Tax-free cigarettes adding to Ontario’s contraband problem
From: Toronto Sun | Guest Columnist
— Christine Van Geyn is the Ontario director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
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And then there’s the real kicker, the Ontario government allocates millions of tax-free cigarettes to smoke shacks on reserves for sale to Status Indians. In fact, they allocate so many cigarettes to reserves that it’s likely only 122 million out of 435 million cigarettes allocated to reserves are sold to Status Indians.
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It sounds crazy, but it’s true. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) has obtained documents through a Freedom of Information request that shows that Ontario Cigarette Allocation System is sending so many tax-free cigarettes to Ontario reserves that to be consumed legally, every smoker on a reserve over the age of 15 would have to smoke 61 cigarettes a day, every day.
