Mr. Speaker, I would like to say a few things on the Tobacco Act and the resolution of the government to make some changes to the bill before us.
A number of years ago when I was an instructor at a technical institute, I remember having a number of students who took up the habit of smoking. We all know that it is a habit that is very addictive. In fact, of all the people I have spoken to over the years, and I am old enough to have spoken to a number of them who got hooked on this habit, a number of them have said to me that they wish they had never started because once you are hooked it is very difficult to stop. It is almost as bad as eating. Once you start eating it is very difficult to quit.
Over all the years I have spoken to people who smoke, I have never once encountered a single individual who suggested to me that I should start. It is such a devastating thing for health reasons and also for costs.
On several occasions as a mathematics instructor I was able to persuade some of my students to stop smoking. I did that by utilizing part of my curriculum in the math department. Whether I was teaching computing and how to set up functions on a computer or whether I was teaching exponential functions, one of the things we did in the realm of math or finance was to talk about the future value of a deposit annuity.
I specifically remember one student who admitted to me that he smoked about one and half packs of cigarettes a day and that his wife smoked well over a pack a day. Between the two of them they were putting almost three packs a day away.
It is very costly to do this. A lot of people look at the price of a package of cigarettes and think only of the present value of that. However, as anyone who has ever sold RRSPs or anything else in terms of accumulating value can attest, value is greatly enhanced exponentially as one makes deposits over a long period of time.
I do not remember the exact numbers nor do I remember at the time what the prevailing interest rates were, but I remember my students when they were learning to use their electronic calculators, learning exponential functions and learning computer programming. I had the students compute the function 365 multiplied by 5, if that was the price of cigarettes, multiplied by the nominal interest rate, say .1 because in those days it would have been around 10%, divide by, in big square brackets, 1 minus 1.1 to the power of say 45, that number of course representing the number of years a student would work from age 20 after finishing his or her degree and working until age 65.
The students as part of their exercise computed the accumulated value of their cigarette money. If instead of putting the money into cigarettes they had put it into an RRSP, it came to, as I recall, $1.3 million with the assumptions that I used. I had a number of students tell me they were going to change. They said that instead of smoking and having nothing when they retire, they were going to put their $5 a day into a little box and once a month they were going to run it down to their RRSP agent and when they retired they would have $1.3 million on which to retire. That is the financial cost of smoking. We all know of the human and health costs. There is absolutely no justification for people who get hooked on cigarettes. They cannot justify it from a health point of view, not for themselves and not for those around them in their own household or in their office. As a result we have seen in the last number of years a great increase in the number of buildings which have become non-smoking buildings because of the devastating health effects. One could probably see in the future a massive lawsuit against cigarette manufacturers. They will be held legally responsible for the devastation they have caused, the early deaths that have been caused and the problems this has caused, not only to the lives of smokers, but also to the lives of their family members.
I do not know whether it is going to come to that or not, but we have certainly had lawsuits of great magnitude in recent years on different issues. Maybe that is going to come. Maybe the cigarette companies are going to have to tally up one of these days and admit that they have caused a lot of devastation.
I say to the Liberal government that ever since we came to the House in 1993 this has been an issue. Very little has been done. As a matter of fact, shortly after we arrived the government took the unusual step of reducing the tax on cigarettes. Its claim was that this would reduce the criminal act of smuggling illegal cigarettes into the country. If the price of cigarettes sold at the counter was reduced, then the motivation for smuggling would decrease and that would reduce smuggling.
I do not think that is a good principle. If we were to take the logic of that principle and apply it to other areas I suppose we could legalize bank robberies, prostitution, theft, embezzlement and other things and, lo and behold, there would be no more crime. It would be a wonderful way of fighting crime, just by declaring that everything we do that is wrong is not a crime any more. Our jails would be empty and we could proclaim ourselves to be the most wonderful country in the world.
Over the years successive governments have tried to reduce the amount of smoking by increasing taxes and, to a degree, they were effective. I personally know people who, when the next tax increase kicked in, said “That is it for me. That pushes the straw onto the camel's back. That breaks his legs and I am not going to smoke any more”. Increased costs in fact do act as a deterrent. I believe that it was a total act of wimpishness on the part of the government. Instead of enforcing the laws, it simply reduced the price so the criminals would of their own accord lose their profit motive and quit.
I am not certain whether the whole act of smoking should be illegal. This is a question one really needs to ask. As long as cigarette smoking is legal in the country it is incredible that we should pass laws that would prevent a corporation from advertising a product which is legal.
For example, we have people advertising certain foods. Maybe looking at me sideways, Mr. Speaker, you can tell how much weight I have lost. I have tried to say no to food lately. I do not want to do any free advertising, but that slim trim diet is working.
There are many products which may be harmful, but we do not take draconian measures to say they cannot be advertised. If the government were really honest with Canadians, looking at the scientific evidence about the harmful effects of smoking on health, it would declare tobacco as a dangerous substance. Then it would have moral and legal grounds for reducing and restricting the advertising of the product. As long as it is a fully legal product, from the point of view of freedom of citizens and the freedom of companies to work in Canada, we have to ask that question.
At the same time I recognize the vulnerability, especially of young teens, to the pressures of advertising. As long as advertisers are able to make a product look exciting and youthful, as if all young people are doing it, as if all of our heroes are doing the smoking thing, it will look attractive and will draw more people in. I think that more people begin smoking because of peer pressure than because of advertising. That is just a guess that I am making.
Bill C-42 is an attempt to solve the problem or at least to reduce the amount of smoking, by young people in particular. The government is looking at a five year transition period on restrictions to advertising. It has never been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that advertising causes people to take up the habit of smoking, but this is what the government proposes to do.
This must be true confession time on nationwide television. I have to blushingly admit to all people here and to anyone who happens to be listening out there that I did at one time smoke a cigarette.