Thank you, Madam Speaker. Today I rise to congratulate our Minister of Finance, also the Minister of Health, on his position to hold fast on the tobacco tax. I had no idea he was going to make those announcements, but it deals with what is happening across Canada. While the bigger provinces, Madam Speaker, are caving in to the smugglers and the criminal element, the rest are standing ground.

Madam Speaker, yesterday, Ontario lowered its cigarette tax by $9.68 per carton, bringing it to $28 per carton in Quebec and New Brunswick. The stand that the western provinces and the territories -- while very commendable from the health point -- have raised fears among the provincial Health Ministers that there will be a dramatic increase in young smokers and a decline in quitters now that the cost of cigarettes are lower. The fear may be well founded, based on the vast quantities of cigarettes that are coming back into Canada from the United States and elsewhere. If the news can be believed, Madam Speaker, there is a much higher cigarette production occurring now in Canada. Someone has to be smoking those cigarettes.

The stand against the lowering of the tax, however, can be likened to the little Dutch boy that stuck his thumb into the dyke and saved the country from flooding. It may well be that there are not enough thumbs left and even then, I fear that the flood will breach the dam before summer is out and that the smugglers will again win and the health of our people will lose. As a matter of fact, we will all lose if that happens.

So congratulations, Minister of Health.

---Applause