Canadian Club -- Winnipeg, MN
January 20, 1998
(Check against delivery)
Canadian Clubs have a reputation for attracting people who are alert to important issues . . .and who can make things happen when those issues need to be addressed.
I am here because I see this as an opportunity to appeal to an influential and civic-minded group of people for help on an issue that I think Canadians are sweeping under the carpet.
Tobacco addiction is not an issue with that is particularly fashionable. It's been around for a long time. It tends to get treated with a national shrug, rather than the outcry and call to action that it really deserves.
You've heard about the famous flesh eating disease. It produces all kinds of front-page headlines every time it claims a victim, and there is no question it is a scary phenomenon . . . even though it only strikes one out of every 100,000 people in our society.
On the other hand, tobacco addiction KILLS one out of every 750 Canadians, every year . . . year after year.
That's 40,000 people a year - the equivalent of a couple of Boeing 747s falling out of Canadian skies this week and every week. Now wouldn't THAT cause a fuss.
I call tobacco addiction the heart-and-lung eating disease. It deserves far more headlines than the flesh-eating disease, or airplane crashes, or other occasional disasters.
But it doesn't get them, because we're inured to it. When we watch people smoke, we are well aware what that smoke is doing to their hearts and lungs, but, in the end, we shrug.
As long as people don't blow smoke in our faces, cigarettes are more-or-less dismissed as a matter of individual lifestyle.
Which is fine with me - the last thing I want to do is attempt to outlaw smoking. Adults are going to do what they're going to do, and that's up to them . . . as long as they don't do it in my space.
Children are another matter. Nobody gets hooked on smoking at the age of 27, or 33, or 52. We all know when it happens; it happens at a young age.
The tragedy is that it is now happening at a younger and younger age. According to Health Canada 14% of those aged 10-14 smoke and 29.5% of teens aged 15-19 smoke.
Again, most Canadians shrug. Which allows governments to shrug too, because governments are smart enough to respond to what voters are alarmed about, not what they're shrugging about.
A lot of us probably throw up our hands because we know it is hard to tell kids not to do anything - they experiment, and they rebel, and that's just the nature of growing up.
Well, maybe. But when you get right down to it, that's a poor excuse for what amounts to a cop-out.
In fact, I think it amounts to abandoning the whole concept of education that we have nourished with such pride in Canada over the years.
Our whole nation is currently seized with finding improved ways of schooling our children to better prepare them for productive lives.
That's a priority in this country, right now. Every poll shows education at or near the top of our list of concerns.
Unfortunately, you can't live a productive life if your heart and lungs don't work.
I suggest that we've got to start going after tobacco addiction as a priority. We've got to figure out how we can motivate young people to stay off this stuff . . . without lecturing them in a way that turns them off.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
The first thing we must do is wake up and identify tobacco addiction among young people as a huge national problem that we are committed to fighting . . rather than a fact of life that we can't do much about.
Tobacco addiction leads to approximately 90% of the preventable deaths in Canada, nearly ten times those caused by traffic accidents, and a hundred times those caused by homicides.
As much as we dismiss this issue, it touches nearly every Canadian.
Let me try a little experiment. Raise a hand, if you will, if any of you have every had a relative - or a friend, or just someone you know personally and value as a decent person - hit by lung cancer, or emphysema, or any of the other manifestations of the lung-and-heart eating disease.
[ Right.]
I will now ask those people to raise their hands again, but I will also ask two other groups to join them.
First, join in if you feel threatened by other people's smoke.
Finally, raise your hand if you watch someone you care about smoke, and worry that we are going to loose that person before his or her time.
[That's a lot of hands].
And you will notice that I haven't even asked people who worry about their own smoking to join in.
I'm not here to embarrass anybody. I am here because I feel that Canadians have a widespread problem that they're not addressing, and all those hands prove me right].
How can any problem . . . that brings on such tragic personal disasters and affects such a high percentage of our population. . . be treated with the degree of indifference that I my own government brings to the issue of smoking among the young?
I am a member of the Senate. As many Canadians would be quick to agree, that doesn't necessarily make me a rocket scientist.
But I think I am least intelligent enough to recognize that our response to this problem is infintisimile compared to the harm it is doing us.
In fact, according to Health Canada, smoking among teens 15 to 19 years of age has increased 25% since 1991.
I am trying to do something about tobacco addiction. Because I don't have to run for election I - like many other senators - feel I have a moral obligation to take on issues that aren't necessarily vote-getters.
Tobacco is that kind of issue. In fact there are some parts of the country in which doing anything to confront tobacco addiction can lose you votes in a hurry.
I think the government's capitulation in exempting tobacco advertising in Formula 1 races from Bill C-71 is clear evidence of that.
Montrealers want their race, Jacques Villeneuve is a folk hero, and that's that. Never mind that Jacques' dashing Rothmans outfit offers young people a perfect connection between smoking . . . and the rush and adventure that flirting with physical danger provides.
So I've got an advantage in going after tobacco addiction . . . I don't have to worry about those Montreal votes, or the votes in tobacco country in southwestern Ontario . . . or just the votes of smokers who don't want to be reminded that their habit is a serious problem.
Moreover, if I think my government, the Liberal government in power in Ottawa, is doing an insipid job of fighting tobacco addiction, I can say so.
It may not win me a lot of new friends in caucus, but my real political friends recognize that I have an obligation to speak out, even if I am criticizing my own party. That's what you pay me for, and that why the Senate exists.
But let's shift the focus away from me.
The issue is huge, public indifference is deeply embedded, and I could spend three lifetimes trying to fight tobacco addiction among the young without making the slightest dent in the problem.
The issue cries out for you people, and people like you across this country, to get involved.
I would like, at this point, to offer you a little additional motivation . . . beyond those 40,000 deaths, and all those young people getting to the point of no return without having the slightest idea what they were really getting into.
Before I offer you this extra incentive, I have five dollars here for the first person who can identify who said the following:
[Quote] We are serious about wanting to help young people stop smoking. If you can suggest productive ways we can work with government, I would be happy to hear them. [End of Quote]
Five bucks. Who said that before the Senate committee?
This should give you a better clue.
[Quote] "The member companies are prepared to work with any responsible agency on the issue of youth smoking to further reduce it." [End of Quote]
I don't know what he meant by "further" reduce it . . . the incidence of smoking is actually increasing rapidly among young females.
But the answer to the quiz is Robert Parker, former MP and Chairman of the Canadian Tobacco Manufacturers Council.
So here is my extra bit of motivation for you. Help me help Mr. Parker and his fellow tobacco executives.
Help me help them use some of their own gigantic profits to do what they say they want to do: keep cigarettes out of the mouths of young people.
It may seem strange that they would want to do that - after all, they're killing off 40,000 of their customers a year, and you think they would want replacements coming up from the junior ranks.
They certainly have had to be dragged kicking and screaming from using young people in their ads, and advertising around schools.
So you would think they would just love the idea of bring on new droves of young smokers.
But the Tobacco companies say not.
Strange, with all their expertise at advertising and marketing, that the tobacco companies just can't figure out how to turn young people off their product.
But obviously they need some outside help. Let's help these people quit. Let's help them stop doing the kind of harm to young people that is clearly bothering them.
In a few weeks I am introducing a bill in the Senate that would impose a 50¢ levy on every carton of cigarettes sold in this country.
Don't worry, that's not going to result in a new outbreak of cigarette smuggling . . . my police friends tell me that 50¢ a carton is well under the amount that would trigger that kind of thing.
But it is a large enough levy to raise $120 million a year, and in a moment I will tell you what I think we should do with the money.
First, let me tell you about levies. They aren't the same as a surtax.
Taxes go into general government revenues, and once that happens, the money can be applied to any government expenditure.
Since finance ministers are strapped for cash these days - and since most government outlays are already legislated and are therefore non-discretionary - once a surtax goes into general revenues it is most unlikely that it will be designated for any particular use.
Since I want to raise $120 million a year to fight tobacco addiction, a levy is a much better option than a surtax.
It can be put into a general trust and administered by a board that operates at arm's length from government.
In short, we can make sure the money is used for what it is intended.
And here is what I would like you to support:
The bill would mount a bottom up . . . anti-smoking campaign . . . aimed to influence young people . . . that might actually work.
Why? Partially because it would have a good chunk of money behind it.
But also because it would be built around ideas emanating from within communities like Winnipeg, instead of the traditional, bureaucratic, command-and-control type of propaganda that kids tend to thumb their noses at.
What would Manitoba's share of $120 million be? Let's say $5 million.
Can you imagine the approaches that people at the Winnipeg Cancer Society or Sifler High School or the Winnipeg YM-YWCA would be likely to come up with to go after tobacco addiction among young people?
Let's harness the energy of community people who know young people, who deal with them every day.
Let's harness the energy of young people themselves.
Let's combine that with the expertise of people who know the disease well.
And let's go after tobacco addiction, right at the street level.
Sure, we can use newspapers and television and radio.
But we can also go person-to-person if we come up with the right kinds of programs.
The kind of programs that work best result when organizations in individual communities . . . like Winnipeg and Churchill and St. Boniface and Dauphin. . . are given the resources to tackle them on the ground.
Once we start doing that, we can also start sharing local experiences right across Canada.
Most of the money raised under this bill would go toward this kind of effort. But there are two other components.
The bill would also compensate the cultural and sports groups that are losing cigarette advertising under Bill C-71 in a way that will give them five years to come up with other types of funding.
It is important that these groups be treated fairly. C-71 only gave them 19 months to find alternate sources of revenue to the tobacco advertising that has been a mainstay for many of them.
I look around these tables and I know that a lot of people here today have been involved in fund-raising for worthy causes. You know how long it takes to build bridges with people and corporations that can help you. It can't be done in 19 months.
These groups deserve at least five years of transitional funding to help them bring new sponsors on board.
There is a strong tradition of corporate generosity in the United States, and we have to do more to develop it here.
But it takes time. My bill would provide some breathing space to do that.
There are many millions of sports fans and culture buffs in Canada who may well be turned off the anti-tobacco movement right now, because they feel they have been unfairly dealt with under C-71.
Many of them have been delighted that the cigarette companies have been supporting events they enjoy, and they don't want to lose what means so much to them.
Let's play fair with these people and encourage them to help us beat tobacco addiction, rather than leaving them to fester about being wronged.
The third component of the bill would compensate tobacco farmers seeking to get into other crops. Tobacco is a very lucrative crop, and not an easy one to leave.
A farmer who looking for a more uplifting way of making a living can shift to tomatoes, but you don't do that without a contract from Heinz or one of the other big canners.
You may want to shift to cucumbers, but you had better have a contract from Bicks.
You may want to shift to peanuts, but the revenue from peanuts is really peanuts - 20% of what you make from tobacco.
You may want to shift to grapes, but it will be three years before your vines begin to produce. Make that five years for apples.
Ginseng is a lucrative crop, but it takes seven years to develop.
So this is a complex problem, and Canadian farmers deserve a little time to work on it.
Again, it would be nice to have these people on our side, rather than watching them fight tooth-and-nail against every effort to curb tobacco addiction.
If this bill is passed, the educational fund will get $60 million of the $120 million in the first year the levy is applied, with the sports and cultural groups taking up $50 million and the tobacco farmers $10 million.
Over the first five years of the levy, the educational component will climb from $60 million to $120 million.
That educational component will gain funds from the the sports and cultural groups and tobacco farmers as their transitional subsidies drop by 20% each year.
The sports and recreation people will get $50 million the first year, $40 million the second year, $30 million the third year, and so on until their funding drops to zero.
Similarly, the tobacco farmers will get $10 million the first year, $8 million the second year, $6 million the third year, and be on their own after five years.
The $120 educational component will keep going and going - like the Energizer Bunny - until we don't have a problem, which isn't likely to be soon.
Dedicated taxes on cigarettes have been effective when they have been tried in the United States.
You may have heard of Proposition 99 in California. Its supporters overcame overwhelming odds to bring in a surtax of 25¢ a pack on cigarettes.
Those funds were used to wage war on tobacco addiction.
This initiative has managed to reduce the use of tobacco products by 36% per cent in California.
Similar initiatives have done well in Arizona and Massachusetts.
These initiatives are incredibly difficult to introduce in the U.S., and they certainly wouldn't be easier here.
Mounting the kind of referendum effort that would work in Canada would not only be costly, it would have a hard time succeeding.
We don't have Propositions here. We have referendums, and nobody likes them muchafter having watched a few in Quebec.
The bill I am introducing could cut the Gordian knot and get us Proposition 99 kinds of funds so we can start mounting a serious challenge to tobacco addiction.
But the bill won't pass without the active support of people like you.
For a start it will be a private member's bill. Private members' bills don't have nearly the leverage in Parliament that government bills do.
In fact, for many decades they were seen as little more than a device to draw attention to an issue.
But the political tone has changed to some degree in recent years in Ottawa. Private members' bills now stand some chance of passing.
Two years ago I had success with a private member's bill that is now forcing federal departments to switch 75% of their vehicles to less polluting fuels than gasoline.
The bureaucracy didn't want any part of this . . . they get awfully set in their ways about how they do things.
But in the end my colleagues - people like Mira Spivak and other dedicated politicians - hung tough and we succeeded.
As a result, a huge government fleet of vehicles is now showing Canadians the way to minimize environmental pollution.
This is government leading by example . . . which I think is something that Canadians would like to see a lot more of.
So this anti-tobacco bill has a chance. And if it makes it through we won't even be using taxpayers' money to fight tobacco addiction - we will be using tobacco money.
In a way we're talking privatization here, which is a useful concept when government isn't dealing effectively with a major social problem.
You may or may not recall that the federal government has committed itself to spending $10 million for enforcement of age restriction regulations and enhancing public health education, and another $10 million for youth programs aimed at cutting tobacco addiction.
That's fine, but it is far from enough, given the enormity of the problem.
It doesn't come close to the $2.03 billion a year the federal government collected in last year’s tobacco taxes. Again, that money goes into general revenue and gets lost.
This $120 million levy won't get lost.
The success of the bill will, to some extent, depend on whether the federal government sees tobacco addiction as an important issue.
Is that the case at the moment? I really don't think so.
Will they when this bill starts fighting its way through Parliament? It depends on people like you. We need leadership on this from influential Canadians.
Too many Canadians refuse to see tobacco addiction as a front-page problem. We've got to change that perception.
Most of the scary stuff on our front pages can't carry a candle to 40,000 Canadians a year dying for no good reason.
Canadians fought the Second World War over a good cause - we didn't want a totalitarian regime to control our lives.
Canada lost 42,000 soldiers over five years in that war. All these deaths were tragic, but at least these young Canadians died fighting for an honourable cause.
What took snipers and bombers and panzer divisions five years to wipe out is taking tobacco products one year, every year.
These people aren't dying in a good cause.
They're dying in the service of marketing campaigns.
They're dying because tobacco addiction is being allowed to creep in and start controlling people's lives at a young age.
Kids are smoking in public school. With what we now know about the inevitable repercussions of widespread tobacco use, that's obscene.
Young people smoke for all kinds of reasons.
The main reason young females smoke seems to be weight control.
Many young people smoke because someone they admire smokes - a friend, an actor, whatever.
And it's no secret that many others smoke simply because adults don't want them to.
When such a huge percentage of our young people are getting their self-esteem from a product that is going to make them old early . . . and quite possibly even dead early . . . you know we're faced with a conundrum that is going to take a lot of very committed human input to unravel.
As a member of the Senate committee that heard expert testimony on the manifold reasons that young people smoke, I am well aware that this is a very complicated problem issue.
Anybody who has ever been in a relationship with a young person who is determined to say "white" every time you say "black" and "black" every time you say "white" knows this isn't going to be easy.
But just because this issue is complex doesn't mean we can afford to walk away from it. We can't, any more than we can afford to walk away from the incredibly complex problem of environmental pollution. So here's what we do.
First let's get the money.
Then let's go to the community - lets go to the kids themselves . . . and people who have figured out what often works with kids . . . and people who are willing to put in the time with kids.
Let's do that instead of hoping a couple of glitzy TV commercial will suddenly convince young people to put down a product that has become a very dangerous friend to them.
Sure, I agree that there might be other ways of going about this.
In an ideal world, the government would put every nickel in tax it collects from tobacco products back into fighting tobacco addiction. But that isn't going to happen anytime soon, for two reasons.
First, this government just doesn't understand the magnitude of the problem, or it would be putting more resources into fighting it.
It should look at the fact that tobacco related diseases are costing Canada $3 billion a year in direct costs and another $7 billion in indirect costs - such as lost productivity.
It should recognize that a small investment fighting this disease would pay huge dividends.
But it doesn't.
Governments tend to respond to voters' flavour-of-the-month demands more often than they respond to logical approaches to long-term problems.
So tobacco addiction has to make do with a pittance.
Finance ministers, by the way, hate dedicated taxes with a passion.
Dedicated taxes tie their hands on how they can dole out their funds - many of which are tied up in statutory programs - and governments are incredibly strapped for funds these days.
If you made me king for a day, yes, I would make sure that tobacco taxes all went back into fighting tobacco addiction.
But we have a far better chance of getting this bill through Parliament than I do of being made king for a day.
So let's be realistic and fight our battles where we can at least get a bit of footing.
You may argue that the government should go back to piling a lot more tax on each package of cigarettes. Young people were certainly dissuaded by the high cost of cigarettes a few years ago.
But the truth is that the smugglers were winning that battle.
Along with a lot of violence we would have ended up with a black market so large that no kids would have bought retail.
At the retail level there is at least there is some measure of control on the age of the purchaser.
So a private member's bill looks like our best option at the moment.
There are a lot of influential people in this room.
There is a lot of energy in this room.
And I am sure that there is enough intelligence buzzing within these walls to grasp the immensity of this problem in a way that is not being grasped generally by Canadians, and certainly has not been grasped by the people who make decisions on Parliament Hill.
So if you have a few moments, I would like to ask you to help me.
I want you to apply some pressure, particularly on your local MP, but on the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance as well.
The lazy man's way of going about this would be through mass mailings of form letters that would pile up in MPs' offices.
But the truth is that form letters don't work.
I know, I receive tons of them a month. Do you know how much impact they have on your average parliamentarian. About this much. [Thumb and index finger].
For a start, we need real letters to fight a real cause - to get a real movement going.
My assistant, Ms Young, has some addresses here of the people who will have to hear from you, and a lot of other people, if I am going to get any help on the Hill next month.
I ask you to take these names and addresses home and help us get going on this.
When MPs and Senators get hand-written personal letters on an issue - a goodly number of hand-written, personal letters - my experience is that their juices start to flow.
I told you that the financial costs of smoking to our society amount to about $10 billion a year.
That's a heck of a lot of of money.
But it's nothing in comparison to the human costs. We all know that, but we don't like knowing it.
My guess is that some problems are so big that people tend to pretend they aren't there.
This one is very much there. Let's stop doing our worrying about our uncles and aunts and friends and young people in silence.
Let's tackle this thing. I'm asking you to come on board.
Thank you very much.
This speech was shown on CPAC on Wednesday, January 28, 1998