Governments + Cigarette Companies Forever

You would think that in our high deficit times that our government would do all that they could to reduce the deficit. What if I told you that the government can get 10 billion dollars, but instead, they settle for a smaller amount. Not 6 billion, not 3 billion, not 2 billion not even a billion, but 550 million dollars. Yeah, that's right our government gave a 94.5% discount on the amount it sued for. What happened was that the tobacco company's were involved in selling crates of cigarettes into the US subsidizers, then those sold them to the smugglers who brought the cigarettes illegally into Canada. Now I think that we should charge these company's guess what full price they did something illegal why should they be allowed to get a 94.5% discount. Let's get this money and lower the deficit, and invest money into our economy, and not allow the cigarette CEO get off easy while we have the legal right to that money for our economy, and lowering our deficit, but apparently making tobacco companies happy is more important than jobs, economy, health care and education.

Canadian companies shipped crates of cigarettes to American subsidiaries; the cigarettes were then sold to smugglers and brought illegally into Canada through native reserves and border checkpoints; once back in the country, the cigarettes were sold to consumers at a big discount - sometimes for about half the price of legally purchased smokes.

It noted that the federal and provincial governments filed claims for nearly $10 billion over contraband smokes. Mahood said that makes the $550-million settlement "a complete sellout." 

 "Canadian governments led by the feds had an opportunity to play hard ball, to build trust among Canadians in the rule of law related to white-collar crime. Instead, they blew away the opportunity to recoup billions of desperately needed lost tax revenues and made big tobacco financially stronger, with a greater capacity to prey on our children."

http://www.cbc.ca/cp/national/100413/n0413113A.html