Thank you, Madam Chair.
I do not actually have a prepared statement. I thought we were coming with respect to clause-by-clause today.
We're happy to take the committee's questions, as we move through this.
Given some of the statements that you have heard, I would like to just follow up with a number of brief remarks to once again reiterate that the department believes that the intention of this bill is still an appropriate way to deal with the problems we see emerging with respect to youth and youth tobacco issues.
The department and the Government of Canada do have a broad tobacco demand reduction strategy and we do want to make sure we are using a multi-pronged approach. You've heard a lot about contraband in some of the previous testimony. There are other departments directly involved in attempting to address and deal with the issue of contraband. The government is aware of that as a problem and is working to take action.
We work with our colleagues in all of the other departments—Canada Revenue Agency, the RCMP, Canada Border Services, Public Safety—to try to make sure that those issues are addressed as we move forward.
With respect to the intent of the bill before you today, our intention is to deal with what we see as an emerging problem, and that is the introduction of these new, novel products, the introduction of flavours, the singles that are attractive to youth.
I don't think that as a department I've had the privilege to have one of our surveys quoted quite as often as we did in the last presentation.
It's important to note that by definition most people who will use tobacco products will be adults, because it is prohibited for youth to have them and for them to be sold to youth. That notwithstanding, from the research we have done, from the focus groups we have done, these are products that are attractive to youth. They are growing in terms of the numbers. Cigarillos went from a very small percentage of the overall market a few years ago to now being the fastest growing product category as we move forward.
As a country, we have made great strides in reducing the prevalence of smoking in this country; however, in the last few years we've stalled, and we've stalled at about 19%. If we want to reduce the prevalence of smoking in this country, we need to take different actions or we will continue to be at that rate. We believe that by focusing on this area we can effectively reduce the number of people who start smoking, and thereby reduce that over time.
Thank you very much.