Bill S-16 (Historical)

Tackling Contraband Tobacco Act

An Act to amend the Criminal Code (trafficking in contraband tobacco)

This enactment amends the Criminal Code to create a new offence of trafficking in contraband tobacco and to provide for minimum penalties of imprisonment for repeat offenders.

Tackling Contraband Tobacco Act

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

May.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Well, if nobody is going to lose their job, why would they issue the letters?

The minister said "may", but the letters indicate that people are going to lose their jobs. The union is working from real letters issued about real layoffs that are occurring in the CBSA.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to thank my hon. colleague from Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca for his absolutely amazing speech.

Before he even began speaking, I jotted down a question on my paper. There is a tendency to think that contraband tobacco comes primarily from first nations. I am glad he gave an overview of the situation and dispelled that myth.

According to an article published in national media outlets a few months ago, some estimates suggest that not 50%, but closer to 90% of illegal tobacco in Canada comes from China. That is a huge proportion. This illegal tobacco is entering Canada through British Columbia, where my colleague is from.

I completely agree that we absolutely must examine this problem in committee. However, are there not better ways to invest our resources? Could we not go a little further and do more?

I think everyone here wants to act in good faith. However, I feel as though we are getting away from the crux of the issue. I wonder what my colleague thinks about that.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I think the member for Alfred-Pellan, with whom I work as the deputy critic of public safety, is doing a fabulous job in that critic portfolio.

I missed the article that said it was 90%. I was going on my conversations with tobacco companies which said it was at least 50%. I would not be surprised if it was 90% coming from China, because it is a huge illegal industry in China to start with. When they see an opening, such as the uninspected containers in Vancouver, I am sure they will shove as much product through that opening as they can.

Again I come back to the fact that we are talking about health. We are talking about the health of young people, the health of kids, the health of young women and the connection to breast cancer. It is important that we attack the right part of the problem.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to speak today to Bill S-16, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (trafficking in contraband tobacco) and the proposed amendments to the Criminal Code to create a new offence of trafficking of contraband tobacco.

I have been here for most of the day listening to the speeches on Bill S-16. As chair of the Standing on Justice and Human Rights, it is my understanding the bill will go to the justice committee for review and just as we reviewed Bill C-54, we accepted amendments from both the Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party last night. Today I tabled the report in the House. It was well analyzed with a number of witnesses, From those witnesses, a number of amendments were proposed and in fact accepted. The amendments from the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party all passed.

Bill S-16 started in the Senate and we are debating it at second reading right now. There will be a vote, hopefully in the very near future, and Bill S-16 will move to committee where a number of the questions that have been asked today will be properly vetted with witnesses and bureaucrats who are responsible for implementing these changes so we understand what the effect will be on the Criminal Code.

The bill would provide mandatory minimum penalties of imprisonment of persons who are convicted for a second or subsequent time of this offence. It is important for everyone to understand that the mandatory minimum approach we have taken on a number of bills is important to give gravitas to the issue in front of us.

It is very important that we send a message to those who are in the business of contraband tobacco, whether they are traffickers, or selling it in small components to individuals, that it is illegal. It was indicated earlier that those who were in the business of not obeying the law often took into account what the penalties would be and used that as part of the cost of doing business. If there are no mandatory minimums, just fines, they price that risk in their product. They will decide what risk level they are willing to take.

It is important, not just in this case, but in many cases that the Government of Canada look at mandatory minimums, and we are doing it in this bill, so we let those who are willing to break the law and circumvent it know that there is a real penalty to be paid, a much more difficult penalty they cannot include in the cost of doing business.

I am fully in favour of mandatory minimums and in this case new mandatory minimums for this new level of offence. I believe it is fair. We are saying that it only will apply after people's second offence. Let us for argument sake, that individuals who make a mistake, are caught up or there is peer pressure, whatever the issue might be and they become involved with contraband tobacco. There is no mandatory minimum for that. However, if people make the mistake twice, they have consciously made that effort. They have built in the cost of making that mistake the first time and are now doing it another time.

It is time for the Government of Canada, through the Criminal Code, to say to them that they knew what they were doing. They broke the law and faced a penalty previously, but now they face a much more severe one with a mandatory minimum. I have no issue with that. My true belief is that the vast majority of the people of Burlington also believe in mandatory minimums.

There is another very important piece to the bill. As member of Parliament, every two or four years if we are in a minority position, we have a platform. Every party has a platform. We go to the people and talk about what we will accomplish if they give us the confidence to form government.

Fortunately for us, in 2011 the public gave the Conservative Party of Canada a majority in the House of Commons. Part of that decision making of the people of Burlington and the rest of Canada was our platform. What did the party stand for?

There are certainly other factors. There is the leader, the policy of the party, the platform during an election and the individual candidate. I would hope that some people in Burlington voted for me because they liked me, but I cannot prove that. It might be my wife and maybe my daughter, but I cannot prove that either.

People talked to me during the election about the platform and what we were proposing to do if we formed government. Part of that 2011 election platform was a commitment to reduce the problem of trafficking of contraband tobacco by establishing mandatory jail time for repeat offenders of trafficking in contraband tobacco.

It was clearly stated in our platform. In fact, part of my literature and part of the campaigning I did included a discussion on mandatory minimums. This was part of what we promoted.

That was two years ago. Some people think it has taken us a while to get here. I do not hear much about in my riding, but my colleagues in caucus were persistent that we needed to move on this, that it was a real issue for them in their ridings. It could be an issue in my riding of which I am not aware.

I am fortunate enough that I and my wife are non-smokers. My two daughters who are young adults are non-smokers. They will have a number of their peers over to our house. There could be as many as a couple of dozen and there are no smokers in that group. I do not have the exposure to that. However, I have been told that it is an important issue at the high schools in my area.

We have the ability to look at what we promised during the election and what we are able to deliver to the people of Burlington and to the rest of the people of Canada. We are moving on that. It took some time. I think we took the appropriate amount of time to look at options to tackle this problem.

This is not an easy problem to tackle. As we have just heard, there are a number of sources for contraband tobacco. It could be offshore or domestic. It could be from south of the border. The sources are difficult. The ability to track and find these sources is a difficult one for police and border services officers.

We promised mandatory minimums in our election platform. We have brought forward some legislation that will meet the commitment we made to the public. We have also said that we cannot just put mandatory minimums in without providing some resources to ensure we can implement them. That is why we have created a special task force, I believe it is up to 50 officers from the RCMP, to tackle this problem.

Having 50 officers will not end the problem overnight, but it is a great start for us to tackle this issue. It has put a focus on the problem that we have been having in our country and, in particular, in certain parts of Ontario to a greater extent than others. It has affected not only certain ridings based on production, but also the distribution. A number of small business owners have come to me and have sent me letters. I have had them in my office talking to me about what this is doing to their businesses.

I am not a proponent of smoking. My mother-in-law had lung cancer. She has had one lung removed. She was a smoker. She has been very fortunate as she is a survivor of cancer. Her lung cancer was over 12 years ago and she lost her brother to lung cancer through smoking. Therefore, smoking, from our family's perspective, is very much frowned upon. We have been lucky that, through the health system, she went on some experimental drugs and her cancer was cured, and we are very grateful for that. We are not big proponents, and that is why I am very much in support of this bill.

I started the conversation of there being mandatory minimum sentences. Let us be honest, some are more significant than others. For those caught in the trafficking aspects, it is up to six months. If it is an indictable offence, it is up to five years. It is significant and I do not deny it. However, it is a significant problem that these individuals have created. We talked about the cost to the health care system and so on, but to me personally it is not about the cost to the system, it is about protecting people's health when contraband tobacco products hit the market.

We know cigarettes are better regulated, produced and properly labelled by a licensed facility. We know they are a health issue. People are well warned on the packaging, which we have increased as a government. It is not any surprise to anyone at any age that these are health hazards. However, the health hazards of tobacco products that are not labelled, and we do not know where they came from and what is in them, are tenfold what the legitimate cigarette producers ensure on those warnings. We have not a clue what is in those other products. That is why we need these penalties to be significant and severe, and I believe this bill would do that.

We have heard from other members today. I do not want to repeat the number of cigarettes that are involved or the kilograms. That information has all been put forward.

The other thing I would like to talk about is why we are moving on this. There was discussion about time allocation on this bill. I believe it is a two-way street in the House, maybe even three-way if there is such a thing. We need to start to work together. We had an example yesterday where we looked at Bill C-54. We had amendments proposed by the opposition. The vast majority of them did not past, but we did accept one from each party. We have seen—

[Wayne Easter]

Wow.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Well, the Liberal Party member at the committee was grateful for that and we made a significant difference. We did hear from the NDP on the same thing. However, our House has offered on a number of occasions recently that we would take a number of spots.

The Liberal Party was offered a number of spots. This was not a secret. It was presented in the House. A number of spots, which was significantly more, maybe seven to 10 times more than the other two parties, were offered to move things forward so that we did not have to move time allocation. That was rejected. Why was that rejected? I do not know why.

I have no issue on bills on which I think there is a significant political difference. However, this bill, and I am using it as an example, I think everyone in the House would like to see go to second reading so that they can have witnesses, have a discussion and move forward on it. We may not completely agree to it in the end, but this is at second reading.

There is an opportunity to move this forward. In my view, that would give us opportunities, in terms of the timeframe, since we only have so much time in the House to debate issues, for other more divisive issues.

Listening to the speeches today, everyone has been pretty much in favour of getting this to second reading. To be frank, as a backbencher, I do not know why time allocation had to be an issue. We should all have been able to agree to a different number of time slots. However, that did not happen.

My hope for the fall is that everyone, from all sides, will work together to make sure that bills on which there is general agreement, at least to go to second reading, we will be able to move forward. Bills on which we have a more fundamental difference of opinion we would spend more time on. After seven years of being here, that has been my frustration as an individual member of Parliament. There have been some issues in that area.

I am looking forward to the bill going to second reading. As chair of the justice committee, I am looking forward to getting that organized early in the fall. This will be one of the first pieces of legislation we will deal with. I am looking forward to learning what people and different organizations believe this will do. I am also looking forward to our coming together as a Parliament and promoting this so that we can get the task force in place to target organized crime, go after these issues and make a difference.

The RCMP is an excellent choice to be doing this. I know that there was talk about the Canada Border Services Agency and their role here, and they do have a role. However, I think when we, through this bill, put an emphasis on the fact that it is a criminal offence and that the nation's police force is in charge of that task force, it gives it the authority, the significance and the attention it needs.

I am looking forward to supporting the bill going to committee. Hopefully, it goes to my justice committee, we have a great discussion on it and we get it passed early in the fall.

[Ruth Ellen Brosseau, NDP, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I really enjoyed the hon. member's speech. There was a moment of clarity and honesty we have been looking for all day. It was kind of missing in question period, but it was really nice to see. I do not even know what number we are at right now when it comes to time allocation motions on these bills.

[An hon. member]

Forty-six.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

It is 47.

[Ruth Ellen Brosseau, NDP, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Is it 46? Anyway, they keep coming.

I have two questions. From all the speeches we have heard today, we are all on the same page. This is important, and we have to move forward. If this was so important to the Government of Canada, I am wondering why this came from the Senate, which is unelected and full of scandals.

Second, is there going to be more financing for local police stations moving forward to actually make a difference and combat contraband tobacco?

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we have had a very full legislative agenda, and this is one item. There is nothing wrong with legislation being introduced in the other place and brought here. It speeds things up. It makes things more efficient and effective.

On that point, the member opposite should ask her House leader why New Democrats did not agree to a certain number of speaking slots and agree to move this bill forward. It would be a very good question for the member to ask her own House leader.

I am looking forward to the report from the RCMP task force to see what resources are needed to solve this problem.

[John Rafferty, NDP, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly appreciated the comments from my friend from Burlington. I want to assure him that New Democrats really do like him.

He was talking about suggestions to make things better. I am glad the minister is here today.

Like most members, we spend a lot of time with our constituents in coffee shops and that sort of thing. I wanted to pass along very quickly a suggestion made by an elderly gentleman I have coffee with whenever I can. He said that for contraband tobacco, most of the issue is with first nations, so why not give first nations the ability to tax that particular product. Then the price would go up. I did not really have any comment of my own on that. It was quite interesting. After I thought about it for a bit, I thought that would show that the government was also moving forward on self-government. There is a further side to that.

I do not really have a personal comment on taxation, but I wonder what the hon. member might think about that.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for meeting with his constituents and discussing different issues, which we all do. We all get input on a variety of issues.

I can honestly say that I have not heard that suggestion before. I am not fortunate enough to have a large native population in my riding. There are no reserves in my riding. I have not heard about the issue of taxation, but I think this issue is more than about taxation. It is about more than whether the government is losing out on taxation on the sale of cigarettes. There are more important issues. Making this part of the Criminal Code, making the trafficking of this particular drug illegal, sends the message that this is a health issue and not just a tax issue.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. friend's speech. It was a very thoughtful, candid speech. I want to ask him two things.

First, the opposition is calling for more thought and consultation on the bill. In terms of consultation, I would like to know who the member thinks we should be consulting with. Is it the smugglers? I would ask him to answer that question.

Second, the NDP seems to be putting forward the spin and misrepresentation of facts in terms of the resources committed to Canadian border services. Since 2005, we have seen a 27% increase in financial resources given to Canadian border services and a 26% increase in the number of employees in Canadian border services. We have the resources, both financially and in terms of employees who are available to interdict contraband tobacco or other products that come across the border.

I wonder if my hon. friend could address those two questions.