Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the member for Thornhill, our new parliamentary secretary to the health minister. As a former minister of the crown in the province of Ontario, I am sure she will do a good job. I am glad to see her there.
There are a few points I want to make in relation to a question I asked the minister before the House rose in June. It had to deal with the 1994 decision by the Government of Canada to reduce taxes on cigarettes. This was the biggest capitulation by the Government of Canada in the history of Canada and led to the largest increase in the number of new smokers in the history of this country.
Why I am concerned about it is that 40,000 Canadians a year die as a direct result of smoking. That is a statistic that can be proven by any measure. It is not an exaggeration. We know 40,000 Canadians a year die from it.
What I suggested the government do, which it has not, is have a three pronged approach to attacking smoking, especially with young Canadians. It has to attack pricing, that is taxation. It has to attack advertising and, most important, there has to be education out there so that young smokers know what is happening.
One of the interesting things happening and one of the most interesting bills introduced in parliament in recent history is a bill introduced by none other than Senator Colin Kenny, an example of how much the Senate can contribute to the Parliament of Canada when decides to do so.
What he is suggesting is that we should have a levy of 50 cents per pack on cigarettes. He is calling this a levy because technically he cannot call it a taxation measure. Normally a senator cannot introduce a taxation measure. That 50 cent levy would bring in revenues to the tune of over $100 million a year.
That $100 million would be broken down to be spent in the following ways. Some would be used to assist farmers moving out of tobacco crop. Millions would be used to educate young Canadians as to why they should not start smoking. Some of it would be used for the arts and sports programs that now depend on funding from the cigarette manufacturers, which I think is absolutely wrong.
We are asking the government to do something and take some strong measures to combat smoking. It is a big problem. I would love to get into the details of Senator Kenny's bill but I do not have the time now to do that. However, I think it is a positive example of how the government can do something with no cost to the taxpayers.
We are talking about hepatitis C victims and the cost to the taxpayers because of mistakes by the government but here is an example of where the government can do something right at no cost to the taxpayers and it is time it acted and acted very quickly.