Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his question.
He is absolutely right. The debate did not take very long, because there was a time allocation motion, but public health is an aspect that we really should be talking about.
As I said, we do not live in an ideal world, but probably all of us, except perhaps a few inveterate smokers, wish that cigarettes no longer existed. At one time, we were unaware of all the damage that cigarettes cause. However, that damage is well known today.
Despite of this, there are still people who smoke, and there are cigarettes on the market whose quality is even worse. In terms of the cigarettes that we buy from big companies, telling ourselves that they are higher quality, the fact remains that they are extremely harmful.
I worked with agricultural producers in the Lanaudière area who grew tobacco and we helped them make a transition into growing some other crop. They told us that there was Chinese tobacco in the contraband tobacco market. I do not want to be paranoid and say that everything that comes from China is unsafe but, it is true, that tobacco was really terrible and extremely harmful.
Like my colleague, I totally agree that we should do everything we can to get rid of this tobacco as soon as possible and get it off the market. Unfortunately, it is often young people who smoke and who have this in their hands and in their lungs.