Mr. Speaker, I have been interested in listening to this debate. As the House has heard there is actually a small debate even within the Reform caucus, as I would suspect there might be within the Liberal caucus and for that matter the BQ.
I find myself to be in a very ambivalent position on this one. It is very difficult. I am looking forward to my colleague being able to assist me with the concept. I suggest we ended up with the taxes as a result of the fact that they were called sin taxes and were on a commodity that people wanted to consume. Therefore for the longest period of time consecutive governments saw it as being a revenue source. After all that is what taxation is. They kept on adding and adding taxes to this particular commodity. As a result we ended up with the situation that we have all acknowledged, the smuggling problem.
When the whole issue was being looked at we also discovered the connection that my colleague from Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca has so ably put forward. We discovered the connection between price and the fact that if the price goes down, then we are undoubtedly going to end up with higher consumption. It is only a straight case of the law of supply and demand.
I have to respect my Reform Party colleague because after all he is a medical practitioner and has seen the results of cancer and other respiratory diseases with respect to this particular product. Undoubtedly I have every respect in the world for the emotion that he brings to this question.
Is it right, is it fair, is it proper to be trying to legislate people's behaviour on the basis of taxation? Is taxation not really a source of revenue and are we not mixing up principles here in trying to legislate people's behaviour by increasing a revenue source? It does not seem like quite a match there. Perhaps my colleague could help me.