Mr. Speaker, that would be a good title to the speech I just gave, “baby step”, because that is basically what it is. In a sense it is a baby step because it is just a small aspect of the problem. At the same time, it is a big step, because by including it in the Criminal Code, it is a whole new ball game. It would give powers to police in different jurisdictions to tackle the issue. Just on that front, it is an immense step.
That said, it will not solve everything. We still need to educate kids. I do not want to divulge my age, but I can understand that in the early 1970s, it was cool to smoke, because we had no pictures of rotten teeth and bad lungs and so on on our cigarette packs. Our cigarette packs were pretty cool, actually, to hold. They were colourful, and we looked so old, so mature, so whatever. Nowadays, if we have a pack of cigarettes, we had better hide it, because it is really gross. People know, so why do they still do it?
If we cut the demand, it will be very hard to continue contraband when there is no demand, but right now there is demand. I wake up with headlines in my region, which has one of the highest percentages of smokers and of smokers of illegal contraband tobacco.
We are close to reserves and places where it is easy to obtain contraband tobacco. Therefore, we all have to work hard. All stakeholders must work together: the provincial, territorial and first nations police, the federal government and public health officials. All of these people have to work together.