Mr. Speaker, the illegal tobacco trade is an important issue for the government. I agree with my hon. colleague that it is a difficult problem for police forces, whether it is at the border, the RCMP, or local forces, to catch some of the folks who are doing it in these local areas. All police forces, the RCMP and local forces, are stretched quite badly with respect to resources.
That is why we have increased the capacity of cross border agencies. We have increased the capacity of the RCMP. It is going to take a little time to do that. The size of the force has been allowed to degrade over a number of years. We are building that back up.
There will be a lot of cooperation, as there is today, and that will improve as forces have more resources, local and RCMP, to combat these kinds of activities and that will only improve as time goes on.