Mr. Speaker, I am to respond to the question of February 1 and that is what I will do.
Research indicates that at least 38,000 die each year as a result of tobacco related diseases. These deaths reflect smoking behaviours of more than two decades ago when the risks of smoking were less understood.
Even now more than 100,000 children and teens begin smoking every year in Canada.
Enough is known about the hazards of smoking that we can predict with gruesome confidence that one in four of these young new smokers will die prematurely from conditions like emphysema, heart disease and lung cancer.
Tobacco deaths are preventable and even one preventable death let alone thousands constitutes a tragedy. This is unacceptable.
Canada's national strategy to reduce tobacco use has gone a long way toward reinforcing the idea that smoking is no longer cool for youth and a lot less socially acceptable among adults than once was the case in this country.
This strategy has proceeded on a broad front with federal legislation restricting cigarette advertising and requiring strong visible health warnings on the product package, with health promotion campaigns aimed at encouraging young people to think twice about starting to smoke and to break free from social pressures to start smoking, and with federal legislation to raise the age at which people may legally be sold tobacco products to 18.
Tobacco smuggling is a serious threat to Canada's strategy against smoking because it is making cigarettes available to young people through illicit channels.
Unless we put a stop to smuggling we will find it increasingly difficult to keep tobacco out of the hands of young teens, which is the very purpose of the sales of tobacco to young people act. With this law we expect Canada's retail sector to take a responsible approach to ensuring tobacco is not available for sale to young people but to make it work to control tobacco access by young persons.
The tobacco market has got to move above ground where we can see it, where we can manage it, and where our programming can have its full effect.
Canada leads the world in taking a comprehensive strategic approach to reducing the toll of sickness and premature death caused by tobacco smoking. We have no intention of forfeiting this lead. The government is committed to implementing innovative programs and legislation to maintain the momentum of our national strategy to continue to reduce addictions to tobacco in Canada and to continue to prevent tobacco related deaths.
I want to inform the House that it is the government that sets tax policy in this country.