Mr. Speaker, I want to start with the general context within which this bill comes before this House. That is that we in Canada, like other states, have spent the better part of the last 150 years pursuing a criminalized and prohibitionist model toward the regulation of cannabis. Colloquially, it is known as the war on drugs, where successive governments have regarded cannabis as a substance that is dangerous and that citizens do not have a right to access, possess, or use in any way. The official policy of successive Liberal and Conservative governments for the last 150 years has been to make it a crime to possess or use cannabis.
We all know, through long experience and reams of data, that this approach to regulating cannabis is a completely failed policy and it failed for a variety of reasons. Some people believe that what folks choose to ingest is fundamentally an individual decision, that as long as it does not affect others, the state really does not have a right to tell citizens what they should or should not put in their body. Others believe that if it is a crime it is a truly victimless crime. If someone chooses to smoke a joint on a Friday night, people have great difficulty regarding that in any way, shape, or form as a crime.
Canadians can legally ingest alcohol or tobacco, both substances that overwhelmingly and demonstrably have more serious adverse health effects when compared to cannabis. Most people have long believed it is an unacceptable contradiction to allow the state to criminalize cannabis while leaving these other substances that are carcinogens and substances that when used exactly as directed can cause death. I want to pause for a moment and speak about one of the most stark moments of testimony heard when we were studying this bill in committee. A person said that people can walk into a liquor store and walk out with a 26-ounce bottle of liquor and there is enough liquor in that bottle to kill them, to kill a child. I do not think we have to remind any members in this House of the effects of tobacco, which is a carcinogen that kills Canadians unacceptably every year.
The other thing that lies behind this context is that, I would argue, every harm associated with illegal drug use stems from the criminalization of the drug use, not the drug itself. That is because people who choose to smoke a joint on a Friday night or have a drink of scotch on a Saturday or share a bottle of wine do not feel that it is inherently a criminal act. There are problems associated with those substances because they are serious substances that have mind-altering properties. Obviously, regulation of these substances is in order. When people have a problem with cannabis and other substances like that, we in the New Democrats do not see that as a criminal justice issue; we see it as a social justice issue. Therefore, when we see a person with a drug problem, we see a health issue or an addictions issue or a poverty issue; we do not see a criminal issue. If experience has taught us anything after spending billions of dollars in Canada and the United States and other jurisdictions to try to stamp out drug use, we know that it does not work. In fact, the statistics before our committee were very clear that Canadian youth are among the first- or second-highest users of cannabis in the world. That is in a context where it is totally criminal and we have life sentences for trafficking in the Criminal Code, so in that context it has not done a darn thing.
Most important, we live in a democracy. The vast majority of Canadians, across party lines I would argue, overwhelmingly see the criminalization of cannabis as an unjustified approach. They want it changed. Last election, some 65% voted for parties that explicitly campaigned on decriminalizing or legalizing cannabis. Even some Conservatives believe, on individual liberty grounds and other such philosophies, that cannabis ought to be legalized. After the 2015 election, Canadians were entitled to assume that their expectation that marijuana would be legalized would finally be enacted. They are disappointed because this act would not legalize cannabis, and I will speak to that in a moment.
When we examine Bill C-45, I would describe it truly as a horse of two colours. On the one hand, it is a definite improvement over the status quo. Finally, Canadians would no longer be criminals simply for possessing and growing small amounts of cannabis. Second, it would create a production and retail market for legal cannabis, albeit highly regulated and controlled by the state.
On the other hand, it is a great disappointment for all those who believed that the Liberal government was going to legalize cannabis, because this bill would not. It would create more cannabis offences than we have at present. It would maintain the criminalized prohibitionist model of cannabis policy, would fail to capture the huge economic potential of cannabis as a sustainable, high-value product worth billions of dollars to our economy, and would be informed by and perpetuate many of the worst, unfounded myths of cannabis. This is truly unfortunate, because the Liberal government had an opportunity and the mandate from the Canadian people to bring in comprehensive legislation based on evidence and science to fix this long-standing social and legal injustice, but it failed to do so.
What would Bill C-45 do? It would allow the personal public possession of cannabis up to 30 grams. It would allow every household to grow up to four cannabis plants, originally limiting it to 100 centimetres in height. It would create a process for those who want to grow cannabis for commercial recreational production to obtain licensing from the federal government, would set the legal age for possessing cannabis at a minimum age of 18 years, and would delegate to the provinces the ability to design the retail distribution model they want to apply in their particular jurisdictions. This bill fails to eliminate criminal penalties for a host of offences, with many subjecting Canadians up to a maximum 14 years of imprisonment.
It would continue to make edibles and concentrates illegal in stark contradiction to the recommendations of the McLellan report and the purpose of the bill, which is explicitly to bring the production of cannabis products outside of the black market and into the licit world. It would prohibit the importing and exporting of recreational cannabis products and perpetuate the discriminatory application of criminalized cannabis laws to the most marginalized Canadians, including poor, racialized, indigenous, and young people. Finally, it fails to deal with pardons for the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who bear convictions for simple possession offences, which, as the Liberal government acknowledges, has devastating consequences for Canadians employment-wise, travel-wise, socially, and economically.
The NDP believes strongly in the legalization of cannabis. In fact, no party in this House has the record of consistency on this issue than the NDP has, working since the 1970s to decriminalize cannabis use in Canada. New Democrats set out to work proactively and positively to examine this bill and improve it. We called the most diverse and informed witnesses before the health committee to obtain the best evidence we could to inform committee members, and we moved 38 amendments at committee to improve this bill. Unfortunately, the Liberals joined with the Conservatives to defeat every single NDP amendment. In fact, it was so bad that the NDP amendment to remove the ridiculous 100-centimetre limit on plant height was voted down by the Liberals, only to have them introduce the identical amendment so they could take credit for passing it. That is okay, progress is progress.
Liberals rejected the NDP amendments to add pardons to this bill. They were ruled outside the scope of the bill. Can anyone imagine ground-breaking cannabis legislation to change 100 years of a criminal approach to cannabis and the Liberals forgot to put in the bill any provision that would allow Canadians with simple possession records, to have at least a streamlined approach to obtain pardons after this bill becomes law? A Canadian could be convicted on June 30, 2018, for simple possession of cannabis for doing exactly the same thing that will be legal on July 1, 2018, and the current government is content with that.
New Democrats want to work proactively with the government and support this bill because it absolutely is an improvement over the status quo, but we will continue to work for legislation that actually reflects the science, the evidence, and the huge economic potential of this.
I will conclude by saying that the restriction on importing and exporting cannabis is absolutely going to hamstring Canadian business. We could be a global leader with first market access with high-quality cannabis products, as the rest of the world comes to the same conclusion that Canada has, which is that criminalizing cannabis is a mistake and poor public policy, and they will be moving to legalize cannabis in their jurisdictions as well. The NDP will continue to work towards those ends.
