Mr. Speaker, I will try to settle down a little bit here. This member has such a nice tone to his voice I cannot see any point in arguing with him.
I would like to point out that his statement about the cigarette smuggling was so far out of proportion it was almost impossible to control. I would like to humbly suggest that if this government had reacted when cigarette smuggling was in its infancy and the problem was much smaller, we would not have had a problem that was so far out of proportion.
The present government will say it started in the previous government. Undoubtedly it did and the previous government failed to address it as well. But when this government took over in October, the problem was not as large as it was later on in the season. The government had the opportunity back then when it first took over. It knew about the problem and could have done something then. It did not and the problem grew. What does it do? It goes into competition with the cigarette smugglers trying to put them out of business. That is not the way to run a railroad or a country.