Madam Speaker, I am pleased to second the motion put forward by the member for Winnipeg North Centre. She has done a lot of work on this bill for which I thank her on behalf of a lot of Canadians.
Bill C-42 does nothing to toughen the Tobacco Act. I agree completely with my colleague from Macleod who just spoke. It does nothing. It is interesting that the parliamentary secretary is here today to speak on behalf of the minister who is out of the country. If I were the minister with the House debating a bill like this I would be out of the country today too.
We must remember this government was elected five years ago to do something and it has done absolutely nothing. I remind the Canadian people that in 1994 the government reduced taxes on tobacco. It was the first and basically the only thing it did. The government caved in to smugglers instead of addressing the real concern of Canadians, in particular young Canadians who are becoming addicted to cigarette smoking. Instead of addressing and fighting the smuggling problem with the weapons and resources of the Government of Canada, the government caved in to the big tobacco companies. As a result of that we have 40,000 Canadians a year, documented, dying because of smoking. The government simply adds to the problem. This bill does nothing at all to change that.
The government now has an opportunity to do something but it has done nothing. It is just a continuation of what it has done since it was first elected, absolutely nothing, just caving in to the interests of the big tobacco companies.
When the parliamentary secretary spoke about 20 minutes ago she did not even consider the amendment to which we are speaking now. Without this amendment tobacco companies would be able to put up new sponsorships signs on buildings while the bill is still before parliament and have those signs up for another five years. That is bizarre. What the parliamentary secretary did to add insult to injury when she was before the committee, when we were going through this clause by clause, was simply read a statement prepared by the Minister of Health to put forth an amendment without explaining fully the rational of that amendment. That is devious at best. We will not go into what I would call it if I were in a real foul mood. It was not the right thing to do.
What we have is the parliamentary secretary being conned by her own minister and his departmental people to put through that amendment which would basically allow the companies to advertise for another five years if they chose to put up signs between now and when royal assent is given. This is absolutely bizarre.
I mentioned 40,000 Canadians dying every year in Canada because of smoking. That is documented and every major health think tank and association in Canada agrees with those figures, as does every member of parliament, including members of the government. They do not argue that figure.
That would be equivalent to 100 Canadians every day dying in an airplane crash. If an airplane crashed every day in Canada and killed 100 people on board, we would at the end of the year have the same number of deaths, slightly less, as with smoking. That is putting it in perspective. What would we do in the House of Commons? What would the Canadian people think of the Minister of Transport if we had a plane crashing every day in Canada, killing 100 people? We would have his resignation on the floor of the House of Commons within a week. But no, this government allows this to happen day in and day out, doing absolutely nothing about it. That is wrong. Excuse the pun, it is dead wrong.
We just had Remembrance Day. On an annual basis we lose more Canadians to cigarette smoking than we did in World War II. Combine all the Canadian deaths in World War II between 1939 and 1945. They do not add up to the number of Canadians who die on a yearly basis because of smoking.
Under any other set of circumstances this would be an outrage, but why is it not? The cigarette manufacturers use millions of dollars to convince us that smoking is okay. What they are advertizing is lifestyle. They are not advertising reality. They are advertising lifestyle and spending millions of dollars to do it.
Coming before parliament from the other place is Bill S-13. It was introduced in the Senate by Senator Kenny. It will be introduced in the House by a Liberal backbencher. The bill will be killed by the government. It is absolutely bizarre because the bill would attack the problem the way it has to be attacked, with real dollars to educate young Canadians about the dangers of smoking.
It would dedicate $125 million a year to educate young Canadians about the dangers of smoking.
We will never have a tobacco bill that is worth anything unless we attack smoking from the price point, that there is a direct relationship between the price of the product and the consumption of a product. That is true of any product. We need a bill that strongly hits advertising and education at the same time.
Unless those ingredients are present in a bill, nothing will to change. We will continue to lose 40,000-plus Canadians a year to smoking.
Smoking kills. The only way we can win this war is to wage war on the cigarette manufacturers. What would be wrong with placing 50 cents a carton, less than 5 cents a pack, at the manufacturing level? Let us call that a levy. Let us be realistic. That is what we have to do.
We need real dollars to attack these people. Some of the biggest cigarette manufacturing companies in the world actually own chains of drug stores. Examine who owns Shoppers Drug Mart. Find out who owns it. I challenge every Canadian to do some research and find out who owns some of these drug chains. They are owned by the shareholders who happen to be the same shareholders who own the shares of major cigarette or tobacco companies.
Here we have the biggest of the biggest in terms of corporate Canada, international corporate strength, day in and day out allowing young Canadians to take up the habit.
What we have to do is fight this with every resource we have. We have a bill that will soon be introduced here by a backbench member of the government, to be shot down by the government because it addresses the problem. It does something about it.
What we have is the Government of Canada being held captive by the big boys, the big corporate giants who figure it is in their best interests to sell a product to Canadians that actually kills Canadians.
This amendment speaks for itself. It puts teeth in a very weak bill and I think it is incumbent on the government to support this amendment.