Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'm not a member of this committee, but I have to say, Mr. Collishaw, that I was struck by your comment that tobacco is the pandemic. I'm sure that if it were any other product or anything else, we would be lining up to respond accordingly, but in fact you give us some interesting statistics. Yet we, as parliamentarians, are only in one business and that is good public policy. Is this good public policy?
I would suggest to you that we have failed as parliamentarians because we have not had a whole-of-government approach when it comes to tobacco. Finance, public security, justice, agriculture, etc.—we have failed miserably. We continue to respond to the edges of the issue.
For example, as a parliamentary secretary to two ministers of finance, I was in the business of dealing with excise taxes on tobacco. We have no problem taxing it. What do we do with the revenue? We put it into general revenue. We don't dedicate a dollar to health prevention or to health care. It goes into general revenue.
From the municipal days, we used to do it. As a former president of the Canadian Parks and Recreation Association, I was involved with Health Canada in a joint project to deal with banning it and educating young people, as young as eight years old, about tobacco. I couldn't believe we were dealing with eight-year-olds at the time. This was in the early 1990s.
My question really, Madam Chair, is to the assistant deputy minister about the failure of government generally in terms of responding. Yes, I support this bill. I support the three amendments, although I have nothing to do at this committee with it. But to me it seems to be, again, at the edges.
One of the comments I noticed in the binder that's put out says we're going to watch further trends. I'm not sure what that means, but if instead of getting ahead of the parade we're going to watch until people become addicted and then we're going to come back and say we need to respond accordingly....
So although this is all well and good, it doesn't address the issue. If we want to deal with the tobacco industry, do we have a long-term strategy that's going to deal with farmers who are currently producing a legal product and with manufacturers who produce it? Are we going to deal with the real issue of smuggling, particularly if other jurisdictions near us are able to continue to promote and manufacture this?
In terms of taxation, are we honestly going to get serious, and is Health Canada going to get together with Finance, and is government generally, regardless of party, going to really take this kind of action? I'd be interested in your comments on those views.