Mr. Chair, if I may, it's an excellent question.
In our opinion, it started with government policy to reduce smoking and high taxation on the product. That has caused this major underground economy in cigarettes, most of which come in from other jurisdictions, the U.S., the Far East.
The major manufacturers, in their attempts to protect their own profitability and their market share, have decided to go into discounted brands of cigarettes. In doing so, they've increased significantly the amount of imported tobacco they use in those products.
It's not that many years ago that legal domestic cigarettes in Canada were approximately 90% Canadian content. There was only a very small component of import, certain grades or styles that they could not access either from Ontario or Quebec. But in their attempts to protect this profitability, they've increased their imports dramatically, whereby the content of legal Canadian cigarettes is probably at 50% or 60%. This has rapidly decreased our crop size, and that's why we're in this situation.
As long as it is profitable for them to do so, they will continue to sell cigarettes in Canada. The largest company is Imperial Tobacco Canada Limited, which is a subsidiary of British American Tobacco. It has decided to close down all its bricks and mortar in this country. All of its manufacturing is being moved to Mexico. It intends to continue selling those cigarettes in Canada, but the manufacturing in Montreal, Guelph, and in my community of Aylmer is all being shut down and moved to Mexico. We expect the other major manufacturers have these sorts of contingency plans in their back pockets as well.