Mr. Speaker, Bill C-42 is not just about tobacco advertising or the government's vain attempt to limit advertising. It is basically about the health of Canadians.
I remind the House that every year in Canada 40,000 Canadians die from smoking. That fact is supported by every major medical group in the country. It is a statistic that even Health Canada supports. It is a big problem.
To give an idea of how big of a problem it is I will use some figures that I have used before. Sometimes we have to implant a visual picture so that people remember the numbers. The number of Canadians who die every year from smoking equals the number of Canadians who died in World War II in total. In other words from 1939 to 1945 approximately 42,000 to 45,000 Canadians died. That is a very disturbing statistic. When we compare that to how many Canadians die on a yearly basis, year in an year out, it is time for second thought.
There is another way to put it in terms of those 40,000 deaths. If we had a major airline crash every day in Canada causing the death of 100 Canadians, day in and day out for one solid year, the total would not equal the number of Canadians who die in one year because of smoking. The member from Newfoundland used the word scandalous. It is scandalous. If it happened in any other jurisdiction the government would do something about it.
We could question how long the Minister of Transport would last or how long the government would sustain the pressure that would be put on it by Canadians from coast to coast if 100 Canadians a day were dying in airline crashes? They would not last long. Somehow the government is able to get away with passing weak legislation like the legislation before us.
Another interesting statistic is that tobacco usage in Canada costs us every year $3 billion in direct costs and $7 billion in indirect costs for a total of $10 billion. The government could argue that it is making money on tobacco and it is. In one year, 365 days from now, the government will have made approximately $2 billion in revenue from taxes on cigarettes.