Mr. Speaker, the only way we are going to resolve anything is to declare all out war on smoking. I say war because I want to remind the House and Canadians that 42,000 Canadians died in World War II between 1939 and 1945. That is almost the same number of Canadians, documented, who are dying every year in Canada as a result of smoking, specifically 45,000. That is more than what we lost in World War II. It is hard to believe.
That is the seriousness of the problem. Sadly the government is doing nothing about it. It is caving in to the interests of the big tobacco lobbyists, and there is none any bigger in this country. There would be only one group of business people lower on the acceptability scale, maybe including politicians, and that would be the big banks. They rank with the biggest of the biggest and they are extremely powerful.
Critical in the debate is that 250,000 young Canadians begin to smoke each year in this country. Statistics shows this is going to lead to an early death for at least 50% of those young Canadians. The numbers are overwhelming and it is sobering when we look at the sheer number of Canadians starting to smoke every year.
Some of the arguments cigarette companies use to promote the use of their product are almost mind boggling. This shows us the power of advertising, the power of the cigarette companies and some of the bizarre things they have done in the past and continue to do.
Knowing that 40,000 people a year die from smoking, being the health critic immediately I would say imagine the drain this puts on our health care services. How much money is devoted to the care and concern of those 40,000 Canadian who are dying because of smoking?
The cigarette companies claim there is a death benefit to smoking and it would be in the government's best interest if all Canadians smoked. The argument is so bizarre it is hard to believe they commissioned a study to attempt to prove this. The cigarette companies say smoking is not a drain on society. It does not result in a cost to government because of sickness, death and work related illness because of smoking.
The cigarette companies are saying that there is a death benefit to smoking and they argue that if you smoke you are going to die younger. Their perverted logic says if you die younger it means you will not be taking in as much in terms of social security from the government. In order words, you would not collect Canada pension as long and this would be good for the government. The cigarette companies argue that you would not be collecting old age pension as long because obviously you are going to die younger. As a result, the government is going to save money.
The argument is so bizarre and so illogical that it is hard to believe that a cigarette company would actually promote it, but they have and they do. It has been discounted and discredited by just about every think tank in the world, including the Work Bank. It is such a bizarre statement, claiming it is factual.
As ironic as it may appear I believe the government buys into the argument because if it did not why would it not crack down on smoking the way it should and the way it can? No, the government has caved in once again to the big cigarette manufacturers.
The government has someone in its own caucus who is proposing to do something about it but unfortunately he is in the other place. I am of course talking about Senator Colin Kenny. Mr. Kenny has a bill before parliament that will do something now about smoking. However, I do not believe the government is going to buy into this one because it means he is doing something decisive, he is doing it now and he wants action. He does not want the government to backpedal on what it should be doing.
This is a good example of what the Senate can do. What the senator is proposing is workable and very doable. Some of the statistics that Colin Kenny cites when he gives his public speeches are the very statistics we are using in this House today.
What I would personally like to see I think goes beyond what Senator Kenny is talking about. If we are going to attack cigarette smoking, three elements have to be in place. We simply cannot attack advertising or education. We have to attack three major components.
One would be the price point. The price point of cigarettes is determined to a large degree by taxation. What I am saying is that a tax increase on cigarettes, a dedicated tax where it would be used for education and maybe for some assistance to the farmers, has to be part of the equation.
The second thing we must do is educate our young people about the risks of smoking. They did that quite successfully in California. Today in California $4 per person per year is spent to advertise the dangers of smoking. In Canada I think the federal government is spending about 30 cents per person to educate Canadians and especially young Canadians about the risks of taking up the habit of smoking.
I have mentioned taxes and education. The third thing is advertising. We have to hit advertising very hard but this bill is not doing that.
Driving here or in any major city such as Montreal, it is pretty obvious what the cigarette companies are up to. They are promoting lifestyle. While driving through the city of Montreal I could come to the subliminal conclusion that by taking up smoking du Maurier cigarettes I am going to be a concert pianist or violinist. I believe that was the market that particular cigarette company was after. It is one of the biggest selling cigarette brands in the country. However, if I wanted to be a downhill skier and possibly a world medalist in skiing, I would probably smoke Export A. Then again if I wanted to be a race car driver I would probably pick up Rothmans.
Cigarette companies are targeting their audience. They know who their audience happens to be, the younger members of our society.
I have mentioned taxes, education and advertising. Where the government went wrong, the single biggest blunder it made in this war on cigarette smoking was in 1994 when it capitulated and dramatically decreased the amount of tax on a package of cigarettes. When taxes were significantly reduced in 1994 there was the single biggest increase in the consumption of cigarettes by young people in the history of the country.
The government caved in. Who did it cave in to? This is even more bizarre. It caved in to the smugglers. Instead of putting money toward the problem of smuggling and enforcing our own revenue laws as it should have, the government caved in to the smugglers. Who did the government hurt? The government hurt 250,000 young Canadians who pick up the habit every year. Who did the government help? I do not know. I guess it helped itself. In 1994 that was the easy way out for the government and it caved in and did it. It was wrong and it is still wrong.
Mr. Speaker, I want you to tell me how much time I have left because I have some amendments to the bill. Five minutes. That should be enough time, because I want to put six or seven amendments on the table. The Speaker is saying 10 minutes and more if I need it.
I see the minister of agriculture is here listening intently and encouraging me as I go along.
I want to put these amendments on the record. Being realistic, we can expect the government to do some things and not to do other things. These amendments are very consistent with what we would like to see happen as a party, as a caucus. It probably does not go far enough as far as I am concerned. I think it has got to be a cold turkey approach: no advertisements, a complete ban on advertising from day one.
Let us go through some of these amendments because they temper some of my own thoughts with regard to this. I want to give credit to the Canadian Cancer Society as well because it has worked hard on some of these amendments. Some of them come directly from the Canadian Cancer Society. I am going to be reading these into the record and I will forward these to the House when I am finished.
One, there should be a ceiling on tobacco company sponsorship promotion expenditures during the delay period. This would prevent tobacco companies from increasing the exposure of sponsorship promotions. It would prevent tobacco companies from increasing the financial dependency of sponsorship recipients. It would stop the sponsorship problem from getting worse. Although the former Tobacco Products Control Act contained a ceiling on brand name sponsorship expenditures, tobacco companies cited a loophole in another provision of the act and increased sponsorship expenditures from $10 million in 1987 to $60 million in 1996.
The second point to be considered in terms of amendments would be that during the delay period, sponsorship promotions should be prohibited on the inside and outside of stores where tobacco is sold. These promotions, which were scheduled to have been banned on October 1, 1998, are completely unnecessary for the promotion of a cultural or sports event.
During the 1996-97 period, including the 1996 summer sponsorship season, sponsorship promotions were generally not found at point of sale. Sponsorship promotions that had previously been visible at point of sale were replaced by direct advertising, given that the tobacco companies were not prevented by law from doing so during the period after the advertising restrictions were in force and before the Tobacco Act was passed.
Sponsorship promotions at point of sale typically contain lots of attractive images and little information, sometimes for events that are thousands of kilometres away or that occurred months earlier. Children go into corner stores every day and they should not be exposed to such promotions.
The reasonableness of such an amendment is demonstrated by sponsored events still being able to use every other media to promote their activities: newspapers, direct mail, television, radio, on-site programs, Internet, billboards, transit vehicles and shelters. Indeed the extensive scope of permitted sponsorship promotions emphasizes just how serious the further delay period will be.
Three, the bill should be amended so that the two year and five year delay periods begin on October 1, 1998 and end on October 1 in the year 2000 and October 1, 2003 respectively. It is an interesting point that at present the cabinet is free to determine whatever starting date it wants. The cabinet can determine whether it is October 1, 1998, January 1, 1999 or some other day in the future. Every month of additional delay means more teenagers needlessly become addicted.
As an aside, the Quebec tobacco act has two and five year delay periods that begin on the fixed date of October 1, 1998. There is no reason for the federal delay periods to begin at the same later date.
Four, the bill should be amended so that only events sponsored as of April 25, 1997 are allowed to continue during the delay period with tobacco sponsorship promotions. At present the bill does not allow sponsorship promotions unless the event or activity was sponsored prior to April 25, 1997. This is a good start, but as the bill now reads, it would allow events or activities whose tobacco sponsorship ended five, 10 or 15 years earlier to be revived. A simple amendment would prevent this scenario from occurring.
Five, the bill should be amended so that the grandfather provisions apply only to events sponsored in Canada as of April 25, 1997. At present the grandfather provision applies to anywhere in the world, whether it is the U.S., Argentina or Botswana. Tobacco companies should not be able to claim that because a Rothmans sponsorship existed in a foreign country and not in Canada, that sponsorship promotions for a foreign event can occur in Canada during the transition period.
Six, during the delay period, any sponsorship promotions should not be allowed to contain images of people, to be misleading, or to be conveyed through non-tobacco goods, for example T-shirts or baseball caps. This amendment could be implemented by making sponsorship promotions explicitly subject to section 21 of the act which bans the use of people in advertising and section 20 of the act, misleading advertising. Sponsorship promotions should be explicitly subject to sections 27 and 28 of the act, the use of tobacco brand elements on non-tobacco goods, with an exemption if necessary for existing international auto racing events for cars and clothing of drivers and pit crews.
Finally, the bill should be amended so that only international auto racing events are able to have tobacco sponsorship during a further delay period, and not all sponsored events. By allowing all events a further extension, allowing for a total delay of four seasons after the act was passed, there will be an unnecessary undermining of the objectives of the act. Delay periods of two years or less have been implemented in many places, including Belgium and France. Thus the bill would be amended to remove the extra two year delay for all promotions for all events, and to remove the extra five year delay for on-site promotions.
In 1988 when I was elected to this place for the first time, I replaced a longstanding member in this House by the name of Fred McCain. Fred McCain was a lifelong smoker. He smoked for over 50 years. It was a habit that Fred said “I took up when I was a young boy. If I had known then what I know now, I certainly would not have taken up the habit”. Fred McCain died just about a year ago. One of the things he impressed on me was to stay the fight, stay the course; we have to keep young Canadians off of that habit.
One of my constituents, Glenn McLeod, immediately after my election last year informed me that he has lung cancer. It was the same situation as with Mr. McCain. He started smoking as a very young man many years ago without knowing the dangers of smoking. But he said to me “If there is one thing that you want to impress on young Canadians, it is the real threat to our health as Canadians”.
Things have evolved over the last 40 years in this country. We now know that smoking is a danger. We now know that 250,000 young Canadians take it up every year. Let this House do the right thing. Bring in a strong bill. That is the only bill that we will support. We want fewer smokers and fewer deaths in Canada as a result of taking up that habit.
