Mr. Speaker, I know this is an issue that has been very important to my colleague. He has worked very significantly on it over the last several years.
There are a number of new offences under the bill. There will be a penalty for the first offence of up to six months in prison on summary conviction, or up to five years imprisonment if prosecuted on indictment. This is for both the transportation and sale and offer for sale of illegal tobacco products. For repeat offenders, those convicted on indictment could be sentenced to a mandatory minimum penalty of 90 days on a second conviction, 180 days on a third conviction, and two years less a day on subsequent convictions after that.
What we found in the past, under the Excise Tax Act, is that the trade in illicit tobacco products was simply an administrative statutory offence, and therefore the perpetrators received fines. They just made that the cost of doing business. They would pay the fine and continue to do it over and over again.
This is a very tailored set of penalties that increases with each subsequent offence. That will target the people who are involved in the continual trade in illicit tobacco products, and those would largely be criminal organizations from outside the native communities, not in the native communities.