Thank you for the question, and thank you for your statement on World No Tobacco Day.
We're very concerned about the much higher rates among the indigenous population. We see much higher rates than the Canadian average in the three northern territories. We need a comprehensive strategy. We need to have engagement with indigenous communities directly. In the north, there's an issue with respect to remoteness, but there are certain messages that I think can resonate in terms of communication that are not currently being used.
In some cases youth need to be educated that modern cigarettes have nothing to do with traditional sacred use of tobacco. In many indigenous communities, many of our best policy measures and taxation measures do not apply. Now that's not the case in the Northwest Territories, but it is within provinces, so there's an opportunity through self-determination for first nations to adopt tobacco tax and keep the revenue equal to the provincial tobacco tax rate, and that's really important to reduce youth smoking.
There's a whole series of measures, and we can go into more detail, but we need to prevent youth from starting we need to offer cessation.