Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question that is being asked. In my riding, there are a lot of great folks who live on first nations territory. Some time ago, a seizure was made at one of the bands, where 14 million contraband cigarettes were seized on that reserve. This particular group of reserves is quite notorious across Canada, sometimes for good reasons but also sometimes for bad reasons, with its links to organized crime. The Alberta government stepped in and confiscated this illegal tobacco due to the fact that it did not have a provincial stamp, which resulted in a loss of revenue in just that shipment alone of several million dollars of taxes that should have been collected.
This is a very serious issue. We cannot have a situation where there are two different streams, one of contraband and one of a legal flow of goods and services in this country. Not only is the contraband not a healthy choice and not inspected by the appropriate authorities, but it evades the taxes that are duly imposed upon these goods in order to address the serious issues that we have as a nation.