Madam Speaker, 29 per cent of young people between the ages of 15 and 19 smoke. Fourteen per cent of kids between the ages of 10 and 14 smoke. Half of these smokers will die prematurely of tobacco related illness. The need for action is clear.
Over the last 25 years governments, committees and individual members in the House have proposed and acted on measures to reduce tobacco use. Through it all the focus has consistently been on protecting the health of Canadians and young people in particular.
In 1971 the federal government introduced a bill to restrict tobacco advertising. That legislation was still on the Order Paper when the House prorogued. In 1986 the House debated a private member's bill sponsored by a new Democratic member, Ms. McDonald. Her bill, the Non-Smokers' Health Act, mandated smoke free workplaces in areas under federal jurisdiction and banned smoking in common areas under federal jurisdiction.
Let me quote from Hansard dated November 20, 1986, page 1382.
Society has a stake in the health of its citizens. When a person is ill, absent from work or dies leaving young dependents, society must pay. Society pays for medicare, society pays for dependents, and society pays for pensions".
In 1989 the government of the day brought in the Tobacco Products Control Act. This act banned the advertising and restricted the promotion of tobacco products. It required by law health messages and information on toxic constituents to be displayed on tobacco product packaging.
The health minister who was responsible for that bill, the Hon. Jake Epp, said:
This is not a moral crusade. It is not a case of some over-zealous individuals attempting to force their lifestyle on others. It is responsible government action in reaction to overwhelming evidence-If tobacco were discovered tomorrow, no government would permit its sale, let alone its advertising".
I want to remind the House that the minister was a member of the Progressive Conservative Party. His initiative, as well as that of Ms. McDonald, a member of the New Democratic Party and minister John Munro, a member of my party in 1971 were supported by members of all political parties in the House.
The government knows that the members from all sides of this House may choose to differ on many different issues, but we have common interest when it comes to protecting the health of Canadians, especially young Canadians, from a lethal product.
Our challenge once again is to work together to reduce tobacco use. We accept this challenge with an increased knowledge and understanding about the physiology and psychology effects of tobacco use. We have learned more about the factors that influence the decision to start and continue to smoke, and about those who are most affected in encouraging people to quit.
We are better equipped today to respond to the judicial standards and expectations that must be reflected in any law that we draft.
The result is a bill that is balanced and reasonable and that responds to the factors that lead far too many Canadian children to smoke. About two-thirds of all young people try cigarettes. For about half of them, experimentation leads to a habit that becomes regular and addictive over a two or three year cycle.
At the outset, they think addiction is something that happens to other people, not them, and that the prospect of heart disease or cancer is far removed from them. Most believe that they will be able to stop whenever they want, but the facts are something
different. That is what hundreds of thousands of young people say each and every year. However, the fact is that half will never quit.
Restricting youth access to tobacco products as much as possible is therefore critical. Restraining access and making it difficult for children ages 10 to 14 and teenagers to purchase cigarettes decreases the likelihood that those experimenting with tobacco will graduate to addiction. The tobacco act will introduce such restrictions.
Photographic identification will be required when proof of minimum age is requested by retailers. As corner stores and gas stations become less viable as a source of supply for young smokers, they will turn to other avenues.
In order to further reduce youth access to tobacco products through such sources, vending machine sales, and mail order distribution of tobacco products will not be permitted.
Self-service displays of tobacco products will also be prohibited. These displays enable underage youth to quickly and easily help themselves to tobacco products, regardless of age restrictions, thus beginning a purchase transaction that retail staff are less likely to challenge. Duty free stores will be exempted from this provision. The exemption is reasonable and will not undermine the achievement of our health objectives, given that these outlets operate in a controlled environment which unaccompanied youth generally do not frequent.
In order to enhance public awareness of the hazards of tobacco use, this legislation will increase the amount of health information to be displayed on tobacco product packaging.
Studies confirm that cigarette packaging is second only to television as a key source of health information about tobacco. A 1996 survey conducted for Health Canada revealed that 75 per cent of smokers want health warning messages to remain on cigarette packages as a reminder of some of the health consequences of tobacco use. Half of these smokers who tried to quit or cut back confirmed that labelling on the packages contributed to their decision.
In another study that same year, the majority of Canadians favoured expanding the amount of information on tobacco packages about the presence and effects of some of the toxic constituents in tobacco and tobacco smoke, such as arsenic, lead and others.
This bill will require that information. The tobacco act will also address the role that promotion plays in the decision to smoke. Promotion does much more than just convey factual information about a product. Through associations with people, objects, events and ideas, promotion creates a brand identity or image that influences and shapes the attitudes, beliefs and behaviours of consumers and potential consumers.
Clearly it is not the exposure to one ad, one display in a convenience store or one tobacco sponsored event that triggers the decision to smoke. People do not get up in the morning and decide suddenly to take up smoking, as some people may have suggested. As I have said before, the decision to smoke, which includes the decision to start and the decision to continue, is a gradual one.
Tobacco promotion contributes to that decision and hinders the quitting process by conveying as many positive and reassuring impressions as possible that smoking is desirable, socially acceptable and more prevalent in society than it actually is, that it is sexy and cool. One should do it to be part of the game.
It is the cumulative effects of tobacco promotion that we as legislators, not members who are bound by political ideology, but those of us as legislators transforming the political ideologies that are in the House, that we must address.
Tobacco promotion is pervasive all across this country. Our environment is literally papered with it from coast to coast to coast. Brand name promotions appear in magazines, on billboards, on the sides of buildings, buses, gas stations, airports and sports stadiums. Retail stores display tobacco brand names on clocks, countertop displays, life size cutouts of sports celebrities and even in ads laminated on the floors of different stores.
The tobacco industry insists that its marketing campaigns do not target youth but that is not the issue here. Whatever the ostensible intent of the tobacco companies, their rich promotional campaigns reach youth. Kids cannot help but be exposed to the images of tobacco that appear on every possible medium in every conceivable location across this country. Being more aware of promotional activities than other age groups, they are susceptible to it. An Ontario study showed that they can name the tobacco sponsors of sports and cultural events. In a Canada-wide survey, 88 per cent could name the country's two most popular brands of cigarettes. That is alarming.
It is not possible to promote a particular brand of a cigarette without at the same time promoting smoking. Our objective is to diminish the prominence and the exposure of tobacco promotion in order to diminish its reach and its influence.
The bill will therefore prohibit tobacco product advertising such as broadcast advertising and billboard, bus panel and street advertising. It will permit tobacco companies to communicate product and brand preference information in print ads in publications that are primarily read by adults, in direct mailings to adults and in places where children are not permitted by law, for example premises that are licensed to sell various alcoholic beverages.
Under the bill the use of tobacco brand names or logos on youth oriented products or those with lifestyle connotations will not be permitted. Young people should no longer serve as walking billboards for tobacco products by wearing ball caps or backpacks emblazoned with cigarette brand names or symbols.
This bill will also regulate the use of tobacco brand names and other brand elements in the promotion of events sponsored by tobacco companies.
Allow me to emphasize an important point. This legislation will not ban tobacco sponsorship nor will it prohibit sponsorship promotion. Tobacco companies remain free to sponsor events and activities of their choosing and will continue to have scope to associate their brands with those events and activities. What the bill will do is limit the extent to which tobacco brand names and other brand elements can be used in the promotion of sponsored events.
Accordingly the display of tobacco brand names and brand elements will be restricted to the bottom 10 per cent of sponsorship promotional material. Such materials will only be permitted in publications that are read primarily by adults, in direct mailings and on the site of the sponsored event. The size of on site promotions and the length of time they can be displayed will in fact be regulated.
What does this effectively mean? It means that tobacco brand names can continue to be used in the name of an event, such as the Craven "A" Just for Laughs Festival, or in the location of the event, such as stade du Maurier, but it also means that the display of the brand names would be confined to the bottom 10 per cent of the promotional material. This is reasonable and it is balanced and it is fair. It enables the tobacco companies to continue to communicate brand information while at the same time contributing to the government's overriding health objectives.
Finally this legislation will give government the authority to regulate tobacco products. While we do not plan to exercise this authority right away, it is important that we have the flexibility to respond quickly to new products that may be introduced on to the market, as well as the developments in social and scientific knowledge as it evolves.
If and when it becomes possible to make tobacco products less hazardous without inadvertently creating new health hazards or triggering negative economic effects, we will have the means to do so.
The legislation will also ensure that we have the information we need to effectively monitor and enforce the production, promotion and sale of tobacco products. Tobacco manufacturers will be required to provide the government with product and sales information as well as information about their manufacturing, distribution and promotion practices.
Great care has been taken to ensure the measures contained in this legislation reflect the guidance provided by the Supreme Court of Canada and respect the charter of rights and freedoms.
In its September 1995 decision the Supreme Court of Canada confirmed that the federal government has the criminal law power to control the advertising of tobacco products. It recognized that the detrimental health effects of tobacco consumption are both dramatic and substantial, and that in fact tobacco kills. As Justice LaForest wrote: "Parliament can validly employ the criminal law to prohibit tobacco manufacturers from inducing Canadians to consume these products, and to increase public awareness concerning the hazards of their use".
Moreover the court unanimously held that the purpose of the legislation, which is to reduce the health effects of tobacco consumption, is a valid and important legislative objective sufficient to warrant limiting freedom of expression. That is precisely what we have done. Justice McLachlin, who wrote the majority judgment, said: "Even a small reduction in tobacco use may work a significant benefit to the health of Canadians and justify a properly proportioned limitation of the right of free expression".
Contrary to what the tobacco industry may suggest, the Supreme Court of Canada recognized a link between certain forms of tobacco advertising and consumption. In particular the court stated that lifestyle advertising may as a matter of common sense be seen as having a tendency to discourage those who would otherwise cease tobacco use from doing so.
The court identifies options which would be a reasonable impairment of the right of free expression, namely: a partial ban on advertising which would allow product information and brand preference advertising; a ban on lifestyle advertising; measures to prohibit advertising aimed at children and adolescents; and attributed health messages on tobacco product packaging. These are precisely the measures that are incorporated in this bill. These clarifications are important because they set the context for the comprehensive and integrated set of measures that are contained in the legislation before us.
This legislation is a product of a deliberate and thoughtful process. We have taken the guidance of the Supreme Court of Canada. We have studied the results of the research conducted by and on behalf of Health Canada as well as the extensive body of international data on tobacco promotion and tobacco use.
We have consulted with the tobacco industry, with arts, cultural and sports groups, with health groups, with retailers and distributors, with tobacco growers and with festival organizers. We have consulted but consultation does not mean that we have to agree with each and every thing that the party across the table is putting
forward. I resent to a certain extent those who are now saying that there has not been sufficient time for consultation.
When the blueprint was tabled in November 1995 over 3,000 interventions and representations were received from a variety of Canadians including those in the province of Quebec. These representations were in regard to a strategy for tobacco consumption. For them to come forward now and say to parliamentarians that they need more time, that they need to have additional consultations, I say that that is the recipe for the deferral and delay of the legislation which I do not believe is acceptable to any reasonable Canadian.
There is no magic solution to the public health epidemic of tobacco use in our society. There is no law that can turn this problem around overnight, but we can take steps to make tobacco less acceptable and less accessible to youth. We can take measures to counter the positive aura that so often contributes to kids' decisions to smoke. We can ensure that people have the information they need to understand what smoking does to their body and to those exposed to tobacco smoke. We can strike a balance between the reality of tobacco use, the charter of rights and the health interests of Canadians.
Our first priority is the health of Canadians and young Canadians in particular. We have proposed steps which should reduce their tobacco use and lessen the encouragement to smoke they encounter all around them. The bill will help to reduce the sense that tobacco use is just a right of passage for young people on the way to a glamorous adult life.
I imagine that very few of us can think about tobacco use without being able to name someone who has lost their life to it. We must persuade young people not to get on the treadmill that will see some 40,000 of our fellow citizens die early, unnecessarily and often painfully.
I close my intervention at second reading with a thank you. Since I have become Minister of Health, I have sustained opposition attacks from a variety of sources, but I want to congratulate the health critic for the Reform Party. He has put aside our partisan differences and has looked at the substance of what we are attempting to do. Because of that I have said to him privately, publicly and now on the floor of the House of Commons that that is the true test of those who take our oath in this House that we will do our utmost to try to improve the lives of ordinary Canadians. I am very appreciative of the hon. member's support. I look forward to hearing his speech and to meeting him at committee as we proceed with this legislation.
I wish to say to the Bloc critic I understand that Bloc members have legitimate concerns and complaints. They should be given the opportunity to air them here today and also to express them at committee. However, I would hope that he could join not with me as a minister but with young Canadians from coast to coast to coast to try to move on this legislation so that it can be passed by Parliament as soon as is humanly possible.
Perhaps that is the best gift that members of the Bloc, the Reform, the New Democratic Party, the Conservative Party and my party could give to young people in this country: a message of health, a message of hope, a message of caring, caring about their futures.
I appeal not in an ideological sense, but I appeal to my colleagues in the Bloc man to man to take their responsibility seriously, which I know they will. Let us move expeditiously to put the legislation through the House as soon as possible.
I wish to apologize to my colleagues in the Bloc and the Reform. I am requested to be in cabinet as I now speak. I must leave the Chamber but I will return as soon as is humanly possible. I hope they will not look at my departure in any way as suggesting that I am not concerned or do not want to be here to listen to their remarks.
