Bill C-415 (Historical)

Expungement of Certain Cannabis-related Convictions Act

An Act to establish a procedure for expunging certain cannabis-related convictions

This enactment establishes a procedure for expunging certain cannabis-related convictions and provides for the destruction or removal of the judicial records of those convictions that are in federal repositories and systems.

Criminal Records Act

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague to the south, who has been representing very ably the riding that was, until very recently and for a long time, represented by my dear friend and colleague Gord Brown. Those were big shoes to fill. I know I am expressing a view that is shared by many in his constituency when I say that my colleague is doing a very admirable job, and my hat is off to him for that.

This is my second opportunity to address Bill C-93 and my third to address the issue of pardons for the formerly criminal act of simple possession of cannabis. I was also able to address the private member's bill, Bill C-415, which was moved in the name of our colleague from Victoria.

I want to focus my remarks primarily on the contrast between the expungement model in Bill C-415 and the record suspension or pardon model in Bill C-93. Looking at this bill and the comments raised in committee persuades me of the truth of a remark that was made in committee by a criminal defence lawyer, Solomon Friedman, who said:

I should first note that Bill C-93 is better than nothing. But better than nothing is a mighty low bar for our Parliament. You can do better. You must do better. Instead, I would urge a scheme of expungement along the lines already provided for in the Expungement of Historically Unjust Convictions Act.

That act was, of course, passed by this Parliament at the instigation of the current government, which revealed that expungement is, at least in principle, possible for the former offence of simple possession of cannabis.

Better than nothing turns out to be the equivalent, in practice, of very little at all. Parole Board officials testifying before the committee studying this bill estimated that out of the 250,000 to 500,000 Canadians with convictions for cannabis possession, only 10,000 would apply for a record suspension or expedited pardon.

I will make two comments. First, I am not sure how much precision or accuracy we can expect in the prediction of 10,000 from people who said that the number of records out there is somewhere between 250,000 and 500,000. That is a substantial margin of error. Additionally, if it is 10,000, why so few? The answer, in part, is the incredibly bureaucratic nature of the process under Bill C-93. When looking at Bill C-93, one gets the impression that the government looked at all available options for dealing with this issue and selected the most bureaucratic one it could find.

Let me quote from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, a supporter of this bill, and my point will be made. In promotion of the bill, she said:

[W]hy not just do it like some California municipalities and erase all the records with the press of a button? We do have an electronic police database of criminal records here in Canada, however, that database does not contain enough information to allow for a proactive amnesty....

[The] Parole Board should explore options for moving towards a more digitized system capable of receiving applications electronically, something particularly important for Canadians in rural areas.

That system would be in the future, not under this bill. That is a reference to the problems of getting access to broadband Internet in rural areas.

The parliamentary secretary then said:

In the meantime, the Parole Board is taking a number of steps to simplify the application process in other ways. It is simplifying its website and application form. It is creating a dedicated, toll-free phone number and an email address to help people with their applications.

In other words, none of this stuff is available, and it will take some time before that happens. She continued:

It is developing a community outreach strategy with a particular focus on the communities most [likely to be] affected by the criminalization of cannabis to make sure that people know about this new expedited process and how to access it...

We will need an advertising campaign.

This is going to be slow and complicated. By contrast, what would have happened under an expungement system? Expungement is nothing the government ever considered. Indeed, it seems not to have even thought of this possibility. Under expungement, we would simply say that the government would act as if any record that stated that a person had been convicted for possession of cannabis did not actually exist. If we found it, we simply would say there was nothing there.

This is done by the courts all the time. Any correspondence between lawyers done on a without prejudice basis, whether or not the words “without prejudice” are put at the front of the various pieces of correspondence, is automatically disregarded by a court. They have no ability to present it as evidence in a proceeding.

Similarly, we could do the same thing with records. This would overcome the problem of having different records kept in different ways, some on paper and some electronically, in different jurisdictions. They would simply have no existence in law. Because it is such a common conviction, when one was accessed, we would understand that it simply did not exist for the purpose of being used by any law enforcement official. That is how we could introduce expungement. This would eliminate all the bureaucracy, all the application fees that are necessary, which would still exist under this proposal, all the time, all the work and all the money that would have to be expended. There is a cost estimate, which I find hard to believe, attached to this bill. There would be zero cost with an expungement system.

In all fairness, the bill is better now than it was before it went to committee and came back with amendments. This is thanks, in part, to an amendment proposed by the member for Toronto—Danforth.

I will again read from the parliamentary secretary's words to give members an idea of what was done. She stated:

thanks to an amendment at committee from the member for Toronto—Danforth, people will be able to apply [for a pardon] even if they have outstanding fines associated with their cannabis possession conviction.

Due to an amendment we voted on at report stage...people whose only sentence was a fine will not be required to submit court documents as part of their application.

Finding these court documents was part of the supposedly costless, expedited process until this amendment was made.

On the other hand, a further suggested amendment, put forward by the Conservatives, was accepted at committee and then subsequently rejected by the government.

I will quote from our Conservative critic on this issue, who stated, “We proposed a measure to allow applicants whose records were destroyed to swear an affidavit explaining their situation and certifying that they are eligible”, which of course creates some paperwork but is less complicated than what we are left with. He went on to say, “This would have made the process even more fair. The Liberals agreed to this amendment in committee but changed their minds at report stage and decided to reject it.”

That would have helped relieve some of the bureaucracy. There are certain costs that continue to exist, and this prompted one person to quip, I think very appropriately, that the bill should not have been entitled an act to provide no-cost, expedited record suspensions for simple possession of cannabis, but rather, an act to provide for lower-cost, somewhat expedited record suspensions for simple possession of cannabis.

In the remaining minute and a half of my time, I want to deal with another important issue. Getting a pardon essentially equals getting forgiveness. People have done something wrong, we forgive them, and we move on. Expungement is a way of saying that what they did was not wrong in the first place. There are some offences for which this might not be true, even if we eliminated them retrospectively. I think, in the case of cannabis possession, it is clear that our ancestors, those who came before us, did not make it legal because they felt it was morally wrong to ingest or use marijuana. They thought it was the best way to protect people from their own unwise instincts. It was a wrong move. It did not work. It ruined a lot of lives, but those people were not put in prison because they had done something that was evil or wrong or would harm the rest of society. Therefore, removing this is entirely appropriate. We need not save expungement, as the government has proposed, only for the righting of historical wrongs based on laws that are now prohibited under the charter. I suggest that, in this case, it is also appropriate, and I urge all of us to consider, as we look forward to the future, the expungement model, perhaps in a second piece of legislation in the 43rd Parliament.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Madam Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-93, an act that would provide for the possibility of a record suspension for a conviction in relation to the minor possession of cannabis.

I support the legislation. However, while I support it, I do so reluctantly. I support it because in the absence of other legislation, it is the best we have at this present time. However, it need not have been that way.

A bill was put forward by the hon. member for Victoria, Bill C-415, that would have provided for the expungement of records for minor possession. I would submit that Bill C-415 was a much better approach than Bill C-93 introduced by the government. I was very proud to stand in support of Bill C-415 when it came to a vote at second reading. It is very unfortunate that the Liberals across the way, almost uniformly one by one, voted that legislation down.

Why is Bill C-415 better than Bill C-93?

One of the distinctions between the bills is the difference between an expungement and a record suspension. Oftentimes there is confusion of whether they are one and the same or more or less substantively the same, but they are substantively different. An expungement is the deletion, it is the removal of a record. If people are asked if they had ever been convicted of the offence of minor possession, they can honestly answer, no, that they have not because that record is expunged; it is removed. It is as though that offence and that conviction never occurred. Bill C-415 would have provided that.

By contrast, Bill C-93 provides something quite different. In order to obtain a record suspension, one must apply to the National Parole Board. While the Liberals pat themselves on the back for waiving the $631 fee, the fact is that there are significant costs associated with applying to the National Parole Board for a record suspension. Those costs can include such things as finger printing and other searches of records that may be required. So complicated is an application for many individuals, that there are individuals who provide services on a for-profit basis and charge anywhere from $1,800 to $2,000 to apply for a record suspension. It is nice that the Liberals waived the fee, but again it does not address the other costs, time and effort that will be required in order to apply.

Second, under Bill C-93, the burden falls on the applicant to obtain a record suspension. If people happen to be convicted in relation to another offence, they need not apply because they do not qualify. More than half a million Canadians have been convicted of minor possession. By the way, almost half of Canadians have said that they have consumed a minor amount of cannabis.

Half a million Canadians have been convicted. According to departmental officials who appeared before the public safety committee, the estimated number of individuals who would be eligible to apply was around 250,000 Canadians. Right off the bat, half of Canadians who have been convicted of minor possession are disqualified. Why should they be disqualified?

Why should they be disqualified from having their record suspended, and frankly it should be expunged, for committing an offence that today is perfectly legal? It is an activity that the Prime Minister bragged about engaging in before it was legal, when in fact the Prime Minister was a sitting member of Parliament. He was never charged. He was not convicted. He very proudly sloughed it off.

However, a lot of Canadians who were not so lucky as the Prime Minister are burdened with a conviction. Then, if they happen to go through the application, establish that they qualify and obtain a record suspension, it is not over. Why is it not over then? The record is not deleted. It just goes from one national database to another. At some point in the future, perhaps the individual who has obtained a record suspension will have a traffic ticket violation, and the Parole Board might try to reimpose that conviction on the basis that the individual is no longer of good conduct. There are examples of that and there was testimony to that effect at the public safety committee.

That is not to mention the fact that the minister has broad discretion to share those records where the minister deems it to be in the interests of public safety or where there is some other security purpose. Again, even after one has gone through the cumbersome process, the record continues to hang over one's head.

The consequences of having a conviction are serious. It is an impediment to employment. It can be an impediment to housing. It can be an impediment to being able to volunteer in one's community. All this is for committing an offence that is perfectly legal today.

I did not support marijuana legalization, but it seems to me that if the government is going to go down that road, and it has chosen to go down that road, expungement should be part and parcel of that legalization. It is why, of the 23 U.S. states that have either legalized or decriminalized minor possession, seven states have provided for an amnesty, and six of those states have provided for expungement.

Again, that is something the government has opted not to do. Instead, it has established a costly, burdensome process that in the end is going to exclude nearly half of the Canadians who have been convicted of minor possession. It is a half measure that is totally inadequate.

While I support this legislation as being better than nothing, the government could do a lot better than Bill C-93.

Motions in Amendment

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to stand today to speak to Bill C-93.

I played a fairly significant role in the debates on Bill C-45 in 2017, because at that time I was serving as my party's justice critic. I recognize that the issue of cannabis reform has occupied the public sphere for quite some time.

I listened to my Conservative colleagues during the debate on Bill C-45 and in today's debate, and I note they favour a strong criminal justice approach. They admit that the problem in question has to do with concerns over mental health and youth getting inappropriate access to large amounts of cannabis. As we know, too much consumption of cannabis can have consequences.

I have always believed that the criminal law approach to drug reform and drug policy is in a sense like using a sledgehammer to hit a nail. I believe that if we want to talk about social and health problems, we really need to focus our policy tools and levers on making sure that our health and social services have the tools to provide not only education regarding the possible harms of over-consumption of certain substances, but also support services to people who feel they have a problem. We should remove the stigma of criminality and of being an outcast among a group of friends or family and community, so that people have the ability to get the help they need. I believe policies like this have been shown to be very effective.

With respect to the harshness of other drugs, especially given the opioid crisis and the heroin crisis, we can look to countries like Portugal, which have moved to a more social- and health-related policy for their drug problems. They saw significant results from that. Portugal went from being a country that used to have one of the highest rates of opioid deaths per capita in Europe to having one of the lowest.

When it comes to cannabis, I believe we had this debate, in large part, with respect to Bill C-45. Bill C-45 did not necessarily legalize cannabis, but rather made it less illegal, because in the provisions of Bill C-45, the consequences for stepping outside the boundaries of the law are in fact quite severe.

I come from a part of the country where attitudes toward cannabis possession and use are quite liberal. Many people on Vancouver Island, and indeed in British Columbia, have long regarded the crime of cannabis possession and use to be outdated and belonging in the previous century. Of course, we are very much looking forward not only to seeing the law reformed but also to seeing the injustice of the criminality addressed.

Unfortunately, when we look at the timeline, it is quite obvious that the Liberal government has not treated this particular issue of Bill C-93 with the seriousness it deserves. As my colleagues will remember, when Bill C-45 was introduced, it was already April 2017. I believe that particular bill received royal assent later that year. However, it was not until October 2018 that it had its provisions for coming into force. In other words, we were well into the third year of the government's mandate before Bill C-45 came into effect and cannabis use and possession were legalized.

Another problem is that police in different jurisdictions in Canada have different approaches. I have spoken to members of the police forces in Vancouver Island, whether in the RCMP or in municipal police forces, and they always tell me that with their limited resources, they have always had far bigger problems to go after than cannabis possession. By and large, when they have caught people with cannabis, they have usually just seized it and told them to please go on their way and not do that in public. However, we know that in other parts of Canada, the full force of the law has been brought to bear on people who possess even tiny quantities of cannabis.

Despite the record and the fact that the government has admitted this is a problem and has acknowledged the injustices, it is only now, in the dying days of the 42nd Parliament, that we are actually dealing with a bill that could have a substantive effect.

The government still has a very heavy legislative agenda before it. The House has just recently passed a motion to extend its sitting hours. We know that the other place, the Senate, is certainly showing true to its form as a new independent body. There is a lot of government legislation that is really up in the air right now, and I am not quite sure that Bill C-93 is going to have enough time to reach the finish line. Moreover, I think it does far too little.

The member for Victoria had a perfect blueprint for the government to follow in the version of Bill C-415. Rather than going through the pardon process, as Bill C-93 is doing, his bill would seek to expunge all previous crimes of personal possession from the record.

I like the word expungement, because it has an air of permanence about it. Expungement basically means that the crime never occurred. It is completely erased from the record. We have something that is now legal in Canada, and we have acknowledged the injustice of it, so it should be expunged from the record of any person who may have been charged with that crime back in the 1970s and 1980s. Such individuals could truthfully state to any official that they have never been charged with or convicted of such a crime.

The problem with a record suspension or a pardon, and we use those words interchangeably, is that the record is going to be set aside but would still exist. Moreover, when travellers go to other countries, such as the United States, which has very harsh drug laws, there is nothing in the bill that would actually tackle the problem of the United States still having those records on its systems. That, indeed, is a big problem.

The major criticism I have of the Liberal government is that instead of going all the way, it often resorts to half measures. We had a beautiful opportunity before us in this Parliament, through Bill C-415, to substantively tackle this issue.

My party, the NDP, has a long history of fighting for this issue. Just in this Parliament, if we go back to June 2016, we used one of our opposition day motions to fight for decriminalization. The Liberals have always argued that decriminalization is not an effective policy, but we always argued that it should be a policy that is employed as an interim measure as we went on to legalization. If we had had that in place for those three years, a lot of Canadians could have avoided those run-ins with the police and with the criminal justice system, which I think many in this place can agree has far bigger problems to deal with using its limited resources. We raised this, as I mentioned, in the debate on Bill C-45 and, of course, through Bill C-415.

I can recognize that there are parts of this proposed legislation that will certainly have a benefit for some people. However, that is precisely the problem: Not everyone is actually going to take advantage of the provisions. It is nice that the fee is going to be waived and that there is an expedited process, but still there is the problem of going through that, and the fact that some people have greater resources than others and will be able to benefit from this much more. I still think expungement would have been the better route, and I will remind my constituents that there was one party in the House of Commons that was fighting for expungement.

I cannot give my support to a half measure, not when we had a better option before us. Therefore, on principle, I will vote against this legislation. I will vote against it because there was a better way, and I am not going to let the Liberal government get away with another half measure without firmly standing in my place on behalf of my constituents and voicing my displeasure at the loss of what was a beautiful opportunity.

Criminal Records Act

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, first let me say something about Bill C-415. After it was over, the member for Victoria, who is always a gentleman, sent out letters to members who had voted in favour of the bill to thank them. I wrote back to him and thanked him for having raised this issue in such a thoughtful, intelligent way and that the entire country owed him a debt of thanks for having done so. I am glad to get that on the record. I feel quite strongly about what a service he did for all of us.

With regard to the issue of these being charter-related incidents, this is a matter that was before the House. There was a committee struck to deal with the issue of systemic racism, Motion No. 103, in the name of the member for Mississauga—Erin Mills. That is to say, as one witness put it, the racism that exists when the racists are gone.

The shadow of administrative racism exists, and it is very hard, as a practical matter, to address these in the form of charter challenges. We can see why this would be the case. There is a pattern of arrests, for example, a statistical phenomenon, but no one act has caused this. It is very hard to engage in charter litigation on it, although better minds than mine have been put to that question.

This is fundamentally a civil liberties issue, and I use that advisedly. However, it is important to point this out. If the member heard all my remarks, he will be aware that I mentioned two examples of racial groups, indigenous people in Saskatchewan and blacks in Nova Scotia, who have been arrested at several multiples of times as the rate for whites in those areas.

This is also an issue in an electoral district like my own, which is almost entirely white. Those who are poor, who are members of the social underclass, who suffer from mental illnesses, who have fetal alcohol effect, have genetic disorders, a gene that makes people more prone to becoming addicted, or an impulse control gene, are more likely to face prosecution and therefore institutional persecution. It is inherently unfair to them as well.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for supporting and mentioning my colleague, the member for Victoria, and his private members bill, Bill C-415, that calls for the expungement of all criminal records for people charged with simple cannabis possession.

The member mentioned the fact that the Liberals have said that the reason they do not want expungement is that it is very special and is only for crimes that we now think, through the charter, should never have been crimes. Yet most of the charges of possession of cannabis have come about from arguably charter-related incidents, where racialized Canadians, Canadians of colour, poor Canadians and indigenous Canadians have been vastly overrepresented in these charges. This could be easily related to our charter.

I am just wondering if the member could comment on that aspect of it. These are crimes that we do not believe are crimes anymore, and we should just expunge these records so that people do not have records anymore and we can let them get on with their lives.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this afternoon's debate on Bill C-93, an act to provide no-cost, expedited record suspensions for simple possession of cannabis, gives me the chance I have long sought to make a clear statement in the House of Commons as to the principles that underlie my long-standing views on cannabis legalization. This is actually my second chance, as I was also able to do so in addressing the private member's bill on the same subject a couple of weeks ago.

I have long favoured the legalization of marijuana. Indeed, I have favoured it since I first sought elected office, almost 20 years ago. My views on the subject were first expressed at a public policy conference in 2001 and published in Policy Options the same year, so my comments on this subject have been on the record for a very long time.

I have always couched my arguments in practical rather than abstract terms. However, the debate today, like the one a couple of weeks ago, allows me to discuss the civil liberties issues associated with the war on drugs separate from the discussion of marijuana legalization. We are not discussing marijuana legalization today. That deed is done and cannabis is legal. If this bill is defeated tonight, cannabis will still be legal. If after tonight's discussion the bill goes on to receive royal assent by the end of this Parliament, cannabis will retain the same legal status.

Tonight we are not talking about the impact that chemicals in drugs could have if we were to legalize them. Today we can say that this is irrelevant to the discussion. We are talking purely about the harm caused by the act of turning a victimless act into a crime.

Today, I want to say, as I did 18 years ago when I first published on the subject, that it is morally wrong to criminalize the personal use of any substance when the use or misuse of that substance would cause no harm to any individual other than the user himself or herself. The act of ingesting cannabis or alcohol, for example, and then driving a vehicle on a public roadway endangers others and is not a victimless crime. That is why it is illegal. That is why it ought to be illegal. However, consuming cannabis and then staying home for the weekend is victimless. For that matter, consuming alcohol and staying home for the weekend is also victimless.

When no person is victimized, other than the person engaged in the act, then it is a moral evil for the state to penalize the person who engages in that act. This principle would apply even if it were the case that none of the following conditions were true.

This principle would apply even if it were not the case, for example, that some people suffer from trauma that causes them to make impulsive choices, especially with regard to mood-altering substances. When these individuals are penalized, the law in effect singles out for punishment those who have suffered from the abusive behaviour of parents or partners, or from the trauma of war, or from fetal alcohol syndrome, or from simple brain trauma. The principle that victimless acts should never be punishable would apply even if it were not true that some people are endowed from birth with genes such as the NRXN3 gene, which in 2011 was identified as being associated with a greater likelihood of becoming addicted. In this case, the law is singling out for prosecution those who have lost the genetic lottery.

The principle would apply even if it were not true that those who have greater influence and power are far less likely to be prosecuted than an average Canadian who has committed the same offence. A case that makes this point is that of the Prime Minister's brother, Michel Trudeau, who escaped prosecution for marijuana possession 21 years ago because of the intervention of his father, who was at the time himself a prime minister.

Here is how our current Prime Minister put this in a speech two years ago. He reported that back in 1998, his father, Pierre Trudeau, “reached out to his friends in the legal community, got the best possible lawyer and was very confident that he was going to be able to make those charges go away.” He continued, “We were able to do that because we had resources, my dad had a couple of connections, and we were confident that my little brother wasn't going to be saddled with a criminal record for life.”

The principle that no one should be punished for a victimless act would be true even if it were not the case that disadvantaged Canadians who are statistically more likely than their fellow citizens to be caught, prosecuted and saddled with a criminal record for life are far likelier to be members of social or racial groups that appear to be marginalized in other ways too.

Two criminologists from the University of Toronto found that in the period of 2015 to 2017 in Halifax, black people were five times more likely than white people to be arrested for cannabis possession. The same researchers found that in Regina, in the same period, 2015 to 2017, very recent history, indigenous persons were nine times more likely than white people to be arrested for this offence.

Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, who was one of the two criminologists, stated, “We know that rates of cannabis use are relatively similar across racial groups. So the fact that specific groups have been disproportionately targeted for drug law enforcement, especially black and Indigenous populations, strengthens that need for amnesty and for pardons. Because those groups have not only been disproportionately targeted, they have been disproportionately harmed by the consequences of having a criminal record.”

Therefore, it is not merely the issue of cannabis legalization that affects people on a racial basis. It is the removal of those byproducts of that racialization of the legal system. Given these facts, I think we can say that this is the very definition of systemic racism, regardless of the proximate cause of each individual arrest.

Of course, the foregoing examples of inequity really do exist and therefore, the provision of the Criminal Code prohibiting the possession of small quantities of marijuana, which happily is now repealed, was wrong at all of these levels too.

If the underlying offence ought never to have been an offence in the first place, which is not merely what I feel but what has already been decided by Parliament when it enacted the Cannabis Act a year ago, then it stands to reason that the retention of any long-term penalty such as a criminal record for the formerly unlawful activity must be wrong for exactly the same reasons. This is true whether it is a charter-protected right that we are talking about or whether it is merely the practical impact on some groups that have been discriminated against in the application of the law. It is true even when the issue is not whether the wrong is a charter prohibited wrong but whether it is merely a wrong when viewed from the point of view of natural justice, a point which is of very considerable significance when we speak about the distinction of the reasons why the government will not issue record expungements as it has done for offences under the Criminal Code at a time when homosexual acts between consenting adults were illegal.

To be clear, the retention of criminal records for persons who used marijuana when it was a criminal offence represented an ongoing injustice and represents today an ongoing injustice that must be remedied. Quite frankly, a provision expunging the records of persons found guilty of possessing less than 30 grams of cannabis ought to have been included in the Cannabis Act a year ago. Why it was not, particularly given the heartfelt civil libertarian sentiment that must have been the motivation for the Prime Minister to share that very personal story about his father and late brother, remains a mystery to me. I note that in other jurisdictions that have legalized the non-therapeutic use of cannabis, the recreational use of cannabis, such as California and Vermont, provisions expunging the records of those convicted under the repealed statutes are part of the repeal legislation itself.

Now, it is too late for Canada to make a perfect copy of that enlightened example, but it is not too late for us to correct the oversight. Bill C-415 standing in the name of my colleague, the member for Victoria, was an effective and well-designed instrument for achieving an end to this lingering injustice.

Bill C-93 is a less perfect and less complete way of achieving the same end for many, although not all, of those who face this injustice. About 500,000 Canadians, which is around 1% to 2% of our adult population, have criminal records for the possession of small amounts of cannabis for personal consumption. Had Bill C-415 passed, it would have expunged all these records.

An expungement is not quite the same thing as a pardon or record suspension, which is what the current piece of legislation, Bill C-93, proposes. It differs in a number of ways. For one thing, a pardon must be formally requested. Any person can apply for a pardon, but under normal circumstances, only after waiting for a period of not less than five years, in the case of a summary conviction, and only upon the payment of a fee of just over $600. Had Bill C-415 gone forward, expungement would have been immediate and costless.

Bill C-93 would not do quite the same thing. The bill's very long title tells the entire story. People would not pay a cost and there would be no waiting time, but they would have to make the application, and then the Parole Board would decide whether to issue that pardon, if the applicants met a series of conditions. It is therefore called an act to provide no-cost, expedited record suspensions for simple possession of cannabis. It would get rid of the five-year waiting period and eliminate the $600 fee, and that is it. As far as it goes, that is good, and for this reason, I will be voting for the bill in principle, to send it off to committee later on this evening.

However, I want to be clear. Bill C-93 does not go far enough, because a record suspension is not an expungement. Unlike an expungement, a record suspension does not result in the permanent destruction of a record of a conviction in federal databases. Unlike expungement, where the person is deemed under Canadian law never to have been convicted of the offence in the first place, one would still be guilty of that offence. One would still have been convicted. It is just that no one could see that anymore.

There are some significant, meaningful differences here. As everyone knows, American border control officials reserve the right to ask Canadians who are crossing the border if they have a criminal record for using marijuana. Canadians are regularly turned back at the border if the answer is yes. Everyone should know that if people answer this question untruthfully and lie to an official of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services while on American soil, as people do when they are going across a land border, as opposed to in the Toronto or Vancouver airports, where they do so while on Canadian soil, they can be arrested on the spot. If records were expunged, but not if pardons were issued, it would be possible for people to answer truthfully, whether travelling by land or air, that they did not have a criminal record for this former offence. This is a very meaningful distinction.

The government uses the following rationale for not using expungement in the case of cannabis offences. I am quoting from the Liberals' press release of March 1, 2019, which is the day Bill C-93 came out. It said:

Expungement is an extraordinary measure reserved for cases where the criminalization of the activity in question and the law never should have existed, such as in cases where it violated the Charter.

I just want to be clear about what is wrong with that logic. The Liberals were making specific reference to the fact that consenting homosexual acts were once illegal, and now any law that prohibits them is regarded as a violation of the charter. It is true that this is a charter distinction, whereas cannabis could be recriminalized without violating the charter. That is about the charter. It is not about the morality of the underlying act. We have said in Canada that there is nothing wrong with consuming cannabis for personal use and possessing small amounts for personal use. There is nothing wrong with it.

I defy any member of the government to stand up here and say that she or he believes that it was morally wrong, that the underlying act was morally wrong a year ago or two years ago or 10 years ago or 50 years ago, that it was morally wrong then and it is morally okay now, any more than it was morally wrong to commit a homosexual act 10 or 20 or 100 years ago and now it is okay.

The fact is that it was never wrong in the case of a consenting gay act between adults, and it was never wrong with regard to cannabis. This distinction, which has to do with what made it into the charter and what did not, because sexual orientation almost did not make it into the charter, is just nonsense.

The fact is that more people who are marginalized because they are poor, mentally ill or come from a group that suffers racial discrimination, and there are different kinds of racial discrimination in different parts of the country, are being prosecuted and persecuted, and they have been in the past. The fact that the cops have been acting in a racist way in different parts of the country at different times does not make what happened to these people somehow less bad than what happened to people who were convicted for committing the supposed crime of engaging in consensual homosexual activity. This is a nonsense distinction.

I point out that I was down in Washington, D.C., last week meeting with members of the House of Representatives in the Senate, who are considering making changes to their cannabis laws. They are not necessarily looking at legalizing it for recreational purposes, as we are doing here, although some favour that. Many want to look at medical marijuana changes, which would make it available to veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. One bill would prohibit officials of the U.S. border services from asking Canadians if they have a cannabis-related conviction. Another one would deal with interstate banking laws as they affect cannabis operations that are legal under state law.

In the United States, they are very aware of the civil liberties issues and the racially inequitable way in which these laws have been applied in their country. The word that is used universally when discussing getting rid of criminal records is “expungement”. There is no reason in the world the government should not accept expungement of these records.

This bill, as I have said, is good as far as it goes. Later on this evening, I will be voting for it, and I encourage my colleagues to do so. However, it is not good enough. It is not acceptable to leave a systemically racist pattern of law enforcement in effect after we have said that the crime itself should never have been a crime and that it was never wrong and is not wrong.

It was okay for the Prime Minister, who was never caught, to use pot when it was illegal. He just did not get caught. He admitted after the fact that he used it. Somehow that is okay, right? I never heard him say that he used it when it was illegal and that it was morally wrong then. I never heard him say that if he had been caught, it would have been right for him to go to prison or to have a criminal record for life. He did not say that. He said that it should not have been wrong, so we are getting rid of that law. He was right about that. He would have been right to make sure that nobody who did not have a prime minister for a dad or the world's best Rolodex would ever face a situation of having a criminal record for life.

The bill is good; it is not good enough. I will be voting for it. I will be very much encouraging members on the committee to vote for some form of amendment to encapsulate the very important consideration brought forward by my colleague from Skeena—Bulkley Valley about taking care of those who have some kind of minor procedural item on their criminal records and are therefore going to face this being left on their records for life. It is an excellent idea. I hope the Liberal government will show some flexibility in this regard. It would be an excellent litmus test of whether the purpose of this bill is to help people or to simply take an issue away from the New Democratic Party, which produced an earlier and better bill on the same subject.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

I didn't see this in your notes. Does your organization support Bill C-415?

[Elana Finestone]

No, they are not. I was invited to a meeting with Mr. Matthew Dubé and Mr. Murray Rankin to discuss Bill C-415 and because Bill C-93 is related, we were also invited to speak on that. However, it was simply in tangent, so no, not really, and no, they are not reflected.

[Elana Finestone, Legal Counsel, Native Women's Association of Canada]

Before my 10 minutes start, I want to mention one housekeeping issue. I have some recommendations and proposed amendments that I just submitted. I won't go into depth about those because we can discuss them during the questions if you would like.

Good afternoon. I would like to thank the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security for having me here today to discuss Bill C-93.

I'm here on behalf of the Native Women's Association of Canada—NWAC. For those of you who don't know, NWAC is a national indigenous organization representing the political voice of indigenous women, girls and gender-diverse people in Canada, inclusive of first nations—on and off reserve, status, non-status, Métis and Inuit.

NWAC examines the systemic factors that affect indigenous women's contact with the criminal justice system and seeks reforms that will alleviate the harms faced by indigenous women in contact with the law.

Today, I'm here to talk about justice: correcting historical injustice, accounting for administration of justice offenses and increasing access to justice for indigenous women.

First, I would like to talk about the context of my recommendations. Indigenous women are under-protected by the criminal justice system when they experience violence, go missing or are murdered, yet they are also disproportionately impacted by the criminal justice system.

Too many indigenous women are in poverty, have precarious housing, lack family support and experience mental illness. They tend to lack knowledge of the criminal justice system and are often not represented by lawyers. They experience cultural and language gaps throughout the system.

From the recommendations in the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the testimony of indigenous women themselves, we know that their experience of the criminal justice system can be traced back to colonialism and racism. Indigenous women's criminalization is one aspect of a larger problem.

NWAC recommends that Bill C-93 account for and meaningfully respond to these realities. I'm here on behalf of NWAC today to make concrete recommendations to address the implications for indigenous women as the bill stands.

Bill C-93 is an important step in acknowledging the harms caused by tough drug policies and their adverse effects on indigenous women, especially indigenous women who are poor and convicted of minor offences. Unfortunately, the effects of the bill will go unrealized for many indigenous women with criminal records for simple possession of cannabis. Simply put, the bill remains inaccessible for indigenous women who are poor and have administration of justice issues associated with their simple possession of cannabis conviction.

NWAC ultimately recommends that Bill C-93 be used to expunge criminal records for simple possession of cannabis and related administration of justice offences. In the alternative, NWAC puts forward the following three recommendations.

The first is to correct historical injustice. It is acknowledged in the House that the prohibition of cannabis was bad policy. There is an acknowledgement by the Liberal Party that indigenous people have been “policed differently, convicted differently and managed by the courts differently”, and that these criminal records have a disproportionate impact on youth from poor communities, racialized communities and indigenous communities.

At NWAC we know that indigenous women are much less likely to escape the notice of the criminal justice system. We know that cannabis used to be legal in Canada. It was legal until cannabis used to be associated with people of colour and considered so dangerous that increased law enforcement and police powers were necessary to contain its use.

Let's correct these historical injustices and interpret this bill in a way that rights these historical wrongs.

I borrowed language from the preamble in Bill C-415, but made a few additions. I recommend that the preamble read the way it does on page 3, but I would just add to the second paragraph the following:

And whereas the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. Gladue and R. v. Ipeelee indicates that indigenous people and communities face racism and systemic discrimination in the criminal justice system

In the last paragraph, I would add that these convictions have had a negative impact not only on their employment prospects but also on custody and access to children.

Recommendation number 2 deals with the need to account for administration of justice offences, a lived reality for criminalized indigenous women. As a group, women's crimes tend to be on the lower end of seriousness. Over half of women's crimes are property crimes or administration of justice offences. Administration of justice offences are criminal offences, such as failure to attend court and failure to comply with conditions, to name a few. A full list of offences is on pages 4 and 5 of NWAC's recommendations.

Administration of justice offences are also known as the “revolving door of crime”, because it's harder for people charged with these offences to leave the criminal justice system. This is especially the case for criminalized indigenous women. Charges against females accused of administration of justice offences are growing faster than charges against males.

Administration of justice offences can be linked to indigenous women's marginalization. The lived reality for criminalized indigenous women is that they do not have the support or means to comply with the criminal justice system. This is not an excuse for their behaviour, but is a reality. For example, indigenous women in remote communities may be unable to get to a distant town where the court is located, and then may face several failure to appear breaches. Another person may unintentionally breach their bail conditions if they are homeless and do not get their court notices. When an indigenous woman is ordered not to attend her residence as a condition of judicial and term release, and there is no alternative housing or community support available to her, she is forced to violate that order to find shelter. As a result, indigenous people and marginalized Canadians are more likely to be charged, and if released on bail, are more likely to be subject to stricter and more impossible conditions.

All of these administration of justice charges add to indigenous women's criminal records and set them up for failure. As it stands, indigenous women who are initially convicted of simple possession of cannabis and amass these administration of justice offences are not eligible to apply or receive a record suspension under Bill C-93.

That's why NWAC recommends that Bill C-93 allow people with simple possession of cannabis convictions and administration of justice offences associated with simple possession of cannabis to apply for and receive criminal record suspensions for both the simple possession of cannabis convictions and any of the associated administration of justice offences.

My last recommendation is to increase access to justice. In light of poverty and administration of justice offences plaguing racialized and marginalized groups affected by the Cannabis Act, NWAC recommends that people who have not completed their sentence for an offence under subsection 4(3.1) be able to apply for criminal record suspensions. It does not make sense for people to continue sentences for conduct that is now legal. This amendment would ensure that people in poverty who cannot afford to pay outstanding fines would have the benefit of Bill C-93.

For the law to positively impact criminalized indigenous women, a gender-based understanding of Canada's history of racism and systemic discrimination towards indigenous people must be embedded in Bill C-93. The criminalization of indigenous women is one of the legacies of colonization. Indigenous women who are typically criminalized for simple possession of cannabis offences tend to be in poverty, are over-policed, and linger in the criminal justice system because of administration of justice offences.

Criminalized indigenous women are set up to fail in this criminal justice system. By allowing people to no longer be clouded by a criminal record for an act that is now legal, regardless of whether they have finished their sentences, Canada now has an opportunity to take a step towards righting these historical wrongs.

Thank you very much for your time. I look forward to our discussion on this very important issue.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley.

Colleagues, 50 years ago, the imminent astronomer Carl Sagan wrote an article under the pseudonym Mr. X. He wrote about cannabis, noting that “the illegality of cannabis is outrageous”. He said, on legalization specifically, “I hope that time isn’t too distant”.

That was 50 years ago.

I am going to start by commending and recognizing the progress we have made. If someone had asked me five or 10 years ago whether I would see cannabis legalized in my lifetime, I would have been incredibly skeptical, yet in October of last year, that is exactly what the government did, following through on a significant promise to treat it as a public health issue but also to treat Canadians as the responsible adults we are.

I will support Bill C-93. It would waive the five-year waiting period. It would waive the $631 fee.

The Minister of Border Security and Organized Crime Reduction has noted that as many as 400,000 Canadians have criminal records for simple possession of cannabis. That is something we ought to correct as much as possible, because we know the impact of a criminal record on one's ability to secure housing, employment and ability to travel.

I will be supporting Bill C-93, but that, to me, is obvious and straightforward. I also think the bill ought to go further, and I hope to see the committee make amendments so that it does.

First, Canadians and colleagues should understand the difference between a pardon and an expungement. According to the Parole Board of Canada, the purpose of a record suspension or a pardon is to remove barriers to reintegration that can be associated with a criminal record. The idea is that we say, “You are forgiven. Move on with your life.” With respect to expungement, the government recognizes that the conviction was for an act that should never have been a crime at all and that these individuals should not be viewed as former offenders. Instead, we say, “We are sorry. We made a mistake. We should never have done this in the first place.”

With respect to cannabis possession, and we are not talking about trafficking, it is straightforward that we never should have made this a crime in the first place and that expungement is the proper answer.

The government has made technical arguments with respect to travel. I trust that the committee will address those. There is no difference at the American border with respect to a pardon or an expungement. In the hands of the American officers, they enforce their laws as they see fit. We should be concerned with our domestic laws.

I will say this. If we can help people move forward with their lives in a more significant way, we should seize the opportunity. An expungement will help Canadians who are impacted by a criminal record more so than a pardon would.

Again, just as a clarifying note on the difference between a pardon and expungement, this really hits home when we see the great differences between governments. We are seeing this in Ontario right now, where the pendulum is swinging so incredibly hard in the opposite direction. A different government could actually restore records when people have been pardoned. The records are simply set aside. A different government could never restore criminal records if they were properly deleted through the expungement process.

I commend the member from Victoria for putting Bill C-415 forward, but I would also note that this is grassroots Liberal policy. I am going to read a resolution from the 2012 Liberal biennial convention put forward by the Young Liberals of Canada and supported by over 80% of grassroots Liberals at the time:

Be it further resolved that a new Liberal government will extend amnesty to all Canadians previously convicted of simple and minimal marijuana possession, and ensure the elimination of all criminal records related thereto;

If we want to be consistent with our legalization promise that tracks back to this resolution, amnesty is the answer.

Most significantly, the most important argument is that we have to correct an injustice. The criminalization of cannabis was a racial injustice in original purpose and current effect.

I want to read a direct quote from Harry Anslinger, America's first drug czar. It is not a positive quote. It is an offensive quote. He warned that “Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men.”

Here in Canada, Emily Murphy, one of the Famous Five, an otherwise celebrated women's rights activist, led a temperance movement grounded in the belief that “aliens of colour” used drugs to corrupt the white race.

If we look at the modern application of these laws, we see a Toronto Star investigation from 2017 which found that black people with no criminal record were three times more likely to be arrested for cannabis than white people. That was in 2017. There was a vice investigation subsequently that made access to information requests to police agencies across the country. It found, for example, in Regina, that indigenous people represented 41% of cannabis arrests in 2015 and 2016, but they were only 9.3% of the total population.

We see the Federation of Black Canadians and the Canadian Association of Black Lawyers stand up in support of going further for amnesty. They are doing so because it was a racial injustice. The government argues that the injustice was in the application of the law; it was not inherent in the law. However, for anyone who understands how we interpret our constitutional law and how we might find a law unconstitutional, we consider the purpose of the law, but we also consider the effect of the law. So too with respect to expungement, it is not only if it is inherently an injustice, but also if it is an applied injustice.

It is arguable whether the original purpose, as I have noted, ought not to be considered as well when we talk about the injustice. I would argue that this was inherently an injustice. I read the Le Dain commission in 1970, which said, “There can be no doubt that Canada’s drug laws were for a long time primarily associated in the minds of its legislators and the public with general attitudes and policy towards persons of Asiatic origin.”

The point is this. We fear different drugs today because we used to fear different people.

The last point I want to make is that if we set aside the most important arguments with respect to racial injustice and we consider basic common sense, almost half of Canadians have self-reported using cannabis in their lifetime. Are half of Canadians criminals? When cannabis is less harmful than the six-pack that people take to a party or a mickey of vodka, should people who possess cannabis, again not traffickers, ever be thought of as criminals? The obvious answer is no, in the same way that I do not think if people take a six-pack to a party they are criminals. In taking a less harmful substance, they ought not to be considered criminals, and we as legislators should cure that. We have the capacity to cure it. We could cure that simply by improving the law before us.

The simple question that we all have to answer is whether the conduct in question is deserving of a criminal record. Demonstrably, the answer is no. It never should have been illegal in the first place.

I support Bill C-93 for moving in the right direction, but we should do what is right when we have the opportunity. We should correct this injustice.

Expungement of Certain Cannabis-related Convictions Act

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

The House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion at second reading of Bill C-415, under private members' business.

The House resumed from April 11 consideration of the motion that Bill C-415, An Act to establish a procedure for expunging certain cannabis-related convictions, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Solomon Friedman]

That might be a little outside of my can. I'm a lawyer without an opinion on something. I'll say this. You're doing a lot of good work here and when it comes to the private member's bill, Bill C-415, I hope that the work and the research this committee does, if this bill doesn't pass in the present Parliament, goes on to the next parliament that can handle it and address all of these concerns with respect to the application process, expungement versus record suspension, and ensure that this is the most just version of this bill possible, whenever it gets passed.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Friedman.

I agree with you that Bill C-415 is not a perfect piece of legislation, but in my view, it is a far better piece of legislation than this legislation. I look forward to voting in favour of it in about 45 minutes.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

When I read it, Bill C-415 doesn't look as if it proposes an automatic system as well.

[Solomon Friedman, Criminal Defence Lawyer, As an Individual]

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and committee members.

Thank you for inviting me to address you today on the subject of Bill C-93.

First, let's start with the positive. The philosophy behind this proposed legislation is sound. It is fundamentally unjust for individuals to suffer under the continued stigma of a criminal record for conduct that is no longer illegal.

As we are all well aware, a criminal record is indeed a significant barrier to success in our society. It compromises a person's ability to obtain employment, education, housing, financing, volunteer opportunities and travel. These are all roadblocks, individually and cumulatively, to a person's ability to integrate into society, contribute positively to the larger community and lead a productive, prosocial life.

The injustice of maintaining the criminal convictions for individuals previously convicted for simple possession of cannabis is further compounded when we examine the uneven and discriminatory effect of the criminalization of cannabis on already marginalized groups in Canada. In Toronto, for example, where black people make up 8% of the population, they account for 25% of all persons charged with possession of marijuana between 2003 and 2013. The same is true with respect to indigenous persons. Take Regina, Saskatchewan, where 9% of residents are indigenous but were 41% of all persons charged with cannabis possession.

Historically, these offences have disproportionately impacted the most vulnerable in our society: the poor, the marginalized, the mentally ill, the racialized and indigenous people. If the statistics aren't enough, I can tell you from the unfortunately steady stream of clients through my office that those charged with simple possession of marijuana share these traits. They generally derive from marginalized groups and, in a cruel twist of irony, these criminal convictions themselves further marginalize those same groups, perpetuating a cycle of criminalization, stigma and inequality.

Bill C-93 undoubtedly comes from a good place, and the government should be applauded for that. However, while well intentioned and a positive first step—there's always a “however”, especially when you bring in a lawyer—it remains, in my respectful view, deeply flawed. I will address each of these flaws in turn.

First, the bill requires that affected individuals apply to the Parole Board of Canada for a record suspension. This requires that a formal application be filled out and sent into the Parole Board for review. While the bill explicitly provides that no fee is payable for this particular application, unlike the ordinary record suspension fee, I suspect that for many Canadians this process will not be free.

There are numerous companies that for a significant fee will, quote, “assist” individuals in completing record suspension applications. In fact, as of today, the top ad under the Google search results for “cannabis pardon Canada” was a for-profit website offering their services for the low monthly price of $72 and $116 per month if expedited. To be clear, that is a monthly price on a 16-month payment plan. Who do you think this website is targeting to pay $72 or $116 per month on a 16-month payment plan?

We're talking about the low, low price of somewhere between $1,152 and $1,856, and that, of course, is irrespective of whether or not the government charges a fee for these applications. Recall that persons most likely affected by these criminal records are those already at the margins of society: people who have faced systemic barriers to success in education, employment and elsewhere. This bill, intentionally or otherwise, may serve as a barrier for people to obtain the very benefits it purports to offer.

Surely, in our age of electronic data, these records of criminal convictions for simple possession of cannabis can be proactively located by the Parole Board of Canada and identified for whatever action is ultimately legislated, be it record suspension expungement or otherwise. The burden, in my view, should be on government to rectify these records. While for those of us in this room the prospect of completing a government application may not be particularly daunting, it might be near impossible to those facing financial, educational, mental health or other challenges.

Second, Bill C-93 requires that individuals have completed their sentence prior to applying for a record suspension. Why? Why should an individual continue to be penalized, whether it is by a real jail sentence, a conditional sentence, probation conditions or otherwise, for conduct that is no longer illegal?

Why should an individual have to await the expiry of a lengthy term of probation for an offence that no longer exists under our law?

In my view, the injustice created by these criminal convictions should be addressed immediately, without waiting for expiration of any sentence, whether it is a prescribed period of probation, payment of a fine or some other sanction. And if you're too poor to pay your fine, well, you can never complete your sentence and you can never apply for this record suspension.

Third, I turn to the most fundamental issue of all with respect to Bill C-93: the very nature of the record suspensions mechanism. A record suspension is exactly what it sounds like. It is not a pardon; those don't exist anymore. It is not amnesty or expungement. It is a statutory process whereby the record of an offence is “suspended”, that is, “kept separate and apart from other criminal records”. A record suspension can be revoked. This happens automatically upon the commission of virtually all Criminal Code or controlled drugs and substances offences.

But it is broader than that. A record suspension may be revoked if the board is satisfied that the person “is no longer of good conduct”. Let me give you real-life examples of individuals I have assisted who have been served with applications from the Parole Board to revoke their record suspension: people who have been the subject of numerous police checks, intelligence, or otherwise, or have received highway traffic offences such as careless driving. They were found to no longer be of good conduct. Now, I am happy to say we successfully defended those applications to revoke the record suspension.

But there you are. This will be hanging over your head for the rest of your life. Moreover the minister retains the discretion to approve the disclosure of such a record where he or she is satisfied that disclosure is “in the interests of the administration of justice or for any purpose related to the safety or security of Canada or any state allied or associated with Canada.”

I can think of a state allied or associated with Canada that might be very interested in the otherwise criminal records of individuals convicted for the simple possession of cannabis.

In other words, the offence always hangs over the individual's head, record suspension notwithstanding. Most importantly, unlike expungement which requires notification to the RCMP and all other federal agencies to destroy all records to which the expungement order relates, there is no such broad requirement for a record suspension.

In review, the proposed application is itself a barrier to access, particularly for an already marginalized population. The bill requires individuals to complete their sentences before applying. In my respectful view, this is illogical, counterproductive and unnecessary. The record suspension is not a deletion of the conviction record itself; it is a suspension, a temporary suspension, one that can be revived by either administrative or statutory process.

What, then, is the alternative?

I should first note that Bill C-93 is better than nothing. But better than nothing is a mighty low bar for our Parliament. You can do better. You must do better. Instead, I would urge a scheme of expungement along the lines already provided for in the Expungement of Historically Unjust Convictions Act. The record of these convictions for the simple possession of cannabis should be expunged permanently and automatically.

In this regard, I would propose a private member's bill, Bill C-415, sponsored by Mr. Murray Rankin and introduced last October. It comes much closer to the goal of achieving true justice and relieving the disproportionate criminalization and stigmatization for those convicted of a now legal act of simple possession of cannabis.

The government has maintained in its backgrounder to this bill that expungement is only appropriate “where the criminalization of the activity in question and the law never should have existed, such as in cases where it violated the Charter.”

While the first clause of that requirement is debatable when it comes to cannabis. I can tell you as a criminal defence lawyer that the criminal prohibition of cannabis has caused much more harm than good. There is no doubt that the disproportionate application of the law violates the charter guarantee of equality and runs contrary to our most fundamental constitutional values.

It is a historical wrong that ought to be redressed. Parliament can do so via the remedy of expungement. I would urge you to do exactly that.

Thank you very much for your kind attention.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I must humbly admit that something happened to me here yesterday that has never happened to me before, and I will probably remember it for the rest of my life.

Perhaps others have experienced something similar, such as thinking, for whatever reason, a Thursday was actually a Friday. They may have gone through their day as though it were well and truly Friday. Despite plenty of indications to the contrary, they may have been convinced it was Friday. Well, this week, I was slated to deliver two speeches in the House, one on Bill C-419 and the other on Bill C-415. For reasons that elude me still, the speech I gave yesterday was on the wrong subject. It was such a remarkably passionate and compelling speech that none of my fellow MPs on either side of the House thought it appropriate to rise and tell me that I was mistakenly talking about the wrong bill. I would have appreciated it if they had. If I were full of myself, I might choose to believe that people were hanging on my every word and wanted nothing but to hear what I might say next. Maybe they were just busy doing other things.

It still holds true that one cannot fix a mistake by repeating it. This evening, I will not speak about the credit card bill, although I really wanted to do so yesterday. I have been interested in this issue for years, even in the previous Parliament when I was the critic. If I may, I would like to extend my most sincere apologies to the member for Lethbridge, who is the bill's sponsor. I truly wanted to speak about her bill, because there is a lot to say. Moreover, I was previously a teacher and I have seen the consequences for all young people who, as they move from high school to college, are offered credit cards when they are not necessarily equipped to understand all the conditions of credit cards, which now are probably just as essential to Canadians as phones. It is impossible to make a reservation or to shop online without a credit card. To have one is one thing. To know how to use it wisely is another. Knowing the limits and all the terms and conditions is yet another. I am talking about credit cards, which I did not want to do. Once again, I apologize to my colleague from Lethbridge. I can assure her that I will be pleased to support her bill at second reading.

That said, I will come back to the topic on the agenda this evening, the bill introduced by my colleague from Victoria, someone I truly admire, as I told him yesterday. He has the ability to simplify a relatively complex situation and make it easier for everyone to understand. I gave a passionate speech and provided examples of people from my riding who are dealing with this problem as we speak. The Liberals' bill is not going to fix the situation. What is more, it is not likely to receive royal assent before the end of this Parliament. It is just smoke and mirrors. The government is not offering any solution to an issue that I believe is easily and very clearly resolved in the proposed bill from my colleague from Victoria.

My colleague has had the opportunity to review the blues and to familiarise himself with the speech I gave yesterday. It would be rather redundant of me to repeat ad nauseam the story that some of my colleagues may have heard during my moment of confusion. I will wrap it up since I had the chance to say what I wanted to say about this bill. Obviously, I will support the bill introduced by my colleague from Victoria.

I would now like to yield the floor to him as quickly as possible so he can draw this to a logical conclusion and try, along with me and everyone who spoke before me, to convince the Liberal government of the soundness of his arguments with respect to the bill this government has brought before us.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this evening's debate on Bill C-415, An Act to establish a procedure for expunging certain cannabis-related convictions, gives me the chance I have long sought to make a clear statement in the House of Commons as to the principles that underlie my long-standing views on cannabis legalization.

I have favoured the legalization of marijuana since I first sought elected office. My views on the subject were first expressed at a policy conference in 2001 and were published in Policy Options the same year, but I have always couched my arguments in practical rather than in abstract terms.

Here today, I can express my underlying belief. I believe today, as I did when I first published on the subject 18 years ago, that it is morally wrong to criminalize the personal use of any substance when the said use or misuse of that substance would cause no harm to any person other than the user himself or herself. When no person is victimized other than the person who is engaged in the act, then it is a moral evil for the state to penalize the person who engages in that act.

This principle would apply even if it were the case that none of the following were true.

The principle would apply even if it were not true, for example, that some people suffer from trauma that causes them to make impulsive choices, especially with regard to mood-altering substances. When these individuals are penalized, the law in effect singles out for punishment those who have suffered the abusive behaviour of parents or partners, or the trauma of war, or fetal alcohol syndrome, or simple brain trauma.

The principle that victimless acts should never be punishable would apply even if it were not true that some people are endowed from birth with genes such as the NRXN3 gene, which in 2011 was identified as being associated with a greater likelihood of becoming addicted, in which case the law is singling out for prosecution those who have lost the genetic lottery.

The principle would apply even if it were not true that those who have greater influence and power are far less likely to be prosecuted than an average Canadian who has committed the same offence. A case that makes this point is that of the Prime Minister's brother, Michel Trudeau, who escaped prosecution for marijuana possession 21 years ago because of the intervention of his father, who at the time was himself a former prime minister.

Here is how our current Prime Minister put this in a speech two years ago. He reported that back in 1998, his father, Pierre Trudeau:

...reached out to his friends in the legal community, got the best possible lawyer and was very confident that he was going to be able to make those charges go away,…

We were able to do that because we had resources, my dad had a couple of connections, and we were confident that my little brother wasn't going to be saddled with a criminal record for life.

The principle that no one should be punished for a victimless act would be true even if it were not the case that disadvantaged Canadians, who are statistically more likely than their fellow citizens to be caught and prosecuted and saddled with a criminal record, are far likelier to be members of social or racial groups that appear to be marginalized in other ways too. Two widely cited statistics in this regard are from Halifax, where black people have historically been five times more likely than white people to be arrested for cannabis possession; and Regina, where indigenous persons have been nine times more likely than white people to be arrested for this offence. This would appear to be the very definition of systemic racism, regardless of the proximate cause for each individual arrest.

Of course, the foregoing examples of inequity really do exist, and therefore the provision of the Criminal Code prohibiting the possession of small quantities of marijuana, which happily is now repealed, was wrong at all of these levels too.

If the underlying offence ought never to have been an offence in the first place—which is not merely what I feel but what has already been decided by Parliament when it enacted the Cannabis Act a year ago—then it stands to reason that the retention of any long-term penalty, such as a criminal record for the formerly unlawful activity, must be wrong for exactly the same reasons. That is true whether it is a charter-protected right that we are talking about or whether it is merely the practical impact on some groups that have been discriminated against in the application of the law. It is true even when that is not the issue, but simply the case that a law was fundamentally wrong.

To be clear, the retention of criminal records for persons who used marijuana when it was a criminal offence represents an ongoing injustice that ought to be remedied.

Quite frankly, a provision expunging the records of persons found guilty of possessing less than 30 grams of cannabis ought to have been included in the Cannabis Act. Why it was not, particularly given the heartfelt civil libertarian sentiment that must have been the motivation for the Prime Minister to share the story about his father and brother, remains a mystery to me.

I note that in other jurisdictions that have legalized the non-therapeutic use of cannabis, such as California and Vermont, provisions expunging the records of those convicted under the repealed statutes are a part of the repeal legislation itself. It is now too late for Canada to make a perfect copy of this enlightened example, but it is not too late for us to correct the oversight. Bill C-415 is an effective and well-designed instrument for achieving an end to this lingering injustice.

About 500,000 Canadians, which is somewhere between 1% and 2% of our adult population, have criminal records for the possession of small amounts of cannabis for personal consumption. The bill would expunge their records.

An expungement is not quite the same thing as a pardon or record suspension. It differs in a number of ways. For one thing, a pardon must be formally requested. Any person can apply for a pardon, but only after waiting for a period of not less than five years, and only upon the payment of a fee of just over $600. Expungement would be immediate and costless.

I am aware that the government recently proposed a measure of its own in an apparent effort to supersede Bill C-415. The government bill, Bill C-93, has a title that tells the entire story of what the government is proposing: an act to provide no-cost, expedited record suspension for simple possession of cannabis. In short, Bill C-93 would remove the five-year waiting period and would eliminate the $600 fee.

As far as it goes, I think this is good, and if the bill comes up for a second reading vote, I will vote for it in principle. However, Bill C-93 does not go far enough, because a record suspension is not an expungement.

Let me show members how they differ.

As everyone knows, American border control officials reserve the right to ask Canadians who are crossing the border if they have a criminal record for using marijuana. Canadians are regularly turned back at the border if the answer is yes. Everybody should know that if people answer this question untruthfully and lie to an official of the immigration service while on American soil, as people are when at a land crossing, as opposed to the Toronto or Vancouver airport, they can be arrested on the spot.

If records are expunged, but not if pardons are issued, it would be possible for people to answer truthfully, whether travelling by land or air, that they do not have a criminal record for this former offence. This is a meaningful distinction.

I hold no remit for marijuana itself. I never used it unlawfully when it was banned and I have never used it since. I care only about sensible, generous laws and about doing all that we can as lawmakers to make Canada a place where nobody is punished for actions that hurt no one else, and where no person faces long-term penalties for actions that we now think should never have been unlawful in the first place.

I congratulate the sponsor of the bill and I plan to vote in favour of his excellent proposal.

[Karen McCrimmon, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to the debate on Bill C-415, an act to establish a procedure for expunging certain cannabis-related convictions. I thank the hon. member for Victoria for his involvement in this file.

I know that we have different points of view on the terms, but we agree that people with criminal records for possession of cannabis should no longer have to deal with obstacles when it comes to employment or housing or any other aspect of their life.

We committed to legalizing and regulating cannabis as part of our platform for the last election. We upheld that commitment, and last October the new system took effect. At that time, we said we would introduce legislation to make it easier for people with criminal records left over from the old regime to have those records cleared. We have upheld that commitment too with Bill C-93, which was debated earlier this week.

It is worth remembering that while we were advocating for legalization, the NDP was merely calling for decriminalization. In other words, if the NDP had had their way, cannabis prohibition would still be in effect, and people found to be in possession of cannabis would be getting hefty fines. That would obviously be a bad idea, because many of the people who have been disproportionately impacted by cannabis prohibition are from marginalized and low-income communities.

Instead of adding to their financial burden, we have proposed legislation that will eliminate the fee to the Parole Board to apply for a pardon, which is normally $631. As well, we have proposed eliminating the waiting period, which can be as long as 10 years. Under our proposal, the pardon application will be reviewed and decided expeditiously by Parole Board staff, rather than being referred to an appointed Parole Board member for review, as is the current process. The usual subjective criteria, like evaluating whether the applicant has been of good conduct and whether the pardon will bring them a measurable benefit will not apply. Plus, the Parole Board will implement an outreach strategy that will involve community partners and civil society organizations to help people take advantage of this new process.

Once a successful pardon is issued, the relevant authorities will be notified and the record will be sealed. It will not show up during a criminal record check, and can be reopened only in extraordinary circumstances, such as the commission of a new criminal offence.

The bill proposed by the member for Victoria would use the mechanism called expungement rather than expedited pardons. As I said during debate on Monday, the practical effect of expungement is for all intents and purposes the same as a pardon, unless the person commits a new offence. At that point, they are going to have a criminal record again anyway, so the reinstatement of the old cannabis possession conviction will have minimal impact.

When it comes to international travel, expungement may cause unnecessary complications. For example, if the United States had previously noted a person's conviction in its records, they could still have that information, despite one's pardon or expungement. If U.S. authorities ask someone to provide evidence of their pardoned conviction, they can get that from the Parole Board. With expungement, there would likely be no Canadian records to provide.

We created expungement as a concept in Canadian law last year as a way to deal with historic convictions for consensual sexual activity between same-sex partners. That was a situation of grave injustice, where the law at issue itself was a violation of fundamental human rights and contrary to the charter.

That is distinct from the situation we are discussing today. The criminalization of cannabis was a bad idea, but it was not a charter violation. Nevertheless, because of its differential impacts on racialized communities, we have proposed a dramatically expedited pardons process. The NDP has also called on us to follow the example of some American jurisdictions that have moved to automatically clear past misdemeanour convictions for possession of cannabis.

In Canada, while federal records are held by the RCMP, there are also records, including paper records, held by provinces in local police offices and local courts. Going through all those records to find all the drug possession convictions and then digging into the details of each conviction to determine whether the substance involved was cannabis is a process that would take years.

There was a suggestion on Monday that we hire an army of summer students to go through hundreds of thousands of police and court records in cities and towns across the country. I could not tell whether it was serious or not. The fact is that an application-based process will result in people getting their records cleared much faster.

After careful and deliberate consideration, we chose a streamlined pardons process as the best approach. Under the bill that we have proposed, Bill C-93, there would be no waiting period and no application fee. Applications would be dealt with through an expedited administrative process, with no subjective criteria. People who have served sentences for simple possession of cannabis with nothing else on their records would get their pardons, full stop.

Once again, I want to thank the member for Victoria for his work, his contributions to this discussion and his thoughtful concern for the people of his riding and across this country. I know we have a difference of opinion about the modalities, but we share the objective of letting people who have criminal records for simple possession of cannabis move on with their lives. Those individuals should be able to get jobs, find places to live, study and travel without the burden of a criminal record for an activity that is now legal. We are all better off when people living law-abiding lives can put their criminal records behind them and contribute fully to our communities. I look forward to the passage of the government's bill, Bill C-93, which would allow for exactly that.

The House resumed from December 7, 2018, consideration of the motion that Bill C-415, An Act to establish a procedure for expunging certain cannabis-related convictions, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Credit Card Fairness Act

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it always a pleasure to rise to support a colleague's bill, especially when that colleague is the hon. member for Victoria. I admire the way he manages files and provides pertinent answers to our questions when we are discussing the matter with him. I must admit, he has a talent for getting to the heart of the issue.

One thing that is seriously starting to grate on me after nearly eight years in the House of Commons is having to say that a bill is a step in the right direction. It is as though we are never able to fully resolve an issue and close a file and say that the matter is resolved and we can tackle another problem and find the best solutions.

That is exactly what the member for Victoria has done with this bill, however; he even stated what he sadly cannot do within the confines of a private member's bill. Nevertheless, he still very much hopes that Bill C-415 will get the ball rolling and motivate the government to either add what he was not able to include and pass this bill or, alternatively, overhaul Bill C-93, the counterpart of this bill that, to my mind, is not up to snuff.

After speaking with my colleague from Victoria, I was preparing a theoretical and even intellectual presentation on the merits of expunging records for simple possession of cannabis compared to the suspension of records. However, reality caught up with me in my riding. I will therefore provide an overview of a case I had to deal with in my own riding and which clearly shows, in black and white, that the government's Bill C-93 does not go far enough and that Bill C-415 really does take a step in the right direction. I do not believe you could find a better example.

I got a phone call from one of my constituents who was in a bit of a panic. Actually, it was a complete panic. I will not name names or say anything that would give away this person's identity, but he is a musician. I have a soft spot for those in the music business because I was a musician myself for many years. This particular musician is on an international tour with a band. They have played in England, several European countries, and many cities across Canada. Now the band is set to play 15 or 20 American cities. Things are going well. It is probably the best tour of this musician's career. A musician's life is not necessarily easy and it is not always a very lucrative career either. Artists really have to have a strong conviction that they are making an essential contribution to society.

Everything is going well for this musician. The whole group, both the musicians and the trucks with the equipment, arrive at the American border. They fill out the necessary paperwork and cross the border. Everyone gets through no problem except for this individual, because border officials saw that he had been charged with simple marijuana possession 25 years ago for one gram of cannabis that he forgot was in his pocket. He is barred from entering the U.S. The band is supposed to play 15 to 20 shows in the United States and they have just lost one of their musicians. They either have to find a replacement or cancel that leg of the international tour because this individual was charged for the possession of one gram of marijuana 25 years ago.

Obviously, the conviction happened 25 years ago and it is on his record. It is not difficult to imagine how someone could forget this after 25 years. It is kind of laughable, especially since society has evolved in the meantime.

This musician is therefore unable to do the tour. He called me to ask how this situation could be fixed as quickly as possible so that he could join the band for the rest of the American tour, since this record did not cause problems anywhere else in the world.

There are all kinds of conditions that you have to meet. You cannot request a pardon until at least five years have passed since the conviction. After 20 years, that condition is fairly easy to meet. Then, you must pay $631 to apply. Whether this amount is high or not high enough is a matter of perspective, as it is directly linked to the individual's annual income. For a musician, $631 could easily represent one or two shows where he is working for the Crown and not for his family or himself. In addition, he has to track down certain documents, like police reports and legal documents. This takes time, and deciding whether he can continue the tour is a time-sensitive decision.

To top it all off, you have to wait 24 months for a response. There is your answer for the American part of the tour. This is a real problem, since Parliament decided this was no longer a relevant issue in 2019. We legalized simple possession of marijuana. The whole time that this government was preparing the legislation, it never bothered to consider what would happen the day after this bill passed.

How do we make sure that a crime that is not considered a crime anymore no longer weighs on people who committed it in the past? If society has evolved to the point of recognizing marijuana as legal, there is no reason in the world to make people suffer permanently for doing something that is no longer seen as a crime. However, their records live on.

If we go with the record suspension approach proposed in the government's Bill C-93, it would be too little, too late, because the suspension would not make the criminal record disappear. The name says it all. The record is suspended. I will admit that the government is showing openness by eliminating the fee to apply for a record suspension. In contrast, the process of expungement is very clear. With expungement, all existing files relating to the conviction are erased, and the slate is wiped clean, as if the crime had ever happened. That also enables anyone with such a conviction on their record to answer “no” with perfect confidence and honesty whenever they are asked if they have a criminal record, because the record has basically disappeared and the offence is deemed never to have been committed. That is an important difference proposed in Bill C-415.

My time is almost up. I had so much more to talk about, but the case I mentioned is probably more compelling than anything I could say. I urge all members to make sure they really understand the difference between expungement and suspension and to support the bill introduced by my colleague from Victoria.

Criminal Records Act

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to explain at the outset that the NDP will oppose this legislation. Over the next 20 minutes that I have available, I hope to explain why record suspension is not the way to go, and record expungement, which I will describe, is the way to go. Record expungement for simple possession is the basis of my private member's bill, Bill C-415, which will be up for second reading debate in the chamber on Thursday.

I have risen on previous occasions in this place to call Bill C-93 a half-baked measure, and I am still of that opinion. Let me explain: It is too little and it is too late.

It is too little, because record suspension is just that, putting a criminal record aside where it could potentially be used again against the individual. It ignores the historical injustice, the disproportionate impact of cannabis possession offences on marginalized Canadians, on blacks and particularly on indigenous people.

It is too late, because it is almost six months since October when we had the historic legalization of possession of cannabis. Here we are, almost at the end of this parliamentary session, starting second reading debate on the bill. It has to go before committee. It has to go to the Senate. It has to go before Senate committees. I am anxious that this will not be law in Canada, as it will die on the Order Paper until the next Parliament addresses that.

It is especially disappointing because the Liberals have had years to do this. Their excuse was to wait until possession was legal on October 17, 2018. Now we are almost six months later, in the dying days of this Parliament, and suddenly talking about it.

I hope that cynicism is not warranted. I hope there is goodwill on the part of the government to fix the bill and move it forward expeditiously. However, I have my doubts.

My private member's bill, which is the counter to this piece of legislation, would require an application process for expungement. In an ideal world, my bill would have had automatic expungement, which is the case in Delaware and California, where officials sweep the records, find out whether a person has a record, for simple possession in effect, and if so, the record is deemed never to have existed. It is gone. It is zapped from the system.

This legislation would require an application. My bill does too, but that is because, as the House well knows, it is a private member's bill, and due to a technicality called the royal recommendation, I could not ask the government to expend money. I was not able to do what has been done south of the border with automatic expungement. That would apply universally and automatically and benefit, disproportionately, indigenous and racialized Canadians.

Let us just stand back from this. We have an activity which is perfectly legal now, but for which hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps that high, have a record for past consumption of cannabis, possession of cannabis, when it was illegal, and now they cannot get on with their lives.

Why does that matter? It matters because blacks cannot rent apartments because they have a criminal record and are on the bottom of the list in a tight housing market. As I will explain later, there are way more people in Halifax who were charged with a cannabis offence and have a record for cannabis than the non-black population.

Believe it or not, it is most glaring in Regina, Saskatchewan. This is government data; this is not me. This is from records disclosed under access to information. An indigenous person in Regina is nine times more likely to have a record for cannabis possession than a non-indigenous person. A black individual is five times more likely in Halifax and three times more likely in Toronto to have the same. An indigenous person in Vancouver is seven times more likely to have a cannabis record. This matters. We would call this law, adverse effects discrimination. We would call this constructive discrimination.

That is why it is so galling that the government wants to bring in a half-baked measure in Bill C-93, rather than doing what is done in California. In San Francisco, there is an automatic intelligence system that simply sweeps the records to make them disappear for those who have a possession of cannabis offence on their record.

Let us contrast this with what the government wants to do today. To its credit, it wants to bring in a bill that says people no longer have to pay $631 for having a criminal record suspended, which is what Mr. Harper introduced, and they no longer have to wait for five years. I congratulate the government for that minor step in the right direction.

In the U.S., a person's record is automatically expunged in the states I have mentioned. These records are deemed not to exist. This matters because it allows people who are asked by a landlord whether they have a criminal record for anything to tell that landlord they do not. When asked by an employer if they have a criminal record, people who have only a cannabis possession charge from several years ago in their background can say they do not, because under expungement, it is deemed not to exist.

The government tells us not to worry and that we do not understand, because there is a human rights statute federally and in all the provinces that says people cannot face discrimination on the grounds that they have a criminal record for which a pardon has been granted. Tell that to an inner city landlord in downtown Halifax or to an inner city employer or small business operator in downtown Vancouver.

It is ludicrous. Why would the government not do the right thing, getting this all done at the same time and done properly, rather than bringing in this half-baked measure? It is too little, too late, which I am sad to say is my theme.

I am not the only one with this opinion. I am pleased to say that the Liberal member of Parliament for Beaches—East York acknowledges the limitations of the bill. He said:

Only full amnesty recognizes the disproportionate impact of cannabis prohibition on people of colour and the fact that cannabis should never have been criminalized in the first place.

Our government’s solution is better than nothing, but it’s not enough to be better than nothing when we have an opportunity to make historic injustices right.

I am quoting a Liberal member, not someone who has an axe to grind, if you will, on this issue. This is a Liberal who realizes we can do so much better.

One of the arguments the Liberals have used to explain why we cannot have expungement is that many people would be affected and it would cost so much money and take so much time. However, that is not true anymore, because we have new data suggesting that only some 10,000 people would be positively affected by the bill. That is not a very large number. Why can we not expunge their records rather than simply giving them this record suspension, after which records move from one filing cabinet to another and can come back and bite people later in a subsequent event if the state deems that they have committed another crime?

What about a crimes such as failure to appear? These are called administration of justice offences. They are not like the actual offence of cannabis possession. They occur when people do not pay a fine or do not show up in court. In these situations the criminal justice system is continually on a person's back, even though the root of it all was a cannabis possession charge.

I have been advised that indigenous women are sometimes affected down the road in this way when they have custody issues with their children. This occurs not because of the cannabis offence but because of the other matters on their record that have resulted from that. It is ludicrous.

The government says our most important relationship is with indigenous people. Here it could make a tiny but critically important change in the lives of so many. Why would it let this opportunity pass to expunge the records of people so they could say they have no criminal record, allowing them to get their foot on the social ladder in order to get employment, housing and the like? I do not understand the government's reluctance in this context.

Professor Kent Roach is one of Canada's leading criminal law specialists. Recently, in the Criminal Law Quarterly, he wrote, “The government's approach to cannabis convictions in the wake of legalization is even more problematic than the expungement act,” which is another bill I will come to.

He continued, “It has announced plans to allow the National Parole Board to grant pardons under the Criminal Records Act. This again requires case-by-case applications. This places challenges on the most disadvantaged people who have been convicted of cannabis possession.”

He goes on, “By not relying on expungement, the government's approach leaves applicants vulnerable to records of convictions and arrest being retained by the RCMP and other federal departments and to questions from prospective employers and landlords about whether they ever had a criminal conviction. It falls behind states such as California and Delaware in terms of reform.”

He then goes on and says about my bill that it “...takes a better approach by proposing to expunge cannabis convictions including the destruction of records of convictions.”

I am not here to score political points. I am not even running again in the next election. I am fully convinced that automatic expungement is the way to go. It is what people deserve. I implore the government to amend this bill and do the right thing by so many people who are affected, whose lives are on hold until we get this right.

Record suspension simply removes criminal records from the main database, CPIC, the Canadian Police Information Centre, and puts the data somewhere else, where it can be used prejudicially later and potentially shared with other departments, thereby having a negative effect.

Expungement means those records disappear for all purposes and for all time. A record suspension or pardon indicates the government is forgiving or excusing individuals for criminal behaviour, and that is all; expungement acknowledges it was wrong to criminalize it in the first place.

At this time, let me give the House the other government excuse for not doing the right thing.

It brought in, to its credit, Bill C-66, which was called the Expungement of Historically Unjust Convictions Act. That bill dealt with same-sex sexual activity, which is no longer criminalized but was in the past. The government said it was going to deem those offences to no longer be on a person's record—gone.

I have two things to say about that.

Number one is that since October, from the last statistics, do members know how many people have even bothered to apply, of the 9,000 eligible? It was seven. That hardly gives confidence that this application process is going to make a difference.

Number two is that the government says, “Oh, member for Victoria, do you know what we will do? We will say that this is to be reserved for things that are constitutionally over the line, such as same-sex sexual activity.”

There is no principled reason for that smokescreen. I have talked to criminal law specialists and constitutional specialists across the country who say that this argument is not valid. Second, even if it were valid, which it is not, what about the constructive discrimination I just talked about, the adverse effects discrimination, whereby the policy and application affect blacks and indigenous people dramatically more than others? What about that?

Not doing the right thing for cannabis expungement as for same-sex sexual activity, which the government is prepared to expunge, makes no sense at all. It is another Liberal smokescreen.

I am not here to score political points; I am just trying to persuade the Liberals to do the right thing. Why would they not do it? That is what is so complicated for me to understand.

The NDP has been calling for this measure for years. I will not go through the whole background of it, but there are deficiencies in addition in the bill that is before us today. The Parole Board does not have the resources to do the job, so there are going to be even further backlogs for other applications from people seeking pardons. There is a whole industry, sadly, out there to help people get rid of their criminal records. If members go on the Internet, they will see everybody who wants to help if they give them a few hundred bucks.

The forms are complicated. Members might not think they are, but for a poor person with little education who is living in the inner city, this measure would impose another burden, and I do not understand why, when our friends south of the border figured it out much more readily.

There are also eligibility gaps in Bill C-93. Only those people convicted of simple possession are eligible, meaning anyone with prior record suspensions of crimes related to the simple possession charges will not be able to use this process. I gave the example of failure to appear or not paying the fine or the like. If there is another offence on the record, then they are facing an inability to apply.

Someone pointed out that if a person has a summary conviction offence and then four years down has another cannabis offence, there may be a total wait of nine years to apply under this bill. I do not believe that was intended, but it is a function of the drafting of the bill, according to experts I have consulted. That is problematic.

The Liberals have had six months since they brought in legalization to do this. This bill is maybe four and a half or five pages in English, so how on earth did it take that long? The elephant laboured and brought forth a mouse.

Bill C-75, which was 302 pages, was before the justice committee, and it rammed that one through. This bill is five pages in English and maybe nine pages in total with English and French. It took the Liberals that long to produce this tiny bill, this weak bill. Presumably they can just check it off on the list that another promise was kept, except if the bill dies on the Order Paper, as most people are anticipating.

This is a real problem. This is an opportunity for the government. My hope is that if the private member's bill that I have before Parliament for debate on Thursday goes to the public safety committee at the same time as this bill, perhaps there will be a way in which some of the provisions that I have suggested for expungement could be brought into the bill that is before us and we could get it right for the victims as they are.

It is not just me saying this. The Prime Minister has been quoted as follows: “...there is a disproportionate representation of young people, from minorities and racialized communities, who are saddled with criminal convictions for simple possession as a significant further challenge to success in the job market....” He seems to get it.

The statistics that the government has produced under access to information confirm what I am saying. I am not making up those shocking statistics about overrepresentation of blacks and, particularly, indigenous people. The Prime Minister gets the consequences, so why would the Liberals not do it right? I do not understand.

Professor Doob, the famous criminology professor at the University of Toronto, stated:

There is no justification for forcing those who were convicted to live with a criminal record for behaviour that will soon not be criminal. A procedure for dealing with the problem has been devised by the current government. They should ensure that relevant drug records are expunged for the thousands of Canadians who have them.

Senator Pate, who has been very powerful on this issue in the other place, has made similar arguments, and I hope that those points are taken into account by the Liberals opposite.

I have been working with a very talented lawyer in Toronto, Annamaria Enenajor, who is the director of Campaign for Cannabis Amnesty. She is a prominent lawyer in Toronto and clerked for the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. She is volunteering for this important cause and she states:

...the government...leaves the impression that restrictions exist on the government's ability to issue expungements for the offense of simple cannabis possession that are beyond its control. This is false. There is nothing in Canadian law that prohibits our government from issuing expungements for offenses that, in their application, unjustly targeted racialized and indigenous communities. It simply chooses not to. This is a policy decision.

That is the nub of the argument. Let us do it right.

There may be some good arguments in theory. I talked about the theoretical ability to apply the human rights legislation when people have been given pardons and so on, but it does not work in the real world. We have an absolute dearth of money for legal aid, and legal aid rarely covers human rights complaints if one has been discriminated against because of one's record. Theoretically, I guess, the Liberals could hang their hat on that, but they sure have not visited many inner cities if they think that is a viable argument in practice. Many small businesses and landlords draft their own applications and may not be aware of human rights legislation.

We have a historic opportunity in the dying days of this Parliament to do it right. Let us expunge criminal records for small quantity cannabis possession and help those thousands of Canadians who need a head start and a chance to get their foot on the rung in the social ladder. Let us do the right thing for those people as soon as we can.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here today, Mr. Minister.

My first question is about Bill C-415, sponsored by my colleague Murray Rankin. It provides for the removal of the judicial records of those convicted of simple possession of marijuana.

I would like to know whether the government has changed its mind and intends to support this bill. If not, when can we expect the introduction of the bill we were promised the moment the act was passed, a bill that, in a way, would suspend criminal records?

Expungement of Certain Cannabis-related Convictions Act

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, I will keep my remarks relatively brief. At first blush it is quite understandable why my colleague has brought forward Bill C-415. When he talked about the difficulties of some being able to express themselves on a pardon as opposed to an expungement, I was intrigued. In principle, there are many different sorts of criminal activities that take place where a pardon has been issued. I suspect that the same challenges in principle would be there for those other individuals who have a pardon that is already in place.

If one wanted to be somewhat consistent, one could ultimately argue what would be the value of having pardons. I believe there is value to pardons. The minister has talked about issues such as pardons being quick and free with no waiting times. This is a commitment the government has made with respect to pardons. Pardons are, for all intents and purposes, packaged away, put in a box, never again to be reopened unless there is another criminal activity that takes place by the individual in question. At least that is my understanding of the situation.

That is why I was somewhat intrigued by his comments when he talked about the individuals who would find it difficult and he used the example of an application for a job. I am very sympathetic to that argument, unfortunately there were not enough questions and answers. I would have liked the member to provide an answer to me on that point. It is more the principle of the matter.

We have gone a long way in recognizing how far we have come in the last number of years. We have a Prime Minister who saw a significant social issue that affected millions of Canadians. In a very responsible fashion, working through the ministers and most members of the House, we were able to bring forward the legalization of cannabis. Since it has been legalized, I have not had one issue or concern from my constituents related to this.

Given the very nature and the magnitude of the change that has been put into place, I see that as an example of how well the government is working with many other stakeholders, because it is not just the Government of Canada. We have to recognize that there are other jurisdictions, in particular our provinces and territories, and there was a great deal of effort with first responders and many other stakeholders to ensure that the launching of a responsible social policy was done in the fashion that it was. As a society, we have benefited by the legalization of cannabis.

There is a lot more that I would like to say, but I understand there is a member across the way who was hoping to speak, so I will end my remarks.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is indeed a great pleasure to rise today to debate Bill C-415 by my hon. colleague and friend from Victoria. We both hail from Vancouver Island and I really admire the work he has put into this bill.

It is not very often that one gets to debate a private member's bill in this place that would have such significance in how it would change how we approach criminal law and acknowledge past wrongs. One other private member's bill that I can reference, which I think had a major impact, was Bill S-201, brought in by Senator James Cowan to recognize genetic non-discrimination. The Liberal cabinet was opposed to that bill, but virtually the entire Liberal back bench rose and disagreed with the cabinet and voted in favour of the bill. With the combination of the Liberal back bench, the Conservatives and the New Democrats, we passed that bill and it received royal assent.

I very much implore my Liberal colleagues to look at what this bill attempts to do. I know that some have raised concerns about the bill. They may not think it is perfect, but at second reading stage, we are acknowledging the intent of the bill. I think that if they looked into their hearts, they would find it worthy to be sent to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, where we could hear from departmental officials and expert witnesses, many of whom the member for Victoria has already quoted. That is where we can look at the language and technical jargon of the bill to see if some of the concerns can be addressed. However, let us at least send this bill to committee. I think this is a very important moment.

Last year, I had the pleasure of giving the NDP's response at second reading to Bill C-45, in my capacity as the justice critic then. I acknowledged that the bill was not perfect and there was a lot of fulsome debate on its merits. My colleague, the member for Vancouver Kingsway said it right, that Bill C-45 did not really legalize cannabis; it just made it less illegal. There are some strict limits that if someone steps outside of, the full weight of the law will still come down on them.

Nevertheless, I think that even my Conservative colleagues can realize that there has been a sea change in public opinion in Canada with regard to cannabis possession. The public has realized that the continued criminalized approach to cannabis possession is wrong. Far too many people suffered under it and, in fact, the continuation of a criminalized approach would actually cause more harm than the use of the drug itself. They have recognized that.

When looking at many of the arguments that Liberal members made in support of Bill C-45, not the least of which was by the Minister of Justice, one of the reasons they cited was that thousands of Canadians end up with criminal records for a non-violent minor cannabis offence each year. I will quote the minister. In her second reading speech on Bill C-45, the Minister of Justice said:

A majority of Canadians no longer believe that simple possession of small amounts of cannabis should be subject to harsh criminal sanctions, which can have lifelong impacts for individuals and take up precious resources in our criminal justice system. Our government agrees that there is a better approach.

I could not agree more with what the Minister of Justice said last year during that second reading debate on this.

There are roughly 500,000 Canadians who have criminal records for cannabis possession. That means that if one were to take a room of 60 people, one person in that room would probably have have a record for cannabis possession. We acknowledge that that has far-reaching consequences. We know that it has affected marginalized and racialized populations disproportionately more than average Caucasian Canadians. That is borne out by the evidence collected in each province and many of our major cities.

Another big issue is that the government came to power with a promise to legalize cannabis. That promise was adopted at the 2012 Liberal policy convention. Therefore, I think that the Canadian public has known for quite some time that this was coming.

As my friend the member for St. Albert—Edmonton said, elections have consequences, and the Liberal government did fulfill that one promise. However, I have an issue with the length of time that it took. We needed the task force to present its report. We then finally had Bill C-45 introduced in April 2017. It received royal assent and came into force only on October 17 of this year. There was plenty of time for the Liberal government to deliberate on the subject and on the consequences that criminal possession has on people's lives. We have this strange binary situation where a person who possessed cannabis on October 16 received a criminal record, but a person who had it on October 17 was perfectly fine.

It is quite amazing what has happened in this country. One can now possess up to 30 grams in public. People can now grow their own plants. Even though there are still very real consequences with the over-consumption of cannabis and whether it is getting into the hands of children, I think we can very much agree that the continued criminal approach to the issue was wrong. It was using up precious resources and it was in no way effectively dealing with the problem.

When we look at the intent of Bill C-415, I very much admire the word “expungement”, because it has an air of permanence about it. It is very much different from a record suspension. As the member for Victoria very clearly laid out, a record suspension is simply setting aside the record. It does not protect the individual in any way from having that reapplied sometime in the future. Indeed, the individual would very much have to prove that he or she is worthy of that happening. However, an expungement allows an individual to truthfully answer the question of whether the individual has a criminal record that he or she does not have one, because expungement makes it as if it never happened in the first place.

We can look at the statistics, specifically with reference to indigenous people in Canada. In Vancouver, indigenous people were seven times more likely than white people to be arrested. In Regina, it was as high as nine times. If we are trying to address a historical wrong, a very real case of social injustice, I think expungement is absolutely the way we should be going.

The Liberals have raised concerns. They have said that they wished to reserve expungement for activities that have been found to be unconstitutional. The parliamentary secretary made reference to Bill C-66, which, absolutely, every member in the House was in support of. However, I have to repeat that the member for Victoria clearly outlined that reserving expungement for activities that have been found to be unconstitutional is simply an arbitrary distinction and has no legal or principled foundation. This is basically a government making up its own rules. I would ask the Liberals to point to any specific case law that underlies their arguments for this, because, trust me, they will not be able to find it.

The Liberals would also like to say that pardoning people will work, because they are going to make pardons free and immediate. I appreciate the fact that the application process will be removed and that the fee will be waived, but right now, the only legislation that actually exists on the books to address this issue, at the end of 2018, three years into the Liberal government's mandate, is Bill C-415 from the member for Victoria.

The Liberals also agree that the process needs to be fair, but they have other doubts about the bill. The bill has been consulted on widely with academics and members of the legal community. I again appeal to my Liberal colleagues to not throw the baby out with the bathwater. If they have difficulties with the technical aspects of this bill, with the language, surely they can understand the intent behind the bill and surely they can find it within their hearts to send the bill to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights where we can make the necessary amendments so that it is reported back to the House in a form they can support.

I look forward to voting on this bill. Again, I congratulate my friend and colleague, the member for Victoria, for bringing in this fantastic piece of legislation.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise on Bill C-415, a private member's bill introduced by my friend the hon. member for Victoria. It is legislation that would expunge the criminal records of Canadians who were convicted for the minor possession of marijuana. The fact that the hon. member for Victoria has had to bring forward a private member's bill around this issue speaks to the fact that once again the Liberals have dropped the ball on the issue of marijuana legalization.

The Prime Minister, during the last election, made it a central platform commitment to legalize marijuana. We on this side disagreed with the position of the Prime Minister, but elections have consequences and enough Canadians voted Liberal and the Prime Minister was elected. Therefore, it was not a surprise that the government decided to move forward with the legalization of marijuana.

It is one thing to have an idea and another to actually implement that idea. What we have seen is time and again the Liberal government has not had a plan when it comes to going about the enforcement and implementation of marijuana legalization. The government had no plan with respect to a public awareness campaign. That was, by the way, a key recommendation of the government's own marijuana task force headed by former deputy prime minister Anne McLellan, and for good reason, because there are serious health risks associated with the consumption of marijuana, particularly for young Canadians, those 25 and under, in terms of brain development impairment among other issues. Where was the government's early and sustained public awareness campaign? There was no public awareness campaign. The Liberals simply dropped the ball.

Then the Liberals had no plan around keeping Canadians safe from drug-impaired drivers. Sure, they introduced Bill C-46, legislation that amended the Criminal Code to bring in drug-impaired driving laws. It is one thing to pass a law and quite another to give law enforcement agencies the tools and resources they need to enforce the law.

Three years ago, there were about as many drug recognition experts as there are today. This is despite the fact that law enforcement agencies, including the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police and the Canadian Police Association, among others, have been begging and pleading with the government to provide the resources so that they can hire more drug recognition experts, which are essential to keep our roads safe. However, instead of listening, the government once again just dropped the ball.

Bill C-46 imposed per se limits around THC. The problem with that is there is not necessarily a clear correlation between THC levels and drug impairment. It is a pretty big problem, but instead of addressing concerns that were raised about the government's approach, the Liberals just shrugged their shoulders as they dropped the ball yet again.

Bill C-46 provided for roadside screening devices to detect drug impairment. The problem was that no device was approved until virtually on the eve of the date that marijuana became legal in Canada. So unreliable is this device that most law enforcement agencies across Canada are not acquiring the device. They are waiting for another, more reliable, device to be approved. Again, the Liberals dropped the ball.

Given a record like that, is it any wonder that when it comes to dealing with the more than half a million Canadians who have criminal records for minor possession, the government has no plan. Again, it has dropped the ball.

The government talks about a so-called expedited pardon process, but it has provided no indication when it plans to introduce legislation. The timeline is completely vague. The government has refused to provide details about what that expedited pardon process would look like. In fact, it seems that while making a commitment to move forward with a pardon process, the Liberals would prefer not to talk about it at all if they can get away with it.

It was not until the member for Victoria called on the government to take action that the government announced it would move forward with some sort of undefined pardon process. As the member for Victoria rightly pointed out, other jurisdictions, including California and Vermont did implement an expungement process at the same time that legalization came into effect.

While one could argue about the merits of expungement versus a pardon versus providing no blanket process at all, what is unacceptable is that the government has refused to be straight with Canadians and tell them honestly where we are going. It just does not have a plan.

It is a little rich that the government has dragged its feet and would prefer not to talk about this issue, given the Prime Minister's, personal history, when in 2013, he bragged about how he used marijuana. He relished the attention he got upon making that pronouncement. Of course, the Prime Minister was not caught. He was not charged or convicted. He does not have the burden of a criminal record. He lives a pretty privileged life. However, as the member of Victoria pointed out, half a million Canadians, including many marginalized Canadians, are burdened with a criminal record for committing an offence that today is perfectly legal.

The time has come for the government to be straight, to come forward and come up with a plan. To date, it has done nothing more than drop the ball. Canadians deserve better.

[Peter Schiefke, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister (Youth) and to the Minister of Border Security and Organized Crime Reduction, Lib.]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to speak to Bill C-415, an act to establish a procedure for expunging certain cannabis-related convictions.

First, I would like to thank the member for Victoria for his hard work and strong advocacy on this issue. I know he has spoken numerous times with the Minister of Border Security and Organized Crime Reduction about this issue. It is something we very much appreciate.

It is clear that the member shares our conviction that some changes need to be made with a new cannabis control regime in place. For nearly a century, the criminal prohibition of cannabis failed to protect youth and led to the highest rates of cannabis use in the world amongst our kids. It also led to billions of dollars in profit for organized crime and created an unhealthy and unsafe situation in all of our communities.

That is why we replaced the criminal prohibition with a far more effective and proportional system of comprehensive cannabis control. While there are no turnkey solutions to righting the wrongs that resulted from that regime, there are now steps we can take to address them.

Bill C-415 would create a method to expunge cannabis possession convictions, regardless of quantity, that are no longer an offence under the Cannabis Act. It proposes a no-charge, application-based process that would allow applicants to provide sworn statements to prove their eligibility. It does not, however, require them to prove their attempts to obtain official supporting documents in doing so.

This bill also proposes that expungement must be granted, so long as the review by the Parole Board of Canada does not reveal any evidence that the activity in question was prohibited under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act or any other act of Parliament.

The approach proposed in Bill C-415 is similar in form to another bill this House passed not long ago, but the nature of the convictions proposed for expungement is quite different. Bill C-66, Expungement of Historically Unjust Convictions Act, received royal assent in June of this year. That legislation was introduced on the occasion of the historic apology to the LGBTQ2 community for decades of state-sponsored systemic discrimination and oppression.

It put in place a new process to permanently destroy records of convictions for offences involving consensual activity between same-sex partners that would be lawful today. The government passed that law so that expungement could be available as a tool to correct a profound historical injustice, where the offence had been ruled unconstitutional or contrary to the Canadian Human Rights Code.

However, there are substantive differences between the nature of those offences and cannabis possession, which courts have never found to be constitutionally invalid. That said, clearly we agree with the member for Victoria that individuals who have previously acquired criminal records for some possession of cannabis should be allowed to shed the burden and stigma of that record.

That is why, when the Cannabis Act came into force on October 17, the government announced its intent to introduce legislation that, once in force, would allow individuals to apply for a record suspension, as long as they had completed their sentence. The five-year waiting period would be waived, and record suspension would be immediately eligible. Finally, the unfair $631 fee put in place by the Harper Conservatives would also be waived, and record suspension would be available at no cost to the individual.

As my hon. colleague across the way mentioned, these records have had a disproportionate impact on youth from poor communities, racialized communities and, of course, indigenous communities. Many Canadians also have a criminal record as a result of some youthful indiscretions, and now lead otherwise exemplary lives.

This proposed measure would make affordable record suspensions available to those individuals. It would give them the opportunity to remove the stigma and burden on their lives that results from a criminal record.

Here, I would point out that thanks to the motion by the member for Saint John—Rothesay, the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security has been instructed to undertake a study of the record suspension program formerly known as “pardons”.

The idea behind this study would be, first, to examine the impact of a record suspension to help those with a criminal record reintegrate back into society; second, to examine the impact of criminal record suspension fees and additional costs associated with the application process on low-income applicants; and third, to identify appropriate changes to fees and service standards for record suspension, and to identify improvements to better support applicants for a criminal record suspension.

The committee would be able to study improvements that could be made to the process for record suspensions. However, I am pleased to note that the government's announcement of intent with respect to the legislation on record suspensions for some possession of cannabis reflects the desire to reduce the kinds of barriers reflected in that motion.

Protecting Canadians is our number one concern. We do that by implementing evidence-based criminal justice policies that are proven to support rehabilitation, prevent crime and victimization, and keep our citizens and communities safe. The government's announced intent to introduce new legislation is in keeping with that principle.

Aside from the differences in the proposed approaches, I would like to also point out that Bill C-415 is flawed as it is currently written. Under the bill, the acceptance of a sworn statement to prove eligibility without having to demonstrate attempts to obtain official documents would risk that an expungement could be ordered and records destroyed for ineligible individuals, such as those who have been convicted of possession of far more dangerous uncontrolled substances, such as cocaine.

As currently written, indeed most individuals would not be eligible to apply, as the bill would require that the activity be legal today. All cannabis obtained prior to the coming into force of the Cannabis Act was illicitly possessed, and the possession of illicitly obtained cannabis remains an offence today.

I am grateful that many members in this House feel that people who have been previously convicted for possession of cannabis should be allowed to participate meaningfully in society. They should have access to good, stable jobs. They should have access to housing and education and the ability to participate in the community. For far too long, many thousands of Canadians have faced barriers to those necessities simply for having possessed cannabis. However, values have shifted, and we recognize the failure of prohibition. It has now been over a month since we have had legalized and regulated cannabis, and we see the positive impact of that action.

What we do now to make things as fair as possible for Canadians must be done carefully and diligently. I very much look forward to taking the next steps to help people turn their lives around. Once again, I would like to thank the member opposite for his views on how we can do so. I am also thankful for the opportunity to address this issue today.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

moved that Bill C-415, An Act to establish a procedure for expunging certain cannabis-related convictions, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise in the House this afternoon to present my private member's bill, Bill C-415. My bill would have the effect of expunging or erasing criminal records for the half million Canadians who have records for the possession of small quantities of cannabis, which became a perfectly legal activity in October of this year.

This is a matter of fundamental justice and I urge all members to support this initiative. I urge government members to keep an open mind and to study the bill and amend it so we can move it forward as quickly and effectively as possible.

As far back as 2012, the Liberal Party passed resolution No. 117 on cannabis legalization and it is curious that it used the words of elimination of all criminal records for simple possession. I am pleased that the Liberal Party agrees with me that expungement and not merely record suspension is what is required in this circumstance.

According to a report commissioned by the Department of Public Safety, fully 86% of those surveyed agreed that completely erasing criminal records for minor offences, particularly cannabis possession, was the right thing to do. Judging by the enormous outburst of editorial support that I am pleased to have received from coast to coast, Canadians get it. They support this initiative because they are fair-minded people who recognize the unfairness inherent in continuing to burden people with the effects of a criminal record for something that is now legal.

I stood yesterday in the House with a prominent aboriginal leader from British Columbia, with people from the John Howard Society and with Senator Pate, the former executive director of the Elizabeth Fry Society. They all called on the government to get with this, expunge records and not to rely, as I will explain why, on merely criminal record suspension in this context.

I have three fundamental arguments in the short time available that I would like to make. First, I want to challenge the government's assertion that it will be bringing on immediate pardons. The word “immediate” means now and I will explain why that is simply not possible. Second, I want to address the government's apparent argument that expungement is somehow reserved for only one category of past historical injustices and not things like this. Only record suspensions apparently, in the Liberals' mind, are appropriate in this context. Third, it is important to tell Canadians about how the unjust application of cannabis laws in our country has happened. I think it is undeniable that there has been an injustice.

On the first point about the timing, the government has had several years to address this signature initiative on cannabis legislation. Other jurisdictions like California and Vermont, when they brought in their laws, brought this piece in at the same time and automatically expunged the records for people with convictions for a small quantity of cannabis. The Liberals chose not to do that. They said they should wait for record suspensions, sometimes they called them pardons, and that will happen sometime soon, maybe with legislation introduced, I presume, in the spring.

Canadians know there will be an election in October. They know any initiative has to pass through both Houses and be proclaimed in law, so it is likely that this will not take place until 2020, if my arithmetic is right. When Canadians hear the word “immediate”, they think of something different. I would urge the Liberals to work with my bill and make it better so we can get on with the task that should have been commenced when we brought in legalization in the first place.

The second argument is the arbitrary distinction between expungement reserved for something called historical injustices and pardons for something else. I do not know who is giving legal advice to the Liberals on this point. I have had the good fortune of getting opinions from Benjamin Berger, Professor of Law at Osgoode Hall, and noted constitutional lawyer Professor Kent Roach at the University of Toronto. They see absolutely no distinction in law. I see none in public policy for what the government seems to be insisting upon.

Let me quote from a leading Toronto criminal lawyer, Annamaria Enenajor of the Campaign for Cannabis Amnesty. She said, “the government...leaves the impression that restrictions exist on the government's ability to issue expungements for the offense of simple cannabis possession that are beyond its control. This is false. There is nothing in Canadian law that prohibits our government from issuing expungements for offenses that, in their application, unjustly targeted racialized and indigenous communities. It simply chooses not to. This is a policy decision.”

Professor Kent Roach says that “The charter is the minimum not the maximum in terms of our sense of justice. The government's proposed pardon scheme also reveals larger problems with our pardon system which, among other drawbacks, is conditional on future good behaviour.”

There is no distinction possible, although the government wishes to make it. I urge it to keep an open mind so we can do what is right for Canadians.

That takes me to my third point. The application of this law is a historic initiative to address a historical injustice. It is a fact, and I commend the government for acknowledging that black and indigenous people across this country have been disproportionately burdened with criminal records for possessing small quantities of cannabis. That prevents these people, who are often already more marginalized and impoverished than other citizens, from getting their foot on the social ladder. Why? It is because they now have a record. It means they are last in line when they want to rent an apartment. They are last in line when they want to get a job and have to answer “yes” about having a criminal record.

If that record were expunged, as my bill would do, they could honestly answer that they do not have a criminal record. It would be deemed in law that they do not such a record. Imagine how many thousands of impoverished Canadians we could assist by doing the right thing.

Jaywalking is not an offence under the charter. However, if nine out of 10 people we go after for jaywalking ho are black or indigenous, then it is a charter violation. Again, I commend the government for acknowledging this data as being valid. If someone is indigenous in Regina, they are nine times more likely to be charged and have a record for cannabis than non-indigenous people; and seven times more likely in Vancouver; and if someone is black in Halifax, they are five times more likely to be charged and have a record; and three times more likely if they live in Toronto. This is wrong. This is Canada. We should fix that, and let these people get on with their lives.

I want to address head-on the government's argument about record suspensions. It chooses to call it “pardons”. It does not do the job. What is the difference between a pardon and expungement? An expunged record is erased; it is completely destroyed. Under my bill, the offences would be deemed in law to have never happened. Therefore, a person whose record has been expunged could truthfully say on a job application that they do not have a criminal record. That makes all the difference.

What about a pardon? A pardon merely reclassifies the record. It may still be released, and even revoked, in the future. Most importantly, with a pardon, an individual can still face those obstacles I talked about. Furthermore, a pardon talks about forgiving, by implication, and not expungement, which would be an acknowledgement of the historical injustice in how cannabis laws have been applied in our country.

For a long time, cannabis amnesty has been a policy of the NDP. Since 2004, we have been calling for amnesty for people with records for cannabis possession. My colleague, the member for Vancouver Kingsway, who has done excellent work on this file, introduced a motion in the House asking the government to immediately pardon all criminal records for simple possession. The government said no.

Let me go to the argument I have heard the government use as recently as this morning. It is wrong. When a landlord or employer asks a person if they have a record, the question they are supposed to ask is whether they have ever been convicted for a criminal offence for which a pardon has not been granted. Now, the government says that if there has been a violation of that requirement, they can go to the human rights branch or the human rights tribunal in their province. I do not know whether the government has dealt with people from the inner city.

I used to do legal aid in downtown Toronto. People who are illiterate and do not speak English have enough trouble already. Do we think they are going to get lawyers, with legal aid in this world being so scarce, and take this to the human rights branch? I do not really think so and neither does Samantha McAleese, who is doing her Ph.D. on this very topic at Carleton. She has worked in the inner city of Ottawa with The John Howard Society for many years. She said that many people struggling with criminal records can often have barriers like literacy or language, making these formal complaints to the human rights codes very daunting. She further said that requiring individuals to muster through a complaint process in order to access employment, housing or any other social domain seems quite ridiculous. People with criminal records already face enough barriers in the community and are often already doing everything they can to get by day by day.

Even if the government is right, why would it not go far enough to complete the job with expungement? Even if there is a legal, technical reason for being right, which I urge the government is not the view of the leading criminal and constitutional lawyers I have consulted, why would it not complete the job?

I was so proud to have stood in this House when another expungement initiative took place not long ago: Bill C-66. It was the expungement of what the government termed, and I agree, historically unjust convictions for people convicted in the past for same-sex sexual activity and yet thousands of racialized and marginalized people have also been treated unfairly in the past. I have demonstrated that and the government accepts it.

People have barriers to renting apartments or getting jobs. Mothers from Saskatoon have cried on the phone to me that their child, busted a couple of years for having a couple of joints, cannot coach the soccer team because of these vulnerable people initiatives that require that people not have records for reasons we well understand, dealing with children and so forth. Their lives are also affected by this. After years of injustice, why would the government settle for a process that will not fully relieve the burden of a criminal record? The only way to right the wrong and finally give the half million Canadians a fair chance is expungement, to erase the records for simple possession.

The evidence is pretty clear that the argument about pardons may be good in theory, but in practice, people in the real world do not always ask those precise questions that the government says landlords and employers should be asking, “Have you ever been convicted for a criminal offence for which a pardon has not been granted?”, that magic incantation. In the real world in downtown Ottawa or Toronto, we were told yesterday, people do not always ask those questions and, therefore, people cannot get on with their lives because they have criminal records, they are already the poorest among us often and they are disproportionately indigenous and black Canadians.

It is simply the right thing to do. Why the government did not do it at the time, like other jurisdictions they modelled their legalization on, I do not know, but it is time to do it now and it is time to do it right. A half-measure is not good enough for Canadians. Expungement is the answer. Record suspension does not do the job. Let us get on with it. I urge all members to do the right thing and support my bill in the House.

[The Chair]

Did you list Bill C-415?

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Sorry about that.

It was Bill C-278, M-174—I'm waiting for somebody to say, “Bingo”—Bill C-417, M-201, Bill C-415, and M-208. I have no problems with any of these, nor do the analysts, from what I can tell.

Procedure and House Affairs

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Mr. Speaker, in light of the discussions that occurred during question period, I seek the unanimous consent of the House to move a motion.

That given the important difference between record suspension, also known as pardons, and expungement and recognizing the government wishes to address this issue through legislation, that notwithstanding any standing order or usual practice of the House, Bill C-415, an act to establish a procedure for expunging certain cannabis-related convictions, be deemed to have been read a second time and referred to a committee of the whole, deemed considered in committee of the whole, deemed reported without amendment, deemed concurred in at the report stage and deemed read a third time and passed.

Expungement of Certain Cannabis-related Convictions Act

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-415, an act to establish a procedure for expunging certain cannabis-related convictions.

Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to introduce today a bill that would expunge the records of certain cannabis-related convictions. Over 500,000 Canadians have a criminal record for cannabis possession. That is 500,000 Canadians who may be barred from finding employment, from volunteering in their communities and from finding a place to rent, all for non-violent action that will soon be perfectly legal.

I also emphasize that not all Canadians have been treated equally under our cannabis laws. In Toronto, black people without a criminal record were three times more likely to be arrested for cannabis possession than white people. In Halifax, they were five times as likely to be arrested, and in Regina it happens nine times more often to indigenous people.

This bill would allow people to wipe from their records all cannabis convictions for things that will be perfectly legal within two weeks. Under the current broken pardons system, Canadians have to wait several years and pay $631 just to apply. Under my bill, they would not have to wait several years, and it would be completely free.

This bill is about righting past wrongs, and it would help hundreds of thousands of Canadians to get on with their lives.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)