Mr. Speaker, the member, the Secretary of State for Multiculturalism, the parliamentary secretary and other speakers have clearly laid out the public health issue related to tobacco. I do not think there is much disagreement as to the priority and importance of dealing with it.
We also know there are some things going on among parliamentarians and the courts, the supreme court. There have been studies with regard to changing labelling and plain packaging, supreme court decisions on the advertising permissibility and actions by lobbyists. This is an area of particular interest to me as a result of the experience I had with labelling containers of alcoholic beverages.
The member has raised some good points in terms of additional strategy. However, Bill C-24 gives the distributor of the tobacco product the option of attributing the health messages on the product to an entity specified in the regulations, in part.
I simply ask the member, notwithstanding this in itself is not a comprehensive strategy, whether he would agree that attributing the health warning message on the packages of cigarettes to a body such as Health Canada or the Parliament of Canada or the Government of Canada would not enhance the credibility of the message, simply by sourcing it to some reference body. That it is a positive step, although I am sure not the conclusive solution the member would like to see.
Would he not agree that is probably still a positive step which should be supported?