The Globe and Mail has revealed details of a smear campaign drawn up by the Non-Smokers Rights Association against their political opponents. Here's the kicker -- the group is partly funded by your tax dollars.

The web page you're reading is an up-front in-your-face effort to influence opinion on the smoking issue. We believe that smoking control policies as they are currently being developed from the federal level all the way down to the municipal level should be a grave concern to Canadians on several grounds. We see threats to free speech rights, and our concerns include the removal of previously taken-for-granted freedom to consume a legal product in a social setting. You may love what we say -- or you may hate it and think our rhetoric is outrageous. But we've exercising our right to take part in public debate, and few Canadians would take issue with that.

Now, imagine that we were getting public funding (we hasten to assure you that we're not -- we don't even get tobacco company money). But just imagine for a moment that we were getting funding for our activities from the hard-earned tax dollars of Canadians. I believe that would infuriate even our most sympathetic readers, to say nothing of the many people who disagree with us. Canadian taxpayers should not be asked to fork out money for any advocacy or pressure groups that appear on the scene. It's as simple as that. Let people who want to take a stand on an issue dig into their own pockets and find their own private donors.

But that's not the case when it comes to the anti-smoking lobby, as a front-page story and a column by Terence Corcoran in Saturday's Globe and Mail made clear.

The Non-smokers Rights Association, led by the aggressive anti-smoking crusader Garfield Mahood, is partly funded by your tax dollars -- to the tune of $500,000 for 1996-97, and $300,000 in the previous year, according to the Globe. Corcoran reports that Health Canada gave the organization "and its sister charity" Smoking and Health Action Foundation, a total of $1.5 million in 1994 and 1995.

What's the money used for? The Globe has published excerpts from a NSRA plan to "mock and ridicule" opponents, and mount a public relations/political attack against a Liberal MP who objects to public funding and charitable status for political lobby groups. The MP, who is active in investigating the political activities of charities, fingered the NSRA for using charitable funds for lobbying in a report last October.

The Globe reports that this MP, John Bryden, was subsequently identified as "a problem" by Garfield Mahood. In his NSRA action plan, Mahood proposed to hold news conferences and pamphleteering campaigns in Bryden's riding in order to "keep him off balance," the Globe tells us.

A scandalous abuse of tax dollars, if ever there was one.

It's a sign of political health when citizens band together and create organizations to lobby for what they believe is in the public interest. The smokers rights movement of which FORCES Canada is a part has every right and a responsibility to lobby against the smoking prohibition movement and the undue interfence in the lives of individual Canadians and businesses which we believe it promotes. Mahood and his crowd have every right to lobby in the way they see fit - - to send pamphlets, attack politicians, and hold press conferences. But it is a travesty for any political pressure group to use public money for its political ends.

It would be a grave injustice for Canadians who advocate tighter smoking restrictions to be forced to pay for the activities of a group like FORCES Canada. It is equally a travesty that we, and Canadians who share our views, are forced to pay for the Non-Smokers Rights Association.

It's time for Canadians to call on the federal government to end public funding for advocacy and political groups, and to deny these groups charitable status. If the federal government wishes to support the right of Canadian groups to lobby for causes, perhaps we could create a special status, maybe with some tax breaks, for such groups -- in a way that makes clear the political nature of these groups. Not only should Canadians be free from having to fund special interest causes that they don't necessarily believe in -- they should not be vulnerable to confusion between what is a "charity" in the commonly accepted sense, and what is a political lobby group.

Let's call on our politicians to stop the gravy train in its tracks. As far as we're concerned, the Non-Smokers Rights Association and its "charitable" arm would be an excellent place to begin.

FORCES Canada