Mr. Speaker, in his comments, my colleague reinforced the point I made in my speech. He said that some people believed this would work and that other jurisdictions had introduced this. However, is it going to work?
The government needs to state very clearly how much it predicts the plain packaging initiative will reduce demand, how much the cost of implementation of this framework will be, how it will deal with the issue of a potential increase in contraband, which we need to study as well. It also needs to talk about some of the findings that have come out, especially the report that has been published in France. The French health minister has said that plain packaging does not lead smokers to stop smoking.
Again, I would go back to the thesis of my speech, which is helpful questions for committee. These are questions that as legislators and regulators we should answer prior to introducing a regulatory framework so we can go back to our constituents and say, if as the Liberals claim, this will reduce the incidence of tobacco usage, this is how much the government expects it to be reduced by, this is the data it relies on, and this is the framework it will use to reduce contraband consumption.