Madam Speaker, we are very sensitive to anybody who could lose a job. That is the last thing we want to happen. However, we have to balance this situation out with what is actually occurring.
We have a group of individuals producing a substance that is the single leading cause of preventable death in this country today. The hon. member may talk about 16,000 people who are employed in the industry but let us balance this off with the fact that 45,000 Canadians die every year from tobacco related diseases. Two hundred and fifty thousand children pick up the tobacco habit every year.
The fact is the tobacco lobby is actively going and supporting this member for its own gains. It wants to invest money into this individual's coffers, not for the benefit of the individual but for the benefit of its own pockets. It has no interest whatsoever in trying to do something for the betterment of Canadian society and for the people therein.
The reality is that tobacco producers are caught in a difficult situation. Crop diversification has worked in a number of countries and I will be happy to offer the hon. member examples of where this has occurred. However, beyond that we are looking at a situation where the production of the substance is costing the Canadian taxpayer and society billions of dollars in losses to health care and to the gross national product.
I would ask the hon. member, when he contemplates this situation, to balance out the supposedly tiny gains that he has in his own riding to the collective good of Canadian society.