Bill C-10 update… ?buying and smoking, will soon be a criminal offence in Canada…
Most First Nations smokes, and buying and smoking them, will soon be a criminal offence in Canada.
Canada’s Bill C-10 is an Omnibus Bill covering taxes and criminal sentencing increases for a long list of items and offences, and will make additional things a crime that were not crimes before. It is going to fill a lot of newly built and planned-to-soon-build prison cells.
It is being fast-tracked, expected to be passed into Law by June 2014, and it includes –
That a select few 1st Nations smokes brands that will get or already have gotten federal approval for retail sales will cost more than double what they do now.
But also that most 1st Nations smokes will be criminalized in Canada, and so too will those who sell them, buy them, and smoke them.
Smokers buying for personal use will be heavily fined for first offence, worse for subsequent offences, and have a criminal record. Those on the other side of the sale to smokers could face up to five years in jail.
Only those few select smokes brands that include a HUGE Federal excise tax on ‘foreign tobacco products’, just recently increased by – 24 percent – to $ 21.03 per 200 cigarettes, to be added to what the sellers want for themselves, will be ‘legal’. The rest are to be classified as illegal contraband.
The few select producers’ brands will be the brands of Grand River Enterprises of Six Nations Territory in southwest Ontario, plus a couple more smaller producers at Akwesasne – which straddles the Canada-U.S. border at Cornwall, Ontario.
All ‘legal’ ‘foreign’ cigars, pipe tobacco, and loose-leaf products will also be subject to the same excise tax.
Because of the global anti-smoking campaign over the past 14 years in Canada, 1st nations smokes sales have soared to over 40 percent of all smokes sold in Canada, mostly Ontario and Quebec, despite frequent huge seizures of products by local, provincial, and federal police (RCMP), and sometimes even the use of the Canadian Armed Forces.
That strategy was always doomed to fail.
Bill C-10 makes every ‘approved 1st Nations legal smokes seller’ the enforcers of the soon-to-be Law.
The sellers will be responsible to determine that if you can’t prove you are a registered 1st Nations person, you can’t buy any ‘legal’ smokes without paying the tax, and you can’t buy any not-approved smokes.
If you are caught by the police on or off 1st Nations Territories with any of the not-approved smokes, you will be charged with committing a criminal offence and fined. Those who sold them to you, whom you will be pressured to identify, will face far worse.
Additional police personnel have been and are being acquired to specifically find and catch offenders of this new crime.
Bill C-10 was tabled late last year in Canada’s House of Commons Parliament by Peter Mackay, currently Federal Minister of Justice and Attorney General, former Minister of Defence, before that Minister of Foreign Affairs, all three of which he’s overseen the disintegration thereof. Before that he was the last leader of the Progressive Conservative Party before agreeing to merge it with (current Canadian Prime Minister) Stephen Harper’s Canadian Alliance party.
Stephen Harper’s political beginnings were as Policy Chief for the Reform Party founded in Alberta, under party leader Preston Manning. The Reform Party ceased to exist soon after it became known to harbour a great number of Heritage Front neo-nazi white supremacists, who were attracted to join the party by Stephen Harper’s Reform Party Policies.
Stephen Harper often assigned them security details at Preston Manning’s speech and campaigning engagements.
The Heritage Front is now defunct since it’s leader Wolfgang Doege was murdered in 2005. But, it’s former members have not ‘gone away’. They have been ‘re-assigned’.
Peter Mackay and Stephen Harper have amassed a long list of hushed-up and buried scandals to answer for some day.
I repeat (to setup for a further point):
Bill C-10 when passed into law sometime in the next two months, will make most 1st nations tobacco products illegal to sell or purchase, except the select few that are registered with the Federal Government and the resale price to smokers includes the recently increased – by 24 percent – federal excise tax of $ 21.03 per 200 cigarettes, which for the very first time will also be levied on all ‘duty-free’ tobacco sales at Canadian-based duty-free border shops, and those smokes you bought outside of Canada from other ‘duty-free’ shops.
The cost of producing a packaged carton of 200 Big Tobacco cigarettes such as Du Maurier and Rothmans is less than $ 6.00 — 1st Nations smokes cost a lot less than that to produce.
Two months ago prices for 1st Nations smokes ranged from about $ 10 to $ 34 for 200 cigarettes. The brand I buy, BBs, very popular, were $ 16. Now, currently, my brand is $ 20, suddenly – 24 percent – more than 2 months ago.
If the BB producers get approved to sell their product ‘legally’, this new excise tax levy will more than double that price to at least $ 41 per 200 cigarettes. That will be a 157 PERCENT increase from 2 months ago.
This does not include Provincial tax on tobacco products, which is yet to be negotiated sometime soon after Bill C-10 become Law to get approval to continue selling.
I very much doubt any brand under $ 34 before excise tax retail price will get approved for ‘legal’ sale.
$ 34 was the former price 2 months ago of Grand River Enterprises’ smokes, which have been federally ‘legal’ for close to ten years already.
I have no doubts that most every other brand will not get approval – except for Grand River Enterprises and a couple of Akwesasne producers.
I could barely afford to smoke 1st Nations smokes at $ 16 per carton before this Bill C-10.
After Bill C-10 becomes Law very soon, I won’t be able to afford to smoke anymore.
Most smokers of 1st nations smokes are like me, and will be forced to quit smoking too.
Most, probably all, 1st Nations mom-and-pop smoke shops, which most are, will go bust.
Aside from anti-smoking rhetoric and anti-indian racism people, many others will say – so what, indians get all that government money from our taxes ! They don’t need smokes money too.
Not true. Most of the government money we are falsely told as going to every 1st Nations person, actually gets eaten up by the very bureaucracy that’s supposed to pass it on to all 1st Nations persons. There is very little left that reaches most of the entitled recipients.
Bill C-10 will destroy 10s of 1,000s of 1st Nations mom-and-pop shop people and their dependants across Canada who will not be able to comply with the law and who have no other means of earning a living.
The Canadian Tobacco Act has always been ‘written’ by global Big Tobacco to eliminate competition, and they have now re-written it again, to eliminate all the little 1st nations operations across Canada, which collectively add up to the largest percentage of sales.
Those responsible for this Bill are global Big Tobacco, which includes the largest 1st Nations producer on this planet Grand River Enterprises of Six Nations Territory in southwest Ontario, plus a couple more producers at Akwesasne, plus key 1st Nations Band Chiefs, the Canadian Convenience Stores of Canada – with probably neo-nazis at the top.
What they all fail to realize is, tobacco sales in Canada will collapse, because the majority of us cannot afford those prices. The majority still smoking will be forced to quit smoking.
see Bill C-10 info below.
how canadian federal government bills become law:
parliamentary house of commons 1st reading – 2nd reading – committee report to house – senate vote – governor general on behalf of queen of england gives royal assent – becomes law or date will become law specified
how long can it take to go from bill to law-of-the-land in Canada:
… on average 3 months. It depends on the legislation and if the governing party has a majority. With a majority it`s easy,with a minority it can take a long time..The house of commons can get a bill passed in a couple of weeks, but it also has to be passed in the senate [and get royal assent by the governor general] before it becomes law.
At times it gets passed in the house, but not in the senate. If it fails to get passed in the senate they send it back to the house with suggestions on how to improve it. [except for Omnibus Bills].
The senate always passes the budget as a matter of tradition. If the the government can`t get the budget past in the house the government falls and it triggers an election. So the easy answer to question is a month to years.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has a majority government, which many in Canada believe he got by very scary nefarious means.
Bill C-10 completed 1st AND 2nd Readings on the very same day !! November 5, 2013, and it went to Committee Report stage February 12, 2014
It is being “fast-tracked”.
On Feb. 14, 2014 Finance Minister Jim Flaherty tabled the 2014 Federal Budget, which was passed, rubber stamped, and depends on the passing of Bill C-10,
which includes a – 24 percent – increase in the excise tax on all ‘foreign’ tobacco products, including duty-free products and 1st Nations tobacco products for 1st time ever.
Originally written By Thomas Laprade
