Mr. Speaker, once again I cannot resist the temptation to speak.
When I saw this topic, fire safe cigarettes, it reminded me of the years when I was a truck driver. One individual practised the ingestion of nicotine without fire, and his nickname was Snuffy. I will never forget Snuffy because he happened to dispose of his habit in many unsavoury ways. I remember getting into a truck one day and the side of the window was blotched and then gravity had pulled it down. I realized that he had been in the truck and did not realize that the window was in fact closed. On another occasion, I was wheeling one of those big 20 inch tires down to the shop and all of a sudden my hand felt a little different. I realized that I had driven over some. That was the first thing that came to my mind when I saw this non-fire cigarette or nicotine usage.
However, on the serious side, I had an uncle who died very tragically in a fire. When we think of fires being caused by smokers, it is usually innocent people who are affected, for example family members, often children, or other neighbours in an apartment building. Their property is lost and sometimes their lives are lost.
I have a friend who works in the nursing section of a burn unit. Nothing is sadder than to see people who have been seriously burned. It is a tremendously challenging situation.
We really cannot be against this bill because it would increase the safety of people while they are using a hazardous product. In fact, we know that cigarettes are very hazardous. It is interesting when we think of the statistics of how people die. In this case, we are told in our briefing notes that about 100 people die in Canada every year because of fires started by careless smoking.
We should also add to that list the 100 people per day in Canada who lose their lives because of smoke related illnesses. That is a statistic that totally boggles the mind. We have in excess of 30,000 people per year in Canada who lose their lives due to lung cancer and heart disease precipitated by the use of tobacco.
For us to continue to even tolerate the use of this substance in our society really boggles the mind. However, being a person who believes in individual freedom and individual choices, I guess I would continue to defend the right of a person to take a bunch of weeds, wrap them up in a piece of paper, light a match to it and suck on it. If they really want to do that, I would defend their right to do it. I have had friends tell me that I cannot take that away from them because they really enjoy it. Well, so be it.
At any rate, I would like to simply say that it is my intention to support the bill as well because it at least goes in the right direction to reduce one of the hazards associated with cigarette smoking.