Bill C-45 (Historical)

Cannabis Act

An Act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other Acts

This enactment enacts the Cannabis Act to provide legal access to cannabis and to control and regulate its production, distribution and sale.
The objectives of the Act are to prevent young persons from accessing cannabis, to protect public health and public safety by establishing strict product safety and product quality requirements and to deter criminal activity by imposing serious criminal penalties for those operating outside the legal framework. The Act is also intended to reduce the burden on the criminal justice system in relation to cannabis.
The Act
(a) establishes criminal prohibitions such as the unlawful sale or distribution of cannabis, including its sale or distribution to young persons, and the unlawful possession, production, importation and exportation of cannabis;
(b) enables the Minister to authorize the possession, production, distribution, sale, importation and exportation of cannabis, as well as to suspend, amend or revoke those authorizations when warranted;
(c) authorizes persons to possess, sell or distribute cannabis if they are authorized to sell cannabis under a provincial Act that contains certain legislative measures;
(d) prohibits any promotion, packaging and labelling of cannabis that could be appealing to young persons or encourage its consumption, while allowing consumers to have access to information with which they can make informed decisions about the consumption of cannabis;
(e) provides for inspection powers, the authority to impose administrative monetary penalties and the ability to commence proceedings for certain offences by means of a ticket;
(f) includes mechanisms to deal with seized cannabis and other property;
(g) authorizes the Minister to make orders in relation to matters such as product recalls, the provision of information, the conduct of tests or studies, and the taking of measures to prevent non-compliance with the Act;
(h) permits the establishment of a cannabis tracking system for the purposes of the enforcement and administration of the Act;
(i) authorizes the Minister to fix, by order, fees related to the administration of the Act; and
(j) authorizes the Governor in Council to make regulations respecting such matters as quality, testing, composition, packaging and labelling of cannabis, security clearances and the collection and disclosure of information in respect of cannabis as well as to make regulations exempting certain persons or classes of cannabis from the application of the Act.
This enactment also amends the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to, among other things, increase the maximum penalties for certain offences and to authorize the Minister to engage persons having technical or specialized knowledge to provide advice. It repeals item 1 of Schedule II and makes consequential amendments to that Act as the result of that repeal.
In addition, it repeals Part XII.‍1 of the Criminal Code, which deals with instruments and literature for illicit drug use, and makes consequential amendments to that Act.
It amends the Non-smokers’ Health Act to prohibit the smoking and vaping of cannabis in federally regulated places and conveyances.
Finally, it makes consequential amendments to other Acts.

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Yes. I have a quick one.

Your slides suggested 51.8% of court cases are currently related to impaired driving. It takes twice as long to deal with a drug case than it does for an alcohol case, so I guess we have to anticipate increased demand on the court system after Bill C-45 comes into effect. Would that be reasonable from a statistical perspective?

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Thank you.

Thank you for being here today.

My riding of Kootenay—Columbia is located in southeastern British Columbia, and my constituents are very interested in and concerned about both Bill C-45, trying to ensure that economic opportunities continue for small business, and Bill C-46, in terms of keeping us all safe.

I would start with a question for Mr. Therrien. In the material prepared by the committee, you are specifically mentioned as having raised concerns regarding random breath testing, provisions from Bill C-226, particularly concerning racial bias in the application of this law.

What sorts of conditions could you recommend to the committee to prevent arbitrariness and racial profiling in random breath testing?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

I'll continue reading:

1. Witnesses are to represent the following stakeholder groups in four two-hour panel blocks per day: i. Existing Canadian licensed producers and dispensaries; ii. Producers of edible cannabis products and other non-smokable forms of cannabis; iii. Ordinary Canadians who made a written submission to the Committee regarding Bill C-45; iv. Young Canadians, 15 to 24 years old. 2. That witnesses for each panel block be allotted as follows: 2 Liberal, 1 Conservative, 1 NDP. 3. That witnesses be directed to prepare oral remarks for 10 minutes in length, and that the witnesses be invited to submit written statements prior to appearing; 4. That the meeting be held prior to September 30, 2017.

Mr. Chair, I'm going to speak to my motion and give the rationale behind it.

Bill C-45 is groundbreaking legislation in many respects. It changes a century of legal, social, economic, and cultural policy in this country. It's 131 pages long and contains 226 clauses, plus schedules. It deals with a number of complex issues about cannabis decriminalization. It involves cultivation, possession, age of access, health impacts, enforcement, production, packaging, labelling, international implications, edibles and concentrates, education, research, and other issues.

In June the Liberals proposed five days of hearings to be conducted the week before Parliament resumed. They solicited the opinion of Canadians over the summer when Canadians are probably least engaged in public policy. They have scheduled these hearings before Canadians could even be fully engaged. In many respects the hearings are over before most Canadians are really engaged in them.

Scheduling the entire week of hearings before the House of Commons resumes avoids scrutiny in the House of Commons and restricts the ability of MPs to raise evidence in the House of Commons questioning the ministers and government as responsible government should allow us to do. It restricts the committee's ability to properly follow up on issues that arise from the testimony. We've heard a lot of testimony this week that raises many issues which I think MPs on all sides of the table would like to be able to follow up on.

At that time in June, both the New Democrats and Conservative opposition objected to those five days. We said we would need more days. I want to pause to emphasize that this committee is the only phase of the legislative process where Parliament hears from the public, from stakeholders, from experts. It's the only opportunity for public input, and I believe it's very important to hear those views as we do our jobs and study this bill.

In June when the opposition objected to the limitation of five days of hearings, the Liberals agreed, saying they were open to holding more hearing days if needed. Now, today, after five days of hearings, it's obvious that there are glaring holes in this bill, that many issues have been raised, and that, most important, there has been an absence of critical voices.

First of all, we have not yet heard a word from from young people. We haven't had one witness, age 15 to 24. Yet we have heard from all sorts of people about how important it is we get this cannabis legislation right for young Canadians, to know precisely the health impacts on developing brains, and to talk to young people in a manner they will accept and understand. We're charged with protecting the health of young Canadians, and yet we don't bother to hear any of them tell this committee how they feel about this issue.

Second, we haven't heard a word from ordinary Canadians. There were many ordinary Canadians who wrote this committee with submissions and requested to appear, but we didn't schedule a single one of them.

Third, we haven't heard from licensed producers themselves, the very people who have been growing cannabis legally in this country for the past 10 years.

Fourth, we've heard a lot of evidence—and I think some exaggeration and maybe even some mythology—about the impacts of edibles, but we haven't heard from a single edible and concentrate manufacturer or industry.

Quite honestly, I think these are glaring errors, yet for some reason I believe the Liberals do not want to hear from a single one of those groups.

Mr. Chair, the New Democrats support legalization. We broadly support this bill. Frankly, we believe this bill can be brought into force by next July, and we're willing to work with the government to do so. We want to work with the government to fix the holes in this bill that we've already identified: the absence of edibles and concentrates, the fact that there's a lack of a national e-commerce platform, the fact this legislation does not deal with pardons, the fact that we have border issues and international considerations, the fact that it still criminalizes many Canadians, including maintain a maximum penalty of up to 14 years in prison for Canadians. There are all sorts of aspects to this bill that I think require further scrutiny.

It is not the New Democrats' intention to be deleterious or to delay in any way the government's stated objective of hitting July 1. That's why, in the context of my motion in the text, I said that we could hold those two days by September 30. We know that the ministers are scheduled to appear next week, on Tuesday. We know that after that process we're going to need at least a week or two to prepare the many amendments before we start the clause-by-clause examination of this bill, in which we'll go through the entire bill line by line and discuss and debate and move amendments. We'll be into October, no matter what. I think it's eminently reasonable to schedule two more days of hearings to hear from those groups that are so important to hear from prior to September 30, so that we can make sure we have the broadest, most comprehensive evidence and information that we can get before this committee while still allowing the government to meet its stated objective.

I'll conclude by saying it's my understanding the Liberals are going to vote against this motion. They're going to have to tell Canadians, explain to them, why the voice of youth is not important to inform this bill, why the voice of ordinary Canadians is not important. I want to stop and say on that point that this bill isn't for producers. It's not for dispensary owners. It's not for edible cannabis manufacturers. This bill is for the millions of Canadians who voted in the last election for the promise of the legalization of cannabis, and to proceed with this bill without hearing from them is unacceptable.

The government side may argue that they heard from the task force. That was to inform the process. Who I want to hear from on this legislation are those people. Now that legislation has been drafted and tabled before Parliament, they have a right to now offer their comments on the actual proposals that have come before us, particularly when the government has ignored several recommendations of the task force in this legislation.

I really hope the Liberal government will see fit to include these important voices. If not, I hope they have a good explanation as to why these important voices are not important to be heard at this committee.

I will conclude here. The difference is this: it's not enough to say that people can contact MPs on their own, or we can hold town halls, which many of us have done or are doing. To testify at this committee is to testify in front of the entire health committee, in public, recorded, televised, and in both languages. That provides a unique opportunity to hear that voice that is not fully accommodated in any other fashion.

For all those reasons, I would urge my colleagues to support this very reasonable motion, so that we can bring Canadians the best, safest, and healthiest cannabis legislation that we can possibly craft as Canadians.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you.

Mr. Emery, the task force also said this about e-commerce mail order:

Consideration should also be given to ensuring that online retail sales have appropriate consumer safeguards. To accommodate those who may not have access to storefronts (e.g., small communities, rural and remote locations, mobility-challenged individuals) a direct-to-consumer mail-order system for non-medical cannabis should be considered.

You're probably aware that Bill C-45 does not contain a permanent national e-commerce platform. Is that a positive or negative thing in your opinion?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Ms. Emery, I want to direct this question to you as someone who has operated a dispensary.

Prime Minister Trudeau also said this: “The challenge of getting this important initiative right is one of ensuring that we are broadly listening to partners, to folks from the medical marijuana industry, to municipal partners, to provinces, and of course drawing on best practices from around the world.... We're going to get this right in a way that suits Canadians broadly....”

I want to ask you a question about edibles, concentrates, and other products that Bill C-45 will continue to make illegal. We've heard evidence before this committee that Colorado, Washington, and Alaska have all legalized edibles. Colorado appears to have a very mature and thoughtful regulatory regime for those products.

Here's what the task force said about edibles:

In weighing the arguments for and against limitations on edibles, the majority of the Task Force concluded that allowing these products offers an opportunity to better address other health risks. Edible cannabis products offer the possibility of shifting consumers away from smoked cannabis and any associated lung-related harms. This is of benefit not just to the user but to those around them....

They said:

...access to a broad range of cannabis products is possible via the illicit market, including through dispensaries and online retailers.

They recommend that the government:

[r]egulate the production of cannabis and its derivates (e.g., edibles, concentrates) at the federal level, drawing on the good production practices of the current cannabis for medical purposes system....

Do you see the omission of edibles and concentrates from this bill as a good or bad thing?

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Thank you, Chair. I'm going to be sharing my time with Dr. Carrie.

I'm going to follow up on the comments from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities with respect to the smart revenue-sharing model. I agree that if municipalities have to bear a lot of the costs of putting this system in place, there should be something in Bill C-45 that would actually make it clear how the revenue is going to be split.

Do you have a recommendation? Would you like to see a one-third, one-third, one-third among municipal, provincial, and federal? What would you recommend?

[Bill Karsten]

Touché.

Sir, thank you for those comments. One thing about the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, it has great respect for the work the federal government is doing on all the files and I certainly wouldn't want to be combative in responding to your points. They're well taken.

The issue, I think, in terms of when you suggest that yes, we have talked and have had meetings with folks like Mr. Blair etc., we view those more as preliminary consultations as opposed to the ability to really sit down at the table and understand this as it evolves week by week. That's still a message we have in terms of needing to be at the table and involved all the time.

It's a very interesting point that you make in terms of the variance between the two companion pieces of legislation, Bill C-45 and Bill C-46. We will be providing additional information on FCM's position in a forthcoming submission to the House of Commons justice committee that will be specifically addressing Bill C-46.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

I think we'll move to municipal issues for a while.

Mayor Karsten, you spoke in terms of needing an extensive implementation process, co-ordinating with all levels of government and so forth. Certainly, that's been under way ever since this process began. I know that Parliamentary Secretary Blair has consulted across the country, with both provincial partners as well as municipal, so I think that is under way.

Other things like prioritizing decision points, federal funding and so forth, are really out of the scope of what this committee is commissioned to do. Our job is to examine Bill C-45, which deals really with the treatment of marijuana in terms of whether it's legal or not. It doesn't deal with impairment issues. Impairment issues are dealt with in Bill C-46, the study of which is going to be under way soon. Bill C-46 does provide additional mechanisms, additional tools, for detecting and processing impairment situations.

I'd like to correct the record. Ms. Gladu said that in Colorado the impaired driving rate increased. We have a letter from the Governor of Colorado and the Attorney General for Colorado too, the Attorney General of the United States, saying that in the first six months of 2017 impairment actually decreased by 21%. I take note of Ms. Emery's reference to the national highway safety board, which indicates not a major increase at least in impairment offences, so I would suggest that impairment is probably not the issue to talk about in respect to legalization.

To be more specific, right now in British Columbia we have situations where illicit growers will rent a property and turn it into a grow op, which is not appropriate for the property, not appropriate for the landlord, so policing grow ops does become an issue and I think that with this new legislation, that sort of thing will cease. I would suggest to you that's a case where this legislation will reduce the load on municipalities so I would ask all three of you witnesses if you would like to testify to that.

Starting with Mayor Karsten, please.

[Jodie Emery]

I'd like to add that one of the major issues of Bill C-45 is that the federal government controls the production.

You've all heard of B.C. Bud. Cannabis has been growing all across this country for a very long time, and the provinces deserve and should have the power and the ability to license their own production agents themselves. If the provinces have to wait on the federal government to supply cannabis, the provincial government stores are not going to have any product on the shelves.

We saw Nevada declare a state of emergency, asking for more pot growers to come forward because they sold out in one week. We're seeing it happen all over the world. You need a lot of supply; you need it everywhere. You need to allow municipalities to license their own craft growers, as they do craft breweries. You need to allow provinces to do it, and you need to allow the federal government to let it happen.

If the production is controlled federally, distribution provincially, storefronts and policing municipally, of course you have a big disaster coming, but—

[Marc Emery]

Bill C-45 accomplishes no objective whatsoever that is desirable. The thing is, it's staring us all in the face. If we want the price to plummet to the point that money is not even a factor with marijuana; if we want all Canadians to be treated fairly before the law; if we want to restore civil liberties; if we want to take away all the police power we have given the police for 30 or 40 years to wiretap, to surveil, to pose as drug dealers, to do all this sort of stuff that's costing billions of dollars, then just take cannabis out of the schedule. Just remove it from the schedule, tell everybody that otherwise you have to be law-abiding, be peaceful, pay your taxes, pay your employees well, and obey all municipal regulations.

Basically just treat it like any other normal industry. After all, it hasn't killed anybody for 50 years. There isn't any other industry in this country that's like that. They all put out pollution that kills, or the cars that kill, or the foods that kill, or their drugs that kill, or the tobacco that kills, or the alcohol that kills. Heck, everything is killing Canadians except cannabis, and you want to treat it as though it's plutonium. It's insane.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

I'll move to production, because the task force said:

Decisions on production, distribution and retail have clear implications for businesses hoping to enter the cannabis industry, including how to ensure a diversity of participants. It is apparent that there is significant interest and speculation about the potential for new revenues.... Supply chain management...has significant implications for consumers and communities. Price, product quality and accessibility can all be affected, depending upon what route the Government chooses to take.

They recommended using “licensing and production controls to encourage a diverse, competitive market that also includes small producers”.

Do you see Bill C-45 accomplishing that recommendation?

[Jodie Emery]

There are three reasons Canadians came around to support legalization. Number one is that we shouldn't criminalize our fellow Canadians who are otherwise law-abiding. They should not be banned from travelling to the United States, lose their job for failing a drug test, or have their kids taken away by the Children's Aid Society. None of that criminalization or harm should happen to peaceful, non-violent Canadians.

Number two, this industry already exists. It's worth billions of dollars. The Fraser Institute and many others have analyzed it and said that cannabis should be legal because it already exists. It's already being grown, sold, shared, and consumed. It's in every movie and TV show. It's everywhere. It's normalized, except with the government. We should allow the existing industry to come out of the shadows and into the light.

The third reason to legalize is that law enforcement has spent billions of our tax dollars on going after people for pot. I'd much prefer that money go toward health care, education, social housing, anything, or allowing our law enforcement to focus on serious crimes that have victims.

Bill C-45, as presented, will not offer amnesty or pardons to people who have been convicted. It will not allow people like my husband and me to be free from a criminal record. It will not allow the existing industry to transition into legality. In fact, it introduces tougher new penalties and prohibits those who have been victimized by prohibition from being allowed to transition. We're being locked out from participating and locked up for being unable to participate.

Although the third reason for marijuana legalization is law enforcement spending, on Friday we saw an announcement of a quarter of a billion dollars of additional tax money going toward marijuana law enforcement. Legalization is supposed to mean you no longer have to enforce a law against it. We know that marijuana law enforcement is extremely costly, and many police offers don't even want to enforce the law, which is why they often don't charge some people but do charge others.

As Mr. Bill Blair, who is not with us right now, has admitted, marijuana prohibition and law enforcement target people of colour, indigenous groups, the poor, and the marginalized. This bill will not legalize anything we've been fighting for.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

This question is for the Emerys.

If Bill C-45 is passed in its current form, will you abide by this new law or continue in civil disobedience?

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Okay.

I have one more municipal question and then I'm going to turn to the Emerys. Do you municipalities feel that you have enough flexibility under Bill C-45 to choose where marijuana can be sold and consumed?

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Thank you to our witnesses.

Of course, that's contrary to testimony we heard from Washington where impaired drug driving increased from 8% to 17% when it was legalized. Colorado saw a 32% increase. There was an increase overall in the U.S. in fatalities due to drug driving.

However, my question is for Ms. Holmes.

I thought you very nicely pointed out the difficulty in the rushing of this legislation that is happening. With only 288 days left before the government wants to legalize marijuana, we have to finish updating Bill C-45. Then the provinces have to come with their legislation that chooses what they're going to do in the areas that we've given flexibility on, and then municipalities have to decide how they're going to implement that, all without any funding in all the areas that you've talked about.

The first and most important thing that we heard was that public education about the hazards of impaired drug driving has to get to parents and youth, as well as to society. How much public education has the federal government provided to your municipality, and how much funding for this initiative have they provided?