Good day and thank you for coming here this morning to testify before the committee.
I also want to thank Mr. Montour for acknowledging his lack of consideration in failing to have his documents for us in French. However, I do appreciate that they will be translated and made available to us.
According to the chart on page 4 of Imperial Tobacco's submission, the overall number of people who smoke is down slightly. My generation was bombarded with ads designed to educate the public on the dangers of smoking. Cigarettes could not be sold to anyone under 18 years of age. My generation learned that you could not buy tobacco products if you were underage. Paradoxically, however, since 1976, while the number of adult smokers is down slightly, there are more young people... Statistics do not show a decline in the number of young smokers, even though my generation and the generations after me were targeted by public awareness campaigns. The illegal tobacco trade likely targets young people, because they are not old enough to walk into a store and legally purchase tobacco products. I realize full well that by mounting a strong campaign to fight contraband products, we will also be educating young people and maybe even stopping some of them from getting hooked on cigarettes.
My first question follows up on something Mr. St. Amand said.
Mr. Montour, you talked about raw materials. Could you explain to me exactly what you meant by “raw materials” in your recommendation to fight tobacco contraband?