Mr. Speaker, one of the reasons I enjoy going home from Ottawa is not simply because the humidity is much less, although it is partly that. There is a lot of space, that is true. But there is also a lot of common sense out there.
One of the things that Cariboo-Chilcotin people are often criticized for is perhaps their lack of subtlety. There may be some subtlety in this bill that I find distressing.
If I remember correctly the reason we came at this is because of a problem with smuggling. We have heard hon. members talk about the consequences of this problem on the lives of community members where this smuggling was taking place, the hardships that people endured with smuggling taking place in their driveways, of not being able to deal with the threats that were involved, of the police being overwhelmed. There is no denying the government was confronted with an enormous problem.
The difficulty that I have and the subtlety that I am speaking to is that the problem has been taken from the streets of these communities and passed in general to the young people across the nation. The problem is such that the lives and the of these people are going to be affected at a time when the federal and provincial governments are facing enormous problems with the country's medical plan. In a sense, we are placing extra burdens on the medical profession and the hospitals in caring for people in the long term.
This kind of subtlety, this kind of passing the buck, or the butt as we have mentioned this afternoon, raises an extremely important moral issue. It does deal with the original problem but it makes the problem move from that area of the country and generalizes it across the country. It increases the difficulties for
many people and increases the costs for a long, long time to come.
My hon. colleague has spoken so well of the difficulties of smoking in his own life. How would he encourage the government to deal with the smuggling which was the original problem the government faced?