Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to discuss this bill at third reading. I want to comment on a couple of remarks made by my colleagues across the way regarding this issue.
Comments have been made that this problem somehow started in October, some time shortly after we came to government. Our response to the problem was bringing in this legislation but we did not take into consideration the health question.
I do not have to remind hon. members where I come from. In my riding I represent a large number of tobacco producers but also the largest native reserve in the country. I used the term reserve in a somewhat limited way because I understand its negative connotations.
I first came to the House of Commons some six years ago, shortly after this problem started. In fact I have discussed it for a number of years. The smoke huts on the Six Nations are a long way from Akwesasne, a long way from where a lot of the so-called smuggling takes place. This started some four or five years ago. People started to use the tax system to their benefit.
This material did not just appear at one single point. It has been coming across the Canadian border for a number of years at a number of points in the east and in the west. It was always a major problem and it has significantly increased over the last two to three years.
Mr. Speaker, you come from an area where a lot of this problem is taking place, therefore you can attest to the fact that this has been going on in a serious manner for at least two to three years.
When the government brought in this legislation it wanted to also look at what many call the negative health effects of smoking. It looked at this issue in a very serious way. It saw that on every street corner in Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver and all across the country young Canadians had access to cheap cigarettes. That access was right on the corner at the school yard. Quite frankly over the last couple of years the smuggling networks got so sophisticated that it became a very good distribution system that was cheap and easy. Young Canadians had access to cigarettes and tobacco like they never had in the past.
This legislation tried to cut off that access to young Canadians. As a government, along with the provincial governments, we tried to make sure that the penalties imposed on the people who were selling tobacco to minors were greatly increased so that the risk of them being caught was also greatly increased.
By doing that we addressed the concerns of Canadians toward health and the easy access to cigarettes young Canadians were getting. By bringing in this legislation we have proven we have totally shut down the distribution system. We have made a system whereby they do not have access to cigarettes.
I agree with the hon. member who spoke previously that this has become a greater problem than just a tobacco problem, that it has moved into other areas. You know, coming from the area, Mr. Speaker, it has moved to alcohol, to guns.
If the hon. member would admit that a lot of what we have done in this legislation, a lot of what we have committed to do in other areas of enforcement, will take a big chunk out of the underground economy also.
What we have tried to do in this legislation is twofold. We have looked at the health of young Canadians. We have made sure that access to tobacco for young Canadians is cut off. We have addressed that health question. We have also made sure that the smuggling situation which has ramifications far beyond Canadians getting cheap cigarettes but has a lot to do with how native Canadians view themselves.
As I have said in the House before, I have had a lot more complaints from native Canadians, people of the Six Nations in my riding, about the smuggling situation than I did from non-natives. They recognized that the values being instilled by the people running the smoke shops and running the smuggling rings were not the values that their fathers and their forefathers had tried to instil in them.
I want to say that I have had a large number of people within the native community come to me and thank me for this bill and thank the government for bringing in this legislation.
I wanted to address the issue that somehow we had all of a sudden just reacted to the fact that we were not going to enforce legislation on native reserves. I do not think that is true. To suggest that smuggling was only taking place on Akwesasne is to ignore the fact that cigarettes were coming through all kinds of points across the country, including points in western Canada.
We have a very large open border. Unfortunately it is very easy to drive truckloads of this stuff across at any given point. We just do not have the sophistication or the numbers of people to check every single truckload of stuff that comes across the border. These smuggled cigarettes were coming in from every-
where. To suggest that it was just a native problem is misleading. It is suggesting something that is not the fact.
I will leave it at that. Mr. Speaker, I know that you have worked very hard on this issue and I want to thank you for your input. It was people who were dealing with it on the front lines, like yourself, that helped shape this legislation and helped create the solution to the problem that we solved.