First, it was important for us to have a fairly significant quantity of product to justify a minimum penalty and also to resist a charter challenge. It would have been problematic if someone were selling a single cigarette and was looking at a minimum of 90 days. The courts would have had some serious problems with that.
It was important for us to have a certain quantity. We chose those quantities because they represent what the RCMP tends to focus on as a minimum. If an individual has 10 kilograms of cigarette product or 10,000 cigarettes, this is the kind of quantity that attract RCMP attention. The RCMP will get involved with lesser amounts but prefers to focus their attention on large-scale operations. For them, large-scale operations usually means a master case involving about 10,000 cigarettes. So, 10,000 cigarettes or more is what they'll want to focus on and that was the amount we thought was best.