WHERE OUR TAX MONEY GOES DURING DIFFICULT TIMES

On October 2009, while many Canadians were hard hit by the global recession and were struggling to make the payments on their homes and put food on the table for their families, Health Canada granted 656 666$ to the Non-Smokers' Rights Association for use in ‘’a coordinated national approach to help address the supposedly significant tobacco control issue of contraband. The project also seeks to encourage smoke-free multi-unit dwellings through education and outreach to housing providers and tenants associations as well as the general public.’’

A lot of precious taxpayer money wasted on attempting for the umpteenth time to find miracle solutions to a contraband problem that can be resolved overnight simply by lowering the tobacco taxes to reasonable levels. A lot of money wasted on an extremist lobby group that wants to deprive citizens of their privacy in their own homes. The NSRA will probably once again attempt to befool Canadian citizens by claiming that they’re not lobbying governments towards legislating smoking in our homes, but in fact they are seeking to obtain the exact same results by lobbying housing providers and tenants associations to ban smoking in apartments and condos. Whether through government legislation or ‘’voluntary’’ rules housing providers would have made under the pressure of these radicals, the objectives and the result would be that smokers end up being denied housing.

Isn’t it time that our government realized that the NSRA is presently doing more harm than good to society and costing us far more in public funds than they are saving us. It is past time for the mission, tactics and "raison d'être" of the NSRA are reexamined in a far more critical light.