Mr. Speaker, first of all about this dragging of one's feet, nonsense. This government was sworn into office in November. The initiative was announced on February 8, only a few days after Parliament was recalled. I asked for three years in the previous government to do something. I asked this new government, three weeks and it was done. This dragging of the feet allegation is sheer and utter nonsense. The member knows it.
In terms of anti-smuggling, obviously the 25 per cent increase in the police force was not just for tobacco smuggling. As I indicated to the member, it was not just a reducing of the taxes. It was the centrepiece of the program. Other things were done as well. The member alluded to some of them, but those things on their own could not work according to the RCMP and according to the people of my riding unless you included that centrepiece which was the reduction of taxes.
The member talks about the smuggling of arms and the smuggling of liquor and so on. First, how does the member think we are catching these people now? It is because we have increased the number of police that we have. Because we no longer have that scourge of tobacco smuggling we can concentrate our efforts elsewhere. Otherwise we would not even know the problem was there. That is how it came to our attention.
Finally, the smuggling of arms and the smuggling of liquor is not done in the same way as tobacco smuggling. I could sit down with the member and describe to him how some of these things occur. There is a link but it is not nearly as direct. You do not smuggle liquor on snowmobiles in the winter or on boats across the river at Akwesasne, at least not generally.
The liquor is smuggled largely by tanker cars, false bottoms and things of that nature. Furthermore, a lot of the liquor is smuggled for institutional use as opposed to domestic use. It is smuggled in large barrels and containers. It is then emptied into smaller bottles by hotel and bar operators and so on and used in that way. It is not the same as the problem of cigarettes where society was probably displaying a smuggled pack. It is vastly different.
On the gun issue, there are many differences again where guns are smuggled on the bottom of trucks. Containers are fastened to the underside of trucks as they cross the border and things like that. I am told the same applies to railway cars, that sort of thing. It is a vastly different network.
Finally, on the issue of liquor, if I can just go back to that point, liquor taxes are not federal taxes. The member would know that as well. Between 80 per cent and 85 per cent of liquor taxes are provincial. They are not federal taxes. The solution
could not be the same even if it were advocated and of course it is not in any case.