Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to Bill S-16. It is an important piece of legislation, as I indicated moments ago when I asked the minister a question. The question, of course, was with respect to resources, whether it be the RCMP or whichever police force is involved, and if these enforcement agencies would have the resources necessary to carry out the added responsibilities that are part of this legislation.
The minister did not answer my question with the kind of specific information I was looking for. That is part of my concern about Bill S-16. We have a piece of legislation, an act to amend the Criminal Code to deal with trafficking in contraband tobacco. It is an important issue, and I will lay out why I think it is important. It deals with an issue that is vexing, to say the least. My concern is that the Conservative government is talking tough in the legislation and in the words it uses, but when it comes to actually bringing resources to bear to support those agencies it expects to now carry out these added responsibilities, I am concerned that the government is once again falling short.
This minister, in particular, and members of the government, have been criticized for not vetting legislation in terms of whether it would be subject to constitutional challenges in the Supreme Court. The government has been found at fault for not having done that. It is a requirement of the Minister of Justice when it comes to all pieces of legislation.
That is a problem. So too is the fact that the government says that it is going to do all these things with respect to justice issues and will crack down, but it seems incapable of putting the necessary resources in place to see that whoever gets the responsibility handed to them, be it the provinces, or in this case, the law enforcement agencies, has the resources necessary to carry them out.
Let me say at the outset, as many of my colleagues have said and will say this evening, that we support moving this legislation forward to committee so that we will be able to bring some of the organizations, experts and different jurisdictions before committee to ask them some of the questions I will raise tonight.
Flaws in the language in this legislation have already been identified. I hope that, for once, the Conservative government will recognize that this is such an important issue as it relates to this country that it will be amenable to making the kinds of amendments necessary to clean up those issues.
I want to talk a bit about why this is so important from a health and safety standpoint and about the forgone revenue for the country. I want to talk about the question of border security. Where are the threats in terms of contraband tobacco?
We have heard a number of comments from government members that would seem to suggest that the sole focus of the problem is first nations in Quebec and Ontario. Is that, in fact, the truth? Is that the case, or is it an unfortunate stereotype that exists on the government side that has not been sufficiently delved into to make sure that we are not heading in the wrong direction?
I asked the minister who he consulted. One of the groups was first nations. As we know, the manufacturing sites for contraband tobacco are generally found close to the border in both Quebec and southern Ontario. Some of the transit points have been identified as first nations communities. If that is where some of the activity is focused, then my question is whether the government sat down with the first nations communities to work together to come up with a comprehensive piece of legislation that talks about the issue from the ground up in a responsible, mature, holisitic fashion.
Provincial jurisdictions have been trying to deal with this issue, as have corner store associations and many health groups. These people need to be consulted. We need to bring these experts forward so that we can talk about it at committee.
First, let me talk about health and safety issues. We have seen the studies, and we know that there is a correlation between the price of tobacco and usage. That is why even though provincial governments do not want to increase taxes, they increase taxes on tobacco, not only as a revenue source but perhaps, most importantly, as a way of discouraging tobacco use. It has been found to be very effective, and the data clearly shows that.
Tobacco seriously harms Canadians. There are hundreds of millions or billions of dollars spent every year dealing with the effect of tobacco on Canadians. That is something we need to do everything we possibly can to deal with.
Governments are using awareness campaigns and warnings and various restrictions on tobacco packaging. People can go into a store, and tobacco products are hidden from view. That has been seen to reduce usage. Keeping advertising off television and out of newspapers and magazines has been seen to be an effective measure in reducing usage.
It is extremely important that governments use every single tool at their disposal to deal with this. What a conundrum. Governments increase taxation on tobacco products and restrict advertising. They insist that warnings labels be put on the packaging by manufacturers to ensure that they do their part in dissuading people from usage.
They made it clear that minors are not able to purchase tobacco products and they try to enforce that, yet at the same time, there is a proliferation of contraband tobacco getting into this country in various ways that makes all of those efforts go by the way.
Again, the issue with respect to health and safety is clear to us. It is clear to Canadians. The government must do everything in its power to try to discourage at every opportunity the use especially in young people. That is where the focus has been and has to be in trying to prevent young people from beginning to use tobacco products.
I understand that it is difficult to put an exact figure on the revenue lost from contraband tobacco, but it has been suggested by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in 2008 that governments have lost between $1.5 billion and nearly $2.5 billion as a result of illegal tobacco products. That is revenue that governments would have had in order to provide the services that Canadians so desperately need.
We talked a moment ago about a motion that was brought forward in terms of providing services to Canadians with disabilities to access employment, to access housing, to access support to services so they may contribute in their communities. Those are revenues that we forgo, that could be used in this area, as a result of the sale of illegal tobacco products. It is incumbent upon us to do something about that.
The bill goes through that in a number of respects and we are going to talk a bit more about that. As I said, the bill specifically addresses contraband tobacco. According to the RCMP, contraband tobacco is any tobacco product that does not comply with the provisions of all applicable federal and provincial statutes. This includes the importation, stamping, marking, manufacturing, distributing and payment of duties and taxes.
At present, contraband tobacco offences can only be prosecuted under the Excise Act of 2001, or various general provisions within the Criminal Code. Bill S-16 would make changes, amendments and additions to the Criminal Code so that police forces are now authorized to take action against these offences. That is extremely important and we would support this.
I want to get to the issue that I raised early on, the fact that the government once again is failing to recognize that the funding needs to be in place in order to make sure that, following these fine words and these honourable changes to the law, the law enforcement agencies are able to carry out their functions.
It has been suggested that 50% of contraband tobacco comes through one port, the Port of Vancouver, from China. As I said earlier, I know there are manufacturing facilities near the border of Quebec and Ontario and that has been discussed.
The government, apparently, has decided to ignore the fact that much more, approximately 50%, of all contraband tobacco comes not from traditional sources or other countries but from China, and it comes through one port, the port of Vancouver. The problem is that there are no inspectors left at the port of Vancouver to deal with this issue.
We know that in the past two budgets, the government has cut hundreds of millions of dollars from the Canada Border Services Agency. This means that there are hundreds fewer front-line officers in place at the borders to deal with this contraband product. That is just one agency; that does not take into consideration the cuts to the RCMP and other law enforcement agencies over the past two budgets. Tens of millions of dollars have been cut from the budgets. The budgets have been reduced for these law enforcement agencies that, as a result of Bill S-16, are now going to be expected to do more.
That is why I asked the minister that question. I will ask him again and I know he will be asked the question again when the matter goes to committee. How does he expect these law enforcement organizations to carry out the added responsibilities included in this bill? They are extremely important responsibilities, let us be clear, but they are responsibilities that are being piled on top of other responsibilities. At the same time that these agencies are losing hundreds of millions of dollars, they are losing hundreds of employees and the capacity to carry out this important work. That just does not fit. To me, that just does not make any sense and I have not heard an explanation from the government.
Let me point out a couple of things in that respect. The 2013-14 Public Safety Report on Plans and Priorities announced a decrease of $20.3 million to deal with counterfeiting crime and a $2.4-million decrease for national security. The department itself stated the following in its risk analysis:
That the Government Operations Centre...infrastructure may be unable to support a coordinated response to large-scale or multiple significant events affecting the national interest.
That current policies and strategies may be insufficient to address the evolution of organized crime.
Again, we are dealing with an important piece of legislation that tries to get at an important problem, whether it is terrorism or, in this case, contraband tobacco coming from other countries and from within, and we are not giving law enforcement organizations the capacity to properly enforce what Bill S-16 is asking them to do. That is irresponsible. I hope the minister and members on the government side are going to be able to answer some of those questions when the bill goes to committee.