Mr. Speaker, it is always sad to be cut off after a few minutes, because the case to be made on tobacco taxes and smoking in general is a very serious one. The time at our disposal here is so important that cutting my speech in two might have a negative effect on the message. Nevertheless, in the five minutes remaining to me before oral question period. I will try to introduce my message.
As hon. members are aware, Bill C-26 consists essentially in raising the taxes on tobacco as an anti-smoking measure.
Right off, I will say that my party, the Bloc Quebecois, will support the bill because we care about people's health and about the fight that has gone on for many years against what I would call a plague, a major social problem, a problem creating considerable cost for the health care sector. It is a problem that also results every year in Canada in deaths that would not occur had people not taken up this bad habit.
Some 29% of people smoke. This is fewer people than in the past but it is still too many. It is still too many because tobacco kills and before it kills it makes people sick. These people impose considerable costs on the health care system.
People get emphysema, caused primarily by smoking. Smoking is also the cause of heart disease, and in particular, myocardial infarction, of lung cancer, and of strokes, some of which are linked to smoking.
Every year, there are over 40,000 deaths related to the use of tobacco. Why are there so many deaths? Why does tobacco kill? It kills because it is a really poisonous mix of highly toxic chemicals.
As for tar, do people know that the tar found in a cigarette includes over 4,000 chemicals? Tar alone, which is but one of hundreds of components found in tobacco and a product of the combustion of tobacco, contains 4,000 toxic products.
Nicotine is the worst of the poisons found in cigarettes. Why? Because, depending on a cigarette's nicotine content, it is the nicotine that creates a dependency, an addiction similar to cocaine and even heroin addiction. Some studies even suggest that nicotine makes it just as hard to stop smoking as to stop using hard drugs such as heroin and cocaine.
All sorts of junk is found in cigarettes. I could talk about it at length, because I smoked for many years. I stopped eight years ago. At the time, I did not have this information. It is thanks to awareness, information and advertising campaigns on the ills of tobacco that I became aware of the makeup of this poison.
Mr. Speaker, I can see that you are getting anxious. I will resume my speech after oral question period.