Mr. Speaker, I rise to support Bill C-11.
As members know, part of this bill deals with the Customs Act and the Excise Act and it therefore deals with issues such as seizure, enforcement, identifying smuggled goods and in fact with a lot of the law and order issues that pertain to smuggling.
The other part of this bill deals with the effects on young people of the lowering of the tobacco prices. I want to say that as a physician, my expertise has always been in the matter of health. My expertise is also with regard to smoking and anti-smoking issues. I have been involved in this issue for many years.
When I came to this House I was only aware of my one perspective. The issue to me was solely the effect of smoking on health. That issue has been well related by everyone here in the
House today. It is no secret to anyone that smoking is the single most preventable cause of death and illness in the world.
It is no secret to anyone that the World Health Organization has said that from the year 1990 to the year 2000 if smoking continues at the rate that it is going, the number of people dying in the world from smoking will be over 40 million people which will be greater than all of the people who have died in all of the wars in the 20th century. That tells members that smoking is in fact a deadly disease and a deadly issue.
However, when I came to the House I was not aware of the other side of this issue, the issue of smuggling. It is well documented that in fact the increase in tobacco prices has had a significant effect and is perhaps the biggest gun in the whole strategy of anti-smoking legislation.
Increasing tobacco prices in fact decreases the access to tobacco for young people. We know that between the ages of 13 and 20 young people having access to tobacco have a great risk of addiction.
I was very concerned that one of the ways of dealing with the smuggling of tobacco had to do with the lowering of tobacco prices. However I am aware now of another group of experts in law enforcement and smuggling. I am not an expert in that. I am only an expert in health. Many people will say I am not but I suppose I am. They have said in their advice to the government that if one merely increases the export tax and uses enforcement measures it will not in itself have an effect on smuggling.
We have now reached a critical point in our increase in tobacco taxes. We had reached the point where we had almost come to the point where prohibition had reached with regard to alcohol when the United States had created a prohibition level. We have seen exactly what happened then begin to happen here with regard to tobacco smuggling.
Forty per cent of all tobacco sales was smuggled tobacco. Two million Canadians were buying contraband tobacco and many of those same Canadians were young people. The same young people who had no access to tobacco as a result of the increased prices were now having access to tobacco because of the cheap smuggled tobacco. The whole strategy of high prices had been undermined.
I support the bill because it deals with the issue of law and order on the one hand and with increasing the ability to seize, with increasing the ability to identify smuggled products and with increasing the enforcement of this smuggling activity of the RCMP and expanding this not only to RCMP and customs officials but I understand to local police.
I also want to support the second part of the bill which deals specifically with the government's understanding of the complexity of this issue. The government understands that lowering tobacco prices will affect the accessibility of tobacco to young Canadians. It has taken steps to mitigate the lowering of tobacco taxes via the Tobacco Sales to Young Persons Act. The amendments to this act, which increase the age from 16 to 18, which decrease the ability of young people under 18 to bring tobacco into this country, which remove vending machines from everywhere else but bars, and which increase the enforcement and the penalties to anyone selling tobacco to minors, have put tobacco very clearly where it belongs and that is as a controlled product alongside alcohol. I would like to see the time when tobacco is treated like alcohol and sold only in liquor stores.
The government has acted immediately and promptly to address a problem that has been allowed to sit for four years without any attention by the other government, so that it is now in the crisis position that we see it in. The government has dealt with a complex issue with sensitivity to both sides of the problem and with a clear commitment to the health of Canadians.
I hope that everyone here will see not only that this bill is worth supporting, but that it is urgent we support it so that we can get on with so many of the strategies that are necessary to improve the health of Canadians and to prevent us from having our young people have access to this lethal drug.