Madam Speaker, I want to compliment my colleague on his intervention with respect to the health issues associated with smoking and the abandonment of smoking.
There are two issues I wish to raise, and I hope there will be enough time for him to address them. He alluded to one of them and that is the issue of contraband cigarettes and all that they impose on the system. The other issue is enforcement.
My colleague has already acknowledged that the bill has a considerable amount in it that needs to be addressed and reviewed. Imposing fines such as $50,000 for infractions is a very important issue, but most people who are involved in anti-smoking strategies admit that enforcement of these measures is more important.
Other governments in the past have discovered that the most common measure for promoting anti-smoking has been to increase the price of legitimate cigarettes. What has happened is that those cigarettes have been replaced by ones from less legitimate manufacturers and retailers, in the process criminalizing a lot of people who engage in the manufacture, sale and distribution of illegitimate cigarettes. There is nothing in the bill that addresses a mechanism to ensure that contraband distributors and sellers of the product are put in the target area. Today there are a lot of people who will actually deliver contraband cigarettes to the home. They will arrange meetings. They have phone numbers. They hand out business cards.
I know my colleague is going to look at this in committee, but I wonder if he would comment on this a bit further because the bill deserves to be supported if it includes all the dimensions of an anti-smoking strategy.