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.

[Dr. Mary Bartram]

Because of the Cannabis Act, there's a regulatory framework for making cannabis available under certain restrictions. The Cannabis Act is currently under review, which just opened up a few weeks back.

It's very difficult to know whether legalization has driven the increased rates of cannabis use among those who use that, as I mentioned earlier, or how much of that is part of the response to the stresses and distress during the pandemic, with the social isolation and that whole constellation of mental health and substance use impacts.

I think the answer to your question is going to be examined over the review of the Cannabis Act. We have a suite of research on the relationship between mental health and cannabis, which the Mental Health Commission has been funding for the past five years, so we look forward to bringing those findings into that conversation. It's not a direct answer, but nevertheless it's the one that I would give.

[Ted Haney]

Sure.

For our industry, assuming the Cannabis Act and the industrial hemp regulations are appropriately implemented, I believe that we will move from our current 60,000 acres to 229,000 acres, with farm grade sales of $340 million, a billion dollars of industry sales, a half a billion dollars in exports and almost 5,000 jobs, contributing $2 billion to the Canadian economy.

That's the prize for industry, for Canadian agriculture and the Canadian economy, just by implementing the Cannabis Act and industrial hemp regulations as written and as intended by Parliament.

[Ted Haney]

I think it begins with implementing the Cannabis Act and the industrial hemp regulations as they are written and, more importantly, as Parliament intended them to be implemented. That will be a great start.

There are amendments to both that will be helpful to more fully open our industry while protecting human health and the environment, but just implementing those two documents as intended will be of great assistance.

[Ted Haney]

Yes.

The dual approach of Health Canada, which was to implement a completely unjustified interpretation of zero tolerance for any non-THC cannabinoid in any hemp process product, really put an end to hemp entering the natural health products and veterinary health products sector completely and has absolutely put additional risk in the highly value-added processes or programs in hemp fibre, as well as hemp foods from seed and stock. Because Health Canada has basically treated the whole plant as cannabis, the ability to use hemp roots to extract bioactives and/or to infuse the product for even topical lotions has been completely voided.

We have a major issue with Health Canada treating hemp as cannabis, which is the opposite of what the intentions of the Cannabis Act and the industrial hemp regulations were in the first place.

[Keith Jones]

Thank you very much, Mr. Shields.

We found that with the uncertainty around the interpretation of the regulation, farmers are finding it too risky to seed hemp and to plant hemp. CHTA has collected numerous examples of how food processors have approached Health Canada with regard to including hemp protein or hemp oil in their food formulations and have been told by Health Canada that in order to do so and to comply with the requirements for CBD, the food processors need to register under the Cannabis Act as licensed processors.

Well, they aren't intending to get into the cannabis business. They're planning to use the exempted parts of the plant—the hemp grain and the hemp stock—for their processes, but Health Canada has advised them they'd need to get licences to be part of the Cannabis Act.

Because of that risk, processors have shut down. Processors are not expanding their businesses. Other food companies are not looking at adding hemp protein, which is a fantastic protein, or hemp oil, which is a sensational functional oil, into their formulations, and as a result, we've seen our acreage drop by half and continue to drop.

[Ted Haney, President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Hemp Trade Alliance]

Thank you very much. Hopefully my mike issues have been addressed.

To summarize the high points, there have been a number of areas in which Health Canada's administration has caused damage. The high points really are that the line between industrial hemp and THC has become less clear in many ways and therefore things have not been delineated. In particular, Health Canada has created interpretation barriers that hinder and block value-added processing of hemp in Canada, and as a result of that, investment in food, feed, fibre and fractions processing has been lower and in some cases has moved outside Canada.

Regulated processes guiding hemp breeding and cultivar registration have become more complex and less transparent, which has resulted in less innovation and higher risk. Health Canada's regulatory interpretation regarding non-THC cannabinoids in hemp products is inconsistent with both the Cannabis Act and industrial hemp regulations. This has introduced risk and uncertainty, which in turn has reduced seeded acres and investments in value-added processing.

Health Canada's regulatory management has really—

[Keith Jones, Board Chair, Canadian Hemp Trade Alliance]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the committee for hearing from us today.

Our organization has been involved as the Canadian national organization for the Canadian hemp industry. The Canadian Hemp Trade Alliance was established in 2003 to advance the industry. We have over 240 members from all 10 provinces and one of the two territories right across the country. We represent over 240 members, spanning the entire value chain, from producers right through to processors and companies that are making hemp products in the food industry.

I'm involved with a hemp farm in Alberta and have been board chair for the last five years at Canadian Hemp Trade Alliance.

Since the passage of the Cannabis Act, Health Canada has, unfortunately, significantly harmed the Canadian hemp industry through inattention, neglect and wholly inappropriate regulatory interpretation. This has directly contributed to the significant loss of hemp acreage in Canada, from 118,000 acres in 2017 to 60,000 acres in 2021, and likely even less this year. Health Canada's regulatory oversight has significantly undermined Canada's position as the global leader in hemp for food.

Today we are asking the committee to engage an emergency study on the current regulatory oversight of hemp under the Cannabis Act and the industrial hemp regulations. The results of that study, we believe, will support our request to move the responsibility for the hemp file from Health Canada, which doesn't understand it, to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, which does understand it.

Our industry grew significantly from 1998, when the production and processing of hemp was legalized in Canada, right through to 2017. The Cannabis Act came into force in 2018.

In 2017, our industry generated more than $180 million in sales, exported $97 million in value-added products, supported over 1,000 jobs, provided $9 million in federal and provincial corporate taxes and contributed approximately $370 million to the Canadian economy.

As Mr. Dubois testified, in addition to being an excellent source of plant oils and proteins, hemp is a tremendous contributor to carbon sequestration and low-emission agricultural production. Competitors in the U.S., Europe, Australia, China and other countries are awakening to the potential of hemp and are amending their regulatory regimes to enable this important crop.

The passing of the Cannabis Act and the industrial hemp regulations was intended to consolidate all hemp-related regulation, delineate between hemp and high-THC cannabis, streamline regulatory processes and remove certain restrictions. Unfortunately, this hasn't happened. Our industry has been damaged since Health Canada began regulating it under the new Cannabis Act.

The entire industry is concerned about the regulatory implementation. It's less concerned about the Cannabis Act itself and the industrial hemp regulations themselves, although there are definitely opportunities for improvement. It's more about the interpretation of those regulations and how Health Canada has actually regulated hemp. Despite hemp seed and hemp stalks being exempted from the Cannabis Act under schedule 2, Health Canada has continued to regulate all hemp and provide advice to any people in the industry interested in using hemp, as it is a controlled substance that requires a cannabis type of handling.

CHTA concurs with Mr. Dubois' testimony that it is time for a review of the regulatory environment and an amendment to the regulatory practices, which are damaging the industry.

I will turn it over to Mr. Haney to share some specific examples. CHTA has a great deal of evidence to provide in this regard.

[David Hurford]

I'll be brief.

I don't disagree with what Tim said earlier on the measurement, but given how difficult it is to move Health Canada—they're stuck on square feet—we felt it was just easier to continue down that road, but I think the Cannabis Act review should help that. We know it should be larger, and we know doubling the current size is very doable.

The last thing I would say is that I would really start with the medical farmers. We have 35,000 licensed medical farmers in this country who have been producing medical cannabis with some challenges along the way, as we've heard. We should start with them. These are expert farmers. None of them have really been approached in any systemic way to say, would you like to transition?

The BC Centre for Disease Control tested the cannabis coming from these medical farmers and found that 15% to 20% of all of the cannabis they're producing could pass the testing regime right now. I would start in a systemic way with really looking at all of those medical farmers who are in the system, who have done their checks, and the municipal government knows they're there, and to start looking at systemically transitioning them into the legal marketplace, or recognizing that these are expert growers and then working our way up from there. Then we could maybe provide a little more flexibility on the top end of the micro category for people to grow.

[David Hurford]

Absolutely, and I congratulate the Kootenay council for their excellent work. Tim may be able to give you a better technical answer on this.

I think the broader scope, particularly around the issues of microbes, is that the laws have really been brought in without a lot of engagement and consultation with the experts. This is a good example, I think, where we have a “made in Ottawa” policy that really doesn't reflect what's going on, and it has some unintended consequences for the sector.

I hope this will be a key point that we can delve into as we review the Cannabis Act, because it really does prohibit a lot of the practices that we want to see, such as regenerative farming in traditional soils and giving back to the earth instead of taking away from it. We pioneer that in British Columbia, and we're very proud of it.

I think this is one of those examples of where a lack of engagement and a lack of consultation with experts really has created some unintended consequences.

I might defer to Tim a little bit more on the details on that question—

[George Smitherman]

I'm happy to answer that question.

I'm also happy to offer—if it's appropriate—to Mr. Epp that I believe some of your questions pertain to the personal grow model that Health Canada allows as a separate licensing regime for individuals who have paperwork from a medical practitioner. We've taken issue with that, because sometimes those medical practitioners are issuing notes which call for a very significant number of plants that is well in excess of the number that Mr. Deighton would be allowed to grow, I believe, within his limitation of footprint.

Mr. Deighton has spoken about a medical licence from Health Canada within the Cannabis Act, but prior to that and continuing through, Health Canada also grants a grower's personal grow exemption. Some of the scale of that is very challenging to us in various parts of the country, and it was probably a focus of the OPP report that you've referenced, sir.

I hope that intervention might be helpful to the committee.

[George Smitherman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Cannabis Council of Canada]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Let me begin by saying what a privilege it is to appear before the committee today. I would like to say that the Cannabis Council of Canada would be well aligned on significant portions of the previous witness testimony, and thank you for that. As an industry that enjoys so many regulatory relations with Health Canada and CRA, we feel very at home amongst those who focus on Canada's growers.

Cannabis and cannabinoids are a value-added agricultural crop contributing billions to a sector that is rapidly leveraging research and technology to create innovative products for millions of adult Canadian consumers. Through the leadership of the government and parliamentarians, including so many of you, our products are trusted globally and we are quietly exporting millions in medicinal cannabis products to welcoming nations and patients. That global market for cannabis exports is rapidly expanding and is estimated to reach $100 billion U.S. by 2030. At least 55 countries currently have or are considering purposeful cannabinoid regulations. Canada's remains the most consequential global cannabinoid legalization initiative, but first mover advantages are proving perishable.

Considering that there are more than 800 licences issued under the , Bill C-45, it's fair to say our licence-holders can be found in all of Canada's regions, and with more than 3,000 retail stores and a truly diverse ancillary services sector, our industry is everywhere, just like our consumers and our community. During our industry lobby day we met with parliamentarians and focused on five key asks where we need to see change if the fuller potential of the goals of legalization are going to be achieved. I want to draw your attention to the threat of the very sustainability of many licence-holders of all sizes posed by unsustainably high taxes, fees and markups that leave almost nobody cash-flow positive. Undercapitalized micros are the most vulnerable.

Just as a quick reminder, licence-holders—sometimes referred to as “LHs”, especially by Health Canada—come in various sizes of operations. Prior to the Cannabis Act, the medical cannabis regulations in place created a very high bar for facilities and operators, and were an important element that made the legalization of adult recreational cannabis possible following 2015. The regulatory model did not create avenues for historic or legacy producers to find their way into the new legal cannabis supply chain, and in response the micro category was introduced. The trade-off was simple: in exchange for a very small footprint, micro cultivators or throughput micro processors were born with watered down regulations in areas ranging from internal and external security, through to the requirements to have a quality assurance individual on staff.

Previously, it was presumed that the legacy grower with the micro licence would produce cannabis and sell it up the food chain to a larger scale licensed producer with brand and market reach. That marketplace, dominated by a few large players, has not emerged and the numerous micros, including C3 member HRVSTR, led by Ashley and Michael Athill, have fought for the direct-sale-through-distributor model to the provincial boards. In response, Health Canada recently shifted approaches and proactively provided sales licence status to all applicants, including micros, which implied an understanding that micros would be directly involved in sales to distributors, namely, to the provincial boards.

Here are some of the current challenges that micros are facing even beyond the overall burden of taxes, fees and distribution markups that fundamentally impair our ability to compete with the unregulated market.

The micro scale makes it difficult to generate enough revenue to support some of the services implied by a direct sales model. Our organization is on the record as favouring an increase in the footprint or processing volume of micros.

Quality assurance stands out as an area where our coordinated plan to build capacity through shared services and best-practices models should be developed with support from AAFC.

Financial services access, and especially very expensive requirements for boutique recall insurance from the provincial distributors, requires special attention.

The smallest players in a nascent agricultural sector need nurturing support, and a cannabis lens should be applied to current programs to ensure fairness. For instance, a micro cultivator with an outdoor grow would not enjoy the same protection from weather-related risks as adjacent crops, because cannabis is not on the list.

Finally, Mr. Chair, achieving the objective of eliminating the illicit market includes the need for the integration of legacy growers into a sustainable environment that includes support for BIPOC communities that have historically borne the greatest price for cannabis legalization.

Thank you for the time. I appreciate the opportunity.

[David Hurford, Secretary, BC Craft Farmers Co-op]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the committee for the opportunity to speak to you on this important topic.

The BC Craft Farmers Co-op was established two years ago to help B.C.'s legendary craft cannabis farmers transition to the legal market and maintain our province's global brand for cannabis excellence. We operate under the co-operatives act of B.C., in the tradition of thousands of other agriculture co-ops across Canada.

Our B.C. cannabis farmers are truly a national asset. They are the best in the world at what they do, and they should be celebrated. Unfortunately, the federal government's micro-licensing regime is excluding thousands of them, not just in B.C. but across Canada. In the first three-plus years of legalization, barely 80 of B.C.'s craft farmers have completed Health Canada's micro-class regulation maze. By comparison, 6,000 medical farmers in B.C. are licensed with Health Canada. A cannabis policy reset is definitely required to realize the full potential of legalization in Canada and unleash B.C.'s craft cannabis community.

In April our organization hosted a summit in Kelowna with the Association of Canadian Cannabis Retailers. Over three days, about 400-plus leaders in the sector came together to hash out some of the challenges created by the federal regime, among other things. Today I'm honoured to present just a couple of the constructive policy proposals that were reviewed, voted on and prioritized by delegates during the summit. There are three of them, and I'll touch on them quickly.

First, the federal government should officially recognize across all legislation that cannabis is actually a legitimate and legal farm activity and product. Canada still does not define cannabis in this way. The B.C. government is planning to exclude structures for use in producing cannabis in the agricultural land reserve. This reality is keeping craft farmers from being eligible for most government assistance.

Second, we need to help these craft farmers transition into this new legal regime and create thousands of rural jobs across Canada. A thousand licensed farmers in B.C. have the potential to create three to four thousand jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenue for taxpayers over the next two to three years. These farmers and processors should be able to access capital, grants and small business loans that other agriculture sectors can access. We believe that with the new Pacific economic development agency, a craft cannabis partnership can be created with all the players involved to really grow the sector's capacity. We think there should be economic development grants for indigenous and local governments that want to expand craft cannabis.

Finally, the Cannabis Act needs a reset. It is up for review this year. It continues to rely heavily on the punitive and authoritarian approach that we saw during prohibition. This review does present an opportunity to reset. We believe an all-party House of Commons committee should be the one reviewing the act instead of Health Canada, as oversight is required. We also believe there are some small changes that the minister can make immediately to the act without any disruption in advance of the review, particularly related to the micro production caps, security pre-clearances and so on.

If significant improvements are not made over the coming year and Health Canada continues to approve licences at the current slow rate, summit delegates resolved that jurisdiction should be transferred to an agency mandated to support the industry and help it flourish. We have submitted all these proposals to the various ministers of health, innovation, agriculture and rural development.

To conclude, there's been a lot of speculation about why Canada's industry has not taken off since legalization three years ago and why the illicit market is still such a significant element. The reason is that cannabis legalization has deprived consumers of what they want. They want fresh, locally grown cannabis by farmers who respect the plant and are passionate about their craft. Canada's legalization task force anticipated the risk of excluding these micro farmers. Otherwise, the task force predicted the development of unhealthy monopolies and large conglomerates, and that's what we're experiencing now in our industry.

Our proposals are designed to be practical measures that can achieve win-win scenarios for consumers, small businesses, rural economies, agriculture industries and Canada's tourism sector as well. Working together, we can ensure that the legacy of cannabis legalization is not just that people are no longer arrested for possession of small amounts of cannabis. Instead, the legacy should be tens of thousands of Canadians who are proudly employed and making an honest living for their families doing something they love to do for the benefit of others.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Government Business No. 10—Broadcasting Act

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour and, from what I am seeing from the current government, possibly a privilege to be able to rise and speak to Bill C-10. I rise representing the good people of North Okanagan—Shuswap.

I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Calgary Nose Hill.

Bill C-10 is the Liberal government's attempt to have the online streaming giants contribute their fair share to Canadian content and the retention of Canadian culture, but it has gone terribly wrong. World wars have been fought to protect our rights and freedom of speech, and we must never let those rights and freedoms be eroded. Freedom of expression must always be protected.

How did this bill go so terribly wrong? When the minister and the current government introduced Bill C-10 last November, the Minister of Canadian Heritage told the House that the bill's amendments to the Broadcasting Act were aimed at benefiting Canadian artists and musicians by forcing web giants to increase investments in Canadian content. That is something I think we all agree on. This initial commitment seemed reasonable, especially considering the need for our Broadcasting Act to be modernized in light of the major changes in where and how we now source music, television and film entertainment.

A couple of weeks later, the minister told the House that Bill C-10 was aimed at film, television and music-streaming services, like Netflix and Spotify, and that the government was committed to introducing another bill aimed at social media platforms, like Facebook and so on. At that time, the minister also stated that user-generated content would not be subject to new regulations.

Despite these assurances, the bill's progression took a sudden turn on April 23, when the Liberal members at committee suddenly amended the bill to extend its powers to the regulation of user-generated content on social media platforms. A bill originally presented as essential to protecting and ensuring continued Canadian content suddenly became a government bill seeking to regulate what Canadians say and share on social media. Smart phone apps were also added to the purview of the proposed regulations.

These amendments prompted strong reactions from my Conservative colleagues and me, but they also sparked a strong reaction from social media experts and Canadians. I have heard more from my constituents in North Okanagan—Shuswap about their concerns regarding the freedoms they could lose through this amendment and this bill than about any other topic in recent history. That is how concerned Canadians are for their freedom of expression.

What we see all around the world, and here in Canada today, is that social media has rapidly become the central platform used by citizens to express their rejections or protests against injustices, including those of government. The proposals of Bill C-10 open the door for the federal government and its regulatory agency, the CRTC, to undermine our ability to continue exercising our critical democratic freedom of expression. After 14 months of living with pandemic restrictions, many Canadians isolated at home and relying on social media for information, connectivity and entertainment, I strongly question why the government has chosen this time to radically change how Canadians can use social media.

I would also like to speak tonight about unintended consequences. It is something we have seen far too much of recently from the government, the unintended consequences of poorly drafted legislation. The case I want to tie into this debate tonight is the poorly drafted legislation in the government's Cannabis Act, Bill C-45, and how it is now having an impact on my constituents in North Okanagan—Shuswap.

I have now heard from constituents who are no longer able to get residential home insurance. Why? Because of poorly crafted and passed legislation. It has been disastrous for these constituents.

One man living on disability and trying to do things by the book was paying $1,000 for his home insurance. That bill then went up to $4,000 per year, then $5,500, then $6,500 and now more than $7,000 per year for a man living on disability. Why? Because he grows cannabis under a medical licence, but he grows more than four plants. Four plants is the maximum allowed under the government legislation. His insurance company has basically raised his rates to the point where he has to almost mortgage his insurance payments because the legislation has made it too costly for him to get insurance and pay for it up front.

He is not the only one. Another couple contacted me. They each have medical cannabis licences. Because the two of them grow more than the four permitted plants, they cannot find insurance.

This is just one example of how the government has failed to look at unintended consequences.

I will also tie in some of the experiences I have had on other committees in dealing with unexplained, non-scientific decisions of the government. It may seem unrelated to this, but I am trying to point out that this legislation is poorly drafted and should be taken back or at least have the proper time spent at committee to correct it.

Tying this to the fisheries committee, there was a regulation regarding the prawn harvesters in B.C., that had been in place for about 50 years. Everyone was operating under those rules. All of a sudden, the government decided it was going to reinterpret those regulations. Basically, it was going to shut down a huge portion of the spot prawn harvesters in British Columbia, simply by a reinterpretation of the regulation that had been in place for 50 years. There was no explanation, no working with the stakeholders to try to figure this out for the future. It threw the whole system into disarray because of unintended consequences of an decision that had not been researched or had any background.

I sat in on the heritage committee last week when it was going through the amendments, those that could be talked about. I tried to bring forward some of these issues about unintended consequences and the Liberal members on the committee tried to shut me down. They tried to censor what should have been my freedom of expression at that committee, pointing out the errors that the government continued to make. The member for Calgary Nose Hill was also in the committee at that time and witnessed how that took place. She may tie that session at the committee into her speech momentarily.

It was interesting to see how quickly the government seemed to want to censor Canadians, especially us parliamentarians by shutting down the debate at the committee stage of this bill to the point where amendments could not even be read aloud by the chair. They simply had to be listed by number and then voted on. Nobody could discuss what the amendment would do, the benefits or disadvantages of it, none of that. All of this was shut down by the government, trying to censor debate on this bill. Now the Liberals have limited the time we will have to debate it in the House, and it is a shame. Something as serious as freedom of expression deserves full and uncensored debate.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's good to see you again. We certainly had some splendid times on that fisheries committee, or FOPO, and it was interesting to hear another member mention today that the FOPO committee had to be cancelled because of the proceedings here.

I sit on that committee, and indeed the meeting was cancelled just minutes before the meeting was to start, but no explanation was given, so I had to come to this committee to find out the reason that my regular committee had been cancelled.

I want to speak to this amendment that's been proposed and how it puts limits and parameters around who will be affected by this. This is certainly needed. We've seen in the past how legislation that was rushed through caused unintended consequences, and I want to refer to unintended consequences that my constituents have been calling me about just recently.

They can't buy home insurance. They can't find home insurance. Why? It's because the Cannabis Act, Bill C-45—

Statement Made on February 5, 2018

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today on a matter of personal privilege. On February 5, 2018, in the 42nd Parliament, I misled the House. Because we now sit as the 43rd Parliament, I was uncertain as to how to correctly deal with this procedurally, so I contacted you to determine how best to proceed. I thank you and the clerk for the guidance provided in this regard, and in particular for your suggestion that I raise the matter at this hour and at this point in today's proceedings.

On the aforementioned date in 2018, at roughly 1:20 p.m., I responded to a very courteous remark from my esteemed colleague, the member for Burlington, then the minister of democratic institutions, who said she was saddened that I was no longer the critic for her portfolio. I thanked her and said:

As members may know, my family runs Giant Tiger. I am now the vice-chair of Giant Tiger and that is the reason I am no longer the critic on this file.

Although it was true that I had assumed this new position at my family's business, it was not true that this was the reason I was no longer the critic for democratic institutions. The actual reason I was no longer the critic for this file was that I had been relieved of my responsibilities as a consequence of having voted against my party's position on Bill C-45, the Cannabis Act, at third reading.

It goes without saying that if I had said anything at all in the House of Commons on February 5 with respect to my being relieved of this position, it should have been the truth, although a judicious silence would also presumably have been acceptable.

Mr. Speaker, you wisely counselled me to keep my remarks as brief as possible, so I will conclude with what I believe to be an important clarification.

In addition to withdrawing the words in question and apologizing for having misled the House, I want to assure the House that my transgression was entirely my own and that no colleague, nor any other person, prompted me in any way to say these words in the House. The purpose of an apology ought to be to correct the record as thoroughly as possible, and this task would be incomplete if I did not clarify that the responsibility lies entirely upon my own shoulders.

I thank all colleagues for their indulgence in letting me speak about this matter today.

Criminal Code

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, although I must reject the premise of the question, I can say a couple of things.

The member mentioned Bill C-45, and Bill C-46 being the companion piece, dealing with impaired driving. Earlier today, a Conservative member talked about MADD Canada. In fact, it supported Bill C-46 and the impaired driving regime that was put in place as a result of Bill C-45 coming into force. Giving police officers the tools they need to keep our roads safe was important. That is why MADD Canada supported this government's proposal in Bill C-46.

As it relates to other initiatives dealing with the criminal justice system, there is a fundamental misunderstanding on the part of those who suggest that, as I dealt with in my speech, giving the Crown more flexibility in determining which procedure to use somehow minimizes the impact of the penalties that would be imposed by the courts. That is simply not true. It is a fundamental misunderstanding of the criminal justice system. I invite my friend to read section 718 of the Criminal Code, which clearly identifies the principles of sentencing, based on the circumstances of the offence and of the offender.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I am not sure I will be getting up again in Parliament. We are coming to the end of this time and I will not be back in the fall, so I want to take a moment to recognize the staff members who spend so much of their time trying to get us ready so that we can come into the House and do our job. I want to particularly acknowledge my present staff, Anita Hindley, Anna-Marie Young, Joycelin Ng and Tristan McLaughlin, for the work that they do.

In the House we often find ourselves at odds in terms of perspectives on issues and certainly that has been the case with the bill. Liberals have failed in so many areas in terms of justice bills. I think of Bill C-45, when they were told they were going to end up in court over their drunk driving provisions. That certainly is happening.

This bill lessens sentences for dozens of different offences in spite of what the Liberals are saying tonight. I am wondering if the member opposite could tell us why all of their conversation about justice issues is focused basically on giving criminals a break and so little of it is focused on protecting the public and victims of those crimes.

Criminal Records Act

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

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to once again speak to Bill C-93. This bill has a number of flaws and perfectly illustrates why Canadians' trust in the Liberals has been broken. On the eve of the election, the government is settling for half measures that are not even guaranteed to pass.

As the parliamentary secretary said, we oppose this bill. We are not here to give the Liberal government a free pass for measures that very few people will be able to access. For example, I will talk about Bill C-66, which established an expedited procedure for expunging criminal records of LGBTQ community members sentenced for behaviour that is no longer deemed criminal. This objective is commendable and we support it, but an automatic process would have been preferable.

We can look at the numbers for the sake of comparison. When Bill C-93 was in committee, we learned that of the approximately 9,000 people who were eligible for the procedure established under Bill C-66, only seven had applied. In committee, we asked government officials for an explanation, but naturally, they were unable to respond. I would certainly be able to provide some, just as the experts did in committee. I will come back to that.

Meanwhile, the government said that it would advertise through non-traditional means. Is it talking about tweets, Facebook posts or pretty hashtags? I have a hard time believing that these ads will be seen by the right people, who are often in precarious situations. We are talking about vulnerable Canadians, racialized people, indigenous peoples and low-income Canadians. Factually and statistically, these people are the most likely to have a criminal record for simple possession of marijuana.

This is easy to prove. Here in the House, the Prime Minister publicly stated that he had once smoked marijuana recreationally, as did other politicians. There is nothing wrong with that. Black people in Toronto, however, cannot get away with it that easily. They are the most likely to have a criminal record for simple possession of marijuana. This is a serious problem and is one of the reasons we oppose this bill. It is clear that the people who need this process the most are the same ones who will not benefit from it.

I would like to talk a little bit about the study in committee in order to explain why the NDP does not support this bill. First, a criminal lawyer told us that this was the least Parliament could do and that it was better than nothing but that parliamentarians have a duty to do much better than that. I could not agree more.

The NDP's commitment to Parliament involves doing our best to help those who need it most. We do not want to settle for taking a tiny step in the right direction. The lawyer I mentioned, Solomon Friedman, also raised several problems with the record suspension system. Those problems are not an issue in the NDP's approach of expunging criminal records. He mentioned two factors.

The first is good conduct. Those who apply for a criminal record suspension, whether under the process proposed by Bill C-93 or the usual process, must demonstrate that they are being good citizens. For the average Canadian, that means refraining from robbing a bank or murdering someone, for instance, as farfetched as that may sound.

Actually, Mr. Freidman explained that it could include getting a speeding ticket or causing a minor accident with another vehicle by turning onto a one-way street and the police is called in. These actions would be considered bad behaviour. Fortunately, the leader of the Green Party and member for Saanich—Gulf Islands introduced an amendment to fix the problem. We introduced a similar amendment that went even further. I will come back to that in a moment.

The government's amendment appears quite good, but if the government acknowledges this flaw and the distinction between record suspension and expungement, why did it not simply agree to expunge the records from the outset? That was what my colleague from Victoria's bill called for. Incidentally, some Liberal and Conservative members supported it.

There are other differences between the two approaches, but I want to come back to the amendment. The Liberals moved a sub-amendment to the proposed amendment, which then lost an important element that was found in one of my amendments, which was rejected. Simple possession of a reasonable quantity of cannabis, just like its consumption for recreational, medical or other purposes, is now permitted under the law following the passage of Bill C-45 earlier in this Parliament. An individual who obtains a record suspension for simple possession of cannabis could subsequently commit another crime for all sorts of reasons. I am not excusing the crime or stating whether it would be justified. This is a hypothetical situation.

Under Bill C-93, if an individual with a criminal record for simple possession of marijuana has his criminal record suspended and subsequently commits a crime, no matter how minor or insignificant it may be, the record is reinstated. That makes no sense. I do not understand that. If the member for Sherbrooke, the member for Saskatoon West, the member for Courtenay—Alberni, or even I, or anyone else, were in possession of cannabis, that would not be considered unlawful under the act.

An individual can get a record suspension through a government-approved process because the offence they committed is no longer an offence. That individual might go on to commit a crime, perhaps due to being marginalized, as the vast majority of people burdened with the injustice of a criminal record for simple possession of cannabis are. This bill is an attempt to repair that injustice. The individual might be struggling with very difficult circumstances. We do not know all those circumstances.

The government says it wants to help these people, but its new system is flawed. If these people trip up at any point in the future, their criminal record will be reinstated and they will no longer benefit from the Liberals' system.

If their records were expunged, as the NDP and all the committee witnesses except for the minister suggested, the records would no longer exist. No matter what future difficulties people might encounter, that record would be gone for good.

I also want to speak about other vulnerable individuals whom this bill does not help. I want to speak about the issues raised by the Native Women's Association of Canada, which came to committee and said that one of the groups that would benefit the least from this legislation is indigenous women, because of all the barriers that would still exist despite this process.

Earlier, I asked the member for Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston about the fact that, by not making the process automatic and calling it “no-cost”, the government is misleading Canadians who may want to benefit from this process. Why is that? As every witness said in committee, there are sometimes enormous costs associated with obtaining the necessary documents to apply in the first place, especially for the individuals who seek to benefit from this process.

The application no longer has a cost, but people have to pay to get their fingerprints, pay to go to the court to find their old records, if they even still exist, which is something I will come back to in a moment, and they have to pay for any other documents they might need. The costs could be hundreds of dollars, and it varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

If people live far away from an urban centre, in a region that is already underserved and where vulnerable Canadians, indigenous people and others are already victims of a system that is fixed against them in many ways, they are even more disadvantaged by those barriers that would remain in place despite this legislation. That is unacceptable.

What could have been done? We proposed an amendment that was unfortunately ruled beyond the scope of the bill, which is interesting. I challenged the chair and the Liberals voted with the chair, which is not surprising, but the explanation that was provided by the law clerk in committee was interesting, when he argued why the amendments were beyond the scope of the bill. He said that all the bill seeks to do is take the existing record suspension process, which everyone agrees is fundamentally unequal, and make it a bit easier in some aspects.

However, by making it automatic, we would get rid of those barriers. It was pointed out to us by the Canadian Association of Black Lawyers, the Native Women's Association and others that many of these individuals do not even think they have criminal records anymore because they paid their fines, which is considered time served, and have moved on to other things. They do not even know.

Anyone in this room who has dealt with government, and certainly we have, in our offices, by the very nature of our work, knows that if it is hard enough for those of us within government to deal with the government apparatus and to have the proper knowledge, then certainly it is true for the most vulnerable Canadians.

Even the idea of making the system automatic was a compromise. We initially wanted criminal records to be expunged, but we said we could live with record suspensions. We were not happy, but we wanted the government to at least make the process automatic. It refused. It will not even accept a compromise.

I said earlier that I would come back to the issue of documentation and poor records management in Canada. It is madness. Ask the police about the Canadian police database. Ask about a crime being committed in Ontario and having to search for records in Alberta, Quebec or elsewhere. It is crazy to see how poorly managed these records are. One of the things that needs to be done is a digital upgrade.

The Conservatives proposed an amendment that all committee members supported. If a person could no longer locate documents because they had been destroyed or lost, they could sign a sworn statement explaining the lack of documentation. The Parole Board of Canada would be able to accept this sworn statement, this letter or declaration, so that the person could move forward with the process.

Everyone was happy. It was a step in the right direction. When the bill came back to the House at report stage, the amendment was quashed. The government turned it into an option the board could choose to make available in very specific cases. The amendment might as well not have been adopted, because it will not help anyone.

That brings me to my next point, which is about the most shameful and frustrating part of the whole process. I have been an MP for eight years. I have great respect for the public service and for public servants who work very hard with very little in the way of resources, despite what the general public might think. What I saw during the committee's study of this bill was unbelievable.

When we asked the minister why this process could not be made automatic and why the records could not be expunged, he flat out said that it was too much work. I swear that is what he said, and I invite my colleagues to read his testimony. We heard the same thing from the representatives of the parole board and during clause-by-clause consideration. When I proposed amendments to make things easier for the people this bill is meant to help, the Liberals asked officials to provide a reason for rejecting my amendments. What did they say? They said that they did not have the capacity, that they did not know how they would do that and that it would be too much work.

The government says that better is always possible. It introduced a bill to help people in our society who are caught in a tough situation, but it refuses to accept a better approach, one supported by everyone who testified at committee. It seems it is too much work for the parole board. According to police, civil society and every expert in the legal community, the parole board has been mismanaging records for far too long. It is far from being the best system. In fact, it is quite the opposite. It is unacceptable.

It is even more shameful given that the committee conducted a study. When the minister was appointed, he came in with great fanfare, much like the rest of the government. He said that the government was going to address all of the injustices created by the previous government and all of the injustices in society. To hear him talk, this was going to be the best government in the history of the universe. According to him, there was no need to worry.

Four years later, what is happening? It costs about $650 for a person to have their criminal record suspended. I do not have the exact number in front of me. There are some disadvantages to giving a speech without any notes. People are being asked to pay about $650 to apply for a record suspension. That measure was put in place by the previous government. Some of the wording has been changed. Now, we talk about record suspensions instead of pardons. As the former Conservative government would have said, a criminal can never be pardoned. The minister said that there was a major injustice in the system and that he was going to fix it.

What happened then? Following in the footsteps of several other members, a Liberal member who, I have to believe, had good intentions, hopped on the bandwagon and ordered a committee study. Most people will have only one opportunity in their entire life to introduce a motion or bill in the House. The member called for a study of criminal record suspensions.

I think he could have asked the committee to conduct the study. It would have gladly done it, but let us put that aside. The member's intentions were good. The member for Saint John—Rothesay appeared before the committee and said that an automatic process should be considered for minor crimes, such as simple possession of cannabis.

We did the work and produced a report. The committee presented its report to the House. The government said it would look at it. Incidentally, Public Safety Canada had already commissioned an Ekos survey that found that three-quarters of Canadians supported simplifying the process for applying for a criminal record suspension, because it would allow individuals to reintegrate into society and get a job. Indeed, 95% of people who are granted a pardon or record suspension do not reoffend.

What did the government do? If I were sitting down, I would fall out of my chair. The government presented the same recommendation that had already been made, which would have been a footnote to our study of the bill, based on what the minister said.

It really fuels cynicism when a government says it will do one thing when it comes to power, but then does not do it. One of the government's own members orders a study. The government says it will do it, and then it does not. Then, a month before the House of Commons' last sitting before the election, the same Liberal members say in committee that we did not really have enough time to do the study and that perhaps it should have been done or will be done with the next government.

This is why we oppose Bill C-93. In the justice system and the public safety system, people were far too often penalized for the colour of their skin or the place they lived. We truly want to help these people. We do not want half measures that fuel cynicism.

Third Reading

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question.

As we have seen for going on four years now, the Liberals always seem to be looking for new ways to make life harder for Canadians. As the hon. member was saying, there are much simpler ways to go about drafting this type of legislation, but the Liberals have gone with a much more complicated process in order to pander to their friends. That is my analysis.

Unfortunately, it was the same thing with Bill C-45. By refusing to take the concerns of municipalities into consideration, the government made things a lot harder for them. They basically kicked the problem to the provinces. The Liberal mind will always seek to make things as complicated as possible for Canadians, who are sure to struggle as a result.

One can only hope the Liberal reign will soon come to an end so we can finally move on with our lives.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this debate on Bill C-93 on record suspensions for simple possession of cannabis. I will be sharing my time with one of my colleagues.

From the outset I would like to say a few words about Bill C-45 because it is impossible to forget. It was no great feat of the government opposite, but it was one of the Prime Minister's rare accomplishments. That should be noted.

Nonetheless, no one will forget that Bill C-45 was bungled from the start and now that it has been in effect since last October, it certainly has not been a resounding success. Many of the projected outcomes of legalizing marijuana did not come to fruition, including reducing the sale of cannabis on the black market to curb organized crime. In fact, the opposite happened. Cannabis sales on the black market have increased.

I cannot ignore the fact that the government opposite also rejected our amendment to create a public registry of investors in the cannabis industry. However, since many of them have direct ties to the Liberal Party and since the money comes from tax havens, we are not holding our breath for the government to set up a public registry. The Liberals said that they would do politics differently and transparently. Fortunately their time is coming to an end.

When the Prime Minister came to power, he decided that his 2015 election promise to pass Bill C-45 at any cost was a national priority, even though other priorities could have easily come before Bill C-45. Like many Canadians, I still have a hard time believing that there was absolutely nothing more important in Canada than legalizing marijuana. Too many people put their trust in the Prime Minister in 2015, believing that he was creating hope in many respects for Canadians. Now, in 2019, it is plain to see that he made a lot of promises and did not follow through on much.

Was legalization truly more important than the economy, safety and security, justice and the future of our children? I believe the history books will confirm that that was indeed the case in this 42nd Parliament.

Getting back to Bill C-93, I want to point out that it can lead to confusion with respect to the use of the term “suspension” in the notion of the record suspension for simple cannabis possession. I want to highlight the importance of thoroughly understanding everything about this notion because many people are surprised to learn about the consequences this could eventually have when they wish to cross the border into the United States.

As we know, U.S. customs have always been very strict when checking the records of Canadians seeking to cross the border and enter their country. They have become even stricter with the legalization of cannabis. When they see that a Canadian has a suspended record for simple possession of marijuana, I am convinced, as are others, that this will have negative rather than positive repercussions. The expungement of criminal records for the simple possession of cannabis would have avoided all of this.

This leads me to wonder about the effectiveness and the goal of this measure. If they wanted to do something about this, record expungement would potentially have been much more effective.

Furthermore, we are debating this matter because after the government legalized marijuana, many Canadians were left with a criminal record for simple possession and inevitably wanted this record expunged. They know very well that a suspension is not as good as an expungement.

Many Canadians have this offence on their criminal records, which prevents them from travelling to the United States. This could be why a powerful lobby asked the Liberal government to suspend the records. Funnily enough, this demand was very much a ploy to win votes, as there are not many days left before the end of this Parliament.

Bill C-45 took effect in October 2018, and the Prime Minister chose to ignore the concerns about the legalization of cannabis expressed by municipalities, police forces, employers, doctors and a number of concerned parents. The Liberals rushed to introduce Bill C-93 at the last minute, at the end of this Parliament, just before the upcoming election. This makes me think that they are desperately trying to pad their record, which is currently light on positives.

The Liberals already promised to legalize cannabis so now they want to please another consumer group, those who were charged with simple possession of cannabis, by quickly getting rid of their criminal record. Still today, an offender with a criminal record for simple possession of cannabis has no choice but to wait between five and 10 years to apply for a pardon. The application costs $631. It is important to reiterate that the cost associated with applying for a pardon was determined based on the cost to the Canadian government and taxpayers, which is fair and equitable. We always felt that is was not up to law-abiding taxpayers to pay for those who break the law.

Bill C-93 is a fait accompli. That being said, even though sound management of public funds is a Conservative priority, we agreed to make pardon applications for simple possession of marijuana free of charge. We know that some verifications were made, that roughly 10,000 people would be eligible to apply for a pardon and that the cost associated with these applications, which would be covered by taxpayers, would be roughly $2.5 million.

It is important to remind those tuning in at this late hour that the purpose of Bill C-93 is to pardon individuals accused of simple possession of cannabis. These are not people with long and colourful rap sheets. As many people have pointed out, the charges usually stem from youthful indiscretions, and in most cases, that is something we can understand.

As such, we believe that Canadians should have timely access to no-fee record suspension. However, as with any bill, it is vital that we ensure it is enforced intelligently, fairly and realistically so that it becomes a good law once passed.

Conservatives understand perfectly well that criminal records for simple possession of cannabis should not create an unjust burden for Canadians now that cannabis use is legal.

Nevertheless, as a responsible party that respects law enforcement, the justice system and public safety, we will always take it upon ourselves to closely monitor the implementation of Bill C-93.

Criminal Records Act

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague, the member for Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, began his speech by talking about all the work done by the committee.

Some of his comments are the same ones we often hear when undertaking studies in committee. The Conservative members proposed amendments during the process. Our approach is very technical. We do not play political games when we move amendments. We really try to improve the legislation and how it will apply in real life.

The member started to speak a little about how this bill was treated in committee. I would like to hear more about the Conservative amendments that were rejected.

I also think that this bill should have been introduced along with Bills C-45 and C-46. In fact, the three issues should have been dealt with in an omnibus bill.

As a member of Parliament, I voted in favour of the expungement of criminal records. At the time, I believed that it would be the best approach. Bills C-45 and C-46 were passed and received royal assent, and the Liberals have had plenty of time to try to find a technical solution to the problems faced by people with a criminal record who are applying for a pardon, while addressing criminal records at the provincial and municipal levels and the associated costs.

I would like my colleague to talk about the work done in committee. Which Conservative amendments were rejected by the government, even though they would have reduced the impact on people on the ground and made this bill better?

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. Indeed, in all matters, there are ways of doing things.

The past four years have been intense, for example, with Bill C-45, the most botched bill that the House has ever had to deal with. It nevertheless has a big impact on Canadian society.

The same is true with Bill C-93. Time is running out. As I mentioned in my speech, we proposed simple, intelligent amendments, but the government rejected them. It is also still not listening to police officers.

Lastly, the government has had no idea what it was doing all along.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-93, an act to provide no-cost, expedited record suspensions for simple possession of cannabis.

Before talking about Bill C-93, I have to say a few words about Bill C-45, because Bill C-93 builds on it. One of the Prime Minister's rare accomplishments from the past four years is a completely botched bill. From the start, Bill C-45, the Cannabis Act, was not well received, especially because of the way the bill was originally put together. Bill C-45 was poorly received because marijuana legalization was by far the most pressing national issue for the Prime Minister. Instead of addressing organized crime, violence against women, or the economy, the government chose to focus on Bill C-45 to legalize marijuana. It was very urgent.

In her speech, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness mentioned information obtained from journalist Alec Castonguay of L'actualité. According to Mr. Castonguay, organized crime has experienced a drop in sales. I wonder if my colleague could provide more information that could be verified with police forces like the RCMP and the Canadian Police Association, which are on the ground and must receive much more technical information that is also available to the government. Unfortunately, we cannot consult that information. Mr. Castonguay is an excellent journalist, but I think the government could provide us with more specific information.

What mattered most to the Prime Minister was giving Canadians from coast to coast to coast access to cannabis. The House may recall that that was his first campaign promise. Now that Bill C-45 has become law, the Prime Minister is realizing that he forgot a step. That is why, at the end of this session of Parliament, we now have to study Bill C-93.

In 2015, the Prime Minister promised an open and transparent government. He promised to save Canada from the bad Stephen Harper. He made many, many promises. Many Canadians put their trust in him and voted for him. Some of them believed so strongly in his message of hope that they decided to run in the last election “because it is 2015”. Today, in 2019, after becoming disillusioned and witnessing the Prime Minister's many mistakes, many Canadians and even some Liberal members have basically thrown in the towel.

Canadians are tired of seeing the Prime Minister dance around when it comes time to work. They are frustrated with seeing the Prime Minister talk when he should be taking action. They are worried that the Prime Minister is welcoming terrorists, contract killers and other criminals without lifting a finger to help victims of human trafficking and our veterans who gave everything for Canada. They are sick of seeing the Liberals go after law-abiding citizens and ignoring organized crime and ISIS traitors. They are sick of it.

They saw the Prime Minister go after women in his cabinet because they resisted. What was their crime? They simply wanted to obey the law.

Canadians and the Liberal MPs who have decided not to come back are sick of seeing the Prime Minister refuse to take responsibility for his blunders, and this October, Canadians will take action. A number of Liberal members have already taken action, in fact. Several have quit the caucus, and others have already announced that they are leaving politics. The Toronto Star is already touting a potential replacement for the position of leader of the Liberal Party. They are sick of all this too, but that is another story.

Bill C-93 would change the pardon process and eliminate fees for Canadians previously convicted of marijuana possession. With cannabis legal as of October 2018, this bill would help Canadians who were convicted of something that is now legal by allowing them to apply for a record suspension without being subject to the usual waiting period or fees. Offenders usually have to wait five to 10 years after serving their sentence, depending on the type of conviction, and the application fee is $631.

This legislative measure seems to be another proposal that was hastily brought forward for political purposes. It is obvious that the Liberals did not take the time to do a thorough analysis. As it stands, this bill proposes a new type of record suspension that cannot be easily revoked and that can be granted automatically without any knowledge of an individual's past history. As with Bill C-45, we are committed to fixing this bill in October, when we form the next government. We want to ensure that we maintain the integrity of our record suspension system.

We support the idea of an expedited pardon process, but we want to ensure that it is a fair process. That is why we proposed amendments. We very quickly realized that the bill could be improved. However, the Liberals have a majority in committee and in the House, so they no longer feel the need to listen to Canadians. For example, we proposed that applications for a record suspension be submitted through an online portal. My colleague spoke about this earlier, and I would like to thank her, because this is new to me. The Liberals have finally listened to the Conservative MPs, but the fact remains that the amendment was rejected. Not only would this measure have saved taxpayers money, but it would also have made it easier for Canadians to apply.

We proposed a measure to allow applicants whose records were destroyed to swear an affidavit explaining their situation and certifying that they are eligible. 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. Once again, I remain doubtful.

Why would they refuse a measure proposed by the Conservatives that would help the public? We do not agree much on the process overall, but we tried to improve it. Our Liberal colleagues agreed with this change in committee. Why, then, did the government reject the idea at report stage? We still do not understand why this amendment was rejected.

We also proposed to restore the Parole Board's discretion to conduct inquiries to determine the applicant's conduct since the date of the conviction. Obviously, someone who has committed other crimes since the original conviction should not be eligible for a pardon like someone else who did not commit another crime. The Liberals also rejected this proposal.

Another one of our amendments would have restored the Parole Board's discretion to conduct an inquiry into all of the factors it could consider to determine whether granting a record suspension would bring the administration of justice into disrepute. The Liberals obviously defeated this amendment.

Our proposals were therefore serious and balanced, but the Liberals, with their majority on the committee and in the House, did what they wanted. They agreed to only one of our amendments, the one requiring the board to include a review of the law's success rate and the associated costs in its annual report. Of course that was only to appease us. I thank them, but it is still a little insulting to have those amendments rejected, considering how we worked in committee.

Ideological fights often erupt in the House. The NDP thinks one way, the Liberals think a certain way, the Conservatives think a certain way and the Green Party thinks a certain way. However, during the committee study, we managed to set ideology aside and come up with technical amendments that had nothing to do with ideology. If we try to co-operate and that does not work, the members opposite should not be surprised when there is some friction on certain issues.

There are many examples to show that the Liberals do not take crime seriously. The amendments we proposed would have improved the bill's procedural fairness and given the Parole Board of Canada better tools to enforce this new law more effectively.

As currently worded, this bill allows for a pardon before the fines are even paid. That seems to be very bad accounting to me. In other words, the fines will remain on the individuals' records, but the provinces will have no way of collecting them. We see that Bill C-93 is poorly crafted, just like Bill C-45. These are aspects of a bill that was rushed in order to fulfill a promise at the last minute. In her speech, the parliamentary secretary said that all this would be fixed later. In trying to rush things, the government is taking shortcuts.

In October, when a new Conservative government is elected, we will have to redo all this work to ensure that all the actors involved, the agencies, organizations, and the provinces, have the answers to their questions. There are many, many questions that remain unanswered.

With respect to the record suspension process, the Department of Public Safety estimates that this measure will cost roughly $2.5 million. Jean Chrétien said that the gun registry would cost $2 million and it ended up costing $2 billion. We know that likely will not happen, but we know what those evaluations are worth.

Moreover, while approximately 250,000 people have previously been charged with simple possession of marijuana in Canada, officials estimate that only 10,000 people will apply, possibly less. That is puzzling. To come up with the figure of $2.5 million, it was estimated that this would cost the government $250 per person. That is less than the current amount of $631 per application because there will be no need to do a background check, as is normally the case.

That being said, the 10,000-people estimate does not seem very high to me. At first, the information we had indicated that 500,000 people had been charged with simple possession of marijuana. In the end, officials told us that it was in fact only 250,000. It is also surprising that they expect only 10,000 people to apply. Based on various assessment criteria, the government does not expect more people than that to apply for a pardon.

The other option, expungement, would involve minimal cost, but it would not apply to individuals charged with more serious offences who negotiated lesser charges or who were in possession of a quantity above the current legal limit. That could be problematic. Judges, Crown prosecutors and the police negotiate deals with individuals who are guilty of other crimes to speed up the process, but if we do not take people's criminal records into account in the pardon process, they could be let off the hook for a different crime.

In that regard, Tom Stamatakis, president of the Canadian Police Association, said the following:

In those circumstances, it is possible that both the Crown and the court may have accepted the plea agreement based on the assumption that the conviction would be a permanent record of the offence and would not have accepted the lesser charge if they knew this would be cleared without any possibility of review at a future date.

That is why, after hearing the testimony of the Canadian Police Association, we proposed an amendment to the bill to delete clause 6.

In his haste to deliver on his self-imposed legislative agenda, the Prime Minister failed to consider the many concerns of municipalities, law enforcement, employers, scientists and doctors regarding the legalization of cannabis. Similarly, the Liberals adopted this bill related to cannabis legalization in the last few weeks of this Parliament without consulting the main stakeholders, including law enforcement.

Now that cannabis is legal, Conservatives understand that criminal records for simple possession of cannabis should not place an unfair burden on Canadians, but we will be monitoring the implementation of this bill, and we promise to assess how well it is working and how fair it is when we take office in October.

As with Bill C-45, the Conservatives will also amend Bill C-93 in order to ensure that it effectively provides appropriate access to no-fee record suspension. We believe that Canadians should have timely access to no-fee record suspension and we will ensure that the law upholds the integrity of the Parole Board of Canada so that Canadians can have their records suspended.

Come October, when we form the government, we will have a lot of cleaning up to do. Our priority will be the real needs of Canadians, including their safety and their prosperity. Everything we do will be for Canadians. When we go to India, it will not be to dance and wear costumes. When we go to Washington, it will be to work and to clean up the mess made of the new free trade agreement. When we invest taxpayers' money, I guarantee it will not be to reward murderers, terrorists or dictatorships that are detaining our citizens on bogus charges. We will also clean up the mess at our borders. We will prioritize new Canadians who obey Canadian laws, and we will crack down on those who cheat and jump the queue. As a government, we will show compassion to those in need, as well as taxpayers. We will take action to improve the environment, but not by dipping into taxpayers' pockets.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate our hon. colleague's candour and honesty in answering questions.

One of the questions I have goes back to the fines that are owed, specifically in terms of municipalities. The number one cost to municipalities is policing. With the passing of Bill C-45, there have been additional costs that have been downloaded to the municipalities. They are still trying to work out how they recover those added costs between the provincial governments. There is still a lot of what-ifs up in the air. One of the ways municipalities would be able to actually mitigate some of the costs would be the fines that would be owed to them through these convictions.

If they are left owing, there is still another what-if. Is the federal government prepared to step in and assist these municipalities in terms of the offloading, paying or assisting with the payment of those fines?

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to start off the debate at third reading of Bill C-93. This measure will make the pardon process simpler and quicker for Canadians convicted only of simple possession of cannabis. This is the next logical step in our efforts to establish a safer and more efficient system for cannabis.

During the last election, we committed to legalizing and regulating cannabis. We did that last fall. At that time, we committed to establishing a way for people to get their records pardoned with no waiting period or application fee. Now we are on the cusp of passing legislation to do just that.

I am very appreciative of the members of Parliament who have participated in the debate on the bill in the chamber. I would especially like to thank all the members of the public safety committee for their usual thorough analysis. My thanks go out as well to the witnesses and to those who provided written briefs.

Ordinarily, to apply for a pardon, people have to serve their full sentence, wait five or up to 10 years, collect and submit police and court records, and pay a $631 application fee. People also have to convince a member of the Parole Board that they meet certain subjective criteria, namely, that they have been of good conduct, that the pardon would give them a measurable benefit and that granting them a pardon would not bring the administration of justice into disrepute.

It is an expensive and time-consuming process, but people go through it because of how valuable a pardon really is. The public safety committee has studied pardons at length, not only in the context of this bill, but as part of a broader study initiated by Motion No. 161 from the member for Saint John—Rothesay.

During that study, a witness from the Elizabeth Fry Society said that a pardon is like “being able to turn that page over” and allows people “to pursue paths that were closed to them.” A witness from the John Howard Society testified that pardons “allow the person to be restored to the community, as a contributing member without the continuing penalization of the past wrong.”

Getting a pardon means that when a person undergoes a criminal records check, it comes up empty. That makes it easier to get a job, get an education, rent an apartment, travel, volunteer in a community and simply live life without the burden and the stigma of a criminal record.

Clearly, now that possession of cannabis is legal, people who have been convicted of nothing but that should be able to shed their criminal records. Given the reality that the prohibition of cannabis had disproportionate impacts on marginalized communities, it is important for the process to be as simple, straightforward and accessible as possible.

That is why, with Bill C-93, we are taking the unprecedented step of completely eliminating the $631 application fee and completely eliminating the waiting period. We are also completely eliminating the possibility that the Parole Board could deny such an application on the basis of subjective criteria like good conduct.

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

Due to an amendment we voted on at report stage yesterday, people whose only sentence was a fine will not be required to submit court documents as part of their application. That is because the main purpose of court documents for those applicants would be to show that the fine was paid, and that just will not matter anymore. Taken together, these measures remove many of the expenses and obstacles that could otherwise prevent people from getting pardons and moving on with their lives.

I was glad to see that the bill received overwhelming support from hon. members in the House yesterday. We have a process that will be created by Bill C-93 that is simple and straightforward without unnecessary obstacles placed in the path of applicants.

One of the issues that has come up over the course of the study of Bill C-93 is the question of why it proposes an application-based system. Some have asked why 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.

For one thing, it generally does not contain information related to summary conviction offences, which is how cannabis possession is most often charged. And for another, it generally does not say whether a person possessed cannabis or an entirely different substance.

Information is entered into the database by individual police officers right across the country. Most of the time for a drug possession charge, the officer just enters “possession of a controlled substance”. It could be cannabis but it also could be cocaine.

To get the details and to find out about summary convictions as well as indictable offences, police and court documents have to be checked. Unlike in California, those documents are kept by many different jurisdictions. They are housed in provincial and municipal repositories across the country, each with its own individual record-keeping system.

Many Canadian jurisdictions have not digitized their records. They exist in boxes and filing cabinets in the basements of local courthouses and police stations. Without applications that enable the Parole Board to zero in on the relevant documents, it would take a huge amount of staff and many years to go through it all. Quite simply, a flick of a switch option that we have seen in California would be wonderful and we would like nothing better than to do just that. In Canada however, that is simply not physically possible in any reasonable time frame. Nevertheless, we are certainly aware of the importance of making the application system under Bill C-93 as simple and accessible as we possibly can.

The public safety committee has made recommendations to continue seeking ways of further reducing the cost to applicants. We have responded with a report stage amendment removing the need for court records for some applicants, and we will keep working to this end.

The committee also encouraged the Parole Board to explore options for moving towards a more digitized system capable of receiving applications electronically, something particularly important for Canadians in rural areas.

For the reasons I mentioned earlier, enabling a truly electronic system would involve technological enhancements not only at the Parole Board but in provinces, territories and municipalities as well. That is a considerable undertaking, but I think we all know that one day it must be done. Our grandchildren should not be breathing the dust off the paper records that we use today. Therefore, I agree with the committee's recommendation to make that advancement happen sooner rather than later.

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. It is developing a community outreach strategy with a particular focus on the communities most affected by the criminalization of cannabis to make sure that people know about this new expedited process and how to access it, because accessibility is the most important element of this. The goal is for as many Canadians as possible to take advantage of this opportunity to clear their criminal records and to move on with their lives. It is to their benefit and to the benefit of all of us that they be able to do so.

I would like to conclude by reminding the House just how far the cannabis file has come during this Parliament, from the blue ribbon panel chaired by Anne McLellan, to the massive cross-country consultations in communities from coast to coast to coast, to the passage of Bill C-45 and Bill C-46, both of which received extensive study in both chambers of Parliament, and the coming into force of Bill C-45 this past October.

We legalized and regulated cannabis, as promised, with the goal of keeping it out of the hands of children and keeping profits out of the hands of criminals, and early signs are encouraging. In the first three months of 2019, according to Statistics Canada, the criminal share of the overall cannabis market dropped to just 38%, which is down from 51% over the same period a year before. Reporting on those numbers recently in L'actualité magazine, journalist Alec Castonguay said, “Organized crime no longer has a stranglehold on the cannabis market. It is in decline”.

The prohibition of cannabis was counterproductive. It was a public policy failure. The new regime we put in place last October is already showing encouraging signs, and Bill C-93 is the logical next step. I encourage all hon. members to join with the government to pass this bill so that the Senate can begin its consideration, and so that Canadians can begin benefiting from this new simplified, expedited pardon process as soon as possible.

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

Madam Speaker, when I was in opposition and Stephen Harper was the prime minister, fairly strong words came down from the PMO. If an opposition member were to propose an amendment, to not allow it to see the light of day. That has changed from the time of Stephen Harper to the current Prime Minister. We have a prime minister who encourages members of Parliament of all political stripes to look at ways in which legislation can be improved. Whether it is this legislation, or Bill C-45 or many other pieces of legislation, we have seen ministers respond to the presentations being made and listen to members on all sides of the standing committees.

Would the member not agree that this is a much better attitude toward standing committees than Stephen Harper ever had?

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Today, Madam Speaker, I am pleased to take part in the debate on Bill C-93, which aims to provide record suspensions for simple possession of marijuana.

I would like us to focus on the word “suspension” and the effect said suspension could have when people try to cross the border. During border controls, if American customs officers do background checks on Canadians and find record suspensions for simple possession of marijuana, I wonder what value they would have when compared to expungement, which would certainly be more effective.

As everyone knows, many Canadians have this type of criminal record and so cannot travel to the United States. That may be the reason why a major lobby was pushing the Liberal government to provide record suspensions, which it did in a clear attempt to win votes, seeing as there are only three weeks left in the 42nd Parliament. I am not really sure that this will result in more services or freedoms for Canadians abroad.

I would like to come back to Bill C-45, which is what led us to Bill C-93.

The 42nd Parliament will no doubt go down in history as the one that made legalizing marijuana the top priority. It was done under a Liberal government. I am still wondering why it was considered more important than the economy, the environment and our children's future.

When I made the decision to run as a Conservative candidate in the 2006 election, I was hoping to leave the world a better place for future generations through public policy. This hope is what really motivated me, because I felt that, in my riding, which was a Bloc Québécois riding, there was not enough collaboration with the federal government, and there were not enough federal programs and services. I also thought that the Liberal government of the day was undermining the Canadian economy through its interventions in other countries. These interventions were sometimes hard to understand, and they were impeding international trade. I owned a small business at the time, and I exported hay. Some of the decisions made by the Canadian government were having practically immediate repercussions on my American customers.

That said, I do wonder why such a powerful lobby had such a strong influence on the Liberal Party. When I say lobby, I mean market. The market for marijuana, for drugs, is worth billions. I never understood why the Liberal members did not brush off this powerful lobby.

Political parties often make policy decisions at biennial conventions. They make decisions for the future based on the votes of delegates from each riding and province. Some 2,000 to 3,000 delegates present policies to be voted on.

I do not understand how a party with 2,000 delegates managed to adopt policies to legalize marijuana. Nevertheless, that is what happened. The Liberal Party's hands were tied by its own policies. The Liberals voted, and they kept their promise.

At the last Liberal convention, they also promised to legalize all drugs, which I find quite concerning. They kept their promise to legalize marijuana, and now they must keep their promise to legalize all drugs. It makes me worry about our country's future.

I have always believed that we enter federal politics to make things better for future generations. In my humble opinion, things have taken a disastrous turn. When we regain power and return to the other side of the House, we will have an unprecedented mess to clean up. The Liberal Party has been running amok for four years, and the bills will start to come in. The credit card is maxed out. The government has not started paying it off, and it is going to saddle future generations with this debt, keeping society from moving forward.

We deal with very important matters, and Canadians will have to choose a vision for the future of their country. The Liberal Party tried to impose a vision on Canadians with its promises, but Canadians will remember that, of all the promises made by the Liberals in 2015, the only one they kept was legalizing marijuana. That is the only promise that led to major change in our country, but not for the better.

Today, we are beginning to feel the effects of that change. I recently spoke with the chief of police in my riding. He talked to me about the problems and adverse effects of cannabis legalization in our high schools, including an increase in consumption. We do not yet have the data to prove this, but it is being compiled. It is not legal cannabis consumption that is on the rise in our high schools.

A study published this week in the media reported that a teen's first use of marijuana unfortunately leaves permanent cognitive damage. A father's greatest hope for his children is that they will grow up in a healthy environment so they have more choice and opportunities, which must lead to a better life.

I am 55 years old and I still have some years left. Throughout my life, I have seen people from my generation grow up. Those who used marijuana did not necessarily get the opportunity to achieve their full potential. It can be the difference between earning $14, $28 or $50 an hour. We are practically all equal at the start, but on life’s journey, some people stand out, others stay where they are and there are those whose lives fall apart. All too often, what they share is an addiction to illicit substances such as marijuana and possibly hard drugs.

This week, one of my constituents called me in a panic, once again because of marijuana and other drugs. She was looking for her daughter, whom she had not seen in a month. She is well aware that her daughter uses drugs—she admitted it. She is desperately looking for her daughter, who is in a city somewhere. When people disappear like this, it has a lasting impact on all their family members and friends. Unfortunately, this is happening more and more, because of the decisions this government made under the influence of a powerful lobby seeking only to legalize its market.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member across the way and also the member for St. Catharines for pointing out the consultations that happened on Bill C-45, which is not exactly the legislation we are debating. However, I can echo that we had consultations in Guelph, Wellington and Kitchener-Waterloo. The Waterloo Regional Police Service was there. There was a lot of work that went into the legislation.

Now we are talking about how to make it fair for people who were convicted under a previous crime, and the idea of expungement. I asked the hon. member from the NDP a question on expungement. When people are going to the States, where there is an existing criminal record on file, if we remove the file in Canada, there would be a disconnect between the two countries. The member's answer was that we should go to an expungement regime in the United States, as if we could enforce that from Canada.

Would the hon. member across the way comment on the idea of expungement and the negative effects it would have on Canadians travelling to the United States, where the regime not only does not have expungement but also considers this a crime in that country?

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

Madam Speaker, we have heard a few Conservative members talking about the rush on Bill C-45. It was three years from the time of the election and commitment. There were consultations across the country, including in my own community in Niagara, which is four ridings. We heard from mayors, fire chiefs, the police chief and senior officials at the police station in Niagara Falls. We had a meeting there. We met with the District School Board of Niagara. We met with Public Health. That was just one consultation in Niagara. I know the hon. minister did that across the country.

How can the hon. member stand there and call Bill C-45 a rush after three years? It sounds like, after 100 years of prohibition, Conservatives would like to wait another 100 years for this change to happen. If the member could explain how three years is a rush, I would like to hear it.

[Guy Lauzon, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Madam Speaker, I do not often rise in the House to speak, but Bill C-93 is a very interesting piece of legislation. In all honesty, I think Bill C-93 came as a result of good intentions. The government saw a problem it had created because of some previous legislation and said that it had to fix it.

We should go back to the original issue. The original issue was that the Liberals rushed a piece of legislation. They tried desperately to meet self-imposed deadlines that they should not have made. The Liberals made promises that, in all honesty, they realized they could not keep. Then, to try to keep the promises, they crafted some very poor legislation. Of course, I am talking about the bill that legalized marijuana.

As some of my colleagues have said, the jury is still out. I do not feel that the jury is out, but some people say that the jury is still out on whether marijuana is a gateway drug. I have some personal experiences in my family, and I would argue that marijuana certainly is a gateway drug. I do not think we are seeing the full ramifications of the legalization of marijuana.

We are discussing Bill C-93 this afternoon because the government is trying to come up with a quick fix for some flawed legislation to legalize marijuana. The end result would be a brand new category of record suspensions, which could not be easily revoked and could be granted automatically without any insight into an individual's history.

Let us imagine a person charged with possession of marijuana. For the poor innocent teenager who is caught smoking marijuana and charged, I am 100% in favour of striking that off his record. However, the people who are repeatedly charged, or the people who plead down maybe from a charge of selling marijuana to a charge of simple possession, I do not think should automatically be granted a pardon.

It is a good thing there is an election in October. Hopefully, what will happen in October is that there will be a change in government. The new government will be able to address some of the flaws we are seeing in Bill C-45 and Bill C-93. Hopefully, the Conservatives will form that new government, and we will bring some common sense and some pragmatic ideas on how to deal with this unfortunate happening.

In essence, we support expedited pardons. We think it is a good idea. There is a little good news in this legislation. I am not part of the committee, but I understand that while the Liberals did not accept all of our amendments, two were accepted that helped to improve the bill's procedural fairness. They would require the Parole Board to include a review of the program in its annual report. If the Conservatives are elected in October, and if there is any justice, we will be elected in October, we will be able to review this, because after a year, this would be subject to review.

Everyone makes mistakes. We realize that the government made a mistake when it legalized marijuana. However, we are supposed to learn from our mistakes. We try to teach our children to learn from their mistakes. We should learn from our own mistakes.

Unfortunately, the Prime Minister, in his rush to meet self-imposed political deadlines, failed to act to adequately address the many concerns of municipalities, law enforcement, employers, scientists and doctors about this cannabis legislation. I am here to say that in my riding of Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, we are feeling the ramifications of legalized marijuana.

In my riding, I have had police officers stop me and say that they do not know what to do with this. They are not sure about the equipment they were given to test whether folks are impaired, or whatever. It is the same with employers. Employers are shaking their heads and asking how they are going to deal with this terrible legalization of marijuana. They are telling me that people are going out during their breaks, smoking up and coming back to work. It is legal, so what is an employer to do about it? People are very confused about this.

Now what do we do? We would add to the problem with Bill C-93. If the government had taken its time and not had its self-imposed deadline at all costs, and instead done Bill C-45 correctly, we would not have this problem. Police officers, employers and all the labour unions told telling us how to do Bill C-45 properly; there was a lot of input. The government had to get it done and now we have ended up trying to fix the problem with Bill C-93.

As I said, Bill C-93 is well-intentioned and has some good features. We agree that a person who just had one charge should not have it on his record, and we would like to facilitate its removal.

From what members of the committee tell me, the government would not listen to suggestions. I cannot understand why it would not listen to the suggestion made on behalf of the Canadian Police Association, which I believe is a reasonable one to improve the bill, namely, calling for the Parole Board to retain limited flexibility and discretion to conduct investigations and to ensure that the small number of applications by habitual offenders are vetted. This would have ensured that these individuals did not take advantage of a process that is clearly not intended for their cases.

The Canadian Police Association deals with this issue day in and day out. It has the experience and we should be listening to it. That was a wonderful amendment. I wish somebody from the government side would explain why it has no intention of including that amendment in the legislation. The amendment is so reasonable and would be so helpful, yet it was defeated at committee where the Liberals have the majority.

There were other amendments that I understand were also rejected. One of them was to restore the power to make inquiries to determine the applicant's conduct since the date of conviction. Let us say a young person made a mistake when they were 15 years old and have not had a problem since. I could understand our pardoning that person very easily. However, what if that person has had a terrible record of breaking and entering, selling marijuana and all of these other kinds of things? Would we still give that individual a pardon? Under this proposed legislation, we would not have any choice because the government did not agree to this amendment.

The bottom line is that I will be supporting this legislation, but it is not the way it should be. The truth of the matter is that the government should have taken its time. Why did we get this piece of legislation in the House at the last minute? It is because the government was too busy with other priorities and it did not seem to matter. All of a sudden, now it wants to ram this through at the last minute. I do not think that is the way this place should operate.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Madam Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to rise today to speak to Bill C-93, an act to provide no-cost, expedited record suspensions for simple possession of cannabis. I will be sharing my time with the member for Edmonton West.

I want to start by stating unequivocally that the Conservative Party and our Conservative leader have stated unequivocally that they have no intention of reopening or again making marijuana possession illegal. That train has left the station.

What we will be doing with respect to Bill C-45 is making corrections to the bill. Obviously, the legislation was enacted last year, and it has been several months since then. I remember saying at the time that although I did not support the bill for several reasons that I stated publicly, I had concerns with respect to issues at the border.

There were also issues that I thought were hypocritical within the bill, namely, with respect to possession of cannabis by young people in this country. I was also concerned that the police were not ready for the legislation to come out given the tools they needed for enforcement of the legislation's drug-impaired driving provisions. I have talked to a lot of young people in my riding, and I still have concerns about the broader issue of the effects of marijuana as gateway drug that could lead to other drugs.

Those concerns are still valid. They still exist. However, again, this is the law of the land now, and there is no changing that. It is certainly my intent to make sure that we do not roll back the clock on this piece of legislation and that it continues.

I will also say that in the year and a bit that I was critic for veterans affairs, I really came to understand the effects of marijuana on individuals and families, and how it has helped move people away from opioid use to marijuana use. I heard many times at the veterans affairs committee and as I crossed the country to speak to veterans and their families that opioids suppressed a lot of emotion and feelings among our veterans, but when they were able to switch to marijuana, it really helped open things up. There was less paranoia from marijuana than opioids. They were able to function socially. There were other functions that became a reality to these families, as well. I became a big proponent of medical marijuana for our veterans in my time as critic for veterans affairs.

I will also say that within my family, marijuana has become important for my cousin who suffers from epilepsy. There was a time when he was smoking medicinal marijuana, and it was helping him with respect to his seizures. He was seeing fewer of them.

Those experiences really caused me to rethink my position, particularly on the issue of medical marijuana. I am strong supporter and proponent of it. As I said earlier, it is not our intention to roll back this legislation. The toothpaste has left the tube, and we are not going to put it back in.

The legislation before us today is important, as well. Those who have been charged with simple possession are really being penalized. In my office, over the course of the last three-plus years I have been a member of Parliament, I have had members of the public come to talk to me about the impact that a simple possession charge has had on their life. They are unable to cross the border, for example, and there is the cost of having the charge suspended, and there is the impact of the charge on employment.

As the legislation stands, I am prepared to support it. However, I also understand there are flaws with it. Quite frankly, in many pieces of legislation introduced over the years by the Liberals, flaws have happened regularly. That is why the legislation went to committee.

Not only were there several amendments put forward by the Conservative side, some of which were rejected, some amendments were brought forward recently. At the end of the day, we are trying to ensure we get legislation in place that works for Canadians. There has been some concern with respect to this legislation.

By way of background, the bill proposes to make changes to the pardon process and waive the fee for Canadians with a past conviction for pot possession. For the people I dealt with, in several cases the fee was quite cumbersome. In many cases, they were low-income Canadians and members in my riding who simply could not afford to pay the fee. Therefore, that fee will be waived for a past conviction of pot possession.

The legislation was introduced in October 2018. The bill seeks to assist Canadians who were criminalized for something that is now legal, without that individual having to wait the usual time to pay the fee otherwise associated with a record suspension. The fact it is now legal is an important element of the legislation. Therefore, those who have a simple possession charge should be allowed to have an expedited record suspension.

Typically, offenders must wait five to 10 years, depending on the type of conviction, after they have served the sentence. The cost of applying is $631. The legislation would amend the Criminal Records Act and references the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Narcotic Control Regulations and the National Defence Act.

As I said, as the bill went through committee, several concerns were highlighted. In particular, the Canadian Police Association was a witness. It suggested two amendments, calling for the Parole Board to retain limited flexibility and discretion to conduct investigations and to ensure the small number of applications from habitual offenders would be vetted. It would ensure that these individuals would not take advantage of a process that was clearly not intended for their case. That important amendment was put forward by the Canadian Police Association.

It also talked about restoring the Parole Board's power to make inquiries to determine the applicant's conduct since the date of conviction. That was an important aspect. Oftentimes, the behaviour and conduct of an individual can change quite rapidly and what was once simple possession, could manifest itself into other areas of criminal activity. The Parole Board, in the view of not just the police association but certainly the members on our side, needed to have that discretion and information available to it to determine further penalties or justification if required.

Of some of the notable amendments introduced to this bill, this one did pass. It allows for individuals to apply for a record suspension under the legislation, even with outstanding fines. This would add a financial burden due to loss of income. It also sets an unwanted precedent regarding the seriousness of the payment of the fines.

One amendment that was defeated was put forward by our colleagues on the Conservative side. It would have allowed for record suspension applications to be made through an online portal. With technology the way it is today, everything is moving to the digital age. We felt it was important to do that.

In wrapping up, we are going to support the bill at this stage, with some trepidation and concern, to ensure those Canadians with minor offences are able to get what they need out of the legislation.

Motions in Amendment

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

Mr. Speaker, I wish the member for Kingston and the Islands would spare the House his manufactured outrage. If he were to look at the voting records, he would see that my party did in fact vote on Bill C-45. The really bad thing about this whole thing is that the government, with all the trappings and power that comes with a majority, is only now moving on this issue. It had an entire term to get to it. Meanwhile, how many people had to go through our justice system while we waited for Bill C-93? How many people were confronted with police officers for a crime that was admitted by the government to be unjust?

I will take no lessons from the Liberals. They are a party of half measures. They know it is true. They know they could have taken substantive action. When Bill C-45 was introduced, what did they do? They waited three years to put those provisions into force. Meanwhile, 400,000 people had run-ins with the law. Liberals refuse to go all the way with expungement. I will take no lessons from them, and I will always cite the member for Victoria on the NDP's position on expungement. We have the right way. Liberals are just sad that they could not bring themselves to vote for it.

[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.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Mr. Speaker, today, we are talking about Bill C-93, an act to provide no-cost, expedited record suspensions for simple possession of cannabis.

This bill seeks to make changes to the pardon process and eliminate fees for Canadians who were convicted of marijuana possession before cannabis was legalized in October 2018.

Now that cannabis has been legalized, this bill seeks to help Canadians who were convicted of something that is now legal by allowing them to apply for a record suspension without being subject to the usual waiting period or fees. For the information of those watching at home, offenders currently have to wait five to 10 years after serving their sentence, depending on the type of conviction, before they can apply for a pardon. They also have to pay about $600.

This enactment amends the Criminal Records Act and makes reference to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Narcotic Control Act and the National Defence Act.

We are days away from the end of this Parliament and this government, which was elected in 2015. At the time, the Liberal government made a lot of promises to get elected. Only one of those promises was kept, namely to legalize marijuana. It seems that was important to Canadians. During the next election campaign, in September, the Liberals will brag about their record and say that the only thing they did was legalize marijuana.

Today, the Liberals are doing things at the last minute again after dragging their feet for three and a half years. I recently made a speech in which I referred to the fable of the ant and the grasshopper, but I will not get into that again. We know that the grasshopper represents the Liberals and the ant represents the Conservatives, diligent, hard-working people who are ready to take the bull by the horns. We will have to fix the mess the Liberal government has gotten us into.

I would like to remind hon. members that Bill C-45, the cannabis legalization act, had two objectives, namely to protect our young people and to eliminate organized crime. I must admit that those are commendable objectives. However, the Liberal government sped up the process. We question their motives, but I will not get into that.

I believe they were serious about what they wanted to achieve, but the actual process of legalization was botched because the Liberals rushed the process. In Quebec, they rushed the process so much that the shops selling cannabis have to close for two to three days a week due to poor management and inadequate supply. That is a testament to the government's improvised approach.

Furthermore, a number of news articles are saying that organized crime is thrilled that the Liberal government is promoting this product, which, in my opinion, is harmful to young people 25 and under, but let us not reopen that debate. They Liberals have a majority and they legalized marijuana, and now we have to live with it. We will need to assess and deal with the consequences.

In an effort to eliminate organized crime, the Liberals are promoting cannabis. Who benefits from this promotion? The answer is organized crime, because there is not enough supply and cannabis has been trivialized. Young people are hearing that there is nothing wrong with cannabis and that it is good for you.

I will read an article by Antoine Lacroix that was published in Le Journal de Montréal on May 16 entitled “Spike in Cannabis Poisoning in Kids since Legalization”. Conservatives are not making this up.

Hospitals are becoming increasingly concerned.

A large increase in the number of children with cannabis poisoning since legalization is worrying medical experts, who are calling on parents to make sure that their pot products are out of reach.

“This is not something we saw a lot with kids under the age of seven. Before 2016, it would be once every three years”...bemoaned Dr. Dominic Chalut, an emergency room physician and toxicologist at Montreal Children's Hospital.

I did not say that he was a Conservative. I just gave his title. He is a doctor, an emergency room physician and toxicologist at Montreal Children's Hospital. I think he is credible. I am not making this up.

The article continues:

Dr. Chalut thinks that the phenomenon will get worse once edibles are legalized in Canada, even though they are already easily accessible.

The Liberals believe they have everything under control since cannabis was legalized, that organized crime is out, that all is well and that Canadians are not dealing with a dangerous product. I have to wonder how reliable and stringent they are.

I will continue:

Impact also felt at Sainte-Justine

On Wednesday, the [Montreal Children's Hospital] called on parents to be vigilant. Since October 17, 2018, 26 children have been treated for poisoning, compared to “a handful per year” previously.

Sainte-Justine Hospital has also seen a twofold increase in poisonings in the past year.

It is important to keep in mind that marijuana was legalized less than a year ago.

“The trend is rather alarming, and we are seeing an uptick in the number of cases. We are going to have to pay very close attention to this”, said Dr. Antonio D'Angelo, a pediatric emergency doctor.

Experts point out that an amount that causes minor symptoms in an adult can have significantly more adverse effects in a child.

We stated that when debating Bill C-45.

In the worst cases, children went to intensive care to be treated for cannabis poisoning. The symptoms include convulsions, vomiting and drowsiness. The [hospital] reports that the youngest patient was under a year old.

The Quebec Poison Control Centre is asking people to be cautious, as they are seeing a sharp increase in poisoning among adults and children.

On October 17, 2019, Ottawa will legalize edibles, such as gummy candies and pot brownies, across the country. The provincial government, on the other hand, has not yet decided whether to authorize edibles.

Alarming statistics

I could go on, but I will get back to Bill C-93. I just wanted to set the stage.

As I said, Bill C-93 seems to be a rush job. Apparently that is the Liberal way: wait until the last minute and get it done in a hurry.

The Liberals were criticized for legalizing marijuana, but they did not learn from that experience. Now, yet again, they are scrambling to repair the damage they did.

We are in favour of pardons. We want to make sure the process is fair. I think fairness for all Canadians is a very important concept. To demonstrate our good will, we helped draft the bill and proposed a number of amendments in committee. The committee was impartial, which meant that we could present our amendments and they were agreed to. The Liberals, the Green Party and the Conservatives all presented amendments, but the NDP did not. I do not know where the NDP members were. For our part, we take this seriously and felt it was important to participate in the committee. That demonstrates our good will. We are parliamentarians and we are here to help make the best laws possible. That is why we, as Conservatives, get involved.

The Liberals did not agree to all our amendments, but they did agree to two of them, and that improved the bill's procedural fairness. Because of our amendments, the Parole Board will have to include a review of this program in its annual report.

It is important to understand that the well-being of all Canadians is important to us, as is fairness.

We want to reassure Canadians that when we gain power in October 2019, we will make some changes to smartly and carefully meet Canadians' needs and guarantee their safety.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Mr. Speaker, here we are again, days away from rising and returning to our constituencies for a summer of gauging the opinions of those in our communities, and the Liberals are back at their same old game, rushing legislation through the House without consulting relevant stakeholders and, more important, not even listening to relevant stakeholders. As a result, Bill C-93 will fail to accomplish its intent, the typical Liberal way.

There is a cascade of failures. Let us look at how we got here.

Back in 2015, the Liberals said that the current approach was not working. They said we had to take the profits away from organized crime and take it out of the hands of our youth. They said that the approach of previous Conservative and Liberal governments was not working to decrease the use of marijuana by our youth.

If we look at statistics from 1980 by Statistics Canada, they show that minors represented 22% of marijuana users. By 2015, only 5.8% of marijuana users were aged 15 to 17. Their whole approach to this was based on a premise that was false and misleading.

Right now, there is absolutely no evidence that it has taken the criminal element out of it. In fact, there is some evidence to suggest that it is increasing. The demand is out there. When regular marijuana users want it, instead of going to government facilities, quite often they go back to where they have been getting it over the years.

This is a huge cascade of failures and the government made the decision to move forward with Bill C-93, proposed legislation that places a focus on expediting the process for providing pardons to individuals convicted of marijuana possession charges prior to the implementation of Bill C-45, the Cannabis Act, which officially legalized cannabis possession on October 17 of last year.

The Liberal government is rushing, with days left, to clean up the mess it made with the rolling out of its marijuana legislation. It was simply not prepared for the effects of its legislation on marijuana on our judicial process, and this is its last-ditch attempt at putting together a piece of shaky legislation before the House rises, which is just in a matter of days. We do not have a lot of time to look at the bill.

My constituents have felt the effect of the Liberal government's failure at providing effective processes since the rollout of Bill C-45 last October. For example, as I said earlier, the Prime Minister has been claiming for what is now years that legalizing marijuana will keep marijuana out of the hands of our kids.

In Oshawa, there have been two instances of marijuana edibles finding their way into one elementary school and parents are very upset. They are saying, as a result of this, these grade 6 students reported feeling dizzy and euphoric. More and more of these stories are rolling out. Stories have been reported, it seems like on a daily basis, from coast to coast to coast. The government is now trying to make up for these obvious mistakes with this poorly drafted policy, pushing it through the House before the House rises.

In my riding, considerations for workplace safety are really important. These are non-existent with the Liberals. Many of my constituents work blue collar jobs. Not providing proper workplace safety measures to go along with the legislation endangers workers and could potentially result in serious injuries or the death of Canadians as a result of the government's inability to effectively roll out workplace safety provisions.

How about tests available to law enforcement in determining whether a driver is impaired by marijuana? It has been obvious that the science is not there yet. These tests are far from being perfected. It is obviously not safe to get behind the wheel while impaired by the effects of cannabis, yet the government passed its legislation anyway, without any consideration as to how law enforcement would combat drug-impaired driving. Until the time that such tests are perfected, roads could become much more hazardous than before.

For this bill we are talking about today, Bill C-93, it is the stance of the Conservative Party that there should be an expedited process in place to offer record suspensions for those convicted of marijuana possession before October 17, 2018.

I am going to focus on the notion that the current government is clearly out of touch with the reality of everyday prosecutorial practices. In the current form of Bill C-93, even those who are truly responsible for more serious drug crimes will be able to have their records suspended, and not just simple possession offenders. A critical consideration that the Liberal government has evidently ignored, despite testimony on it at committee, is the process of offering a less serious conviction, such as marijuana possession, in exchange for co-operation by more serious drug offenders, such as those charged with the intent to sell illegal drugs. Out-of-court plea bargaining agreements occur on a regular basis. As a result, many individuals who are truly responsible for more serious drug crimes end up pleading guilty to simple possession charges. If Bill C-93 were to pass in its current form, and obviously it will, without provisions taking this issue into consideration, we would be suspending the records of individuals who should not have that option available to them in the first place.

A very important stakeholder came to committee and the government ignored what he had to say to improve the bill. Tom Stamatakis, the president of the Canadian Police Association, stated:

...it is possible that both the Crown and the court may have accepted the plea agreement based on the assumption that the conviction would be a permanent record of the offence and would not have accepted the lesser charge if they knew this would be cleared without any possibility of review at a future date.

The fact is this concept is simply logical. Canada's Crown prosecutors are tasked with upholding the laws passed by Parliament. What prosecutor would offer a plea bargain agreement to drug dealers, knowing they would later have their offence suspended? What the Liberals are proposing with this bill is to throw out all of that prosecutorial history that has been there for decades.

To solve this problem, my Conservative colleagues moved amendments to Bill C-93 that had been proposed by the Canadian Police Association. Had those amendments not been voted down, they would have granted the Parole Board the power to open inquiries on any factors that would bring the administration of justice into disrepute, such as suspending the record of drug dealers as a result of prosecutorial plea bargaining practices. The reality is that there were two amendments. The first would restore the Parole Board's power to make these inquiries to determine the applicant's conduct since the date of their conviction. The second would restore the Parole Board's power to make inquiries with respect to any factors that it may consider in determining whether record suspension would bring the administration of justice into disrepute. These were common-sense ideas put forth by the men and women on the ground who are going to be tasked with following through with this cascade of marijuana legislation, most of which was poorly thought out. The amendments would ensure that these individuals not take advantage of a process that clearly was not intended to be used in their particular cases.

This is just another example of the Liberal government seemingly making every attempt to let criminals get away with their illegal actions. It is despicable. I speak on behalf of my constituents when I say it is unacceptable that the current government is not taking this issue into any consideration whatsoever.

Let us talk for a moment about the costs of this. I think nobody in the House would want to see marginalized Canadians not given access to these record suspensions. The reality is this. The minister was asked to come up with some numbers to let Canadians know how the government came up with the estimated cost of this. Unfortunately, the minister utterly failed to provide how this process was put forth and how it would apply to Bill C-93. He promised to provide the numbers by the time we vote on this legislation. Has that occurred? Absolutely not. Has anyone seen these processes? We have seen the estimates, we have seen the numbers, but we really do not know how much it will cost Canadians. Therefore, the answer here is no.

Would anyone be surprised that perhaps even he does not know? I think the answer might be not.

I see that my time is up.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the bulk of my presentation was about some of the disingenuous comments that were being made by the government on both Bill C-45 and Bill C-93.

I talked about Bill C-45 and the comments that Bill C-93 will, once passed, facilitate barrier-free movement and barrier-free access to education. However, there will still be challenges in that respect because there is no expungement. I also talked about the comment that Bill C-45 has impacted organized crime. The government does not have data for this. It does not have the data or the proof to say that Bill C-45 has limited our youth's access to drugs. Those are my challenges with Bill C-45 and Bill C-93.

I always enjoy this debate and the back-and-forth conversation. It is respectful. However, if we are going to debate this issue, at the very least we should talk facts, not use disingenuous rhetoric.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to rise to speak to Bill C-93, an act to provide no-cost, expedited record suspensions for simple possession of cannabis. It has already been stated that the Conservatives, though having concerns about this legislation, will be supporting the bill. The bulk of my speech will be about some of the comments bandied about in this debate by the government side, which are disingenuous.

I will go back to the passing of Bill C-45, the legalization of cannabis bill, and some of the challenges being seen across our country. There are concerns that Conservatives and, indeed, opposition members on all sides of the House stated prior to the passing of Bill C-45. At the time, Conservatives felt it was a flawed piece of legislation that was passed hurriedly to try to tick off the box, so that the Liberals could say they have done what they said they were going to do in 2015. There were serious concerns then and there are serious concerns now.

Government members have said that Bill C-93 is just another example of how Liberals are being tough on organized crime and keeping drugs out of the hands of our youth, and yet they cannot provide us data as to whether the passing of Bill C-45 has actually minimized the proceeds going to organized crime, whether it has kept organized crime out of the legalized cannabis market or whether it has kept cannabis out of the hands of youth.

I will read a passage from Bill C-45, under part 1, “Prohibitions, Obligations and Offences”. Subclause 8(1) states, “Unless authorized under this Act, it is prohibited...(c) for a young person to possess cannabis of one or more classes of cannabis the total amount of which, as determined in accordance with Schedule 3, is equivalent to more than 5 g of dried cannabis”. A young person in Canada is defined as between the ages of 12 and 18. By virtue of that statement in Bill C-45, it is legal for someone between the ages of 12 and 18 to have under five grams of cannabis.

When members are in their ridings, we spend a lot of time working with many different groups. I, for one, have spent a lot of time with the educational and law enforcement communities, and Bill C-45 has done nothing to keep the proceeds of cannabis and marijuana from organized crime and nothing to minimize access by youth. As a matter of fact, it has probably made it easier. In some of the most marginalized communities, there is increased drug use because it is now okay for those aged 12 to 18 to have less than five grams of marijuana on them.

The Liberals have also said that Bill C-93 would provide barrier-free access for travel, but we already know that it would not clear one's record. The record still exists, as it is not expunged. Canadians travelling across the U.S. border or the borders of other countries are still subject to the enforcement of the rules and regulations of those countries.

When I was talking about Bill C-93, I canvassed our front-line officers, our law enforcement. When we talk about consultation, if we are going to be totally honest in this debate, the government likes to say it has consulted Canadians from coast to coast to coast, but it has not. Our front-line officers asked us to put forth reasoned amendments, and a colleague across the way just said the Liberals would not support that.

When I was preparing for this, I talked with some of my friends who are on the front lines. They said that, in reality, for the last 10 years, most seizures have been treated as non-seizures. Therefore, this may have an application for those who were charged maybe 20 or 25 years ago, and it might help some people in our most marginalized communities, maybe first nations or our black community, as I believe the NDP talked about. This might assist them, but it would not impact those who have been charged in recent years, perhaps in the last decade leading up to October of last year.

Cannabis is often called a gateway drug. Our colleagues from Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner and Yellowhead themselves were on the front lines in law enforcement for many years and have served our country and our communities valiantly. Therefore, when they offer comments and real-world experience with respect to this, I tend to listen.

I also know, from working with some of my friends in coordinating law enforcement agencies and front-line workers, that possession is often a gateway charge. Law enforcement officers may not have all the information they need to make a complete case, so they will charge people with possession to be able to build a case.

It has also been noted that, many times, in a major trafficking case when the worst of the worst are before the courts, they will plead down to possession. That is why, going back to my comment about listening to our front-line workers, those who have been charged with protecting us and keeping us safe and sound, we must always do whatever we can to provide them with the tools required to do their job so that we and our friends, families and communities can remain safe and sound.

I will go back to Bill C-45. Bill C-93 is another failed piece of legislation where the government did not provide adequate thought and did not listen to the consultations. Bill C-45 was the same. It did not arm the communities and municipalities with the required tools. The number one cost in most communities is with respect to policing. The government did not arm them with the tools to be able to pay for the increased costs of policing. It did not arm our front-line officers with adequate training for the roadside tests in the rush up to October. What is impairment? Is it one joint? Is it two joints? What is impairment under the influence of cannabis? Indeed, we are now seeing charter challenges because of the flawed testing equipment the RCMP forces have been outfitted with.

As I said in the preamble to my speech, the Conservatives will be supporting this piece of legislation as we move forward. Our colleague across the way will probably challenge where the Conservative stance is on this. I think the confusion lies in that this is another piece of flawed, rushed Liberal legislation that the government is trying to move forward. It is saying that it is doing this, but it is not putting the resources and the work behind it. It is not listening to the people who will be in charge of implementing this legislation, and this is causing concern.

Our job as the opposition is to challenge and to question. That is what we are doing. We are speaking for those who do not have the floor. There are 338 members of Parliament elected to be the voice of their communities, and that is what we are doing.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-93, an act to provide no-cost, expedited record suspensions for simple possession of cannabis.

I hate to say this, but I do support the bill in principle. It is a terrible bill. It has been pushed on us at the end of this Parliament. The Liberals have known this was coming up, but now they are trying to ram it through. It reminds me of the NAFTA trade deal. It is not very good for Canadians.

The Liberals brought forward the marijuana legalization bill, Bill C-45, an act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other acts. It received royal assent in June 2018. The Prime Minister at that time wanted to push it through, but he had to set it aside until October 17 because there were so many complications. The Liberal government did not look at how complicated it would be for many jurisdiction across our country.

I never supported Bill C-45, and I still do not support it. It was badly thought out and badly written, probably worse than the bill before us. However, this is typical of the government. Again, look at what it did with NAFTA.

Yesterday, when the Prime Minister spoke about NAFTA, he said a deal was better than no deal. He did not say it was a great deal. Bill C-45 was his promise to the public. It was an election gimmick. It probably worked, but let us get back to Bill C-93.

No deal would be bad, therefore that is why I support this. The Parole Board wants to investigate a good portion of these applications, which its representatives said so many times at our committee hearings. It said that it did not have an electronic program. It also did not seem to be very interested in that and had not even looked at it. Many different witnesses said that the program to apply for a record pardon was too cumbersome.

A prosecutor in California recently said that when government used 20th century technology to tackle a 21st century problem, it would be the people who would pay the price. That is exactly what we are doing today. We still working with 20th century technology, most of it by hand.

Bill C-93 recommends that the Parole Board look at electronic means. It was my recommendation, and it was kept in the report. As mentioned earlier, the Parole Board could not tell us exactly how many people might apply for this. One figure was 250,000 and another agency said it might be closer to 500,000. The Parole Board said that it might get 10,000 to 12,000 people applying. It could not give us the cost. This seems to be a government agency where bureaucrats do not want to step out of their sandbox and modernize. It is not listening to Canadians to do what is best.

I would like to read about something that recently took place in the state of California, which legalized marijuana a few years ago. It is called the “Code for America’s Clear My Recordto revolutionize criminal record clearance practices”. This article was posted on February 14 by Jails to Jobs magazine. It states:

Imagine the effect that automatically clearing hundreds of thousands of eligible criminal records would have on the lives of people who have them. Those unable to get jobs because of mistakes they made in the past would now be record free. Imagine that.

Considering the hassle and expense that people must go through to clear their records, it almost seems unbelievable. But it’s not. Technology has the capability to download rap sheets in bulk, algorithmically, read them to determine eligibility and automatically fill out the petitions...

However, we are not going that way. We made a recommendation, and I discussed it many times, but it was ignored by the Liberal government and the Liberal members on the committee.

Code for America launched clear my record. It was a program developed in the United States and it went online in California last year. California intends using this system to clear 250,000 criminal records for simple marijuana possession in one year. Here we are bringing in Bill C-93 with no real strong indication of going electronically in the modern age. I have made a recommendation, and I think it probably will sit in the background.

The whole discussion on Bill C-93 should have been about modernization and making it easy for the people to go on a computer, whether their own, or one through a social service agency or a legal channel, fill in the application, the history and make a declaration. Let the computers do a lot of the digital analyzing work of checking the records. The program could go on to interconnect with provincial court registries. The program could go on to interconnect with the RCMP. However, it is going to be done it manually in the 21st century. I cannot understand why we would go that way when the technology is out there and proves it can be done.

I have come to understand the NDP's rationale for expungement. When I listened to my colleague from the NDP explain the rationale at the committee, it made sense in a lot of cases.

I started policing back in the sixties as a young man, and the marijuana movement was just starting. We were laying charges for simple possession of marijuana or maybe trafficking if a person had a certain amount. Expungement could work if that is the only record the person has.

However, my colleague from Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner and I have concerns. He is a police officer too. In a lot of cases, going back over the years, these simple records sitting in our record systems did not start that way. They may be simple possession charges today, but they may have started off as trafficking or obstruction charges, but they were dealt down by the prosecutor and a defence lawyer to simple possession charges. We are concerned with those charges. That is why the Canadian Police Association has asked that they be thoroughly reviewed.

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

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise to address Bill C-93 this morning. I found it actually quite excessive listening to my New Democrat friends on this issue. As the parliamentary secretary put it, I think it is important that we recognize that the NDP tends to grossly exaggerate its stand on a wide variety of issues. This is a good example of that.

In the last federal election, the New Democrats, under Mr. Mulcair, actually said that they were not in favour of the legalization of cannabis. That was their position. Now the member says that we should not hold them to account for what the NDP said back in the last federal election, but in the same speech, he said that he wants to hold us to account for what we said in the last election.

Let us talk about the cannabis issue. What did the government say back in 2015? The Liberals were very clear, and our leader was very clear, that we were in favour of the legalization of cannabis, because we wanted to protect our young people. We wanted to bring in strong regulations. We wanted to go after criminal activities. That was our justification for making that commitment to Canadians back in 2015. The Conservatives, on the other hand, wanted the status quo.

The NDP position was very clear. It did not want to legalize cannabis. It wanted to decriminalize cannabis. Reflect on that. I think the NDP is trying to find relevance in society today, because even the Green Party tends to outdo the NDP on the environment file. Many of the positions the NDP is adopting today are going to the Green Party. On this issue, it is following the Liberal Party. That is fine. We do not mind sharing our ideas with our NDP friends.

However, those following this debate should not be fooled by the type of information the New Democrats are providing on this issue. They argue for expungement, because they are grasping. A few years ago, they were not even in favour of the legalization of cannabis. During the 2015 campaign, we made a very strong presentation to Canadians, and Canadians accepted it, and now, through Bill C-45, we actually have cannabis legalized here in Canada.

The Conservatives and the NDP, that unholy alliance, I would argue, at times come together. The last few days, they have been saying, “Here we are with 18 days left to go in this session and the government is wanting to rush things through.” When we were elected, we made a commitment to Canadians to work hard every day. What do they expect us to do, say that with only 18 days left in this session, we are going to stop, as if there is nothing else for us to do?

From day one, with that very first bill, Bill C-2, to reduce taxes for Canada's middle class while at the same time increasing it for Canada's wealthiest 1%, until the last day we sit, this government's intention has been to continue to deliver for Canadians in a real and tangible way.

The legalization of cannabis took us a considerable amount of time. We cannot just bring in legislation and pass it. Legislation of that nature requires a great deal of background work, such as working with the many different stakeholders, provinces and indigenous leaders. We could not bring in this legislation before we even passed the other legislation.

This legislation is before us today because it is good, sound, solid legislation. This is the type of legislation that is going to have a profoundly positive impact on the lives of many Canadians. That is the reason we are debating it today.

Whether there are 16 days, 10 days or five days left does not really matter. At the end of the day, Canadians can know that this government will continue to work every day to advance good, strong social budgetary policies.

For individuals who have been convicted of simple possession of cannabis, this legislation would allow an expedited pardon for that particular conviction. It is as simple as that. This legislation would expedite it and ensure that there was no cost for receiving that pardon.

For those who have an interest in getting a pardon, this government has made it exceptionally easy for them to do. That is why this legislation is important. It is why we challenge all members of the House to support it.

With regard to the expungement argument being brought forward, a pardon is all that is required. It is far more than the NDP was prepared to offer in 2015. When its members say that it should be expungement, they should put an asterisk there to indicate that it is a lot more than what they were prepared to do back in 2015.

I know that the NDP had a change in leadership. I believe that the current leader says that the legalization of heroin and cocaine should be allowed. I believe that could be a potential election platform coming from the NDP. That is what its current leader has talked about in the past. Maybe the NDP might provide some clarity and transparency on that issue. We are glad that the NDP has accepted the idea of the legalization of cannabis.

The NDP had some influence with the Conservatives. Prior to the last election, the Conservative Party was outright against it. I remember the brochures, the propaganda and the myths being created. Even back then, the Conservatives were more focused on being critical of personalities than on substantive policy issues. The Conservatives were against it. They did not want legalization, and I do not believe they even favoured decriminalization. After the election, they started to talk about the decriminalization of cannabis.

A few of them are saying that they started talking about it a bit earlier. In fairness to my Conservative friends, that might be the case. Having said that, who were the biggest benefactors? I argue that it was the gangs and the criminal element that were the biggest benefactors of the Conservative policy on cannabis. Stop and think about that.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Madam Speaker, thank you for bringing some order to the House when the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Border Security was arguing with the NDP. I am here to present our arguments.

I was talking about our Prime Minister, who made a lot of promises in 2015. Many Canadians put their trust in him; they saw him as a beacon of hope. Now, in 2019, it is clear that he made a lot of promises and ultimately did not achieve much.

Canadians are giving up. They are tired of seeing the Prime Minister dance around when it comes time to work. They are frustrated with seeing the Prime Minister talk when he should be taking action. They are worried that the Prime Minister is welcoming terrorists, contract killers and other criminals without lifting a finger to help victims of human trafficking and our veterans who gave everything for Canada. They are sick of seeing the Liberals go after law-abiding citizens and ignoring organized crime and ISIS traitors. They are sick of it.

They saw the Prime Minister go after women in his cabinet because they resisted. What was their crime? They wanted to obey the law. Canadians are sick of seeing this Prime Minister refuse to take responsibility for his mistakes, and this October they will take action. A number of Liberal members have already taken action, in fact. Several have already quit the caucus and many others have announced that they are leaving politics. Even the Toronto Star is touting a potential replacement for the position of prime minister and leader of the Liberal Party.

Before talking about Bill C-93, I have to say a few words about Bill C-45, because one complements the other. To give credit where credit is due, one of the Prime Minister’s few accomplishments was passing Bill C-45. However, let's not forget that it was a botched bill. It was passed in the House and became law, but it was botched.

The Prime Minister decided that his commitment to passing Bill C-45 was a national priority. Everything was a priority. There was nothing more important in Canada than legalizing marijuana. Organized crime, violence against women and the economy paled in comparison to legalizing weed.

Now that Bill C-45 has been in force since October 2018, Bill C-93 is being introduced at the last minute, once again, at the tail end of the current session and Parliament. They want to rush to expunge the records of people accused of simple possession of cannabis in the past.

Normally, an offender with a conviction on their record has to wait five to 10 years before applying for a pardon and pay a $631 fee. Originally, the fee was set based on the cost to the Canadian government and to taxpayers. We agreed that applying for a pardon for simple possession of marijuana should be free, even though sound stewardship of public funds is a Conservative priority. One of the reasons we did not oppose this measure was that the committee learned that no more than 10,000 people would be eligible to apply for a pardon, costing taxpayers about $2.5 million. That is what officials told us.

It is important to remember that the goal is to grant a pardon to those who have been convicted of simple possession of cannabis and do not have an extensive criminal record. We understand these convictions are often the result of youthful indiscretion. It was also explained to us that the indigenous and black communities are disproportionately affected and are less likely to have the resources to apply for a pardon. We are flexible on this point, and we accept the facts. There is no problem there.

However, there is a problem with the way Bill C-93 was crafted. Some of our amendments were accepted, and we thank our colleagues on the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security for that. The fact remains that the bill still has a few flaws.

The Conservatives' amendments improved the bill's procedural fairness and require the Parole Board of Canada to include a review of the program in its annual report, which will enable us to review the legislation the year after it comes into force.

Currently, the record suspension process is a user-pay system. Earlier, the member mentioned the $631 record suspension fee. Now that cost is estimated at $250, which justifies the $2.5 million I mentioned.

The other option, expungement, would involve minimal cost, but it would not apply to individuals charged with more serious offences who negotiated lesser charges or were in possession of a quantity above the current legal limit. In general, law enforcement organizations are in favour of record suspension for simple possession, but they want us to take into account individuals who pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of simple possession.

Tom Stamatakis, president of the Canadian Police Association, testified that, in those circumstances, it is possible that both the Crown and the court may have accepted the plea agreement based on the assumption that the conviction would be a permanent record of the offence and would not have accepted the lesser charge if they had known this would be cleared without any possibility of review at a future date.

That is why I moved a motion to amend the bill. This amendment would delete clause 6. The Canadian Police Association explained that the Parole Board of Canada must retain the discretion to conduct additional checks because every case is different. Clause 6 of Bill C-93, as it is currently drafted, does not enable the Parole Board of Canada to do its job properly.

In his haste to meet his self-imposed political deadline, the Prime Minister failed to consider the many concerns of municipalities, law enforcement, employers, scientists and doctors regarding the legalization of cannabis. Similarly, the Liberals introduced legislation that correlates with the legalization of cannabis in the last few weeks of this Parliament without listening to the main stakeholders, including law enforcement.

Now that cannabis is legal, the Conservatives understand that criminal records for simple possession of cannabis should not place an unfair burden on Canadians. However, we will be monitoring the implementation of the bill. We promise to determine whether it is working and whether it is fair when we take office in October.

As with Bill C-45, the Conservatives will also amend Bill C-93 in order to ensure that it effectively provides appropriate access to no-fee record suspension. We believe that Canadians should have timely access to no-fee record suspension and we will ensure that the law upholds the integrity of the Parole Board of Canada so that Canadians have their records suspended.

Come October, when we form the government, we will have a lot of cleaning up to do. Our priority will be the real needs of Canadians, including their safety and their prosperity. Everything we do will be for Canadians. When we go to India, it will not be to dance and wear costumes. When we go to Washington, it will be to work and to clean up the mess made of the new free trade agreement. When we invest taxpayers' money, I guarantee it will not be to reward murderers, terrorists or dictatorships that are detaining our citizens on bogus charges. We will also clean up the mess at our borders. We will prioritize new Canadians who obey Canadian laws, and we will crack down on those who cheat and jump the queue. As a government, we will show compassion to those in need, as well as taxpayers. We will take action to improve the environment, but not by dipping into taxpayers' pockets.

Extension of Sitting Hours

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

moved:

That, notwithstanding any Standing Order or usual practice of the House, commencing upon the adoption of this Order and concluding on Friday, June 21, 2019:

(a) on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, the ordinary hour of daily adjournment shall be 12:00 a.m., except that it shall be 10:00 p.m. on a day when a debate, pursuant to Standing Order 52 or 53.1, is to take place;

(b) subject to paragraph (e), when a recorded division is requested in respect of a debatable motion, including any division arising as a consequence of the application of Standing Order 61(2) or Standing Order 78, but not including any division in relation to the Business of Supply or arising as a consequence of an order made pursuant to Standing Order 57, (i) before 2:00 p.m. on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, it shall stand deferred until the conclusion of Oral Questions at that day’s sitting, or (ii) after 2:00 p.m. on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, or at any time on a Friday, it shall stand deferred until the conclusion of Oral Questions at the next sitting day that is not a Friday, provided that, if a recorded division on the previous question is deferred and the motion is subsequently adopted, the recorded division on the original question shall not be deferred;

(c) notwithstanding Standing Order 45(6) and paragraph (b) of this Order, no recorded division in relation to any government order requested after 2:00 p.m. on Thursday, June 20, 2019, or at any time on Friday, June 21, 2019, shall be deferred;

(d) the time provided for Government Orders shall not be extended pursuant to Standing Order 45(7.1) or Standing Order 67.1(2);

(e) when a recorded division, which would have ordinarily been deemed deferred to immediately before the time provided for Private Members’ Business on a Wednesday governed by this Order, is requested, the said division is deemed to have been deferred until the conclusion of Oral Questions on the same Wednesday;

(f) any recorded division which, at the time of the adoption of this Order, stands deferred to immediately before the time provided for Private Members’ Business on the Wednesday immediately following the adoption of this Order shall be deemed to stand deferred to the conclusion of Oral Questions on the same Wednesday;

(g) a recorded division requested in respect of a motion to concur in a government bill at the report stage pursuant to Standing Order 76.1(9), where the bill has neither been amended nor debated at the report stage, shall be deferred in the manner prescribed by paragraph (b);

(h) for greater certainty, this Order shall not limit the application of Standing Order 45(7);

(i) when one or several deferred recorded divisions occur on a bill at report stage, a motion, “That the Bill be now read a third time and do pass”, may be made in the same sitting;

(j) no dilatory motion may be proposed after 6:30 p.m., except by a Minister of the Crown;

(k) notwithstanding Standing Orders 81(16)(b) and (c) and 81(18)(c), proceedings on any opposition motion shall conclude no later than 5:30 p.m. on the sitting day that is designated for that purpose, except on a Monday when they shall conclude at 6:30 p.m. or on a Friday when they shall conclude at 1:30 p.m.;

(l) during consideration of the estimates on the last allotted day, pursuant to Standing Order 81(18), when the Speaker interrupts the proceedings for the purpose of putting forthwith all questions necessary to dispose of the estimates, (i) all remaining motions to concur in the Votes for which a notice of opposition was filed shall be deemed to have been moved and seconded, the question deemed put and recorded divisions deemed requested, (ii) the Speaker shall have the power to combine the said motions for voting purposes, provided that, in exercising this power, the Speaker will be guided by the same principles and practices used at report stage;

(m) when debate on a motion for the concurrence in a report from a standing, standing joint or special committee is adjourned or interrupted, the debate shall again be considered on a day designated by the government, after consultation with the House Leaders of the other parties, but in any case not later than the 31st sitting day after the interruption; and

(n) Members not seeking re-election to the 43rd Parliament may be permitted to make statements, on Tuesday, June 4, and Wednesday, June 5, 2019, at the expiry of the time provided for Private Members’ Business for not more than three hours, and that, for the duration of the statements, (i) no member shall speak for longer than ten minutes and the speeches not be subject to a question and comment period, (ii) after three hours or when no Member rises to speak, whichever comes first, the House shall return to Government Orders.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Motion No. 30, which allows for the extension of the sitting hours of the House until we rise for the summer adjournment.

I rise today to speak to Motion No. 30. This motion would allow for the extension of sitting hours of the House until we rise for the summer adjournment. There is a clear and recent precedent for this extension of hours to give the House more time to do its important work. It occurred last year at this time and also the year before that. As well, in the previous Parliament, the hours of the House were extended in June 2014.

Four years ago, our government came forward with an ambitious mandate that promised real change. Under the leadership of our Prime Minister, our government has introduced legislation that has improved the lives of Canadians from coast to coast to coast. However, we have more work to do.

So far in this Parliament, the House has passed 82 government bills, and 65 of those have received royal assent. The facts are clear. This Parliament has been productive. We have a strong record of accomplishment. It is a long list, so I will cite just a few of our accomplishments.

Bill C-2 made good on our promise to lower taxes on middle-class Canadians by increasing taxes on the wealthiest 1% of Canadians. There are nine million Canadians who have benefited from this middle-class tax cut. This tax cut has been good for Canadians and their families. It has been good for the economy and good for Canada, and its results have been better than advertised. On our side, we are proud of this legislation. We have always said that we were on the side of hard-working, middle-class Canadians, and this legislation is proof of exactly that.

As well, thanks to our budgetary legislation, low-income families with children are better off today. We introduced the biggest social policy innovation in more than a generation through the creation of the tax-free Canada child benefit. The CCB puts cash into the pockets of nine out of 10 families and has lifted nearly 300,000 Canadian children out of poverty.

Early in this Parliament, in response to the Supreme Court of Canada, we passed medical assistance in dying legislation, which carefully balanced the rights of those seeking medical assistance in dying while ensuring protection of the most vulnerable in our society.

Also of note, we repealed the previous government's law that allowed citizenship to be revoked from dual citizens. We also restored the rights of Canadians abroad to vote in Canadian elections.

We added gender identity as a prohibited ground for discrimination under the Canadian Human Rights Act. Also, passing Bill C-65 has helped make workplaces in federally regulated industries and on Parliament Hill free from harassment and sexual violence.

We promised to give the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer the powers, resources and independence to properly do its job. We delivered on that commitment through legislation, and the PBO now rigorously examines the country's finances in an independent and non-partisan manner.

Through Bill C-45, we ended the failed approach to cannabis by legalizing it and strictly regulating and restricting access to cannabis, as part of our plan to keep cannabis out of the hands of youth and profits out of the pockets of organized crime. Along with that, Bill C-46 has strengthened laws to deter and punish people who drive while impaired, both from alcohol and/or drugs.

These are just some examples of the work we have accomplished on behalf of Canadians.

We are now heading into the final weeks of this session of Parliament, and there is more work to do. Four years ago, Canadians sent us here with a responsibility to work hard on their behalf, to discuss important matters of public policy, to debate legislation and to vote on that legislation.

The motion to allow for the extension of sitting hours of the House is timely, and clearly it is necessary. We have an important legislative agenda before us, and we are determined to work hard to make even more progress.

Passage of this motion would give all members exactly what they often ask for: more time for debate. I know every member wants to deliver for their communities and this motion will help with exactly that. We have much to accomplish in the coming weeks and we have the opportunity to add time to get more done.

I would like to highlight a few of the bills that our government will seek to advance.

I will start with Bill C-97, which would implement budget 2017. This budget implementation act is about making sure that all Canadians feel the benefits of a growing economy. That means helping more Canadians find an affordable home, and get training so that they have the skills necessary to obtain good, well-paying jobs. It is also about making it easier for seniors to retire with confidence.

Another important bill is Bill C-92, which would affirm and recognize the rights of first nations, Inuit and Métis children and families. The bill would require all providers of indigenous child and family services to adhere to certain principles, namely the best interests of the child, family unity and cultural continuity. This co-drafted legislation would transfer the jurisdiction of child and family services delivery to indigenous communities. This is historic legislation that is long overdue.

We have another important opportunity for us as parliamentarians, which is to pass Bill C-93, the act that deals with pardons as they relate to simple possession of cannabis. As I mentioned, last year we upheld our commitment to legalize, strictly regulate and restrict access to cannabis. It is time to give people who were convicted of simple possession a straightforward way to clear their names. We know it is mostly young people from the poorest of communities who have been targeted and hence are being left behind. This bill would create an expedited pardon process, with no application fee or waiting period, for people convicted only of simple possession of cannabis. Canadians who have held criminal records in the past for simple possession of cannabis should be able to meaningfully participate in their communities, get good and stable jobs and become the contributing members of our society that they endeavour to be.

Meanwhile, there is another important bill before the House that we believe needs progress. Bill C-88 is an act to amend the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act and the Canada Petroleum Resources Act. This legislation only impacts the Northwest Territories, and its territorial government is asking us to act. This legislation protects Canada's natural environment, respects the rights of indigenous people and supports a strong natural resources sector. This bill will move the country ahead with a process that promotes reconciliation with indigenous peoples and creates certainty for investments in the Mackenzie Valley and the Arctic.

Earlier this month, our government introduced Bill C-98, an act to amend the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act and the Canada Border Services Agency Act. This bill would create civilian oversight of the Canada Border Services Agency. It would provide citizens with an independent review body to address complaints about the CBSA, just as they now have complaint mechanisms in place for the RCMP. Let me remind members that it was our government that brought forward Bill C-22 that established the national security intelligence committee of parliamentarians, which has tabled its first annual report to Parliament. We are committed to ensuring that our country's border services are worthy of the trust of Canadians, and Bill C-98 is a significant step towards strengthening that accountability.

We have taken a new approach. We, as a government, have consulted with Canadians when it comes to our legislation. We have seen committees call witnesses and suggest amendments that often times improve legislation, and we, as a government, have accepted those changes. We were able to accomplish this work because we gave the committees more resources and we encouraged Liberal members to do their work.

Likewise, currently there are two bills that have returned to the House with amendments from the Senate. I look forward to members turning their attention to these bills as well. One of those bills is Bill C-81, an act to ensure a barrier-free Canada. Our goal is to make accessibility both a reality and a priority across federal jurisdictions so that all people, regardless of their abilities or disabilities, can participate and be included in society as contributing members. Bill C-81 would help us to reach that goal by taking a proactive approach to getting ahead of systemic discrimination. The purpose of this bill is to make Canada barrier free, starting in areas under federal jurisdiction. This bill, if passed by Parliament, will represent the most significant legislation for the rights of persons with disabilities in over 30 years, and for once it will focus on their abilities.

The other bill we have received from the Senate is Bill C-58, which would make the first significant reforms to the Access to Information Act since it was enacted in 1982. With this bill, our government is raising the bar on openness and transparency by revitalizing access to information. The bill would give more power to the Information Commissioner and would provide for proactive disclosure of information.

There are also a number of other bills before the Senate. We have respect for the upper chamber. It is becoming less partisan thanks to the changes our Prime Minister has made to the appointment process, and we respect the work that senators do in reviewing legislation as a complementary chamber.

Already the Senate has proposed amendments to many bills, and the House has in many instances agreed with many of those changes. As we look toward the final few weeks, it is wise to give the House greater flexibility, and that is exactly why supporting this motion makes sense. This extension motion will help to provide the House with the time it needs to consider these matters.

There are now just 20 days left in the parliamentary calendar before the summer adjournment, and I would like to thank all MPs and their teams for their contributions to the House over the past four years. Members in the House have advanced legislation that has had a greater impact for the betterment of Canadians. That is why over 800,000 Canadians are better off today than they were three years ago when we took office.

We saw that with the lowering of the small business tax rate to 9%, small businesses have been able to grow through innovation and trade. We see that Canadians have created over one million jobs, the majority of which are full-time, good-paying jobs that Canadians deserve. These are jobs that were created by Canadians for Canadians.

That is why I would also like to stress that while it is necessary for us to have honest and vibrant deliberations on the motion, Canadians are looking for us all to work collaboratively and constructively in their best interests. That is exactly why extending the hours will provide the opportunity for more members to be part of the debates that represent the voices of their constituents in this place, so that we continue to advance good legislation that benefits even more Canadians.

It has been great to do the work that we have been doing, but we look forward to doing even more.

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

Madam Chair, I will be providing 10 minutes of remarks followed by some questions.

One of many things this government has done since taking office is to legalize and strictly regulate cannabis in Bill C-45. This is one of the biggest and most transformative public policy shifts in recent history.

Before this legislation came into force in October of last year, Canadian law enforcement agencies were spending billions of dollars annually to enforce the prohibition against cannabis while organized crime was reaping billions of dollars in illegal profits. It was easier for young people to buy cannabis than cigarettes. This situation was neither defensible nor responsible.

From the beginning, public health and public safety have been the primary objectives throughout the policy development process and the implementation of the new legislation.

Our government has always been focused on protecting youth from the known health risks of cannabis and working to keep those who are under the age of majority from accessing it. In fact, keeping cannabis out of the hands of young people was one of the primary, driving policy objectives of the Cannabis Act. That is why only adults who are 18, or 19 depending on province of residence, are able to legally purchase or possess cannabis. It is also why the Cannabis Act prohibits advertising designed to encourage youth to use cannabis. It also prohibits selling or providing cannabis to youth, and imposes serious criminal penalties on people who break the law.

In addition to protecting youth, our government's approach to legalizing cannabis has provided adults who use cannabis, or who want to use cannabis, with a lawful, regulated and safe environment in which to do so. Providing a regulated and legal alternative for purchasing cannabis will ensure that the product is safe and will significantly reduce organized crime's share of the cannabis market.

When our government embarked down the path of cannabis legalization, we did so with the recognition that such a seismic shift in the Canadian social policy landscape could have far-reaching impacts, including in the area of road safety. That is precisely why our government strengthened the criminal law with respect to drug-impaired driving at the same time. In fact, in recognition of how closely linked these two issues were, the bill to legalize cannabis and the bill to strengthen the Criminal Code impaired driving regime were introduced on the same day.

Among the many changes to the criminal impaired driving framework was the creation of three new driving offences for having prohibited levels of cannabis' primary impairing component, THC, in the blood. These offences are more objective and will be easier to prove than the long-standing offence of driving while impaired by a drug. In addition, the new law has provided law enforcement with the authority to use roadside oral fluid testing devices as another tool to detect drug-impaired drivers.

One drug screener was approved by the Attorney General of Canada in August last year, and I note that a notice has just been made of the intention to approve a second drug screener. I understand that the public comment period with respect to this second drug screener will close on May 20, at which point the Attorney General will make a final decision, taking into account any comments received. This is very encouraging news for the law enforcement community, as they will have more tools at their disposal. In addition, all Canadians should be aware that the police are well-equipped and well-trained to detect drug-impaired drivers.

It is also important to note that police were not starting from zero in detecting drug impaired drivers. Police were intercepting and arresting drug-impaired drivers long before cannabis was legalized. In fact, since 2008, police have been authorized to conduct sobriety tests at the roadside and at the police station to determine if a driver is impaired by drugs. As part of the response to cannabis legalization, more officers have been trained to detect drug impairment and more will continue to be trained in the coming months.

I think we can all agree that the previous approach to cannabis did not work. In my view, the new legal framework, accompanied by stronger impaired driving laws, is a reasonable and responsible approach.

I would like to compliment our government for its robust public awareness campaign in sharing messages on several key elements of these legislative changes, including how to safely use cannabis, the dangers of using cannabis before driving or while on the job, the rules that remain around cannabis and the border and how important it is not to take cannabis across international boundaries. This extensive public awareness campaign was available on social media, online, on television and elsewhere to counter persistent myths and misconceptions about cannabis and cannabis impaired driving.

Finally, I would be remiss if I did not take a moment to mention the collaboration between the federal government and the provinces and territories who help make this profound public policy shift a success. As we know, the federal government is responsible for legalizing and strictly regulating the production of cannabis, setting standards for health and safety and establishing criminal prohibitions. On the other hand, the provinces and territories are responsible for licensing and overseeing the distribution and sale of cannabis. Our provincial and territorial partners play an important role in helping to achieve the ultimate public policy objective of ensuring that young people do not have access to cannabis and that those who sell outside the legal framework face stiff criminal penalties. The federal government will continue to work in partnership with the provincial and territorial governments to ensure the continued and effective implementation of these legislative reforms.

That said, can the minister expand upon what else was contained in the impaired driving legislation, Bill C-46, and what are the major measures included therein that will help reduce fatalities on our roads as a result of drug and alcohol impaired driving?

Criminal Records Act

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for talking about the NDP's position.

It seems to me the Liberals do not realize they can take “yes” for an answer. We voted in favour of Bill C-45. Anyway, let's get back to the difference between a pardon and an expungement.

As my colleague from Beloeil—Chambly mentioned in his speech, most of the U.S. states that legalized cannabis have expunged simple possession offences from criminal records, and the sky has not fallen as a result. We know that expungement has brought relief to individuals and unclogged the system. As our neighbours to the south have shown, it costs society nothing.

I would like to know why my colleague supports this bill's proposal to pardon an offence, leaving criminal records intact, rather than the record expungement approach, which most U.S. states have taken.

[René Arseneault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate on Bill C-93 at second reading. This bill will make things fairer for Canadians and their families. There was an ineffective prohibition of cannabis for far too long and, as a result, many Canadians ended up with a criminal record after being convicted of simple possession of cannabis.

Criminal records can make it hard for people to get jobs, find housing or even volunteer in their communities. The associated stigma can create the impression that the individual will always be seen as a criminal.

Criminal records are obviously necessary in the context of public safety. However, they can run counter to their objective when they prevent people who do not represent a danger from actively participating in society. This is particularly true when the activity for which the individual was convicted is no longer illegal and when the members of certain communities are disproportionately affected.

This is why our government has introduced Bill C-93, which would streamline the process for getting a pardon, also known as a record suspension, by waiving the waiting period and the application fee.

Generally speaking, an individual convicted of simple possession of cannabis must wait five years for a pardon, although the waiting period can be as long as 10 years. With Bill C-93, applicants could apply as soon as they have finished serving their sentence. The application fee, which has been $631 since 2012, would be waived. On top of that, the usual criteria, like determining whether people have shown good behaviour and whether a pardon would bring them a measurable benefit, would also be waived.

The Parole Board of Canada is taking additional steps, such as simplifying application forms and doing community outreach, with the goal of allowing people with past convictions for cannabis possession to clear their records and move on with their lives as quickly and easily as possible.

This is one of the final chapters in the unfortunate story of cannabis prohibition in Canada, which goes back almost a century. Billions of dollars have been wasted enforcing an ineffective legal regime, not to mention the billions that lined the pockets of organized crime.

In spite of the prohibition, Canadian youth are among the heaviest users of cannabis in the world. Some of them, especially members of marginalized communities, were saddled with criminal records that limited their educational and economic opportunities.

Because of the many different courts and police services in urban and rural communities all across our country, each with its own archives of convictions that go back decades, we do not know the exact number of Canadians with simple possession charges on their records. However, we do know that a simplified pardon process with no waiting period or application fee would make it easier for people to get the pardons they need to finally turn the page.

During the last election, we committed to ending the ineffective and counterproductive prohibition of cannabis. The NDP, on the other hand, wanted to maintain the prohibition of cannabis, with a decriminalization system that would have seen police issuing fines to people in marginalized and low-income communities. As for the Conservatives, they still think that people who possess a small amount of cannabis for personal use should be thrown in jail.

Canadians gave us the opportunity to enact our proposal in October 2018, and we did exactly that. With the coming into force of Bill C-45, we put in place a system of legal, strictly regulated cannabis production and distribution, designed to keep cannabis out of the hands of Canadian youth and to keep profits out of the hands of criminals. At that time, the government announced that it intended to provide recourse for individuals who had been convicted of simple possession of cannabis only. Once again, we have delivered on our commitment.

A pardon with no waiting period and no fee is a very effective measure available to everyone in our society.

When a person is pardoned, their criminal record is sealed and sequestered. A criminal record check by a prospective employer or landlord would come up empty, and U.S. border services would not find anything in the Canadian police database either.

The criminal record could only be disclosed or reinstated in exceptional circumstances, for example, if a new criminal offence is committed.

The effect of a pardon is fully recognized and protected under the Canadian Human Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on a person's criminal record.

Many provinces and territories offer similar protection. Waiving the usual wait period and application fee are unprecedented measures. By doing so, we would be removing the major obstacles in the path of Canadians seeking to lift the stigma and burden of a criminal record for possession of cannabis, allowing them to participate fully in society and become responsible Canadians.

We cannot go back in time and give them back the opportunities they have lost, but we can give them a way of moving forward. When people fully reintegrate into Canadian society by going to school, getting jobs and generally participating in community life and Canadian society, we are all better off.

It was in our collective best interest to end the prohibition of cannabis, because a system governed by a rigorous legal framework is safer for us all than a black market operating without oversight of any kind. Now that we have a legal framework in place, it is in our collective best interest to enable Canadians who have previous convictions for possession of cannabis to clear the criminal records imposed on them under the old regime.

Bill C-93 is a step in that direction. I strongly support this bill, and I urge all my hon. colleagues to do the same.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I noticed that the member did not touch on the issue that I raised at the end of my presentation, which is the cost to Canadian taxpayers.

The member talked about progressive social policy. The Liberals will spend Canadians' money until it is all gone. That is what the Liberals specialize in. It is not a progressive social policy that works. They specialize in taking money out of people's pockets, spending it and then not being accountable for it. It started with a trip to the Bahamas. It certainly has continued with massive spending with deficits they cannot control and with very little interest in accountability for that money as well. This is just one more place where that kind of carelessness has shown up. They do not plan ahead of time. They do not think about the consequences.

He mentioned Bill C-45. They were told that the bill would be taken to court pretty much immediately in terms of the impaired driving components of it. The people who said that were right. We see that has been challenged in multiple places across Canada, because the Liberals did not consider the charter in the application of that bill.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am a little confused with some of the closing remarks from the member opposite. I do not now know whether the Conservatives support or do not support a pardon or an expungement. It is becoming more and more difficult. I think we are hearing a lot of personal opinions, but Canadians would be interested in hearing the official position of the Conservative Party on this important piece of legislation.

It has been an interesting process, which dates back to the last federal election back in 2015. As members know, the NDP did not support the legalization of cannabis, and the Conservative Party also did not support it. Now, from what I understand, the NDP supports not only the legalization of cannabis but the legalization of everything else, and the Conservative Party would not retract the legislation, which I think is a good thing. My question for the member opposite is related to that.

Over the last few years we have been evolving this progressive social policy. It has been going relatively well, and many would argue that it is going exceptionally well. Would the member not agree that when we look at Bill C-93 and Bill C-45 combined that in fact we are on the right track? Even the opposition critic's personal opinion indicated that she is in favour of a pardon.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes.

I would like to go back to the discussion we were just having. My two colleagues who just spoke supported the legalization of cannabis, and the discussion we have had over the last few minutes about these administrative charges was interesting.

When talking to prosecutors about past charges around simple possession, they will tell us that many times people go into court charged with multiple offences, such as perhaps other drug offences or trafficking. Those kinds of things are tied in, and the charges are often pleaded down to simple possession. In that kind of situation, the offender would qualify for the Liberals' proposal; whereas, a teenager from a rural area who is charged and does not have the capacity to get to a court hearing, or who fails to appear and gets this administrative charge, would not qualify for that kind of hearing.

Right from the beginning, we see the unintended consequences of poor legislation, and this is not the only bill where that has happened with the Liberal government. The present Liberal government will be known in the future as the government that brought legislation in without having thought through much of it. When bills come back with 25, 30 or 40 amendments, we know that the government has not done its job with respect to preparation.

We have seen that all over the place. We have seen it with respect to a million different issues. We are seeing it at home right now in my area, on the canola issue. We found out early on that the Chinese government wanted us to do something about tariffs on steel, and our government refused to do that. It was more interested in kowtowing to the Chinese government than dealing with our biggest trading partner, the United States. As a result of not moving on it, we ended up with tariffs. Now we have further tariffs on canola. We have tariffs on pork. We have these tariffs because the government does not consider what it is doing. It does not take into account the consequences of its activities, and then we see all kinds of secondary effects. This legislation, when I get around to talking about it, indicates that as well.

We see it on carbon taxes and other taxes imposed by the Liberal government. It has had the highest impact on Canadian people with the least effect of any type of carbon program that one could put in place.

Aboriginal affairs would be another good example. We heard this afternoon about the fact that the government failed to consult the aboriginal community with respect to another bill. The government has not asked the aboriginal community what is best for its people. The Liberals claim that the majority of people who would be impacted by that legislation are aboriginal and those with a very low income, but they have not asked them what would work for them. Often aboriginal peoples do not have access to urban centres or easy access to the Internet and those kinds of things, and the Liberals do not ask them what would work for them. Instead, they come with a plan that for many people would not work.

With respect to aboriginal affairs, the Liberals have divided communities. Many bands want to participate in the energy projects in our part of the world. They want to have a part of the prosperity that comes out of energy projects, and the government has basically divided those communities. That seems to be what the Liberal government does most effectively.

The government talked about having consultations on this legislation, but it failed to do that. It also claimed to have had consultations at its firearms meetings in the last few months. It set the meetings up to make them work as well as possible for itself, but that did not quite turn out. There were 135,000 online responses, and basically it was 75% to 80% opposed to the government making a move and changing things. I guess the government did not anticipate that, but that was the reality of the Canadian population. Once again, the Liberals misread it.

We see unintended consequences around energy disasters such as the purchase of the Trans Mountain pipeline. There was no need to do that.

Probably the place where we have seen the most obvious set of unintended consequences is around financial management. We have seen those folks just blow through people's tax money.

It was interesting. Last week, we were talking about the budget implementation bill. The deputy House leader, at every point, talked about the public purse. However, rarely did he talk about taxpayers and the fact that there is only one place that the government gets money, and that is out of the pocket of the taxpayers of Canada.

On each of these things, whether it is budgets that are running deficits that are two and three times what were promised, or the Trans Mountain pipeline, a pipeline that no one wanted to sell and no one wanted to buy, the government has not thought about taxpayers. The proponents themselves were willing to spend the money on the project. However, now we have Canadian taxpayers who have dived into it to the tune of about $5 billion so far. If the government is going to get the project done, it will be another $10 billion. The government has committed that kind of money to it without even thinking about taxpayers.

The Liberal government has also failed to spend its infrastructure money fairly and equally.

Another area where there has been unintended consequences, probably one of the most obvious ones, was the summer jobs program. The Liberals completely misread Canadians, trying to force them to follow the Liberal ideology. Anyone who had a different perspective from the government was then pushed to the outside.

I would argue that we are back here again. We have the late introduction of Bill C-93. It looks more like a public relations project than anything else. Again, this follows in the footsteps of Bill C-45 and Bill C-46, bills that the Liberals passed without an understanding of many of the consequences of what they were doing. I was not one of the people who supported those two bills.

The Liberals find themselves in a situation right now where they do not have the capacity to meet the demand. They did not prepare for that. They do not have capacity to set a realistic price. Those folks who are happily selling on the private market are doing just fine, in spite of the government's attempt to try to stop that.

The messaging across the way has been that the government is going to keep this out of the hands of people who should not have it. When I am talking to junior high-school students, for example, they are telling me that this is more accessible to them than it has ever been in their lives.

There is certainly no solution at the border either. I heard Liberal members say earlier today that they have had discussions and this is not going to be a problem for Canadians. We know full well that it is. We have a small crossing near my home. I went down to Montana a couple of weeks ago, to the post office down there, and came back. U.S. Customs agents are now stopping Canadians on the U.S. side of the border before we come into Canada.

As members know, people stop at the U.S. side on the way down, and when they come back, typically they drive to the Canadian side and then out. They are now stopping everyone prior to being allowed to exit to Canada. I asked why they were doing this, and I was told that they have direction from on high. I asked when it happened and was told that, coincidentally, when Canada legalized cannabis. There is another problem here that the Liberals never thought of at all.

I have another thing I want to talk about today as I am wrapping up. It seems like time flies very quickly here. We have talked a lot about the difference between pardons and expungement, and those kinds of things. The government has made its choice; others have very different ideas.

One of the things I want to bring up goes back to the taxpayers. There is a bill here of somewhere between zero and $600 million to do this process. I have a question as to why the taxpayers should be stuck with this bill one more time. The government seems comfortable spending everyone else's money.

This morning, we heard a Liberal member talking about his friend who, when he graduated from university, could not get a job at 7-11, but now he is a public servant. He is a public servant and is probably doing really well. Why should the folks who are now working at 7-11 be expected to pay for his pardon or expungement, whichever direction the Liberal government finally goes in with this legislation?

We have gone so far away from considering where money comes from. The government takes it out of the pockets of average people and does not think a thing about it. We have a situation here where people have broken the law, and they typically broke it knowing what the law was and that if they got caught there was going to be a punishment.

The law is now changed, and I do not have any problem with people getting pardons or expungement of these records. The question is, why should the taxpayers, those folks who are working for an hourly wage, be expected to then pay that bill?

I suspect that this is going to be much less successful than the Liberals said it will be. I was surprised a little earlier when one of my NDP colleagues talked about the pardons that have been made available to the gay and lesbian community. He said that only seven people so far have applied to the process. That probably means the process is too complicated for people to be bothered with and people have not done that.

Today I have heard figures that 10,000 people will apply, that there are 200,000, up to 400,000, who will be impacted by this. My question to the government today would be, why does it expect that the taxpayers of Canada would once more pick up the cost for a government bill that has a number of unintended consequences that were not considered ahead of time?

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

Mr. Speaker, in the last election, the Prime Minister, then only leader of the Liberal Party, indicated that we would move forward with the legalization of cannabis. Through Bill C-93 and C-45, proposed a few years after we were elected, we are fulfilling a commitment we made in the last election. I see that as a good thing.

I believe Canadians consider this a major change in public policy. It is a significant change. There have been relatively few bumps since its implementation. It has gone over relatively well.

Does the member not believe that we should be giving a gold star to the civil servants who assisted in getting us where we are today?

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

Mr. Speaker, I voted for Bill C-45. I think that is pretty simple for the member to understand.

However, while the Liberals continue to try to relitigate the last election, I am standing in this House saying that what they could be doing is expunging records for indigenous Canadians, black Canadians and young Canadians, in places like Halifax, Toronto and Regina, who are disproportionately affected by these absurd criminal records for something that is now legal.

New Democrats, both in the House and at committee, proposed to expunge criminal records for simple cannabis possession. With no offence to my colleagues to the right of me, I am sad to say that more Conservatives than Liberals voted for the bill that we proposed. While that member may want to live in 2015, I am fighting for those individuals who just want to get jobs and move on with their lives and not live with a black mark on their file because the government could not think on a bigger scale and more outside the box than what it is doing here today.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am going to need some time to fact check all the erroneous things that the member said.

First of all, the leader of the NDP, the member for Burnaby South, like health officials in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, wants to decriminalize drugs, recognizing that these are dangerous substances, but also recognizing, as we would have hoped the government would, but it does not, that these are now public health issues.

I want to walk the member through the NDP's position, since he seems to have had some trouble understanding it. The NDP advocated for decriminalization in the lead-up to legalization. Why? We understood that it would be a complicated process. We were right, because the government threw provinces under the bus while trying to get this process going.

That being said, the NDP supported Bill C-45, supported legalization, and through that whole process asked government members why they would not decriminalize simple possession of cannabis, as Canadians continue to be taxed with criminal records. These are young Canadians, vulnerable Canadians, racialized Canadians.

What do we have now? We have an eleventh-hour, half-baked, no pun intended, solution. Despite what the member thinks he is telling us to look forward to at committee, we are already at committee studying this bill before it is even out of the House. It is getting eviscerated by officials who cannot tell us where the numbers are that the member is quoting from, with the Minister of Border Security who said that this is a great injustice, and if we consider it a great injustice, maybe we should go toward expungement.

The member would also know that lawyers have come before the committee to speak about expungement. Please stop saying “pardon”, because the government did not respect its promise to change a record suspension back into a pardon. A pardon means something else in the United States, so a pardon and expungement are equally worthless at the border.

Does anyone know what one can do in Canada with a pardon or record suspension? Potential employers can ask if people have a criminal record for which they have obtained a record suspension. People have to say “yes”. With an expungement, they do not have to, so if they are racialized or vulnerable Canadians who want to get a job, expungement is the way to go. That is why witnesses at committee are telling us that it is the solution. That is why the member should get on board and stop believing his own hot air about this issue which the government has dropped since day one.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, a member across the way just said that is correct. Even the Conservative Party has recognized that the idea the Liberals had back when we were the third party is solid and progressive, and one that is necessary at this stage.

Indirectly, on behalf of the government and Liberal caucus members, I would like to thank members of the Conservative Party and the NDP for recognizing that we have brought forward sound legislation. I would encourage them to continue to follow the direction that we continue to provide on this very important topic.

Bill C-93 would allow for pardons. Pardons are the best way to deal with the issues facing about 250,000 Canadians. I think that is the number.

All we are talking about is simple possession, not possession and other issues, but simple possession of cannabis. What can we do to assist those individuals who have a criminal record based on simple possession of cannabis? The government's response is to issue a pardon and ensure that the finances are not going to be a part of the issue so that anyone who has a simple possession of cannabis conviction will in fact be able to get that pardon if that is what he or she would like to see happen.

I am encouraged because the critic from the Conservative Party indicated that her personal position is favourable to what the Liberals are suggesting, which is a pardon. However, there have been some speakers in the Conservative Party who are saying that they are not convinced as of yet, but at least they are approaching it with an open mind on whether it should be expungement or a pardon. I suspect that once this bill gets to committee and they hear follow-up information, the Conservative Party will see the value in the recommendation that has been provided by science, experts and the department, which will clearly demonstrate that in fact a pardon is the best way to go.

I do not know about my New Democratic friends. I am not sure where they will go on this issue. They always try to come up with something different, something unique. They seem to be on the expungement bandwagon, even though we have come up with an explanation as to why it would not do what is necessary for us to advance this further. They do not want to talk about that. If we listen to the New Democrats, we would think it is absolutely unanimous throughout the country that it has to be expungement and that the government does not necessarily know what it is talking about. I would highly recommend that we do not listen to New Democrats in the House.

The best example I can give is that of a constituent crossing the border into the U.S. What are we telling people when we say that their record has been expunged? We are saying that the act they went to court for, were convicted of and got a criminal record for never existed. Therefore, when a U.S. border agent asks them if they were ever prosecuted and had a criminal offence dealing with cannabis, they might say no. Why? The government said that the record was expunged. That could lead to all sorts of problems for an individual. A pardon does not do what an expungement does. Millions of Canadians travel to the U.S. A pardon would allow a constituent the opportunity to go to the U.S., and the individual is not going to be misinformed. This is just one of the more blatant examples that I can provide.

Of the 250,000 people we are talking about, it is expected that about 10,000 or so will go through this pardon process. In the questions and comments from across the way, members are asking why it is 10,000 and what happens if there are more than 10,000.

Our civil service is one of the best of any country in the world. We have professional civil servants who have a very good understanding of our systems. I would suggest that the numbers that are being provided are not just coming out of the dark. The numbers come from individuals we have entrusted. If the number is higher or lower than 10,000, the government will adjust, but the predicted number is around 10,000. We have the flexibility to make the adjustment, if it is necessary.

The idea of providing a pardon is of great value to Canadians and to society. People do get themselves into situations. Someone will be found in possession, but by pure luck another individual who also is in possession is not found to be in possession. The individual found to be in possession gets a criminal record. That does not mean the individual is worse than the thousands of others that were never found guilty of possession.

Many would argue that the consequences are unfortunate. We have listened to many speeches as this has been going on for the last couple of years. We often hear of individuals not being able to get a job because they have a criminal record based on the simple possession of cannabis. As a parliamentarian, I find that is a hard thing to ignore and not do anything about.

This legislation is good for Canadian society, especially now when we recognize that when we passed Bill C-45, the legalization of cannabis legislation, it only makes sense that we do what we can in regard to those who were found guilty of simple possession to enable them to dispose of that record via a pardon process.

Once this legislation is passed, thousands of Canadians in all regions of our country will apply to get their criminal record pardoned. This will assist many of those individuals in applying for a job or performing charity work. Canada is very dependent on volunteers. There are many ways society can benefit, such as an individual having a job and being able to participate more fully. These are the types of things we are going to witness. All one has to do is talk to some of those individuals. There are plenty of them, a quarter of a million of them. That is a lot of people. These individuals will directly benefit and there are many more that will realize an indirect benefit.

One of the things that is really important from the government's perspective, and even from a member of Parliament's perspective, is that we have to work towards making our communities safer for all of us. Individuals should feel safe in the communities in which they live. They should feel safe walking on the sidewalks in their neighbourhoods. They should feel safe being a part of their community and not be scared to walk down the street. We need to look at ways to reduce the amount of crime in our communities.

I was pleased when the minister responsible for crime reduction came to Winnipeg North and joined me on Selkirk Avenue, where we met with James, a fellow from the Bear Clan Patrol and one of the board members. We were able to check out a bit of Selkirk Avenue. The minister used to be the chief of police for the city of Toronto.

We understand how important it is that we strive to have less crime on our streets. With Bill C-93, working along with Bill C-45 and the legalization of cannabis, at the end of the day there is going to be less crime in our communities. These are the types of actions that are important for us to act on.

Today we have a second bill on a very important issue, an issue that we made a promise about in 2015. We are fulfilling yet another commitment to Canadians.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Madam Speaker, as had been noted earlier in debate today on this topic, the legalization of marijuana may well be the only election promise that the government has successfully kept, as we get to the very end of this Parliament. That bill, even then, took longer than the Liberals' promised deadlines for which it was to take place.

There are still a number of loose ends to this that were not properly contemplated under Bill C-45 and Bill C-46. I would ask the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan if he would like to comment on the late hour, literally down to the final weeks of this Parliament, still trying to deal with the sloppiness of the entire legalization rollout?

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

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate on Bill C-93 at second reading.

This bill will make things fairer for Canadians and their families. There was an ineffective prohibition of cannabis for far too long and, as a result, many Canadians ended up with a criminal record after being convicted of simple possession of cannabis.

Criminal records can make it hard for people to get jobs, find housing or even volunteer in their communities. The associated stigma can create the impression that the individual is a criminal who has nothing to offer Canadian society.

Criminal records are obviously necessary in the context of public safety. However, they can run counter to their objective when they prevent people who do not represent a danger from actively participating in society. This is particularly true when the activity for which the individual was convicted is no longer illegal and when the members of certain communities are disproportionately affected.

That is why our government has introduced Bill C-93, which would streamline the process for getting a pardon, also known as a record suspension, by waiving the waiting period and the application fee.

That is why our government has introduced Bill C-93, which would streamline the process for getting a pardon, also known as a record suspension, by waiving the waiting period and the application fee. The waiting period for people convicted of cannabis possession is generally five years, although it can be as high as 10 years. With Bill C-93, applicants would be immediately eligible. There would also be no application fee, which has been $631 since 2012.

On top of that, usual criteria like determining whether people have been of good conduct and whether a pardon would bring them a measurable benefit would also be waived. On top of that, the Parole Board would take additional steps, like simplifying application forms and doing community outreach, all with the goal of allowing people with past convictions for cannabis possession to clear their records and move on with their lives as quickly and easily as possible.

This is one of the final chapters in the unfortunate story of cannabis prohibition in Canada that goes back almost a century. It has involved billions of dollars wasted in enforcing an ineffective legal regime, and many more billions lining the pockets of organized crime. In spite of prohibition, Canadian youth became some of the heavier users of cannabis in the world. Some of them, especially members of marginalized communities, became saddled with criminal records that severely limited their educational and economic opportunities.

Because of the many different courts and police services in cities and town and rural communities all across our country, each with its own archives of convictions that go back decades, we do not know the exact number of Canadians with simple possession charges on their records. However, we do know that a simplified pardons process with no waiting period or application fee would make it easier for people to get the pardons they need to finally turn the page.

During the last election, we committed to ending the ineffective and counterproductive prohibition of cannabis. The NDP, on the other hand, wanted to maintain the prohibition of cannabis, with a decriminalization system that would have seen police issuing fines to people in marginalized and low-income communities.

As for the Conservatives, they still think that people who possess a small amount of cannabis for personal use should be thrown in jail.

Canadians gave us the opportunity to enact our proposal last October, and we did exactly that. With the coming into force of Bill C-45, we put in place a system of legal, strictly regulated cannabis production and distribution, designed to keep cannabis out of the hands of Canadian youth and to keep profits out of the hands of criminals.

With the coming into force of Bill C-45, we implemented a production and distribution system for legal cannabis that is rigorously regulated and designed to keep cannabis out of the hands of youth and to take the profit out of the hands of organized crime. At that time, the government announced that it intended to provide recourse for individuals who had been convicted of simple possession of cannabis only.

Once again, we have delivered on our commitment. Providing no-cost, expedited record suspensions is effective. Criminal records of pardoned individuals are sealed and segregated. Background checks by prospective employers or landlords would yield no results, as would a search of the Canadian police database.

The effect of a pardon is fully recognized and protected under the Canadian Human Rights Act, which forbids discrimination based on a pardoned conviction. Similar protections already exist in several provinces and territories.

Waiving the waiting period and application fee are unprecedented measures. By doing so, we would be removing the major obstacles in the path of Canadians seeking to lift the stigma and burden of a criminal record for possession of cannabis, allowing them to participate fully in society.

We cannot go back in time and give them the opportunities they have lost, but we can give them a way of moving forward. When people fully reintegrate into Canadian society by going to school, getting jobs and generally participating in community life, we are all better off.

Now that a legal framework is in place, it is in our collective interest to allow people with criminal records for cannabis convictions to wipe the slate clean of records imposed under the former system.

Bill C-93 does that. I strongly support Bill C-93 and I encourage all my colleagues to support it.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my Liberal colleague for his question.

It is a good thing our vision differs from the Liberals'. We voted against legalizing marijuana and it is now legal. That said, Bill C-93 highlights the bill's shortcomings.

The government was improvising, and Bill C-45, its marijuana legalization bill, was rushed through Parliament. It did not have unanimous support. With this bill you told the provinces that they would have to figure things out. We will have to work together on Bill C-93.

I was indeed against the legalization of marijuana. If the government wants this bill to pass unanimously, we are going to have to review it carefully, because it creates a large number of inequalities, and I do not like inequality.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today in the House to speak to Bill C-93, an act to provide no-cost, expedited record suspensions for simple possession of cannabis.

This bill follows on Bill C-45, an act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other acts, which has been in force since October 17, 2018. Bill C-93 seeks to make changes to the pardon process and provide no-cost record suspensions for Canadians found guilty of simple possession of cannabis in the past. It also seeks to help Canadians who were convicted of using a drug that is now legal, since they will no longer have to go through the usual waiting period or pay the fees associated having their record suspended.

For this type of application, an offender would usually have to wait between five and ten years, depending on the conviction, after serving the sentence to obtain a pardon. Furthermore, the cost of the application is $631. The measure introduced by Bill C-94 would amend the Criminal Records Act and makes reference to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Narcotic Control Act and the National Defence Act. It goes without saying that this new legislative measure must be properly drafted or else it could potentially mislead many Canadians who could one day avail themselves of it.

For example, if this legislative measure were adopted as written in Bill C-93, the administrative costs would be grossly underestimated. Also, it would result in criminal information about offenders being maintained and remaining available, as in the case of pardons granted in a system parallel to that of the RCMP. This information would be available to foreign police services. This would allow U.S. customs officers, for example, to bar a Canadian convicted of simple possession of marijuana from entering the United States.

If a criminal record is not completely erased, it can have a life-long impact. This is counter to the purpose of the bill to ensure that all Canadians who have been convicted and have a criminal record will be able to travel to the United States without any problems.

My speech on this bill will focus primarily on one topic that is very important to all Canadians, specifically the sound management of public funds, which has never been the hallmark of a Liberal government. The Liberals have always been champions of debt. I think that the current government is a perfect example of that, here in the House. Accordingly, it is only responsible and even advisable to ask such important questions about Canadian taxpayers' hard-earned money.

I have a serious concern about how much Bill C-93 will really cost. Based on our estimates, it could cost $315 million. The minister and his officials have said that it would cost around $2.5 million, because they expect that just 10,000 of the 250,000 eligible Canadians who have been convicted of one sole possession offence will apply.

Since we are talking about estimates, let us recall the boondoggle created by a Liberal government with the implementation of the national firearms registry in 1995. Let's talk about Liberal spending estimates.

I would like to remind members about how much the Liberals estimated it would cost to set up the infamous registry. At the time, it was supposed to cost $2 million. Do my colleagues remember how much the implementation of this very expensive and useless Liberal registry ended up costing? Surprise, it cost an estimated $2 billion. That is a far cry from the $2 million projected. So we can put this in proper context, I will say this: the cost was nearly 1,000 times the initial estimate. The Liberals are clearly not very good at estimates. In fact, I would say that they are the worst.

My concern, which is very justified and shared by many colleagues and taxpayers, makes it hard for me to believe the government's estimate of $2.5 million. It is obvious to anyone who has read the bill that even the government is not sure about this amount. Considering the significant bureaucratic effort required to analyze, validate and confirm the profile of each applicant, we are convinced that the Liberal government's cost estimates are well off the mark.

It is only natural for Canadians to find the government estimates set out in this bill rather dubious. It is important to remember that the Liberals promised to balance the budget in 2019. However, the only thing members will remember about the Liberals' legacy to our children and grandchildren is another $90 billion in debt. How long will it take us to pay that back? It will take at least 25 years. So much for the Liberals' estimates.

Given the painfully obvious past and present failures of Liberal governments as well as the government's claims that middle-class Canadians are its priority, I have to say that making the middle class bear the tax burden of this measure, the cost of which the government has obviously once again under-estimated, is unfair to honest people who have never had a criminal record and likely never will. Canadians work hard to earn a decent living to feed and house their families and to try to give them a decent education so that their generation will be richer than ours.

I will find it very difficult to support this bill if significant amendments are not made to ensure that justice is served for honest taxpayers and for the offenders who would benefit from a privilege paid for by said taxpayers.

I agree with expedited record suspensions for simple possession in principle, but we need to consider the cost. Canadian taxpayers deserve the truth when it comes to their money. I will always stand up for their right to demand transparency and accountability in the government's management of public funds. Once again, that does not seem to be the case with this bill.

There are so many problems with this legislation I hardly know where to start. The only way to make it worthwhile is to sit down together and go through it in detail to make sure Canadian taxpayers are treated fairly and are not made to foot the bill. Normally, pardons come at a cost, but these will be handed out for free. We need to look at all the ins and outs of this bill to make sure it is fair to everyone, and, most importantly, to make sure the government's numbers are accurate and costs will not end up ballooning like they did with the gun registry.

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

Madam Speaker, I wholeheartedly agree with the comment made by the hon. member for Calgary Rocky Ridge.

Wherever one stands on the issue of legalization, it is very clear that, from the start, the Liberal government completely bungled the implementation and enforcement of legalization legislation. On that basis alone, I was against Bill C-45 and Bill C-46, which contains a number of provisions.

Quite frankly, this issue should have been part of the legalization bill. It should have been part and parcel with the legalization bill. Instead, we are left in a situation where we have a flawed half measure that very likely may not make it through this Parliament. It is another example of the failure of leadership on the part of the government.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

As I recall, Mr. Paul-Hus, the consultation was responsive. In other words, once Bill C-45 was enacted.... Indeed, for a number of months before it finished its parliamentary course and became law, there were large numbers of Canadians—in the general public, in the media, a good many members of Parliament and it came up in question period—who were making the case that upon the change of the legal regime in Bill C-45 the issue of criminal records needed to be dealt with.

Therefore, in the course of our work on Bill C-45, we began considering the alternatives for how you could respond to the criminal records issue in a way that was fair and equitable, effective and efficient. It was really in response to what appeared to be a very broad public consensus. We brought forward the legislation. It would seem to be contradictory to change the law in Bill C-45 but not deal with the issue of previously existing records. That was the very broad public comment that we responded to.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague.

I am trying to understand her question, but, as far as I know, legalization has not helped mental health. According to reports and comments we have been getting from medical professionals, some mental health problems are related to cannabis consumption.

As I said in my speech, people can now buy cannabis legally, but the black market is still flourishing and continues to supply cannabis to young people. Cannabis does not even make people bat an eyelid now. During our earliest speeches on Bill C-45, we said that legalization would make people think of cannabis consumption as no big deal, and that is exactly what is happening.

The goal was to implement measures to ensure that young people would not use it or would use it only once they reached legal age. That is not what we are seeing. With respect to mental health, I would encourage my colleague to check with the Minister of Health, who I am sure has more up-to-date information than I. What I have been hearing is that the situation has not improved.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am here today to talk about Bill C-93, an act to provide no-cost, expedited record suspensions for simple possession of cannabis.

The first thing I want to tell the government is that we think this is pretty reasonable, but there are “buts”. We think most Canadians are okay with erasing records for simple possession of cannabis. We agree on that, especially when it comes to young people. A lot of young people get caught when they are just trying marijuana. They might be in a park, the police happen to be there, and they end up with a record for something that is really just a youthful indiscretion.

Of course, there are also adults who have tried marijuana or used it while it was illegal. After he was elected, our own Prime Minister admitted to smoking cannabis while it was still illegal. As we see it, that is not very good, considering what one represents once one is elected and becomes a federal MP and then the Prime Minister. Still, he admitted to smoking while it was illegal. That is not a good example to set for Canadians.

However, we understand that for younger people, minors or youth, this can fall under the category of youthful mistakes. What we are accepting with Bill C-93 is the clearing of the criminal records of people who were convicted of simple possession once in their lives. We are not talking about people who were caught many times, like 200 or 300 times, or people who have a criminal history or other offences on their criminal records. In the case of a one-time conviction for simple possession, we can accept that it was a mistake and grant a pardon.

Although we are prepared to support the idea of Bill C-93 at second reading, we would need to study the bill in detail in committee, because much of it is unclear. There is no preamble and no clear explanation of the goals of the bill or who could benefit from it and why. That is why the committee study will be important. It will be vital to dig into the details and get down to the nitty-gritty to figure out what is not being said. It is often the unspoken elements that require clarification.

Let us talk about the costs involved, for example. It is estimated that about 500,000 Canadians have criminal records for simple possession. The cost of applying for a pardon is a little over $600. If you multiply those numbers, it comes to $315 million, so that is how much would normally be paid by those taxpayers who have a criminal record. The government wants to make it free. This means that Government of Canada resources will be used to process the files of these individuals, who would normally have to pay for it themselves. If they were paying, that would cover the cost of processing these records, which amounts to roughly $315 million. That is not insignificant. We in the Conservative Party are wondering why other taxpayers should have to pay indirectly for these individuals to apply for a pardon.

It is typical of the Liberal government to believe that money is no object. The Liberals never consider taxpayers, who pay a lot of money in taxes. They never say “no”, and they throw money around left, right and centre. We have been watching them do this for the past three and a half years. This comes as no surprise. To us Conservatives, however, these are important considerations.

I want to come back to Bill C-45, which is one of the things that led to Bill C-93 currently before the House. Bill C-45 is the notorious marijuana legalization bill, which was introduced in a hurry to fulfill an election promise. However, it raised a great many questions that have never been answered. The government says it consulted experts and received information. We know that is completely false—or perhaps its did not really listen to the feedback given in those consultations. Police forces had all kinds of concerns, as did the medical community. Issues were raised but were never taken into consideration. Landlords also had questions about cultivation and use inside apartment buildings. Those issues were never resolved, and this creates uncertainty.

Given the way Bill C-45 was passed and expedited in order to fulfill the famous election promise and pander to young voters who voted Liberal because of it, we think that there will always be questions, especially since the government did not want to listen to law enforcement and doctors, among others. Even if I started out by saying that we are prepared to support Bill C-93, we must still thoroughly examine this bill, because we do not want the Liberals to pull a fast one, as the expression goes.

First of all, the legalization of marijuana was supposed to reduce the proceeds of organized crime. The parliamentary secretary spoke about it in his speech. Sales of marijuana alone by organized crime are estimated at $7 billion. The Liberals said they were legalizing marijuana to take this money out of the pockets of organized crime and put it in the government's coffers. However, this was a false argument and a public relations exercise. We know that organized crime continues to sell marijuana. It even copied the labelling of products sold in legal stores in developing its packaging. This law did not stop organized crime from continuing to do business.

Furthermore, since it is now legal, no one is afraid of getting arrested, which is kind of odd. People are still using illegal drugs and organized crime continues to profit. The concerns we raised while we were debating Bill C-45 have now proven to be valid.

Again, we do support the spirit of the bill, but we want to study the bill in committee to be sure that the final version is very clear. This is my first term as a member of Parliament, but I have been learning quickly. I learned rather quickly that the Prime Minister is not to be trusted. Recent events are proof of that. The Prime Minister raised a lot of hopes, but the promises turned out to be snake oil. He made promises to everyone, but at the end of the day, we now know they meant nothing. He claimed to be a feminist. He said that the status of women was important and that he would make it a focus of debate as much as possible. Everyone knows what he did with the three female MPs who now sit as independents.

The Prime Minister also mocked Stephen Harper, saying he did not take the needs of indigenous people into consideration. He said that he cared about indigenous people and he was going to fix the situation. Last week, however, we saw young indigenous women turn their backs on our Prime Minister here in the House. Indigenous communities in Canada heard all the lofty promises that were made, but the Prime Minister kept breaking those promises.

Getting back to the legalization of marijuana, I would remind the House that the Prime Minister was in such a hurry to fulfill his election promise that he did not listen to the municipalities, law enforcement, employers and scientists. The Conservatives are often accused of not believing in science, but the first to ignore scientists were this Liberal Prime Minister and his team. They keep shaking their heads, but they ignored scientists from across Canada regarding the problems associated with marijuana.

The government also promised to create a legal framework for derivative products and set standards for the sale of edibles and concentrates such as hashish within 12 months of legalizing marijuana. That was six months ago, and we still have not seen a plan to make that happen. This is yet another unfulfilled promise, and seeing as this session is about to end, it will probably be another broken promise.

It is easy to see why the majority of Canadians feel betrayed by this Liberal government. Much like Obama, the Prime Minister made a lot of noise but over-promised and under-delivered. All too often, we have heard the Liberals downplay the dangers of marijuana, and now that they have legalized it, future generations will think cannabis consumption is no big deal. Even my own children are now saying that it is legal and smoking it just to try it out is fine. That is not how it works though. It may be legal, but it is still very dangerous. Young people need to understand that it is hazardous to their health, not a harmless consumer product.

Experts say it is especially dangerous for young people, and everyone agrees.

In a Globe and Mail article published in April 2017, the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Psychiatric Association, the Canadian Paediatric Society and other organizations representing front-line health care providers express their concerns about the ill effects of cannabis, especially for chronic smokers under the age of 25.

In this article, the experts say to please keep the public health focus front of mind as this legislation is unrolled. That is a direct quote from Dr. Gail Beck, the clinical director of youth psychiatry at the Royal Ottawa Hospital. She also says that lots of people think this is harmless.

I would like to read out this article to show the House that cannabis consumption really does have consequences. These are the words of experts, not politicians. The experts quoted in this article say that the medical profession in this country has long had misgivings about medicinal marijuana, namely that there is not enough solid evidence of pot's efficacy in treating chronic pain and other ailments to warrant a doctor's endorsement. However, with the advent of legal recreational marijuana, doctors have a different set of worries.

A major concern is the potential for marijuana addiction, in particular among teens and young adults. Christina Grant, a professor of pediatrics at McMaster University in Hamilton, says that one in seven adolescents who start using cannabis will develop a cannabis use disorder, which is significant.

Dr. Grant, a principal author at the Canadian Pediatric Society, released a statement last fall, saying that cannabis use crosses over into disorder territory when it begins to cause dysfunction in users' day-to-day lives, derailing their commitment to school or work and sowing conflict in their families.

Cannabis has also been associated with certain mental illnesses. We still do not know how the medication, depression and anxiety all connect. Science has not yet established a cause and effect relationship between the two. In other words, we cannot be certain whether people smoke cannabis because they are depressed and anxious or if they are depressed and anxious because they smoke cannabis.

Dr. Beck says there is stronger evidence that heavy use of cannabis can lead to psychosis, especially among people who have a family history of mental illness. However, the vast majority of the research involved people who use cannabis daily. The scientific literature is virtually silent on the mental health effects of occasional use.

Dr. Grant noted that we do not know the lower limit that is safe and there is no evidence to suggest that nothing will happen if a person uses cannabis once or twice.

There is good evidence that teens who smoke pot frequently suffer long-lasting damage to their still immature brains, including problems with memory, attention and executive functioning. Dr. Grant added that, for teenagers who use cannabis regularly, there are actually structural changes that are visible on MRI. She adds that certain areas of the brain are visibly smaller, there is thinning of a part of the brain called the cortex, which is very important in terms of thinking and planning and organizing.

The adult brain appears capable of recovering from chronic pot use in a few weeks. According to Dr. Beck, that is not what happens in young people. Citing concerns about the adolescent brain, the Canadian Medical Association, which represents the country's physicians, last year urged the federal government to ban the sale of marijuana to people under the age of 21 and to restrict the amount and potency of the drug available to those younger than 25.

Most of the health concerns associated with cannabis apply to heavy users. However, occasional tokers can wreak havoc if they get behind the wheel while high. For an occasional user to consume some pot and then get behind the wheel is a recipe for disaster.

According to Amy Porath, director of research and policy for the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, cannabis impairs our ability to safely drive a vehicle. It impairs our reaction time, our ability to multitask and to pay attention. Police across the country are currently piloting a roadside saliva test to see if it adequately detects cannabis-impaired drivers.

Whether it is tobacco or cannabis, Dr. Porath said, there are concerns with smoking anything. Smoking can cause coughing, wheezing, sore throat and tightness in the chest. It can also aggravate asthma.

That article was published before marijuana was legalized. Major concerns were raised in this 2017 Globe and Mail article, which looks at the problems with marijuana.

I am bringing it up again and members may be wondering why I am talking about this. It all comes back to the basic concept, which is the way marijuana was legalized. The government completely ignored experts, scientists and police officers. It completely ignored the proposals that the opposition made in committee. It also completely ignored the work of the Senate. Senators proposed a lot of amendments but the Liberals rejected all of them, just like they rejected the proposals of the official opposition.

That is why we are prepared to say that Bill C-93 might make sense. Given the way the government works, we would never go so far as to say that the bill is extraordinary and that we will vote in favour of it without any debate. That would be impossible because there are always grey areas, things that are unclear.

The Liberals know what they want. They have a course of action and a way of doing things. As for us, our duty is to examine the issues, ask the right questions and propose any necessary amendments.

We are therefore prepared to support Bill C-93 at second reading. However, it needs to be reworked in committee, and I hope that the government will listen to and understand the amendments that will be proposed. I am sure that the NDP will also propose amendments.

Unfortunately, we do not have enough information to immediately pass the bill in its current form. We need to go a little further, to dig a little deeper. After the committee does its work and the Liberal government makes some decisions, we will decide how to move forward. At this point, we have some doubts. We will see what happens, and then we will respond accordingly.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, in her speech, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness said that the purpose of Bill C-45 was to keep some $7 billion out of the pockets of organized crime.

Does she know whether organized crime revenues have dropped or, instead, stayed the same?

Customs Act

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Louis-Saint-Laurent. Our debate has not been very fruitful since this morning. I want to remind the House of certain facts about Bill C-21. Bill C-21 authorizes the Canada Border Services Agency to collect and receive biographical information on travellers leaving Canada. The act will authorize officers to require goods being exported from Canada to be reported, despite any exemptions, and will give them the power to examine those goods.

The Prime Minister first announced an agreement with the United States to implement a system for sharing basic biographical information in March 2016, after his first official visit to the U.S.

Currently, under the beyond the border action plan, the two countries collect and share biographical information on third-country nationals and lawful permanent residents at land ports of entry. Data on entry to one country serve as a record of exit from the other.

On November 21, on the matter that concerns us today, the Senate committee heard from Daniel Therrien, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, about the bill's general intention and the amendment adopted by the House of Commons. Mr. Therrien had this to say about the bill: “I am generally satisfied that this border management issue is based on important public policy objectives and the personal information in question is not particularly sensitive.”

As for the amendment, Mr. Therrien pointed out that, for greater legal certainty, section 93.1 should be amended to state that the data collected under sections 92 and 93 should be retained by the agency for a maximum of 15 years.

However, we should not forget that the former Conservative government negotiated the beyond the border action plan, which includes a provision on sharing entry and exit data with the United States. At the time, given the political concerns about privacy, we decided not to give effect to this legislative measure just before the election. However, this provision deals with longstanding Conservative priorities for border security and compliance with benefit programs.

Our border services need to have the tools to keep Canadians safe. Frankly, our law enforcement services all need the tools to do their jobs, but the current Prime Minister's government is needlessly compromising Canadians' safety. As long as this Prime Minister continues carrying out his reckless ideas, Canadians will have good reason to be concerned. Allow me to give some examples.

Under the current Prime Minister, we are seeing a problem at the border. This is something we raise often, but the government claims the opposite. However, I can confirm that right now, the time to conduct a security screening on the illegal migrants crossing into Canada has gone from the standard eight hours to just two hours. In addition, there is no government directive for border officers regarding the new ways to manage the influx of visitors coming to Canada with marijuana. Once again, the government says that we need to stop debating, that we should help the government move forward instead of standing in the way. The thing is, there is a reason we are standing in the way. We have valid questions.

Problems often arise after the debate and implementation of bills that the government rams down our throats, like Bil C-45 on marijuana. We then point out that we told the government so. The government refused to accept some of the amendments proposed by the Senate and now there are problems. Right now, border services officers are having to deal with those problems, as are police officers, who are having trouble detecting whether drivers have used drugs.

Let us come back to the matter of illegal migrants. Every time we ask a question about this issue, the Liberals say that we are racist or xenophobic. This has absolutely nothing to do with the race of the people who are coming to Canada. I believe that anyone who illegally crosses our border is an illegal migrant, regardless of his or her origin or colour. This has nothing to do with racism or xenophobia. That needs to stop. It is a dangerous game. The government is accusing us of playing a dangerous game when it is the one doing so by saying things that make no sense.

The problem is that the Prime Minister created a situation with his infamous tweet, even though the members opposite say that is not true. It is fairly easy to see that people are coming to Canada in response to what the Prime Minister said.

The government set up a camp to welcome migrants in Lacolle. Yes, it is important to welcome people, even if they are in Canada illegally. We are responsible people after all. We can agree on that.

However, the Liberals grossly mismanaged the situation. They set up a camp and expanded it. They set up infrastructure to receive 500 people a day. It is a nice facility with all the equipment and everything needed to do things properly.

However, this year, the camp expanded tremendously. There was room to take in 3,000 people. The Saint-Bernard hotel was even part of the security perimeter. The Government of Canada sent a cheque to the hotel owner, who must have left on vacation for a year since the rooms that were rented are empty and no one is staying there.

There is a steady flow of migrants every day and we are spending tens of millions of dollars in Lacolle. The Parliamentary Budget Officer pegged the cost at $1.1 billion. In the meantime, the government is not fixing the problem, it is not taking a position and telling these people to stop coming here illegally.

We are not asking questions just for the fun of being obstructionist. On the contrary, we want to resolve this issue. I have been here for three years. Whether in committee or in the House, our questions always serve to advance matters, not obstruct them.

The member for Kingston and the Islands accused us of throwing a wrench into the works, but they are the ones who are doing a bad job and messing everything up. They have botched everything including Bill C-45.

I would like to see a bit more maturity in the House, and I would like people to make sense when they are talking to MPs on this side of the House.

We also need to talk about the UN global compact for migration. Once again, members over here have been clear, we have taken the time to do things properly, we have assessed the situation and reviewed this much-touted compact. My party's immigration critic was on the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. Nothing made sense. The fact that the Prime Minister told the world Canada is good and is going to help them solve their problems is just a lot of hype, just for show.

Once again, we were practically accused of being bad, racist, right-wing or even extreme right-wing people for being against this. In the end, 34 countries—countries that matter—refused to sign the compact.

This morning, a former UN lawyer and current Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada lawyer published a very clear letter in Le Devoir setting out very specific facts that show that this is far-fetched. That is the word that the author uses at the end of the piece. We must not sign the global compact because it does not hold water. It is nonsense.

This is just like the government. From the start, for three years, all this government has cared about is improving its image and doing whatever it wants, like tweeting that it is sending $50 million to South Africa and that it is all good because the suckers in Canada will foot the bill.

Do we ask this kind of question just to block the system or for the fun of it? No. We are responsible people. We are seeing what is happening and we are asking questions appropriate to the circumstances.

Many of the 38,000 people who crossed the border illegally will experience hardship. That is obvious. There are families, particularly Haitian families, who were in the United States and got a scare. They were told to come to Canada, but now they are being told that they do not have the right to claim asylum here. The tweet sent in 2017 was just a joke, just for show. However, people are bringing their children with them and they will have to go back, not to the United States but to Haiti. Do the Liberals see how complicated this situation is and how much hardship this will inflict on people over the years?

All that to say that we supported Bill C-21. However, it is not a futile exercise to continue to debate it, to ask questions and to make improvements when circumstances change. The government needs to stop laughing at the opposition. As I already mentioned, the opposition has not raised many issues over the past three years that did not turn out to be true and important.

Criminal Code

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

Mr. Speaker, excuse me while I shed a few tears for the troubles of being in a majority government. The parliamentary secretary should have an inkling of understanding, because he once sat in this corner, of the vast amount of power a majority government wields in this place. Frankly, I find it inexcusable at this stage in the 42nd Parliament that the only substantive justice bills that have been passed by the current government are Bill C-14, which was the result of a court-ordered deadline, and Bill C-46, which, of course, was the companion bill to Bill C-45.

Our contention on this side of the House has been that it would have been unnecessary to even use time allocation if the government had taken the non-contentious parts of Bill C-32, which was rolled into Bill C-39, which was rolled into another bill, and made those a standalone bill. For example, we have provisions in the Criminal Code such as challenging someone to a duel, possessing crime comics and fraudulently practising witchcraft. For decades, legal scholars have complained that these faithful reproductions in the Criminal Code lead to confusion. It should have been no secret to officials in the justice department that as soon as the justice minister assumed her mandate, we could have moved ahead with a bill to get rid of those inoperable, redundant sections of the Criminal Code, probably with unanimous consent.

Looking back at the last three years of the government's legislative agenda, particularly with justice bills, would the parliamentary secretary not agree with me that it would have been smarter to package the non-contentious reforms of the Criminal Code in a standalone bill, rather than having us, at this stage, at three years, with not a single reform of the Criminal Code yet passed by this Parliament?

Consideration of Senate Amendments

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

Madam Speaker, I am very happy to be participating in today's debate on Bill C-51. I find it unfortunate, however, that the government has again had to resort to time allocation on a justice bill. The bill passed the House of Commons. I was certainly one of the members who voted in favour of it. However, I find myself in the awkward position of actually agreeing with what the Senate has done to the bill, because it very much mirrors the attempt I made at the justice committee last year to codify the nature of consent and provide a bit more definition in the Criminal Code.

Before I get to the Senate amendments more specifically, I want to talk more generally about the government's record on justice bills. While I do have a great deal of respect for the Minister of Justice and I very much agreed at the start of the government's mandate with what she was attempting to do, the pace of legislative change from the Minister of Justice has been anything but satisfactory. We started off with Bill C-14. It received a lot of attention and debate in Canada, as it should have, but we have to remember that the only reason the government moved ahead with Bill C-14 and we passed it in 2016 was that the government was operating under a Supreme Court imposed deadline. There was really no choice in the matter. Furthermore, when Bill C-14 was passed, we very nearly had a standoff with the Senate because of the provision in the bill about reasonable death occurring in a predetermined amount of time. We knew that that particular section would be challenged in the court system.

The other substantive piece of legislation the government has passed is Bill C-46, which was designed to move in conjunction with Bill C-45. Of course, Bill C-46 was problematic because the government has now removed the need for reasonable suspicion for police officers to administer a Breathalyzer test. They can basically do it whenever a person is legally stopped, whether it be for a broken tail light or for not stopping completely at a stop sign. If an officer has a Breathalyzer test on their person, they can demand a breath sample right then and there, without the need for reasonable suspicion. I have seen mandatory alcohol screening operate in other countries, notably Australia.

In my attempt to amend that bill, I stated that if we were going to apply such a draconian measure, it should be applied equally, because if we start giving police officers the ability to decide when or where to test someone, we know from the statistics, notably from the City of Toronto, that people of a certain skin colour are more apt to be stopped by the police than others. If such a provision were to be implemented, it should be applied equally at all times.

Moving on, there is Bill C-28, which deals with the victim surcharge, but is still languishing in purgatory at first reading.

The government then moved forward with a number of cleanups of the Criminal Code, the so-called zombie or inoperative provisions and the many redundant sections of the Criminal Code. That is the thing about the Criminal Code: It is littered with out-of-date provisions that are inoperable because of Supreme Court or appellate court rulings, but they are still faithfully reprinted every single year because Parliament has not done its work to clean up the Criminal Code. As my college the member for St. Albert—Edmonton has noted, it has led to some very bad consequences, notably in the Travis Vader case, where the judge used an inoperative section of the Criminal Code to convict someone. That conviction was then overturned. So these section do have very real consequences.

My contention has always been with section 159, which was brought forward in Bill C-32. Bill C-32 was then swallowed up by Bill C-39. Then Bill C-39 was swallowed up by Bill C-75, which has only just passed the House and now has to clear the Senate. We have no idea how much longer that is going to take. The House is about to rise for the Christmas break. We will be back functioning at the end of January, but Bill C-75 is a gigantic omnibus bill and full of provisions that make it a very contentious bill.

My argument has always been that for such an ambitious legislative agenda, especially if we are going to clean up the Criminal Code as Bill C-51 proposes to do, I contend that the Minister of Justice, had she had a good strategy in dealing with the parliamentary timetable and calendar and how this place actually works, would have bundled up the non-contentious issues in Bill C-39 and Bill C-32, which was morphed into Bill C-75, together with the non-contentious issues of Bill C-51 and made it a stand-alone bill, and we could have done that work.

These are issues that we cannot really argue against because it is a moot point; the Supreme Court has already ruled, so keeping them in the Criminal Code just leads to further confusion. Here we are, three years into the government's mandate, and the Criminal Code has still not been cleaned up to this day. For an ambitious legislative agenda, that leaves a lot to be desired. I heard Michael Spratt, who regularly appears as a witness before the justice committee, describe Bill C-51 as dealing with the lowest of the low-hanging fruit. Therefore, if we had been serious, we could have made some very reasonable progress on that. Be that as it may, we have Bill C-51 before us and we have to go over it.

Before I get into the specific amendments brought forward by the Senate, I think it is worth going over some of the things we are talking about. Among the things Bill C-51 would repeal is the offence of challenging someone to a duel. It used to be illegal to provoke someone to fight a duel or to accept the challenge. We will get rid of that section because it obviously reflects an earlier time in Canada's history. It is the reason why in this place we are two sword lengths apart. Members of parliament in the U.K. used to go into that place with swords on their hips. The bill would also get rid of section 143 dealing with advertizing a reward for the return of stolen property. It would get rid of section 163, dealing with the possession of crime comics, a legacy of a 1948 bill by a member who thought that crime comics negatively influenced kids by encouraging them to commit crimes, and that they were not a part of a good upbringing. The section on blasphemous libel would be dropped. Fraudulently pretending to practise witchcraft is probably one of my favourite ones.

While Bill C-51 is making some much needed changes to sections of the Criminal Code, as I said earlier, we would not be arguing these cases in the House three years into the mandate of the current government if the bills had been bundled up into a single bill, which I am sure could have had royal assent by now.

We did have a very interesting discussion at the justice committee on section 176. When I first read Bill C-51 and it mentioned that this section would be repealed, I read right over it. However, when hearing witnesses at committee, it became quite apparent that section 176 had a lot of very deep meaning to select religious groups. After hearing all of that testimony about the importance of having section 176 remain in the code, I am glad to see that the committee members were able to work together to polish the language to ensure that it would now be applicable to all religious faiths, and not just single out the Christian faith. Now, if someone were to interrupt the religious proceedings of any faith, that would be dealt with appropriately under section 176.

The heart of the matter before us is the Senate amendments to Bill C-51. As I mentioned, it is kind of awkward for a New Democrat to be recognizing the work of the Senate. I value the people who sit as senators. I know there are some very determined people who certainly try to do their best there. My problem has always been with a 21st century democracy like Canada having an unelected and unaccountable upper house. I have to face the electorate for the decisions I make and the words I say in this place, and for what the Senate as a whole does.

I am going to be rejecting the government's motion on Bill C-51, because I agree with the substance of what the Senate was attempting to do in Bill C-51. It very much reflects some of the testimony that I heard at committee, and I have also reviewed some of the Senate Hansard transcripts of the debates it had on Bill C-51. While it is true that the amendments were not passed at the legal and constitutional affairs committee of the Senate, they were passed at the third reading stage. When we see the transcripts, we can see that the hon. senators in the other place were trying to codify what they saw as some missing aspects of the bill.

If we look at the heart of the matter, it comes down to the Supreme Court decision in R. v. J.A. The Supreme Court ruling reads:

When the complainant loses consciousness, she loses the ability to either oppose or consent to the sexual activity that occurs. Finding that such a person is consenting would effectively negate the right of the complainant to change her mind at any point in the sexual encounter.

In some situations, the concept of consent Parliament has adopted may seem unrealistic. However, it would be inappropriate for this Court to carve out exceptions to the concept of consent when doing so would undermine Parliament’s choice. This concept of consent produces just results in the vast majority of cases and has proved to be of great value in combating stereotypes that have historically existed. In the absence of a constitutional challenge, the appropriate body to alter the law on consent in relation to sexual assault is Parliament, should it deem this necessary.

The court in a sense is recognizing the very important part that Parliament plays in this. One thing I have learned during my time as our party's justice critic is that, in looking at the Criminal Code, ultimately, we in this place are responsible for drafting and implementing the law and it comes down to the courts to interpret it. There is this kind of back and forth. When the justice aspect of the government and the parliamentary part of it work in tandem like that, we hopefully arrive at a place where the law is reflective of today's society.

However, it is not only the J.A. decision that we should be looking at. On October 30, which coincidentally was the very same day that the Senate sent the bill back to the House, there was a decision in the Alberta Court of Appeal, R. v. W.L.S. In that particular case, an acquittal on sexual assault charges was overturned by the Court of Appeal. The Court of Appeal acknowledged in its decision that the complainant was incapable of consenting.

Senator Kim Pate provided us with a message. She said:

In regard to our discussions concerning Bill C-51, I write to draw your attention to the recent case of the Alberta Court of Appeal, concerning the law of incapacity to consent to sexual activity. Please find a copy of this case attached.

The Alberta Court of Appeal heard this case on October 30, the same day the Senate passed the amendments to Bill C-51. The court overturned the trial decision on the grounds that the trial judge had wrongly held that nothing short of unconsciousness was sufficient to establish incapacity. While this erroneous understanding of the law was rectified on appeal in this case, as we know, the vast majority of cases are never appealed. The trial judge's decision demonstrates the very error, fed by harmful stereotypes about victims of sexual assault, that many of us are concerned the original words of Bill C-51 risks encouraging.

Senator Kim Pate is basically acknowledging that there is a role for Parliament to play in providing a more explicit definition of consent, what it means and when consent is not given. While I am certainly one of those people who trusts in the power and ability of judges to make decisions, the judicial discretion, I align that thinking more with the decisions that they make and not in the interpretation of the Criminal Code. There is room in some parts of the Criminal Code to be very specific so that there is no judicial discretion, and that we are very clear on what consent means and what it does not mean.

Turning to the actual Senate amendments, they would be adding specificity in both clause 10 and clause 19. Basically, those particular aspects want to ensure:

(b) the complainant is incapable of consenting to the activity in question for any reason, including, but not limited to, the fact that they are

(i) unable to understand the nature, circumstances, risks and consequences of the sexual activity in question,

(ii) unable to understand that they have the choice to engage in the sexual activity in question or not, or

(iii) unable to affirmatively express agreement to the sexual activity in question by words or by active conduct;

Adding this kind of specificity to the Criminal Code is very much a good thing. In paragraph (b), it says “including, but not limited to”. I think adding that kind of specificity will help with certain cases. From the very interesting Senate deliberations on this subject at third reading, we can see that senators were not very happy with how Bill C-51 left a bit of a hole.

We have made much of the witness testimony at the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. Professor Janine Benedet did look at this particular aspect of the Criminal Code. As I said in my exchange with the member for Mount Royal, one thing she stated was:

Any clarification we can give will be beneficial. It doesn't have to be an exhaustive list, but there has to be the idea that consent has to be informed, that you have to have the ability to understand that you can refuse—because some individuals with intellectual disabilities do not know they can say no to sexual activity—and that it has to be your actual agreement. Those are all things that can be read into the code as it's currently written, but sometimes are not fully realized in the cases we see.

Adding that specific part would be very much in line with what Professor Benedet was saying at the committee. That is why I will be rejecting the government's motion and voting in favour of the Senate amendments.

Turning to the Senate deliberations on this bill, in some of that debate it was said that R. v. J.A. outlines the requirement for active consent. However, the Senate very much found that without the specific amendment by Senator Pate to Bill C-51, we would have failed to capture the scope of consent laid out for us by the Supreme Court, supported by experts in the law of sexual assault in Canada.

Feminist experts in sexual assault law have advised that the inclusion of the word “unconscious” risks creating a false threshold for the capacity to consent. There were also deliberations that the current wording in Bill C-51 poses a serious risk that women who are intoxicated would be blamed if they are sexually assaulted. They would not be protected by this bill.

Further, some have noted that the weakness is in the definition of what constitutes non-consent. According to a legal expert who provides sexual consent training to judges, there is not enough precedent or awareness among judges to believe that the proposed wording in clause 10 and clause 19 of the bill is clear enough.

I see my time is running out, but I will end with some of the really scary statistics we face as a country. Statistics Canada estimates that some 636,000 self-reported sexual assaults took place in Canada in 2014. Shockingly, it also estimates that as few as one in 20 were actually reported to police. Those are statistics which should give us great pause and lead us to ask ourselves what more we could be doing. The Senate amendments are very much in faith with trying to keep that.

I would also note that this is probably one of the last opportunities I will have to rise in this particular chamber to give a speech. I want to acknowledge the history of this place and what an honour it has been for me, in my short three years here, to have served in this House of Commons chamber. I know we will be going forward to West Block, and an admirable job has been done there.

I finish by wishing all my colleagues a merry Christmas. I hope they have a fantastic holiday season with friends and family, and that we come back in 2019 refreshed and ready to do our work on behalf of Canadians.

Expungement of Certain Cannabis-related Convictions Act

[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.

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you so much for inviting me to the Standing Committee on Health.

It's truly important for me to be here today to discuss with you the supplementary estimates (A) for the year 2018-19. I always welcome this opportunity to highlight some of the priorities and to discuss our efforts to keep Canadians healthy and safe. As always, I'm grateful to the committee members for your contributions to discussions, and I look forward to answering your questions.

Before I begin, I would also like to thank my officials who are accompanying me today.

They are Mr. Simon Kennedy, deputy minister of health; Dr. Siddika Mithani, president of the Public Health Agency of Canada; Dr. Theresa Tam, chief public health officer and from the Public Health Agency of Canada; Monsieur Michel Perron, vice-president of external affairs and business development at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research; and last but not least, Mr. Paul Glover, the president of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

They are masters in their fields and I am always happy when they accompany me at committee here. Also, I may turn to them for details with respect to some of the questions.

First, I would like to speak to Health Canada's authorities. Through the supplementary estimates (A), we are asking for an increase of $33.5 million. This would raise Health Canada's total authorities to just under $2.4 billion. This increase in funding would allow us to deliver on key priorities of the Government of Canada. I will describe these for you now, starting with opioids.

As Minister of Health, the first file that I was briefed on as Canada's health minister was the opioid crisis.

Since 2016 this crisis has claimed the lives of over 8,000 Canadians. This is a national tragedy that must be stopped, and it's why our government has taken action to save lives and to turn the tide on this national public health crisis.

So far we have restored harm reduction to the core of our approach and opened more than 25 supervised consumption sites. We have implemented the emergency treatment fund through budget 2018, and we are working to reduce stigma, which is a barrier to health and social services for people who use drugs, through public education.

Nevertheless, the opioid crisis continues to take lives and devastate communities. We must do more, and we will do more. These enhanced efforts include Health Canada's substance use and addictions program, which provides more than $28 million annually to support initiatives that work to prevent, treat and reduce all forms of harm from problematic substance use.

As a part of these estimates, this program has realigned $7.3 million to help address the opioid crisis.

Let's turn now to cannabis.

To support the legalization and regulation of cannabis, Health Canada received an additional $500,000 for operating expenditures from the central advertising fund as a part of these estimates for the cannabis pre-legalization advertising campaign.

This funding is a part of our government's significant investment of $108.5 million over six years to support cannabis public education, awareness and surveillance activities. We know that it's essential to invest in public education efforts surrounding the health and safety facts of cannabis, specifically targeting youth, in advance of the Cannabis Act coming into force.

These campaigns began long before legalization. They're intended to give Canadians, especially youth, the honest facts about cannabis, and to put them in a position to make informed, responsible and healthy choices. While healthy choices are the most important part of maintaining good health, environmental factors also have an impact.

Now let's turn to the new impact assessment and regulatory processes.

As you know, our government is renewing the federal impact assessment and regulatory system. The enhanced system will better protect Canadians' health, as well as our environment, fish and waterways. It will also rebuild public trust in how decisions about resource development are made.

This system will apply to all projects that are subject to federal assessment, such as mines, dams, pipelines and marine terminals.

Health Canada is the key federal department positioned to provide expertise on human health impacts of projects like these.

As such, we are requesting $5 million to help transition to the new impact assessment and regulatory processes.

Let's turn now to pay administration. I would now like to turn to an important administrative issue.

As you know, the Phoenix pay system continues to pose challenges for the public service, including employees of Health Canada and its portfolio organizations. For this reason, we are requesting $1.3 million in additional funds to address the issues in pay administration and to help ensure that our employees are paid properly and on time.

I will now speak in more detail about our portfolio organizations, their priorities and their specific requests for funding.

The Public Health Agency of Canada, PHAC, is asking for a net increase of $6.7 million to its authorities. This would bring the total authorities for 2018-2019 to $687.2 million.

This increase includes nearly $5.5 million to support the Aboriginal Head Start in Urban and Northern Communities Program.

This program funds indigenous community-based organizations in urban and northern areas to develop programs that promote healthy development of indigenous preschool children.

The increase we are requesting also includes $1 million to support PHAC's childhood vaccination campaign. This advertising campaign will raise awareness of the importance, safety and effectiveness of vaccination.

As a part of the health portfolio, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, also known as CFIA, works to uphold a strong and reliable food-safety system.

The supplementary estimates we are presenting today reflect an increase of $9.4 million for CFIA for specific time-limited activities, bringing its total authorities for 2018-2019 to $762 million.

The specific time-limited activities include funding for the Canadian Food Safety Information Network. This network will strengthen Canada's ability to detect and respond to food hazards by connecting and coordinating food safety and public health authorities.

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research, or CIHR, is Canada's health research investment agency. It provides $1 million per year to support Canada's health scientists.

Through these supplementary estimates, CIHR is seeking an increase of $0.4 million, for a total of approximately $1.1 billion in available authorities. This increase will support the creation of new scientific knowledge—knowledge that will lead to improved health, more effective health services and products, and a stronger Canadian health care system.

In conclusion, Health Canada, and indeed all five organizations in the health portfolio, is committed to spending funds responsibly, efficiently and effectively. The work I have outlined today will be instrumental in helping us achieve our mandate to protect the health and safety of all Canadians.

Thank you for this opportunity to speak about our work and to explain our budgetary priorities.

I am now pleased to take your questions.

Criminal Code

[Arif Virani, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, Lib.]

Madam Speaker, very briefly, as to the competency of the government, I would point to our medical assistance in dying bill, Bill C-45, and Bill C-46, and our appointment of 240 judges.

The member opposite took issue with peremptory challenges. The question I would put to him is on this issue. First of all, we have not just eliminated peremptory challenges, but are allowing judges to ensure that any jury will be diverse and represent the community it serves. We emphasize challenges for cause.

Does the member opposite believe, as in England, as it was done 30 years ago, that it is important that if one seeks to stand aside a juror, one has a reason for that, other than simply just the way that juror looks, and that one can enunciate that reason in front of an impartial adjudicator?

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise in the House especially to talk about ensuring the safety of my constituents and all Canadians.

Every day since the 2006 election I have had the privilege of being chosen to represent the values that are dear to us in Lévis—Lotbinière. My Conservative colleagues and I are determined to live up to that honour ethically and with respect and integrity.

Generally speaking, the legislation debated and passed in the House moves Canada forward, but since the election of this Liberal majority government, legislation is debated and passed very quickly in the House, which is moving our country backward. The list is long, but consider the marijuana legalization legislation, which is disastrous for the future of our young people, not to mention the bill before us today.

I would like nothing more than to remain positive, even optimistic, or even bury my head in the sand like so many other MPs are doing when it comes to Bill C-75, the 300-page omnibus justice bill.

As the official opposition, we have to once again call out this Liberal government's poor judgment, as it refuses to consider the impact that some of its changes will have on the safety of our children and our country. What is motivating the government? Is it tyring to keep one of its promises at all costs, even if that means setting Canada back? Time will tell.

We were fortunate to have inherited one of the most stable and robust political systems in the world, a model in terms of peace, order and good governance. Of course, things took a turn for the worse with this Liberal government, which wants to liberalize everything that we think should have some oversight.

Making major changes to Canada's justice system should be a judicious exercise, one that is not taken lightly, as the Liberal government seems to have done once again. Believe it or not, rather than taking action to combat terrorism, the Liberals want to get rid of penalties imposed on those who go abroad to join a terrorist group like ISIS.

What should we make of this Prime Minister who believes that reintegration, rather than prosecution, is the best way to treat ISIS fighters? Clearly, in keeping with the usual Liberal opportunism, the rights of victims and the safety of Canadians are not among the Liberal government's priorities to the same degree as they were top priorities for the Conservatives. The Prime Minister wants to lower penalties for serious crimes.

Apparently reason, committee testimony, studies, and plain old common sense just do not matter. If this bill passes, criminals may have to do nothing more than pay a fine instead of serving jail time for serious crimes such as leaving Canada to participate in a terrorist group, trafficking in persons and impaired driving causing bodily harm.

It makes absolutely no sense. All of these crimes are indictable offences and carry with them the maximum jail time they deserve. The Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights heard from victims of crime who are angry that the Liberals are again failing them by denying justice for their loved ones.

Recently, the Prime Minister refused to put a murderer back in jail. He decided to pay veterans' benefits to incarcerated criminals who never served their country. That is scandalous.

Canada's Conservatives have always stood up for the rights of victims of crime, and we will not stop now. That is why we submitted over 100 amendments to ensure the continued safety of Canadians and our country.

We called for serious crimes to remain indictable offences and demanded that the Liberals reverse the elimination of preliminary inquiries and peremptory challenges of jurors.

We also called for a reversal on the elimination of cross-examination of police officers for certain offences and an increase to the maximum sentence for sexual assault.

We demanded that the victim surcharge imposed by the courts not be reduced.

Obviously, some of the amendments are commendable. The Conservatives can support some of the proposals set out in Bill C-75. We agree to remove the provisions of the Criminal Code that have been deemed to be unconstitutional. The Conservatives can support that measure because it will benefit victims of crime and it will clean up the Criminal Code.

It goes without saying that we support increasing the maximum sentence where offenders have been repeatedly violent toward an intimate partner as well as the consideration of intimate partner violence as an aggravating factor in sentencing. We also support more stringent temporary release requirements in the case of offenders who have committed intimate partner violence.

It also goes without saying that we support the provisions to reduce delays in our justice system, particularly those that seek to limit the scope of the preliminary inquiry, allow increased use of technology to facilitate remote attendance by any person in a proceeding, modernize and clarify interim release provisions to simplify the forms of release that may be imposed on an accused, and provide for a judicial referral hearing to deal with administration of justice offences involving a failure to comply with conditions of release or failure to appear as required.

Finally, modernizing the language used in the Criminal Code to make it non-discriminatory is also a very good thing.

The Prime Minister played the part of the grasshopper who travelled here, there and everywhere around the world singing and dancing. Time has become a critical factor for this Prime Minister, who claims that his government is introducing an omnibus bill so that it can fulfill multiple election promises at once, since this is the final sprint before the next election in a few months.

This is deplorable and a fait accompli. Introducing a big bill such as this one leaves the opposition little time for careful and in-depth study. For most of the session, Bill C-45 on marijuana legalization and Bill C-46 on drug-impaired driving kept the Senate busy.

They are two major pieces of legislation that make good on the Liberals' immoral promise to legalize marijuana, a promise made during the 2015 election campaign.

These delays and poor management of the legislative agenda have left the government short on time to fulfill its mandate. It will be hard pressed to achieve its goals with Bill C-75 and other pieces of legislation that have been languishing for months.

We criticized the government for failing to do anything up to this point to reduce delays in our legal system and we were critical in particular about its approach to judicial appointments.

Can members believe that as of April 1, 2018, or three years after he was elected as Prime Minister, there were 59 vacant judicial positions at the federal level? We believe that it takes less time and is more effective to appoint judges than to impose an omnibus bill on Parliament.

In closing, under no circumstances should checking off an item on their list of election promises compromise the safety of honest Canadians and our borders or weaken Canada's justice system.

It is not just the Prime Minister who will be adversely impacted, but an entire generation that we have been honourably defending for more than 150 years.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today to speak to Bill C-84. I would first like to mention that I will be sharing my time with the member for Markham—Unionville.

Bill C-84 seems to be another example of the government striking a valiant attempt to make a change, yet it is an incomplete attempt, much like most of the legislation we have seen coming forward from the government. Some of these previous shortcomings include Bill C-45, the cannabis bill, which just came into effect a few days ago. Even though that legislation was debated in the House and passed roughly a year ago, there still remain multiple enforcement agencies, municipalities, regional districts and first nations that agree it simply was not complete or ready. It did not give the provinces or municipalities time to prepare.

After that was Bill C-46, the bill that dealt with impaired driving, which was tied to Bill C-45. We have now heard that because of the way Bill C-46 was drafted, there is no proof that the systems in place and the science and technology around identifying impairment, which was fairly standardized when it came to alcohol, are going to be effective when it comes to drugs. Not only do we have another piece of flawed legislation out there, but we have communities and enforcement agencies trying to scramble to figure out how to deal with that.

The next piece of legislation I am familiar with is Bill C-71, the government's firearms legislation, which, in listening to its rhetoric, is aimed at reducing gun violence, gangs and so on. However, the bill does not mention gangs or gun violence at any point in time. All it talks about is registering firearms and making things worse for law-abiding firearms owners.

The most current is probably Bill C-75, an act to amend the Criminal Code. That is a bill the government introduced to bring modernization to the Criminal Code. That bill has been bantered back and forth many times, but it is now at committee stage. My colleague from St. Albert—Edmonton is currently on the committee studying that bill, and members are looking at stacks and stacks of amendments to another government bill. I experienced the same thing when I sat in on the discussion on Bill C-69, when I happened to be substituting on that committee. I believe there were 600 amendments to that government bill. The bill was 300 pages long, and I believe 300 or 350 of those amendments came from the government side.

I continuously see the government putting forward draft legislation for debate in this House that it has not thought through or consulted on properly, and it just ends up being hashed about at committee. We have seen the Senate return a number of bills to this House with amendments. Worst of all, we see communities, enforcement agencies and the public trying to figure out how they are going to manage or work around this poorly drafted legislation from the government.

Turning back to Bill C-84, an act to amend the Criminal Code with respect to bestiality and animal fighting, I praise the government for bringing forward legislation to deal with this. I agree we need to do what we can, as legislators, to bring in legislation to protect people, protect the innocent and protect animals from the abuses we have seen. Also, to protect them from the ways criminals have been able to skirt the laws through definitions, different interpretations in the courts and so on. On that point, I will give the government credit for at least attempting to do something right.

When I look at this bill, I also see where it comes up short in some cases. I compare it to an insurance policy. I think everyone here has had an insurance policy and has taken a close look at it. Some have possibly made a claim through that insurance policy only to find out that the claim is denied because in the fine print something was excluded.

We may get a chance to amend this bill in committee. Even though it is a short bill and one would not think it needs much amendment, I do not believe it is perfect and I will be talking to committee members about possible amendments going forward.

When I see that the bill includes a phrase that basically bans the fighting or baiting of animals or birds, I question whether that is going to impact our provincial hunting regulations. I have not yet been able to have full discussion with anyone to determine this. In some provinces, it is completely legal and within ethical standards to plant crops to attract wildlife, such as deer and elk, to certain areas for hunting purposes. Those are perfectly accepted standards that continue to this day. In fact, many of those standards actually improve the chances of correct and humane harvest of those animals because they are at a baiting station.

That is why I question the wording in this bill. I will be following through further on this to make sure that this bill, like many other bills the government has put forward, is not flawed after it gets through committee. I want to make sure we are protected in those ways.

Another thing that troubles me with this bill is why it took the government almost a year to introduce its own bill that is identical in most ways to a bill introduced by a member from our side of the House, the member for Calgary Nose Hill. Her bill was introduced in December 2017, and yet the government sat on it and did not move it forward for debate. The government could have had this process done by now and given credit where credit was due, to the person who brought the issue forward.

It seems to be a continuous mantra of the government to not do anything until it is caught not doing anything. We see it when we have witnesses appear at committee to give testimony. We see it in the Auditor General reports. It just seems to be a continuing theme.

In fact, I had the same experience myself. I introduced a private member's bill a couple of years ago to recognize volunteers in search and rescue situations. Just a few weeks later the government announced that it was going to create service medals for search and rescue volunteers. Again, it was not doing anything until it got caught not doing anything.

That is the case here. It is disappointing that the government has to be shown the way forward by members on our side. We see this quite often with the opposition day motions we bring forward. In fact, we had another one just last week. We put forward an opposition day motion that the Liberals could have easily acted on much sooner, but we had to force their hand by forcing the argument and putting it to them to make them step up to the plate. It is just another case of, as I said, not doing anything until they are caught not doing anything. Then they get caught in a bind and have to put out something that is not complete, not well-thought-out and not well-processed.

With that, I am finished my comments. I know I will be receiving questions on this.

Elections Modernization Act—Speaker's Ruling

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

I am now prepared to rule on a point of order raised on October 23, 2018, by the hon. member for Perth—Wellington regarding Bill C-76, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act and other acts and to make certain consequential amendments.

The hon. member objects to an amendment adopted by the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, sometimes called PROC in this place, on the basis that it amends a section of the parent act not amended by the bill. He argues that the committee went beyond the mandate the House had given it and urges the Chair to strike the amendment from the bill. He notes that Speakers have exercised this power in the past to deal with inadmissible amendments adopted by a committee.

I am grateful to the hon. member for having raised this matter, as it affords me the opportunity to clear up a misconception about what is commonly referred to as the “Parent Act rule”.

As the hon. member no doubt noted, the passage he cited concerning this rule, found at page 771 of House of Commons Procedure and Practice, is contained in a section about relevance.

The Parent Act rule, the idea that an amendment should not amend an act or a section not already amended by a bill, rests on a presumption that such an amendment would not be relevant to the bill. This can be true. Often, such amendments attempt to deal with matters not referenced in the bill, and this is improper.

However, there are also occasions when an amendment is relevant to the subject matter of a bill and in keeping with its scope but can only be accomplished by modifying a section of the parent act not originally touched by the bill or even an entirely different act not originally touched by the bill. This is especially so when the amendments are consequential to other decisions taken by a committee or by the House.

In the present case, an amendment adopted by the committee creates a new section 510.001 of the Canada Elections Act. This section would empower the commissioner of Canada elections to request and obtain certain financial documents from political parties. The hon. member made no suggestion that this amendment was inadmissible. He objects, however, to a related amendment to section 498 of the act that makes it an offence to refuse to comply with the commissioner's request. Section 498, while not originally part of the bill, is the section that spells out offences relating to Part 19 of the act, which is where the new section 510.001 would be found.

I have trouble seeing how this could be considered irrelevant to the bill. Were I to accept the hon. member's argument, we would find ourselves in the strange circumstance of allowing an amendment that creates a new obligation but refusing an amendment that spells out the consequences for failing to comply with that new obligation.

The parent act rule was never intended to be applied blindly as a substitute for proper judgment as to the relevance of an amendment. Clearly, amendments that arise as a direct consequence of other admissible amendments should be considered relevant to the bill, even if they are made to a section of the parent act otherwise unamended.

The hon. member noted that our procedural authorities do not reference any exceptions, leading him to conclude that none are possible. He well knows, however, that practice and precedent are also binding. As is stated at page 274 of House of Commons Procedure and Practice:

Where there are no express rules or orders, the House turns to its own jurisprudence, as interpreted by the Speaker, who examines the Journals and the Debates of the House to determine which rulings of past Speakers and which practices and precedents should be applied.

There are multiple examples of amendments of this nature having been accepted in the past. In 2003, Bill C-250, an act to amend the Criminal Code (hate propaganda), contained a single clause amending section 318 of the Code to change the definition of “identifiable group”. At the beginning of the report stage, on June 6, 2003, the Chair accepted amendments to sections 319 and 320 of the Criminal Code, which also dealt with hate propaganda.

On May 5, 2014, when the Procedure and House Affairs Committee presented its report on Bill C-23, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act and other acts and to make consequential amendments to certain acts, the report contained an amendment to section 345 of the act, which was not originally amended by the bill, but sought to clarify what did not constitute an election expense under section 376, which the bill did amend.

Just last year, in a report tabled on October 5, 2017, the health committee amended Bill C-45, an act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other acts, by modifying section 7 of the Non-smokers' Health Act, originally untouched by the bill. This change arose out of an earlier amendment to the definition of “workplace” in the same act.

These are just a few examples where exceptions were made to the parent act rule because the amendments were clearly relevant to the bill. Given that the present amendment is of a similar nature, I have no difficulty concluding that it too should be found in order.

I thank all hon. members for their attention.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Tomorrow Bill C-45, an act to legalize and regulate the production of cannabis, comes into effect. I wanted to take this moment in time to acknowledge and thank the HESA committee for the work that they did in furthering that legislation.

You will recall it was a year ago September that we met for a solid week before anybody else was back here on the Hill. We heard over a hundred witnesses and made some very substantive changes to the legislation. On October 5, 2017, we tabled our document in the House and it proceeded to go to the Senate after that.

Again, thank you for that time and the contribution by the committee.

[Allan Rewak, Executive Director, Cannabis Council of Canada]

Good afternoon. I'd like to begin by thanking the committee for the opportunity to be here today. As was mentioned, my name is Allan Rewak and I am the executive director of the Cannabis Council of Canada, or C3.

We serve as the national trade association for producers of medicinal cannabis approved by Health Canada, under the ACMPR, and very soon, Bill C-45, the Cannabis Act.

With me today, as mentioned, is our association's vice-chair Philippe Lucas, who will take the lead on all questions related to medicinal cannabis and the needs of the patients we serve.

C3's diverse membership represents approximately 85% of the cultivation of legal cannabis in Canada under the current ACMPR and reflects the full diversity and scale of our nascent legal industry. Today, in consultation around the upcoming federal budget, I'd like to express two key complementary but also mutually reinforcing recommendations.

First, as we build this new industry together, we believe we must ensure that the tax environment for both medicinal and recreational cannabis is conducive to building up an industry that can effectively compete against an illicit market.

Secondly, as we do this, we must ensure that medicinal patients, who really gave birth to our sector, are not unfairly penalized for accessing the medicine that has improved their quality of life.

In regard to the first issue, as I'm sure this committee is aware, all adult-use cannabis sold in Canada will be subject to both provincial and federal sales tax. Additional provincial tax measures will occur in certain provinces and we also will have a federal excise tax. On top of this, we will have a cost-recovery fee to assist Health Canada in regulating and measuring our industry. Taken together, this cascade of taxes presents an immense cost burden on an industry that requires very significant, upfront capital outlays to begin, and which is competing against an existent illicit market that is remarkably well funded and quite adaptable.

If our shared goal is to truly replace this illicit market, we must ensure that the tax burden does not make legal cannabis uncompetitive vis-à-vis the illicit marketplace. If we are to successfully defeat the illicit market, we must be able to directly compete against them for market share, price, availability and product selection, which will altogether be the deciding factor for the success of this new policy regime.

Today we're here to share our concerns around the growing tax burden that will affect the viability of licensed producers and also the success of public and private retailers in all provinces. We believe that as we move towards October 17, we must also, as we look at this issue, not forget the needs of our medicinal patients who are facing an ever-increasing escalation in the price of their medicine. This is a direct result of the Cannabis Act.

As CFAMM has told you today, from a patient perspective, cost has always been cited as a primary obstacle in accessing medicinal cannabis, and the burden of sales tax compounds this through the application of an excise tax. Ironically, while critically and chronically ill Canadians can get opioids or benzoids tax free, patients using cannabis at the direction and support of a medical professional will face an additional 10% sin tax on their medicine on October 18.

We know Canadians don't support this. A national poll, commissioned by both CFAMM and the Canadian Medical Cannabis Council in February 2018, found that over 60% of Canadians support removing the tax on medicinal cannabis, suggesting it should be zero-rated, just like all other prescription drugs. In fact, to the best of our knowledge, Canada is the only jurisdiction in the world—and there are 30 countries that are legalizing or have legalized medicinal cannabis—that does not have a differential tax rate fully implemented for medicinal and adult consumer-use cannabis. Notably, in our discussions with members of all political parties in the House and in the Senate, we have yet to find anyone who actively believes in an aggressive fashion that taxation on medical cannabis makes sense and would oppose the removal of excise tax as we move forward in fully developing this regime.

While our country is about to take the momentous step of legalizing cannabis for adult consumers, we urge you not to forget those 300,000 Canadian patients who benefit from its use for medicinal purposes. We believe that, as all other prescription drugs, no GST and certainly no sin tax should be targeted towards sick or suffering Canadians.

In closing, I would like to thank the members of this committee for the opportunity to be here today to voice our concerns primarily on the part of patients. With my colleague Mr. Lucas, I'd be pleased to answer any questions you may have after the other deputants have provided their remarks.

On a personal note, before we begin that, happy Thanksgiving to all of you.

Accessible Canada Act

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

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to Bill C-81, an act to ensure a barrier-free Canada.

I want to say at the outset that I am pleased to see that the minister has brought forward this bill. I have absolutely no doubt about her sincerity in trying to improve the lives of people with disabilities. I too am aligned in that direction. I have listened carefully to the debate we have had so far talking about how to get people with disabilities the same rights and responsibilities as other citizens, how to make sure they are able to live independently and how to make sure they are free from violence. I am aligned in all those things. I think I have heard that all the parties in the House are aligned in how we improve the lives of people with disabilities, and what we can we do with this bill to make sure it is effective.

When it comes to deciding to tackle an issue, with my engineering perspective I will ask what it is we are trying to do. I think it is trying to get people to be able to live independently, to have the same rights and responsibilities as others and to be free from violence. What is the plan to make that happen? What mechanisms will we put in place in order to make sure the money or the incentives flow so the behaviours of people will take root?

In my speech, I am going to talk a bit about what has happened in the past and what the Conservatives did. Then I will talk a little about the Liberal record. Then I will talk about the situation in my own riding, some ideas about possible solutions and some concerns I have with the legislation as it is written today.

I know things were going on to help improve accessibility when the Conservatives were in power. Although I was not here myself, I saw all the announcements and improvements happening in my own riding of Sarnia—Lambton, where multiple millions of dollars were spent to upgrade different buildings to ensure they were accessible for people in wheelchairs and to put different aids in place to help people with disabilities. I note that was going on.

At the same time, we have heard other members in the House talk about the Conservative Party's introduction of the registered disability savings plan in 2008. This plan is quite a rich plan. I looked at the details of it when we were addressing an issue that I will talk about later. However, this is a plan where a disabled person can put in up to $5,000 a year and the government will match it threefold. That program has been going on for almost 10 years. Although it has not come to the point where people are collecting from the program, it is a very well thought out way of ensuring people with disabilities will have the wherewithal to retire in dignity.

I see that and see the efforts of the member for Carleton, who brought forward a very intelligent bill aimed at addressing the problem people with disabilities have when they want to go work and their benefits are clawed back. In some cases, the money they are getting from other disability programs is clawed back. I was really disappointed in the extreme that every Liberal in the place rejected that private member's bill. That bill would have been such a help to people with disabilities. We talked as well about the member for Calgary Shepard bringing forward a private member's bill on rare diseases, which was also rejected. I just heard a member from the NDP talking about her bill being rejected.

This is where one really has to question people's motives. When people say one thing and do another, they are likely to be called hypocrites. When I look at the Liberals, I see there is a lot of talking about helping people with disabilities, but then we look at the record of what has happened since the election in 2015. The first member who had the portfolio to do something here on accessibility, or helping the disabled, was the member for Calgary Centre. It was in the mandate letter, yet nothing was done. That member is also a person who has lived experience as a person with disabilities, but nothing was done. It was not a priority.

It was then passed along to the member for Etobicoke North. However, I do sympathize with her. She is the Minister of Science and has a lot of very important things to do which, of course, I, as a fellow science person, cannot criticize. Again, nothing really came forward.

Then when I looked at the bill to see what was in it, I thought that perhaps there would be a lot of infrastructure money. We know there are a lot of buildings that are not accessible and they need a lot of money in order to repair them so they will be accessible. In some cases, those could be incentives. There is a number of ways that could be done, but nothing in the bill talks about that.

In fact, the bill has sort of an element of what the minister's powers would be. It has an element of a standards organization that can talk about what the right thing to do would be. There are mechanisms in the bill to complain. There are mechanisms in it to inspect. However, there are no action words. There is really no doing of anything. It is going to be consulting and spending a few more years to try to figure out what we should do, when we already know some of the things we should do. Some of the things we should do involves investing the same kind of infrastructure money that was previously done under the Conservatives.

I have heard the government speak about the $180 billion of infrastructure money that it will invest over the next number of years. In fact, the Liberals got elected on a promise to spend very small deficits in order to put infrastructure in place. That was going to create jobs and drive the economy and repair our roads and bridges, etc. None of that ever happened. My point is that there was a lot of infrastructure money that was planned to be spent. Even though the government has had difficulty getting that accomplished, as I think it has only spent about 40% of what it planned, it has still racked up way more deficit but not on the intended things.

There is an opportunity for the government to do something immediately with respect to infrastructure to improve accessibility. Those are things where the building codes exist today. The specifications exist today. The standards exist today. No work needs to be done to consult anybody on that or have new standard organizations to do it. This already exists. All it really needs is political will to put that money in place.

Instead, the government has basically a different political will, if we look at where the billions of dollars that the government is spending is going: $4.2 billion on foreign aid; $2.65 billion on climate change support for foreign countries like China and India; $5 billion for the Syrian refugees; $1 billion for the asylum seekers; and multiple billions of other things that are spread around the world but not for Canadians and not for the disabled. When we look at where time, energy and money is put, that determines what our values are or what our priorities are.

It has been three years before seeing any kind of legislation and the legislation does not have any strong actions in it. It is more of “we'll put structures in place to consult”. I really question whether there is enough political will to achieve good outcomes here.

As I mentioned, I have some good examples from my riding that I can share. I know that the previous member of Parliament, Pat Davidson, was very active. She really cared about improving accessibility. Elevators were put in multiple buildings. We had accessibility all over the county of Lambton. As well, we have upgraded many of the schools to be accessible.

The Sarnia Arena is going under remediation. I was there for an event this past weekend and all of the entrances and front sidewalks, etc. have been improved for accessibility and all of the standards have been met.

Not everything is wonderful in my riding. We have a situation in Port Lambton where the post office, which is a Crown corporation and is under the legislation being proposed, is not accessible. It has been there for a long period of time and was grandfathered, but it is not accessible. We are having a municipal election and people are going to have to go to Canada Post to vote. In Port Lambton that is pretty much all there is. However, it is not accessible. People have known about it for a long time. My office has called and nagged and has been told that they will get to it. However, no one has got to it.

Here is an example where the solution is known. It just needs to get done and it needs to get done in a hurry. Again, where is the will to force these solutions to happen?

I have a tremendously great example of a fellow named Dan Edwards in my riding. Unfortunately, he had an accident which rendered him unable to walk and left him in a wheelchair. He has been super inspirational in the riding. He does fundraising for mental health efforts and different things.

This is one of the things he did. We have a fundraiser in Sarnia—Lambton called the Dream Home. It is a fundraiser for the hospital. He decided to get together with the architect who was going to build the latest Dream Home for a lottery to raise money for the hospital and decided to make it a visitable home. A visitable home is a home where any person in a wheelchair would be fully able to access everything, from cooking to the entrances. Everything is ground floor. It is very well done.

I had the opportunity to tour the home and see what he and architect had designed together. He shared with me a lot of information about the very many plans like this. It is quite possible. We have these solutions that we could put in place to allow people to live independently. That would be great. Again, money and political will is some of what is required here.

The other piece of advice I would give with respect to solutions and rolling out the infrastructure money is to ensure that it is well-distributed. Of the $180 billion that was announced over 10 years, only $2 billion of that was earmarked for rural communities. When we look at improving accessibility, I think we will find that there is even more need in the rural communities. In many cases, they have grandfathered their buildings. There are more older buildings, and they have not been made accessible. As well, there is less of a population base to bring in the revenue to do these things of their own volition. That needs to be considered.

With respect to some concerns about the legislation, $290 million has been proposed. I heard discussion earlier about 5,000 new public servants. I was not clear if that was 5,000 public servants with disabilities who would be hired while attrition happened, so over time, or whether that was 5,000 additional public service employees. Of course, I would be opposed to increasing the size of government.

Another concern I have with the bill has to do with leaving things for the regulations. As a parliamentarian, and a detailed-oriented one, I do not like to leave things to chance. I have seen before, under some of the legislation that the Liberals have brought forward, where it is all left to regulation.

With Bill S-5, for example, the Liberals decided, from the plain packaging and the vaping, they were going to leave a lot of it to the regulations. We were approving a bill, and as the point was made, that we really did not know what the final outcomes would be. We were going to leave it to the regulation.

In the example of Bill S-5, the Liberals want to go to a plain package. The dimensions of the plain package are produced by machines that are obsolete, that are no longer owned by anybody who is legitimately in the business. The Liberals have given businesses six months to convert.

They would have to redesign the old, obsolete machines and get them built somewhere, and that is certainly an 18-month deal, or they would have to be shut down altogether in order to achieve this plain packaging goal, or let them use the existing size. That is an example of where when things are left to regulations, they do not always get done the way that we might want. That is why parliamentary oversight is important.

Bill C-45, the cannabis legislation, is another example where the Liberals decided to leave a lot of the details to the regulation. The problem is that the regulations did not come out quickly enough to address all the unanswered questions that were still out there. Now we are left with a situation where we will legalize on October 17, and there is still a huge number of things that are not addressed in the regulations. Again, there is no parliamentary oversight to talk about them.

This point came up again on Bill S-228 with the regulation that we most recently talked about, which is the one that prohibits the marketing of unhealthy foods to children. Instead of defining what the healthy foods are, the comment was that it would be left to the regulations.

As parliamentarians, we have a right to know what that list will be and have some opportunity to object or give input if we do not agree. By leaving it to the regulations, we would be passing a blank bill that says we would be doing something. We have no idea what the something is and we have no input on the something, but we are expected to vote in favour of it. I have an issue with that.

When it comes to accessibility, we have been much too slow in moving forward and addressing these things. For example, there are a lot of the grandfathered buildings. My mother is 84 and walks with a rollator. There are a lot of places she cannot go because of staircases or it is too narrow to get through. Something needs to be done there and I look forward to seeing what solutions will be brought forward are.

I will talk a little about some of the things the government could do that would make people have more faith in its wanting to help disabled people.

Members may remember when I was here on a Friday, asking a question about the disability tax credit. Through that whole event, we found out that where 80% of people with type 2 diabetes were previously approved, all of a sudden 80% were disapproved. We raised the concern, and the Liberal government insisted that nothing had changed. Of course, as the scandal went on, it came out that indeed things had changed. There were instructions given to interpret the criteria differently, and it went very broad. It affected not just people with diabetes but people with other disabilities, such as autism and mental disorders like bipolar. It took months and months to get justice for those people. This is what undermines people's faith that the government is sincere in its efforts to improve things for people with disabilities.

I will give members another example. For people with multiple sclerosis, it can be very difficult, because people are not always be at the same degree of wellness. It is sort of intermittent where there may be periods where they cannot work and other times they may be fine.

However, the current EI rules are not flexible enough to allow a person who has MS to be on EI and work intermittently, the same total benefits as someone who takes it consecutively would get. I raised this issue with the Minister of Labour. There is an easy fix there. If 670 hours of eligibility are required and there is a certain amount of hours that people get in benefits, then allow the intermittency. Those are the kinds of things we can do for people who have disabilities to be able to live independently, to work and to engage. We need to do that.

I did take the point that was made earlier that no disability lens was used for the legislation. When we do legislation, we do it with a gender-based lens. Therefore, it is very appropriate here to take that recommendation from the member and put a disability lens in place.

I also do not like the powers to exempt in the bill. I find that when we allow exemptions and have cabinet decide, we get into trouble. We saw this with the carbon tax. The government had the power to exempt and it decided to exempt the largest emitters up to 90% of their emissions. There is an example where having the power to exempt is really not what we want.

In summary, I absolutely want to see persons with disabilities have the independence they need and have the help they need. However, it has to happen faster. I call on the government today to start putting money into infrastructure for accessibility and do the solutions that we already know about, while we craft improvements to the bill.

Carbon Pricing

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. In a moment I will be asking for unanimous consent to present a motion.

Last night, the Senate passed Bill C-45, important legislation that will positively change 100 years of legal, social, and economic attitudes towards cannabis. It will legalize an activity that the vast majority of Canadians regard as acceptable.

That is why, Mr. Speaker, if you seek it, I hope you will find unanimous consent for the following motion: That, in the opinion of the House, given the passage of Bill C-45 and the imminent legalization of cannabis for personal recreational use, and recognizing that many Canadians are facing criminal charges, experiencing criminal sanctions, or bearing criminal records for cannabis offences that are soon to be legal, the government should take all necessary steps to immediately provide pardons for those burdened by criminal records for cannabis offences that will soon be legal.

Cannabis Act

[Bill Blair, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to acknowledge the passing of Bill C-45 in the Senate and to recognize the substantial work undertaken by all parliamentarians. I sincerely thank senior officials and our incredible support staff who have contributed to legislation that will legalize and strictly regulate the production, distribution, and consumption of cannabis in Canada. The evidence that nearly a century of prohibition has failed us is overwhelming, and it has compelled us to do a better job of protecting our kids and keeping our communities safe.

I want to acknowledge the excellent work of our task force and the thousands of Canadians who have contributed to the national discussion on this important issue. We are indebted to our provincial and territorial counterparts, indigenous leaders, and municipalities for their hard work and partnership. We will continue to work with all levels of government, indigenous communities, and law enforcement to transition to a responsible legal framework that works for all Canadians.

As the process of implementation unfolds, I would remind everyone that until the current criminal prohibition is repealed and replaced, the law remains in effect and should be obeyed.

Marijuana

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, once again, protecting the health and safety of Canadians is our number one priority. The current approach to cannabis is not working. It lets criminals profit and does not protect our young people.

We thank senators for all the work they have done over the past few months, and we have agreed to the vast majority of amendments brought forward. We are convinced that Bill C-45 will give us the opportunity to achieve our objectives and ensure a responsible transition towards a legal market.

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, once again, protecting the health and safety of Canadians is a top priority for our government. The existing approach to cannabis does not work. It allows criminals to profit from cannabis and it is also a failure because it does not protect our children.

We thank the Senate for all its work and we agreed to the vast majority of the proposed amendments. We firmly believe that Bill C-45 will help us reach our objectives and ensure a responsible transition towards a legal cannabis market.

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, the health and safety of all Canadians is a top priority for our government.

The approach taken by Mr. Harper's Conservatives did not work. It allowed criminals to profit from cannabis and did not manage to keep cannabis out of the hands of children.

We thank the Senate for its work and we agree on the vast majority of the proposed amendments. We believe that Bill C-45 will help us meet our objectives and allow for a responsible transition towards a legal market.

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, protecting the health of Canadians is an absolute priority for our government. The Harper Conservatives' approach did not work. It allowed criminals to profit and did not manage to keep cannabis out of the hands of youth. We thank the Senate for its work, and we agree with the majority of the amendments presented by Conservative and independent senators. We are convinced that Bill C-45 will allow us to reach our objectives and ensure a responsible transition to a legal cannabis market.

Firearms Act

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Mr. Speaker, that has nothing to do with the bill we are discussing. The hon. member and friend from Winnipeg Centre should look at the legislation carefully to see if this is something that would really address the situation he is talking about, gang violence in his own constituency, which is a significant problem. I realize that and acknowledge that this is a serious issue in his riding.

I will affirm very clearly, from my understanding of this legislation and from what I have read, that this will not help you at all, because it is not law-abiding gun owners you have a problem with. It is gangs, illegal guns, and the drug trade, which will only get worse once Bill C-45 is passed later this week by the Senate. You will have nobody else to thank for that but yourself—

Cannabis Act

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

It being 3:08 p.m., pursuant to order made on Tuesday, May 29, 2018, the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion relating to Senate amendments to Bill C-45.

The House resumed consideration of the motion in relation to the amendments made by the Senate to Bill C-45, An Act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other Acts.

Marijuana

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, protecting Canadians' health and safety is a top priority for our government. The Harper Conservatives' approach did not work. It allowed criminals to benefit and did not manage to keep cannabis out of the hands of our children. We thank the Senate for its work, and we agree with the majority of the amendments they proposed. We believe that Bill C-45 will give us the opportunity to achieve our respective objectives and to transition towards a legal market.

Cannabis Act

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to once again speak on an issue that I and many Canadians are deeply concerned about. I rise to speak against Bill C-45. This bill would legalize marijuana in Canada, a dangerous drug that is nothing less than damaging and addictive. I have been very clear that I am against this piece of legislation. I have taken the time to listen to experts from all backgrounds, and the findings continue to be the same: Marijuana is dangerous and Canada needs to think twice before going through with this bill. The Liberals really do not seem to get it.

Let me remind us all of the facts. According to the Canadian Medical Association, increased use of marijuana before the age of 25 severely impacts brain development. This means that this drug should not be made available to young people. In Colorado, where marijuana is legal, there have been cases of elementary school students consuming brownies containing marijuana and showing up high at school, as a result of how accessible the drug is in their homes. We are now beginning to see that happen in Canada. People have a misconception that marijuana is already legal.

Unfortunately, it gets worse. In Oshawa last month, on two different occasions, marijuana snacks were brought into schools in the form of gummy bears and cookies. The government refuses to think of our children. This is wrong. Unfortunately, the Liberals continue to put their political agenda above the safety of Canadians and are failing to consider the consequences. Worst of all, our police force is underfunded, unequipped, and not properly trained to react to an influx of drugs into our communities.

When it comes to health and safety, Canadians deserve the best. If we look at the example of Colorado again, Colorado is already regretting its decision to legalize marijuana. Just last month, we heard the Colorado governor say that he would not rule out banning marijuana once again. We should not make the same mistake as Colorado.

Many Canadians are deeply worried. The constituents in Markham—Unionville have told me countless times how concerned they are about the consequences of allowing marijuana to flow freely into our communities.

I will remain on the right side of this issue. The legalization of marijuana is a serious matter. I do not understand why the government refuses to look at all the facts. It has an arbitrary deadline in mind and is continuing full steam ahead. The Liberal government's plan to legalize marijuana would make Canada the first developed country in the world to do so. That fact alone should make us pause.

Why are we signing up to be the largest social experiment of the 21st century, when all the experts are telling us to slow down? I would have hoped that instead of politicizing the issue, the Prime Minister would take into consideration the many concerns presented by health experts, first responders, community leaders, and residents. Instead, the Prime Minister has opted to use everything at his disposal to rush Bill C-45 into law.

The evidence is clear. Marijuana contains over 400 chemicals. Many of these are the same harmful chemicals found in tobacco smoke and cause serious harm to youth brain development. There is no doubt about it: Marijuana is not safe. The misguided idea pushed by the Liberals that recreational use of this drug is harmless and should be legalized reinforces a misconception that marijuana is harmless. It would result in the normalization of marijuana use, for which our young people will pay dearly.

Countless medical professionals have testified that the brain continues to develop until the age of 25. According to the Canadian Medical Association, increased use of marijuana before the age of 25 increases one's risk of developing mental disorders such as schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety by up to 30%, compared to those who have not used marijuana under the age of 25.

The government cannot go through with this bill.

I have heard loud and clear from my riding that people are concerned about the negative consequences that legalizing marijuana would have on our community and our youth. They are worried about what it would do to the value of their homes. However, the Liberals just keep going.

This is a piece of legislation that pertains to an issue very close to me. Marijuana is a dangerous drug. With all the pro-marijuana publicity lately, it can be hard for many Canadians to remember that marijuana is indeed damaging and addictive.

Canadian families expect safe and healthy communities in which to raise their children. Elected representatives can and should provide guidance on this drug to reflect the views of all Canadians. Let us all remember that we are talking about the health and safety of Canadians, and they deserve better. Let us not rush through the legislation. We need to do what is right for all Canadians. The provinces, municipalities, and police forces are not ready to implement this legislation.

I have said many times before that I oppose the legislation entirely. I choose to listen to the concerns raised by scientists, doctors, and law enforcement officials. I want to advocate for the voices that are not heard in the legislation and for those who say that the government's plan is being rushed through without proper planning or consideration of the negative consequences of such complicated legislation. The passing of Bill C-45 would lead to negative repercussions at the global level.

The government claims that the legislation will control the drug, but in reality it would allow the drug to get out of control, especially when we look at the issue of home grow. I really just cannot believe it. If marijuana is in the home, youth will have access to it. We have already seen this happen. Why will the government not look at the bill for what it really is, a big mistake? We cannot normalize this drug. We should not legalize it. Our children will pay the price.

I was speaking to the police chief of York region. He is definitely against this. He asked me to ask the member of Parliament for Scarborough Southwest what side he was on for the 40 years he was in law enforcement, compared to now.

There is no money. For York region alone, it will cost $54 million over three years. The previous Liberal provincial government had promised up to 60%, and 40% will be taken by the local residents of York region. Is that fair?

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Madam Speaker, not everybody follows Facebook; not everyone follows Twitter. What does the member think this government should have done back in December, as it was proposing this bill to come forward this year?

Does the member not think it should have reached out to the Canadian School Boards Association? Does the member not think it should have reached out to all school divisions in this country, with some literature, with some pamphlets, with some education on it, or maybe even a video or two?

That would seem to be the wise thing to do. We just heard from the hon. member that the government has done none of this. It is relying on Facebook and Twitter. Is that not disgusting, that the government has never once gone into the schools in this country to tell people about the effects of this cannabis bill, Bill C-45?

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

What does the member mean by “Come on”, Madam Speaker? In our schools in Saskatoon that has happened already. That is how much members know about this. They have no idea what goes on in our communities, that we are trying to give our students in elementary school and secondary school better lives. Instead, the government is just pushing Bill C-45 ahead without any consultation with the people who it affects most of all, which is our young people.

Shame on the government. It has not done the consultation it said it was going to do. It has not reached out to the Canadian School Boards Association. I know this because I have talked to the Saskatchewan school boards. The government has done nothing. Shame on it for pushing Bill C-45 without talking to the people who it affects the most, which is our kids. They are our future.

I cannot support this bill without the consultation that the government said it was starting months ago. The government has done nothing and it should be ashamed. There is no way those on this side are going to support Bill C-45.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak to the amendments to Bill C-45, respecting the legalization of cannabis. I will be sharing my time with the member for Markham—Unionville.

There is no question that the current Liberal government is intent on pushing this bill through, despite numerous concerns voiced by experts, by law enforcement, and by Canadians across this country, including school boards, from coast to coast to coast. This is not a bill that should be forced through Parliament on a whim. As Parliament has spent many months studying the implications of this bill, many concerns and problems with the bill have been brought forward, as we have heard continuously in the last hour or so in the House. It is critically important for all Canadians that the current Liberal government work to resolve these problems, and that it listen to these concerns rather than try to push this bill through at all costs.

The Senate, as we know, has returned Bill C-45 to the House with 45 amendments, but the government has agreed to only 29 of them. The government has no plans to resolve any of the problems, which are still left unaddressed given its rejection of other crucial amendments. However, notably, the Liberals are refusing to allow provinces to determine on their own whether to ban cultivation of marijuana in individual homes. This is a big issue. Provinces such as Manitoba and Quebec have already signalled their deep concern with the negative social impacts that would occur as a result of allowing households to grow up to four marijuana plants. These provinces have concerns and they want to have the power to ban homegrown marijuana cultivation, but the current Liberal government has blatantly ignored these concerns and has said, “absolutely not”.

Most of the medical groups and the police services that have appeared before the House committees studying this bill have said they are against the provision in Bill C-45 to allow homegrown marijuana. Even if these households contain small children, even if this provision would allow organized crime to exploit homegrown marijuana production, and even if the police have said they will have serious difficulty monitoring whether people are growing no more than four plants in their homes, the government has said no to those provisions. The Liberals have shown that they care more about pushing through this bill as soon as possible than they care about public safety or about fixing the significant flaws in the bill. This action is totally unacceptable, and it also demonstrates clearly that the Liberals have their priorities backwards.

I spoke to many real estate people in my province of Saskatchewan, and actually on lobby day many of them came through our offices here, representing the Canadian real estate boards. They are also concerned. There are no landlord-tenant regulations for growing four plants in a home that maybe somebody is renting. This is something that needs to be discussed with the Canadian real estate board, and it has yet to do so.

In March of this year, I spent eight days touring various communities in Nunavut. I visited eight or nine schools on our trip, and that was really enjoyable. While I was meeting with the people of these communities, I heard many serious concerns with this bill, and how it would negatively impact the well-being of these northern communities. We should say right off the bat that there are no health centres in Nunavut for people struggling with addictions. I heard time and again there is not one facility in Nunavut that handles addictions, so when people have a problem they will be flown either to Winnipeg or all the way to Montreal. These people want to stay in their communities, yet they have no addiction facilities. Perhaps we should start there with at least one addiction facility in Nunavut and work out from there, but no, this bill will pass and we will see the horrific incidents that will happen time and again in Nunavut because of this. While the Liberals are taking no steps to mitigate the negative consequences that this bill would have in these communities in Nunavut, many of the elders are really concerned with this cannabis bill and they have not been consulted.

I found that first-hand when I toured each village up in Nunavut. Many of the elders are really concerned with this cannabis bill, and they have not been consulted. The government claims it consults indigenous peoples, and yet seven or eight of the Inuit communities I saw had not been consulted on this bill as of March.

The government wants to make sure at all costs that provincial and territorial governments will not be able to ban the homegrown marijuana plants within their own jurisdictions. This is not at all helpful, and it does nothing to address the many concerns I heard during my visits to these communities in late February and March. These people are being ignored by this Liberal government, because the Liberals' priority is to push this bill through at any cost.

The role of Parliament, of course, is to ensure that bills passed are for the betterment of all Canadians and do not cause harm to people across the country. Actually, the way in which Bill C-45 is being handled by the current government suggests in no way, shape, or form that the best interests of Canadians are being attended to.

We have talked to many people in this country about the bill. The number one consideration is the education aspect of it. In December, the government began its advertising about cannabis legislation. Where should it have started? I would think it should have contacted the Canadian school boards for a start. Does the government not think we should be in every classroom in this country talking about the good and the bad about cannabis? The government has not done anything at the school board level in this country.

I know this because I have a daughter in the city of Saskatoon who is a teacher. She is teaching grades 7 and 8. They have not even discussed this bill, and it is coming forth right away. I also have a son in Alberta who teaches at a junior college in Lethbridge. They have not even talked about this. These are kids in grade 9, 10, and 11, yet these schools have not talked about this bill and how it will be worked out in the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan.

When the minister brought this bill forward, we were told that a vast education program would come with it. We have seen one or two ads on television, but let us get to the grassroots and to the kids who are in grade 6, 7, 8, and beyond. Why would we not talk about this bill in schools? Why would we not give each school in this country some literature so they can talk about the harmful effects of cannabis? The government has done none of it.

I was a school board trustee for nine and a half years. I asked the government questions time and time again about the education of this bill. Representatives told me it had hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend on education. It has done next to nothing.

Schools are petrified that come September, they are the ones that will have to deal with this. They will have to deal with seven-year-olds coming to school with cannabis in their pocket, and yet none of the education has been done.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Madam Speaker, I am thankful for the opportunity to speak this afternoon on Bill C-45, an Act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other Acts. Bill C-45 was first introduced in this place on April 13, 2017, just over a year ago. It is remarkable that the Liberal government, in just a little over a year, is desperately trying to force this proposal through. Although there has been a great deal of work done around the bill, it is abundantly clear that this has happened far too quickly. The Liberals are rushing through this legislation to meet their political deadline, not a well-thought-through plan, but a deadline that is self-imposed. This is despite very serious concerns that were raised by scientists, doctors, and law enforcement officials.

I want to note from the outset that I do not support the legalization of marijuana. The Conservative Party has adopted a much more measured and responsible approach to keeping minor marijuana possession illegal, but to make it a ticketable offence. This is the position that has long been adopted by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. Unfortunately, Liberal backbenchers appear willing to support the Prime Minister's dangerous proposal. I believe we have a moral responsibility to soberly consider the consequences of legalizing marijuana in so many areas of Canadian life.

The fact that the Liberals are continuing down this reckless road without having a fully fleshed-out legal framework in place for the significant supplementary conditions is irresponsible. The only appropriate way to move forward with a bill of this scope, if that is truly what the Liberals wish to do, is to move cautiously and carefully. Anything less represents a profound failure to ensuring that these changes do not increase risks to Canadian children and families.

It is the primary duty of any government to keep its citizens safe. The specific goals of Bill C-45 are outlined in clause 7, and they include protecting youth, regulating the industry, and eliminating the black market. The problem is that Bill C-45 will accomplish none of these goals. I will focus for the most part on my concerns around protecting our youth.

Mr. Marco Vasquez, a former police chief in the town of Erie, Colorado, had this to say to the Standing Committee on Health:

When you increase availability, decrease perception of risk, and increase the public acceptance of any commodity, you will see increased use. Once we see that increased use, it's very difficult to keep marijuana out of the hands of our youth. We know from validated studies that marijuana use for youth under 30 years old, especially chronic use, can have an adverse effect on brain development. We also know that one in six youth become addicted to marijuana.

We've certainly seen an increased use of marijuana in Colorado, and I believe that the increased use will ultimately increase disorder and risk factors for our youth. We're already seeing signs of increased disorder within our communities.

Dr. Laurent Marcoux, president of the Canadian Medical Association also noted:

Children and youth are especially at risk of harm, given their brain's development. And they are among the highest users of cannabis in Canada.

To better protect this part of the population, we are recommending that the age of legalization be set at 21 years. The quantities and the potency of cannabis should also be more restricted to those under age 25.

Despite these increased risks, however, evidence shows that youth today do not believe cannabis has serious health effects. A comprehensive public health strategy for cannabis must therefore include education, similar to what has been done with tobacco.

Educational strategies should be implemented before, and no later than the enactment of any legislation in order to increase awareness of the harms and to conduct further research on its impact.

These are just a couple of the comments on the matter of youth consumption of cannabis. Currently, Bill C-45 recommends the age of 18 as a federal minimum, but medical professionals have testified that the brain continues to develop until the age of 25. Increased use before the age of 25 increases one's risk of developing mental disorders like schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety by up to 30%, compared to those who have not used marijuana under the age of 25. This is why the CMA and the other medical professionals recommended raising the age at which a person can consume marijuana to at least age 21.

Another challenge with the bill is that children ages 12 to 17 are able to possess up to five grams of marijuana. As the points I have just raised will underscore, this is ridiculous in light of the medical evidence of the harm it can cause to youth. Bill C-45 offers no provision to prevent them from selling or distributing cannabis to other 12- to 17-year-olds.

I turn now to the home grow provisions included in this bill. Bill C-45 would allow four plants per dwelling, with no height restriction on the plants. If grown in optimal conditions, this could yield as much as 600 grams of marijuana. What we heard from plenty of testimony at the health committee is that there is a great deal of apprehension around home grow. These concerns were raised by most medical groups and police forces who appeared.

For one thing, this proposal absolutely would not keep marijuana out of the hands of youth. If it is in the home, youth will have access to it. Furthermore, there is no requirement to lock up the marijuana if the home has people under the age of 18 living in it, or even just frequenting it. What we have seen in other jurisdictions is that by legalizing homegrown marijuana, that area has been hugely penetrated by organized crime. This is why the State of Washington, for example, does not allow home grow, except for medically fragile persons who cannot get to a dispensary. It has been able to reduce organized crime to less than 20% of the market.

Dr. Kevin Sabet, president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, told the health committee:

We are deluding ourselves if we think that major drug trafficking organizations will not exploit every chance they get to have a way to be legitimized through the legal market. We're seeing this in other states. We're also deluding ourselves to think that they will go away and not try to undercut the government price of cannabis. The economies rule the day here in terms of price. The lower the drug price, the more likely someone is to use, and the illegal market can easily undercut the legal market.

I want to speak for a moment about my province of Manitoba as well. The Government of Manitoba made a responsible decision to prohibit home grow in the province. This decision will cut out more of the black market and better protect children. Unfortunately, the Liberals appear poised to reject an amendment that would confirm the ability of provinces to make these sorts of localized decisions within their own territories. Quebec and Nunavut have also expressed a desire to take similar steps in their respective legislatures.

The Liberal government has thrown a lot at the provinces and territories with Bill C-45, and to reject an amendment that would help provinces better manage this transition to legal marijuana would indicate a significant lack of judgment. I hope that the Liberals will make the right choice and help provinces make the best decisions possible for their residents.

My wife is a very good cook and baker, and when she bakes a batch of cookies or cakes or brownies, not cannabis brownies, but real brownies made with cocoa, she does not put them on the counter thinking that they are not available to children. With the legislation before us, we are going to see home grow marijuana readily available to youth in kitchens, living rooms, family rooms, and dens. The ill-conceived and poorly thought-out plan of legalizing home grow operations makes one of the Liberals' priorities, which is protecting youth, completely unattainable, because it is going to be easily accessible.

When I get a prescription for pain medication after surgery, I do not take that prescription and leave it lying on the counter where it is easily accessible to children, for example, in the sunlight where it can grow. I put that prescription in the cabinet where it is inaccessible to children.

We tell children not to play with matches. We do not keep matches within the reach of children, yet we are going to have homegrown marijuana within the reach of our youth and children. We are absolutely going to be inviting them to play with this dangerous chemical.

It is irresponsible for the government to think it is reaching this objective of protecting our youth by allowing home grow operations to be legitimate and forcing the provinces to agree. It talks about provinces having the ability to set their own regulations, and indeed some of them have. I compliment my Manitoba government for establishing stricter regulations as far as the age by which possession and use will be accepted. However, not allowing the provinces to establish restrictions on home grow is irresponsible.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Madam Speaker, today I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Provencher.

I am here today to speak against Bill C-45 and its legalization of cannabis. This bill is supposedly intended to protect youth, regulate the industry, and eliminate the black market. Not only would it not do any of those things, it would also prevent Canada from upholding several of our international treaties, something very dear to me as a former diplomat, and would likely cause additional tension with provincial governments.

Doctors and other medical professionals have found that the brain continues to develop until the age of 25 and that marijuana use before that age will actually increase an individual's risk of developing mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety, by up to 30%. For this reason, one of the principal intentions of this bill was to keep marijuana out of the hands of children. This legislation would be unsuccessful in that regard for two reasons.

The first reason is that the legislation would allow possession for minors, children aged 12 to 17. I have a son who is seven years old, and the thought that he would be able to possess cannabis five years from now is terrifying to me. They would be allowed to possess up to five grams of marijuana, which is approximately 10 to 15 joints. There is also no provision to prevent them from selling or distributing cannabis to other 12- to 17-year-olds. The amount minors are allowed to possess should be zero so that we can send the right message on the dangers for youth. Youth should not be using it and therefore should not be allowed to carry it. Again, the thought of this being anywhere near my young son frightens me.

The second reason is that this bill would also set the age of 18 as the federal minimum. The Canadian Medical Association and other medical professionals recommend increasing the age at which a person can legally consume marijuana to at least 21. Although under the age of 21 there is potential for mental disorders, as previously mentioned, they also recognize that if the age is set too high, people will continue illegal consumption.

If we want to keep marijuana out of the hands of children, 18 is too young an age. Typically, 16- and 17-year-olds hang out with 18-year-olds. The majority of us in the House have certainly been to secondary school.

Another goal of this legislation was to help eliminate the black market for marijuana. Having worked in Central America and Latin America, the black market for narcotics is very well known to me and concerns me very much.

This is extremely unlikely to happen, because it is dependent on many factors. Factors such as pricing, distribution, production, and packaging are not included in this bill. They are, rather, left to the provinces to legislate. Additionally, allowing people to grow marijuana at home would only increase the size of the black market, as Canadians would be permitted to grow yields of up to 600 grams in their homes. Such a large amount of marijuana can easily lead to trafficking and make it extensively harder to enforce.

We heard this from Joanne Crampton, the assistant commissioner for federal policing criminal operations in the RCMP, who stated:

organized crime is a high priority for federal policing, in particular, for the RCMP. We target the highest echelon within the organized crime world. We're very cognizant...and realize that the chances of organized crime being eliminated in the cannabis market would be.... It's probably naive to think that could happen.

She said it is “probably naive”. This is yet another goal of this legislation that would not be achieved.

This legislation is also being rushed through Parliament without necessary debate or consultation. We have heard repeatedly from municipal and provincial governments that they will not have the necessary time or resources to adequately respond to the impact Bill C-45 would have on both Canadians and our communities.

There are numerous organizations and associations that have asked to push back the arbitrary deadline. For example, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police asked the government to extend the deadline. I think “asking” is a subtle word. I would say that “begging” would be more appropriate.

Over 68,000 police officers in Canada will need specific training in the wake of this monumental legislative change, and a few months is not a realistic time frame within which we can do this. If police are not prepared to deal with the legalization of marijuana due to inadequate training, this may lead to poor decisions and result in bad case law for any new legislation. This is important, because law is based upon precedent, and we are going into a time when these precedents will be set for the future.

We need our law enforcement in Canada to have the proper ability and resources to uphold the law. Police will require final legislation from all levels of government before being able to begin their planning and training. The government should have provided police forces with clearer direction in this regard. Provinces, municipalities, police forces, and our indigenous communities have made it clear that they are not ready to implement this legislation and that more time would have allowed for adequate consultation to develop a successful framework.

There will also be major international implications from implementing this legislation. The legalization of marijuana does not comply with three United Nations treaties: the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances, and the 1988 Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances. Might I add, as a former diplomat, that I cannot see how this could not possibly affect the Vienna Convention as well in regard to consular matters.

We also know that this could cause additional tension with our southern neighbours, the United States. Officials at United States' border crossings have been asking individuals whether they have consumed marijuana, and if the response is yes, these individuals have been denied entry by our next-door neighbour. This will be problematic when individuals' legal marijuana use in Canada results in their consistently being denied entry into the United States.

At the health committee, we heard that the former mayor of Grand Forks, Brian Taylor, was barred from going back to the United States due to a “relationship with marijuana”. A relationship: those are pretty strong words.

By the way, Grand Forks is a beautiful place. I went there as part of my honeymoon. I loved it there. It sits near a river. There is a presidential museum there, which we had the opportunity to visit.

Getting back to the bill, not having a solution to this problem may cause additional tension in the context of already hostile NAFTA negotiations. This is a serious issue that is still unresolved.

This legislation is also likely to cause jurisdictional problems here at home. Quebec and Manitoba have taken a strong stance against home grown marijuana, but the government will force all provinces to allow home growth, contrary to a unanimous amendment from the Senate.

Provincial governments will bear much of the burden of this legislation when it comes to regulations on distribution, production, and enforcement, so it is only fair that they have discretion in this area. This is yet another case of the federal government forcing its policies on provincial governments, much like it is trying to do with the carbon tax. It is very similar indeed.

The bill is extremely worrisome, as it contains some major issues. The Standing Committee on Health heard from many witnesses on Bill C-45, and the government keeps failing to implement their recommendations. These concerns are from respectable establishments, such as the Canadian Medical Association and the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. Some significant and well-known organizations in the nation are saying that they are not ready, that this legislation is not ready, and that they require more time.

I always say that we will be the official opposition that holds this legislation to account through enforcement, through distribution, and through education.

If my Liberal colleagues across the floor truly cared about the well-being of Canadians, they would not be putting this legislation forward in its current form. We need to stand up for the safety of all Canadians and vote against Bill C-45.

[Bill Blair, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Madam Speaker, quite frankly, I am rather perplexed by the member's comments. The member may recall that Bill C-45 passed second reading and went to committee. That committee heard from over 100 witnesses, over the course of a very long and concentrated session of testimony, before reporting back to the House. It made a number of amendments and recommendations to the House, which were adopted. We moved forward to third reading, and then it went to the Senate.

This is an issue that has been examined extensively for over 50 years. When we became government, we formed a task force with expertise from the areas of justice, public safety, public health, and problematic substance use. We sent it across the country. It received over 30,000 submissions from Canadians on this issue. There were over 700 written submissions. It conducted dozens of round tables and town halls across the country, gathering information before it made recommendations to the government. Therefore, this has been perhaps one of the most consulted and collaborative processes ever undertaken by a government.

We are grateful for the important work done by the Senate. It has contributed enormously to this discussion. However, we believe we have a well-informed evidence-based policy framework for the strict regulation of cannabis, and we are prepared to move forward on it.

[Bill Blair, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada and to the Minister of Health]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in the House to speak to Bill C-45, the cannabis act.

I would like to begin my remarks by acknowledging the very comprehensive and important work of the Senate. The depth and breadth of its review was unprecedented for any proposed federal legislation that has come before it. It included extensive studies by five committees, which together conducted 47 meetings over 195 hours and heard testimony from over 200 experts and witnesses.

We have followed this process very closely. We have listened very carefully to the thoughtful questions and observations put forth by the members of the other place. The country has been well served by their careful attention to this important issue, and we are deeply and sincerely appreciative of their hard work and wise counsel.

I would also like to acknowledge the work of the aboriginal peoples committee. The government's response benefited tremendously and was made better by its advice and advocacy. I am sincerely grateful for its advice and counsel, which I believe has significantly improved the government's response to indigenous community concerns.

The Senate's comprehensive study has also provided parliamentarians and Canadians alike with an opportunity to learn more about the government's policy to legalize and strictly regulate cannabis, including understanding the main objectives and features of the proposed framework. One of the things I have been struck by throughout this process is the overwhelming consensus among nearly all parties that the government must do more to protect the most vulnerable of our citizens—our kids—from the health and social harms that the current failing system of cannabis prohibition has led to.

Prohibition has not stopped our young people from accessing and using this drug. In fact, Canada's record of youth consumption of cannabis is among the worst in the world. Prohibition has enriched organized crime in the billions of dollars each year while exposing Canadians to an unregulated, untested, and unsafe drug. Finally, the failed system of criminal prohibition has resulted in the criminalization of hundreds of thousands of Canadians and contributed to an unjust disparity and impact on vulnerable communities.

Prohibition has failed. We cannot regulate and control a prohibited substance. It is only by ending the prohibition, which is what legalization is, that we are able to implement a comprehensive and far more effective system of strict regulatory control. It means replacing a dangerous system of illicit production and grow ops with a strictly regulated, licensed regime that provides for adherence to rigorous health and security standards, oversight, testing, and accountability. For the provinces and territories, it means displacing drug dealers and illicit dispensaries with a strictly regulated distribution system, which will do an infinitely better job of keeping cannabis out of the hands of kids and redirect revenues from criminal enterprises to the public good.

Bill C-45 acknowledges and respects the jurisdictions of the provinces and territories to strictly regulate all aspects of distribution and consumption to reduce the social and health harms related to the current failed system of cannabis control. I would like to take the opportunity to acknowledge and thank each of the provinces and territories for their excellent collaborative work in bringing forward their respective legislative framework and, in particular, for providing a proportionate and enforceable prohibition for the possession, purchase, and consumption of cannabis for young people under the age of majority that will allow law enforcement to do their job of protecting youth but which will not expose our kids to the harm of a criminal record.

Although the government commends the valuable work done in the other place in conducting a thorough study of Bill C-45, it is our government's view that some of the amendments adopted would not fully support the bill's policy objectives and could have unintended consequences. For example, the other place adopted an amendment that would prohibit prosecution by indictment when an 18-year-old or 19-year-old distributed five grams or less of dried cannabis to a youth that is less than two years younger. The amendment would also allow for tickets to be issued in such circumstances. Finally, this amendment would also allow for a parent or guardian to share cannabis with their 16-year-old or 17-year-old children at home.

Our government has consistently indicated that the proposed cannabis act would not provide a mechanism whereby young persons could legally access cannabis. In fact, we strengthened penalties for adults who provide cannabis to minors or to use it to commit cannabis-related offences. However, the parental exception created by this amendment would essentially serve to create a legal supply channel in the cannabis act for 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds to access cannabis and would allow a parent or guardian to distribute up to 30 grams of dried cannabis to their 16-year-old or 17-year-old children or wards at home. A youth could in turn distribute up to five grams of dried cannabis received from their parent or guardian in the home with other youth outside the home.

Both the parental exception and the elimination of the ability to prosecute by indictment for close-in-age sharing of small amounts would serve to encourage and normalize cannabis use by our youth and is therefore not accepted by our government.

Ultimately, the crown should retain discretion on how to proceed, based on the circumstances before it. By not accepting this amendment, such discretion would be preserved, and where appropriate, the crown could elect to proceed summarily. This amendment goes against the fundamental objective of the bill, and that is why we are unable to support it.

Next, the Senate has recommended an amendment that would require that the minister collect and publicly disclose the names of every holder of a licence or permit, including persons who have control of or shares in corporations holding a licence. In addition to raising significant concerns from a privacy perspective, this amendment would likely engender a number of significant operational challenges.

For example, the inherent volatility of shareholding in publicly traded corporations could make the proposed reporting requirements practically impossible to meet, and could cause extreme delays in licensing. Moreover, it could also impose unprecedented requirements on businesses operating in the legal cannabis industry, making their treatment inconsistent with the treatment of businesses operating in other sectors of the Canadian economy.

The proposed act was carefully designed to ensure that its current provisions comply with privacy and other obligations and that it respects our charter. Our government has robust physical and personal security screening processes in place for the existing cannabis for medical purposes industry, which is designed to guard against infiltration by organized crime. For example, all officers and directors of a company must undergo thorough law enforcement record checks prior to licensing.

As part of a new regulatory framework, Health Canada has proposed to expand the list of individuals who would require a security clearance to include the directors and officers of any controlling company, in addition to those of the licensed company. An amendment to Bill C-45, adopted by the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology, would also give the minister expanded powers in this regard.

We have designed and implemented a rigorous and robust security framework that we believe will prevent organized crime and illegal money from infiltrating the legal cannabis market. For those reasons, we do not support this amendment.

Finally, I turn to the amendment proposed by the Senate with respect to allowing provinces to prohibit personal cultivation. The determination of four plants as an appropriate and reasonable limit to allow Canadians to engage in personal cultivation only for their use was arrived at after very careful consideration through examination of other jurisdictions and consultation across the country by both our task force and our senior officials. It was intended to allow those who may not otherwise have access to this drug, as a result of being from remote communities or perhaps being underprivileged, to have reasonable access. The limitation of four plants was also determined to be a safe limit, whereby the commercialization of that would be highly unlikely, and prevented by other sections in the act, and that any effort to sell that would be criminalized.

At the same time, our government has created an offence for producing more than four plants. However, we also have been very clear that we have acknowledged the provincial jurisdiction to impose strict regulation in relation to personal cultivation. For example, we have acknowledged that any province can place limits on the number of plants up to four and can place restrictions and regulations determining limits on location, safety, security, health concerns, and the size of fences. They can impose a requirement for permits, for example, and fees to be paid.

What we have also recognized is that prohibition does not work, and the effort to continue to enforce a prohibition takes away a province's and a municipality's opportunity to regulate this behaviour. We have seen the failure of prohibition. We have seen it has resulted in an unsafe situation in all of our communities. It has put our kids at risk and enriched organized crime. We believe that by imposing a strict regulatory framework, federally, provincially, and municipally, we will be able to do a much better job of controlling this behaviour to ensure we reduce the social and health harms to our kids, protect our communities, and protect the health of our citizens.

Despite the disagreements we may have on specific amendments, I want to reiterate that based on our extensive study over the last two years, the government is confident that Bill C-45 represents a balanced approach that will help meet our objectives. This is why we believe the amendments proposed in the other place need to be carefully considered, with a view to maintaining that balance and avoid unintended consequences, through the implementation of a new regime.

Where a disagreement exists with respect to a provincial authority, our government is not telling the provinces and territories that they cannot strictly regulate. However, we have also acknowledged that there may be limits to their ability to do that. The government is not saying that the Province of Quebec cannot prohibit personal cultivation. Nor are we prepared to authorize that in our legislation. We recognize that the failure of prohibition should not be perpetuated and continued in the country when we have an opportunity to regulate this substance properly.

[Rosemarie Falk, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-45, the cannabis act, a bill that would have a profound impact on our Canadian society.

The Liberal government's plan to legalize recreational marijuana has created a lot of uncertainty and unanswered questions. It is pushing this legislation forward without giving it the due diligence it requires. That is why it comes as no surprise this legislation has been sent back to us with so many amendments.

The priority of the government should be the health and safety of Canadians, but through legislative process, it has been clear that the Liberals are rushing to fulfill a political promise. At the outset, the Liberals set an arbitrary deadline to legalize the recreational use of marijuana, and the rush to legalize this harmful drug continues. This is despite concerns that have been raised from scientists, doctors, and law enforcement officials.

In this legislation, the Liberals have included a section outlining its purpose. The stated purpose of the cannabis act is to protect public health and safety, particularly that of young people, and that its purpose is to restrict access to cannabis for young people and to discourage its use. It also states that it sets out to reduce illicit activities and the burden on the criminal justice system. It states the goal of providing access to a quality-controlled supply of cannabis. Lastly, it wants to enhance public awareness of the health risks associated with cannabis.

Unfortunately, the legislation before us does not and will not achieve these goals. It is important to consider why this legislation does not achieve its stated purpose. We often hear from those in favour of legalizing the recreational use of marijuana that it is just a harmless drug. That is a myth. There is scientific evidence that marijuana is not a harmless drug, especially for young people. To quote the Canadian Medical Association:

Children and youth are especially at risk for marijuana-related harms, given their brain is undergoing rapid, extensive development.

Our understanding of the health effects of marijuana continues to evolve. Marijuana use is linked to several adverse health outcomes, including addiction, cardiovascular and pulmonary effects..., mental illness, and other problems, including cognitive impairment and reduced educational attainment. There seems to be an increased risk of chronic psychosis disorders, including schizophrenia, in persons with a predisposition to such disorders. The use of high potency products, higher frequency of use and early initiation are predictors of worse health outcomes.

The health effects I just described are very serious. They come at a high cost to Canadian taxpayers, and an even higher individual cost to the person experiencing any of these health problems. Knowing this, the recreational use of marijuana should never be encouraged. This is particularly critical when it comes to young Canadians. A young person's brain continues to develop until the age of 25. Although provinces are able to set a higher age, the cannabis act recommends the age of 18 as a federal minimum. That means the Liberals are recommending legalizing marijuana for individuals seven years before their brain finishes developing.

Medical professionals have testified that increased use before the age of 25 increases the risk of developing mental disorders by up to 30% compared to those who have not used marijuana before the age of 25. I would argue that what one permits, one promotes, and knowing what one allows, one encourages. Knowing the medical facts we know, it is irresponsible to allow an 18-year-old to legally smoke recreational marijuana. The Liberals are normalizing drug use and knowingly putting Canada's young people at a disadvantage.

A concern was raised during the study of this bill at the House's health committee that by setting the age at 18 for legal recreational use, there was a greater chance it would land in the hands of even younger children.

The point was raised that children 16 or 17 years old are more likely to be around 18-year-olds than, say, a 21-year-old. This means that the legislation as it is could increase the likelihood of a minor using marijuana. Let us not forget that this legislation actually allows children aged 12 to 17 to possess up to five grams of marijuana. That is the equivalent to 10 to 15 joints. If the message the Liberals are trying to send to the youth is that they should not use marijuana, they have missed the mark. The legal quantity of marijuana possession for children aged 12 to 17 should be zero. Zero sends the right message.

A public education and awareness campaign would also help send the right message. A campaign of this regard should be implemented before the legalization of marijuana and not after. While Health Canada is putting together a program, there has been no indication that it will be rolled out before the legalization of marijuana, and there is no requirement of sorts. There are no provisions in the cannabis act for public education. If not rejected, this legislation should at least be put on pause until a public education plan is rolled out. It also should not be rushed ahead when provinces, municipalities, police forces, and employers are not ready to implement it.

The belief that legalizing recreational marijuana use will eliminate the black market is also flawed. That outcome is dependent on a wide variety of factors, many of which are being left up to the provinces. The fact that this act legalizes home grow plants is actually more likely to result in an increase in the size of the black market. This bill allows individuals to grow four plants per dwelling, with no height restrictions on the plants. Four plants could yield up to 600 grams of marijuana. That is a large quantity and it could easily be trafficked. A network of home grows could easily contribute to organized crime. There is also the question of how the four plant policy will be enforced.

In addition to the impact on the black market, the home grow provision in this legislation also raises other concerns. When marijuana plants are grown in homes, marijuana becomes even more accessible to young Canadians. There is also no ability to control the quality of the marijuana that is grown in someone's home. This directly counteracts a stated purpose of this legislation.

The impact of marijuana plants on a home could be very significant. It is a known fact that the moisture from marijuana plants can create mould and spores in the structure of a home. This can impact the structural security of a home. It can also result in air quality that is harmful to a person's health.

There is also the concern that there is a 24 times greater incident of fire in residences growing marijuana. This creates even more danger for individuals living in apartments and multi-unit dwellings. This legislation also creates a unique concern for landlords.

I have raised many concerns with the legislation before us. I did not even get to the very valid concerns of many Canadians who are concerned with the odour of recreational marijuana use, or the issues of second-hand smoke and drug-impaired driving. Employers are also concerned with marijuana use in the workplace and its impact on workplace safety.

The cannabis act is irresponsible legislation. It fails to meet its intended purpose. It does not keep marijuana out of the hands of children. It does not keep profits out of the hands of criminals. It does not address the many concerns that have been raised by scientists, doctors, and law enforcement.

The cannabis act is being rushed through to fulfill a political promise, and doing so sacrifices public health and safety.

Conservatives will not support the Prime Minister's ill-conceived plan to legalize this harmful drug. Canadians deserve better.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate my colleague's comments. However, I wonder why Bill C-45 includes a provision that would make cannabis possession by minors permissible. Youth under 18 would not be allowed to buy cannabis, of course, but they would be allowed to have the drug in their possession. The provinces are going to have to deal with that measure.

The federal government could have defined all the prohibitions. Instead, the government is allowing cannabis possession by minors and leaving the burden of regulation to the provinces, which will each handle it differently. Quebec has set out its rules, but if someone goes to New Brunswick there will be other rules. At some point, it is the federal government's responsibility to ensure that we have regulations that help the provinces instead of making things more complicated for them.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Madam Speaker, I should mention that I will be sharing my time with the member for Battlefords—Lloydminster.

I rise once again to speak to Bill C-45 on the legalization of marijuana, on behalf of the millions of Canadians who would like to be standing beside me or in my place.

Let us not forget that the Prime Minister promised that legalizing marijuana would take street drugs out of the hands of children and take the production and sale of drugs away from organized crime. That is the line the government adopted to support this bill, but we can clearly see that it is completely false.

Last fall, we voted under the guillotine of time allocation, and naturally, given the Liberal majority, the bill was passed and sent to the Senate.

I am pleased to see that the senators felt free to propose the 46 amendments we are studying today. Interestingly enough, 29 of these 46 amendments are from the government. We have said all along that Bill C-45 is a botch job, that it would not work, and that we could not support it. Today we have proof, because the government itself had to make 29 amendments to a bill it rushed to ram down the throats of the members of the House of Commons.

Now the Senate, comprised mostly of government-appointed independent Liberals, agrees with the opposition and made a total of 46 amendments. Clearly, Bill C-45 was botched from the beginning, and we still do not understand the logic.

The Prime Minister appears to be living in a fantasy world. We often hear people taking about a magical land of unicorns and Care Bears. I think those people have a point, considering what is going on and how the Prime Minister sees and does things. It really is a fantasy land, and nothing we are being told makes any sense.

The government's official position was that Bill C45 was supposed to resolve the problem of marijuana trafficking controlled by organized crime and keep marijuana out of the hands of children, but it is really having the opposite effect. It is also going to cause other problems.

No, legalizing marijuana will not reduce access to it. Yes, organized crime will find ways around our laws. No, police officers cannot use magical Care Bear powers to fight drug-related violence and crime.

All that because the Prime Minister decided to make this an issue, to make it an electoral promise. He decided that this was urgent and that he had to legalize cannabis as quickly as possible without any respect for the concerns of scientists, doctors, or law enforcement officers.

What is more, the Prime Minister, who is supposedly a great friend to the first nations, did not even take into consideration their extremely serious concerns.

On top of all that, Canadian employers will have to deal with this situation. How will employers be able to monitor employees who work in manufacturing, in industries that require the use of dangerous equipment? We still do not have any answers on that. The government is rushing to legalize cannabis, but there are still unanswered questions.

The basic premise had to do with children. I will talk later about plants in homes, about how organized crime will get around the law, and about how children will be allowed to be in possession of marijuana. They will not be allowed to buy any, but they will be allowed to have it on them. It really does not make any sense.

Let's also talk about police officers. Over the weekend, a police officer gave me an example. He said that, under the existing legislation, when a police officer stops a vehicle and can smell marijuana, he or she has the right to search the vehicle. Most of the time, or quite often at least, when police officers conduct such a search, they find other drugs, such as amphetamines or cocaine, hidden in the vehicle. Having the authority to intervene because of the smell of marijuana often enables the police to discover hard drugs in such vehicles.

Three years ago, in Quebec City, where I live, the police stopped a tractor-trailer. They smelled drugs, searched the vehicle, and found a million dollars from the sale of drugs by organized crime hidden in it.

Now, police officers who smell marijuana will have to do some kind of yet-to-be-determined test to find out if a person is intoxicated, but they do not have the right to conduct other searches. These are real-life situations, not imaginary hypotheticals. Instead of helping police officers, the government is creating problems for them. Bill C-45 defies logic.

There is also the issue of market adjustment. Organized crime is not going away. Independent Liberal Senator Serge Joyal mentioned that, according to police, organized crime has already infiltrated Canada's medical marijuana market. He also said that 35 of Canada's 86 legal cannabis producers are financed in part by investors who use tax havens to hide their identity and that Cayman Islands investors have already pumped $250 million into the Canadian cannabis industry.

Despite the Liberals' attempt to get this bill passed as quickly as possible, senators made a number of amendments, including an amendment that would require cannabis companies to publicly disclose the identity of their shareholders. That is a reasonable solution that the opposition can get behind. This amendment would make it impossible for organized crime to use tax havens to infiltrate the Canadian cannabis market. That should have been in there from the get-go. I hope our friends on the other side of the House will accept this amendment.

As far as possession of marijuana is concerned, that will be legal. Retailers will be allowed to sell marijuana and people will have to be at least 18 to buy it, but children like mine, who are 13 and 14, will be allowed to have marijuana in their possession. At the risk of sounding unparliamentary, that seems stupid. They will not be allowed to buy it, but they will be allowed to have between 10 and 15 joints on their person. My son could have between 10 and 15 joints on him and that would not be an offence or a crime, but he would not be allowed to buy those joints. There are so many things like that that we do not understand and that do not work. We think that there are still too many inconsistencies in Bill C-45.

Then there are the property owners. In Quebec, the Corporation des propriétaires immobiliers du Québec, or CORPIQ, cannot fathom why we would pass a law that would let people grow cannabis plants in apartments in Quebec and elsewhere in Canada. These plants need humidity to grow. People will grow them in closets and are going to do all sorts of things that will damage the apartments and cause problems for the owners, not to mention the issue of the odours. There still remain unanswered questions.

In that regard, I would like to sincerely thank the governments of Quebec and Manitoba, which resolutely refused to let people grow cannabis at home. However, the Prime Minister of Canada told the provinces that they could not prevent people from doing it. Now that the bill has passed and Quebec is saying no, while the federal government says yes, there could be a constitutional challenge over pot plants. Society has far more important problems. We do not need a constitutional battle over pot plants grown at home. I hope Quebec will continue its fight, and I will be supporting it 100%.

This issue is even creating problems at the Canada-U.S. border. The bill does not address those Americans who may travel to Canada with marijuana on them, thinking that it is legal. According to the legislation, when a Canadian border services officer stops an American who is in possession of marijuana, the traveller must be turned back to the United States, where he or she will be charged. Similarly, Canadians who are not careful and who are in possession of cannabis when they are stopped at the U.S. border will also be charged. This problem has not been fixed.

According to a report from US. Homeland Security, there is a significant problem with drugs being trafficked from Canada to the U.S. Nothing has been fixed.

I could have used much more time, but I can say that I am very happy with the Senate's work. I hope that the government will at least listen to reason here.

(The House resumed at 12 p.m.)

The House resumed from June 13 consideration of the motion in relation to the amendments made by the Senate to Bill C-45, An Act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other Acts.

Business of the House

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister of Small Business and Tourism]

Mr. Speaker, this afternoon, we will finish debating the last opposition day motion in this supply cycle. Then, we will debate the main estimates.

Tomorrow morning, we will begin third reading of Bill C-68 on fisheries.

Next week will be a a busy one. Priority will be given to the following bills: Bill C-45 on cannabis, Bill C-59 on national security, Bill C-64 on abandoned vessels, Bill C-69 on environmental assessments, and Bill C-71 on firearms.

Marijuana

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, Parliament is in the process of dealing with two very important pieces of legislation, Bill C-45 and Bill C-46. They are, together, making some of the most profound changes ever with respect to the legal handling of cannabis in the history of Canada. When that process is completed, the law will change, and at that time, the government will consider all appropriate measures to ensure fairness in our system.

Consideration of Senate Amendments

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board]

Madam Speaker, I rise to speak to the message from the other place on Bill C-45. Before I start my remarks on that, I want to say that this is a historic time. I am very proud of this legislation, this change in social policy that we are making as a government.

If we reflect on what it is like to go out for dinner with friends and have a beer or a glass of wine with dinner, and we think about the fact that there was a time when that was illegal, when the provision of alcohol was controlled by the criminal underworld, and when the act of partaking in alcohol was a crime, it is almost impossible to imagine that this made sense in an earlier period, and it certainly does not make sense to us today. In the same way, in the future we will be looking back at a time when cannabis was illegal, criminalized, and purveyed by criminal gangs. In a future day, the public in Canada will not be able to imagine how that could have made sense. In fact, it does not make sense. That is why I am so proud of what we are doing today.

It does not make sense because it has not worked. Having the use of cannabis deemed a criminal matter, as opposed to a health and safety matter, makes no sense. It creates massive profits for the Hells Angels and other organized criminals. It provides no safety with respect to what might be in the content of the product that is being consumed or what might be harmful. Members should make no mistake: It is being consumed, notwithstanding the fact that it is an illegal activity, a criminalized activity. Our young people are using this product at higher rates than virtually anywhere in the world. Therefore, it is far past time to take the control and regulation out of the hands of the criminal underworld, which has been profiting from it, and place them in the hands of government, where health and safety aspects can actually be addressed by the government.

That is exactly why, in 2011, after the election, I began this discussion in Ottawa with Liberal colleagues, saying that I think it is time we address the situation and, as a party, consider legalizing marijuana. I had the privilege of bringing a film called The Union, a documentary about the control of cannabis by the criminal underworld and all the negative aspects of that for our society: the shootouts in open streets in broad daylight in our cities when there were gang wars; the drawing into criminal activity of young people, who were being recruited by the gangs to be part of their distribution network; and the hundreds of thousands of young Canadians who ended up in the justice system because of their involvement with cannabis.

Therefore, it is with great pride and humility that I want to acknowledge Parliament and the government for what we are doing here. This is a historic time. I have to say that in 2011 it looked pretty impossible. However, our Prime Minister took the bull by the horns and made this commitment in our last election platform, and we have proceeded with this project.

I am now going to talk about some of the details of implementation so that we do this as best as we possibly can as a Parliament and a government.

As others have already pointed out, both houses of Parliament have conducted extensive studies of the proposed cannabis act. In the other place, Bill C-45 was studied by five different committees, which heard from over 200 experts and witnesses. Four of those committees conducted an in-depth study of specific aspects of the legislation and its implications. They carefully assessed issues related to criminal law provisions, indigenous persons, international obligations, and Canada's borders. I want to add my voice to those who have acknowledged this important contribution, and to thank the other place for its extensive work on this bill.

The study of this proposed legislation by Parliament built on extensive work by the Task Force on Cannabis Legalization and Regulation. In 2016, after the previous election, the task force undertook extensive consultations to hear from Canadians; public health experts; law enforcement; provincial, territorial, and municipal governments; indigenous organizations; U.S. state governments with more experience administering cannabis regimes; and more.

The proposed act was developed largely on the basis of the thoughtful advice of this task force, and the act has been carefully designed to support the policy objectives stated in clause 7. It was carefully designed to ensure that its provisions would comply with privacy and other obligations and respect the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

For these reasons, the amendments proposed by the other place had to be very carefully reviewed and assessed on the basis of whether they would support the bill's policy objectives and could have unintended consequences. Based on this review, it is clear that some amendments, in fact the majority of the amendments brought forward,would further improve the bill, and they support its objectives. Others are problematic.

For example, the amendment that would further clarify the requirements and the scope of the legislative review that would be undertaken three years after the coming into force of the act would be a positive improvement to the legislation. This amendment would establish a clear timeline of 18 months, following the beginning of the review, for the minister to table in Parliament a report on the findings of the review.

In line with the objective of a separate amendment in the other place, it is proposed that the act clearly indicate that this legislative review carefully consider the impacts of this legislation on public health, including on youth, the impacts on indigenous peoples, and the impacts of home cultivation.

However, on the other hand, a number of amendments adopted in the other place cannot be supported, as they could create significant issues. This is the case, for example, of an amendment that would require that the minister collect and publicly disclose the names of every holder of a licence or permit, including persons who have control of or shares in corporations holding a licence. This amendment would raise concerns from a privacy perspective and would impose requirements on businesses operating in the legal cannabis industry that would be inconsistent with how businesses operating in other Canadian industries are treated.

It would also pose some issues from an operational perspective. For example, the volatility of shareholding in a publicly traded corporation could make the proposed reporting requirements practically impossible to meet and could cause extreme delays in licensing.

Health Canada has a robust physical and personnel security screening process in place for the existing cannabis for medical purposes industry. It is designed to guard against infiltration by organized crime. All officers and directors of a company must undergo thorough law enforcement record checks prior to licensing.

As part of the new regulatory framework, Health Canada has proposed to expand the list of individuals who would require a security clearance to include the directors and officers of any controlling company, in addition to those of the licensed company.

As we finalize our study of Bill C-45, I urge all parliamentarians to remember that this legislative framework is one of the pillars of a comprehensive public health approach the government is proposing to better protect Canadians and minimize the harms associated with cannabis use.

The government is taking action in a number of key areas, informed by the strict regulatory controls that are currently in place for Canadians who access cannabis for medical purposes and by lessons learned from our considerable success in taking a public health approach to reducing tobacco smoking rates. Our strategies include efforts to educate Canadians about the harms and risks of cannabis use, to promote healthy choices and reduce youth access, and to prevent problematic and high risk patterns of use, and many more.

It is important that we consider the proposed legislation in the context of these broader proven strategies for protecting public health. The government has taken every reasonable action to ensure that this bill is designed to take those things into account. I am proud of Bill C-45 and proud to—

The House resumed consideration of the motion in relation to the amendments made by the Senate to Bill C-45, an act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other acts.

Bill C-45—Notice of time allocation motion

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Waterloo, ON]

I will read it into the record in English, Madam Speaker.

I would like to advise that an agreement could not be reached under the provisions of Standing Orders 78(1) or 78(2) with respect to the consideration of certain amendments to Bill C-45, an act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other acts.

Under the provisions of Standing Order 78(3), I give notice that a minister of the crown will propose at the next sitting a motion to allot a specific number of days or hours for the consideration and disposal of proceedings at the said stage.

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister of Small Business and Tourism]

Madam Speaker, I would like to advise that an agreement could not be reached under the provisions of Standing Orders 78(1) or 78(2) with respect to the consideration of Bill C-45, An Act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other Acts. Under the provisions of Standing Order 78(3), I give notice that a minister of the crown will propose, at the next sitting, a motion to allot a specific number of days or hours for the consideration and disposal of proceedings at the said stage.

Cannabis Act

[Marc Miller, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Infrastructure and Communities]

Madam Speaker, I would like to say that I will be splitting my time with my colleague and hon. member for Vancouver Quadra.

Before I give the formal part of my speech, I would like to start by discussing an element that was brought up by the hon. member for Vancouver Kingsway, who had spoken about a number of members of the Senate and others as well as the Right Hon. John Turner as to their potential financial interest in legalizing marijuana.

I understand this is an issue of privilege, that members can say what pleases them in this House. However, I found it particularly unparliamentary that the member would raise the record of someone who has served this country with distinction and with honour in talking about the Right Hon. John Turner who was Prime Minister of Canada, and among the positions he occupied he also was the minister of finance and the minister of justice. He is a man of some advanced age, I believe. I would like to wish him a happy birthday; he turned 89 quite recently. I know it on good authority that he has zero interest in the legalization of marijuana or any pecuniary derivative thereof.

I will not presume bad faith on the side of the hon. member, and I hope that when he gets a chance to retract those words he does so because we are in fact talking about a person who served this country honourably, regardless of party lines. I do hope the member takes the chance to retract those comments.

I am pleased to rise in the House today to respond to an amendment adopted by the Senate with regard to Bill C-45, an act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other acts.

I commend the Senate for the valuable work that it did as part of its in-depth study of Bill C-45. However, I believe that some of the amendments the Senate adopted do not fully support the political objectives of the bill. They may also have unintended consequences.

Take for example, clause 5.2, a new clause that would provide for the following:

For greater certainty, this Act does not affect the operation of any provision of provincial legislation that is more restrictive with respect to, or prohibits, the cultivation, propagation or harvesting of cannabis in a dwelling-house.

Bill C-45 would allow adults to grow up to four cannabis plants per residence. Cannabis grown in a dwelling-house could not, under any circumstances, be sold to others, and anyone who grows more than four plants could be criminally charged.

The justification for the proposal to allow Canadians to grow up to four cannabis plants per household is twofold. First, this proposal would help displace the illegal cannabis market. Second, it would help prevent the unnecessary criminalization of otherwise law-abiding Canadians who safely and responsibly grow a small number of cannabis plants at home for personal use.

Home cultivation would also create a legal source of cannabis for people who do not have easy access to it through a provincial or territorial store or an online platform, particularly those who live in remote regions.

The proposal to allow people to grow a limited quantity of cannabis for personal use is similar to the current provisions regarding tobacco and alcohol. Canadians can legally grow their own tobacco or brew their own beer at home for personal use.

We can also trust Canadians to properly store cannabis, just as they safely store their prescription drugs at home in a responsible manner.

I would also like to point out that in the national cannabis survey, one of the questions the government asked was where people currently get their cannabis and where they thought they might be able to access it in the future. Of all the respondents who use cannabis, only 2% had thought of cultivating it for personal use.

The home cultivation our government is proposing is based on the opinion of the task force on cannabis legalization and regulation, and is in line with the frameworks adopted by most of the American states that have chosen to legalize and regulate cannabis for non-medical purposes, particularly Colorado, California, Oregon, Nevada and Alaska.

Those states allow home cultivation and have limits regarding the number of plants that can be grown, ranging from four to 12 plants per household. It is important to remember that Bill C-45 was designed to allow the provinces and territories to oversee the distribution and sale of cannabis within their borders and to add additional restrictions regarding certain aspects that are not proposed in the federal cannabis legislation, such as personal cultivation, if they wish.

That flexibility is there so they can adapt their laws in response to local realities and priorities in a way that is compatible with the public health and public safety goals in the proposed cannabis legislation.

The Government of Canada believes that the provinces and territories are in the best position to determine whether they need such restrictions and to establish tougher regulations. Most of the provinces do allow home cultivation of four plants as set out in Bill C-45. However, some provinces have already chosen to include restrictions in their legislation. For example, New Brunswick requires cannabis cultivated outdoors to be surrounded by a locked enclosure. Indoor cultivation must take place in a separate, locked space. Alberta would allow indoor cultivation only, and Nova Scotia has indicated that it would allow landlords to prohibit cannabis cultivation and smoking in rental units.

If someone decided to challenge a provision of a provincial cannabis law, a court would review the provincial system in its entirety, along with the federal cannabis law. It would then be up to the court to determine whether there was a conflict or whether the objectives of the federal legislation had been frustrated.

Over the past two years, our government has carried out extensive consultations and studies to support this bill. In this way, we have developed the best possible measures for protecting all Canadians, especially young Canadians.

Bill C-45 is largely based on the recommendations of the task force I mentioned earlier, which were formulated based on the opinions and expertise gathered through the extensive consultations. The bill reflects and balances the broad array of opinions from the provinces and territories, municipalities, communities, indigenous governments, and a wide range of experts and stakeholders.

The provincial and territorial governments developed their own legislation based on this insightful framework, and their investments and preparations for the establishment of retail systems are well under way.

Bill C-45 proposes to allow adults to grow up to four cannabis plants at home. It is essential to allow home cultivation in order to support the government's objective of displacing the illegal market.

The government is proposing a national approach to home cultivation designed to allow this activity to be achieved in a way that takes into account the valuable comments received from countless stakeholders. Although the framework for legalization includes some flexibility for setting certain restrictions on home cultivation, we are of the opinion that this amendment is inconsistent with that approach.

However, as we know, the bill contains a provision to review the cannabis act. Under that provision, three years after the coming into force, the minister will have to ensure that the act and its application are reviewed. Our government is proposing to amend that provision in order to specify that the review in question will include a review of the impacts of the cultivation of cannabis plants in a dwelling-house. Our government is committed to carefully examining the findings of such a review.

Based on the evidence currently before us, we are fully convinced that home cultivation can be done in such a way that is compatible with the health and public safety objectives of the bill. It constitutes a reasonable way to allow adults to grow cannabis for personal use, and that approach squares with the opinion of the task force and the approach adopted by most of the American states that have legalized and regulated cannabis.

For those reasons, I will not be supporting this amendment.

The House resumed consideration of the motion in relation to the amendments made by the Senate to Bill C-45, an act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other acts.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Madam Speaker, as I tuned in to listen to the Senate debate on the cannabis bill, Bill C-45, I was given a stark reminder of why so many Canadians have so little confidence in that unelected, unaccountable body. Certainly it is legitimately questionable whether an institution capable of producing such baseless fearmongering and ignorance has any legitimacy blocking legislation passed by an overwhelming majority in this democratically elected House of Commons.

Disturbingly, in the hours leading up to the final vote on Bill C-45, the Liberal government was forced to quietly swear in two new senators to ensure its passage, even though they were not present for one minute of testimony, one minute of debate, or one minute of review of the bill. However, they cast their vote in lockstep with the government. Some democracy. Some sober second thought.

After studying this legislation for over six months, it is not even clear that all 93 senators actually understood the most basic facts about cannabis, such as the most basic facts about cannabis quantity. While reviewing the act, Senator Nicole Eaton, a Conservative from Ontario, said this:

[F]ive grams is about four tokes. So, in other words, if I’m a high school student—I’m 16—I have four tokes in my pocket, which is under five grams. So you just don’t take it away from me, but I’m allowed to possess it, right?... I’m allowed to have less than five grams, or I’m allowed to have zero grams? This is what I don’t understand.

There is quite a bit the senator does not understand. For the record, five grams of cannabis is enough for some 10 joints. That is far more than four tokes.

Given this statement, l was rather surprised to learn that both Senator Eaton and Senator Frum were forced to abstain from votes on the cannabis bill because they stand to profit from legalization. Senator Eaton declared a conflict of interest over the bill “due to an impending investment in the cannabis industry.” However, until she recused herself, Senator Eaton was an active participant in debates and committee work on legalization, including voting against Bill C-45 at second reading.

For her part, Senator Frum has a property “that will be leased for the purposes of selling recreational cannabis”. After initially indicating her opposition to Bill C-45, she recused herself from debate, deliberation, and voting on the matter.

While it may seem like a contradiction to publicly oppose Bill C-45 while privately investing in cannabis, such behaviour has become disturbingly common in the lead-up to legalization. An emerging group of so-called cannabis capitalists, notably composed of the same police officers and government officials who have spent years prosecuting the war on drugs, has already begun staking its claim to the new recreational market.

Some prominent names include the following.

Kim Derry, who served as deputy chief when the current Liberal member for Scarborough Southwest, the Liberals' point man on cannabis, was Toronto police chief, is now the security adviser for THC Meds Ontario.

Former Ontario Liberal deputy premier, George Smitherman, who once served as the province's health minister, is tied to THC Meds Ontario as well.

Former Liberal prime minister John Turner is a board member for Muileboom Organics, Inc.

Chuck Rifici founded Tweed Marijuana Inc., the country's first licensed provider to go public, while he was chief financial officer of the Liberal Party of Canada.

Former police chief and Conservative cabinet minister Julian Fantino, who once compared cannabis to murder and voted in favour of harsh mandatory minimum sentences for cannabis as a member of the Harper cabinet, has now gone into the cannabis business himself with former RCMP deputy commissioner Raf Souccar.

It is a travesty of justice and a hypocrisy of the highest order that those who fought hardest for legalization may benefit the least from it, while those who spent a lifetime enforcing prohibition are now lining up to fill the boardrooms of the cannabis industry.

Those who put their liberty on the line as activists for legalization, and who, in the pursuit of their defence of cannabis, often took legal liability and got criminal records, not for any violent activity but in their drive to get sensible cannabis policy in this country, now carry the burden of a criminal record for their efforts. Not only have they been shut out, but the federal government has not even offered them a path to participate in the cannabis industry, or to obtain pardons. Are they now supposed to sit back in admiration of the moral flexibility and business acumen of their former detractors?

The inescapable truth is that Bill C-45 is principally about legalizing the cannabis industry, not the plant or its usage. This bill is not about legalization, but about making cannabis less illegal. If this legislation were truly about legalizing the cannabis plant, it would herald the end of criminalization, the end of stigmatization, and the end of the prohibitionist approach to cannabis policy that has been such a failure for almost 100 years. Instead, this legislation would create an incredibly complex criminal framework that legal experts and police chiefs predict will result in more, not fewer, cannabis offences post-legalization.

There have been many opportunities to change course as Bill C-45 worked its way through Parliament. I want to be clear. I do give the government credit for rejecting the most harmful amendments proposed by the Senate, and for accepting the NDP's proposals in a number of ways, including to legalize the sale of edibles and concentrates, albeit not for one year post-legalization. This is unjustified, but it is the best the Liberals would do. The government has also agreed to remove the misguided 100-centimetre plant height limit. Unfortunately, the Liberals have also rejected a number of key improvements to Bill C-45.

I would like to take a moment to focus on some of the Senate's key proposed amendments and the government's response to them.

First is home growing. Based on the advice of the task force on cannabis legalization and regulation, the federal government has proposed to allow the personal cultivation of cannabis for non-medical purposes, with a limit of four plants per household. However, after considering a proposal to ban home growing outright, the Senate chose to amend Bill C-45 to allow provincial governments to ban home growing themselves. Now, this is not a rational or evidence-based approach to cannabis policy. As the College of Family Physicians of Canada put it, “Banning home growing for personal use defeats the purpose of legalization, which is to reduce the harms of criminalization.”

New Democrats believe that, under legalization, the personal production of cannabis should be permitted, similar to the home production of alcohol, such as beer and wine. Personal production would play an essential role in eliminating the illicit cannabis market since it would ensure that individuals who want to consume cannabis can afford it and have access to it in regions without nearby retail storefronts. For many Canadians, particularly those in rural areas who would not be served well by the retail marketing of cannabis, this may be the only way to get access to cannabis.

I would point out that under the Supreme Court of Canada's ruling, medical cannabis users are allowed to grow their own cannabis. In some cases, they are growing eight plants, and they can obtain a licence from another person and grow for that person. Would it not be the height of folly if across Canada one house on a block could grow cannabis, because it is grown for medical reasons, but the house beside it could not, because it is for recreational purposes? That is the height of inequity and it would make a mockery of the law.

I would point out that the health and safety issues generally associated with home cultivation are overwhelmingly the result of large-scale, industrial, illicit growing operations that operate covertly in residential buildings due to prohibition. This can result in damage due to improper ventilation, and the illegal electrical hook-ups pose a fire risk. However, the personal cultivation of four plants would obviously not pose similar risks any more than growing four plants of any other species in the home. I daresay that most Canadians in an average household have more than four plants in their house. By contributing to the dismantling of the illicit market, home cultivation would actually serve to help eliminate those covert industrial growing operations.

Furthermore, I would point out that raw cannabis plants are non-psychoactive. According to University of British Columbia botany professor Jonathan Page, who testified at committee, if anybody, including a child, were to eat the raw bud of cannabis, that person would get the acidic form, which is non-psychoactive. The fresh material is not capable of getting one high. One needs to bake it, heat it, or smoke it in order to obtain that result.

The government chose to reject this amendment because it said, “t is critically important to permit personal cultivation in order to support the government’s objective of displacing the illegal market.” Canada's New Democrats agree.

On potency limits, the Senate also proposed an undefined potency limit for cannabis products. I think the Conservatives are supporting this. On this point, it is important to note that the task force on cannabis legalization and regulation rejected potency limits for a number of reasons. It believed that if prohibited these products would continue to be available on the illicit market. The task force also concluded that there was insufficient evidence even to identify what a safe potency limit would be. The task force emphasized the significant risks associated with the illicit production of high potency concentrate, and instead called on the government to regulate them within a legal market.

I would point out that illicit producers often use flammable solvents, such as butane, to extract cannabinoids from plants, an inherently dangerous process that can also leave carcinogenic residues on the end product. Product safety was also a concern as the extraction process may also concentrate contaminants, such as heavy metals and other impurities in addition to THC.

The government rejected this amendment because “the government has already committed to establishing THC limits in regulations, which will provide flexibility to make future adjustments based on new evidence and product innovation.” While we support the decision to reject this amendment, Canada's New Democrats believe that the government should heed the advice of the task force in this area.

On branding, the Senate proposed deleting a provision of Bill C-45 that currently would allow a person to promote cannabis, a cannabis accessories or a service related to cannabis by displaying a brand element on the thing, provided that it would not be associated with young persons, appealing to young persons, or associated with a way of life that would include glamour, recreation, excitement, vitality, risk, or daring.

The government rejected the Senate's amendment because “the Cannabis Act already includes comprehensive restrictions on promotion.” Again, Canada's New Democrats agree.

Branding restrictions on cannabis in Bill C-45 are there now. Indeed, they are already more stringent than those applied to alcohol. I do not need to remind any of the members of the House of the tragedy that occurred just a few months ago. A young Quebec girl died after consuming a high alcohol volume drink and ended up drowning in a river. If we look at that product, it is definitely marketed to young people, even to children, and there are no similar restrictions on alcohol. The House should look at closing that in the future.

With respect to parental sharing in the home, just as is currently the case with alcohol, the Senate proposed to allow parents to share cannabis with a younger family member of at least 17 years of age in the home. Canada's New Democrats believe this was a sensible proposal and the government was ill-advised to reject this amendment.

We currently allow this approach for alcohol because we understand that parents can be trusted to model responsible behaviour to their children and to make positive choices for their family's well-being. In fact, the New Democrats believe parental education will be a key component of low-risk use of cannabis and should not be criminalized. After the bill becomes law, parents will be able to legally consume cannabis in the house, and if they want to pass a joint to their 17-year-old and discuss responsible use of cannabis, the bill would make that a crime. We do not think that is sensible.

The government has also rejected the Senate's parallel proposal to ensure that sharing among individuals close in age within two years would not be criminalized, and that a cannabis offence carrying a sentence of less than six months would not be used in deportation proceedings for someone without citizenship status.

The government justified its rejection by saying, “the criminal penalties and the immigration consequences aim to prevent young people from accessing cannabis and to deter criminal activity by imposing serious criminal penalties for prohibited activities...”.

If criminalization and the threat of imprisonment or deportation prevented people from using cannabis, then Canadians would not be consuming an estimated 655 metric tonnes of it per year and we would not have the second highest rate of cannabis use among youth between 16 and 24 in the world, and that is when we have full criminalization and life sentences for trafficking.

Contrasting that, a single bottle of liquor is enough to kill a child, and yet I know of no 14-year prison sentence arising from the distribution of beer or liquor. However, a parent who shares a joint with his or her son or daughter who is 17 would be a criminal under this legislation. An adult who possesses 31 grams of cannabis in public would be a criminal. A youth who possesses more than 5 grams of cannabis would be a criminal. An 18-year-old who passes a joint to a 17-year-old friend would be a criminal. An adult who grows five cannabis plants would be a criminal.

This kind of continued criminalization is inconsistent with a rational and evidence-based criminal justice policy and will only serve to reduce the positive impacts of the bill. The prohibitionist approach has been repeatedly discredited by its failure throughout history.

For far too long, we have wasted billions of dollars in resources in the criminal justice system by criminalizing otherwise law-abiding citizens at an alarming rate for simply possessing and consuming cannabis. In fact, we are today. According to Statistics Canada, in 2016, the most recent year of available data, there were about 55,000 offences related to cannabis reported to police and police charged 17,733 people with pot possession.

A recent Vice News investigation found that black and indigenous men and women have been overrepresented in cannabis possession arrests across Canada just in the year since the Liberals formed government, and yet Bill C-45 would preserve the criminalized approach to cannabis, along with the damaging paternalism of the war on drugs.

I want to be clear that from the very beginning Canada's New Democrats have worked hard to reach across the aisle with constructive proposals to improve the bill. These changes included the following: providing pardons to Canadians saddled with a criminal record for offences that will no longer be offences under Bill C-45. This amendment was ruled outside the scope of Bill C-45. However, given the Prime Minister's previous statements, it is shocking that the Liberal government would structure a so-called cannabis legalization bill in such a way that pardons could not be included through amendment.

We proposed empowering provincial governments to create parallel production licensing regimes in order to give provinces the flexibility to implement legalization in the manner best suited to their jurisdiction. For example, this would have allowed provinces to let craft growers, small scale producers, and outdoor growers compete against the federally licensed corporate giants.

As said earlier, we proposed the legalization of edibles and concentrates, which are among the safest ways to consume cannabis and are the growing part of the market. This would allow Canadians and entrepreneur of businesses across the country to provide safe, regulated products to customers instead of allowing this to be provided underground.

We proposed decriminalizing the penalties section in line with the Tobacco Act. We proposed that the legalization should take a regulatory approach with significant fines for offences rather than criminal ones.

One of the purposes of Bill C-45, as laid out in section 7, is to “reduce the burden on the criminal justice system in relation to cannabis.” Penalties in the bill should be consistent with that stated intent.

I am disappointed that the government chose to reject these vital proposals, but I am heartened that the bill at least contains a mandatory review of Bill C-45's operation in the next Parliament. I view this as a tacit admission by the government that it knows the bill contains problematic sections that will need to be fixed.

To be clear, Canada's New Democrats will support this motion and this legislation because we have fought for an end to prohibition ever since the 1971 LeDain Commission. The bill before us today is an important step forward but it is far from perfect.

After the last election, Canadians rightfully expected that the Liberals would produce a timely and fair cannabis law. As it now stands, the federal government has left the heavy-lifting of legalization to the provincial, territorial, municipal, and indigenous governments. The bill will lead to the emergence of a patchwork approach to legalization that will shut out the most long-standing cannabis activists, the folks who have spent decades honing their craft and providing world-leading medicinal cannabis to patients across Canada.

Some provinces have chosen to impose a government retail monopoly, some have chosen to shut out existing compassion clubs, and some provinces are pushing to ban home growing outright. This is disappointing. It is a lost opportunity. It is a betrayal of the clear promise that the Liberals made to Canadians in 2015.

Done properly, an appropriate legal approach to cannabis can achieve impressive benefits economically, technologically, and medicinally. The New Democrats will continue to work to provide the best cannabis legislation in the world for Canadians.

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

Madam Speaker, I would like to say that this will probably be my last opportunity to speak to Bill C-45, so I want to make sure I give it full coverage.

The government says that the reason it is bringing in this legislation is that what is in place now is not working. What is proposed under Bill C-45 is not going to work either, even with the many amendments that have been brought forward.

What was this bill supposed to do in the first place? If we refer to the purpose of the bill, it is supposed to “protect the health of young persons by restricting their access to cannabis”. We can see right away a couple of things in the bill that are going to put cannabis into the hands of young children. First is clause 8, which would allow young people aged 12 to 17 to have up to five grams of cannabis. That is the wrong message in any universe.

We have talked about home grow and how when people have in excess of 600 grams of cannabis growing in a house, young people are likely to get hold of it, in the same way they get hold of liquor in the liquor cabinet. This is certainly not going to keep cannabis out of the hands of young children.

Furthermore, I would say that if the government has a belief that the systems being put in place in some provinces are going to help out, let me assure the House that Kathleen Wynne put in a process in Ontario of LCBO-type stores and delivery. For people in Sarnia—Lambton, the closest store is in London. If they called their drug dealers today, in about 30 minutes they could have whatever quantity they wanted delivered to their houses for about $7 a gram. The government has proposed a price of $10 a gram, with $1 in tax on top of that. If it thinks that is going to work to displace the organized crime that is in place, it is sadly mistaken.

The other item I want to talk about with respect to youth is the public education that was supposed to happen. The Canadian Medical Association has been clear that among young people under the age of 25 who use cannabis, 30% will have severe mental illness issues, such as psychotic disorders, bipolar, anxiety, and depression, and 10% will become addicted. Where is the public education on that? Where is the message to tell young people today that this is harmful? That message is not out there. Young people are saying, “It's no more harmful than alcohol.” They are not getting the message.

The only public campaign that has been done was done by the Minister of Public Safety, who did a brief TV commercial to let kids know that they should not drive while they are drug-impaired, which, while true, is totally inadequate to have the kind of public education that was recommended by Colorado and the State of Washington. Colorado did $10 million worth of public education for a population that is lot smaller than what Canada has. The State of Washington did the same.

We are certainly not going to achieve the first objective of keeping it out of the hands of children. What about some of the others? Will we provide for only the legal production of cannabis “to reduce illicit activities in relation to cannabis”? If we look at all the places that have legalized marijuana, we see that in Colorado, which allowed home grow, it still has significant issues with organized crime. The police have a lot of nuisance complaints, and there are entire residential neighbourhoods that smell. There are lots of problems there.

We can look at the State of Washington, which decided that it would not allow home grow, except in the case of medicinal marijuana. It was able, in three years, to reduce organized crime to less than 20%. Because it had set the age at 21, it was able to make it difficult for young people to actually get hold of marijuana. It is unlikely that 21-year-olds would be sharing with 17-year-olds, unlike with the legislation we have before us.

Another problem that has not been addressed by the government with respect to home grow concerns property-owner rights. In Ontario and Quebec, once this legislation is passed, property owners would be unable to prevent people from growing marijuana in their houses. For those who are maybe less experienced, when growing marijuana, there can often be a mould problem in the house. I have been approached by the real estate associations, which have asked questions. Currently, when there is a home grow in a house, and the house is sold, they have to do a total remediation for the mould and a recertification of the house. They want to know if they are going to have to do that for all the home grows. That question has not been answered by the government.

The other question that has not been answered by the government has to do with the impact at the border. I live in a border community. Conversations have been had with Homeland Security and with border officials. They have said, “Canada is changing its law. We are not changing our law federally. It still is illegal federally, and we are not adding resources because of Canada's law.” Dogs will sniff. If people have second-hand smoke residue on their clothes, if a kid borrowed the car and happened to be out with other kids who were smoking marijuana, if people smoke themselves and do not happen to have any with them but have the residue, the dogs will sniff it out, and people will be pulled over into secondary, and they will go through the standard procedure there. The problem is that there is not enough secondary for the number of people who will be pulled over. When asked what they will do then, they said they would put a cone in the lane the person is in and perform the secondary inspection there, which will back everything up. They have informed us to expect an increase of up to 300% in wait times at the border.

The government has known about this for two and a half years. It has done nothing to establish any kind of agreement with the government of the U.S., other than to say to make sure that people tell the truth. That, of course, is great advice, but it will not prevent the wait times and the problems that are going to be seen at the border.

Furthermore, the government has not educated young people to understand that if they are caught with marijuana in the U.S., it is a lifetime ban from that country. The U.S. is not the only country that will ban people for the possession of marijuana. There are a lot of countries in the world. Young people who intend to have a global career are not being informed about this, and there could be very adverse consequences from the public education that has not happened.

This bill was also supposed to “reduce the burden on the criminal justice system”. Unfortunately, we know that the justice minister is behind the eight ball in terms of putting judges in place. She is about 60 short. Because of that, we see murderers and rapists going free due to Jordan's principle. If there were an intent on the part of the Liberals to try to clear the backlog and make sure that those who have committed more serious crimes receive punishment, one of the things they could have done, as was suggested many times, even since last September, was let those who have marijuana charges drop off the list and get out of the queue so that the more serious offences could be prosecuted. Of course, the Liberals have done nothing with respect to that, and so again, they are not going to actually offload them from the system. In fact, there would be more criminal charges under this legislation than previously existed, because now, if people had five plants instead of four, that would be an offence. Now, if they had 31 grams instead of 30, that would be an offence. Now there would be offences for transferring it to younger people. There would be a lot of offences that did not exist previously, so definitely, we will not achieve that goal.

There was the goal to ”provide access to a quality-controlled supply of cannabis”. Now that they would allow home grow, and everyone is going to be doing their own thing, there would actually be no management of the quality control of this product. That is also not acceptable.

Some of the other unanswered questions we see have to do with workplace safety. This was raised when the marijuana issue was studied by the original council. There was testimony brought to committee. There were questions raised all over the place. How are we going to protect the employers, who have the liability, and the other employees, who are worried? They are worried about people who may come to work drug impaired. We do not want to be flying with Air Canada and have the pilot impaired. We do not want to have people operating nuclear plants who may be drug impaired.

Bill C-46 was supposed to be the companion legislation to Bill C-45. Bill C-46 was going to allow mandatory and random testing on the roadside, because, as people know, it is dangerous to smoke drugs and then drive a car. That was going to open the door, then, for people to say that if it is dangerous to smoke drugs and drive a car, perhaps it is also dangerous to then drive a plane or drive a train or operate a nuclear plant, or any of these other things. The question of workplace safety and how we are going to protect and what legislation is going into place is a total blank space.

We have not looked to our neighbours to the south that have legalized and have both mandatory and random testing in place. I worked on many projects, and I actually had an office in the States at one point in time, so I know that American employers are able to screen people before they hire them. They are able to mandatory test them, and they are able to random test them. The government has totally lacked leadership in addressing the issue of workplace safety, etc.

With respect to the actual amendments that have come, some were good and some were not good. One amendment that was brought would allow 18-year-olds to share their marijuana or allow parents in a home to share their marijuana. I am glad the government decided not to accept that one.

I am still concerned about the fact that there is even marijuana in the house. However, if that amendment was accepted it definitely would not have not been keeping marijuana out of the hands of young children.

One of the amendments that they did not accept had to do with the banning of promotional things like T-shirts, caps, and flags that would have a cannabis symbol on them. The government did not accept this amendment from the Senate. I am very concerned about that.

There are a lot of Canadians out there who are worried that when marijuana is legalized in Canada they are going to use Canada Day flags that have cannabis on them. Everybody will have a T-shirt with cannabis on it. That will be disgusting. It will absolutely denigrate our country and the people who have served our country and made Canada a proud country. It will deface that. The government has allowed people to continue to have that kind of paraphernalia by refusing the language here. It is total hypocrisy because under Bill S-228, which talks about prohibiting unhealthy advertising to children, we would not want to see pop or something like that on a T-shirt or a flag. However, with cannabis, it is okay. I am totally opposed to that.

Another thing that the government should have taken into account was the amendment that was brought on capping the potency of THC. We have heard reports from all over Canada, as people are increasingly trying marijuana for the first time or experiencing B.C. bud, which purportedly has one of the highest THC contents and a lot of potency, that people are presenting at the emergency wards with uncontrollable vomiting due to THC poisoning. Knowing that a part of the intent of this bill is to protect the health of Canadians and of youth, I cannot understand why the government would not recognize that there needs to be some control on the potency of things that are out in the marketplace.

Some of the amendments were compassionate and talked about giving people more time to pay their fines. I thought that was good that the government accepted those. I also thought it was good that they would, for young people, ages 12 to 17, who were experiencing an offence, look at ticketed offences, which is something that we would have supported, and restorative justice options.

If we look to countries that are doing the best job of intervening and helping people to get off drugs, look to Portugal. If anyone is found in possession of drugs there, they are given an intervention with a medical person, a psychiatrist, and a legal person. They then try to figure out what the root cause is of why these people are self-medicating or why are they becoming addicted, and what can be done to help get them off of it, in terms of mental health therapies or drug addiction therapies, etc. We need to look at this whole thing.

The other part that I think is unfortunate is that the indigenous people have not been adequately consulted. I was very disappointed to find that in September of last year, when we first heard at committee from Chief Day and from the Métis nation, they said they had not been adequately consulted. It is disheartening to hear that again when this went before the Senate, the same message came out that they had not been adequately consulted, and that they wanted to have the ability within their own communities to define whether or not cannabis would be allowed. Apparently under federal law, it was clarified to them that if it is a federal right of Canadians to possess cannabis, then it is not something that they would be able to go against. There was some resistance about that based on the sovereignty of the indigenous peoples. I think that was not resolved to their satisfaction.

It is worrisome that the government continues to rush ahead. It says that this is the most important relationship, the nation-to-nation relationship, yet it is willing to go and throw gasoline on a fire in terms of moving ahead when it has been asked not to do so.

Some of the other questions that arose at committee that really have not been adequately answered have to do with a lot of the detailed specifics about who is going to pay. Municipalities are saying there will be a cost to them to implement it, but they have not been included in the cost breakdown or the agreements that have happened. That is of concern. There have also been concerns raised by people who currently are consuming medical marijuana, and their understanding is that they are going to be paying tax on that.

Typically, in Canada, prescription medicines are not taxed. Therefore, as long as people have a prescription from a doctor for their medicinal marijuana, my expectation would be that it would not be taxed. However, that is not what the government is saying. Also, there is language in the budget bill that is a little suspicious, which states it would exempt people from paying tax on medicinal marijuana that has a drug identification number. The problem with that is that there are no medications that have a drug identification number because there are so many different components in marijuana that the companies have not been able to spend the research dollars required to characterize them or to effectively control the quality of them so that they could acquire a number like that. Therefore, that is a meaningless promise, for sure.

There were some amendments that were brought to bring this legislation in line with the tobacco legislation. I am in favour of having those things aligned. However, it seems unusual that the government would be spending $80 million to get people to stop smoking and then $800 million to get people to start smoking marijuana, especially when the Minister of Health just stood up and talked about how the government knows there are harmful effects.

One of the things I find very interesting, from a timing point of view, is that today Health Canada took the harmful impacts of cannabis off of its website. That was something that had been on the website. I had someone that brought it to my notice, and sent me a screenshot of what used to be there and a screenshot of what is not there now. It is very interesting that on the day that the Liberals want to see this legislation pass into law, it would suddenly take off of the website the information that shows there are harmful effects from cannabis not only to young people but also others.

Therefore, I would request that the government not hide things. Rather, it should try to be open and transparent, as it says it is always trying to be, and put that information back on the website. Every place that has legalized marijuana has said that one of the most important things to do is to invest in public education, and target that education not just to young people so that they understand the harmful effects this would have on their brains, but also to adults and parents who can influence young people, and the general public so that they can understand as well.

I am very concerned about some of the unintended consequences that will happen as a result of this legislation. I know there are people already smoking marijuana in Canada today. However, when it becomes legal, there will be many more who will decide to try it. They may not be informed about what the impact will be when they cross the border or what the impacts might be on their mental health or that of their children. They may not understand what the health impacts will be for them. They may not understand the ramifications with respect to their place of work and how they are going to impact both their employer and those who work around them.

That said, I am very opposed to the legalization of marijuana, which I have said on many occasions, not just because it is bad for people but because this bill has so many holes in it and so many unanswered questions, and there will be so many bad, unintended consequences for Canadians, that it will be left to the Conservative Party, when we come to victory in 2019, to clean up the mess made by the current government's moving forward in this rushed and irresponsible fashion to implement this bill.

This bill will absolutely not keep marijuana out of the hands of young children. It will not get organized crime out of this business. It will not unload our criminal justice system. It certainly will not provide access to a quality-controlled supply.

What we can expect is that on Canada Day there will be a lot of people out with their T-shirts on, totally insulting those Canadians who are proud of our country and who are not in agreement, and there are a lot of Canadians who are not in agreement with this legislation.

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Madam Speaker, as I was indicating earlier with respect to the public education and awareness campaign, it is important to make sure that the appropriate investments are made to inform Canadians about Bill C-45 with respect to the coming into force date and all the information that needs to go with it. I also have to stress that the information and tools we are going to put in place with respect to public education and awareness are key.

The public education campaigns have already started. They started last year, and we are continuing to roll out these products. We recognize that we have to get the key messages out to Canadians, because we want them to be able to make responsible choices.

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Madam Speaker, the priority of Bill C-45, as we legalize cannabis, is to restrict cannabis and get it out of the hands of youth. We recognize that in Canada, in many instances, it is easier for our youth to purchase cannabis than it is for them to purchase cigarettes. We recognize that the current system is not working, and that is why we are moving forward with the bill. We want to legalize, restrict, and also regulate this substance.

We recognize that Canadian youth are among the highest consumers of cannabis among the developed countries. As a result, we are taking a public health approach. We are making some significant investments in the area of public education and awareness. We are also partnering with many agencies to make sure that we provide the appropriate tools to provide the public education and the awareness campaign that is needed to ensure that they get the proper information.

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Madam Speaker, once again, I want to thank my colleague for his question.

With regard to home cultivation, we obviously thought about this issue and also closely examined this amendment. We recognize that the Senate did a thorough job, and we studied all the recommendations made to date.

I do not agree with my colleague who called it a mediocre law. The task force on cannabis legalization and regulation did great work, and we have been working on this bill for two years. We are convinced that Bill C-45 is really good.

It was very important for the other chamber, the Senate, to review it and make recommendations. On this side of the House, we studied these recommendations very carefully and we accepted the majority of amendments.

We do not hold the same position on home cultivation, but we nevertheless respect the work done by everyone.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, I recognize that for both ministers this is a very difficult bill. Overall, I certainly support Bill C-45. In general, it strikes the right balance. However, I am disappointed that some of the Senate amendments have been rejected, and I wonder if the minister would reconsider.

I tried similar amendments when the bill was before committee. The ones I could generally lump together are clause 9, pages 10 and 11; and another one further in, clause 51, pages 29 to 31, dealing with what we might characterize as social sharing. I am very concerned that young people will not realize that if they are 18 years old and their best friend is 17 years, 11 months, and two weeks old, passing a joint to this friend in a social setting would constitute distribution and could even involve jail time.

I think we ought to look at these amendments that came from the Senate. Again, I think that the government has done a pretty fair job here. I have a lot of concern on regulations, which I will raise later. I am very concerned to make sure that legal growing outdoors of organic cannabis would be permitted. However, for now, looking at these amendments, I wonder if there might be some reconsideration around this particular area of concern.

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Madam Speaker, once again we have to make it very clear that our objective in moving forward with Bill C-45 is simple. We are moving forward with legalization as we want to restrict access to cannabis by our youth. We want to protect our youth. We also want to regulate the product that is on the market.

With respect to the issue of home grow, we have to recognize that if we want to displace the illegal market, we have to use all the tools that we have at our disposal.

We recognize as well that when individuals have a prescription to grow cannabis for medical purposes, they have the opportunity to grow that product at home. When we talk about recreational cannabis, we feel that both systems should be consistent.

I also have to add that for all provinces and territories, should they choose to add additional limits with respect to home cultivation, they will be able to do so. If a province chooses to only allow one plant to be grown, it can absolutely do that.

As my friend and colleague indicated, the province of New Brunswick, my home province, has even put a specific requirement forward. It wants to ensure that if New Brunswickers choose home cultivation they will have to do so under lock and key.

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

moved:

That a message be sent to the Senate to acquaint their Honours that, in relation to Bill C-45, An Act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other Acts, the House:

agrees with amendments 1, 2, 5, 6, 10, 11(b) and (c), 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17(b), 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 27, 28, 29, 30, 34, 35, 36 and 37 made by the Senate;

respectfully disagrees with amendment 3 because the government has been clear that provinces and territories are able to make additional restrictions on personal cultivation but that it is critically important to permit personal cultivation in order to support the government’s objective of displacing the illegal market;

respectfully disagrees with amendments 4, 11(a) and 38 because they would be contrary to the stated purpose of the Cannabis Act to protect the health of young persons by restricting their access to cannabis;

respectfully disagrees with amendment 7 because the criminal penalties and the immigration consequences aim to prevent young people from accessing cannabis and to deter criminal activity by imposing serious criminal penalties for prohibited activities, including importing and exporting cannabis and using a young person to commit cannabis-related offences;

respectfully disagrees with amendment 8 because the Cannabis Act already includes comprehensive restrictions on promotion;

respectfully disagrees with amendment 9 because the government has already committed to establishing THC limits in regulations, which will provide flexibility to make future adjustments based on new evidence and product innovation;

respectfully disagrees with amendments 17(a) and 25 because other Senate amendments that the House is accepting would provide the Minister with expanded powers to require security clearances, and because amendments 17(a) and 25 would present significant operational challenges and privacy concerns;

respectfully disagrees with amendment 23 because law enforcement has an obligation to maintain evidence unless there is a risk to health and safety, and provisions currently exist in the Cannabis Act to provide compensation should evidence be disposed of and ordered to be returned;

respectfully disagrees with amendment 26 because mechanisms already exist to provide for public scrutiny of federal regulations;

proposes that amendment 31 be amended by replacing the text of section 151.1 with the following text:

“151.1 (1) Three years after this section comes into force, the Minister must cause a review of this Act and its administration and operation to be conducted, including a review of the impact of this Act on public health and, in particular, on the health and consumption habits of young persons in respect of cannabis use, the impact of cannabis on Indigenous persons and communities, and the impact of the cultivation of cannabis plants in a dwelling-house.

(2) No later than 18 months after the day on which the review begins, the Minister must cause a report on the review, including any findings or recommendations resulting from it, to be laid before each House of Parliament.”;

respectfully disagrees with amendment 32 because the Bill already provides for a comprehensive review of the core objectives of the Cannabis Act, including a requirement to table a report in Parliament and because the suggested amendment to amendment 31 provides for a review of the public health impacts of the Cannabis Act;

respectfully disagrees with amendment 33 because Parliament already has broad discretion to initiate studies of specific matters by parliamentary committees, and because the Bill already provides for a comprehensive review of the Cannabis Act, including a requirement to table a report in Parliament.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be here today and to rise to speak to Bill C-45, Cannabis Act. I would first congratulate the other chamber for its excellent work and careful study of this bill. Once again, I want to point out the great work done by all senators over the past seven months and by committees that did remarkable work over many meetings.

We are about to witness an historic moment in Canada. When this bill comes into effect, it will change the way our country controls access to cannabis.

It will be an important change for every one of us, including governments, indigenous peoples, law enforcement agencies, health professionals, and Canadians.

As I have said many times, our objective for legalization is to replace a system that is not working. We need to keep cannabis out of the hands of youth and profits out of the hands of organized crime.

Bill C-45 gives us the tools we need to accomplish that.

As we know, the bill before us today is the result of more than two years of study and consultation.

It builds on the extensive work of the task force on cannabis legalization and regulation. The task force consulted with a wide range of stakeholders, from the provinces and territories, to law enforcement, to health and safety experts. It also reached out to young Canadians, indigenous people, and many others. Their feedback and recommendations certainly helped shape this bill.

The proposed legislation is informed by lessons learned from jurisdictions in the United States and elsewhere that have legalized and regulated cannabis. It included effective practices from other regulatory regimes such as tobacco, for which we have implemented a public health approach with demonstrated success.

As a result, the proposed legalization strikes the right balance between making cannabis legally available to adults and protecting all Canadians.

Over the past few months, this bill has been studied and debated by the other place. Five of its committees carried out comprehensive studies and heard from over 200 witnesses. This work led them to propose a number of amendments to the bill. Several of those amendments made Bill C-45 stronger.

For example, senators had proposed an amendment that would strengthen our ability to keep organized crime out of the legal industry by giving the minister the power to require specific persons associated with a licensed organization to hold a valid security clearance. There is no doubt that this change improves Bill C-45 and the government will fully support it.

We are, however, concerned that other proposed changes could undermine the bill. After careful thought and consideration, we have decided not to support some of the proposed amendments. My colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health, will speak in more detail about this decision.

In the meantime, I would like to focus on two specific issues that have captured the interest of the other place. Let us talk about the indigenous perspective.

The first concerns the indigenous perspective on Bill C-45. In a recent letter, the Minister of Indigenous Services and I acknowledged the interests and concerns raised by the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples. We have committed to continue to take action in specific areas including supporting mental health and addiction services, public education and participation in cannabis production, and addressing jurisdictional and revenue-sharing issues.

We have committed to report to both chambers on progress in these areas within 12 months of receiving royal assent. I would like to assure members that our government has noted these areas of interest and concern. We will address each area through continued engagement with indigenous communities, indigenous organizations, and with the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples.

Home growing was the other issue that received careful consideration from the other place. As we know, the bill allows adults to grow four plants per household. There are three reasons why limited home growing should be allowed.

First, allowing people to grow a small number of plants for personal use will prevent the needless criminalization of otherwise law-abiding citizens. Second, limited home growing will help displace the black market, an unsafe, unregulated market that supports criminals and organized crime.

The bill sets out strict rules for growing cannabis at home. Setting a very low limit on the number of plants is a reasonable way to allow adults to cultivate cannabis for their personal use while prohibiting larger-scale grow ops.

Under the proposed legislation, provinces and territories have the flexibility to impose additional restrictions on personal cultivation should they wish to do so. This flexibility will allow provinces and territories to tailor their legislation to local circumstances and priorities in keeping with the public health and safety objectives set out in the proposed cannabis act.

This new legislation is an essential component of our overall public health strategy for cannabis. The purpose of this approach is to minimize the harms associated with cannabis use and decrease the probability of substance abuse. Our public health approach includes significant investments in budget 2017 and budget 2018 for promoting awareness and providing information. It also provides for close monitoring of the impact.

In accordance with this strategy, we will provide the facts on cannabis to Canadians. The government will then be able to measure and understand the impact of these policy changes over time.

We know that there are health risks associated with cannabis use. These risks are higher in certain age groups and among people with specific health conditions. Our objective is both to give people the information they need to make informed decisions about cannabis and to minimize the risks.

Through all of this, our top priority is to protect our youth. Youth face the greatest health risks from using cannabis and are especially vulnerable to its effects. For this reason, the bill contains many measures that have been designed to restrict access to cannabis and to protect young people. This is essential, given that Canadian youth use cannabis at a rate that is among the highest in the world. This is why Bill C-45 proposes serious criminal penalties for those who provide cannabis to anyone under the age of 18.

The bill also includes prohibitions on promotion and advertising and on products, packaging, and labelling that would be appealing to youth.

The bill introduced today was carefully crafted to address the long-standing problem of immediate access to and prolonged use of cannabis in Canada. There is a pervasive illegal market that is deeply entrenched. This market does not comply with any rules or regulations to protect the public, and especially our youth.

We promised a solution to Canadians, and we have kept our promise. Over the past two years, our government carried out a huge amount of research, analysis, and planning for Bill C-45. We consulted various stakeholders and we spoke with our partners.

We made strategic investments to inform Canadians about the health impacts of cannabis and the risks associated with driving under the influence of drugs.

We also examined and accepted a number of sensible amendments, and we will do so again today.

I am convinced that Bill C-45 gives us the legal framework we need to protect Canadians, especially our young people.

Canada is well positioned to make this change. We already have a world-class system for the production and regulation of cannabis for medical use. The bill proposes to build on this strong regulatory regime.

We will continue working closely with our partners at the provincial and territorial level and indigenous communities to ensure a successful implementation of this legislation once it is passed.

The provinces and territories are ready. Canadians are ready as well.

As parliamentarians, we have done our job and produced an historic package of legislative measures in the interest of Canadians.

Marijuana

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, the current approach to cannabis is not working. It allows criminals to profit and has not managed to keep cannabis out of the hands of our children. However, our government is legalizing, regulating, and strictly controlling access to cannabis, and we are pleased that Bill C-41 was passed by the Senate.

We thank senators for their work. Our government will carefully examine the amendments they made.

[Jody Wilson-Raybould, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question with respect to Bill C-45, the cannabis legislation that we are moving forward. I would like to thank the members in the other House for the thoughtful and considered amendments they have put forward.

I am anticipating that we will receive a message in this House. We will carefully consider the amendments that the other House has put forward as we move toward a comprehensive legalized framework and strict regulation of cannabis.

Criminal Code

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Members are asking “what?” They may not know, but it seems there will be a Progressive Conservative majority government in Ontario. I am sorry to have to break that news to my friends across the way, but the Liberals may still get official party status. It is a harbinger of things to come in a year and a half in federal politics. One of the reasons we are likely to see a similar result for the Liberals in a year and a half is precisely their failures with respect to the justice system.

I will turn now to a much less happy subject, and that is the content of the Liberals' Bill C-75. We can call it a justice omnibus or “injustice” omnibus bill. It is over 300 pages, making various changes with respect to the framework around criminal justice. There are certainly problems with the way the Liberals are administering the justice system, problems in need of solutions. However, the proposals by the government do not improve the situation. In fact, they make the situation much worse.

There are so many different aspects of the bill. It pays to mention to some extent that this is an omnibus bill. The Liberals talked in the last election about not doing omnibus bills. They said that omnibus bills limited the scrutiny that could be applied to individual items, that they forced members to vote all at once on provisions, some of which they may think were laudable and others which they may think were not.

Coming from that election promise, we now find ourselves in a situation in this Parliament where it seems virtually all of the legislation we debate is omnibus legislation. It is interesting that we had previous bills before this Parliament that included many of the same provisions and then the government decided it would roll them all together in one massive omnibus bill. I guess the Liberals felt they were not being as effective in advancing their legislative agenda as they wanted to, but this is yet another case where we see the government going back on its promise. On the one hand is the commitment about how it would manage the parliamentary process, then we see, in practice, the government doing the exact opposite.

The arguments the Liberals use for bringing in these omnibus bills, which go against their previous commitments, are usually something to the effect of they think it is a really good bill, that there are a lot of good things in it, so they want to get it through. Whether it is a good bill is precisely what a robust parliamentary process is supposed to determine. That is why the appropriate level of scrutiny is necessary. There will probably be an opportunity to pull all sorts of quotes from the member for Winnipeg North and others decrying these process elements, which are now being deployed with full force under the Liberal government.

We have in front of us an omnibus bill. There are a number of different elements I want to discuss, as well as more broadly the government's failure to manage the justice system effectively.

Members will understand and appreciate how important the effective functioning of our justice system is, especially in a context where the courts have ruled that cases can be thrown out if they do not proceed within a particular time frame. We have seen very serious charges not proceed, simply on the basis of time and delay. Therefore, the management of the criminal justice system so these delays do not happen, so people are actually brought to justice on time, is critical for the protection of society and for ensuring justice is done for victims, for the criminal, and for everyone.

Why do we have this growing problem of delays? The most obvious reason, and a reason the government has been steadfast in refusing to address, is the government's failure to appoint judges.

The fact is, it took six months for the justice minister to appoint a single judge. The government lauds its judicial appointments on various fronts. I am sure that any justice minister would laud their own appointment choice, but we have to get the job done. It is fundamental to the effectiveness of our justice system that we achieve quality and the necessary quantity so that the work can proceed. Appointing justices should be the easy part. I do not suspect that there is any shortage of qualified people in this country who are interested in the position, yet the government has been very slow to proceed, and this has created a significant concern.

It is not as if nobody was suggesting the Liberals take action. Thank goodness we have a strong opposition, and a strong shadow minister and shadow deputy minister of justice who were specifically calling very early on for the government to move forward with the appointment of justices.

I can hear my friend for St. Albert—Edmonton asking the justice minister when she would finally do her job and start appointing judges. The justice minister responded to those questions day after day in question period, yet despite those questions being posed by the Conservatives, we simply did not see action.

We have this issue with court delays, and the government now seems to believe that one of the solutions to court delays is to reduce the penalty to allow for summary convictions. The effect of that is lower sentences for very serious crimes. That is sold by the government as a solution to a problem that it has created, but let us apply Occam's razor and try and take that obviously simpler solution, which is that the justice minister should do her job and appoint the necessary number of judges to ensure that we do not have court delays.

In the context of justifying itself, the government is saying that we are going to have summary convictions to try to fix the problem that we created. The Liberals are not admitting it, but that is the implication of what they are saying. We see proposals for summary convictions, meaning reduced charges for all kinds of various serious crimes. I think it is important for the House to identify and look at some of these crimes for which they are proposing reduced sentences. This is not an exhaustive list, but I want to identify some of the key ones.

There is participation in the activity of a terrorist group. I do not recall ever receiving phone calls in my office from people saying that we should have lighter sentences for those who participate in terrorist groups. Maybe members across the way have had a different experience. However, I do not think, especially in the present time and climate, that people are looking for that kind of approach with regard to those who are involved in a terrorist group.

As well, there is leaving Canada to participate in activities of a terrorist group. There is a possibility now that going to fight abroad with a terrorist organization like Daesh could be a subject of summary conviction and therefore lower sentences. There are other serious offences, but I would highlight those two terrorism-related offences, which are the first ones on my list for which we are hearing proposals in the proposed legislation for lighter sentences.

Concealment of identity while taking part in a riot would be a possible summary conviction, as well as breach of trust by a public officer. The idea of lighter sentences for public officers who breach trust is interesting. Why would the Liberals be proposing lighter sentences for public officers who breach trust? I cannot imagine why the Liberals are proposing lighter sentences for public officers who breach trust. We might pontificate about that, but I would perhaps risk venturing into unparliamentary territory.

There is municipal corruption. For example, if a former MP became the mayor of London, hypothetically, there is a possibility of lighter sentences for municipal corruption.

There is selling or purchasing office. I want to reassure the Minister of Infrastructure and Communities that this does not refer to selling or purchasing office equipment. This is selling or purchasing an office itself, which is a criminal offence. However, now it would possibly be a matter of summary conviction.

Another is influencing or negotiating appointments or dealing in offices. It is interesting that so many elements of political corruption are being proposed for lighter sentences in this bill. It is very interesting, but I cannot imagine why that would be.

For prison breach, there is a proposal for lighter sentences. Assisting a prisoner of war to escape is something that I hope does not happen often. It does not seem to me that this offence would be a good candidate for a lighter sentence, but the justice minister, and through this bill the government, is proposing lighter sentences in that case.

Obstructing or violence to or arrest of officiating clergymen is an item I want to come back to. It is something dealing with section 176 of the Criminal Code that we have already had some discussion on in this place. The government made some commitments with regard to not changing that section, and now it has gone back on those commitments by trying to re-engage that section through Bill C-75. I will come back to that and talk about it in more detail in a few minutes.

There are also lighter sentences proposed for keeping a common bawdy house and for causing bodily harm by criminal negligence.

There are three drunk-driving-related offences: impaired driving causing bodily harm; blood alcohol level over legal limit, with bodily harm; and failure or refusal to provide a sample, with bodily harm. Canadians who are concerned about combatting drunk driving and drug-impaired driving should be, and I think are, a bit frustrated by some of the back-and-forth that we see from the current government. It is frustrating to me as I follow the positions the Liberals take on some things and not on others.

A member of the Conservative caucus proposed a very strong private member's bill that included a number of provisions dealing with drunk driving. That bill was supported by, I think, all members of this House at second reading. Then it was killed after committee, yet many very similar provisions were included in the government's bill, Bill C-46. The government has not been able to pass that bill ahead of its marijuana legislation. The Liberals said it is critical we have these provisions around drunk driving in place, and they proposed it at the same time as Bill C-45, the marijuana legalization bill. They said these things were important together, and they are willing at the same time to pass the marijuana legalization bill ahead of the drunk and drug-impaired driving bill.

Many of the same provisions were already proposed by a Conservative private member's bill. I recall the speech the parliamentary secretary for justice gave at the same time with respect to my colleague's private member's bill, when he quibbled with the bill on such trivial grounds as the coming-into-force date of the bill being too soon. They said they could not pass this bill combatting drunk driving officially because the coming-into-force date was too soon. They can propose an amendment to change that. It was really because the Liberals wanted to try to claim credit for some of the provisions there. Again, we have this further question about the government's response on issues of alcohol-impaired driving because they are creating conditions for a summary conviction around that issue.

Let me list some other offences: receiving a material benefit associated with trafficking; withholding or destroying documents associated with trafficking; abduction of a person under 16; abduction of a person under 14; material benefit from sexual services; forced marriage; polygamy; marriage under age of 16 years; advocating genocide; arson for fraudulent purposes; participating in activities of criminal organizations.

We have a great deal of discussion about the government's feminist agenda, and yet on some of these crimes, such as forced marriage or polygamy, crimes that very often involve an abusive situation targeting young women, the government is reducing sentencing that targets those who commit those kinds of crimes. It is unfortunate to see the government talking about trying to respond to some of these problems that exist, and then when it comes to criminal justice, they think it is acceptable to propose lighter sentences in these cases.

I have a number of other comments I will make about this bill in the time I have left to speak.

There is a proposal in this legislation to get rid of peremptory challenges. This is a provision that we are interested in studying and exploring, but I think that even if there is an inappropriate use of peremptory challenge in some cases, we should be careful not to throw out a provision if there may be other negative consequences that have not been discussed.

Some of the discussion around peremptory challenges suggests, on the one hand, that they can be used to remove people from juries on the basis of racial profiling. Essentially, somebody is racially profiled and presumed to think in a certain way, so they are removed on the basis of a peremptory challenge.

People have countered those criticisms by saying that on the other hand, peremptory challenges could be used against those who express or have expressed or give indication of having extreme or bigoted views. Sometimes the law needs to recognize other potential impacts that are maybe not being fully foreseen.

We think this issue of peremptory challenges is very much worthy of study at the committee level, but I encourage members, in the spirit of appropriate legislative caution, to work out and consider the full consequences of changes to the structure of our jury system, recognizing that even if there may be negative consequences to this provision in particular situations, removing peremptory challenges may create other unconsidered negative consequences as well.

I want to speak about section 176. This is a very important section of the Criminal Code that specifically addresses the targeting of religious officials or the disruption of worship, things that in many cases would likely lead to some charge anyway, though not in every case. It ensures that somebody who is trying to disrupt the practice of faith is treated in an proportionate way. That is what section 176 does.

The government had previously tried to get rid of section 176, to remove it from the Criminal Code. The justification was weak. It said that because the language used was “clergymen”, it was somehow narrow in its definition and applied to only one faith and one gender. The point was amply made in response that although the language was somewhat archaic, it was very clear that it applied broadly to any religious official and to any religious institution.

The section was subsequently qualified. There is nothing wrong with clarifying the language, but it was always clear and never seriously in dispute that it applied broadly and on an equal basis.

It was through public pressure, the work of the opposition in partnership with many groups in civil society in raising the alarm about this, that the government backed away at the time from its proposal to remove section 176. Now section 176 is back before us. The government is not proposing to remove it; it is just proposing to change it to a possible summary conviction, again meaning a lighter sentence.

Again we are raising a question that is similar to the discussion around drunk driving. There is this kind of back-and-forth, bait and switch approach with the government, but it is clear that there is this repeated attempt to weaken the laws that protect religious institutions and the practice of faith. Some of the time the government is very glad to trumpet its commitment—for instance, in its talk about combatting Islamophobia—but when we have a concrete provision in the Criminal Code that protects people's ability to practise their faith without interruption, we see not one but multiple attempts by the government to move against it.

There is so much more to say about Bill C-75, which is over 300 pages, that I could talk for hours, but my time has expired.

Business of the House

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister of Small Business and Tourism]

Mr. Speaker, this afternoon, we will continue with the report stage debate on Bill C-69, the environmental assessment act.

Following this, we will turn to Bill C-75, the justice modernization act, and Bill C-59, the national security act.

If time permits, we shall start debate at report stage of Bill C-68, the fisheries act, and Bill C-64 on derelict vessels.

Tomorrow morning, we will begin third reading of Bill C-47 on the Arms Trade Treaty. Next Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday are allotted days. Also, pursuant to the Standing Orders, we will be voting on the main estimates Thursday evening.

Next week, priority will be given to the following bills: Bill C-21, an act to amend the Customs Act; Bill C-59, an act respecting national security matters; Bill C-64, the wrecked, abandoned or hazardous vessels act; Bill C-68 on fisheries; and Bill C-69 on environmental assessments.

We also know, however, that the other place should soon be voting on Bill C-45, the cannabis act. If a message is received notifying us of amendments, that will be given priority.

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Minister of Health]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to each and every one of you for coming in bright and early this morning. I know it's perhaps a bit of an odd time to come in, but we certainly wanted to make sure that we had an opportunity to respond to some of your questions and to appear for the main estimates.

Hello, Mr. Chair and members of the Standing Committee on Health.

Thank you for inviting me to speak to you about the votes in the 2018-19 Main Estimates for Health Canada and some of its priorities.

First of all, I would like to congratulate the committee on its work and accomplishments. The government and I value its expertise on health matters.

All standing committees work hard, but I have to say that the Standing Committee on Health does outstanding work.

First, I wanted to introduce my colleagues, but you've done that already, so I will pass along and continue with my comments.

Over the next few minutes, I would like to highlight some of the portfolio's key proposed expenditures for the 2018-19 fiscal year. I would also like to discuss our actions on some of the issues that this committee will address in its work over the coming months. I will then be pleased to take some of your questions.

Let me begin by giving you an overview of Health Canada's planned initiatives.

The department is seeking $2.2 billion in spending authority for 2018-19. This funding will enable Health Canada to continue to protect the health and safety of Canadians. As you know, the budget no longer includes the First Nations and Inuit Health Branch, which has been transferred to Indigenous Services Canada.

I will now outline some of the government's priorities for health and describe what Health Canada is doing to follow through on them.

Let's start with Canada's actions on the opioid crisis. As you all know, this crisis is certainly unprecedented, and the effects are truly heartbreaking. One of the first trips I made as Health Minister was to Vancouver, where I toured the Downtown Eastside to visit treatment centres and supervised consumption sites. It was very moving.

I was proud that our government is taking action. We have restored harm reduction as a key pillar in our strategy. We have approved more than 25 supervised consumption sites and passed the Good Samaritan Drug Overdose Act. We have supported national treatment guidelines for opioid use disorder, and we've made it easier for health professionals to provide access to methadone and prescription-grade heroin as treatment options.

Continued federal actions combined with reduced barriers to treatment will help us mitigate the opioid crisis.

I will now turn to cannabis.

As you know, the government wants to protect Canadians and minimize the harmful effects of cannabis consumption. That is why it introduced Bill C-45, which is currently being considered in the other house.

In these estimates, we are seeking $65.1 million for the implementation and application of a federal framework to strictly regulate cannabis. In addition to developing a regulatory framework, the government has made public education a cornerstone of its approach to cannabis, the ultimate focus of which is public health.

We want to give Canadians the information they need to make informed choices.

Another priority for our government is ensuring that Canadians have access to the health care services they need. That is why our government is working with the provinces and territories to ensure that health care systems continue to respond to the needs of Canadians. In the 2018-19 main estimates, we are requesting $850 million in funding to support provincial and territorial investments in home care and mental health care.

As you know, last summer, provincial and territorial governments agreed to a common statement of principles on shared health priorities with the Government of Canada. Now, Health Canada is establishing bilateral agreements with each province and territory to determine how they will use the federal funding included in these estimates to improve access to home care and mental health services.

We are also making great strides on another important issue, pharmacare.

In the 2018-19 Main Estimates, we are seeking $17.9 million to improve the affordability and appropriate use of prescription drugs and medical devices. This amount will allow us to strengthen regulations on the price of patented drugs and modernize the way we regulate prescription drugs and medical instruments.

We also want to protect Canadians, governments, and private insurance companies against exorbitant drug costs, while ensuring that patients have access to the drugs they need. These efforts are in line with and contribute to the key measures announced in Budget 2018, in particular the creation of an advisory council on the implementation of a national pharmacare program.

Mr. Chair, in April you tabled the committee's report entitled “Pharmacare Now: Prescription Medicine Coverage for all Canadians”. I would like to thank you and the committee members for all the work that went into producing this excellent report. I am confident that it will be helpful to the advisory council.

Today, I also want to highlight the progress made by the agencies of the health portfolio. Let me begin with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

Overall, the estimates for this agency have decreased marginally over the last year. Beyond these estimates, budget 2018 provides $47 million to maintain CFIA's efforts to improve food safety. Specifically, this funding will support activities to address food safety risks before Canadian consumers are affected.

This includes improving risk intelligence and oversight, developing offshore prevention activities, and improving business compliance with food safety regulations. Budget 2018 also provides $29 million for continued support for CFIA's activities related to the negotiations of export conditions and the certification of Canadian exports against the import requirements of other countries.

I will now turn to the Public Health Agency of Canada.

The votes for the Public Health Agency of Canada in the 2018-19 Main Estimates represent an increase of $17.2 million, bringing its total budget to $589.2 million. This increase is primarily for the creation of the Harm Reduction Fund, which will support community projects to help reduce rates of infectious diseases, such as HIV and hepatitis C, among people who use drugs, and provide new funding for the effects of climate change on public health.

As you know, one of the government's key priorities is to understand and mitigate the health effects of climate change. The funding requested in the main estimates reflect this priority.

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research, also known as CIHR, supports world-class health research in Canada. CIHR's proposed spending on health research for 2018-19 is approximately $1.1 billion, an increase of $16.8 million over the 2017-18 main estimates. These estimates will help provide the evidence needed to make better health care decisions and ultimately improve health outcomes for Canadians. By supporting the Canada 150 research chairs program, this funding will enhance Canada's performance and reputation as a global centre for science, research, and innovation excellence.

In closing, I would like to say that I am confident that the measures outlined today will help Health Canada carry out its mandate, which is to maintain and improve the health of Canadians. This is a very broad mandate and we face headwinds at times, so it is essential for us to have clearly defined priorities with targeted measures.

The commitments announced in the main estimates reflect our most pressing health priorities. They show that we are taking action. They reassure Canadians that we will continue to protect and improve our health system.

Once again, I want to thank the committee for the opportunity to provide comments, and I will be pleased to take some of your questions. I have my officials with me, so I may rely on them for a bit of assistance if your questions get technical.

Thank you.

[Brian Marlatt]

It really depends on how these things are viewed.

I mean, social media campaigns don't cost a lot, but they're loud, they're vocal, and they're often unrepresentative. That's a form of advertising in a way, but it is not—quote, unquote—“advertising”.

There are things that external movements and groups can do to influence election results unfairly. Today, Bill C-45 is being debated in the Senate. There's a very large lobby, which I think has shaped the debate around the issues that Bill C-45 raises. Is that measured by knowledge and science, or is it measured by how social media and campaigning by people who want to benefit financially from the legalization of marijuana want to represent themselves? Do we do that in an election period, and is that fair representation to Canadians?

Those are questions that I think need to be asked when we look at what third parties actually do in the pre-writ period. However, controls by Elections Canada—“controls” is the wrong word—let's say, administration by Elections Canada, I think is helpful.

Marijuana

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, both bills, Bill C-45 and Bill C-46, are extremely important. Bill C-46 includes the toughest measures in the world to deal with impaired driving.

We have worked very carefully with all members of Parliament, with the Senate, with provinces, and with law enforcement agencies to get this strengthened law in place. I look forward to the Conservative Party actually supporting Bill C-46, because some of the elements in that bill were originally proposed by the hon. member.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Those are exactly my colleague's arguments. In the case of Bill C-45, which includes marijuana, the Prime Minister's intent was for it to be in force on July 1st. However, we could see that because of the legislative work, implementation would take place later. This doesn't mean that everyone can smoke pot on July 1st. It will only be legal once the bill comes into force.

It's kind of the same principle. If, on July 4th, I want to buy a gun, I will have the right to do so if the legislation hasn't yet come into force.

What are we going to do after that? If the legislation comes into effect in September, what will people who have bought guns in the summer do? There is no logic in that. In fact, there is one, but is it correct, legal and acceptable?

There's the problem.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

I tend to have more comfort with the assessment of the PBO, but having said that, I have two more areas. I hope to get to murdered and missing women, but I have one quick question before I go there. This is related to marijuana and the excise tax.

When cabinet made the decision about the distribution of the marijuana excise tax to provinces and territories, why, as minister for crown relations, did you fail to stand up for indigenous interests and ensure they were part of this sharing agreement? We have communities that are going to be impacted by Bill C-45. Money was given to the provinces with the deal that they would share with the municipalities. It would appear, in spite of the commitment by the Prime Minister that this is the most important relationship to him, some of the communities that are going to be most impacted have been totally left out of any sharing agreements around excise tax.

Controlled Drugs and Substances Act

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be able to join the debate today on Bill C-330, introduced by the member for Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo.

What does this bill purport to do? Bill C-330 would be making an amendment to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, specifically section 55. Section 55 of that act lists all the areas where the Governor in Council is able to make regulations for the purposes of carrying out the provisions of the act. What the bill would do is insert a new clause under paragraph 55(1)(g). Paragraph(55)(1)(g) allows the Governor in Council to make regulations “respecting the premises, processes or conditions for the production or sale of any controlled substance or any class thereof, and deeming such premises, processes or conditions to be or not to be suitable for the purposes of the regulations”.

The proposed paragraph 55(1)(g.1) that the member wants to insert through this bill would require persons or classes of persons who intend to produce or sell any controlled substances to obtain the written consent of the landlord, and it would prescribe the manner and form in which that consent is to be obtained and the conditions under which it must be renewed. That is what this bill is purporting to insert into the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

I have a few problems with this bill because I think it oversteps its bounds in a few areas, and I will walk the House through them.

I will start off with the Allard decision rendered by the Federal Court a few years ago, which was in response to the previous Conservative government's regulations that dealt with medical cannabis and the authorizations included therein. The new access to cannabis for medical purposes regulation was the Liberal government's response to the Federal Court of Canada's February 2016 decision. In that decision, the court found that the requirement for individuals to get their cannabis only from licensed producers, which was the regime for medicinal cannabis imposed by the previous Harper government, violated the liberty and security rights protected by section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

I feel this bill would be inserting another impediment to the constitutional and charter-protected rights of patients to access medicinal cannabis. If the federal government is going to insert itself, through this law, by basically mandating that written consent would have to be authorized by a landlord, the courts could reasonably see that as an impediment and a contradiction of the spirit of the ruling rendered by the Federal Court in 2016. That is my number one reason.

As I walk the House through this, I think the big problem is that this bill would very clearly insert itself into provincial jurisdiction. If we look at section 92 of the Constitution Act, 1867, specifically subsection 13, it is very clear that provincial jurisdiction over property and civil rights is there for all to see. Provincial jurisdiction over that area has been reaffirmed by the courts on numerous occasions, and I know provincial governments are very quick to assert their right in this particular area if they suspect any federal intrusion.

Property and civil rights can cover a whole range of issues, and I think that was the intent of the Fathers of Confederation. They wanted matters of a merely local or private nature, basically property and civil rights, to be included under provincial jurisdiction. Canada is a very big and very diverse country, and from British Columbia to Manitoba to Prince Edward Island we have various different local cultures. The provinces need to be authorized to make laws that fit the local cultures in each of those provinces. I feel that by trying to legislate how written consent has to be informed in the relationship between a tenant and a landlord, Bill C-330 would be very clearly inserting a federal power into an area defined under property and civil rights.

The very clearly written Allard decision by the Federal Court on a section 7 protected right for access to medical cannabis for patients who require it, and the fact this is very clearly an area of provincial jurisdiction are two clear reasons why I think the House should vote against this bill.

I would also like to talk a little about the federal criminal law power, because it is another thing we have to talk about with respect to this particular bill.

In previous rulings, the Supreme Court of Canada has held that a valid criminal law requires, first, a prohibition; second, a penalty; third, a criminal law purpose, such as peace, order, security, morality, and health. If I look at the aim of Bill C-330, I do not think it really matches the requirements of a federal criminal law power. If we look at the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, that is very much what it concerns. It tries to prohibit or to limit certain types of behaviour.

We know that the bill is being discussed in the context of medicinal cannabis, because recreational cannabis, as was rightly pointed out by the government side, will come under a new regime once Bill C-45 receives royal assent. However, I think that a federal bill that aims to become a statute but inserts itself into property and civil rights is not a valid exercise of the federal criminal law power. That is a third point that we have to be aware of when discussing the bill.

While I talk about this, let there be no illusion that I don't have sympathy for landlords who are going through this. I think every member of Parliament has had landlords approach them who have valid concerns about how their properties are being managed. I would say to them that, for most of the issues, the provincial governments will be responsible for regulating these kinds of contracts in their residential tenancy acts and so forth. I know that the Government of British Columbia has come forward with some proposals specifically with reference to when Bill C-45 is implemented. The member for Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo is quite right to be suspicious of Health Canada's inspection regime, because I do not think Health Canada has allocated enough resources or is carrying out enough inspections to ensure that licence holders are complying with the terms of their licences.

I have brought this very same issue to the attention of the Minister of Health. I wrote her a letter on behalf of constituents a few years ago, and I did get a response. I will read from that letter from the health minister, because I think we need to keep the pressure on the health minister to live up to her obligations. Part of her response reads:

The Department has taken measures to ensure that Canadians are well informed about the rules and their responsibilities to help them comply with the new regulations [the ACMPR]. We have also emphasized the need to comply with all relevant provincial, territorial and municipal laws, including local by-laws about zoning, electrical and fire safety, as well as all related inspection and remediation requirements. We have also outlined on our website precautions Canadians can take to reduce risks to their health and safety.

I will be following up with the Minister of Health, because I still think there are some very real gaps. Obviously, from the feedback I have heard from constituents, the actions of Health Canada thus far do need some improvement. I hope that the parliamentary secretary is listening to my concerns, because I will be following up on them.

I think it is a question of resources and commitment that we need to take up with the health minister. When we look at the minister's response, she has outlined “provincial, territorial and municipal laws”. She acknowledges that this is an area of provincial concern and jurisdiction; hence, lending more credence to the argument that Bill C-330 kind of falls outside the scope of what we are able to do.

I will conclude by saying that while I cannot support Bill C-330, I will respect the intent behind it. I know that the member for Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo has identified a problem and is trying to take action to solve it. However, I just do not think that Bill C-330 is the answer. I think that we need to keep the pressure up on Health Canada and the Minister of Health to ensure that the inspection regime is running as well as it possibly can.

[Bill Blair, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada and to the Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased today to rise to speak to Bill C-330, an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. This private member's bill proposes to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to allow regulations to be made that would require written consent from landlords in the event that their tenants were producing or selling a controlled substance within leased space. If applicable, Bill C-330 would also establish a mandatory requirement for the Minister of Health to report back to Parliament on an annual basis to explain why such regulations had not been made.

As my colleagues know, the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act is a legal framework for the control of substances that can alter mental processes and that may produce harm to individuals or society when diverted to an illegal market. Under this act, it is illegal to conduct certain activities with respect to controlled substances or precursors, unless authorized by regulation or granted by an exemption.

If I may, I will take the opportunity to correct an issue of language. My colleague and friend across the aisle, in his remarks, referred frequently to a prescription for medical marijuana. I want to take the opportunity to clarify, if I may, that there is no such thing as a prescription for medical marijuana. It is, in fact, an authorization, which provides for an exemption under the current criminal prohibition, as directed by the courts in the Allard decision, and as incorporated into regulations under the new ACMPR regulations.

The Controlled Drugs and Substances Act includes broad authorities that enable the government to strictly regulate the production and sale of controlled substances.

I would like to articulate a number of the reasons the government is unable to support Bill C-330. When introducing the bill on December 14, the member for Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo indicated that it sought to address concerns from landlords about tenants growing cannabis for medical purposes in leased premises. Bill C-330 could, in fact, have implications for a number of parties that are regulated under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act who operate within leased facilities. This could include, for example, licensed producers of cannabis for medical purposes and licensed producers and dealers of other controlled substances.

If a licensed producer or dealer of a controlled substance is operating in a commercially rented facility, the lease agreement will typically include details on the specific activities that are taking place within the facility, making the landlord aware that controlled substances are being produced there. The landlord would, therefore, consent by way of approving the lease.

To obtain a federal licence to commercially produce cannabis for medical purposes in cases in which the applicant is not the owner of the site, an application must be accompanied by a declaration by the owner of the site consenting to its use for the proposed activity, and like federally licensed producers and dealers of controlled substances, including licensed producers of cannabis for medical purposes, individuals authorized to produce cannabis for their own medical use are subject to regulations under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. Cannabis for medical purposes is regulated under the Access to Cannabis for Medical Purposes Regulations.

These regulations aim to provide reasonable access to cannabis for medical purposes for Canadians who have received an authorization from their health care practitioners. Under these regulations, Canadians can legally cultivate a determined amount of cannabis for their own medical use or designate someone to produce it for them. These regulations contain landlord consent requirements applicable to personal and designated production if the production site is not the ordinary place of residence of the applicant or the designated producer, and the site is not owned by them.

Finally, as members of this House also know, Bill C-45, the cannabis act, is currently before the other place. This act would create a strict framework to control and regulate the production, distribution, sale, and possession of cannabis using a public health approach, in which public health and public safety objectives would be at the forefront. Should it receive royal assent, cannabis would no longer be regulated under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. Regulations with respect to cannabis, for both medical and non-medical purposes, would be enacted under the cannabis act, and this would include the landlord consent requirements that currently apply to cannabis for medical purposes, about which I have previously spoken.

Under this new legal framework, adults would be permitted to legally possess and purchase limited amounts of cannabis through a government-licensed retailer. Subject to applicable provincial, territorial, and municipal rules, adults may also be allowed to cultivate up to four plants at their place of residence.

Allowing for the cultivation of a small number of cannabis plants at home supports the government's objective to displace the illicit market. It is a reasonable way to allow adults to cultivate cannabis for their own personal use, while prohibiting any commercialization and sale of that which is produced for personal use and which prohibits large-scale grow ops, which will attract the criminal sanctions contained within that bill.

The approach our government is taking with respect to home cultivation is consistent with the advice we received from the task force on cannabis legalization and regulation and with the approach that has been taken by most jurisdictions in the United States that have legalized and regulated cannabis for non-medical purposes.

Provinces and territories have the authority and can assess the need for additional restrictions within their jurisdictions, and they will be responsible for enforcing those rules. In fact, some provinces have already chosen to incorporate such restrictions in their proposed legislation, and I will give some examples.

New Brunswick would require a locked enclosure around outdoor cultivation and a separate locked space for any indoor cultivation.

Alberta has proposed that all cultivation will take place only indoors and it will allow landlords and strata councils to restrict cannabis cultivation.

Nova Scotia has recently proposed to provide landlords with the ability to ban the smoking and growing of cannabis within rental units.

These are just a few examples of how provincial legislation would be used and relied upon to establish rules that are tailored to each province.

Additionally, each municipality has the ability, through its zoning and bylaw jurisdictions, to enact additional regulations to control and to ensure this conduct is done in a way which is safe and socially responsible.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the sponsor of the bill for providing us with an opportunity to debate this important matter.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is difficult sometimes to pick up a speech where one left off several weeks ago. However, I am going to do my best to do so and will begin by commenting on the first hour of debate on this bill.

I am not sure why or how this came about, but many speakers tried to confuse the intent of this bill with those of Bill C-45 or Bill C-46, though it has nothing to do with them. Nothing in this bill has to do with arguments for or against the legalization or decriminalization of recreational marijuana. This bill has absolutely nothing to do with the discussions on those bills dealing with those questions. This bill is completely unrelated. This bill deals with the existing regime for medical marijuana, and medical marijuana only.

I hope that today, as we resume debate on this bill, we will confine discussion and debate to the subject matter of the bill, which is the home cultivation of medical marijuana that has been prescribed. Under the current regime for medical marijuana, a patient with a prescription is permitted to cultivate marijuana in their home. This bill does not reject their doing so or argue that a person should not be able to do that with a prescription.

What this bill addresses is the issue of landlord consent. This is important because it is well known that home cultivation of marijuana can damage property and create health hazards. It varies from province to province.

In British Columbia, for example, a person might be permitted to grow marijuana to fill three prescriptions in their home, two for the residents of a home, plus a prescription for a non-resident of a property. If a person combines three prescriptions, and if these are particularly heavy dose prescriptions of up to, and in excess sometimes, of 10 grams a day, the number of plants required to fill such large prescriptions if combined are quite numerous, in some cases perhaps more than 100 plants.

Putting 100 plants in one home raises a number of health considerations. I know that many members have a background or history in local government and know that from their time, as municipal government representatives, this is something that had to be dealt with when when there was widespread illegal home cultivation. The grow ops that sprung up as a result presented an enormous challenge to municipalities, law enforcement, and health authorities in dealing with the health consequences of growing too much organic matter in an enclosed indoor space. Therefore, mould and toxins are important considerations.

If a person owns their own home and wishes to grow 100 plants, and has the legal prescriptions to do so, no problem. If a person is a tenant and their landlord permits them to do so, no problem. However, if a person's landlord is not even aware of such cultivation in a home and it results in the destruction of the property, this is a tremendous problem for landlords, and a tremendous disincentive for either the development of, or investment in, rental property. If a prospective landlord has to exist in a climate in which they do not know if a tenant can destroy their property through excessive cultivation, they may choose not to even invest in that property.

We know this is a tremendous issue that all municipal and law enforcement people have been aware of, but it is also an issue in the real estate and mortgage industries. I spent my career, before running in the last election, in the mortgage business. In the mortgage business, once a property has been flagged as having been used for the cultivation of marijuana, that property is stigmatized to the point that it is unmortgageable and unmarketable.

Many lending institutions generally say that they would never lend on a property that had been used to cultivate marijuana. If there was a certificate of remediation, they might say that under a certain set of other strong criteria, they might perhaps lend on the property, but my experience over 20 years as a mortgage broker is that no lender will ever accept a mortgage application on a property formerly used for the cultivation of marijuana. They will find a way to kill it. They will render the property unmarketable and unmortgageable, and perhaps uninsurable.

Marijuana

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal government ignored opposition warnings, good science, and common sense when it put together Bill C-45, its marijuana legalization bill.

This legislation will do nothing to keep pot out of the hands of kids or eliminate the marijuana black market. In fact, provisions wrapped into the bill would allow children from 12 to 17 years of age to possess up to five grams of marijuana for personal use, making it easier than ever for kids to score pot.

Just this week, Durham Regional Police reported that marijuana-laced cookies and gummies had found their way into Oshawa's elementary schools on two separate occasions. As many as eight kids were reportedly affected. Some of these kids were as young as 11 years old.

Legalization will only make marijuana more accessible to kids, and troubling incidents like the one in Oshawa will become the norm in our schools.

I urge the Liberal government to listen to indigenous groups, municipalities, police, and doctors and delay this implementation until we can ensure our students can be protected.

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, the current approach to cannabis is not working. It allows criminals to profit and it has not managed to keep cannabis out of the hands of our children.

We deeply respect the work that the Senate is doing and we look forward to getting their report. Our government is confident that Bill C-45 will pass later this year. Our government will continue to work with its partners to ensure a responsible transition to a legal cannabis market.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

We're anxious to see both pieces of legislation proceed. Bill C-45 corrects a problem that has existed for almost 100 years. The law with respect to cannabis in Canada has been long-standing, and for those 100 years it has been an abject failure. It has not kept marijuana out of the hands of our kids, and it has not kept the proceeds out of the hands of organized crime. Obviously, the existing law is not working. We need to change the approach. Bill C-45 changes the approach.

Bill C-46 deals with the larger and different problem of all forms of impaired driving, whether it's drug-impaired or alcohol-impaired, creating new offences, new technologies, and new techniques to keep our roads safer, and it needs to be passed promptly, too.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

That is not what you said. When you tabled Bill C-45 in the House last year, you said that Bill C-45 and C-46 were twins that they went together and could not be separated.

Today, because of the legislative process, Bill C-46 is delayed. However, the Prime Minister absolutely wants to legalize cannabis. In fact, I don't know why this is so urgent. So, you accept that Bill C-46 is not ready but that C-45 will come into effect.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Mr. Paul-Hus, the problem with impaired driving, whether it's drug-impaired of alcohol-impaired, exists today. It's already here. That's why, in Bill C-46, we have created new offences. We have provided for new funding and new technology to better deal with all forms of impaired driving, whether it's cannabis or anything else. The sooner Parliament can deal with Bill C-46, the better. It's not contingent on Bill C-45, because the problem already exists.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

That's perfect. So with regard to public security, this issue has generated costs of $173 million.

I would also like to talk about the problems related to Bill C-45 and to Bill C-46, which concerns impaired driving.

Yesterday, your colleague Mr. Blair said that Bill C-45 could come into effect even if Bill C-46 is not ready.

As Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, do you accept that marijuana will become legal while there will be no law governing drivers in this regard?

The RCMP Commissioner is with us today. Mr. Blair can say one thing but as Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, do you agree with the fact that regardless of whether Bill C-46 is ready or not, marijuana will be legalized?

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Mr. Davies, the dialogue between Canada and the United States has been ongoing on many issues, but specifically on this issue, for quite some time. We have wanted to make sure that the Department of Homeland Security and all the agencies that function under DHS are well aware in great detail of how the Canadian law will change and why that change is appropriate. The flow of information has been going back and forth very effectively.

One thing we point out to the United States is that cannabis crossing the international boundary in either direction is illegal today and will remain illegal after Bill C-45 is enacted. Nothing changes in that regard.

[Jonathan Zaid]

Sure.

On the first question of prescription versus over-the-counter cannabis, Bill C-45 proposes that the medical cannabis system as it stands today, as described by Cannabis Canada and Hydropothecary, largely continue as is, moving into legalization. This will mean a medical cannabis system distinct from non-medical cannabis. Patients will still have to go to their health care provider. They will still have to go through that assessment to ensure that they are suitable for the use of medical cannabis and that there are no risks in doing so.

Then they will get their products shipped directly to their homes. This is a distinct medical cannabis program that largely operates in a way that I consider to be similar to that of an online pharmacy, where it's still a prescription-like document that's sent and used for medical purposes only. That will be totally distinct. This is what we're saying should be exempt from taxation. When it's used for medical purposes on the basis of a health care provider's authorization, it should be treated like every other medicine that is based on a doctor's authorization, which are all exempt from tax.

On the second question, I believe that you're referencing the CCIC conference. I was a speaker there. I attended this, as well.

CFAMM has been advocating for a distinct medical cannabis system for the reasons we highlighted today. Patients have unique needs. It's irresponsible, I think, to suggest that patients, some of whom have serious medical conditions, like MS and cancer, go and simply self-medicate through a recreational cannabis store. That makes no sense. That's not a safe way for someone to integrate cannabis into their health plan, especially when they have other medications they're using.

I would also note that over 11,000 or 12,000 Canadian physicians have currently authorized cannabis for medical purposes. The number keeps going up. I haven't seen the latest market data, for the past month, but this is a number that's growing month over month significantly.

I hear the CMA's concerns. That said, patients are very clear. The courts have been very clear. And most other associations that represent different health authorities, such as nurses and pharmacists, have recommended a distinct medical cannabis system.

[Allan Rewak, Executive Director, Cannabis Canada]

Good afternoon.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to be here today. As mentioned, my name is Allan Rewak, and I am the executive director of Cannabis Canada, the national trade association for licensed producers of medical cannabis under the ACMPR.

Our group has recently undergone a very profound and positive transition. At our recent annual general meeting just three weeks ago, the members of the Cannabis Canada Association, the Canadian Medical Cannabis Council, and Canopy Growth Corporation agreed to unify to create one central stakeholder voice for our sector, which we will operate on a go-forward basis as the Cannabis Canada Council, or C3.

I'm very pleased to say that our strengthened and large organization can now confidently say that we represent the vast majority of licensed producers in this country, including the large-scale major producers, mid-scale producers, and emerging licensed producers. We believe this common and inclusive framework will be a significant asset to policy-makers such as you as you look towards the further regulation and design of our growing industry.

We are collectively committed to investing heavily in Canada and building up great jobs in the long term in the communities we operate in. This is something that we anticipate will escalate significantly once Bill C-45 comes into force and is fully implemented.

As part of this commitment to building up Canada, we are not opposed to the application of tax on adult consumer use of cannabis, despite the challenges a new taxation regime imposes on a nascent regime. We're proud to play our part.

That being said, our members, both large and small, are deeply concerned with the application of excise tax to medical cannabis as a sin tax. While we recognize and appreciate the very positive efforts of the federal government in seeking to exclude high-CBD, low-THC products from taxation, we believe the ratios offered in this budget are overly prescriptive and will work against our common interest of providing fair access to medicine for Canadians.

Instead, considering the fiscal risk of harm for legitimate medical patients—some of whom are here today—that the proposed taxation regime would entail, we propose that we instead adopt a collaborative and iterative approach to this issue. Specifically, C3 would recommend that all taxation on medical cannabis be deferred for a minimum of one year.

During that time, we would further propose that this committee recommend that Health Canada and aligned ministries create a working group to study appropriate age-gating and other gating mechanisms to the medical cannabis system to ensure that this system is free of abuse and to develop a more comprehensive evidence-based matrix of cannabis as treatment for specific medical disorders. We hope this new matrix will confidently and reasonably define a legitimate health care regime that ultimately will be tax free, just like other medicines.

We believe this approach will give us the information we need to get the medical system right while preserving and respecting the needs of medical patients.

In closing, I'd like to thank the committee again for the opportunity to be here. I'd be pleased to answer questions within a scope of information when available.

[Annie MacEachern, As an Individual]

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and committee members. Thank you very much for having me here today to discuss the amendments to the excise tax, specifically around medical cannabis. I am here today because I fear for my rights as a medical cannabis patient and for all patients who choose cannabis.

I have been actively involved in following the progress of Bill C-45 and Bill C-46 to ensure that the rights of medical cannabis patients aren't being forgotten. I have watched hours of committee meetings on ParlVu and CPAC. I have hosted public discussions in Prince Edward Island. I have written letters to members of Parliament and senators, and I've met with local MLAs, MPs, and senators and, of course, patients. Despite my best efforts I am still here fighting for safe and fair access to a treatment that I have been prescribed by my doctor.

My goal in speaking with you today is to fill in some of the gaps in the general understanding of medical cannabis, to inform you of the obstacles medical cannabis patients face, and of how the additional excise tax will only further its inaccessibility.

The myth that non-medical users will seek a licence to access medical cannabis to save one dollar a gram is simply false. The ACMPR program is not a more convenient or a less expensive way to access cannabis, especially when retail stores will be a legal option. Patients are required to order their prescribed cannabis online, as it is not available in storefronts. The shipping costs vary by licensed producers, but they range from $10 to $20 per shipment. Logically, it would make sense for patients to fill their prescription in one order to avoid multiple shipping costs per month, but many patients are living on one income or with financial assistance and have families to support.

According to CFAMM, one in five patients can't afford to fill their full prescription, let alone pay all of their prescription in one pay cycle. These statistics align with the anecdotal research that I have done through my advocacy work with patients across Canada. I'd like to take a moment to break down the costs associated with medical cannabis for you. A gram of cannabis can vary from $4 a gram to $17 a gram when it comes in dry herb form. A typical prescription is three grams a day. On average, patients pay $10 a gram.

Many people forget that patients then have to consume their cannabis. Many doctors recommend that patients use vaporizers to eliminate certain health risks associated with combustion. A quality vaporizer will cost a patient no less than $75. The only alternative to inhaling cannabis currently available to patients is sublingual oils, which are, on average, $100 per bottle.

Simply put, healthier options for medical cannabis patients are cost prohibitive. Medical cannabis is the only prescribed medicine subject to HST and GST. In addition to that, it is not covered by the generic drug plan, and only one insurance provider will be offering limited coverage for specific diagnoses like cancer, HIV, and rheumatoid arthritis. This is a great start, but it's not enough.

With the opioid epidemic rife in our country I would be remiss not to mention the recent studies that have shown a decrease in opioid prescriptions in regions that have legalized non-medical cannabis. This in turn has resulted in fewer deaths from opioid overdose.

I would like to quickly share a story with you. A friend of mine, a young woman in her 30s, struggled with an addiction to opioids and benzos for 10 years of her life. She was diagnosed with MS two years ago. With the help of cannabis she has been able to stay away from opioids, despite living every day in chronic pain. At a recent visit to the hospital for day surgery, she was offered opioids for the pain. She declined, explaining her past to the nurses. Not everyone in that situation would have been strong enough to say no.

I believe that the current costs of medical cannabis and the costs associated with it, in addition to the excise tax, will not only drive medical cannabis patients out of the ACMPR program, but also drive them back to the black market, or potentially to opioids.

Despite the benefits of purchasing cannabis from a medical producer, cost is the bottom line for many Canadians. Rather than taxing medical patients, I urge the government to please explore a different approach to taxing recreational users. We should be supporting those who have made the choice to use cannabis as a treatment as much as the patients who choose to use pharmaceuticals to medicate.

Thank you very much for your time.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

I would just make the point, in one sentence, that there is a schedule for implementation that has been very carefully negotiated with the provinces, and the federal government funding is in place to make it happen in a way that will support the implementation of both C-45 and C-46.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Mr. Carrie, the Department of Public Safety has been working with their departmental counterparts across the country to allocate the funding we've set aside for the implementation of both C-45 and C-46, and that is $270 million and some spread over a number of years. That is to make the new technology available, to accomplish the training that is necessary for the new technology, and to implement—

Health

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, the health and safety of Canadians is a priority for our government. The cannabis being sold today is neither regulated nor tested, and is very dangerous. Bill C-45 creates a responsible, well-regulated, legal market.

We are taking the time to do things right, but delaying the bill would only benefit organized crime and our youth would still be at risk.

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, the approach to cannabis does not work. It has allowed criminals and organized crime to profit while failing to keep cannabis out of the hands of youth.

We respect the work that the Senate has been doing, and we look forward to reviewing the recommendations brought forward by the social affairs committee.

Our government is confident that Bill C-45 can be adopted later this June. Our government has taken important steps to address specific interests expressed by indigenous committees and other groups.

We will continue to collaborate with the provinces and territories to ensure that a reasonable transition to a legal market is brought forward.

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, the current approach to cannabis does not work. It allows criminals to profit and has not managed to keep cannabis out of the hands of our children.

We have a lot of respect for the work done by the Senate, and we look forward to carefully studying the report that the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology is working on.

Our government is confident that Bill C-45 can be passed in June. Our government has taken significant measures to address the specific interests of indigenous communities and organizations.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Article 19, which is more about the laws of general application, seeks to acquire.... To meet that sort of standard in terms of the Inuit, the Métis, the as yet undefined Daniels v. Canada, and the first nations from across the country that have not reconstituted...?

My other concern is that we have created something so unwieldy that the government could not even afford something such as Bill C-45, because everyone would have the right to have their consent sought on these issues.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

I'm going to use a practical example, because you referred to Bill C-45. That's the marijuana legislation, a piece of legislation that clearly will be impacting indigenous peoples across this country.

It calls for free, prior, and informed consent, so we now know, obviously, the first nations across the country, the Inuit, the Métis.... This is the ability of the Government of Canada to move forward with a piece of legislation needing informed consent. I know right now in the courts, the Liberal lawyers are arguing that that would completely fetter the ability of the federal government to move forward, because you overlay in Daniels how you get to any sort of place where you can do the appropriate work for free, prior, and informed consent with all the treaty and rights holders on something like a law of general application.

[Gervais Coulombe, Director, Sales Tax Division, Tax Policy Branch, Department of Finance]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Part 3, which covers clauses 68 to 119, implements a new federal excise duty framework for cannabis products, a measure that was proposed in the February 27, 2018, budget and detailed in the supplementary information on tax measures, on page 40.

The proposal builds upon the framework that was released for consultation by the government in November of last year, and reflects the revenue-sharing agreement that was agreed to in principle at the finance minister's meeting in December of last year as well.

The duty, which will be introduced as part of the Excise Tax Act, 2001, will generally apply to all products available for legal purchase, which at the outset of legalization will include fresh and dried cannabis, cannabis oils, and seeds and seedlings for home cultivation. Cannabis cultivators and manufacturers will be required to obtain a cannabis licence from the Canada Revenue Agency and remit the excise duty, where applicable.

Excise duties will be imposed on federally licenced producers, the so-called cannabis licensees, at the higher of the flat rate applied on the quantity of cannabis contained in a final product and the percentage of the dutiable amount of the product as sold by the producer. The dutiable amount generally represents the portion of the producer's sale price that does not include the cannabis duties under the Excise Act, 2001.

The proposed excise duty framework will be applied as follows.

A flat rate duty will be imposed, at the time of packaging for final retail sale, on the quantity of cannabis flowering and non-flowering material, generally referred to as ''flower'' and ''trim'', respectively, as well as on cannabis seeds and seedlings in the case of home cultivation. The flat rate duty will be imposed on a dollar-per-gram basis, or dollar-per-seed or seedling basis in the case of seeds or seedlings. A lower rate per gram will be applied for trim as compared to flower.

A product will generally be considered to be packaged by a cannabis licensee when it is put in a container intended for sale to a final consumer at the retail level.

At the time of delivery of the cannabis product by the cannabis licensee who packaged it to a purchaser, for instance, a provincially authorized distributor, an ad valorem rate will also be imposed on the dutiable amount of the transaction. Cannabis licensees selling to purchasers would be liable to pay duty at the higher of the flat rate, the dollar per gram, or the ad valorem rate on the product, the 10% that I just mentioned. The applicable duty will only become payable at the time of delivery to a purchaser. The cannabis licencee who packages the cannabis product for final retail sale will be liable to pay the applicable excise duty.

All cannabis products that will be removed from the premises of a cannabis licensee to enter into the Canadian market for retail sale will be required to have an excise stamp. Excise stamps will have specified colours indicating the provincial or territorial market in which it is intended to be sold. It will be the responsibility of the cannabis licensee who packaged the cannabis product to determine and apply the appropriate excise stamp before its entry into the duty-paid Canadian market.

The excise duty framework will generally apply to cannabis products that contain THC, tetrahydrocannabinol, the primary psychoactive compound of cannabis. However, packaged products that contain concentrations of no more than 0.3% of THC, and consequently have little to no associated psychoactive effects, will generally not be subject to the excise duty under the proposed framework. Pharmaceutical products approved by Health Canada, with a drug identification number, a DIN, that are derived from cannabis and that can only be acquired through a prescription will also not be subject to the excise duty.

The federal government has reached an agreement with provincial and territorial governments on a coordinated cannabis taxation framework for the initial two years after legalization. In practice, the coordinated framework provides for the application of the federal excise duty, as well as an additional excise duty, in respect of provinces and territories.

This part also amends the goods and services harmonized sales tax, the GST/HST, the basic grocery rules of the Excise Tax Act, to ensure that any sales of cannabis products that would otherwise be considered basic groceries are subject to the GST/HST, in the same way as sales of other types of cannabis products.

In addition, relieving rules for various agricultural products will be changed to ensure that sales of cannabis products, including seeds and seedlings, will not be relieved under these rules.

The measure will generally come into effect when cannabis for non-medical purposes becomes available for retail sale. That means that the measure is contingent upon the passing by Parliament of Bill C-45, which is currently in front of the Senate—Bill C-45 being the bill legalizing cannabis for non-medical purposes in Canada.

We are available for questions.

Thank you.

Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 1

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is another good make-work project that we will not need when we get a Conservative government, because we will do away with the carbon tax. Therefore, we do not need that $120 million.

It is very clear that the government has no plan. It is parallel to what they were doing on the marijuana bills, Bill C-45 and Bill C-46. The government was really quite anxious to put out how many dollars it thought it could make with it. However, when I wrote to the Parliamentary Budget Officer about the costs of it, he said that he would tell me what they were if he knew them, but the Liberals would not tell him. This is the same. The Liberals are quite ready to talk about all the money they can make out of a carbon tax, but they will not tell anybody what it will cost.

Controlled Drugs and Substances Act

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Madam Speaker, since I only have a couple of minutes, I will cut to the main part of what I was going to discuss.

First is a reminder that we are not debating Bill C-45. We are debating something completely different. It was disappointing that so much of the debate seemed to be confused with Bill C-45.

I spent many years in the mortgage industry, as some are aware. The ability to grow substantial amounts of medical marijuana in a home, without a landlord's consent, or with the landlord's consent, for that matter, produces some extremely difficult problems. The mortgage industry and the insurance industry have for years and years been extremely clear about not wishing to either insure or mortgage a property in which marijuana has been grown, whether legally or not. The issue has been expressed by many others. It is about the health hazards, the destruction of the property, the compromise of the structural integrity of the home, and the presence of noxious fumes and mould. These are the types of issues. Even if a person can legally grow 120 plants, no mortgage lender will ever mortgage a property that has been known to have had marijuana, in any quantity, grown in it.

This is a serious issue about stigmatizing a property. Once a property is known to have been used for the cultivation of marijuana, it becomes literally unmarketable. For many years, this would come up time and again. An application for a loan would come in. It would become known and disclosed that marijuana had been grown on the property, and no lender would touch it. I do not have time to read here the lending practice, but I can assure the House that marijuana being grown in a home makes the home unmarketable.

Bill C-330 attempts to address that issue by giving landlords at least some ability to control what goes on in their own property that will affect the marketability of the property, the insurability of the property, and certainly the ability to get a mortgage for the property. I support the bill for that reason. It would give some level of protection to landlords so that if they chose to rent a property to someone who would grow marijuana legally, under a medical marijuana prescription, it would be a contracted choice between the landlord and the tenant.

At present, landlords are in a disadvantaged position, where they risk their property through the growth of marijuana. It is perfectly legal, from the point of view of having a prescription for medical marijuana, or indeed, not that I want to bring Bill C-45 into it, but if it is passed and given royal assent, even to grow two plants. We might all agree that two plants is not a health hazard.

Right now, the mortgage and insurance industries do not agree with that. In 20-plus years as a mortgage broker, I never saw a lender that would knowingly mortgage a property when it was known to have had marijuana growing in it. That is something that the federal government will need to address, and the bill is a way to address it so that at least a landlord would have the ability to insist that marijuana not be grown in a property and would have at least some level of protection.

Madam Speaker, you only gave me two minutes. I trust I have exceeded that, and I will conclude with that, if that is your wish.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to debate Bill C-330, an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, also referred to as “landlord consent”.

I would like to thank the member for Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo for giving us the opportunity to debate this issue.

As my hon. colleagues know, the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act is the federal law used to control substances that can alter mental processes and that may cause harm to health and society when diverted to an illicit market.

Under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, it is illegal to conduct certain activities with controlled substances or precursors unless authorized by regulation or if an exemption is granted. These regulations and exemptions allow for lawful activities with a medical, scientific, or industrial purpose. Bill C-330 proposes to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to provide a specific regulation-making authority concerning the creation of requirements for written consent from landlords to produce a controlled substance in leased premises. It would also require the minister of health to report back to Parliament on an annual basis to explain why additional regulations had not been made, if that is the case.

I would first clarify that the bill, as written, would have implications not only for individuals who are authorized to cultivate small amounts of cannabis for medical purposes but for other parties using leased space, including licensed producers of cannabis and licensed dealers of other controlled substances.

I remind members that the existing regulations on controlled substances under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act have quite a broad scope. They allow the government to tightly regulate a wide range of activities and aspects connected to the production and sale of controlled substances.

In addition, if a licensed dealer were to produce such substances in a commercially rented facility, the lease agreement would likely include details on the specific activities taking place in the facility, making the landlord aware that the controlled substances were being produced. Consent would be provided by way of approving the lease.

The commercial production of medical cannabis is already regulated by the Access to Cannabis for Medical Purposes Regulations, created under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

Provisions in the access to cannabis for medical purposes regulations require that any application for a producer's licence be accompanied by a declaration by the owner of the site consenting to its use for the proposed activities, if the applicant is not the owner of the site.

As we debate Bill C-330 today, I think it is important to consider Bill C-45, the cannabis act, which is currently being studied by the Senate.

Should this legislation receive royal assent, oversight of cannabis would, for the most part, no longer fall under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act but rather under this new legislation, the cannabis act. A change in federal oversight would include comprehensive requirements for producers of cannabis and rules for individuals who choose to legally cultivate a small amount of cannabis in their homes for both medical and non-medical purposes.

If the cannabis act is passed, it will create a new legalization framework, with stringent regulations restricting access to cannabis by controlling the production, distribution, sale, and possession of cannabis. If BillC-45 receives royal assent, adults will be able to access cannabis that has been quality controlled and that comes from a legal and tightly regulated industry.

Provinces and territories would be responsible for the distribution and retail sale of cannabis, while the federal government would oversee the production of cannabis to ensure consistent product safety and quality standards across Canada.

Subject to provincial limitations, the bill would also permit adults to grow up to four cannabis plants at home for personal use, provided that they were obtained legally. Allowing adults to grow a limited amount of cannabis in their dwellings is consistent with the advice from the task force on cannabis legalization and regulation and with the approach adopted by many jurisdictions in the United States that have legalized cannabis.

If the bill receives royal assent, both the commercial producers and any adults who choose to cultivate a small amount of cannabis at home will have to comply with the provincial, territorial, and municipal regulations in place. This would include compliance with all fire prevention regulations, building codes, and any rules or regulations set by the landlord or leaseholder.

Provinces, territories, and municipalities, based on their own authorities, have the flexibility to set additional requirements and restrictions, beyond what is being proposed in the cannabis act, to address matters of local concern and community priorities. In fact, a number of provinces have already decided to pursue such additional restrictions with respect to home cultivation.

For instance, Alberta is proposing that all home grow-ops be limited to indoor cultivation only. Nova Scotia wants to grant landlords the power to prohibit the use and cultivation of cannabis in rental units. New Brunswick wants all outdoor cultivation to be done in locked enclosures, and proposes separate, locked spaces for all indoor cultivation.

We will continue to work closely with provincial and territorial governments, municipalities, as well as other stakeholders and partners, to successfully implement our new legislative and regulatory framework to strictly regulate and restrict access to cannabis.

Once again, I am grateful to have had the opportunity to debate this issue.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

moved that Bill C-330, an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (landlord consent), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to stand and debate my private member's bill in the House today. I look at the two votes we just had which were unanimous. They were on items put forward by Liberal members and concern very practical matters that will make things better for Canadians. I certainly I hope this particular piece of legislation will be received in the same spirit of co-operation, because I am truly convinced that this bill would make things much better and solve a really significant and difficult issue.

What Bill C-330 would do if passed is amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to provide for regulations requiring the consent of landlords to tenant activities in respect of controlled drugs and substances. More specifically, the enactment would require the written consent of any landlord on whose premises the production or sale of any controlled substance is to occur.

The bill is in response to the access to cannabis for medical purposes regulations, which came into effect August 24, 2016. These new regulations do not require individuals who wish to produce marijuana in their residence to notify or seek the consent of their landlords. The federal government failed to provide clear direction for landlords and insurance companies when it made changes to the medical marijuana rules.

Under the rules, Health Canada gives specific guidelines on how to safely set up a medical grow op, but when it comes to checking if the safety rules are being followed, the federal department is leaving that up to the municipalities. I think all of us who live in communities have had our municipalities express extreme frustration on this issue. According to the local development and engineering services director in Kamloops, the problem is that federal privacy rules apply, which prevent local authorities from knowing where medical marijuana is being grown. They do not get a list of addresses, so they cannot actually do anything proactively in terms of going out and inspecting the premises. It is a significant issue. There is no system to proactively check if tenants are growing the allowed number of plants according to their permit.

When asked about this issue, the health minister said the federal government's role is to ensure people who need medical marijuana have access. I want to pick up on that point. I do not disagree that people who need medical marijuana should have access, but I want to give an example. Some people need digoxin for their heart, but they do not have to actually grow foxglove in their home to get digoxin. If people need something that is medically necessary, surely to goodness we could find a better way than having them grow it in their home because they cannot afford it. We have found ways around antibiotics and drugs like digoxin. We do not require people to grow their own medication. The government says that we have to provide access, but who is looking out for the landlords who have put hundreds of thousands of dollars into their homes? They are having their homes destroyed because the federal government has not found a better way to provide access to needed medical marijuana. Surely we can do better than that.

This is important for people who might be listening, because there is a lot of talk right now about the new recreational regime. Bill C-45, which is before the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology, is a proposed regulatory framework for cannabis for recreational purposes. As I talk, members will see there is a huge difference between what is proposed for recreational use and medical marijuana.

With medical marijuana, the task force that was tasked with going around and making recommendations to the government essentially suggested that as the government moved toward legalization of marijuana and regulations the distinct system of the medical marijuana regime be maintained for medical purposes.

We have two very distinct systems. One is recreational, and that is Bill C-45, which is moving through the Senate. We also have the issue of medical marijuana, which has been around for many years.

The medical regime will allow people, including those under the age of 18, with the support of a health care practitioner, to have access to cannabis for medical purposes. They can purchase it from a federally licensed seller of cannabis for medical purposes. They can cultivate their own, if they are over the age of 18, or designate someone to grow cannabis on their behalf, which is called “designated production”.

There used to be limits on how much cannabis could be stored. The Liberals tried to align the recreational and medical regimes, but they took away the limits on what can be stored, which had been in place before.

When the Liberals put out the new regulations around recreational use, they talked about four plants. I think they did that because they knew they would be heading into the difficult territory we have seen with the medical regime. It is four plants. It can be regulated. The provincial authorities have the ability to regulate. For example, strata condominiums can say whether one can have dogs or cats. There is an ability for provinces to create some regulations around the four-plant designation. I believe some provinces are saying no to the home grow and others are saying yes. The government recognized that with any more than four plants it would be heading into very difficult territory, but there was no consideration given to the issue. It is only the federal government that can solve this issue with the medical marijuana. The provinces cannot do it nor can anyone else.

It is important to note that with a medical licence, people can grow their own and be designated to grow for someone else. There is a maximum of four licences to grow cannabis in one residence. For example, a 1,500 square foot apartment could have up to four licences. What does that mean in practical purposes? If one has been prescribed three grams per day, that means one could have 15 plants indoors, six plants outdoors, or a combination of indoor and outdoor plants. However, it is not uncommon or all that extreme that a person may have a prescription for seven grams a day. I remember the government moving the limit for our veterans from 10 grams to three grams. Again, seven grams is a number we can use. If there is a licence to grow for four people at seven grams a day, a person could have an enormous number of plants indoors. It could be up to 120 plants growing indoors if someone had four licences for seven grams. It is an incredible amount.

I will recount the true story of someone who came into my office, and this was part of the genesis of the bill. He shared his story with CBC in February 2017:

Longtime landlord Darryl Spencer was left scrambling for insurance after discovering a tenant was growing dozens of medical marijuana plants inside and outside his rental house.

When the landlord told his insurance company about the perfectly legal grow-op, his coverage was cancelled, leaving him with no insurance, few rights and a big cleanup bill.

Spencer says the downstairs tenant in the Kamloops, B.C., rental property got a medical marijuana licence that allowed him to legally grow as many as 60 plants without his landlord's permission or knowledge.

This was his retirement savings plan, by the way. He had decided to put his money into a revenue-making rental property. There were 60 plants there without his knowledge.

The article continues:

A call from a concerned neighbour prompted Spencer, who is also a retired fire inspector, to check out the home he's rented out to different tenants for a decade.

He discovered a mess of extension cords, fans and bright lights packed into a room filled with dozens of marijuana plants. The upstairs tenant, a woman with a small child, was complaining about heat radiating through the walls and electrical breakers going off....

...landlords have little recourse if a tenant is growing licensed medical marijuana. They don't even have the right to know it's happening. Yet it's landlords who are being denied insurance

They do not have the right to know what is happening when a tenant is growing medical pot.

Spencer told Go Public, “I was worried about the fire hazard. That was my first thought because of the extension cords, the use of electricity and that something could catch fire.”

When he notified his insurance company about his tenant's grow-op, Gore Mutual cancelled his coverage.

“They wouldn't cover claims to do with medical marijuana or air quality contamination,” he said.

Gore Mutual Insurance said that it “does not provide coverage for marijuana grow-operations regardless of their legality because this type of operation in a residential building presents inherent insurance risks.”

The article continues:

Those risks, the company says, include “a greater likelihood of water damage, mould, fire, vandalism and burglary.”

Under most basic home insurance policies, marijuana-related damages or anything that companies believe is “high risk” is not covered.

This is a view that is shared by many insurance companies, according to the Insurance Bureau of Canada.

“While regulations may allow for the legal growing of marijuana for medical purposes, it does not change the structural risk grow-ops pose to homes and condos.... The operation of a grow-op, whether legal or not, is still a high-risk activity.”

That was from Andrew McGrath, spokesman for the Insurance Bureau, in an email to Go Public. The article continues:

Gore Mutual Insurance told Spencer it might reinstate his coverage if he got rid of the tenant and took specific steps to ensure the house was safe to live in.

He actually had no ability to get rid of this tenant because of the laws of the land. He actually had to tell his tenant he would pay him to leave. That was a significant cost for him.

The article states:

The insurance company also wanted air and soil testing, plumbing and electrical inspections, and the house checked for mould.

Spencer did it all, while searching for another insurance company that would cover him right away. None would.

He went for quite a while with no insurance. I remember that he came in and chatted with me in my office. He was devastated. He was absolutely beside himself seeing his life savings potentially completely at risk.

As I noted, he finally paid the tenant to leave, then he did all the remediation that was required. Of course, he is out thousands and thousands of dollars.

We talk about availability and affordability of housing in this country. When we have potential landlords who are terrified that if they rent their homes they will have no recourse, and they still do not in terms of this medical marijuana issue, I think they rightfully are saying that they are not going to rent. They will take their homes off the market or sell them. Therefore, this is an issue that has ramifications for more than individuals and their finances. It has significant ramifications for the availability of affordable housing.

Go Public covered the story. Eventually Spencer did all the work and managed to cover things off.

I do not think anyone is appreciating the cost to landlords of people growing medical marijuana. According to the Canadian Federation of Apartment Associations, it can be absolutely prohibitive.

What I am asking is that we get support to get this to committee. I appreciate that people who have a need for medical marijuana need affordable access to it, but surely, at the same time, we cannot be jeopardizing the hundreds and thousands of dollars of investments by people across this country who are being absolutely devastated by this particular structure of a regulation.

[Eric Gagnon]

There are a couple of things.

First of all, I want to remind the committee that tobacco products are hidden from public view. There's already a 75% health warning on the pack. I don't think that plain packaging will reduce smoking, but that's another debate.

The health minister has been saying that marijuana products will be in plain packaging. However, Bill C-45 allows for branding of the products. What we're saying is that if there is plain packaging for marijuana, the same plain packaging should apply to tobacco products. There should at least be a logo of the brand that enables us to differentiate legal from illegal packs.

Marijuana

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

Mr. Speaker, I have two petitions to present today.

The first petition is on Bill C-45. The petitioners say that it is a flawed bill that will not protect youth or climate or reduce the workload of the criminal justice system; that the implementation of the bill is being rushed, risking the health and safety of Canadians; and that the passing of the bill would put Canada in violation of three international United Nations treaties. Therefore, the petitioners are calling on the government to not proceed with the legalization of marijuana.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

I think you again flagged some things that I have addressed, whether it's Bill C-45, C-68, or C-69. This bill has significant implications for all those other three bills and that is something that I don't think we've perhaps looked at or addressed very well.

I do want to talk about Kinder Morgan because I think it's a pretty good example of some of the challenges that we have. I think a mining project is somewhat easy in terms of free, prior, and informed consent, identifying whose territory it's in and ensuring that the rights and titles are respected and acknowledged and the projects move forward.

You talked about concerns from your community, Mr. Richardson. I have chiefs who run down that pipeline and who are saying, “We took it to our community. They voted 85% for it. One-third of the pipeline is going through our territory.” We have communities along the whole pipeline route, and it's more than just the benefit agreements. They've taken it to their communities and 85% is not 100%, but it is significant.

What we have is rather like Canadians in general. We have a complexity of very strong feelings on this particular issue. How will government ever, if we have something like Bill C-262, align all those important considerations? Again, I look at the communities, the Shuswap people who are predominantly in one area.

It's difficult. It's complicated. I know we were grappling with it until midnight last night. It's important and I worry about where we're going to end up in terms of making sure we respect rights while still being able to move forward with things that are important for everyone who lives in this country.

Maybe we'll hear from Mr. Newman and then Mr. Richardson.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

I know my colleague here was visiting a number of communities in the north last week and had a considerable discussion around, for example, the marijuana legislation. Certainly, again, the government stood up at the UN and made commitments; and they made commitments of Canada and have introduced legislation. I think it's clear that something like Bill C-45, the marijuana legislation, will impact communities across this country, including yours. Not only did I not hear any discussion around the legislation, which, I think, article 19 would suggest should have happened, the general application, but I also didn't hear anything around even excise cost-sharing. It was all conversations with the provinces.

We know that in Bill C-68 and Bill C-69 it certainly appears they haven't lived up to their commitment. Would you suggest that Bill C-45 is another example where a commitment that was made on the international stage has not been lived up to in Canada?

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

I had the opportunity last week to go to nine communities on an eight-day trip to Nunavut. I've talked to Minister Bennett about certain things. One of the things we talked about was Bill C-45, the marijuana cannabis bill.

They really haven't been consulted up there. I know that Natan Obed always has his door open to you, but let me tell you this, because I went into nine schools: they're scared as hell. There are addictions up north that you know about, family violence, and a shortage of homes. They're crowded.

Let me say this: there is not one addiction centre in Nunavut, not one. You send them to Selkirk; you'll send them to Winnipeg; you'll send them to Montreal. You'll send them everywhere but their own land. What are you going to do about that? I heard that. They don't want to leave Nunavut.

Do you see what I'm saying? You're coming with this bill. Everybody is scared up there because they're going to be shipped out. Many of these, all of these, are dry communities, and now you're going to add this marijuana to them but you don't have one addiction centre in Nunavut.

What would you think if you were living there today? If you were at Rankin Inlet today or Chesterfield Inlet today or Baker Lake today and I said to you, “We don't have an addiction centre available. You have to get on the next flight. I don't know when you're coming back, and I don't know where you're going”? What do you say to those people?

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to point out that the purpose of the amendment I am going to propose is to exclude vaping substances that contain cannabis, as well as cannabis-related devices that are not tobacco products, the focus of the bill on tobacco and vaping products. In this way, vaping substances containing cannabis and the majority of cannabis-related accessories would only be subject to Bill C-45, the Cannabis Act. This amendment would only come into effect when the relevant provisions of Bill C-45 also come into effect.

And so I would like to move the following motion:

That Bill S-5 be amended by adding after line 14 on page 47 the following new clause: “79.1 If Bill C-45, introduced in the 1st session of the 42nd Parliament and entitled An Act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other Acts, receives royal assent, then, on the first day on which both subsection 204(1) of that act and section 3 of this act are in force:

(a) the definition accessory in section 2 of the Tobacco and Vaping Products Act is replaced by the following:

accessory means a product that may be used in the consumption of a tobacco product, including a pipe, cigarette holder, cigar clip, lighter and matches, and also means a water pipe. It does not include cannabis accessories, as defined in subsection 2(1) of the Cannabis Act. (accessory)

(b) the portion of the definition vaping product in section 2 of the Tobacco and Vaping Products Act after paragraph (d) is replaced by the following:

It does not include devices and substances or mixtures of substances that are excluded by the regulations, cannabis, as defined in subsection 2(1) of the Cannabis Act, cannabis accessories, as defined in that subsection, tobacco products or their accessories. (produits de vapotage)“

That is the change I am proposing.

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and I want to thank the witnesses for coming to testify on Bill C-262. Your presence is highly appreciated.

I want to continue on that very question that my colleague, Cathy McLeod, posed. The question we need to ask ourselves in response to that question is, in what way will Bill C-45 affect aboriginal treaty rights? I see very few ways that Bill C-45 will affect aboriginal treaty rights.

You referred to additional measures that would be required to further the implementation of the UN declaration above and beyond Bill C-262. I certainly agree with that. The Prime Minister, on Valentine's Day, made a speech in the House of Commons to which I responded. One of the things he talked about was that necessity to have a major shift in the political culture of Ottawa towards indigenous peoples and their fundamental rights. Joe referred to a “transformative shift”, and I agree with those terms.

Bill C-262 refers to making sure the laws of Canada are consistent with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The Prime Minister referred to laws, policies, and operational practices. Article 4 of my bill refers only to laws. Would you suggest we now add or amend that article to include policies and operational practices?

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

If you're committing to UNDRIP, you're committing to free, prior, and informed consent around laws of general application. We know that you're making the commitment to put it into the laws of Canada. That's very clear. I think we've agreed about what this bill does and what UNDRIP does. So how are you going to get free, prior, and informed consent for a law such as Bill C-45? We're not looking at our existing legal framework; we're looking at a new legal framework.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Certainly, from my perspective and from that of many of the first nations communities, there is a very clear interpretation of what consent means. I would suggest that perhaps Pam Palmater is right.

My next area is that this will apply to laws of general application, plus obviously there are significant areas in terms of natural resource development and land use.

In terms of laws of general application, I would take, perhaps, Bill C-45, which is the marijuana legislation. How would you get FPIC—free, prior, and informed consent? If we're going to put it into the law, how are we going to get free, prior, and informed consent?

Clearly, in my opinion, the marijuana legislation is going to affect first nations communities as per laws of general application. The minister has indicated that it applies to laws of general application.

As a department, how are you going to get free, prior, and informed consent for something like Bill C-45? Because you don't have that right now.

Senator Patterson was just in the north. They're very concerned. They said they had no consultation around Bill C-45. Perhaps you could talk about how you are going to get free, prior, and informed consent from Inuit, Métis, and the very diverse first nations across the country.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The purpose of this amendment is to restrict the advertising of vaping products, particularly to make sure they are not accessed by young people. This amendment would establish strengthened restrictions on the location of vaping product advertising to match the provisions restricting tobacco advertising in the Tobacco Act, and also, for that matter, the cannabis advertising in Bill C-45.

At present Bill S-5 contains few or no restrictions at all regarding the location of advertising. That means that such advertising could appear on television, on billboards, at movie theatres, on public transit buses and shelters used by children going to school, at ice rinks where minor hockey is played, and so on. Bill S-5's current vaping product advertising restrictions are weaker than those of every other developed country with similar legislation except the U.S. The provisions regarding the location of vaping product advertising are in fact so weak they resemble those in the 1964 tobacco industry voluntary advertising code in Canada.

I think it's incumbent upon us to tighten these up. I think we heard the minister say that she was very supportive. In fact, she wants us, I think, to tighten up the advertising restrictions on vaping. This one in particular states:

If the promotion is made using a means of telecommunication, the promoter must take reasonable steps to ensure that the promotion cannot be accessed by a young person.

So this one deals specifically with telecommunications. It's consistent with what I recently said, that we have to close every single door to make sure that nicotine cannot be marketed in any way to children. We should do everything possible to accomplish that. That's what this motion does for telecommunications.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

I don't know that we want to spend too much time comparing this, because we really didn't have evidence before this committee about that. I think it's an interesting question that Mr. Lobb is asking, but I don't think we have the evidence.

I would point out a couple of things. Many of the provisions in the act before us I think are replicated in Bill C-45. I know that many of the sections on promotion and advertising and restricting lifestyle advertising, etc., are similar, if not identical. I have seen a fairly common approach to this legislation in seeking to keep these products out of the hands of children, to discourage the use of the products, and to not have lifestyle advertising.

One other additional factor I would mention is that despite my attempts to have edible cannabis products and concentrates legalized, we had a bit of a compromise on that and they will be legalized within one year of Bill C-45 becoming law. My point is that, once that happens, one difference between cannabis and tobacco is that I'm not sure there are any edible tobacco products, but there certainly are edible cannabis products.

I know that many people prefer edible cannabis products. One of the reasons why I wanted to see edibles and concentrates legalized quicker was for the very reason Mr. Van Loon just mentioned. The least safe method of ingesting cannabis is by smoking it, yet ironically that's what this government preferred to do first, whereas I know that a lot of cannabis users would prefer to ingest cannabis in edible or vaping form, which is less harmful. I do think that's one difference between the products.

[James Van Loon]

That would be in Bill C-45. It says the cannabis products are not subject to these.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

I'll tell you why I ask.

I was in a dispensary in Vancouver last week—our break week—and this particular dispensary had a wide variety of concentrates. What I learned there was that for health reasons, well over 50% of the customers who come into that store prefer to vape or deliver the cannabis by a vaping tool, as opposed to smoking the raw flower.

Do you have any comment on the relative harm or preference? I know that concentrates won't be legal under Bill C-45, the cannabis act, for a year after the normal legislation passes, but does either of you, Dr. Strang or Dr. Selby, have any comment in terms of whether or not we should be trying to drive people to ingest their cannabis products through vaping as a healthier alternative to smoking?

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Correct. With respect to the issue of being able to vape marijuana, that would be considered a concentrated type of product. That would only be available a year after the coming into force of Bill C-45. It's very much like edibles. We recognize that when we've had conversations or testimony—we've heard testimony from our colleagues in Colorado—

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

Okay.

I'll go back to the minister. Did I understand you correctly? Did you say that in terms of the vaping of marijuana, that won't be allowed until one year after Bill C-45 is implemented?

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Thank you very much for being here. Welcome back to the health committee.

There's been a good discussion already about the balancing act that's here in Bill S-5. One one hand, we want to get our youth away from nicotine and away from tobacco. We don't want them to be enticed or brought in to become addicted to nicotine. For me, that is the number one priority. I've heard you say that as well. That is, to me, what must happen, and that's what Bill S-5 is continuing to further.

We have a second item, though, which is trying to move adults who have tobacco smoking habits onto a healthier way of consuming nicotine than smoking. Those are the competing agendas. Personally, I don't think the balance is there. I think you've mentioned a few times that you think it's there, so I was delighted to hear that you're entertaining an amendment on lifestyle. I think that's a very important one, so thank you for that.

My second point, though, is on location of advertising and location for vapour product advertising. I have a 13-year-old son. I don't want to be at my neighbourhood bus stop with him with a vaping advertisement on my local bus stop. I don't want to go to the movie theatre and try to explain what vaping is and why vaping is a product that's being advertised. I don't want to go to the local hockey rink and explain to him what vaping is and why it's done. Location is a critical issue. I believe that, with the way it's set up now, we're going to be exposing young Canadians to vape products when we don't have to.

The Canadian Cancer Society was very strong on this one. What they said about Bill S-5 was that the vaping restrictions are weaker than the Tobacco Act and Bill C-45 for cannabis, that the vaping product advertising restrictions are weaker than in almost every other developed country except for the United States, and—these are all location advertising—the provisions regarding the location of vaping advertising are so weak that they resemble those of the 1964 tobacco industry advertising.

I guess my question to you is this. Would you please consider an amendment—and I'd like to bring one forward—that also restricts the location of advertising for vaping? I think there are lots of ways to communicate to adults who are smokers that vaping is a better way to consume nicotine, other than putting it on hockey rink boards. Would you consider an amendment on location?

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

If I understand your question correctly, with respect to the possibility of being able to vape cannabis types of products down the road, that part of the legislation will not be allowed until the first year of the passing of Bill C-45. When it comes to vaping cannabis, that would be considered a form of concentrate.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

I appreciate that you've talked to the Minister of National Revenue.

I'd like to switch gears now to vaping. The bill gives you the power to schedule and list certain types of products. You've said it's to protect children, and I don't disagree that we need to protect children. What I would say, first of all, is that marijuana is listed as being on there; however, it seems kind of interesting to me that you would say you have to be 18 to buy a vaping product, you can't buy marijuana-flavoured vaping products, yet you can go and buy—under the new regime that you proposed in Bill C-46 and Bill C-45—marijuana. Why have you listed marijuana as one of the flavours that cannot be sold?

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

If we implement Bill C-262, article 19 will create some requirements, just as introducing something like Bill C-45 will clearly impact every Canadian. Article 19 would apply, which would trigger the need for free, prior, and informed consent.

Would that be a reasonable assessment of this, that it would have a sort of domino effect?

[Satinder Chera, President, Canadian Convenience Stores Association]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. My name is Satinder Chera, and I am the president of the Canadian Convenience Stores Association.

Our association is proud to represent 27,000 small business owners across Canada who serve 10 million customers each and every day. As you will note from the materials in your kits, our channel provides employment opportunities for over 234,000 Canadians and collects over $22 billion in taxes for all levels of government. Our stores ensure that Canadians have access to necessities and basic groceries wherever they live, and a third of them serve rural and remote regions of the country. In our vast country it is our distributors who provide this critical link of getting those necessities to our stores, which is why I am joined by Anne Kothawala, who represents that part of our industry.

Our industry is much more than our contribution to the economy. We support local sports teams and charities. Last year we held our first ever national Convenience Store Day, during which politicians and community leaders worked a shift in our stores and helped us to raise over $80,000 for charity. Our channel is constantly changing and adapting. You can buy food-service items like samosas and healthier snack options such as energy bars. Twenty years ago newspapers were a significant part of our sales; today they are not.

Tobacco sales have also declined, just as the number of Canadians who smoke has declined. This is a good thing; however, those sales have moved to the illegal market. Across Ontario, one in every three cigarettes sold is illegal, and it's as high as 60% in some markets throughout the province. Please find more information regarding contraband in your kits.

Just so we are very clear, we're not here to defend the tobacco industry. After all, tobacco is a cause of serious diseases. That said, so long as Canadians choose to smoke this legal product, our retailers continue to represent the most responsible avenue for them to buy tobacco products. We are the most responsible safeguard to keep tobacco products out of the hands of children. It is in this context that we work with the tobacco companies, along with confectionery, snack, and beverage manufacturers, who are all non-voting members of our association.

My colleague and I are both parents. As any parent, we don't want our kids, or any kids, to get their hands on tobacco products. In fact, retailers play an important role in keeping these products out of the hands of youth to begin with through display bans and with identification checks through our We Expect ID program that is included in your kits. Convenience retailers are part of the solution to preventing kids from smoking, not in opposition to it.

We are here today to raise the concerns of our members about the impact that the proposed plain-packaging legislation will have on our stores. We fear that despite the intent of the legislation, efforts to reduce tobacco consumption will be wasted and, ultimately, worsened by this bill. We will also talk about the vaping side of Bill S-5, where we fully support the government's finally stepping in to regulate this promising development for consumer choice.

Our channel has proven to be the best at age testing when measured against the Beer Store or the government-owned LCBO in Ontario. According to data from Smoke-Free Ontario, public health units have conducted over 20,000 underage mystery shops, with a pass rate of 96% by convenience stores in Ontario.

Committee members may be asking why, if 75% of the package is already covered by warning labels, it would matter if the remaining 25% were covered too? There are three reasons.

First, as with any product, branded packaging gives consumers assurances of quality and reliability and helps them distinguish one product from another. Standardizing cigarette packaging will make it much more difficult to differentiate legal from non-legal products. Moreover, Bill S-5 allows for the standardization of the cigarettes themselves. Forcing legal products to look like their already-standardized illegal counterparts will only further encourage consumers to make their purchasing decisions on price alone. The cheapest products will always come from the black market, free from any tax or ID check.

Second, we already compete with an illicit market that is double the global average. With plain packaging, we can expect to see counterfeiting become a bigger problem than it already is.

Third, because of the black market, law-abiding convenience stores lose not only the tobacco sales, but also the purchases that go along with them—milk, bread, lottery tickets. Governments lose tax revenue, and no one is there to prevent children from buying illegal tobacco.

We know that committee members have heard a lot about the black market and contraband lately, having just studied Bill C-45. Many witnesses have remarked on the importance of addressing the black market when it comes to cannabis, and several have pointed to branding to visually separate these products and provide consumers basic information about them as well as a quality guarantee.

Our members cannot understand why, when the government is trying to curb black market cannabis, it chooses to proceed with plain packaging for tobacco, which will be a boon to the already thriving black market. If the shared problem between tobacco and cannabis is the black market, why are we treating these products so differently?

This is compounded by stories from retailers in other countries where they have adopted plain packaging. Our Australian retail counterparts have struggled with inventory control, staff training, and customer transactions without any of the intended benefits. Contraband rates increased by 20% in that country after plain packaging was introduced. More recently, the Australian and French governments have both stated that plain packaging did not have the desired impact on smoking rates. As you can imagine, our retailers and distributors hear these stories and are naturally questioning whether we should expect to see any different outcome for plain packaging if implemented here in Canada.

I'll now turn it over to my colleague to conclude our remarks.

[Rob Cunningham]

Through a combination of Bill C-45 and this bill, it will not be possible to consume cannabis wherever smoking is banned in federal workplaces—banks, broadcasting, the RCMP, or the federal government.

Vaping devices can be used to consume cannabis and other substances, so that's a question if widespread advertising of these devices is to be allowed. It's much more open than in the cannabis act. The government should not intend to undermine the restrictions it has in the cannabis act.

[Neil Collishaw, Research Director, Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Honourable members, thank you for your invitation to present our views on Bill S-5, An Act to amend the Tobacco Act and the Non-smokers’ Health Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.

I am the research director at Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada. Although I'm not a doctor, I have been working for 35 years in the area of tobacco control. I worked at Health Canada in the 1980s and at the World Health Organization in the 1990s.

Bill S-5 will legitimize what is currently a grey market for vaping products. It will give some clarification that facilitates the introduction of plain packaging and will make a small number of other important advances for tobacco control. Sadly, however, the bill, as currently drafted, contains unnecessary risks to public health. If these flaws are not corrected, we predict that the bill will create more problems than it solves.

The fundamental flaw in the bill is that it opens the door too wide for the promotion of vaping products. One consequence of legalizing vaping products is whether it will invite tobacco companies into the Canadian market with new vaping products. They do not participate now in the grey market.

Royal assent on this bill will be the starting gun for the race to sell as many of these products as they can, using every marketing tool that this law will hand them. The bill hands them too many such tools. As currently drafted, it will allow them to advertise on television, radio, billboards and retail outlets, social media, direct mail, text messaging, contests, and giveaways. Once again, girls in skimpy outfits could be sent into bars to offer samples to patrons. We have seen the same companies use these same tools to recruit and addict previous generations to nicotine.

Our recommendation for minimizing this risk is simple: restrict advertising for vaping products the same way it is restricted for tobacco, which, you will remember from your review of Bill C-45, is also under the same types of restrictions that are in place for cannabis. Permit only information and brand advertising advertisements and allow that only in a very few places. Even if the marketing rules are the same, vaping products will still enjoy a marketplace advantage over tobacco products as they will be sold in branded packages with lesser health warnings and without taxes. We are not alone in making this recommendation. Most major health organizations also suggest that vaping products be subject to similar restrictions.

In response to these concerns, the Senate adopted the amendments proposed by the health department to give the government regulatory authority to curb advertising of vaping products in case things went wrong. A few months later Health Canada issued a consultation paper on the types of regulations it was considering, and these were a throwback. They were very similar to those that the tobacco industry used to govern itself in place for cigarettes in the 1960s and 1970s.

Restricting television advertising to certain times of day, billboards to certain distances from schools are not good enough, and we know this from bitter experience. No one should be encouraging a consumer product that has a better than 30% chance of addicting people to lifelong use. Regulations cannot put the advertising genie back in the bottle. We need to restrict advertising for vaping products now, not later; and we need to do it strongly, not weakly.

If this bill passes as currently drafted, Canada will be virtually alone in allowing such liberalized rules for promoting vaping products. Most OECD countries that allow vaping products to be sold apply similar advertising restrictions to those that exist for tobacco. Only the U.S.A. allows largely unrestricted advertising for vaping products, and what has this meant for young Americans? Well, I think the title of the December 2016 press release from the U.S. Surgeon General is the answer: “Surgeon General Reports Youth and Young Adult E-Cigarette Use Poses a Public Health Threat”.

Now I turn to another flaw in BillS-5, one that could be described as a serious omission.

While opening the door to vaping products and their advertising, Bill S-5 fails to start closing the door to other tobacco products. Bill S-5 legalizes vaping products in the hope that they will offer some reduction from the harm that tobacco causes. It's a nice hope and I hope it comes true, but it's still only a hope. To guarantee that harm will be reduced, we need a plan to get rid of the conventional cigarette.

A few months ago the U.S. pushed forward with its vision of how to ensure that the benefits of less harmful forms of nicotine use were accompanied by a reduction in the use of the most harmful forms. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced a comprehensive harm reduction framework in July 2017 in which they plan to reduce the amount of nicotine in conventional cigarettes as a way of shifting smokers to less harmful forms. Because of particularities of American law and regulation, the FDA is constrained on how it can regulate cigarettes and they have chosen nicotine reduction because basically the law doesn't allow them to have any other options. But in Canada we do—you do, as legislators.

We can follow and improve on the American lead by creating a harm reduction framework that aims to reduce the supply and demand for cigarettes by using a range of approaches. These might include cap and trade programs, financial incentives, performance requirements, and other modern regulatory tools. The government has set a goal of achieving less than 5% tobacco use prevalence by 2035, “less than 5 by 35”, but so far it seems to be less of a plan and more of a slogan. However, there is now an opportunity through Bill S-5 to establish a harm reduction framework that will ensure that legalizing vaping helps reduce smoking.

Here are some key changes that we are proposing in very much summary form: expand the purpose of the act to include reducing the burden of disease, preventing addition to nicotine, and achieving the minister's goal of less than 5 by 35; expand the scope of the act once again to establish regulatory authority over new heat-not-burn products as well as other new tobacco products that may be introduced in the future; and impose new requirements and obligations on the tobacco industry.

We have prepared detailed suggestions for how these changes could be introduced during clause-by-clause review of the bill, and I will be happy to share our suggestions with you later on.

This committee can greatly assist in achieving the goal of less than 5 by 35. Don't allow Bill S-5 to be passed without the safeguards needed to protect young people and others from tobacco and nicotine industry marketing. Make sure that Bill S-5 is a step towards ending the sale of combustible tobacco products and not a way to recruit future smokers.

Thank you for your attention.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, this is a huge change in Canadian law and it must be approached in a sensible, orderly, practical way. Until Parliament has passed the legislation and enacted a new regime, the old regime remains in effect and that law must be respected.

In the meantime, I think all Canadians understand the government's objectives to do a better job of keeping cannabis out of the hands of our kids, a better job of keeping illegal cash out of the hands of organized crime, and to increase safety on our roads. That is what Bill C-45 and Bill C-46 will accomplish.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the minister is giving me roughly the same answer I got from the Minister of Health yesterday. Currently there is some confusion over what is legal and what is illegal and how to regulate it.

Can the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness confirm that before moving ahead with Bill C-45 the necessary background checks will be made in order to prevent organized crime from infiltrating the Prime Minister's marijuana program?

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Mr. Speaker, last August I received a call from a citizen of Laval, which is represented by a Liberal MP. Unfortunately, she had no confidence in her MP. She contacted me and asked that I present an e-petition, petition e-1270, which calls on the government to reject Bill C-45 respecting the legalization of cannabis.

I believe that young people have the right to be protected, but this legislation does not protect them. The petition calls on the government to reconsider. There is still time. Let us not destroy our young people with this law. We can use other means to protect our precious youth.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will repeat the question. We know that of the 86 cannabis producers in Canada, 35 of them get funding from tax havens. That means some of that funding is coming from organized crime.

Before implementing Bill C-45, can the minister confirm that the government will sort out that mess so that Canadians can be sure that organized crime has not infiltrated supposedly legal businesses?

Tobacco and Vaping Products Act

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Madam Speaker, I want to reference my colleague from Winnipeg North. In the House this morning he referenced the fact that in his time as health critic, he learned about the vagaries of smoking and a number of those issues. I would just like to point out that when there was only two of them in the legislature in Manitoba, he was the critic of just about everything.

I just want to reiterate the question that was asked this morning. There was talk about the wonderful parts of the bill, but this is not associated with the licensing of marijuana in Bill C-45. Does my colleague think that is a contradiction of terms from the government?

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, that was precisely what I was trying to do, lay it out that Bill C-45 and Bill S-5 seem to be going in two opposite directions. I am asking the government for some consistency on this.

When it comes to a good cigar, however, there is something to be said about adding life to years rather than years to life.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the debate on the topic throughout today, particularly my colleague's comments, and there appears to be a conflict between Bill C-45, which is the cannabis bill, and Bill S-5.

Governments, provincial and federal, as well as organizations have spent a lot of money trying to stop people from smoking. We get into vaping, contraband, and a lot of these topics. All of these things are out of fear for our health, whether we are talking about illegal contraband, packaging, or health, when people go to a doctor or have surgery and have to sign something saying whether they smoke and when they stopped smoking.

In Bill C-45, it is almost like we are encouraging people by legalizing cannabis. The provincial governments will be selling different types of products or sending it out to have other people do it. Is there a major contradiction in the philosophy of these two bills?

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, since the member delved into the issue of Bill C-45 and the legalization of cannabis, I wonder if he would allow me to also pursue some aspects of that program that I have concerns about.

I am definitely in favour of Bill C-45 and the legalization of cannabis, but I do see that we are moving in a direction that there is a presumption that cannabis cannot be grown outdoors and we need to move it indoors. In the state of Colorado where cannabis is legal, the city of Denver's growing operations for cannabis alone now constitute 2% of all the electricity demand for the state of Colorado.

From a carbon footprint point of view, I am very concerned about the direction of how we regulate the growing of cannabis, which is not covered in Bill C-45, and why we are moving in the direction of additional water use and intensive energy use for a product that we do not think is safe but is not more dangerous than tobacco. Tobacco is grown outside, so why can cannabis not be grown outside?

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to address Bill S-5 this afternoon. Bill S-5 is not about the legalization of marijuana, but I am going to talk a little about that anyway. The member for Winnipeg North, clearly holding up a lot of the government here today, will enjoy this in particular, I think.

The comparison between the way the government proceeded under Bill C-45 and what is happening with Bill S-5 is interesting and instructive. The reason I want to, later on in my speech, talk a little about the issue of marijuana legalization is that there is a bit of a gap when we hear members talk about the need to have clear information and the importance and value of plain packaging, but a member of the NDP cannot even answer my direct question about whether he supports plain packaging for marijuana. These comparisons are interesting. The push on tobacco, on the one hand, and then some of the messages with respect to marijuana, are clearly very much in tension with each other.

The other point I want to make in relation to the bill is that the government has spoken about the great work it has done, which happens from time to time in this place, but Bill S-5 originated in the Senate, so perhaps it is another opportunity to underline the fact that the Senate perhaps acts more independently than the government would actually like it to. When we have a bill coming out of the Senate that the government says reflects the work of the government, clearly it raises some questions about the actual independence level of the so-called independent senators the government is appointing.

I was going to move unanimous consent on something, but I will not anymore.

The issues that are dealt with in the bill are vaping and plain packaging for tobacco. The member for Winnipeg North appreciates my restraint, I am sure.

The bill speaks first about having plain packaging for tobacco. Members have probably heard, from different sides of this question, about the merits of this as a strategy for reducing the amount of smoking. For example, there are some people who argue that there has been a reduction in smoking as a result of plain packaging initiatives in some countries. However, in some of those cases, we can also see a long-term trend in the reduction of smoking in those countries anyway, so it can be difficult to establish a clear cause and effect if there was a reduction in levels, but it was consistent with a general social trend of a reduction in smoking.

The same argument could potentially be made about contraband. If we see an increase in the use of contraband after plain packaging, some might ask if that is part of a trend or something new. In general, as we try to make policy and respond to evidence, we have to, as much as possible, distill what seems to be caused by a change in policy and what might be part of an overall long-term effect. These are questions that, as we support the bill through to committee, I hope to see studied in detail, because it is not enough to have a good intention, obviously. We need to be able to demonstrate the link between the intention and the impact the policy would have practically.

One of the concerns we have heard about the proposal to have plain packaging is an increase in contraband. There are already very high levels of contraband tobacco. Over 50% of cigarettes in Ontario, for example, are contraband, and there is some evidence, although I know it is disputed by others, that plain packaging increases contraband. That creates all kinds of risks in terms of people being aware of what is in them, and obviously, the impact on health associated with that, and the greater risk of cigarettes getting into the hands of minors, and so forth.

I think there is a legitimate debate about plain packaging. It is not necessarily helpful when members characterize anyone who has legitimate questions about plain packaging as being put up to it by the tobacco industry. There is a legitimate discussion there, and I hope the committee will explore this in the spirit of that legitimate discussion. I myself remain relatively agnostic on the question. I am interested to see where the discussion on plain packaging goes.

On the issue of vaping, I have heard from constituents who have attested to the benefits for them in terms of smoking cessation. They have been able to make progress in cessation, as a result of access to vaping products, that they had not previously been able to make. I appreciate that feedback from constituents. It is something that I very much take note of as I consider the legislation in front of us.

What this bill seeks to do is regulate vaping. Certainly members have recognized the benefit of vaping, of having the information out there, and of further research. In particular, this part of the bill marshals strongly in favour of sending it to committee. There are different elements of this bill, some of which are more legitimately contentious than others. This bill deals with these two very distinct issues.

I think members know that the member for Cariboo—Prince George was in the hospital recently. I understand that he is doing very well now and is watching these proceedings. He had asked someone to highlight a particular story he had noted about a teen baseball player whose stepmother is calling for stronger vaping regulations after his death. This was someone who fell in the context of vaping and subsequently passed away. It raises again the importance of studying the issue of vaping and the impacts, as this bill does, and of exploring opportunities around regulation.

I want to send our best wishes to the member for Cariboo—Prince George and also to note this article he discovered and wanted to see raised.

I will go on to the issue of marijuana, because, as is well known, the government is proceeding with its plan to legalize marijuana. Members have heard the talking points on this. I almost slipped into saying them myself. To “legalize” and closely “regulate” is what the government always says. On the other hand, if we look at the kinds of regulations it is proposing and the arguments it is making in the context of Bill S-5, and we compare them to Bill C-45, it becomes quite clear that it is failing on this issue of close regulation, even when it comes to its own standards. I want to talk about some of those specific issues in terms of how we compare the agenda being advanced vis-à-vis tobacco and the discussion on marijuana.

First of all, we should acknowledge that while there is a great deal of public health information about the risks associated with tobacco use and a lot of information encouraging cessation from using tobacco, there is a general lack of information and advertising on the risks associated with marijuana. It has become clear to me, in some of the conversations that have happened in this House, that while one would never hear members say that they doubt evidence about the risks associated with tobacco, and there is agreement here that the use of tobacco is not good for one's health, on the issue of marijuana, there are members who really have downplayed the risks. Of course, we have a Prime Minister who has himself talked about his use of marijuana when he was an elected official while at the same time he was initially voting in favour of tougher sentencing with respect to marijuana. He then obviously changed his position. Perhaps he had some reckoning with something he was doing at the same time he was an elected official. Those kinds of messages obviously put out misinformation and confusion, in the minds of people.

I see that there are health claims being made about marijuana that are not backed by science and that are very much at odds with the kinds of claims we might hear made about tobacco. A lot of people may not know that use of marijuana, especially by young people, even relatively occasional use, can be associated with higher rates of certain mental health challenges later in life. The carcinogenic effects of marijuana are, of course, well established and, generally speaking, the carcinogenic effects of smoking marijuana are stronger than the carcinogenic effects associated with smoking a cigarette. Of course, people smoke them differently—they would not necessarily smoke a pack of joints in quite the same way—but the point is that the carcinogenic effects, pound for pound, are much stronger when it comes to marijuana. These are things that members are not always taking note of in their discussion around marijuana and, again, when it comes to the misleading health clams that we see sometimes made around marijuana.

I had a particularly jarring experience of this, which was captured by TVO. The member for Beaches—East York and I participated in a show that TVO put on—Political Blind Date, it was called—where we went to different facilities and learned about different sides of a question. We went to a facility in Toronto that has subsequently shut down, called Queens of Cannabis, where we were greeted by a so-called wellness expert who had no medical training of any sort, who was telling us about the alleged benefits of infusing one's children during pregnancy with THC. Obviously this is not something with any evidentiary basis, and yet it was the kind of health claims that were being made. We see some of these false claims being made and propagated with regard to marijuana in a way that, generally speaking, we do not see happening with respect to tobacco. There are not so-called wellness experts out there who are claiming to tell us about the benefits associated with using tobacco.

Recognizing that, the urgency of having clear, strong public health information associated with the risks of marijuana should be noted by members and should be well considered, and yet we do not have any requirements in this legislation for plain packaging on marijuana products. If members think that tobacco products should have clear warning labels, and I agree that they should, then why would the same not hold with respect to marijuana? If, as some have argued, plain packaging is beneficial for reducing the smoking of cigarettes, then why would not the same principle apply in the case of marijuana? It is strange to me and I have a hard time understanding, on the one hand, the approach to tobacco and, on the other hand, the approach to marijuana.

The government members have also talked about how, if we legalize and strictly regulate marijuana, so they say, it will be kept out of the hands of children and the profits will be kept from organized crime. I can almost give the speech from their side, I have heard the line so many times. However, when it comes to tobacco we see, as members have said today, how very often people start smoking when they are underage. It is very common that young people still access tobacco products when they are underage, and there is still a great deal of contraband tobacco that benefits organized crime. Therefore, how do we square the claims that the government is making with respect to marijuana with the information that the government members are talking about? For instance, I think it was the member for Winnipeg North who talked specifically about the age at which people often start smoking tobacco. If nothing else, the government should be considering promoting a reduction culture around marijuana as it legalizes it, but it is not even doing that, at least not in the same way that it is trying to do so with respect to tobacco.

The situation with contraband tobacco makes a point that was lost in the debate around marijuana, which is that just because a product is legal does not mean organized crime cannot be involved in that industry and benefit from it.

In reality, organized crime does not just sell illegal products. It can use illegal methods to sell legal products. Organized crime can benefit from exploiting instances of regulation or taxation, which provide it with an opportunity to operate outside of the legal sphere even while selling a product that is legal. In the case of tobacco, it is regulation and it is taxation.

I think all members are supportive of the idea of having taxes on tobacco, but when those taxes are in place, a reality is that they create an opportunity that might not otherwise exist for organized crime to be involved in that industry. That is simple, basic economics.

When it comes to marijuana and the federal government and other levels of government talk about taxation, regulation, and age restrictions, all of these dynamics will ensure that organized crime is still involved. It is a reality that organized crime is not being shut out of the picture. Those risks will continue to be in place for young people to access it.

If we look at the history of organized crime, frankly, this is true. Organized crime has benefited in certain instances when products are illegal, but it has certainly not ceased to operate when said products are legalized. Organized crime made a lot of money during alcohol prohibition, but it certainly did not go away or cease to make a lot of money after alcohol prohibition ended.

The other issue that we need to note is flavour. The last government addressed the issue of flavoured tobacco products, but the present government is open to moving forward in the future on edibles and on questions around flavouring in marijuana. There is not the same approach, with respect to the risks of flavouring and the impact associated with it when it comes to marijuana, as the approach when it comes to tobacco, and that is quite interesting.

The particular issue, as well, with marijuana is that it is just much easier to grow than tobacco, from what I have been told. The Liberal government would allow home grow. People are not growing four tobacco plants in their home regularly. Am I right?

The risk with the marijuana discussion, again, is that an environment has been created in the bill where we are going to have flavoured products, where we do not have clear health information, and where we do not have those same warning labels. As a result of allowing home grow, we will have the continuance of an illegal market, the continuance of a situation where it will be relatively easy for young people to access marijuana.

I want to make this point as well. The government has argued with respect to its marijuana legislation that the current approach is not working. If we define success as the complete elimination of marijuana use, then we could say that the current approach has not achieved complete cessation. However, nothing is going to achieve complete cessation. We have not achieved it on smoking and we have not achieved it on very hard drugs either.

Over the last 10 years we have seen a substantial reduction in marijuana use, and the numbers bear that out. I presented them in questions and comments in discussion with the Minister of Justice. If the goal was to reduce use and therefore reduce the risk, then the approach that was being taken to marijuana was not perfect—there were certainly opportunities to improve; our party favours the ticketing option—but it is quite clear that success was being achieved in terms of reduction.

To summarize, we are supportive of sending the bill to committee, of further studying the issues around plain packaging as well as vaping. I encourage stakeholders as well as my constituents to keep us informed about their perspective and proposals they have for potentially improving the bill.

It is important to highlight how the government's approach to marijuana legalization is very much exposed by this bill, and how the lack of proper safeguards and procedures in Bill C-45 is evident in comparison to Bill S-5.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, as a matter of fact, Bill C-45 contains extensive provisions that regulate the promotion and packaging of cannabis products. We went through a detailed examination of those in committee.

I think all of us in the House share general agreement on things like making sure that cannabis products are not marketed towards children, that they are sold only in places that adults frequent, and that there is accurate, safe information on cannabis products.

Whenever we are dealing with a substance like cannabis, tobacco, or alcohol, we want to make sure that consumers have accurate, safe information about the product they are ingesting so that they can make an informed choice. Of course the difference between tobacco and cannabis is that tobacco is a known carcinogen that kills. There are some differences in terms of the products. That is a distinction that may be lost on the Conservative Party.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d'Orléans—Charlevoix.

I rise today to speak to Bill S-5, an act to amend the Tobacco Act and the Non-smokers’ Health Act and to make consequential amendments to other acts.

There is an old saying which John Wanamaker said about advertising, but it would work for politics too, that half the money we spend on politics is useless but we never know which half. Even if some of what we do in this place is fruitless, that certainly cannot be said of our efforts to combat smoking. The reduction in smoking rates in this country is a great success story. It demonstrates that well-designed legislation can improve Canadians' health. It is part of the half of what we do that really matters.

It is really worth reflecting on how far we have come. I can remember when smoking was absolutely everywhere. We have made huge strides. One in two Canadians in the 1960s was a smoker. Every second person was a smoker. Today that number is just 13%. We have made huge strides, but not all jurisdictions made similar progress. Smoking is still very prevalent in some countries in the world.

I am reminded of a story on the history of tobacco use worldwide. The author was on a train in another country when a local offered his friend a cigarette. His friend declined and the local was flabbergasted. He simply could not understand why someone would decline a cigarette. The cigarette used to have a similar cultural power in Canada. Not that long ago those ashtrays on desks in this place were in use. What started as a public sector ban eventually spread to the private sector. We no longer have to inform a server if we want the smoking or non-smoking section in a restaurant. Our country has really made progress in discouraging this deadly habit.

This brings me to the legislation we are debating today, Bill S-5. The bill seeks to expand our country's proud legacy of curbing tobacco use. The question is, does it successfully build on that legacy? The bill addresses some of the very important issues. On my way to work in the morning I have seen fewer people smoking cigarettes than before, far less compared to 20 years ago, but I am seeing more people puffing on small metal devices. When I initially saw them, I did not know what they were. They call it vaping. It does not quite have the cool look that cigarettes supposedly used to have. It is hard to imagine Clint Eastwood projecting his rugged image in those old westerns while puffing on a tube attached to a battery pack, but that is a good thing.

We know for sure that inhaling carcinogens into our lungs is neither rugged nor cool. The Marlboro Man died a long time ago of lung cancer. Does vaping really help people quit smoking as its advocates claim? A study by Public Health England found that vaping is 95% less harmful than smoking tobacco. That is a good start. It is called harm reduction. The vapour does not contain the carbon monoxide and volatile organic compounds that cigarette smoke does, but it does still contain nicotine, which is, of course, what smokers are addicted to.

Studies have found that people using e-cigarettes with nicotine were more likely to stop smoking compared with those who received placebos. It is still supplying the addictive substance, but through a much less harmful delivery mechanism. It would still be best to get off nicotine altogether, but it is a powerful drug. For those who cannot, vaping seems to hold great promise as a less harmful option.

If vaping has such great potential to help smokers quit, then we need to be very careful in how we regulate it. However, before I speak further to that point, I want to make it clear that I strongly agree the vaping market needs some regulation. Nicotine is a drug subject to the Food and Drugs Act, but as it stands, no vaping product has been authorized in Canada. All nicotine-containing vaping products are being sold illegally. I assume that would come as a surprise to many people. I see vaping happening on Sparks Street. I do believe that most of those people do not know it is an illegal substance.

It is a Wild West market out there for these products, and this situation needs to be addressed. The vitally important provisions in this bill are those that ban the sale of vaping products to those under 18. The U.S. Surgeon General released a report in 2016 which found that 25% of students in grades 6 to 12 had tried e-cigarettes. In Canada, one in four youths age 15 to 19 reported having tried e-cigarettes. These products are making their way to those underage. This needs to stop.

We know that educating children about the dangers of smoking is most effective before they reach grade 6. Too often this is forgotten. We concentrate on warning them when they are teenagers, when it is often too late. With the rising popularity of vaping e-cigarettes, we need to educate children about their danger as well. Just because they have great harm reduction potential for adults who already smoke does not mean we want more people taking it up as an addictive habit. Nicotine is very addictive.

Education should go hand in hand with regulation. However, to return to my earlier point, we need to protect the health of adult Canadians without robbing them of a viable way to get off cigarettes.

While I support this legislation, I hope the committee will carefully consider certain aspects of it. For example, while some restrictions on branding and marketing are important, I am not sure that banning flavours is wise. Many adults enjoy a variety of flavours, and access to them might help encourage them to quit cigarettes. I, myself, have a jar of jujubes in my office. I am sure many of my hon. colleagues in this place have a sweet tooth. I am not sure about the logic of sweet flavours only appealing to children. Maybe there is a good case for completely banning flavours. I just think it is something the committee should consider in depth.

The other piece of this legislation that I hope will receive some careful consideration in committee is the implementation of plain packaging for cigarettes. I support measures that will reduce the smoking rate, but we do not want to see a corresponding spike in organized crime. It is important to remember that smoking is already at an all-time low in Canada. Five decades of combatting tobacco use has been successful.

We need to be careful about inadvertently supporting the contraband cigarette industry by taking drastic new measures, especially when existing measures are working. Will cigarettes with no branding at all, even on the filter, look identical to unbranded, contraband cigarettes? If that is the case, it becomes a consumer protection issue. Contraband cigarettes often have been found to contain ingredients that would not be allowed in the regulated Canadian market.

As far as I understand it, the Australian experience of plain packaging has led to unclear outcomes. They saw a decrease in smoking rates among adults, but a possible increase among those underage. Tobacco use as measured by tobacco expenditures was unaffected. A careful cost-benefit analysis needs to be conducted.

It is up to the hon. members opposite to prove that plain packaging will not aid in the sale of contraband tobacco. I should note that while I support this bill going to committee, I am surprised the government is supporting legislation to modernize smoking laws while at the same time legalizing marijuana.

It is a real mixed message to Canadians. If plain packaging is necessary to lower cigarette smoking rates, why has no similar rule been introduced for marijuana? The Liberals are rushing forward with Bill C-45 despite the objections of police forces and municipalities across the country. Like many aspects of legalization, these issues have been left unaddressed.

With that said, as it stands, I am in support of this bill going to committee. I think it has great potential to do a lot of good. The committee will need to consider some of the concerns I have raised today to make sure the bill does not result in unintended consequences. If the committee does that, I think the bill could really help foster a healthier Canada.

Marijuana

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, once again, our priority is to protect the health and safety of Canadians. That is why Bill C-45 is a priority.

The current approach is not working. It has allowed criminals to profit and has not kept cannabis out of the hands of children.

The cannabis bill will create a strict legal framework to control the production, distribution, sale, and possession of cannabis in Canada.

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, protecting Canadians and their health and safety is a priority for our government. The black market is currently under the complete control of criminals. The cannabis being sold today is unregulated, untested, and often very unsafe.

Bill C-45 creates a responsible, well-regulated legal market for adults. We are taking the time to do things right, but this delay will benefit organized crime and present an ongoing risk for our young people.

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

As you're aware, the health committee worked very hard at studying Bill C-45, and you did tremendous work at the beginning of the summer. If my memory serves me well, you were here well before we were all here, and you heard from many witnesses over five long but very interesting days, I was told. We also have to recognize that the task force has met people from coast to coast to coast and provided some recommendations to government with respect to some areas that we should consider.

With respect to the area of taxation, as you're very well aware, Minister Morneau is meeting with his provincial and territorial colleagues next week, I believe, and the issue of excise tax is certainly going to come up with respect to where the profits are going to be going, or where the monies collected are going to be going. That is a conversation that is ongoing with them as well. I don't know if my deputy minister wants to add anything to that.

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Minister of Health]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for inviting me today to present the health portfolio financial overview of supplementary estimates (B) for the period 2017-18.

I am thrilled to be accompanied today by my deputy minister, Simon Kennedy; Dr. Theresa Tam, our chief public health officer; Carolina Giliberti, executive vice-president of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency; Yves Bacon, CFO and vice-president of the corporate management branch of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency; and Michel Perron, executive vice-president of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

We are pleased to have the opportunity to discuss the resources that we are requesting to maintain and improve the health needs of all Canadians.

The health portfolio continues to deliver on several priority initiatives for our government. In these supplementary estimates (B), the health portfolio's budget will increase by just over $297 million, raising its proposed authorities to date to $7.16 billion. This constitutes an increase of approximately 6% over our authorities to date.

This funding will allow the health portfolio to achieve several key objectives in several priority areas, which I will now briefly address.

Our government recognizes that Canadians expect the health care system to adapt to their changing needs. They also expect federal, provincial and territorial governments to work together to strengthen our health care system.

In August, the Government of Canada and the provinces and territories agreed to a common statement of principles on shared health priorities. This common statement of principles outlines the priorities for federal investments in mental health and addictions as well as home, palliative and community care. It commits governments to work with the Canadian Institute for Health Information on a set of common indicators to measure progress in these areas. And it reaffirms a shared federal, provincial and territorial commitment to improve the affordability, accessibility and appropriate use of prescription drugs.

Every province and territory has also agreed to its share of $11 billion over 10 years in federal funding for home care and mental health. They have also agreed to the broader funding arrangements under the Canada Health Transfer, which will provide more than $200 million in federal health funding over the next five years.

Health Canada is now in negotiations with each province and territory to develop multi-year bilateral agreements that will outline the terms and conditions for the remaining funding over 10 years.

The Government of Canada is committed to a renewed nation-to-nation relationship with indigenous people. Part of that commitment involves ensuring that first nations and Inuit have access to culturally appropriate health programs and services.

In December, the Government of Canada announced the formal creation of the new Department of Indigenous Services Canada. This is truly an important step in the government's transformation of services to indigenous peoples. By consolidating services into one department, we will be improving the sharing of information and strengthening our capacity to meet the needs of the people we serve.

Therefore, significant funding associated with indigenous programming included in these supplementary estimates will now fall under the purview of Minister Philpott.

I truly remain committed to supporting our government's important goal of improving indigenous health. Throughout this transition period, I will support my colleagues, Minister Bennett and Minister Philpott, to help ensure that first nations and Inuit continue to have access to high-quality health services and programs. I will also work to ensure that we maintain effective relations with our indigenous partners.

Another key file under the health portfolio is the legalization and regulation of cannabis. We know that the current approach to cannabis does not work. It has allowed organized crime to profit while failing to keep cannabis out of the hands of our young people. This is why our government introduced Bill C-45 to legalize and strictly regulate access to cannabis.

In these supplementary estimates, we are requesting $39.1 million to develop, implement and administer a federal framework to legalize and regulate cannabis. This will include the licensing and oversight of producers of cannabis for medical and non-medical purposes.

Another health priority that we are addressing is the opioid crisis. We continue to use all the tools at our disposal to address the growing number of overdoses and deaths caused by opioids. As you know, there were more than 2,800 apparent opioid-related deaths in Canada in 2016, and the preliminary data for 2017 suggests that the number of opioid-related deaths will exceed 3,000. These estimates include an increase of $6.2 million to address the crisis. This includes funds to support increased access to harm reduction measures and to prevent infectious diseases that may result from sharing drug-use equipment.

This is a complex health and social issue, and it will not be fixed overnight. This is why our government will continue to work with partners from across the country to take action on this public health crisis.

With respect to the impact of climate change on the health of Canadians, I am pleased that Budget 2017 allocated $471 million over five years to Health Canada, the Public Health Agency of Canada and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to address the health risks associated with a changing climate.

The Public Health Agency of Canada recently accepted proposals for the Infectious Diseases and Climate Change Fund. These proposals will address gaps in knowledge related to climate-driven food-borne, water-borne and zoonotic infectious diseases in Canada. This includes preparing for and protecting Canadians from climate-driven infectious diseases, including Lyme disease and the West Nile virus.

Our government is also committed to promoting and improving public health and increasing vaccination rates across the country. Vaccination remains one of the most effective public health tools to protect Canadians, which is why we are allocating $1 million in funding towards an advertising and public education campaign to help Canadians make informed decisions on vaccinations.

Vaccines are effective and safe, and they play an important role in the protection of our health and of our communities. I am pleased that the government, in partnership with the provinces and territories, has endorsed new vaccination coverage goals and targets for reducing vaccine-preventable diseases by 2025.

These supplementary estimates reflect an increase of $7 million in the budget of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which will support the CFIA's important ongoing work in plant protection, animal health and food safety.

Safer food remains a top priority for the CFIA. While Canada already has one of the safest food safety systems in the world, our government is dedicated to improving that system so that Canadian families continue to have confidence in the food they eat.

The CFIA has increased its focus on prevention, preparedness and response to minimize risks to human, animal and ecosystem health. This includes plant protection and animal health, the first links in the food chain.

In conclusion, I am confident that the amounts noted in these estimates and the funds identified in Budget 2017 will allow the health portfolio to continue to support better health outcomes for all Canadians and to build a healthier country.

Thank you again to the committee for inviting us to join you today. I look forward to answering your questions.

Third Reading

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill C-58. Actually, that is what I was supposed to talk about, but the government has given me yet another opportunity to talk about its closed-mindedness and lack of transparency by moving another time allocation motion, this one for a bill that has to do with access to information. How ironic.

I am very glad to have the chance to speak after my colleague, the parliamentary secretary, who chose to talk about things that happened in the past. His eloquence and his legendary speaking skills in Parliament are well known to us all. There is a reason he has said more words in the House since the beginning of the session than any other member. He has been more vocal than anyone else during this Parliament as well as during the previous one. I believe that, more often than anyone else, he condemned the Conservative government's time allocation motions, which it did use to get its legislation through. The parliamentary secretary once had some choice words about democracy, the work of parliamentarians, and how outraged he was about time allocation motions.

This government was elected on a promise not to use time allocation motions, in order to allow for full debates. It was elected on a promise of basic openness and transparency. It promised it would be open at all times and would sometimes say no. The parliamentary secretary was the spokesperson of that election campaign.

What have we here today? In two years, this government has broken the previous government's record on using time allocation motions. It has used them on a number of very important files, including marijuana legalization, a subject that Canadians wanted to hear more about. Canadians represented by members on this side of the House wanted them to take the time to express their views on the matter. I am also convinced that many people represented by members across the way would have liked them to speak and fully explain their thoughts on Bill C-45 about marijuana legalization instead of repeating government talking points. Unfortunately, the government has used time allocation yet again, as it has done in so many other cases.

Speaking of flashbacks, the parliamentary secretary should also flash back to the eloquent speeches he gave in the last Parliament. They might inspire him to add to today's debate on time allocation motions. In his presentation, he also talked about the past Conservative government that saw the light on proactive disclosure. The Conservatives in government at the time adhered to that policy. Unfortunately, today's Bill C-58 takes us back to the dark ages. I am not the one saying this, it is the Information Commissioner. I will come back to her in a moment.

If the Liberals saw the light while they were in opposition, the light has unfortunately gotten steadily dimmer since they came to office, and we are heading for total darkness. The parliamentary secretary boasts that Bill C-58 will be open to periodic review. This morning I heard it called a “living document”. However, I wish the government had given life to something better, because right now, its living document seems doomed to a worthless existence.

We can already expect this bill to go nowhere in terms of delivering on the objectives and intentions that the Liberals announced during the last election campaign. It will not meet any of its objectives. Sadly, as far as those objectives go, this document is stillborn. Bill C-58 is not a living document. If it were, the government would have accepted the committee's recommendations. It would have agreed to amend its so-called living document from the outset in order to improve it and eliminate its dark and murky aspects by listening to the recommendations of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. Unfortunately, all of the committee's recommendations were rejected.

That is not what I would call a living, open, and transparent document that can be improved upon. The government had already made up its mind, and it refused to amend and refine the bill into something that we on this side of the House could support.

The Liberals' approach is nothing new. Every time the Liberals introduce a bill on which we could have all worked together to move certain files forward for the good of Canada and Canadians, they find a way to sneak in some totally unacceptable legislation. They know very well that there will not be unanimity and the opposition will vote against the bill. They put things in that go too far or that do not make sense. Then they say that there are good things in the bill and they wonder why the opposition does not support it. It is because the Liberals overlook all the bad things. That is how the Liberals see things. They speak in general terms and have a massive public relations campaign, but when we start getting into the details, when we look beyond all the pretty words and pretty pictures, we find that there are many flaws. The quality and the resolution of the image are not always very good.

We have become accustomed to seeing a lot of shenanigans from the Liberal government. Since I was elected in 2015, I have seen that there are all sorts of ways of using the legislative process. The Liberals are trying to do things and they are especially trying to get out of the promises they made to Canadians in order to get elected in 2015. The Liberals realized that they could promise just about anything but that it is not so easy for a government to keep such promises.

I think the Liberals are going through a tough time right now because they made all sorts of promises in order to get elected. They promised Canadians just about anything, but now they are unable to keep those promises, so they have to find a way to get out of them. They decided to introduce a bill that does not accomplish what it is supposed to accomplish, thinking that would at least get people talking about the issue.

However, talking does not change anything. If all the government does is talk about an issue, if it does not change the laws, if it is not really held to account, and if it does not keep the promises that it made to Canadians, then Canadians end up with a government that does things that people did not elect it to do. That is what is happening today.

A number of things in Bill C-58 do indeed reflect Liberal promises. The Liberals made the following promise: “We will make government information more accessible.” Clearly, based on my reading of the bill and in light of what members of this cabinet have been doing, this government has no intention of increasing government openness and transparency. Instead, Bill C-58 actually undermines access to information in Canada. There is a great deal of opposition to Bill C-58.

This government claims to be open by default, and yet, the fiercest opposition to Bill C-58 is coming from the most loyal defenders of government transparency and access to information. What is wrong with this picture? We are talking about journalists, civil liberties groups, and yes, even the federal Information Commissioner. Indeed, the individual responsible for enforcing the legislation we are debating here today has criticized much of what is in Bill C-58.

In a report released in September, Ms. Legault said that Bill C-58 fails to deliver the fundamental reform the Access to Information Act needs. She said that the government's proposals actually introduce new barriers to the process Canadians must go through when requesting government documents. One would expect to hear that kind of thing from the opposition Conservative Party because our job is to criticize the government. However, that message is from the Information Commissioner, who is responsible for enforcing Bill C-58.

The report is entitled “Failing to Strike the Right Balance for Transparency”. The title says it all. Here is what the report says:

In short, Bill C-58 fails to deliver.

The government promised the bill would ensure the act applies to the Prime Minister’s and ministers’ offices appropriately. It does not.

The government promised the bill would apply appropriately to administrative institutions that support Parliament and the courts. It does not.

The government promised the bill would empower the Information Commissioner to order the release of government information. It does not.

Rather than advancing access to information rights, Bill C-58 would instead result in a regression of existing rights.

It is the sad story of a government that promised things it had no intention of doing, or a government that improvises and was clearly not ready to govern. Two years after the election, I think that any political observer can confirm what I am saying. The government was not ready and, now, it is improvising and trying to look like it is keeping its promises, which it is entirely incapable of doing.

Let me get back to the Information Commissioner’s special report. The tables at the end of the report are impressive. They include a comparative summary, as well as information about improvements to Bill C-58, the current situation and other items. In short, we can see whether the various elements of the bill are positive, or whether they constitute a regression.

On the topic of making requests, we have a regression; declining to act on requests, regression; declining to act on requests for institutions, positive. Let us be fair, there are positive elements. The Prime Minister’s Office and mandate letters are neutral; ministers’ offices, regression; government institutions, regression; Parliament, regression; courts, regression.

With respect to fees, the process was to be streamlined and the fees abolished, but the changes still constitute a regression. On the topic of oversight model, we have a regression; seeking representations from the Privacy Commissioner in the course of an investigation: regression. That is a lot of regression, and this is not just my opinion. Mediation will be positive if added. The publication of orders will be positive if added.

The examination of solicitor-client privileged records is a positive. We are not being partisan: the impact of the purpose of the Access to Information Act is unknown. On the transition to a new oversight model, we have a regression; and the impact of the mandatory periodic review is unknown.

I can see why the impact of a mandatory periodic review is unknown. Since we began considering Bill C-58, several good suggestions have been made to improve it. The government did not take any of these suggestions into account. I understand why the commissioner has certain questions concerning the purpose of the mandatory periodic review.

The report ends on a negative note. The changes to Info Source, or the requirement institutions have to annually publish certain classes of information, constitute a regression, and lastly, on the topic of institutions’ annual reports on the administration of the Access to Information Act, we have yet another regression.

We are not the ones saying this. It is in the report of the Information Commissioner of Canada, whose title speaks volumes: “Failing to Strike the Right Balance for Transparency”. This document made recommendations to the government for improving Bill C-58 so that it would meet the openness and transparency needs not of the official opposition, the NDP, the Bloc québécois, the Green Party, independent members of Parliament or Liberal backbenchers, but of Canadians.

Unfortunately, “Failing to Strike the Right Balance for Transparency” is the report card for Bill C-58. That is why the Liberal government had to put forward a time allocation motion today, to silence the hon. members of every opposition party here in the House. It does not want us to spend time repeating that the Information Commissioner said that it was way off the mark.

Mr. Speaker, if you knew everything that people were saying and all the articles that were being written about Bill C-58, you would also have a hard time understanding the government's intention. According to the cofounder of Democracy Watch, the bill constitutes a regression in that it allows government officials to decline requests for information if they believe that the request is frivolous or in bad faith.

Let us put ourselves in the shoes of a member of cabinet who is being asked questions about his villa in France and who decides that the request is frivolous or made in bad faith, since where he spends his vacation is no business of Canadians. This person would refuse to answer the questions. That is what Democracy Watch is denouncing.

Also, well-known defender of Canadian democracy Mr. Conacher says that public servants should not have this power, because they will likely use it as a new loophole to decline giving the public the information to which it is entitled. That is exactly what I have been saying since the beginning.

Bill C-58 also imposes new obligations on people requesting information. The act currently requires government institutions to make every reasonable effort to assist a person making a request, regardless of the information requested. However, under the proposed legislation, people requesting information will have to provide more specific information about the exact type of document they are looking for, the period in question and the exact subject.

In other words, if I want to know more about the elimination of a tax credit for diabetics and I do not give the exact name of the tax credit and the form, the people across the aisle may decline to give me the information. Still, as far as I know, Canadians have the right to know why the government eliminated the tax credits for diabetics. When a major change affects the lives of those who are the most vulnerable, Canadians have the right to know why the change was made and why the minister did not inform the opposition and all Canadians. I think that is logical.

It is as if the government wanted to find more ways of hiding the truth from Canadians. I do not dare say it, but this bill looks like another attempt at a cover-up on the part of the government, and yet, all it is doing is revealing to Canadians just how unprepared it was to govern. That is our assessment of Bill C-58.

It is probably for that reason that the government does not want to have to answer questions about tax reform, the Morneau affair, Netflix taxes, the small deficits they promised, NAFTA, China, home mail delivery, and the Prime Minister's vacation on a private island, which was talked about a lot. It is probably the reason why Bill C-58 is before us today and why we are subject to time allocation.

The promise of openness and transparency is a failed public relations exercise, and I would remind members that, according to the Information Commissioner, the government has failed to meet its goal to be transparent.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you.

During this committee's study of the cannabis act, Bill C-45, we learned that the federal government covers the cost of medicinal cannabis for Canadian veterans but not for first nations and Inuit populations. In your view, how does oral health coverage for registered first nations and recognized Inuit compare with other populations, such as veterans, for which the federal government provides oral health coverage?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Quickly, Bill C-45, the cannabis legislation, just passed in the House. Sort of perplexingly, there's a ban in Bill C-45 on the importation and exportation of recreational adult-use cannabis products. There's no such ban on medicinal products. Given that the global industry for cannabis can be multiple billions of dollars, and it's an innovative, technological, intellectual property-laden industry in which other countries will start copying Canada, would you be a voice at the cabinet table for relaxing that so Canadian entrepreneurs can actually get first market access in this highly innovative and burgeoning lucrative field?

Cannabis Act

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

The House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion at third reading stage of Bill C-45.

The House resumed from November-22 consideration of the motion that Bill C-45, An Act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other Acts, be read the third time and passed, and of the amendment.

Petitions

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to speak for the vast majority of the people in my riding in presenting a petition signed by over 9,000 members of the Cercles de fermières du Québec from across the province. These people are against the legalization of marijuana, and especially against Bills C-45 and C-46, which are rushed and sloppily drafted.

Given that political, police, and legal authorities say they are not ready to handle this situation, they are calling on the government to impose a moratorium on marijuana legalization until the provincial and territorial governments are properly equipped to oversee the legal sale of marijuana. A survey showed that more than 82% of my constituents are against legalization. Maybe the 40 Liberals across the aisle are not taking the time to—

Cannabis Act

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Madam Speaker, earlier this week, I voted to remove from Bill C-45 the provision in clause 9 that would penalize someone who, for example, passes a joint, at a party, to someone who turns out to be under the age of 19. Right now, in the legislation, it is a 14-year penalty for what is called non-commercial cannabis trafficking.

Does the member share my concern that people in the public may not be aware that this is a severe penalty for something that could well be an accident and that, given that the government has closed down debate, this cannot be fully aired?

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Louis-Saint-Laurent, who gave an excellent speech. I agree with him completely.

Now I would like to hear what he thinks of this rush to implement Bill C-45, which is supposed to protect our young people and eliminate organized crime. If you read every single clause of the bill, there is nothing to guarantee that those objectives can be achieved.

Is there another goal here? His colleague asked him a question about the 2019 election. What are the Liberals' personal interests in this and are they willing to sacrifice our young people to win the election in 2019?

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Madam Speaker, countless medical professionals have testified that the brain continues to develop until the age of 25. According to the Canadian Medical Association, increased use of marijuana before the age of 25 increases one's risk of developing mental disorders such as schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety by up to 30% compared to those who have not used marijuana under the age of 25.

The government cannot go through with this. Is this what we want for our children? I have said it before and will say it again. This is most certainly not what I want for my children. This is not what I want for my constituents and this is not what I want for Canadians.

For these reasons, the Canadian Medical Association and various other medical professionals recommended increasing the age a person can consume marijuana to 21 at the very least. As it stands, the government will fail our children if it goes through with this legislation. The government claims that this legislation will control the drug, but in reality it will allow its use to become out of control.

The vast majority of witnesses at the health committee spoke strongly against home grown marijuana in their testimony, including most medical groups and the police forces that appeared. Allowing home grown marijuana will most certainly not help us to regulate the industry. Further, police have said at the health committee that because they cannot see inside homes, they will be unable to enforce a plant per household quota. Even more concerning is that a large network of legal home grows could easily become an organized crime network, and this could happen next door to anyone.

Canadian families expect safe and healthy communities in which to raise their children. We are parliamentarians. We are representatives of our constituents and we need to ensure that all voices are heard. People are concerned about this drug. We as elected officials can and should provide guidance on this drug to reflect the views of all Canadians. When it comes to health and safety, Canadians deserve the best. This legislation is not what is best for Canadians.

There are only 218 days to go until the arbitrary date of July 1, 2018. Let me be clear: let us not rush through this legislation. We need to do what is right for Canadians. The provinces, the municipalities, and police forces are not ready to implement this legislation. I cannot support Bill C-45.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-45, An Act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other Acts, be read the third time and passed.

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Louis-Saint-Laurent.

I am pleased to rise today to once again speak to an issue that I, and many Canadians, care deeply about. I am thankful to be given the privilege to speak to Bill C-45 at third reading. This is a piece of legislation that addresses an issue very close to me. Today I am going to speak to why I oppose Bill C-45.

First and foremost, marijuana is a dangerous drug. The Liberal government should not push through this legislation. This is not what is right for Canadians. In theory, the purpose of this bill is to protect public health and public safety. In practice, Bill C-45 will not achieve this goal. One of the main concerns regarding this legislation is accessibility to drugs. Bill C-45 does not keep marijuana out of the hands of children. It allows it to be grown in households. If marijuana is in people's homes, what message is that sending to our kids? This legislation does not keep our children healthy and/or safe. I hear from concerned constituents almost every day who are confused about this legislation and are worried about what it means for their families. The Liberal government cannot recklessly continue to push through this legislation.

We know that marijuana is a dangerous drug. We know that it is damaging to the human body and addictive. We know it causes harmful effects on youth brain development and greater incidents of psychosis and schizophrenia. However, despite all of these side effects, the Liberal government is set to ensure that marijuana will be legal by July 1, 2018.

I oppose this legislation entirely. I choose to listen to the concerns raised by the scientists, doctors, and law enforcement officials. I want to advocate for the voices that are not being heard with respect to this legislation, those who say it is being rushed through without proper planning or consideration for the negative consequences of such complicated legislation.

The passing of Bill C-45 would lead to negative repercussions at the global level. I have spoken before to this concern, but it is an important one. If this legislation passes, Canada will be in violation of three international treaties. Therefore, how can Canada hold other countries to account on their treaty obligations when Canada does not honour its own?

There are various issues regarding this legislation, which has led me to conclude that it is thoughtless, irresponsible, and rushed. The only goal it has is to reach the arbitrary deadline of July 1, 2018. The Liberal government is not listening to the medical professionals. It is not listening to our police forces. It is not even listening to the concerned Canadians, who believe that this bill is fundamentally flawed and is being rushed through Parliament in order to meet this arbitrary and irresponsible deadline. For these reasons, and many more, I am entirely opposed to this legislation. The science is clear that marijuana is dangerous.

I want to touch further on the issues with respect to our children and families. The last thing we want is youth consumption to increase. We do not want our children to have increased risks of mental health disorders. We should be setting up our children to succeed. When it comes to youth, I know we all want to ensure they are safe, able to have a better life, and have more opportunities than we did. Bill C-45 will not help us achieve this goal for our children. Allowing easier access to drugs will not leave our children better off.

Currently, the bill recommends the age of 18 as the federal minimum. However, the provinces are being given the power to set a higher age. This is problematic. If we talk to our southern neighbours, the United States, the states of Washington and Colorado have legalized marijuana and set 21 as the minimum age. Ontario presently says it will set the minimum age at 19 and Alberta at 21. We know this is not safe. Countless medical professionals have testified that the brain continues to develop until the age of 25.

According to the Canadian Medical Association, increased use of marijuana before the age of 25 increases one's risk of developing mental disorders such as schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety by up to 30% compared to those who have not used marijuana—

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Madam Speaker, since our party has formed government, we have been working with the provinces and territories in preparation of Bill C-45. We continue to have high level meetings with provinces, territories, and indigenous leaders every three weeks in order to properly prepare for the royal assent of this bill. This comes as no surprise to Canadians and to provinces and territories. We work in close collaboration with our provinces and territories and we will continue to do so, all the way through the process of this legalization.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Madam Speaker, New Democrats support the legalization of cannabis, and we are supportive of Bill C-45. However, we expected the Liberal government to be respectful of the concerns of the provinces.

I would like to ask the Minister of Health a simple question. Why, on the very day that the provinces were asking for more time, would the Liberal government impose time allocation on Bill C-45? Why would the Liberal government be so disrespectful?

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Madam Speaker, as indicated, we are absolutely providing a solution to an existing problem, because we recognize that many youth are consuming cannabis that is illegal, unregulated, and the list goes on.

Through Bill C-45, we have made significant investments with respect to education and awareness. We want to make sure we start that process before the bill receives royal assent, as well as afterward.

We are going to be starting a public education campaign, and have already done so, with examples like Drug Free Kids. We have been able to partner with them, and over 120,000 tools from Drug Free Kids have already been given to Canadians. That tool provides Canadians with information regarding the risks associated to cannabis. It will also provide parents, service providers, and mentors to children with the information they need to have that difficult conversation that will sometimes be needed with youth.

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Madam Speaker, to the contrary, we are presenting a solution to an already existing problem in our country. We recognize that the rate of Canadians who consume cannabis is extremely high and we are absolutely taking a public health approach when it comes to this. We want to ensure we legalize, strictly regulate, and control access to cannabis, specifically to our youth.

We have brought forward Bill C-45 to address exactly that. We are not encouraging the use of cannabis by any means, but we are recognizing that the rate of consumption among Canadian youth is already very high and we are absolutely addressing that specific issue.

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Madam Speaker, we have to recognize that the present approach on cannabis is not working and we are presenting a solution to an existing problem. We recognize that many of our Canadian youth already consume cannabis. They are obtaining the product illegally and the product is not regulated or controlled. Therefore, our approach is a public health approach. We truly want to ensure we legalize, strictly regulate, and restrict access to cannabis by our youth.

When it comes to the age of 18, we consulted broadly with the task force, and it made that recommendation. With respect to provinces and territories, we are all aware that if they choose to make the age higher than 18, it is absolutely their choice.

Again, I have to make it very clear. We are taking a public health approach with respect to Bill C-45. We want to protect the health and safety of our children. During this process, we certainly are not encouraging the use of cannabis. It is quite the contrary. We want to ensure we can limit access to it by youth.

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Minister of Health]

Madam Speaker, I rise to continue third reading debate of Bill C-45, an act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other acts.

The Standing Committee on Health has now completed its review of the bill and has heard from over 100 witnesses. I want to sincerely thank the committee members for their valuable insight and thoughtful contributions to the development of the legislation, and a special thanks for their hard work.

A number of amendments were adopted by the committee and will now be considered by Parliament. Our government supports these amendments. They include eliminating the proposed 100-centimetre height limit for the cannabis cultivated at home and committing to the regulations of edibles within 12 months of the bill's coming into force.

Given the transformative nature of the proposed legislation, we also support the amendments made by the committee that will require a review of the law three years after it is brought into force.

Bill C-45 is grounded in the interest of public health and safety. It is worthy of adoption by the House.

Bill C-45 would legalize, strictly regulate, and restrict access to cannabis for Canadians over the age of 18. By legalizing, strictly regulating, and restricting access to cannabis, this law would take profits from the sales of cannabis out of the hands of criminals and organized crime and protect the public health through strict product requirements for safety and quality.

Bill C-45 is grounded in protecting public health and would replace the current system, which clearly is not working.

Our bill focuses on protecting those whose cannabis consumption poses a greater risk to society: our young people.

Our bill includes tough new criminal sanctions for those who provide cannabis to young people or recruit them to commit a cannabis-related offence.

Our government intends to educate the public about the risks of using cannabis, so we are planning a major information and awareness campaign that will target teenagers and young adults first and foremost. That campaign will address a number of issues, including the risks of driving while under the influence of cannabis.

Bill C-45 is informed by the recommendations of the task force on cannabis legalization and regulation, which was led by the Hon. Anne McLellan. As well, on October 20, I met in Edmonton with health ministers from provinces and territories and we discussed the state of cannabis readiness.

I want to assure all of my colleagues that provincial and territorial governments will continue to play a crucial role in ensuring the health and safety of Canadians, especially young Canadians, when it comes to cannabis.

I would like to outline the bill's many strengths in greater detail.

Cannabis is the most commonly used illegal substance in Canada. Some 21% of our youth and 30% of young adults have reported using cannabis within the last year. Scientific evidence shows that the risks from cannabis use are higher for youth than adults. It also shows that the younger people are when they start using cannabis and the more often they use it, the greater the risk to their health.

The facts are clear: a lot of young people have access to cannabis, even more than in other developed countries. That is why our government is proposing to view the issue through the lens of public health. This bears repeating. Our government is not coming out in favour of cannabis and neither is it trying to make it more accessible to youth. It is completely the opposite. Above all, our government is seeking to protect our youth through strict cannabis regulation. As I mentioned before, too many young people can already get cannabis more easily than cigarettes.

Speaking of cigarettes, let us look at the anti-smoking measures that have been taken over the last 30 years. The government has different means of controlling access to tobacco and discouraging its use, such as a regulatory framework, controlled advertising and promotion, taxation, as well as warning labels on the risks of smoking.

Over time, this approach helped curb tobacco use significantly. The percentage of young smokers dropped from 27% in 1985 to 10% in 2015.

That is one of the reasons we are looking closely at lessons learned from the fight against smoking as we prepare our approach to cannabis.

First of all, our bill prohibits anyone under the age of 18 from possessing cannabis. This was one of the task force's recommendations. This age limit will protect our teenagers, and we believe that setting it any higher would contribute to sustaining the black market. The bill does stipulate, however, that the provinces and territories are free to raise that age limit.

Secondly, the bill protects our young people by placing tough restrictions on advertising related to cannabis use. It prohibits any advertising that could make cannabis appealing to a young person. It also prohibits the use of any packaging or labelling that could be appealing to our youth.

Cannabis promotion will be limited to communicating information to consumers. Once again, this information must not be presented in any way that could draw the attention of young people. Obviously, these measures will help limit access to cannabis for young people and reduce the product's appeal for young people.

Nevertheless, we know that it is less likely that young people today believe that cannabis is a significant health risk. That is why we will also be providing Canadians with information about cannabis, so they can talk to their children about the associated risks.

We must also educate and support adults in making informed and responsible choices that minimize the risks of using cannabis, including the dangers related to drug-impaired driving. That is why our government announced that we would invest $46 million in public education and awareness, and surveillance, and that work has already begun.

Our government will continue to provide leadership, invest resources, and work collaboratively on public education with other levels of government and key partners across the country.

Bill C-45 would also establish a legal and quality-controlled supply of cannabis for sale to adults.

The legalization establishes a number of clear rules to protect consumers and set national standards and controls for cannabis products. Under the proposed legislation and its regulations, the federal government will establish industry-wide rules on the types of products that will be allowed for sale in Canada, including rules governing how they are to be produced, tested, labelled, packaged, and shipped.

We will build on Canada's existing regulations and system of licensed production of cannabis for medical purposes, which has been recognized as one of the best systems in the world.

Let me reassure my colleagues that we are also looking to others who have already done this, and we are working closely with them. We are having ongoing conversations with other jurisdictions, such as Colorado and Washington states, to learn from their experiences and build upon the lessons they have learned. We want to get this right.

Putting in place a sound, effective system of regulated access to cannabis will require co-operation and collaboration from jurisdictions.

Under the bill, the federal government would be responsible for establishing and maintaining a comprehensive and consistent national framework to regulate the production of cannabis. For their part, the provinces and territories could license and oversee the distribution and sale of cannabis. Together with municipalities, they could also tailor certain rules in their own jurisdictions and enforce them through a range of tools, such as tickets for example.

We have worked closely with our provincial and territorial counterparts to ensure their input has been heard and taken into account. Earlier this week, we published a detailed consultation paper on our proposed approach to regulating cannabis. Over 60 days, we will undertake in-depth discussions with the provinces and territories, indigenous representatives and stakeholders. We are also inviting Canadians to submit their feedback online until January 20, 2018, on everything from licensing of producers, to product standards, to packaging and labelling.

In conclusion, the bill before the House today is designed to address the issues we are already dealing with. Our youth have access to cannabis. Our youth consume cannabis. Organized crime continues to profit from its unregulated sale.

Although we are proposing to legalize cannabis, we understand that its consumption, like that of alcohol or tobacco, should not be encouraged. That is why we are doing everything we can to protect our young people as we move forward with the legalization of cannabis.

Today, I am asking my colleagues to support Bill C-45 at third reading stage.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Madam Speaker, I want to commend my colleague on his earnest and heartfelt speech. Our Liberal colleagues would do well to read and reread his words, because his speech was full of common sense and, above all, gave us many real reasons to truly protect Canadians from the coming scourge of marijuana legalization.

I must rise again today to speak against the Liberal government's marijuana legalization bill. Quebeckers can count on the 11 Conservative members from Quebec to represent them. We know that most Quebeckers are against the legalization of marijuana, as proposed by this government. The 11 members from Quebec unanimously agree that, on Monday, they will vote against legalization.

I am going to tell the House what my Quebec colleagues think of the bill that has been sloppily cobbled together by the Liberal government. On Monday, the Liberal bill to legalize marijuana as of July 1, 2018, will go through third reading. Because the government has made this issue its top priority since it was elected, the Liberals will ram this bill through despite all opposition.

The Prime Minister will thumb his nose at everyone who spoke out against this initiative. He will continue to ignore vigorous public opposition. He will turn a blind eye to the facts, the studies, the science, and what Canadian society wants. We have seen over and over again that the majority oppose this bill.

So far, numerous organizations, associations, federations, and institutions have expressed their disapproval of the Liberal government's initiative and its rush to get this done. People across Canada are obviously worried, and with good reason.

The Prime Minister could not care less about what experts, scientists, social workers, police forces, and society in general think, and he never has.

The provinces and municipalities will have to shoulder much of the responsibility for the consequences of marijuana legalization, but they were not adequately consulted. Recently, unable to keep up with the Prime Minister's frenzied, reckless pace, the Government of Quebec once again called on the government to postpone enacting the bill.

Earlier this week, first nations members also asked for a delay. The Prime Minister categorically refused. True to his arrogant form, he is even forcing a ridiculously unfair revenue-sharing scheme on the provinces and municipalities, even though marijuana legalization will end up costing them a bundle.

The Prime Minister wants to offload the hefty health care and security costs onto the provinces and municipalities, while pocketing most of the revenue from marijuana sales, no doubt to pay down the Liberal's huge budget deficit.

Let us talk about the facts. Numerous studies have shown the negative impacts of marijuana on the brain, especially for people under 25 and those most vulnerable. Research has also shown that legalizing the drug will not help eradicate organized crime, as the Liberal government claims.

Furthermore, we already have a problem with impaired driving on our roads, and this piece of legislation will only increase the risk of accidents, injuries, and deaths. Also, Canadian police officers do not have the necessary training or tools to detect impaired drivers, not to mention the lack of oversight of drug use in public places and workplaces, and the added pressure on our health care systems.

The Liberals' bill obviously does not pass the smell test, nor does it come close to passing the common sense test. Not only are the Liberals going against what Canadians want with this bill, but they are also putting Canada in a difficult position on the international stage.

In fact, three international treaties will be violated if the government goes ahead with the legalization of marijuana. Also, Canada will be the only country in the G20 and G7 to make this substance legal. No other government in the world has legalized marijuana so quickly.

No other government has imposed so few restrictions on the possession of plants in the home and no specific requirements regarding public safety. For those reasons, we, the members of the Quebec caucus of the Conservative Party of Canada, will stand up in the House of Commons on Monday and vote against this bill.

If those words sound familiar, it is only because I was just reading from the joint letter that we, the Quebec caucus members of the Conservative Party, signed and published today to express our position on this bill, which will unfortunately pass on Monday considering the power of the Liberal majority, despite everything that experts, the general public, and police forces are saying, and despite what common sense dictates.

The letter is signed by the member for Richmond—Arthabaska, our political lieutenant, the member for Beauce, the member for Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, the member for Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d'Orléans—Charlevoix, the member for Beauport—Limoilou, the member for Louis-Saint-Laurent, the member for Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, the member for Lévis—Lotbinière, the member for Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, and the member for Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles.

We on this side of the House have taken a clear stance. The government wants to move quickly on this without weighing all the facts. We believe that as of July 1, 2018, this bill will drastically change our society. This week we had the opportunity to meet with U.S. officials who are also very concerned about the impact that this bill will have at the border.

Our border with the United States is something we must take care of, something we must absolutely be concerned about. It is not complicated: we should ensure people are able to cross the border as easily as possible. The United States is our most important client. It is where Canadians go most often to relax. It is the place where we have the most ties, and it is our primary economic partner.

The United States is very worried about what is happening because their federal government considers using marijuana as a crime. Anyone who commits a crime outside the United States and admits it may be denied entry into the United States. That is what the Liberals are failing to tell Canadians.

Let us imagine that a person smokes marijuana, whether in their apartment or in a park, just before crossing the border. We know that the smell of marijuana really lingers and that it permeates just about everything near the person smoking it. When the canine units at the border sniff the scent of marijuana on this person, the U.S. customs officers may not find any drugs, but they will pull him or her aside to the dreaded car search area, where no one wants to go. They will search the entire car to locate the source of the scent, even if the individual does not have marijuana on their person.

Once the vehicle has been searched, they will question the driver. They will ask whether he or she has ever consumed marijuana, and I hope the driver will say no. Otherwise the Americans will have the right to turn that person back and ban him or her from the United States for a set period of time because they admitted to consuming marijuana, with is a federal offence in the United States. This is not something that the Liberal government is quick to point out to Canadians who are travelling to Florida, Arizona, or California, and it is also not something that they have settled with the Americans.

For that and other reasons, and especially because of the harm that this government is going to do to Canadian youth, I and my other 10 Quebec colleagues, will vote against Bill C-45 on Monday.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

Madam Speaker, I would like to advise you from the outset that I will be splitting my time with the member for Mégantic—L'Érable.

I rise to take the opportunity to speak today against Bill C-45, a rushed and ill-conceived piece of legislation, which many of my colleagues have already pointed out has many flaws. Please allow me to amplify their concerns and add mine.

First and foremost, what is the rush? What is the rush with one-step, full-scale legalization, without interim steps? What is so important about the arbitrary deadline of July 1, 2018?

Really, if we are looking to do something substantive in a rush, maybe the Liberals could listen to my NDP colleagues who have been calling, for a long time, to make sure that the records of people who have been found guilty and have a criminal record for simple possession would be eliminated, so they could get a good job. If the Liberals want to rush something, why do they not rush at that?

Why ignore police and medical professionals' advice and push ahead with Bill C-45? Why not allow police, provincial and municipal governments, as well as health officials to better prepare for the onslaught of issues this legalization will unleash?

Believe me, there will be an onslaught of issues. All members need to do is look at other jurisdictions that have legalized marijuana to find that there will be a slew of issues that the government will need to deal with.

To date, why has there been no public education of the risks of smoking marijuana? What we have heard most often about many of the risks of marijuana is that they are so much more detrimental to our youth. No one should assume that some of us who are speaking against this, because we are parents and public figures, are trying to be condescending. None of us are trying to be patronizing. No one should assume that any of my colleagues or myself are trying to stereotype anyone either. We do not have some outdated notion of society.

What we are saying is that there is a massive number of risks that we are concerned about, and the government has not taken them into consideration. Data shows 30% to 40% of young people who use cannabis under the age of 25 will develop psychotic disorders, depression, and anxiety disorders. Let me repeat that, upward of one-third of people under 25 who use marijuana will develop psychotic disorders, depression, or anxiety disorders. That is far too many.

Where are the human rights champions over there who know already of the growing mental health epidemic with our youth, and who are not speaking up about the way drugs exacerbate those mental health issues? Where are they?

As a father of a daughter who suffered mental health issues to the point of taking her own life this past summer, I have seen first-hand the risks of drugs at an early age. My family and I have seen this path and what it leads to, the hurt and the pain, the suffering. We have felt the consequences most directly as many, too many, other families have.

Our heart aches thinking about what could have been, what should have been, had Lara not been exposed to drugs, on top of all the other demons she had to fight on a daily basis. It is tragic, and it is all to common.

That is why I am particularly concerned about the provisions in Bill C-45 when it comes to possession by children ages 12 to 17. As currently written, the bill allows children aged 12 to 17 to be in possession of five grams of pot. This is approximately five to 10 joints. What is positive about that, in any way, shape, or form? How is that good government? How is that having a concern about the safety and security of Canadians?

I am profoundly concerned. At 12, children cannot buy cigarettes, they cannot drink, they cannot drive, they cannot vote, they cannot enlist to fight for our country, but they can possess five to 10 joints. Really?

Medical professionals have told us that the number should be zero. In fact, they oppose Bill C-45 based on the harm it would do to our youth, and they are concerned about the young age at which it allows youth to possess pot, thereby condoning and encouraging it.

I do not accept the argument that, just because we pass legislation, we do not endorse something. Come on, that is always the case. Whenever we legislate, we are saying that we are doing it for the public good and are endorsing the behaviour.

How can I stand by as a parent who has lost a child to the struggle she had with many anxieties and depression, or as a member of Parliament whose primary concern is the safety of Canadians, and allow legislation that would exacerbate those depressions and anxiety in Canadian children as young as 12? How could I not speak out? It would be unconscionable.

I am not blind to the obvious. I know, and all members of the House know, that whether by peer pressure or otherwise, there are many teenagers who use marijuana; too many, and I wish it were far fewer. I wish they could see the damage they are doing to themselves. I wish they could have had a conversation with Lara in her later years. She would have counselled them otherwise. She would have warned them of the harm of smoking marijuana and the consequences on their cognitive abilities, how it amplifies any mental health issues, and how it is a slippery slope from one joint to a few joints to harder drugs, and on and on.

There are other reasons why Bill C-45 is flawed, not the least of which is that legalizing marijuana would not remedy the underground economy. We need only to look to tobacco. By some estimates, 40% of tobacco sold in Ontario is contraband. In fact, a study that came out last month by the National Coalition Against Contraband Tobacco found that one in three cigarettes sold in Ontario is contraband. Do members opposite honestly believe that it will be any different with pot, that it would be above board, and every single joint is taxed?

There was a similar experience with gambling, so we are not talking about something that does not have a track record in the past. After gambling was legalized, the stranglehold of organized crime continued in that business. It did not stop the gambling. In fact, by all measures, it increased it. In legalizing it, we inadvertently made matters worse for our young people. Studies indicate that up to 60% of children and adolescents engage in some form of gambling each week. This is because they are a generation that was exposed to legal gambling from a young age and it was not frowned upon, which is why the predominant concern about problem gambling is not primarily for adults but young people.

I heard some heckles about that, but we are not talking about somebody who is buying a lottery ticket. Are those members out to lunch? I am talking about someone who begins in gambling and then is trapped in gambling, and then that is a lifestyle. They can never ever enjoy their job or buy a house or anything, because they fritter away all their money on gambling. If that is what some members feel is okay for youth, then fine with that.

We must question the signals that we are sending to our teenagers. What precedent are we setting? Are we fully ready for all the social impacts that this will have on the years ahead?

My colleagues have raised a number of other points about Bill C-45, such as drug-impaired driving, the super-sized amount of pot one could grow at home, the lack of a public education program, and scientific evidence. However, the point I want to stress today and the question I want all members of the chamber to think through clearly is the exposure of marijuana to young children and adolescents. It is not too late to change it. It is not too late to stop it. It is not too late vote no on Bill C-45.

In closing, I will ask again, as I did at the outset. Why ignore police and medical professionals in regard to Bill C-45? Do we really think that 12 to 18 year-olds having five or 10 joints in their bedroom is a wise thing to advocate? Why do we not have more public education right now? Why not allow police, provincial and municipal governments, and health officials to better prepare for the massive upfront cost? I say again, what is the rush? Officials are not ready. I implore members to listen to the experts, doctors, scientists, and law enforcement. I ask all members to vote against Bill C-45.

The House resumed from November 22 consideration of the motion that Bill C-45, An Act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other Acts, be read the third time and passed, and of the amendment.

National Impaired Driving Prevention Week

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak to the motion put forward by the hon. member for Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel. With the holiday season almost upon us, our discussion today is very timely. The holidays are a time of year when people get together to celebrate with family and friends, but there is, of course, a cloud to that silver lining: an increased likelihood of impaired driving incidents following the celebrations.

A number of public education awareness campaigns are in full swing this time of year. They encourage Canadians to drive sober or offer drivers alternative ways to get home safely. One of them, as we have heard already, MADD Canada's project red ribbon, is marking its 30th anniversary this year. Together, these efforts have had a powerful and positive impact. According to MADD Canada's estimates, between 1982 and 2010 nearly 36,650 lives were saved in Canada due to reductions in alcohol-related fatal crashes. That is something for which we can all be very thankful.

However, despite the progress we have made as a society, impaired driving remains a very serious problem in our country. People who are in no shape to drive continue to get behind the wheel. Some choose to drive after getting high or having too much to drink, but as this motion suggests, impaired driving is not limited to drugs or alcohol. Motorists who are too tired to drive are also impaired and can cause just as much damage as drivers who are drunk or high. The same can be said for distracted drivers, including those who text behind the wheel.

Impaired drivers of all kinds not only put their own lives at risk but endanger the lives of their passengers and everyone else around them. In fact, impaired driving remains the leading criminal cause of death in Canada—anti-social criminal decisions leaving thousands of Canadians dead or seriously injured each year. What makes this carnage on our roads all the more senseless is how easily these deaths could have been prevented. The risks are well known. The risks have been known for decades. The risks are common sense. Today, we would be hard pressed to find someone who would deny the dangers of drunk driving.

Sadly, it is a somewhat different story when it comes to drugs. Drug-impaired driving is actually on the rise. Almost 3,100 incidents of drug-impaired driving were reported by police last year, 343 more than the previous year. Overall, the rate of drug-impaired driving increased by 11%. According to the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction, 40% of drivers who die in vehicle crashes test positive for drugs. By comparison, 33.3% test positive for alcohol. Figures like these show how crucial it is to get out the message about the risks and consequences of impaired driving, including driving under the influence of cannabis.

As we know, this past spring the Government of Canada introduced Bill C-45. Its overarching goal is to protect the health and safety of Canadians, keep cannabis out of the hands of youth, and prevent criminals from profiting from its production and sale. The bill proposes tough new measures to severely punish anyone who sells or supplies cannabis to young Canadians. That includes two new criminal offences with maximum penalties of 14 years in prison for those who sell or provide cannabis to anyone under the age of 18. These proposed measures complement a public education and awareness campaign informing Canadians, especially Canadian youth, about cannabis and its risks.

Budget 2017 directed an initial investment of $9.6 million for public education and awareness on this topic. The public education campaign has begun and will continue over the next five years, because there is an immediate and continuing need to set the record straight on a number of issues related to cannabis. The funds will also be used to monitor the trends and perceptions of cannabis use among Canadians, especially youth. Too many people are under the delusion that cannabis does no harm, which is completely false. Cannabis presents definite health risks.

Another myth centres on a person's ability to drive after consuming cannabis. We know that young people who test positive for drugs, alcohol, or both continue to be the largest group of drivers killed in motor vehicle crashes. However, when it comes to cannabis, research shows that many Canadians, including youth, do not take the risks seriously. According to an EKOS study conducted for Health Canada last year, 27% of Canadians have driven a vehicle while under the influence of cannabis. More than one-third of Canadians also reported that they had been passengers in vehicles driven by someone under the influence of cannabis. That number jumps to 42% among young adults and 70% among recent cannabis users.

The results of a national study conducted by the Partnership for a Drug Free Canada can help to explain these findings. It found that almost one-third of teens do not consider driving under the influence of cannabis to be as bad as doing so under the influence of alcohol. In addition, just over a quarter of Canadian young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 believe that a driver is either the same or, sadly, better on the road while under the influence of cannabis.

The reality paints a far different and more gruesome picture. Among all drivers killed in motor vehicle crashes in Canada between 2000 and 2010, 16.4% tested positive for cannabis, which is one in six.

It is clear that a large percentage of Canadians downplay or even flat out disbelieve the fact that cannabis impairs your ability to drive safely. That is one reason why Bill C-46 is such an important piece of legislation as a complement to Bill C-45.

Bill C-46 would strengthen Canada's laws to enforce a strict approach for those who drive under the influence of alcohol or drugs, including cannabis. Among other provisions, it would create new criminal offences for drug-impaired driving, and authorize new tools to allow police to detect drivers who have drugs in their system.

In September, the government announced up to $274.5 million in funding to support the provisions of the bill. Up to $161 million of that funding is earmarked for building law enforcement capacity across the country. It will help law enforcement and border officials detect and deter drug-impaired driving, and enforce the cannabis legislation and regulations. That includes training additional front-line officers in how to recognize the signs and symptoms of drug-impaired driving, and providing them with access to drug screening devices. It also includes funding to raise public awareness about the dangers of drug-impaired driving.

As announced last month, the Government of Canada is joining forces with Young Drivers of Canada to spread that important message. The project will involve the airing of public service announcements over the next year. Public Safety Canada and Young Drivers of Canada will also work together to share material through Facebook, Twitter, and other social media channels.

I think all of us in this House can agree that impaired driving is a serious problem in Canada. Awareness weeks like the one proposed by my colleague are another tool that we can use to foster good habits, recognize the dangers of impairment, and even to recognize impairment itself, because there seems to be some misconception about that, and to have safer roads and save lives.

I will be supporting this motion and I encourage my colleagues in the House to do the same.

Business of the House

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister of Small Business and Tourism]

Mr. Speaker, this afternoon, we will continue the debate begun this morning on the Conservative Party's opposition motion.

Tomorrow, we will have the second and last day of debate at third reading stage of Bill C-45 on cannabis.

Monday, we will resume debate on Bill C-59 concerning national security. We will then move on to the report stage of Bill C-63 on the budget.

We will continue with debate of Bill C-63 on Tuesday.

On Wednesday and Thursday, we shall take up debate on the Senate amendments relating to Bill S-3, the Indian Act, unless we can get it done sooner.

I should also note that we will have the LGBTQ2 apology next Tuesday, November 28, immediately following question period.

Cannabis Act

[Peter Schiefke, Liberal, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very thankful that my hon. colleague and her party will be supporting Bill C-45 as a measure that will help protect our young people and ensure that they have less access to cannabis.

We are taking action on all fronts. We are looking at the opioid crisis, taking concrete action and have been doing so since we took office. I will say that that is actually something that has been supported by all sides of this House, because I think we all realize it is an urgent crisis that needs to be addressed. We are addressing it on multiple levels.

Specifically in relation in the question about cannabis, this is something we promised Canadians we would do, something that we realized needed to be addressed for a very long time. We had a failed system in place. We are no longer going to turn a blind eye to it. We are no longer going to look Canadians straight in the face and say that we are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a system that is working, because it is not working.

The statistics I mentioned, and that the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada mentioned in her speech, show one in five youth, and one in three aged 20 to 24, are smoking are marijuana. That has been ongoing for a while. We are taking action. It is something we promised Canadians we would do. That is exactly what we are doing.

[Peter Schiefke, Liberal, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Mr. Speaker, did my hon. colleague speak to any law enforcement officials here in Canada?

Had he done that, he would have seen that this is not a new problem that would be created by Bill C-45. Right now, there are Canadians who are driving under the influence of cannabis, and nothing was done by the previous government to address that issue.

Here we are. Bill C-45 is on the table. Now it has suddenly become an issue for Conservatives. They suddenly see it as a problem for Canadians. The former Conservative government could have looked at it and said that driving under the influence of cannabis is an issue in this country, and that it was going to work with our law enforcement officials, listen to them, and give them the funding necessary to empower them to do their jobs.

Conservatives have finally woken up and realized that this is an issue. Now, after we have announced over $80 million to provide law enforcement officials with the support they have been asking for for a long time, the previous government has decided to wake up.

[Peter Schiefke, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister (Youth)]

Mr. Speaker, I rise in the House today to discuss this government's plan to legalize and strictly regulate cannabis in Canada.

Bill C-45, the cannabis act, was put forward by this government to confront and address the realities of cannabis use in our country. It happens that Canadians are some of the most avid users of cannabis in the entire world.

In 2015, 21% of those aged 15 to 19 used cannabis regularly. The number was 30% for those aged 20 to 24. It is accessible to our children, it is available in schools, and it funds major organized crime to the tune of billions of dollars per year. Clearly the current approach is outdated, archaic, and just does not work.

Over the years, the Government of Canada's approach to cannabis use devolved into harsh mandatory minimums and unfair criminal justice practices. The reality we have found ourselves in does not match the policies that previous governments have enacted.

I am proud to rise to share with my hon. colleagues in the House and my constituents of Vaudreuil—Soulanges why the cannabis act is the plan we need now to build a safer and better Canada.

We need a new approach, one that takes care of our children and punishes organized criminals rather than everyday Canadians. The cannabis act would revamp the Government of Canada's policies in three key ways, to legalize and strictly regulate cannabis use in Canada.

First, we will prioritize working with the territories and provinces as equal partners to reforming the current cannabis regime in Canada. This work is well under way and it has been for quite some time now.

Second, we will address the simple fact that cannabis is accessible to Canadian teenagers, whether we like it or not.

Third, we will take billions of dollars out of the pockets of organized criminals and gangs.

Each of these pillars is critical for my community of Vaudreuil—Soulanges where thousands of new families settle each year, making it one of the fastest-growing ridings in the country. However, they also apply from coast to coast to coast, and work to address challenges we face with our provincial and territorial partners.

Our aim is to set a framework that the provinces and the territories can expand on in ways that best suit them. Our plan will succeed because the cannabis act works with our partners while safeguarding the underlying principles protecting our youth and keeping money out of the hands of criminals.

Working with our provincial partners and, in particular, my community of Vaudreuil—Soulanges, and the Government of Quebec is the cornerstone of this new approach. Last week, the Quebec government's cannabis legislation was tabled in the national assembly. Its legislation is complementary to the partnership we have established to ensure safety and security for our young people and for our communities.

In Quebec, the government will be creating the société québécoise du cannabis, a parallel body to the Société des alcools du Québec. This model has worked in Quebec to support alcohol regulation and I am confident our partners will get the needs of Quebecers right in cannabis legalization as well.

The strict regulation of cannabis under the cannabis act is designed, first and foremost, to protect Canada's young people. This is particularly important to me as parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister for youth, and also as a father of two young children. It is also a priority for the young families that choose to call my community of Vaudreuil—Soulanges home. I am sure all members in the House will agree that we owe it to them to get this right, and the cannabis act does not compromise on keeping Canadians safe, particularly young Canadians.

We are setting a national benchmark for a legal age to purchase and consume cannabis at 18 years of age. The Government of Quebec set the same age with its legislation last week.

We will not be punishing our teenagers for possessing up to five grams of cannabis. Instead, we are setting harsher penalties of up to 14 years in jail for selling or giving cannabis to youth or using young people to commit cannabis-related crimes.

This government believes that the abuse of youth by illegal drug trafficking networks is a real crime. I think that my colleagues on both sides of the House and in the provinces and territories share this belief.

We must ensure that young Canadians understand the dangers and potential consequences of using cannabis. In October, we announced an investment of $46 million over five years to raise awareness among Canadian youth of the realities of cannabis use.

By supporting large-scale campaigns to inform and educate Canadians, we are creating widespread awareness of the risks of cannabis consumption. As part of our plan, 114,000 brochures entitled “Cannabis Talk” have already been distributed in partnership with Drug Free Kids Canada.

On November 10, Health Canada hosted a partnership symposium on cannabis public education and awareness. Stakeholders from all sectors gathered in Ottawa to better identify possible actions.

These concrete measures are proof of our commitment to prioritizing health and safety risks based on facts, not on fear or disinformation. This includes prohibiting the use of attractive packaging and labelling in advertising and any other attempt to encourage young Canadians to consume cannabis.

The bill currently before the House would impose fines of up to $5 million, imprisonment for up to three years, or both for distributors who do not comply with the regulations. By setting national standards to meet the challenges associated with the widespread use of cannabis in Canada, we are taking fair action to protect young Canadians without punishing the one-third of adults who use cannabis recreationally.

Our government wants to protect our youth by instead focusing our efforts on organized crime and people who give cannabis to children despite the health risks associated with cannabis use at a young age.

By setting very strict penalties for selling cannabis to young people, our government is sending a clear message about our unwavering commitment to protecting the health and safety of young people first and foremost, in my riding of Vaudreuil—Soulanges, across Quebec, and across the country. This is something that all Canadians can get behind.

Canadians also know that we need to do whatever it takes to keep money out of the hands of criminals and organized crime. The cannabis act will make our streets safer by creating a legal, regulated, and safe supply of cannabis that will be available to all Canadians who have reached the age of majority.

Bill C-45 establishes a framework for purchasing product online or in person and allows Canadians to have access to cannabis outside the black market. The bill also enables the government to set reasonable prices that would be directly competitive with current prices on the black market.

We are also ensuring that those who wish to continue selling cannabis outside of regulated markets will be subject to penalties. Depending on the seriousness of the offence, they will face fines and up to 14 years in prison. This approach will allow the government to remain flexible while also going after the worst offenders.

The cannabis act will keep our young people safe and keep money out of the hands of criminals, thanks to a strictly regulated sales system for this country.

Our government is establishing a framework for our provincial and territorial partners so that the work reflects the will and concerns of the people.

I am proud to contribute to a plan that is built on fact-based decisions and reflects the reality we are currently facing in Vaudreuil—Soulanges, in Quebec, and of course in Canada.

I am proud to be part of a government that is taking action to address a problem that has existed for far too long. It is a problem that has existed for decades, and yet previous governments just made the decision to continue with the status quo. We knew full well the rates were high. In some cases, depending on the age group, rates were going up, but previous governments did nothing. We knew that those who were smoking marijuana, almost one-third in some cases or even more than one-third in certain age groups, were getting a product from organized criminals and drug dealers.

People had no idea what the product had been laced with. It was a product that people knew could have been laced with something that was more detrimental to their health, and yet they had no other option because governments turned a blind eye to the realities of a failing system. We knew the system that existed for the last 10 years and even for decades was putting billions of dollars into the pockets of organized crime.

I can say with a good amount of authority, and I speak on behalf of my caucus members from Quebec, that this had a serious impact on violence and violent crime in my home province of Quebec. Those people who are from Quebec, and who have been following incidents of violent crime related to organized criminal activities in Quebec know there have been significant rises and falls in crime relating to biker gangs, and that the primary source of revenue for these gangs was the illicit sale of drugs. Yet, federal governments did absolutely nothing.

Governments still tried to convince Canadians they were spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a system that was working when we knew full well it was not working. We could have done better, and we should have done better, but it required courage to do so. It requires looking back as to why we are all here as members of Parliament.

We are here to put in place systems that work, and to use taxpayers' money effectively. Yet, for decades, we have not been doing that. We have been trying to convince Canadians we had the best possible plan in place, and their hundreds of millions of dollars were being spent properly. We knew full well that was not the case.

Therefore, this is what we did. We first started off by being honest and open with Canadians that this is what we would do if we were elected. Once we were elected, we followed through on that promise and started with national consultations, including committees that met and brought in experts on all sides to talk about how we can best do this. We studied other jurisdictions in the United States and around the world who have seen better success rates in the systems that they had in place. I and other members of Parliament from all sides of this House went across the country, hosting town halls and asking for feedback from our fellow constituents. We worked hard over the last two years to reach out to Canadians and to experts in various fields to make sure we were getting the information to get this right.

Second, we looked at all the data that was in place. There have been many studies that have been put forward talking about health benefits and about other systems that worked better. Because of the data, and because other jurisdictions had the courage to try something new, we were able to look at those jurisdictions, and see that they have reduced rates of cannabis use among their youth. They had reduced violent crime related to organized criminals and street gangs, and they had ensured that money was longer going into the pockets of organized criminals. They managed to do those things because they were brave enough to try something new. Because they tried something new, we are able to look at those jurisdictions and say, “What could possibly work in a Canadian context?”

Third, we have been working with our provincial and territorial counterparts to make sure there is a robust dialogue with them. Now, more than ever, we are also having a dialogue and working with our municipal counterparts to make sure that this is, at all levels of government, something we will succeed in doing, because we are working at it together.

The hope is that we would reduce the rate of consumption and use of cannabis by our youth. For those who do use cannabis regularly, they would get a regulated product that is safer for them to consume, and we would be ensuring we take money out of the hands of organized crime.

Fourth, we would ensure we provide funding where it is necessary, with over $40 million for an educational campaign at the federal level to ensure we are educating young Canadians on the negative effects of cannabis use. This would not be a law that looks to encourage young people to start smoking cannabis. This proposed law, that we are putting forward, is in the hope of reducing use among youth.

Part of that is a $40 million-plus educational campaign to make sure we are doing everything we can to educate young Canadians about the fact that cannabis is not something they should be using, and that there are health effects which could be particularly negative for youth as their brains are still developing. Therefore, we are putting our money where our mouth is, because we know it is a necessary step in putting this proposed law forward.

We would also put forward over $80 million to provide support to law enforcement agencies across the country to give them the tools to better understand how to detect those driving under the influence of cannabis, which is incredibly important. Whether or not we want to admit it in this House, there are already people who are driving under the influence of cannabis, and yet very little has been done, particularly by the previous government, which did very little but turn a blind eye and leave it up to law enforcement to try and figure it out on its own.

The previous government knew full well that the problem already existed, and that those law enforcement agencies could have used additional funding to better train law enforcement officials, and to put in place better systems to find out who was driving under the influence and take appropriate action. Therefore, this money would also go toward providing the tools necessary to test individuals for driving under the influence.

I did not come to this House to do easy work, and I know I speak for many of us who were elected in the election of October 2015. I came here to solve problems, particularly ones that have been plaguing Canada and Canadians for far too long. I say with all sincerity, and I know I share this with young fathers and mothers in this House, and those who have older children, that we need to make decisions now that are going to positively affect our youth later on. We should not leave it up to the next government, regardless of how difficult those decisions are. Instead, we need to make those tough decisions now.

My hope is that when my three-year-old son, Anderson, and my one-year-old daughter, Ellie, are at the age when they are going to high school, that they have a harder time accessing cannabis, that they have an educational system and a campaign in place at all levels of government that does not turn a blind eye to the fact that it is easier to get marijuana on a high school campus than it is to get cigarettes, and that we are actually taking action.

This is the kind of legacy I want to leave for my kids, and that is the kind of legacy that I want to leave for future generations of young Canadians. With that, I encourage all members of this House, regardless of which aisle they sit on, to vote in favour of Bill C-45. Let us take the next necessary steps in protecting our young people.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the NDP pointed this out early on, after hearing testimony about the difficulties some people had entering the United States when asked by border guards if they had ever used cannabis and they answered affirmatively. Even though they had used the cannabis legally in Washington state and Colorado, they were denied entry into the U.S. This led to a concern by the NDP that the government should be negotiating, or at least attempting to negotiate, with the Trump administration some form of agreement to recognize the reality that cannabis would be legal in Canada. We do not want to subject Canadians to being turned away at the border or being compelled to lie. The answer we got, unfortunately, was unsatisfactory. It appears that the government has not been entering into those negotiations. There is a real concern that after July 1, 2018, Canadians will be vulnerable in that respect.

I want to end on a positive note. Economically, Canada has a chance to be a global leader in producing safe, quality cannabis products. We are not the only country in the world that will legalize it. Other countries will do it, too. This is a classic industry that is sustainable, high tech, innovative, green. A $5 seed can be turned into $1,000 worth of product. Canadians are global leaders, and that is why we are so adamant that the ban on importation and exportation in Bill C-45 should be changed to give Canadian businesses a chance to tap into that market. This could provide billions and billions of dollars of economic activity once other countries do as Canada does and we abandon the old prohibitionist view of conservative parties around the world.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, when the Liberals promised Canadians cannabis legalization last election, I think that reasonable Canadians understood legalization to mean the end of criminalization, the end of stigmatization, and the end of the prohibitionist approach to cannabis. It is why I, along with millions of other Canadians, was somewhat surprised to read the fine print of Bill C-45 only to discover that it is not legalization at all, but would just make cannabis less illegal. The proposed legislation would create a litany of new cannabis-related criminal offences, most of which carry a maximum sentence of up to 14 years in prison. As renowned criminal defence attorney Michael Spratt put it:

[Bill C-45] is an unnecessarily complex piece of legislation that leaves intact the criminalization of marijuana in many circumstances.

An adult who possesses more than 30 grams of marijuana in public is a criminal. A youth who possesses more than five grams of marijuana is a criminal. An 18-year-old who passes a joint to his 17-year-old friend is a criminal. An adult who grows five marijuana plants...is a criminal...This continued criminalization is inconsistent with a rational and evidence-based criminal justice policy and will only serve to reduce...the positive effects of [the bill].

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health has claimed that these harsh penalties are reserved for some “gangster in a stairwell” selling cannabis to children, but this is exactly the sort of reefer madness rhetoric that has fuelled prohibition for nearly a century. The evidence before the health committee was directly contrary to this view. In fact, 95% of cannabis producers and consumers in this country are non-violent, law-abiding citizens who have nothing to do with organized crime whatsoever.

If criminalization and the threat of imprisonment prevented people from using cannabis, then Canadians would not be consuming an estimated 655 metric tons of it every year when we have full criminalization and life sentences for trafficking. Indeed, the prohibitionist approach has been repeatedly discredited by its failures throughout history. Cannabis consumption has increased steadily throughout the so-called “war on drugs”, and Canadian youth consume cannabis at some of the highest rates in the world today. Of the 4.6 million people the parliamentary budget officer projects will use cannabis at least once in 2018, nearly 1.7 million, or more than one-third, would be in the 15 to 24 age group.

For far too long, we have wasted billions of dollars in resources in the criminal justice system by criminalizing otherwise law-abiding citizens at an alarming rate for simply processing and consuming cannabis. In fact, we still are. According to Statistics Canada, in 2016, under the Liberal government after it promised Canadians legalization, the most recent year of available data, there were 55,000 offences related to cannabis reported to police, and police charged 17,733 people with pot possession. Given that cannabis possession will soon be made legal in Canada, the NDP has been clear from the outset that we should immediately decriminalize the possession of recreational cannabis for personal use pending full legalization.

Now, petty possession is a crime that the Prime Minister himself has admitted to committing while serving as an elected official. This admission of past cannabis use belies his repeated assertion that “Until we've changed the law, the current laws exist and apply.” I guess he meant that they apply to other people and not to him.

It is a shame and hypocrisy of the highest order that the current government continues to prosecute and convict Canadians for simple cannabis possession, which is something the government admits should be legal. The government knows full well that current cannabis laws are not applied consistently across this country. Indeed, their discriminatory impact has been well documented by Canadian researchers, like Simon Fraser University's Dr. Neil Boyd.

Furthermore, given the extensive body of research on the negative impacts of carrying a criminal record, it is clear that pursuing thousands of convictions for actions that we no longer view as criminal will needlessly harm vulnerable Canadians, particularly young people, racialized communities, indigenous people, and other marginalized groups, mainly the poor.

I want to be clear that because I support genuine cannabis legalization, I acknowledge that Bill C-45 is an improvement on the status quo. That is why Canada's New Democrats will support this legislation. This bill allows for the legal possession of up to 30 grams of cannabis, permits the legal cultivation of up to four cannabis plants per dwelling or house, and creates a framework for the development of a legal recreational cannabis industry in Canada.

I must note, however, that Bill C-45, inexplicably, allows the provinces and territories to derogate from these basic freedoms. This should be a major concern to anyone who wants genuine cannabis legalization in Canada, and those who are urging this House to rush this legislation through.

I also want the record to show that after we revealed gaping holes in the Liberal government's cannabis legislation, the NDP worked in the best spirit of Jack Layton to reach across the aisle to give Canadians what they actually voted for, genuine cannabis legalization.

For anyone who doubts the positive role an effective opposition can play, I will point out that we were able to convince the Liberals to do the following: drop the ridiculous 100 centimetre plant height limit belied by all evidence and the experts; bring in edibles and concentrates, albeit not immediately, but within a year; and recognize the necessity of craft cannabis growers being brought into the legalized production framework.

Mark my words, these improvements would not have happened had the New Democrats not worked diligently at committee to bring forth the witnesses and evidence, and push the government to do the right thing. I will give the government credit because, unlike the previous Conservative government, which hardly ever took any suggestions from this side of the House, the Liberal government has proven able to listen to the evidence and make adjustments, albeit not as far as we would like.

In addition, at the health committee, we put forward 38 practical amendments to fully align Bill C-45 with its purposes section and the evidence we heard from expert testimony. The purposes include bringing the illicit industry into the light; making sure that Canadians have access to safe, well-regulated cannabis products; and taking the production and distribution of cannabis out of the hands of organized crime and bringing it into the regulated legal industry.

That is what the New Democrats paid attention to when we moved our amendments to make sure that this legislation aligned with those purposes. Unfortunately, the Liberal government has refused to do that in all cases, edibles being the most notable example. The government is content to leave edibles and concentrates in the hands of the black market, in the hands of organized crime, totally unregulated for up to another year and a half to two years from now. It cannot explain why.

Our proposed changes, besides legalizing the sale of edibles and concentrates, included providing pardons to Canadians saddled with a criminal record for offences that will no longer be offences under Bill C-45. This amendment was ruled outside the scope of Bill C-45. However, given the Prime Minister's previous statements, it is rather shocking that the Liberal government would structure a cannabis legalization bill in such a way that pardons cannot be included via an amendment, with these ruled outside the scope of the bill. When the Liberals say they have taken their time and consulted widely, maybe they could explain to Canadians how, after two years, they somehow forgot to deal with the issue of pardons for the criminal convictions that Canadians carry for cannabis possession when they Liberals know how devastating the effects are of those criminal convictions on people's economic and social lives.

We also proposed amendments to empower provincial governments to create parallel production licensing regimes to give them the flexibility to implement legalization in the manner best suited to their jurisdiction. For example, this amendment would have allowed provinces to let craft growers, small-scale producers, outdoors growers, and artisanal growers compete against large federally licensed corporate entities. That was voted down by the Liberals.

We proposed decriminalizing the penalties section in line with the Tobacco Act, proposing instead that the legalization take a regulatory approach, with significant fines for offences, rather than criminal ones. One of the purposes of Bill C-45, as laid out in section 7, is to “reduce the burden on the criminal justice system in relation to cannabis”. Penalties in the bill, in the NDP's view, should be consistent with that stated intent.

With the Liberal government's rejection of these amendments, I am very concerned that Bill C-45 will continue to harm many Canadians after it becomes law in this country. Unconscionable prison sentences, arbitrary possession limits, and barriers to small craft and artisanal producers are just a few of the damaging provisions that need to be corrected.

However, I am heartened that this bill would at least require a mandatory review of the act's operation in the next Parliament. I view this as a tacit admission by the government that it knows that this bill contains problematic sections that will need to be fixed. In fact, it was a Liberal amendment to move the review from five years to three years. I think the Liberals know that this bill has flaws that will need to be fixed.

Truthfully, I would prefer to get it right the first time around. As it currently stands, the federal government has left the heavy lifting of legalization to the provincial, territorial, municipal, and indigenous governments. The task force on cannabis legalization was very clear in the lead up to legalization that the federal government should “Take a leadership role to ensure that capacity is developed among all levels of government prior to the start of the regulatory regime”. Yet, when asked if the federal government had even been talking with first nations and indigenous governments on a nation-to-nation basis to ensure that capacity were developed, Ontario Regional Chief Isadore Day told the health committee, “No, they haven't, and again, it's going to be really critical.”

By freezing out stakeholders and insisting on meeting an arbitrary politically motivated deadline, the Liberal government is clearly sacrificing quality legislation for speed. This has led to the emergence of a complex patchwork of different approaches to cannabis across Canada, and will put many Canadians in the position of perhaps breaking the law unintentionally. For example, some provinces may not allow any home growing. In fact, Quebec just announced this very measure. Some provinces may choose to lower the public possession limit from 30 grams. Some provinces may forbid public consumption. Some municipalities may ban cannabis sales and consumption completely.

I want to be clear to any Canadians watching this. The Liberals put forth legislation that will allow the provinces to deviate from people being allowed to grow four plants at home and from being legally able to carry 30 grams of cannabis in public. For those who are searching for and have waited for decades and decades for cannabis legalization, they should be aware that federal leadership in a national legalized structure for cannabis is not going to be delivered by this bill. We see that already, as I have mentioned, with the Quebec example. In that province, one will not be able to grow plants at home. I do not think that is what cannabis advocates have been working for all these years.

The Liberals' recent attempt to unilaterally impose an excise tax without consulting other jurisdictions directly contradicted the recommendations of the McClellan report. The Liberals' attempt to keep half the excise tax revenues at the federal level ignores the fact that the bulk of expenses related to legalization will fall to the provincial, territorial, and municipal levels.

For our part, Canada's New Democrats will continue to reach across the aisle to help ensure that legalization is done right and on time. Ever since the Liberal government of the day ignored the recommendations of the 1971 Le Dain commission, our party has been calling on successive governments to stop saddling Canadians with criminal records for using cannabis. We strongly believe and continue to maintain that these unjustifiable arrests must end as soon as possible.

I would be remiss not to use this occasion to outline some simple truths about cannabis that I fear are far too often drowned out of the public discussion by prohibitionist fearmongering. Number one, in almost all contexts, alcohol and tobacco are far more personally and socially harmful than cannabis. Cannabis does not make people aggressive, a person cannot fatally overdose on cannabis, and cannabis is not a carcinogen. We heard this point repeated over and over again by experts at the health committee.

Number two, cannabis has a broad range of therapeutic benefits. It is used as an effective medicine by Canadian patients suffering from conditions ranging from epilepsy to PTSD, from cancer to arthritis. I believe if this point were properly understood by the Liberals, they would not recently have announced a plan without consulting patients to impose a new excise tax of $1 per gram on medicinal cannabis, or 10% of the final retail price, whichever is higher.

At the end of 2016, there were 129,876 Canadian patients with authorizations from physicians to use medicinal cannabis, and since the first Canadian veteran was reimbursed on compassionate grounds in 2007, Veterans Affairs Canada now covers the cost of medicinal cannabis for over 3,000 Canadian veterans, yet the government wants to tax them.

Shockingly, however, the federal government does not cover medicinal cannabis for indigenous people, a discriminatory policy that puts a lie to the Prime Minister's claim that his most important relationship is with indigenous communities.

The Liberals' medicinal cannabis tax is misconceived, unfair to patients, and damaging to public health. It is simply poor public policy. The cost of medicinal cannabis is already high, given that unlike prescription drugs and medically necessary devices, it is not tax exempt under federal law. Medicinal cannabis is neither exempt from the GST nor eligible for reimbursement under nearly all public or private insurance plans, so patients are currently forced to spend hundreds, or thousands, of dollars each month to acquire a sufficient supply of medicinal cannabis, or choose a riskier option, like a prescription opioid because it is tax exempt and covered for reimbursement. That is perverse.

Medicinal cannabis should be treated like other medically prescribed therapeutic medicines. Looking forward, New Democrats will use every tool at our disposal to scrap that flawed policy decision.

Third, just yesterday, in the House, the Conservative member for Thornhill told Canadians that legal cannabis is just as dangerous as fentanyl, and home-grown cannabis is “virtually the same as putting fentanyl on a shelf within reach of kids”. This is an outrageous and dangerous falsehood, and grossly insensitive to those who have lost loved ones to fentanyl overdoses. Trying to capitalize on their personal tragedy for political purposes is shameful, callous, and unsupportable. I call on the Conservative Party to correct the record and for the member to offer a sincere apology to every Canadian who has been affected by the fentanyl crisis.

That brings me to truth number four. Cannabis and cannabis concentrates have been consumed by humans for thousands of years without bringing about the alarmist predictions peddled by prohibitionists. Cannabis is not a carcinogen, there are no lethal overdoses from cannabis and cannabinoids, and cannabis can be used to reduce anxiety and enhance enjoyment of many activities. Much like unwinding with a glass of wine, millions of adult Canadians find occasional cannabis consumption a relaxing and pleasurable way to spend their free time.

Ultimately, I have come to understand that a genuinely legalized and properly regulated cannabis industry in Canada has enormous potential in many respects. Done right, an appropriate legal approach can achieve impressive benefits economically, technologically, and medicinally. It can advance Canada's cannabis producers, retailers, and innovators on a global scale. It can generate world-leading intellectual property, innovation, and sustainable development benefits, and it can help establish an evidence-based understanding of cannabis that has been so marred by decades of misinformation and mythology.

At the very time that many other jurisdictions are also grappling with the failures of prohibition, why on earth would we pre-emptively cut ourselves off at the knees by legally prohibiting cannabis exports to markets where it would be legal to import it, and yet Bill C-45 explicitly prohibits all importation and exportation of recreational cannabis. The world is rapidly waking up to the potential of safe, regulated, and legal cannabis products. Countries like France, the Czech Republic, Belgium, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Croatia, and Slovenia look to reexamine their approaches to cannabis, and Canada should be establishing itself as a first-to-market world leader. While the U.S. cannabis industry continues to be hindered by the Trump administration's reefer madness thinking about cannabis, Canada should be taking advantage by empowering our entrepreneurs and developing export markets all around the world.

Millions of Canadians use cannabis. They have used it in the past, they will use it today, and they will continue to use it in the years to come. They are not criminals. They are our parents, teachers, friends, colleagues, loved ones, and citizens of this great country who voted for genuine cannabis legalization in the last election. The NDP will continue to work positively and constructively to develop the smartest, safest, and most effective cannabis legislation and regulations in the world, because it is time we delivered.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we must not confuse Bill C-45 with the decriminalization of marijuana, although that is part of this legislation. Conservatives also agree that for minor possession that portion should be struck from the Criminal Code.

Educating children and youth from the ages of 11 to 17 is important. Those under the age of 18 will not be allowed to smoke marijuana, but allowing them to have possession of up to five joints certainly is not the type of education that we on this side of the House envision.

Sweden has spent a lot of money and has done a lot of training and as a result has seen its rate of usage drop, and that country has not legalized marijuana.

The member is correct. We should and we must educate. We should be telling people. The report that I referred to from Health Canada should be in every home and in every school. We should be warning children about the dangers. We should warn young people about what marijuana can do to them if they use it before the age of 25 and who knows what could happen after that. That should be a part of our education system.

If we put the time and energy that the Liberal government is prepared to spend on this legislation into education, we would have a whole different scenario in this country.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, throughout the debate at second reading, through committee hearings, and now finally, in the final debate, mounds and mounds of evidence have been introduced and cited, painting a grim picture of the consequences of the government's determination to legalize marijuana for recreational purposes.

Still, the Liberal government is bound and determined to ram this legislation through, so that by July 1, 2018, Canada's 151st birthday, youth as young as 18 will be able to legally purchase marijuana from government outlets, and use this drug with virtually no restrictions.

I have been allotted 20 minutes to present my objections to this harmful legislation, but would need hours to present all the evidence presented by doctors, psychiatrists, researchers, police, parents, and a host of specialists warning the government not to go down this road, and of the serious consequences if it does.

I will instead focus on a few articles and studies, and ask the members across the floor, how can they can justify their actions, having had prior knowledge to these?

I hold in my hand mandate letters from the Prime Minister to ministers on expectations and deliveries. I will be using them in my presentation to point out just how this action by the Prime Minister has been broken by his ministers.

The Prime Minister presented all ministers with these mandate letters after the last election.

The mandate letter to the Minister of Health reads:

I expect you to work closely with your Deputy Minister and his or her senior officials to ensure that the ongoing work of your department is undertaken in a professional manner and that decisions are made in the public interest.

I wonder if the minister, at that point, informed the Prime Minister about this document from her own department, modified on August 19, 2016. I am sure she was aware of it. This document, among other things, states:

Using cannabis or any cannabis product can impair your concentration, your ability to think and make decisions, and your reaction time and coordination. This can affect your motor skills, including your ability to drive. It can also increase anxiety and cause panic attacks, and in some cases cause paranoia and hallucinations.

It further states:

Cannabis should not be used if you:

are under the age of 25;

are allergic to any cannabinoid or to smoke;

have serious liver, kidney, heart or lung disease;

have a personal or family history of serious mental disorders such as schizophrenia, psychosis, depression, or bipolar disorder;

are pregnant, are planning to get pregnant, or are breast-feeding;

are a man who wishes to start a family;

have a history of alcohol or drug abuse or substance dependence.

A list of health outcomes regulated to the short and long-term use include the following:

increase the risk of triggering or aggravating psychiatric and/or mood disorders (schizophrenia, psychosis, anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder);

decrease sperm count, concentration and motility, and increase abnormal sperm morphology;

negatively impact the behavioural and cognitive development of children born to mothers who used cannabis during pregnancy.

This document was available to the minister. It clearly shows that in reaction to that, she is breaking what the Prime Minister instructed her to do. I am going to read another that the Prime Minister has written:

No relationship is more important to Canada than the relationship with Indigenous Peoples.

That was to the Minister of Indigenous Services in the opening statement. Why did the minister not sound the alarm and give the Prime Minister the message that she received from President Aluki Kotierk of the Nunavut Tunngavik? She said:

The federal government needs to consult with Inuit on whether cannabis should be legalized and, if so, when, as well as plan to deal with the possible negative impacts of legalizing cannabis...

It goes on. Chief Gina Deer of the Mohawk Council of Kanawakee stated:

Our community has been zero tolerance for many years on drugs. Now when you tell them that we have to accept marijuana as a legal product and not as a drug, it’s hard to accept, especially for elders.

The Prime Minister further stated to the Minister of Crown-Indigineous Relations:

I expect you to re-engage in a renewed nation-to-nation process with Indigenous Peoples to make real progress on the issues most important to First Nations, the Métis Nation, and Inuit communities--issues like housing, employment, health and mental health care...

This is what Chief Isadore Day stated in testimony at committee:

It's accurate to say that first nations are also not prepared to deal with the ramifications of Bill C-45. Does Canada even know the full impacts of cannabis yet? When the states of Colorado and Washington legalized cannabis sales in 2013, American Indian tribes were negatively impacted.

Further, Chief Day also stated at committee that despite hearing this, the Liberals continue to reaffirm that it's important that we focus on getting this job done as quickly as we are able.

The chief reiterated that one of the biggest concerns that first nations have with Bill C-45 is the health and safety of our people. He cited statistics that cannabis is the second most abused substance among indigenous people. He added that in Ontario alone, $33 million is needed to treat first nations with drug and alcohol addictions. He concluded by stating that there appears to be more questions than answers. This leaves the first nations in a compromising state, leading to an accelerated timeline.

The Prime Minister also said to the minister:

Work with the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness and the Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs to address gaps in services to Aboriginal people and those with mental illness throughout the criminal justice system.

She should have told him about the health report that I mentioned previously, and the concerns that his own government had with the legalization and usage of marijuana.

Health Canada stated warnings, and I have mentioned some, but it serves to mention these as well:

Cannabis contains hundreds of substances, some of which can affect the proper functioning of the brain and central nervous system. The use of this product involves risks to health, some of which may not be known or fully understood. Cannabis should not be used if you have a personal or family history of serious mental disorders such as schizophrenia...

The Prime Minister loves to point out to the Minister of Justice, who just spoke, his great love and respect for the charter. In his mandate to the minister he stated:

You are expected to ensure that the rights of Canadians are protected, that our work demonstrates the greatest possible commitment to respecting the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

A child advocate group in New Brunswick has done an assessment of violations to the rights of the child treaty, and has a very serious concern that this legislation is going to see legal challenges. I wonder if the minister should have told the Prime Minister that a court challenge, which is what it has stated, is a good idea under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Section 7 states:

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.

The minister should have warned him that by legalizing marijuana, a drug with psychoactive properties, the Government of Canada will encourage the sale and consumption of marijuana, thereby putting all Canadians at greater risk of encountering harm and death through impaired driving accidents and workplace accidents, smoking-related sicknesses, and other marijuana-induced injuries. For example, police chiefs across the country have expressed their concern that they will not be able to keep the public safe from drugged drivers. Thus, the proposal to legalize marijuana runs contrary to the charter provision, the right to the security of the person.

To the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, he wrote:

As Minister...your overarching goal will be to lead our government’s work in ensuring that we are keeping Canadians safe.

Here again, I would raise the report from the health department, but I would also make mention of a report that has just come out, “The Legalization of Marijuana in Colorado: The Impact”. The executive summary states, “Marijuana-related traffic deaths when a driver was positive for marijuana more than doubled from 55 deaths in 2013 to 123 deaths in 2016.” This same executive summary states, “In 2009, Colorado marijuana-related traffic deaths involving drivers testing positive for marijuana represented 9 percent of the traffic deaths. By 2016, that number has more than doubled to 20 percent.” It goes on, and there are statistics that talk about what happens to the youth and how youth use has risen dramatically as well.

This might be my favourite. The Prime Minister wrote to the Minister of Science, the same minister who has repeatedly, in this House, stood up and said that the current government will listen to science, because the Prime Minister told her this:

We are a government that believes in science – and a government that believes that good scientific knowledge should inform decision-making.

I wonder if that minister told the Prime Minister about the report on the legalization of marijuana in Colorado, or possibly this report from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Here is a great one she should have read, from Frontiers in Psychiatry: “Persistency of Cannabis Use Predicts Violence following Acute Psychiatric Discharge”. There is this lengthy report from the World Health Organization: “The Health and Social Effects of Nonmedical Cannabis Use”.

It goes on and on. I am sure the minister read the “Market Analysis of Plant-based Drugs C. The Cannabis Market”, from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Every one of these reports points to the same conclusion: the use of cannabis is restricted for a reason. There is a reason governments have, on a continual basis, made that their practice.

I have often stated in this House that I am genuinely impressed by the Liberal caucus. It is full of doctors and lawyers and Ph.D.s and Rhodes scholars. This is not a group of people who could be excused for not having the information.

I found a great article by James Di Fiore, written in the Huffington Post. He wrote:

I've written about my modest contribution to the elimination of pot prohibition before. To recap, in 2011 I was hired by the Liberal Party of Canada's upper brass to pressure their delegates to vote yes on a policy initiative that would push for legalization. For three months, my team approached marijuana advocacy groups and rallied their members to bombard [all] delegates via email, tweets and Facebook messages. The plan was to put enough pressure on delegates until they voted for a Canada who would shed its draconian views on weed. When we started, just 30 per cent of delegates [30 per cent of that caucus] were in [the] camp. After the votes were tallied at the Liberals' 2012 convention, more than 75 per cent of delegates voted yes.

This group can make the right choice. I know that there are many in the Liberal caucus who are opposed to what the government is doing and what the Prime Minister is forcing them to do as well. Now is the time for them to stand up, make the right choice, and vote against this dangerous bill.

I might add that the Prime Minister is not leading a bold charge that will make this an example of progressive nations. Let us listen to what Prime Minister Mark Rutte, of the Netherlands, said, in a 2014 article about the use of marijuana. “People should do with their own bodies whatever they please, as long as they are well informed about what that junk does to them”. The Dutch have a different approach to the whole idea of marijuana.

The article went on, “Rutte added in the same interview that cannabis legalization of the Colorado model”, and I should emphasize that the Colorado model is for those 21 years old and over, “where the state taxes and regulates all levels of the supply chain, and adults 21 and over are allowed to purchase weed from state-licensed stores—was out of the question. 'If we were to do that, ' he said, 'we'd be the laughing stock of Europe.'”

This not going to be a progressive move by the Prime Minister and the Liberal caucus. As a matter of fact, while the Dutch system has some major drawbacks, current UN treaties forbid countries to legalize and regulate drugs for recreational use. Specifically, the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs,1961, states that member states have a general obligation “to limit exclusively to medical and scientific purposes the production, manufacture, export, import, distribution of, trade in, use and possession of drugs.”

Piet Hein van Kempen, a professor of criminal law and criminal procedure in the Netherlands, was recently asked by the justice ministry to study whether international drug treaties offer any wiggle room to legalize, decriminalize, tolerate, or regulate cannabis in any other way for recreational use. His answer was an emphatic no. Maybe when the Prime Minister gets to meet his new best friend, Xi Jinping, he can tell him about his plans to legalize marijuana and ask for his thoughts. I am sure he would give the Prime Minister a history lesson on what took place in Chinese society.

The Liberals are on track to legalize marijuana for recreational purposes by July 1, 2018. They say they have had extensive consultations, conducted the largest online survey, and completed a report called “A Framework for the Legalization and Regulation of Cannabis in Canada”. The Liberals say they have consulted with Canadians; provincial, territorial, and municipal governments; indigenous governments; representatives of organizations; youth; parents; and experts in relevant fields. Ignoring the warnings of doctors, police chiefs, and first nations parents, they have pushed this bill rapidly through the House.

This bill would drastically change Canadian society, the full ramifications felt for years to come. They say it will protect us and take marijuana out of the hands of criminals. I suggest it would enslave our youth and make the government the new pusher on the block.

I move:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following: “Bill C-45, An Act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other Acts, be not now read a third time, but be referred back to the Standing Committee on Health for the purpose of reconsidering clause 226 with the view to establish a coming into force date that complies with the wishes of those provinces, territories, municipalities, law enforcement officials and first nation groups who require more time to prepare for the legalization of cannabis.”

[Jody Wilson-Raybould, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Mr. Speaker, we are a government that bases its actions on science, evidence, and certainly, on data. The latest data available in 2015 shows the prevalence of cannabis use in the past year was one in five Canadians aged 15 to 19, and nearly one in three aged 20 to 24. The rate of cannabis use in this country, particularly among young people, is among the highest in the world.

The status quo simply is not working. We need to ensure that we put a comprehensive framework in place around the legalization, the strict regulation, and the restriction of access to young people. This is the purpose and intent of Bill C-45. This comprehensive framework would be similar to tobacco.

We will ensure we do as much as we can to keep cannabis out of the hands of kids while at the same time ensuring we invest $40 million in the promotion of an educational campaign, a public awareness campaign, particularly among young people, about the risks of using cannabis. That is what we are committed to doing while working with other jurisdictions.

[Jody Wilson-Raybould, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Mr. Speaker, as I said in my comments, the status quo simply is not working. Our government has been committed to the legalization, strict regulation, and restriction of access to cannabis from day one.

To the first part of the question, we have engaged in extensive consultations to ensure that we heard from Canadians right across the country. The first step we took, a vitally important step, was to engage a task force on cannabis. The task force consisted of experts in justice, public health and safety, and law enforcement. This task force was led by the hon. Anne McLellan, and it provided us with substantive recommendations. Most of those recommendations are contained in Bill C-45. The task force received 30,000 submissions from Canadians across the country.

We introduced Bill C-45 and have continued throughout to engage with provinces and territories, municipalities, and indigenous communities and indigenous governments. We will continue to do that as we move towards July 2018 to ensure that we have a substantive, comprehensive framework for the legalization of cannabis in this country.

[Jody Wilson-Raybould, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the purpose of Bill C-45, as all members of the House have heard me state before, and what we are committed to, is legalization, strict regulation, and restriction of access to cannabis to keep it out of the hands of young people, and the proceeds of its sale out of the hands of criminals. As I have stated many times, simply decriminalizing it at this point would not assist us in achieving those objectives.

What I have been doing, and what I am committed to continue to do, is to work with my colleague, the Minister of Public Safety. We have recognized that over-criminalization of the possession of small amounts of cannabis is something that needs to be addressed. We have sought to address this in Bill C-45. Again, in conversations with the Minister of Public Safety, we are considering how we can approach record suspensions.

However, our focus right now is to change the status quo to ensure that we put in place a comprehensive framework for the legalization, strict regulation, and restriction of access to cannabis by young people.

[Jody Wilson-Raybould, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank all members of the committee for their substantive work on Bill C-45. As I have said with respect to this bill, protecting the health and safety of Canadians is a top priority of our government. That is why we are taking a careful regulatory approach to cannabis legalization.

Our officials have been very open, honest, and reflective in embracing discussions from across the country and throughout the world. We have been working actively with international experts, including the United Nations, to determine the best course forward on our international commitments. I want to remind the members of this House that eight American states, including the District of Columbia, have already decided to legalize recreational marijuana. We are committed to ensuring that we continue to work with our global partners to best promote public health and combat illicit drug trafficking.

[Len Webber, Conservative, Calgary Confederation, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I sit on the health committee along with a number of other wonderful people, and we do some good work. We listened to many presenters on this bill at committee, one in particular being Professor Steven Hoffman, an expert in international law who teaches at Osgoode Hall Law School. He is very concerned about Bill C-45 being passed and violating three United Nations treaties that Canada signed onto years ago. This particular bill would violate those three treaties.

How does the minister plan to deal with the United Nations and our international friends when this bill is passed?

[Jody Wilson-Raybould, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

moved that Bill C-45, An Act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other Acts, be read the third time and passed.

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise to speak to Bill C-45.

On October 13, I introduced two pieces of important legislation in the House of Commons. First, Bill C-45 proposes a framework for legalizing, strictly regulating, and restricting access to cannabis in Canada. The second complementary piece of legislation, Bill C-46, proposes new and stronger laws to more seriously tackle alcohol and drug-impaired driving, including cannabis. I am proud to note that Bill C-46 has been passed by the House and is being studied in the other place.

I am pleased to speak again today about Bill C-45 and discuss some of the amendments that were carried during the Standing Committee on Health's extensive study of the bill. I would like to thank all committee members for their considerable amount of work on this file. The committee reviewed 115 briefs and heard from nearly 100 different witnesses, who provided their invaluable perspectives on a wide array of issues, ranging from law enforcement to public health.

Groups represented at committee included the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, the Criminal Lawyers' Association, the Métis National Council, the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Public Health Association, and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. Officials from Colorado and Washington state also provided testimony on their states' experience in the legalization of cannabis.

After hearing from the witnesses, several amendments were proposed at clause-by-clause consideration of the bill. I will speak to some of these worthwhile amendments in a moment, but first I would like to remind members what Bill C-45 is all about.

Bill C-45 would create a legal framework whereby adults would be able to access legal cannabis through an appropriate retail framework sourced from a well-regulated industry or grown in limited amounts at home. Under the proposed legislation, the federal, provincial, and territorial governments will all share in responsibility for overseeing the new system. The federal government will oversee the production and manufacturing components of the cannabis framework and set industry-wide rules and standards.

To that end, our fall economic statement of 2017 has earmarked $526 million of funding to license, inspect, and enforce all aspects of the proposed cannabis act. Provincial and territorial governments will in turn be responsible for the distribution and sale components of the framework.

Beyond the legislative framework outlining the rules for production, retail sale, distribution, and possession, cannabis will remain a strictly prohibited substance.

Division 1 of part 1 of the proposed act clearly sets out that many of the offences that currently apply to cannabis under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act will continue to exist under the proposed cannabis act. This is very much in keeping with the recommendations contained in the final report of the task force on cannabis legalization and regulation.

In its report, the task force recommended that criminal offences should be maintained for illicit production, trafficking, possession for the purposes of trafficking, possession for the purposes of export, and import/export.

I will now speak to the amendments adopted by the committee. Let me begin by saying that our government supports all the amendments adopted by the Standing Committee on Health. At this time, I would like to speak about five specific amendments that were adopted during clause-by-clause consideration of Bill C-45.

First, the height restriction for cannabis plants permitted to be grown at home was eliminated. The 100-centimetre height restriction was intended to balance the interest to allow personal cultivation while safeguarding against the known risks associated with large plants, including the risk of diversion outside of the licit regime. The height restriction, indeed the proposal to allow even limited personal cultivation, attracted significant commentary both before the health committee and in the general public.

We understand the complexities leading to the task force's recommendation of a 100-centimetre height limit and accept the health committee's conclusion after it listened to several witnesses about the problems that such a limit might realistically create.

Our government agrees that this issue is best addressed outside of the criminal law. Should they wish, provinces and territories. relying on their own legislative powers. could address plant heights and if legislative authority exists or is extended to municipalities, they could do so as well.

Second, the addition of the good Samaritan provision will exempt individuals from criminal charges for simple possession if they call medical services or law enforcement following a life threatening medical emergency involving a psychoactive substance. Evidence demonstrates that individuals experiencing or witnessing an overdose or an acute medical condition are often afraid to call emergency assistance due to the fear of prosecution. A good Samaritan clause in the proposed cannabis act will help to ensure that individuals contact and co-operate with emergency services in the context of a medical emergency, knowing that they will not face prosecution for minor possession offences.

Third, the amendments to the Non-smokers' Health Act, provides flexibility to prohibit the smoking or vaping of tobacco or cannabis in specific outdoor areas or spaces by regulation in federal workplaces to protect people from exposure to tobacco or cannabis smoke. This aligns with the recommendation by the Canadian Cancer Society.

Fourth, courts will have the discretion of imposing a fine of up to $200 for an accused convicted of a ticketable offence rather than imposing a fixed fine in the amount of $200. This will ensure that the courts can consider a range of factors in setting the fine, including the ability of the accused to pay the fine.

Finally, an amendment was adopted to require a review of the proposed cannabis act three years after its coming into force and to table a report in Parliament on the results of this review.

Given the transformative nature of the proposed legislation, it is important that our government clearly communicates to Parliament and to the Canadian public the impact the legislation will have on achieving our objectives of protecting youth and reducing the role of organized crime. This will enable us as parliamentarians to determine whether future changes to the legislation are necessary to help ensure the protection of public health and safety.

I will now speak to the significant discussion that has occurred in relation to the treatment of young persons under the proposed cannabis act.

On the one hand, the Standing Committee on Health heard from witnesses, including criminal defence lawyers and the Canadian Nurses Association, who argued that youth possession of cannabis should not be subject to criminal penalties, because making it a criminal offence for a youth to possess five grams of cannabis would not deter them from possessing. It would only serve to perpetuate the disproportionate enforcement of laws on young, marginalized, and racialized members of our society.

On the other hand, others, including opposition members, have called for a zero tolerance in relation to the possession of cannabis by youth. Our government is mindful of the concerns raised in relation to the exemption of young persons from criminal prosecution for possession or sharing of up to five grams of cannabis and the suggestion that this decision is sending the wrong message to youth.

As I discussed at my appearance before the committee, our government has drafted Bill C-45 to specifically ensure that there are no legal means for a young person to purchase or acquire cannabis. Young persons should not have access to any amount of cannabis.

At the same time, criminalizing youth for possessing or sharing very small amounts of cannabis recognizes the negative impacts that exposure to the criminal justice system can have on our young people, particularly marginalized young persons.

Our focus aligns with what the majority of respondents conveyed to the task force; that criminal sanctions should be focused on adults who provide cannabis to youth, not on the youth themselves. This does not mean that our government sees youth possession or consumption of cannabis as acceptable. Our government has given much thought as to how we will keep cannabis out of the hands of youth and discourage them from using cannabis at all.

Our government has been encouraging the provinces and territories to create administrative offences that would prohibit youth from possessing any amounts of cannabis without exposing them to the criminal justice system. Police would be given authority to seize cannabis from youth with small amounts. Provinces and territories use this measured approach for alcohol and tobacco possession by young persons, and it has proven to be successful. We were pleased to hear that Ontario, Quebec, and Alberta have already announced their plans to create just such prohibitions, and we expect other jurisdictions to follow suit.

This approach is complemented by the other significant protections for youth in Bill C-45. The proposed act creates new offences for those adults who either sell or distribute cannabis to youth, or who use a young person to commit a cannabis-related offence. It protects young people from promotional enticements to use cannabis, prohibits cannabis product packaging or labelling that are appealing to youth, and prohibits the sale of cannabis through self-service displays or vending machines.

In addition to these legislative mechanisms, I would also like to remind members that our government will be undertaking a broad public education campaign to inform Canadians of all ages about the proposed legislation, including penalties for providing cannabis to youth and the risks involved with consuming cannabis. This public education campaign will focus on helping young Canadians make the best choices about their future and to understand the risks and consequences of using cannabis. This public education and awareness campaign has already begun, and it will continue to be an ongoing priority. To that end, last month our government announced $36.4 million over five years in funding for public education and awareness. This is in addition to the $9.6 million over five years toward a comprehensive public education and awareness campaign, and surveillance activities that we announced in budget 2017.

I will now turn to the implementation and timing of Bill C-45. Much has been conveyed about the timing of the implementation of the proposed cannabis act, with the suggestion being made that provinces and territories will not be ready, or that law enforcement will not be ready. Several witnesses at committee, however, rightfully pointed out that we need to act now. The Canadian Public Health Association responded to claims that we are not ready for legalization by advising the committee of the following:

Unfortunately, we don't have the luxury of time, as Canadians are already consuming cannabis at record levels. The individual and societal harms associated with cannabis use are already being felt every day. The proposed legislation and eventual regulation is our best attempt to minimize those harms and protect the well-being of all Canadians.

Witnesses at committee further pointed out that there is always a perception that more time is needed, but that any delays would contribute to confusion among the population.

Our government agrees that we need to act now, and we have been working closely with provinces and territories on many fronts, including through a federal-provincial-territorial senior officials working group. The working group has been kept apprised of developments on this file over the last year through meetings via teleconference every three weeks, as well as in-person meetings. Most recently, a meeting took place here in Ottawa on October 17 and 18.

Since the introduction of Bill C-45, several federal-provincial-territorial issue-specific working groups have also been established to collaborate more closely on a range of complex issues, including drug-impaired driving, ticketable offences, taxation, and public education.

Our government recognizes that providing support to provinces and territories for this work is critical. That is why we have committed, for instance, up to $81 million specifically to the provinces and territories to train front-line officers to recognize the signs and symptoms of impaired driving, build law enforcement capacity across the country, and provide access to drug screening devices.

Our government is encouraged by the tremendous amount of work that has already been carried out in the provinces and territories. Many jurisdictions committed to and have completed public consultations on how cannabis legalization should be implemented.

Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Alberta have released proposed legislation and frameworks describing how they will approach recreational cannabis, and Manitoba has enacted the Cannabis Harm Prevention Act. Clearly, many provinces are moving forward in anticipation of the July 2018 time frame.

Recognizing that some provinces and territories may not have systems in place by the summer of 2018, our government is proposing to facilitate interim access to a regulated quality controlled supply from a federally licensed producer via online ordering, with secure home delivery through mail or courier.

Our government's intention is to offset the broader costs associated with implementing this new system by collecting licensing and other fees, as well as through revenues generated through taxation, as is the case with the tobacco and alcohol industry. Discussions with provinces and territories around the proposed taxation plan have already begun and will continue. As part of our consultations on this matter, we welcome the feedback of all Canadians to ensure that we achieve the goal of keeping prices low enough to put criminals out of business while helping to offset the costs of education, administration, and enforcement.

In conclusion, I would like to reiterate that Canada's current approach to cannabis continues to contribute to the profits of organized crime, risks to public health and safety, and exposes thousands of Canadians to criminal records for minor cannabis offences each year. Most Canadians no longer believe that simple possession of small amounts of cannabis should be subjected to harsh criminal sanctions. I would like to conclude by encouraging all members of this House to support Bill C-45, as amended by the Standing Committee on Health.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

In my opinion the nays have it.

And five or more members having risen:

The recorded division on the motion stands deferred.

The House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded divisions at the report stage of Bill C-45.

Call in the members.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to speak on Bill C-45, because so many Canadians are talking about it right now. If one goes to a school in the Pontiac, and I have visited several, or to a municipal council to talk about what the federal government is doing that is new, much of the same thing is heard, which is that Canadians are interested and concerned. More than anything, they are open-minded about finding the right path on this issue of marijuana and cannabis legalization. Why? Simply put, it is because they know that what has been done in the past has not worked. At the end of the day, Canadians expect the government to not simply stick its head in the sand but to react to evidence and the problems of everyday communities, where we see rates of the consumption of cannabis by our youth that really concerns them.

It is very important that we are taking this opportunity today to debate this bill and to consider what our communities are saying. I would like to report a bit on what I have heard and speak about why I am hearing support from my constituents in the Pontiac for this bill.

Number one, there is an appreciation that a public health approach is being brought on this matter. At the end of the day, slapping criminal sanctions on individual Canadians for engaging in the consumption of cannabis is an approach that has not worked. It has landed a lot of people in jail, and in particular, it has landed a lot of indigenous Canadians in jail. That is a major concern for constituents in the riding of Pontiac.

It has allowed criminals, organized crime, to take advantage of a market and sell products in an uncontrolled fashion to the most vulnerable in our community. That is simply not acceptable. We need to do better.

I was playing ping pong the other day in a high school in Fort-Coulonge, and I was thinking about how great it was that we were able to play a sport in a school and have fun. I knew that just down hall, at some other point in the day, there would be an opportunity for a kid to buy marijuana. Why? It is because the market is uncontrolled. The market is unregulated, and it is being run by criminals. We can no longer hide, and we can no longer fail Canadians on this important issue.

Our youth deserve protection. It should not be easier to buy marijuana than it is to buy a pack of cigarettes or a six-pack of beer. It should not be that way.

I am proud of our government for acting and for all the consultation it has done. It has consulted with law enforcement, with health experts, and with safety experts, road safety experts in particular. There was a Task Force on Cannabis Legalization and Regulation, and pursuant to its advice, this legislation was developed. This was not done in a hurry. It was done after careful consideration.

I am so pleased that caucus members, in particular the parliamentary secretary to the minister of health at the time, came to visit the Pontiac to discuss the concerns of our community. If we are going to get to a place where we legalize but strictly regulate and restrict access to cannabis, we need to do so in a manner that has the full confidence of Canadians.

I appreciate that it is the opposition's job to oppose and to raise issues it is hearing from constituents as well, and that is a good thing. However, this issue of cannabis legalization and strict regulation and control has to be done with a view to the public interest.

I do believe there is a strong consensus emerging in Canada that we can get there by learning from the mistakes and successes internationally, and that we can create a new framework that will ultimately protect our kids, clean up our streets, and get us to a healthier country because, at the end of the day, that is what we all want. We want safer communities, healthier Canadians, and protected kids. It is comforting to many of my Pontiac constituents.

I will admit quite frankly that many seniors in my riding have expressed concerns about whether this will just open the floodgates. The response is no, not at all. In fact, this bill, complete with the investments our government is making, which I will speak to in a moment, is the single best way to tighten the societal measures that will restrict access. When I tell constituents that this bill would make it a specific criminal offence to sell cannabis to a minor and establish significant penalties for those who engage young Canadians in cannabis-related activities, whether consumption or distribution, etc., they understand that this is not a free-for-all. It is absolutely not about that. It is about protecting our communities in a smarter and better way.

I would like to take a moment to talk about investments in public education and law enforcement. This is not just a law that our government is presenting; it is a whole investment program that will ensure that these protections and regulations are put in place. For example, our government promised to invest $46 million over five years in public education, awareness, and surveillance. These additional resources would allow the government to undertake a robust public awareness campaign so that Canadians, especially our children, are well informed about the dangers of driving under the influence of cannabis and other drugs.

The people in our ridings are well aware that, for a long time, young people across Canada have been making the poor decision to smoke, rather than drink, before getting behind the wheel because they think that it is somehow more acceptable or that they will not be caught. We all know that this is not true, but we need an awareness campaign, and our law enforcement officers need to be given the resources they need. We are making sure that happens. We have committed up to $161 million to train front-line officers to recognize the signs and symptoms of drug-impaired driving, build law enforcement capacity across the country, provide access to drug-screening devices, develop policy, bolster research, and raise public awareness of the dangers of drug-impaired driving.

This is a serious set of legislative measures and investments. What we are really doing is investing in the future of a smarter Canada, which does not stick its head in the sand, does not say there is no health issue, and does not ignore the fact that youth consumption of cannabis products is at unacceptable rates, but does accept that we can do better if we look at the evidence, go into it with our eyes open, and tell ourselves yes, we can do better.

[Kate Young, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary for Science]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to debate Bill C-45. I want to start by saying opposition members are fooling themselves if they believe that young people are not already using cannabis. They are using cannabis in record numbers. The present system just does not work, and we need to do something. In some cases, we have heard it is easier to buy cannabis than it is to buy cigarettes and beer.

The current system is allowing criminals and organized crime to profit. Some people argue, as the former member did, that cannabis is a gateway to far worse drugs. I will tell the House what a gateway is. A gateway is when our young people are buying cannabis from a pusher whose only goal is to get this kid hooked on something even far worse. That is the gateway.

I agree that something needs to be done as far as education is concerned. Bill C-45 includes this. We need to warn young people about the harmful effects of using pot. I was happy to attend, just in the last hour, an event sponsored by the Canadian Nurses Association. Their members are aware that everyone needs to be educated. They released a list of how to reduce the harms of non-medical cannabis use. I thought it was very helpful, so I thought I would mention some of the ideas they have. Barb Shellian, who is the president of the Canadian Nurses Association, says this is a non-judgmental approach, because they agree that whether we like it or not young people are going to consume cannabis. I will list some of the concerns they have, because they are concerns for all of us.

Number one, they say to reduce the harms of non-medical cannabis use, delay use until early adulthood.

Since the risk of dependence is higher when use begins at an earlier age, cannabis use disorder and its related health harms may be reduced or avoided if use is delayed until early adulthood.

I agree. We agree. This is the education that must get out to our young people.

Number two:

Minimize frequency of use—Because the risk of harm increases with the rate of use, avoid frequent, daily or near-daily use.

That is good advice.

Number three:

Try to stop when use becomes hard to control—Frequent users of non-medical cannabis who experience difficulty controlling their use should attempt to stop, with professional help, as necessary.

Number four:

Minimize respiratory complications—To reduce respiratory complications, avoid smoking cannabis with tobacco, refrain from deep inhalation and breath holding, and consider using a vaporizer rather than smoking.

Number five:

Avoid using amounts that are large or highly concentrated—Be wary of excessive use or high-potency THC cannabis, including synthetic cannabinoid products. Consider adjusting the dose by using only the amount needed to achieve the desired effect.

While some people might think this is encouraging the use of cannabis, this is education our young people need. I am so glad that the Canadian Nurses Association has put this together. There are a number of further ideas that I think we should all hear about.

Number six:

Refrain from using non-medical cannabis with alcohol—Mixing non-medical cannabis with alcohol can increase impairment exponentially and can also cause anxiety, nausea, vomiting, or fainting.

Number seven, of course:

Avoid driving while high—Given the effect of cannabis consumed by inhalation typically peaks after 30 minutes and gradually subsides after 1 to 3.5 hours.... avoid driving for at least 6 hours after use by inhalation... Wait longer if high-potency products or larger doses were used, if acute impairment persists or if the cannabis was used with other substances (including alcohol).

This is information we need, and information our young people need. We know young people are consuming cannabis, but are they getting this information? I am so glad that the Canadian Nurses Association has put this out.

Number eight, share with care is an interesting point:

Users should take care to minimize lip contact with joints or implements for smoking or vaporization. Shared items that come in contact with the lips increase the risk of transmitting infections, including meningitis, influenza and other pathogens.

Vulnerable groups should abstain from use—An increased risk for cannabis-related problems can occur in high-risk groups, including pregnant women and individuals with a personal or family history of psychosis. These groups should avoid use altogether.

I could not agree more, and this is information our young people need. It continues:

Use caution when ingesting cannabis—To avoid accidental overdose with cannabis edibles, “start low and go slow.” States where cannabis is legal recommend starting with no more than 10 mg of THC and waiting at least two hours before ingesting more.

This is really good information that comes from the Canadian Nurses Association. I am sure it is on its website, if members want to check it out.

I am so happy that our government is investing in public education and law enforcement, because we not only need to regulate, we need to educate. Therefore, our government is investing up to $274 million to support law enforcement and border efforts to detect and deter drug-impaired driving and to enforce the proposed cannabis legislation and regulations.

We have committed up to $161 million for training front-line officers in how to recognize the signs and symptoms of drug-impaired driving; building law enforcement capacity across the country; providing access to drug-screening devices; developing policy and bolstering research; and raising public awareness about the dangers of drug-impaired driving.

Provinces and territories will be able to access up to $81 million over the next five years for new law enforcement training. This is important. We know that we need to do this hand in hand with legalizing cannabis.

Our government has also committed $46 million over five years for public education, awareness, and surveillance. These additional resources will also allow the government to undertake a robust public awareness campaign so that Canadians, especially young Canadians under the age of 25, are well informed about the dangers of driving under the influence of cannabis and other drugs.

Our government will invest additional resources as needed to make sure there is appropriate capacity in Health Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Canada Border Services Agency, and the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness to license, inspect, and enforce all aspects of this proposed legislation.

In the months ahead, our government will share more details of a new licensing fee and excise tax system. It will also continue to engage with all levels of government and indigenous people, because we know that not only the federal government but the provinces and municipalities are very interested in how we are going to roll this out and how the tax system will impact the coffers of their governments.

I want to go back to what I was talking about before, about how we cannot keep our heads in the sand. We have to be realistic that the number of young people smoking pot, consuming cannabis, is very high in Canada. It is one of the highest in the world. This is something that has concerned every parent of a teenager. My children are adults now. I am a grandmother. I worry about the harmful effects of cannabis on my young grandchildren when they get to be teenagers, but I know that by then, we will have the education they need to make sure they are making wise decisions. Decisions are being made by young children every day in this country, and for the most part right now, many young people are making those decisions without thinking twice, without even considering the harm it will do if they decide to start to smoke cannabis.

I look forward to any questions.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to join the debate on Bill C-45, the marijuana legalization bill.

I would like to start by saying that when I was elected to serve the people of Lévis—Lotbinière back in 2006, I never imagined that I would one day have to debate a bill aimed at legalizing a drug that is harmful to Canadians' health.

Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would live to see the day the Liberal Party of Canada pulled off this feat, if it can be called a feat.

It is also disgusting and crass to see rich investors taking pleasure in owning shares in Canopy Growth Corporation. These investors have made a lot of money since the share price started to climb, fuelled by leaked information from the report on marijuana legalization.

Members will recall that the report's findings indicated that there have been disastrous consequences wherever cannabis has been legalized. Our duty, as legislators in this place, is to leave Canada a better place as a result of all our work and diligence.

We can very well imagine that there must be a great sense of unease, and I would even say a major conflict of values, at Health Canada, which continues to warn about the dangers of consuming marijuana on its government Internet site and in its documentation.

I am wondering what is going through the minds of these people who, like health professionals, parents, and grandparents who bring healthy and positive values to our society, are completely taken aback by the idea that our loved ones will be able to lawfully destroy their lives and their potential by consuming cannabis.

A number of my colleagues opposite are saying that it is just pot. I invite them to visit the psychiatric wing of a hospital and to see what happens when loved ones are held in a secure wing, under surveillance 24/7, because they no longer know how to live and are a danger to themselves. I invite them to go and see these poor people who have been disrupted and dehumanized. Then I want to hear what they have to say.

As everyone here knows, my colleagues and I have spoken at length about the dangers and all of the repercussions associated with using this drug at the critical ages of 13, 14, or even younger. It can cause irreparable harm.

With that in mind, I am still trying to understand why the Liberals have decided to proceed with marijuana legalization. When I participate in policy discussions and debates in the House, I am dismayed at their simplistic and utterly amoral reasoning about how it is our duty to protect our young people and our society and to keep organized crime in check. Unfortunately, we are talking about a market that holds an obscure sway over the facts.

What we have seen in U.S. states that made certain choices will not help us live in a peaceful, respectful, orderly society, drive on safe roads, and achieve progress and prosperity. Anyone who thinks it will is deluded. Back in 2006, during my first year as an MP, I became aware of the groups lobbying the Liberals to go down this path. I rejected it wholesale, and its pernicious influence never took root within me. The Conservatives wanted nothing to do with those lobby groups. We wanted to work on Canadians' real priorities.

Could someone explain to me how the Liberal Party's financial backers, those with the deepest pockets, managed to use our democracy to legalize cannabis, which is currently a source of worry and torment for so many people in distress?

I would like to come back to the word “priority”. Who is pushing the Liberals to make this a national priority? That is a fundamental question to which we must find the answer. There is a good chance that it is people who are untouchable because they have large family fortunes. Rather than creating collective wealth, these people, who are born into money with a silver spoon in their mouth, are unscrupulously using that money for more nefarious purposes.

I am talking about influential people of untold financial means who should not have control over our future. How do those people sleep at night?

Do they not feel any remorse for what they are about to make the Liberal members opposite do? The Liberals will likely not have the privilege of voting according to their own conscience and beliefs.

I think greed is overshadowing common sense here. A person has to be pretty twisted to see a societal problem as a business opportunity.

Members will forgive the comparison, but it seems obvious. The only people I have seen, both in the movies and, unfortunately, in real life, who are capable of using subterfuge to achieve their goals and get what they want are people with psychopathic tendencies.

I do not want to offend my colleagues, but there is no denying that the only people who are able to cause other people harm without feeling any remorse or emotion, while remaining cold and detached, are psychopaths, at least to my knowledge. The issue that is currently before us just does not make any sense.

From a young age, we teach children to watch out for bad guys, not to trust strangers, not to give in to bad influences, and to listen to that little voice inside them when it tells them they are on the wrong track.

I would add that for years, police officers have been working on prevention in our primary and secondary schools, warning our children about people who might offer them some pot and urging them to avoid people who use it.

Now we are having a debate on legalizing a substance that sends so many people to hospital, to prison, or leads them to homelessness. This substance sends young people to youth centres or foster homes. It is a gateway drug to more harmful substances. Far too often, these people end up in the morgue. Yes, I said morgue. The common thread among people who use drugs is that they started by using marijuana.

Where is this Prime Minister's ethics and common sense? Where are his emotions for our young people? Why are the Liberal MPs following him? Who is making the decisions in that party? That is a question that remains unanswered. Is it the Minister of Finance, a bunch of people from Toronto, or a handful of influential rich people? Let us wake up before it is too late or let us free ourselves from the Liberals.

We are fortunate in Canada to have three entities for limiting power. We have the House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court. I am calling on them at this moment in time because the House is heading in the wrong direction despite the Conservatives' efforts.

If the Senate truly represents the wisdom of this country, and if the Prime Minister appointed 25 senators who are worthy of the position when he took office, those individuals will see to it that this does not pass. They have a duty to do so.

Our Canada cannot remain strong and prosperous with marijuana flowing freely in our homes, on our streets, on our construction sites, amongst our skilled workers, in public areas, and in the hands of our loved ones, who are usually our flesh and blood.

An entire generation is going to be left in shambles by this Liberal recklessness. This generation is already up to its neck in debt, and now it will be mentally burdened on top of that. It is shameful.

I have a question for all senators across party lines. Do they really want to have this weighing on their conscience, on their shoulders? I am not talking about the weight of a gram of pot; I am talking about the downfall of an entire generation, an entire nation.

I am also talking about the massive human and financial costs that will be put on the provinces, which can barely meet the health care needs of their citizens as it is. These costs will continue to rise because of the legacy the Liberals are leaving to future generations.

I ask the good Lord to rid us of the Liberals.

Being trustworthy is going to be a factor here. The Liberals' improprieties and tax havens are nothing compared to what lies ahead. Someone needs to stand up and say “no” to pot in our homes, “no” to the Liberal Party, and “no” to this unworthy Prime Minister who left his judgment who knows where, and who is preparing a living hell for us here far away from any tax havens. That is my prediction.

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

Mr. Speaker, it does not matter which area of the country it is, whether Quebec, Newfoundland, Manitoba, my home province, or British Columbia, the message is always the same. We have a government that made a commitment during the last election to do what Bill C-45 aims to do. The opposition can say what it will, but over two years, the government has come up with an approach to deal with a very important social issue. Whether it was in the province of Quebec or any other province, there was support for this government to move forward on this very important issue.

Would the member across the way not at least acknowledge that it is good to have some sort of national standard as to how best to deal with the legalization of cannabis, and that moving forward is in the best interests of all citizens of our country?

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I made a point of listening to my colleague opposite. She said that she is concerned about 13- and 14-year-olds using cannabis.

Bill C-45 allows four plants per home. Do they think that our young people are not going to want to take a few leaves, dry them, and try them, or give them to their friends?

With this bill, all young people will have access to cannabis, not just those who are 13 and 14, but also those who are 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15.

Can my colleague tell us whether amendments will be made to this bill?

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

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to speak today to Bill C-45 concerning the legalization of cannabis. This issue is important to people in my community. I have heard from many constituents about their interests, desires, and concerns related to the legalization of cannabis. I have heard from many people who are in favour of legalization. They would like this bill to become law as quickly as possible. They are in favour because they themselves consume cannabis or are concerned about the negative effects of maintaining the criminalization of cannabis in our communities.

I have also heard from many people who are not necessarily opposed to legalization, but they have concerns. I hope to address these concerns today. I understand their concerns about using cannabis. I am a mother and recognize the concerns raised in that respect. As I say that, I can imagine my kids rolling their eyes at home. As a parent, I worry about my children, too. I understand they will make mistakes, but the legalization of cannabis is not one of my top concerns for my children going forward. I also believe that through the legalization and regulation of cannabis, concerns about cannabis consumption by youth or people operating vehicles can be addressed.

In many parts of my community, a spring walk through the park will bring the smell of lilacs and pot. I do not say this to make light of cannabis use, but simply to point out that it is very common in my community and very common in a situation where it remains illegal. It is very clear, based on a walk down my streets but also on statistics, that the criminalization of cannabis is not keeping it out of the hands of people in our communities, adults or youth.

I understand that the statistics are that 21% of youth have used marijuana and 30% of young adults use it. Those are high numbers. If the goal is to keep people from trying marijuana or using it, the approach of criminalization has not worked. As has been stated in this place many times, but it bears repeating, the World Health Organization found in 2009-10 that the number of Canadians under 15 who had tried cannabis was at a higher rate than for any other country studied. As well, in a 2013-14 study by the WHO, Canada remained in the top five countries of 15-year-olds and was number one for cannabis use among children 13 years of age or younger. Clearly, if a person is concerned about youth access to cannabis, the current system is not working.

Here is the crux of the matter: the threat of a criminal record is not deterring youth from consuming cannabis. They are still doing it. However, once they have a criminal record, this can impact their future opportunities. It can close doors, and to what end? Under the new legislation, as with alcohol, there will be regulations to prohibit the purchase and use of cannabis by youth, but as with alcohol, we will not be threatening them with a criminal record. The criminal record brought only negative consequences without achieving its purported goal, which was to deter use.

Finally, we want to continue to collaborate with the provinces and territories to make sure that the public education campaign can also be done collaboratively and that we all have access to the same information.

Another point is on the nuts and bolts of working with youth. It is harder to have conversations and convey information about something that is hidden. Our government has announced $46 million for a public education program to accompany the legalization of marijuana. Having an open conversation is much more effective. Health Canada has published detailed information on the health risks of cannabis use on its website, and I encourage all Canadians to review it. It is there to be found.

As we talk about youth, I am also concerned about the fact that people who are consuming marijuana are exposing themselves to risks that go beyond health issues related to consumption. For example, there is no way to trace source or ensure the quality of the marijuana they purchase. We saw situations during the prohibition of alcohol where people consumed alcohol that had impurities. It was somehow made in a way that was not safe and would make people sick. Under our current legalized and regulated system for alcohol, we rarely hear of such incidents.

In the same way, in the legalized market, we have more controls over the safety of production and the safety of the method of sale. Personally, I would rather see people going to a store that is regulated to purchase their cannabis than to a drug dealer.

The model of decriminalization fails to address consumer safety. That is not the other option here. The model of decriminalization has and maintains a lot of the harms associated with the prohibition of cannabis use. Decriminalization does not address the concerns raised by my constituents, and it leaves us with a grey zone. It leaves us with a market that remains in the hands of organized crime.

I would like to share some statements made by the Centre for Addition and Mental Health in Toronto from its cannabis policy framework. It states:

Under decriminalization, cannabis remains unregulated, meaning that users know little or nothing about its potency or quality.

As long as cannabis use is illegal, it is difficult for health care or education professionals to effectively address and help prevent problematic use. The law enforcement focus of prohibition drives cannabis users away from prevention, risk reduction and treatment services.

Decriminalization may encourage commercialization of cannabis production and distribution – without giving government additional regulatory tools. Those activities remain under the control of criminal elements, and for the most part users must still obtain cannabis in the illicit market where they may be exposed to other drugs and to criminal activity.

Our government is proposing a system that allows for regulatory control of production, distribution, and sale. Along with the experts at CAMH, I support our government position of legalizing and restricting access, to allow opportunity to regulate cannabis and mitigate the risks.

Our government has committed up to $161 million for training front-line officers on how to recognize signs and symptoms of drug-impaired driving. Whether legal or not, drug-impaired driving is happening in our communities.

In 2008, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police unanimously urged the government of the day to make resources available for the training of drug recognition experts and for all officers in field sobriety testing. That plea resulted in no action from the government. In 2013, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police asked the government to make available oral fluid testing technology, and no action was taken by the former Conservative government.

Our government is listening to the concerns of law enforcement agencies and providing the training, resources, access to technology, and legal authority to allow police across the country to provide them with what they need to keep our communities safe.

Currently, Canada's non-medical cannabis industry is entirely criminal, meaning that all non-medical cannabis being sold or purchased in our communities is helping to put approximately $7 billion annually into the pockets of organized crime. Upwards of $2 billion every year are spent trying to enforce our current ineffectual cannabis prohibition regime. Smart action is what is needed to drive down the black market for cannabis. With legalization and regulation, law enforcement resources can be used effectively and we can reduce the involvement of organized crime.

For too long, in my community and across the country, cannabis has been easily accessible among our youth who have been using it at record rates to the great profits of organized crime.

I support Bill C-45 to enact the cannabis act, to provide legal access to cannabis and to control and regulate its production, distribution, and sale.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, before I begin speaking to Bill C-45, I would like to highlight for those who are watching today that the Liberals took the opportunity to move time allocation on this important bill. In essence, that means they cut down the debate. They are actually refusing to hear from the members on the opposite side of the House today because they want to rush it through and get it to a vote. Why is it they want to rush it through and get it to a vote? Because they have party preparations to put in place for July 1, 2018. That is unfortunate. It is degrading to our parliamentary process to not have the opportunity to enter into a robust debate with respect to the topic at hand on behalf of the Canadians who have elected us to represent them here.

With that said, when I talk about Bill C-45 and the legalization of marijuana, I am not talking about its legalization for medical purposes, I am not talking about the legalization of marijuana in a way that is well-researched, thoughtful, or has taken into account the different factors that need to be considered, I am not talking about a bill that came out of a lengthy consultation process or a scientific endeavour, I am talking about a bill that was incredibly rushed in nature. It really did not take scientific evidence into consideration. It did not take the insight of law enforcement agents, health care practitioners, or experts into consideration. Really all it does is rush through this piece of legislation at a rate that is unnecessary and with a deadline that is arbitrary. That is of course, July 1, 2018.

I have heard from many people who are very worried about this legislation. Many have spoken out at a national level, including aboriginal leaders, law enforcement agents, health experts, municipalities, provinces, and of course concerned citizens from all across the country. Some of the things that they are saying are that they are concerned about children accessing marijuana easily and the age at which they are legally able to acquire it, the lack of education programs, the timeline and the fact that it is very rushed, the costs to the municipalities and provinces, and the fact that they really do not feel they have been given adequate time to respond. I am hearing from law enforcement agents much the same about the costs and the timeline. As well, they are bringing up drug-impaired driving. Then there is the issue around taxation. Therefore, in this time that I have, I would like to address some of these issues to a greater extent.

When it comes to children, I believe the government should take them and their future very seriously. That is part of what this place is about. There are 338 of us who have been elected to make decisions on behalf of Canadians from coast to coast. Yes, we make those decisions for today, but we also have to be aware of how those decisions will impact those who would come after us tomorrow.

Unfortunately, this legislation is ill-drafted in terms of its legal age of access, which is age 18. If we were to talk to the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Paediatric Society, or the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, they would all say that the age of 18 is too young, that the human brain is developing until the age of 25, and that the use of marijuana impedes the full development of the human brain. Therefore, they have called for the legal age to be 25, and then said that perhaps age 21 would be a good negotiating point. That amendment was brought forward at committee. Of course, the Liberals shut that down. Therefore, it begs the question of whether the government is acting responsibly by setting the age at 18. The government also said that it would take the next generation seriously. It said that it would be the party that wants to keep marijuana out of the hands of young people. However, by setting the legal age at 18, and allowing four plants to be grown in our homes, which I will talk about momentarily, it is really not looking that seriously at keeping it out of the hands of young people.

Not only that, I heard from a group of young people who I meet with on a monthly basis to advise me on different topics at hand. We talked about the legalization of marijuana, and they said this, “If we legalize marijuana”, and of course we are going down that road, “and we do it according to the mechanisms that are at play here without education”, which there is none of right now, “it will normalize it and young people will think it is just okay, that there are no negative repercussions to the use of marijuana.” The young people I am listening to are telling me they are quite concerned. They are concerned for themselves, for their peers, and are very concerned for their younger siblings and what they might fall prey to. I think that is definitely worth considering.

A further point we need to consider related to child access is definitely education. In their budget, the Liberals did promise a considerable amount for education. They said $9.6 million over five years. In my estimation, that is not enough. I do not know if they are going to be able to afford an adequate education campaign with that amount of money over five years. Nevertheless, it is money put aside. It is money that was promised to this cause, and the Liberals did commit to a “robust”, which is the Prime Minister's word, campaign with regard to educating young people.

To date, we have seen nothing. There has been no action, nothing, just a broken promise. We see them talking out of one side of their face saying that education is very important and we want to keep it out of the hands of young people, but then out of the other side, they are actually not willing to move the dial and invest money in getting an education program up and running, which of course means that we are actually setting young people up for experimentation and for the normalization of drug use among our children.

I have yet another concern. This proposed legislation would allow for four plants to be in every household. Let me amuse the House for just one moment. I did a little research, and one plant equals 1.2 kilograms or 1,200 grams of marijuana, which is how much that would produce. If there is 0.66 grams in each joint on average, which is what my research told me, then one plant would actually produce 792 joints. However, we would be allowed not one but four plants, and four plants would actually produce 3,168 joints. Now at 3,168 joints—and on average people smoke about three joints a day, which is what my research told me—then four plants in a household would produce 1,056 days worth of joints. I ask the House if that sounds like a personal amount. I am just curious. This would leave plenty to sell and plenty to use, and those plants would be right in a person's home.

I am not speaking out on this on my own. Law enforcement agents are also very concerned about this, and they are begging the question of why we would allow four plants in a home when we are legalizing marijuana and people can go down the street and get it a store.

My next point is with regard to law enforcement agents. They came to the committee and told us their concerns, and there are many of them. One is that they are concerned about the deadline of July 1. They are telling us that they will not have their men and women in uniform trained to deal with this. They are saying that the wait list for training is super-long and the cost is extravagant. Not only that, but agents would have to be sent to the United States to access that training. In essence, they told the committee that they needed more time and more than double the number of police officers who are certified to conduct roadside drug-impaired driving testing.

This should concern us. I do not want to be on the road. I do not want my nieces, nephews, brother, sisters, parents, or anyone else on the road when there are individuals out there who are impaired, and that is normal. I am not okay with that. Again, we need that robust education program put in place so that people understand. Also, we need law enforcement agents in place so that they can actually enforce the law.

The officers who came to committee also said that we can expect about a six- to 12-month gap between the legislation coming into effect when people legally have access to marijuana and the point where the police are actually caught up and able to enforce. This is a six- to 12-month gap, and they said that this will allow organized crime to “flourish”. So much for keeping organized crime down.

I also want to draw to members' attention the costs and consequences that this proposed legislation would mean for municipalities and provinces. We are talking about a cost for our law enforcement agents. We are talking about a cost with regard to putting policy in place. We are talking about insurance costs for private employers and policy costs at that level as well. We are talking about costs with regard to just different legislative pieces that have to be put in place, and all of the consultations and legal work that have to be done around that.

All in all, the point I wish to make today is that the Liberals are rushing through with the bill. They are choosing to rush this proposed legislation through based on an arbitrary deadline that carries absolutely no weight or essence in the House. They could stop it. They could halt it. They could adequately consult. They could be responsible and listen to the experts who have spoken on this proposed legislation. Right now, the government is choosing to act irresponsibly, and I highlight the word “choosing”. They are choosing to put inadequate legislation in place over this country.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, we did hear lots of interesting testimony at our committee. I appreciate the question the member is asking.

However, it is important to keep in mind a couple of things. First of all, the current system is not working. It is not working as we have the highest cannabis usage rate by young people in the entire world. Second, we also have to recognize that the criminal elements that are involved are profiting greatly from the current system.

As part of Bill C-45, the government, rightly, put in place a framework through which we can ensure that we are able to combat the scourge of drug-impaired driving on our roads, which is happening now. We know that there is an effect that will take place if people are fearful that they will get caught, that if they are using cannabis and driving they will be caught, and that if they are impaired, they will be prosecuted.

With regard to some of the comments my friend made regarding the tools and the training that police officers need, the government has put substantial resources behind the legislative framework to ensure police officers have the tools and the training they need. It is almost $300 million for that alone to be rolled out in due course. It is very important and vital that we get this right. The government is committed to doing it. It will be reviewed in three years' time. The money is there to make sure that the police have the tools and the training they need.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak in support of Bill C-45 at report stage debate. This historic legislation represents a positive first step in the complex process of legalizing, strictly regulating, and restricting access to cannabis.

Since the introduction of the bill, it has been emphasized that the approach proposed by the bill is grounded in the basis of public health and public safety, including the goal of keeping cannabis away from young people.

Consistent with the commitments to protect the well-being of Canadians, our government introduced companion legislation, Bill C-46, which targets those who drive while impaired by drugs. This distinct piece of proposed legislation would strengthen the criminal law response to drug-impaired driving and help to increase the safety of our public streets and roads.

In its consideration of Bill C-45, the Standing Committee on Health heard from the Ontario Public Health Association that “impaired driving is a leading criminal cause of death and injury on our roadways, and cannabinoids are among the most common psychoactive substances found in deceased and injured drivers in Canada.”

Despite having made progress in deterring and reducing the amount of alcohol-impaired driving over the past decades, statistics indicate that drug-impaired driving is actually increasing.

I am fortunate enough to be a member of the Standing Committee of Justice and Human Rights. We studied the companion legislation to Bill C-45, that being Bill C-46. It is obvious that there is a problem on our roads today with drug-impaired driving, and the problem under the current system keeps getting worse.

According to Statistics Canada, of the more than 72,000 police-reported impaired driving incidents in 2015, almost 3,000 of those were related to drugs. This may not seem like a large proportion, but when we consider that this is double the amount of drug-impaired driving incidents since just 2009, the upward trend becomes very worrisome.

According to a recent publication by the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, 20% of cannabis users self-report as having driven at least once within two hours of using cannabis.

Another recent study based on the Victoria healthy youth survey in British Columbia indicates that 64% of males and 33% of females who were heavy users of cannabis reported that they drove while drug impaired.

The Ontario student drug use and health survey of 2015 reported that the percentage of drivers in grades 10 to 12 who reported driving after consuming cannabis was higher than those who reported driving after consuming alcohol. This survey further indicated that an estimated 29,500 adolescent drivers in Ontario alone drove within one hour after consuming cannabis within the previous year.

I think I can speak for all of us when I say that I find this to be very troubling. The fact that driving while impaired by drugs is currently a criminal offence punishable by a mandatory minimum fine of $1,000 on a first offence does not seem to be a sufficient deterrent for an increasing number of drivers.

However, the penalty is not the whole answer anyway. What is clear to me and what the preponderance of the evidence demonstrates is that it is the fear of getting caught that acts as the real deterrent to impaired driving.

Given the current statistics on cannabis consumption before driving, I am fully supportive of the government's approach to strengthen the criminal law framework addressing drug-impaired driving. The proposals on impaired driving would authorize a new tool for police officers to better detect drivers with drugs in their body. These devices would determine whether a driver had certain drugs in his or her oral fluid, including THC, which is the impairing compound in cannabis.

The presence of THC in oral fluid is a strong indicator that cannabis was recently consumed and therefore provides useful information to a police officer who is conducting a roadside investigation. Again, what is essential here is that people will know they will be much more likely to get caught if they drive while impaired by cannabis. This will act as a real deterrent and keep our roads safer.

While reviewing Bill C-45, health committee members heard from the public safety minister who recognized “Essential to this new regime is engagement with and support for police and border officers to ensure that they have the tools they need to enforce the law.”

To this end, the government recently announced an investment of $274 million to support law enforcement and border efforts to detect and deter drug-impaired driving and for enforcement of the proposed cannabis legalization and regulation scheme.

Provinces and territories will be able to access up to $81 million over the next five years for new law enforcement training and to build capacity and enforce new and stronger laws related to drug-impaired driving.

The impaired driving bill also proposes new legal limit offences for drugs and driving. Once these offences are enacted, the crown would no longer have to prove that a driver was impaired by a drug if an analysis of their blood showed that they had a prohibited level of drugs in their body. This legal efficiency would provide a much more timely way to prosecute and punish those who choose to mix impairing drugs with driving activity.

I am pleased to note that one of the proposed offences prohibits certain levels of alcohol and THC which, as I indicated earlier, is a particularly impairing combination of substances. This proposed offence would send a strong message against driving after mixing cannabis with alcohol.

In my view, the proposals to address drug-impaired driving are a positive reflection of the government's broader approach to cannabis legalization in that they represent a cautious, public safety-driven response with the ultimate goal of public protection.

To reiterate the remarks of the Minister of Public Safety to the health committee:

...cannabis impaired driving is happening on our streets right now. The faster we get the right tools, the funding, the training, and the legislative and regulatory authorities in place, the safer Canadians will be. Legislative delay does not make the problem go away or get better.

At committee, amendments were adopted to require a review of both Bill C-45 and Bill C-46 three years after coming into force and to table reports before Parliament on the results of these reviews. This would allow the government to clearly communicate the impacts of the new legislation and to determine whether future changes are necessary.

I am pleased to recognize the substantial efforts of the government to fulfill two of its key platform commitments to legalize cannabis and also, importantly, to create new and stronger laws to apprehend and actually deter those who would otherwise drive while under the influence.

In conclusion, it is critical to underscore the objectives of Bill C-45, which is designed to legalize, strictly regulate, and restrict access to cannabis. With the highest usage of young people using cannabis in the developed world, it is clear the current system is not working. We must make it harder for young people to access cannabis, take business away from criminals, and put public health and safety front and centre. That is what Bill C-45 does and that is why all members should support this important legislation.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It was indeed a bit distracting.

First, we are concerned, as I think everyone here is, about the use of marijuana by children and young people, and recognize there must be no advertising of these products to them. We are happy to see that Bill C-45 recognizes these concerns as well.

Second, there must be a taxation strategy that produces a long-term revenue stream for programs that promote public health, education, and research. One of the big problems with the criminalization of marijuana is that it has made research into its effects, particularly its long-term effects, very difficult. Hopefully, legalization in this country will stimulate serious research on this critical issue and, hopefully, there will be sufficient funds provided by the government to ensure that this research can take place.

Third, there must be legislation in effect to deal with drivers impaired by marijuana. This is covered under Bill C-46, which has already passed the House. I stated my concerns about this issue during debate on that bill earlier. Suffice it to say that I was disappointed with the government's faith in roadside saliva testing, which will not relate to impairment at all and will undoubtedly result in charges being laid against people who are not impaired. I hear that there are already groups lining up to challenge that bill in court.

However, our main concern with the marijuana legalization route the government has taken is that it has not considered immediate interim decriminalization of simple possession of marijuana, or at least allowing discretion on the part of prosecutors and police not to enforce an unjust law. Here we have a government that was elected on a clear promise to legalize marijuana, and yet two years later courts across the country are still giving people criminal records for simple possession. On the one hand, the government is saying that using marijuana is okay, and on the other hand, it is ruining people's lives, often those of young people, visible minorities, and racialized Canadians, by giving them criminal records for using marijuana. It does not make sense. It is really a cruel injustice.

Also, it is clogging our courtrooms for no good reason. We are seeing more and more real criminals go free because they cannot get a trial in a reasonable time frame. We should be looking for ways to clear up the courtroom logjam, and stopping the prosecution of simple possession charges would be an obvious place to start. We should also be pardoning Canadians who have a criminal record based only on past convictions for simple possession of small amounts of marijuana. These people have a very hard time finding work because of their criminal records and cannot cross borders, yet we are now saying that what they did was not criminal at all and, in fact, will now be completely legal. Let us pardon them so they can get on with their lives.

I want to change gears a bit and talk about some of the lessons we might have learned from alcohol prohibition. Marijuana became illegal in Canada back in 1923 at about the same time alcohol was illegal. Alcohol prohibition was rather short-lived and alcohol consumption was made legal again in most provinces by 1930. However, early regulations made consumption of alcohol not much fun. When I was growing up in British Columbia, there were separate entrances for men and women in beer parlours, people had to be sitting when they drank, could not listen to music, and certainly could not dance. Things have changed, and I think most people would agree that the earlier restrictions seem rather silly now, and certainly were not effective in curbing public intoxication.

Beer was once produced only by large, monolithic brewing companies, but now we have hundreds of small craft breweries springing up across the country. They not only produce good beer, but provide good jobs and diversify the economy of many small towns. In my riding, we also make the best wine in Canada. There are hundreds of small wineries in B.C. and Ontario, and a growing number in other provinces. The wine industry is a huge part of the economy in my riding, not only through the sales of wine but also by boosting the tourism industry that is so important in the Okanagan Valley.

What most people like about small estate wineries and small craft breweries is that they are small. They produce diverse products. People can go to meet the people who make the wine and beer. A lot of it is made from organic products, and many advertise the small ecological footprint of their operations.

A lot of my constituents say they feel that Bill C-45 will be like prohibition 2.0. This is not what they voted for when they voted for marijuana legalization. They do not want to buy marijuana from huge companies that produce huge quantities of product in indoor facilities that use a lot of power and pesticides to keep production levels up.

I recently met with a group of farmers and business people in my riding who want to grow marijuana on a smaller scale. They would like to grow outside, using sunlight instead of indoor grow lamps and heaters. They want to grow outside so they go organic. They will not have to use the chemicals needed to keep indoor plants free from fungus. They would like to grow co-operatively, each farming maybe a hectare of highly secure land and processing the crop at a central location for distribution. It sounds great. It sounds like the 21st century. It is allowed just across the border in neighbouring Washington state, but all of this would be illegal under Bill C-45.

In committee, the NDP moved 38 amendments to improve the bill and one amendment would have given the provinces the option to create their own licensing frameworks, such as those to allow for craft growers and small producers. The government side voted every one of these amendments down.

I agree that we need to legalize marijuana. We need to get the industry out in the open, away from gangs and organized crime. We need to tax it so we can fund the education, research, and health programs necessary to deal with drug use and addiction that are already so prevalent in our country. However, restricting the production of marijuana so tightly by making producers grow indoors and banning co-operative ventures, we will be incentivizing an ongoing black market that will defeat the original purpose of the bill.

Therefore, let us learn from alcohol prohibition. Let us not go back to 1930 for legalizing marijuana. Let us regulate it in a modern and intelligent way so Canadians who wish to use cannabis can do so in a practical, safe, and healthy manner.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to speak today to Bill C-45, the legislation that would legalize marijuana in Canada. I will say off the top that I support the legalization of marijuana and will be supporting this bill in general, but I have some concerns about the process it maps out for regulating the marijuana industry across this country. I spoke to this bill at second reading, but I want to say more now that it has passed committee, and I have heard from more constituents about it, and we know more details of the government's intentions regarding marijuana legalization.

In the interest of full disclosure, I will say that I represent the beautiful riding of South Okanagan—West Kootenay, where it is public knowledge or at least widely recognized that the production of marijuana has been an important part of the local economy of my region for many years. I do not have any precise figures on its economic impact, since it is a black market. Certainly it is used widely, as I can attest after door knocking throughout my riding. It is because the government recognizes this widespread black market and recognizes that marijuana is used by many Canadians for both medical and recreational purposes that it has brought forward this bill to regulate marijuana, so that it will be used as safely as possible and that the economic activity it generates can be properly taxed.

We in the NDP support the legalization of marijuana, with some caveats. First, we are concerned, as I think we all are here—

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today in support of Bill C-45, the proposed cannabis act as amended by the Standing Committee on Health. I support this legislation, in particular because Canada's historic approach to dealing with cannabis is simply not working. My remarks today will focus on why the status quo is failing Canadians, especially our youth.

Cannabis has been prohibited in Canada since the 1920s and is currently listed as a controlled substance in schedule II of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. The prohibition of cannabis has not led to abstinence. As the Minister of Health stated at the Standing Committee on Health hearings on Bill C-45:

...cannabis has become the most commonly used illegal substance in Canada. Today 21% of our youth and 30% of our young adults use cannabis. Our youth have the highest prevalence of cannabis use when compared with peers in other developed countries.

This clearly shows that significant numbers of Canadians are using cannabis in the face of prohibition. One would conclude from these numbers that the prohibition approach is not impacting the consumption patterns for cannabis use.

In the face of such non-medical use of cannabis, what has been the impact of the prohibitionist approach? As heard by health committee members, the impacts of the existing approach have been, first of all, to sustain a cannabis industry run by organized crime; second, to jeopardize public health and public safety; and finally, to subject recreational users of small amounts of cannabis to unwarranted criminal liability.

The link between organized crime and the illicit cannabis market is well known. Cannabis is the most trafficked drug in the world. Organized crime groups are more than happy to supply the general public with cannabis.

The Standing Committee on Health heard from the public safety minister, who said:

Canada's non-medical cannabis industry is entirely criminal. The illegal cannabis trade in this country puts $7 billion annually, perhaps more, into the pockets of organized crime. Over half of Canadian organized crime groups are suspected or known to be involved in the cannabis market. Canadian law enforcement spends upwards of $2 billion every year trying to enforce what is currently an ineffective legal regime.

We know that organized crime groups pose a significant threat to public safety and negatively affect the daily lives of Canadians. These groups are tied to illegal activities, such as drug trafficking, prostitution, theft, and human trafficking, and have a violent and corrupting effect on the communities and cities where they operate.

The minister also noted:

With legalization and regulation, we can enable law enforcement resources to be used more effectively, and we can dramatically reduce the involvement of and the flow of money to organized crime.

The overall impact of organized crime groups in Canada extends beyond the obvious and immediate threat of these activities. Unseen impacts include greater costs for law enforcement and the justice and correctional systems, costs that are typically borne by all Canadians.

I would acknowledge that organized crime is not going to disappear from Canada by virtue of the passage of Bill C-45. Organized criminal activity in Canada is a multi-faceted problem that requires a broad-based, integrated response. That said, the current approach to cannabis has clearly been failing on many fronts for close to a century, and that continues to bolster the profits of such criminal organizations. Our government recognizes this and has acted.

Another impact of the failed prohibition approach to cannabis is on public health and public safety. During the Standing Committee on Health's study of Bill C-45, we heard from witnesses who emphasized the need to act now and end the current prohibition.

During its testimony, the Canadian Public Health Association stated:

The proposed legislation and eventual regulation is our best attempt to minimize those harms and protect the well-being of all Canadians.

I briefly noted earlier the threats to public safety posed by the existence of organized crime groups in our communities, but there are many more aspects of public health and public safety in the context of the illicit cannabis market. The existence of clandestine grow ops operating in communities across the country serves to damage properties and threaten the safety of our neighbourhoods. Such grow ops create risks due to mould, improper electrical installation and the associated fire hazards, unchecked use of pesticides and fertilizers, and break-ins and thefts, all of which result in dangers to neighbouring residences and first responders.

The current mechanism through which Canadians can access cannabis leaves much to be desired. The risk to cannabis consumers is heightened in the context of cannabis supply, which is unregulated and not subject to any quality control or packaging requirements clearly indicating the potency of the product. Currently, cannabis consumers do not know what they are getting, and there is no framework to promote the safety of the cannabis supply. Simply put, the cannabis being sold today is unregulated, untested, and often unsafe.

Dispensaries continue to operate illegally across Canada in defiance of our laws. The existence of clandestine grow ops highlights the need for a new approach, one that will ensure that adult Canadians who choose to consume cannabis will have access to a quality-controlled supply that is subject to national standards and contributes to minimizing the potential harms.

Finally, I would like to address the impact that the current prohibitionist approach has had on a significant number of our citizens, many of whom have been labelled as criminals because of their personal decision to consume cannabis. In 2016, there were nearly 55,000 cannabis-related offences reported to police. This is more than half of all police-reported drug offences. This resulted in approximately 23,000 cannabis-related charges being laid.

The criminal records that result from these charges are, in many cases, more than the individuals deserved for their actions. These individuals may often have difficulty finding employment and housing as a result, and may have been prevented from travelling outside Canada. Furthermore, the criminal justice system resources required to deal with many of these minor infractions inhibits the system from devoting resources to more serious matters.

To deal with criminal charges and records, the opposition would simply have us decriminalize cannabis. Let me be clear: decriminalization will not work. It will not achieve our objectives of taking cannabis out of the hands of our youth and the profits out of the hands of criminals.

Through Bill C-45, our government is proposing a better approach. With Bill C-45, our government has introduced legislation that would strictly regulate and restrict access to cannabis. Bill C-45 would deter illegal activities in relation to cannabis through appropriate sanctions and enforcement measures. Bill C-45 aims to protect the health of young persons by restricting their access to cannabis, all the while ensuring that Canadian adults are able to legally possess, grow, and purchase limited amounts of cannabis across Canada.

Based on that, I would encourage all members to support Bill C-45 as amended.

[Kevin Sorenson, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

One member across the aisle is chuckling and saying they are trying it right now. This legislation would even allow them the opportunity to have it legally in their home, and we know many more will try it. Maybe he will laugh at that as well.

They do it now, they will do it then, and they will do it even more; the member is right. They may get hurt if they manage to get greater access to it. I really believe that the Liberals have not thought out the long-term consequences of what they are doing. Many constituents have written me with concerns about these very types of scenarios.

The Liberals speaking in this debate continue to say our current marijuana laws are not working. Indeed, that is what the member just hollered across the hallway: “They are trying it now”. My constituents say that, if they are doing it now, Bill C-45 is not an answer to anything. How can police determine what marijuana has been purchased legally and what marijuana has been obtained from criminal organizations, the dealers? They cannot. The Liberals are not helping our police with that question and many more.

Our border guards will also face a major dilemma. We have already heard about the lineups at border crossings. We have also heard that patrol dogs at Canada's border crossings can detect marijuana. Many vehicles will be held up in long lines for many hours as our border agents try to find out what the particular vehicle has in it that the dog is reacting to. Sometimes the agents will be satisfied that the vehicle merely had an occupant who had smoked marijuana a day or two before. The agents will find out that the driver of the vehicle may not be intoxicated and there are no drugs or marijuana in the vehicle now, but they may find that out after an hour of searching. It has taken a long time for the border agents to do their job.

It will not be the Canadians' fault. They are trying to comply. It will not be the border agents' fault. It will not be the dogs' fault. It will be the Liberals' fault. It will be the Liberals who have to deal with the long lineups, and already we have lineups. The delays will be longer and longer. Trade between Canada and the United States, our largest customer, will be at risk and will slow down. The border will become thicker.

Knowing the health risks, are we not trying to discourage Canadians from smoking tobacco? The answer is yes. We see health agencies and government agencies continuously trying to do it, so why now would the Liberals try to allow Canadians to smoke marijuana? We know baked goods are not included in the bill. Goods baked with marijuana, such as cookies, brownies, and candies, all pose a major concern to Canadians, but they will not be allowed. There will be people who decide to bake with marijuana, if they have access to it, and people may consume it without even being aware.

The Canadian Medical Association has said that cannabis has a significant impact on mental development. The Canadian Paediatric Society considers that young people using marijuana up to age 25 are jeopardizing their mental health, yet the government rushes through.

Bill C-45 proposes to regulate and legalize the production, possession, and distribution of marijuana across Canada. The Liberals want to impose it by July 1, 2018. Canada Day will be the celebratory day for the Liberal Party, as then it would be legal. Stakeholders across this country are saying, “Please do not rush this legislation”. The Liberals will not allow another six months or any extra time. That is their deadline. They have moved closure today.

Clauses 8 and 9 of the legislation state that an individual can possess or distribute four cannabis plants that are not budding or flowering. Children in the household would have access to marijuana.

Bill C-45 states the quantity of marijuana that children may legally possess. Paragraph 8(1)(c) says that children under the age of 18 are prohibited from possessing the equivalent of five grams of marijuana or more. A child under the age of 18 can use or distribute marijuana as long as he or she has less than five grams.

I have already heard from families with children who have been using marijuana and now have developed schizophrenia. They are concerned about this. They believe it triggers something that causes the disease.

I see that my time is up. Again, I would caution the government. It is moving too fast and does not know the ramifications. It has not studied where it has taken effect in the States, and there are problems.

[Kevin Sorenson, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to stand in this House today to speak in opposition to Bill C-45, the Liberal government's bill to legalize marijuana. I say I am pleased to speak to it because this is perhaps one of the most controversial bills that the current government has brought forward; very seldom have we seen new drugs being legalized in this country. I am pleased to speak to it because my constituents have spoken to me about it, but also because there are very few members in this House who will have an opportunity any longer to speak to this, because earlier today the government moved time allocation. The Liberals moved closure so they could rush this legislation through. Many different groups are telling them to slow down, and they went in the opposite direction and decided to rush it. That is what the government is trying to do. It is trying to bring forward full legalization of marijuana.

With full legalization, the Liberals know the fears. They know the concerns around rushing. They know the adverse effects it would have on children, and they know that others who are most susceptible to the dangers of marijuana would now have greater access to it. This bill is not about decriminalization. The Liberal government is not proceeding slowly on the legalization of marijuana. It is not proceeding carefully on this file. The government has been warned by many groups that it is moving too fast and it should not.

We are debating the release of a narcotic on the people of Canada. This past week, we have seen that the provincial government in Quebec unveiled legislation that would severely curtail what the Liberals in Ottawa have planned for the entire country of Canada. On the other hand, we have seen the NDP provincial government in Alberta unveil the most liberalized of all provincial pot legislation that provinces have brought on; the NDP in Alberta has gone even further. Again I will repeat that by far the majority of constituents who have emailed, phoned, and stopped into my office to talk to me from Battle River—Crowfoot are opposed to the full legalization of marijuana.

That being said, many of my constituents are not opposed to the decriminalization of marijuana. That is, many of them believe that some young individuals who have been caught with a joint or with one marijuana cigarette should perhaps not be given a criminal record for life. However, that does not mean that we have to put the entire population of our country at risk by giving the go-ahead to our Canadian society, and that is what the Liberal plan is.

Everyone knows that marijuana can be a powerful intoxicant. It impairs judgment. It impairs a person who drives a vehicle or operates a tractor or any other type of equipment. We know, according to Perrin Beatty and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, that it would have an adverse effect on productivity in the workplace; it would be diminished, not enhanced. Innocent people would be hurt, and some would be killed. This is the record of the states and areas that have legalized marijuana.

The Canadian Medical Association says that our youngest Canadians are going to be placed at risk because their mental capacity and their brains are still developing until after the age of 25. After the legislation, moving forward, there would be marijuana available to the youngest children in homes across Canada. Parents, perhaps even grandparents, could buy marijuana and have it at home. Again, it would become more accessible for young children. Members can bet their boots that young Timmy and Jane are going to do everything they can to get hold of “one of those marijuanas” and try it. They will be determined, just as children are. We have seen it with alcohol and with tobacco. They will try it.

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to continue my remarks on Bill C-45. As I shift into my discussion and the details of the legislation, I would like to take a moment to pay tribute to the former deputy prime minister of Canada and former member of Parliament for Edmonton Centre, the hon. Anne McLellan. Her work, and the work of her task force, has laid a foundation for a new legislative regime that will make Canada a leader in the safe regulation of recreational cannabis.

Let me share some of the details found in the legislation. Under the existing regime, which has been in place since 2014, Health Canada is responsible for licensing and overseeing cannabis producers. These producers are required to operate within the regulations to provide quality-controlled cannabis to registered patients. This rigorous licensing process ensures, for example, that entrants to this market have gone through a thorough security check and that producers have appropriate physical security infrastructure in place. Canada also has a world-class compliance and enforcement regime intended to ensure that licensed producers fully comply with the rules in place.

Over the course of the last year, a licensed producer in Canada was inspected an average of seven to eight times, for a total of approximately 274 inspections. In May, 2017, Health Canada announced it will require all licensed producers to conduct mandatory testing for the presence of unauthorized pesticides in all cannabis products destined for sale. This adds to the system of controls in place that oversee the quality of federally regulated cannabis products. This experience will have a direct impact on the health of Canadians who may choose to use this product.

Believe it or not, a large number of Canadians who get cannabis on the black market cannot rely on quality control regulations. This bill is about safety. It is working when it comes to medical cannabis, and it is going to work under this framework. The commercial industry now has more than four years of experience and serves over 200,000 active patient registrations. This licensed production under the medical regime provides a solid basis to support cannabis production under the bill.

With the world-renown regime for producing cannabis for medical purposes, the government is on solid ground to successfully move to a new approach to cannabis that would better protect Canadians.

Our government has been working and will continue to work very closely with provinces, territories, municipalities, and indigenous communities to support the implementation of this new framework. In fact, I had a meeting with councillors from my own city of Edmonton, who met with the parliamentary secretary for the minister of justice on this file. It was a very frank and open conversation about the work the Government of Canada will be doing with the province and with the City of Edmonton. This collaboration will be critical to ensuring that all the pieces are in place to support the success of the new approach. We are pleased to note the progress being achieved by our provincial and territorial partners in developing their respective approaches.

Canada is a federal system. Provinces and territories will and must have a key role to play in the success of the new system. They would be responsible for the oversight and regulation of the distribution and retail sale of cannabis, in close collaboration with municipalities.

In cases where provinces or territories do not have a fully functional retail sales system in place once the bill takes effect, adults will be able to buy cannabis directly from the authorized federal producer by ordering it online for secure home delivery by mail or courier.

Industry representatives have indicated they are getting ready to support the timely implementation of the new regime and to ensure that high standards are met in the production of regulated product. A representative for the Cannabis Canada Association, Colette Rivet, pointed out:

Licensed producers are eager to work in collaboration and compliance with the federal and provincial governments to quickly establish effective, low-risk distribution and retail models that are well regulated, highly secure, and tailored to the needs of each province.

Upon the coming into force of the bill, adult Canadians would have access to a range of quality controlled products, including dried cannabis, fresh cannabis, and cannabis oil, which could be consumed in a number of different ways. In jurisdictions that have legalized cannabis, these products constitute the largest part of cannabis products sold on the market.

Our government also recognizes the need to permit the legal sale of cannabis edible products and cannabis concentrates as part of the federal framework as soon as possible. While it would be irresponsible to further delay the implementation of the framework to legalize, strictly regulate, and restrict access to cannabis, it would be equally irresponsible to move in a rush when it comes to regulating edible cannabis products and concentrates. Experience in other jurisdictions, such as Colorado, as well as expert testimonies heard during the hearings of the committee, have underlined the unique health and safety challenges and risks associated with these products. Under this proposed timeline, the government would not have to rush to put these novel cannabis products on the market at the expense of public health and safety.

As I mentioned earlier, the existing system is a failure. It is a failure at keeping cannabis away from Canadian youth. It is a failure to Canadians who have faced criminal sanctions for something as simple as possessing a joint. It is a failure to health professionals who are prevented from having honest conversations with patients who hide their cannabis use because of its criminalization. It is a failure to Canadians who face the risk of purchasing cannabis on the black market.

The time has come for Canada to adopt a new approach. The time has come to bring cannabis use out of the black market and into a safe and regulated market that will protect Canadians and keep cannabis out of the hands of youth. I am proud of the work of the Standing Committee on Health in this matter, proud of the work of the department, and proud to stand as a member of this government in seeing that cannabis is safe and legally regulated in Canada.

The House resumed consideration of Bill C-45, An Act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other Acts, as reported (with amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

Marijuana

[Jody Wilson-Raybould, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to stand up to speak to Bill C-45, which is currently being debated. Our government has been and will always be committed to moving forward to legalize, strictly regulate, and restrict access to cannabis in order to keep it out of the hands of children and the proceeds out of the hands of criminals. We are going to continue to work collaboratively with the provinces and territories and municipalities, based on the robust consultation that we have done through the task force through engaging with Canadians, to ensure that we have a robust framework for the legalization and strict regulation of cannabis in July 2018.

Report Stage

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise to speak in the House today in support of Bill C-45, an act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other acts. In my remarks today I would like to focus on why a new approach to cannabis is needed in this country and why we need to act now.

The evidence is clear. The current approach is simply not working. All that it has managed to achieve is to unduly criminalize Canadians for possessing small amounts of cannabis and to encourage them to engage with criminals in order to consume products of unknown origin, potency, quality, and safety. It has also allowed criminals and organized crime to profit.

What the current model does not do is protect Canadians, especially young people, against the risks and dangers of using cannabis.

Although cannabis has been illegal for decades, the usage rate among young Canadians is one of the highest in the world.

We cannot allow this to continue. A new approach is required as soon as possible to better protect our youth and to make sure that adults have access to products that are quality controlled and have known origins, and so that they no longer run the risk of having a criminal record for possessing or sharing small amounts.

During the hearings at the Standing Committee on Health, Mr. Ian Culbert, the executive director of the Canadian Public Health Association, said:

Unfortunately, we don't have the luxury of time, as Canadians are already consuming cannabis at record levels. The individual and societal harms associated with cannabis use are already being felt every day. The proposed legislation and eventual regulation is our best attempt to minimize those harms and protect the well-being of all Canadians.

Any further delay in implementation would simply perpetuate a system that is already failing to protect the health and safety of Canadians. This is exactly why our government is committed to bringing the proposed legislation into force no later than July 2018. Upon the coming into force of Bill C-45, Canadians who are 18 years of age or older would be able to possess, grow, and purchase limited amounts of cannabis for personal use. This would mean that the possession of small amounts of cannabis would no longer be a criminal offence, and it would prevent profits from going into the pockets of criminal organizations and street gangs.

The bill would, for the first time, also make it a specific criminal offence to sell cannabis to a minor and would create significant penalties for those who engage young Canadians in cannabis-related offences.

Canada is more than ready for a new approach that will better protect the health and safety of Canadians. As my colleagues are well aware, Canada has already gained valuable experience that will help us create a sound framework for cannabis legalization and regulation. We already have a system in place that provides access to medical marijuana, and that system is recognized as one of the best in the world.

Let me share some more of the features of that system we are building upon. Under the existing health regime that has been in place since 2014, Health Canada is responsible for licensing and overseeing cannabis producers. These producers are required to operate within strict regulations to provide quality-controlled cannabis to registered patients. This rigorous licensing process ensures, for example, that entrants to this market have gone through a thorough security check and that producers have appropriate physical security infrastructure in place.

Canada also has a world-class compliance and enforcement regime intended to ensure that licensed producers fully comply with the rules in place.

[Leona Alleslev, Liberal, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-45 is about taking leadership. It is about setting a new standard. It is about taking the next step in Canadian public health and safety. If not now, then when? It is our responsibility to address a public safety and health issue that is in front of us and is affecting our youth. We do not have the luxury of time. Now is the time to address something that is at the core of our safety.

[Leona Alleslev, Liberal, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak in support of Bill C-45,an act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other acts.

As my colleagues have pointed out a number of times, the current approach to cannabis is not working. It has put money in the hands of criminals and organized crime and failed to keep cannabis out of the hands of young Canadians.

The fact that cannabis is a controlled substance has not stopped Canadians from using it. In 2015, approximately 12% of Canadians reported consuming cannabis in the past year. For young adults between the ages of 20 to 24, that rate is more than double at 30%. The vast majority of Canadians are obtaining cannabis products from the illegal market. This cannabis is produced without regard for public health and safety, often in clandestine circumstances, with no oversight over how it is produced, no testing for dangerous or unhealthy contaminants, and no requirements whatsoever with respect to appropriate safeguards, factual and accurate labelling, or child-resistant packaging.

That is why our government is moving to enact this legislation. It would better protect the health and safety of Canadians by providing access to a legal and quality-controlled supply of cannabis, while implementing strict controls to restrict youth access to cannabis.

On the illegal market, cannabis products are often grown, produced, stored, and sold without regard for public health and safety or accountability to the consumer. The products may be contaminated with pesticides, heavy metals, moulds, and bacteria. The source of this cannabis is often obscure or unknown.

The bill would ensure that the production of cannabis in Canada is subject to a high and consistent national standard, in terms of product quality, as is the case under the current regime for the production of cannabis for medical purposes. This means that, under Bill C-45 and the supporting regulations, all producers would be subject to a licensing process that verifies that they have the capacity to meet the product quality-control standards. Producers would also have to conform to standards in terms of the safety and security of their facilities, the vetting of personnel, record keeping, and inventory controls. This would include rigorous requirements for product quality testing, standard operating procedures that must be observed throughout the facility, a sanitation program, and product recall measures to address any product-related issues.

The proposed framework would require that product quality be controlled through mandatory testing and that a robust compliance and enforcement regime be in place. In fact, Canada already has a world-leading system in place to regulate the production of cannabis for medical purposes, which provides a solid basis upon which to build.

Let me provide some of those regime requirements. Under the current regime, which has been in place since 2014, Health Canada is responsible for licensing and overseeing cannabis producers. These producers are required to operate within the regulations to provide quality-controlled cannabis to registered patients. There are currently 67 producers that are licensed to produce cannabis for medical purposes. These producers are the only commercial source in Canada of legal, quality-controlled cannabis for medical purposes.

The regulatory framework sets out a series of strict requirements that must be met to protect the health and safety of Canadians and the integrity of the legal system. For example, licensed producers are required to utilize strict production practices in their facilities, such as having a quality assurance person and a sanitary program.

Each licensed producer is required to test each and every product lot prior to its sale to the public. This includes tests for metals, mould, bacteria, and other potential contaminants, which can be harmful to public health. If the test results are outside of identified specifications, the product must not be sold.

Licensed producers are also required to test each lot for THC and CBD potency levels, and the results must be displayed on the labels.

Health Canada also announced recently that it will require all licensed producers to conduct mandatory testing for the presence of unauthorized pesticides in all cannabis products destined for sale.

These standards and controls are backed by a robust compliance and law enforcement regime to ensure that licenced producers fully comply with the rules at all stages of the production process.

Under this system, every licenced producer will undergo multiple unannounced inspections every year in order to verify that they are using the best production practices and following specific rules regarding the use of authorized pesticides. These inspections will also ensure compliance with rules on physical and personnel security, and record keeping. Last year, for example, Health Canada inspectors conducted more than 270 inspections on site and every licenced producer in Canada was inspected on average seven or eight times.

The features described are designed to ensure that any cannabis product released for sale to the public meets a high quality standard, but as in any industry, there may be circumstances in which a product may be released for sale that does not meet the established regulatory standards. Therefore, to address these situations quickly and authoritatively, the regulatory framework requires that licensed producers have a recall system in place to promptly contact clients and remove products that do not meet these high standards.

In short, Bill C-45 would build on a well-functioning, effective system to help ensure that cannabis that is legally sold in Canada is strictly regulated and quality controlled. In addition to setting controls similar to those existing under the cannabis regime for medical purposes, Bill C-45 would put in place a set of additional measures, tools, and resources to protect the health and safety of Canadians.

Industry might use marketing techniques to increase demand and revenues. We have a responsibility to establish reasonable regulations for these marketing activities to ensure that important public policy objectives, such as protecting the health and well-being of young people, are achieved.

The facts are conclusive. We have seen with tobacco that exposure to advertising, even if it targets adults, has an impact on children. Under the bill, advertising restrictions would apply to cannabis based on lessons learned from our experience with tobacco.

The proposed legislation and supporting regulations would also ensure that packaging is child resistant, reducing the risk of accidental consumption. They would also set limits for potency and portion size and require factual information to be clearly presented on the product. The oversight and regulation of production at the federal level would provide all Canadians with the assurance that, no matter where cannabis is produced or sold, it would be subject to the same high quality and safety standards and requirements across the country.

In conclusion, this bill provides a real opportunity for Canada to address health and public safety issues associated with the illegal cannabis market. The proposed framework would establish a robust system that would allow adults to have access to legal and quality-controlled products as a result of a well-regulated framework, compliance, and enforcement. This would place Canada in a better position to protect the public health and safety of its youth and Canadians as a whole.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to discuss Bill C-45, the pot legalization bill, or as I call it Phoenix 2.0. Why do I call it that? It is because it is an example of government rushing through a bill to meet some nonsensical, arbitrary deadline, despite warnings from everyone involved that we are not ready. In this case, instead of hurting those solely in the public sector, we are going to be hurting Canadians across all demographics, and especially the young.

With Phoenix, we had the opposition, the public sector unions, and department chief financial officers saying not to rush forward. With pot legalization, we have police chiefs from across the country, the Alberta Association of Chiefs of Police, the RCMP, and members of the U.S. enforcement agencies saying not to rush forward. Sadly, as with Phoenix, the government seems intent on barrelling ahead, regardless of the warnings.

The Liberals are desperate to show they can keep a promise after all. “Look at me” the PM will say on July 1, hiking up his pants to show off his socks with marijuana leaves. He is going to spark up the first ceremonial doob on Parliament Hill, and run around taking selfies with those lighting up. No doubt, the clever Liberal marketing machine will say the PM just happened to be running by, shirtless no doubt, and a crowd toking up. Of course, his official photographer will just happen to be there taking some pictures. No doubt they will come up with some clever tag about the PM and hashtag it that he was “photobonging” some group.

However, there are real consequences to rushing forward when law enforcement is not ready. Let us look at the Liberal policy on pot from its web page, broken down by statement. The first statement is that current laws do not “prevent young people from using marijuana.” The Liberal solution to legalize the substance that is being consumed defies logic, to argue normalizing pot use and making it available everywhere will somehow prevent young people from using it.

Consider some real-world examples. Colorado went from 13th place to first place overall for pot consumption among its youth, after legalization. Washington State's pot use among students, post-legalization, is 42% higher than the rest of the country. Studies from the U.S. show that the young people have a perception, post-legalization, that pot is harmless and does not cause mental issues.

Allowing every citizen to legally grow pot, up to four plants worth at that, means by definition there will be more pot. The government has so far neglected to adequately explain how it plans to keep the extra pot off the streets and out of our schools.

Next it states, “Arresting and prosecuting these offenses is expensive for our criminal justice system. It traps too many Canadians in the criminal justice system for minor, non-violent offenses.” Let us be frank, things have changed since many of us in the House were younger. Police are no longer focusing on arresting kids for having a joint or two, because they are far too busy working on other important issues.

The police chief of Edmonton stated it clearly. He said that police may use the presence of pot as a cause to search a car or search someone, where they may find guns, opioids, or stolen goods. However, to argue for legalization because too many Canadians are trapped in the criminal system simply does not jive with what the experts are saying.

Next, the Liberals say, “...the proceeds from the illegal drug trade support organized crime and greater threats to public safety, like human trafficking and hard drugs”. Here is a clue for the government. The Hells Angels are already involved in the legal part of marijuana. I quote from the RCMP report to the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. “There is no shortage of organized criminal groups who have applied to produce medical marijuana under Health Canada's new MMPR, including...Hells Angels”. Legalization is not keeping out organized crime. Organized crime is already taking advantage of the legal regime.

The Liberal plan goes on to state, “To ensure that we keep marijuana out of the hands of children, and the profits out of the hands of criminals, we will legalize, regulate, and restrict access to marijuana.”

In summary, they will keep pot out of the hands of children by legalizing the substance we want to get rid of, legalizing possession for children as young as 12, and making production legal, thus ensuring the supply will skyrocket. At the same time, they say we will keep the profits out of the hands of criminals, even though they have not said how, and they are ignoring the fact that the criminals are already involved in the legal system. The government seems to expect the Hells Angels will just turn over and say, “Well, we had a great run, guys. I guess I'll use my Harley to be an UberEATS driver now”. Maybe the government could offer the Hells Angels some of those reintegration services they are offering returning ISIS fighters.

Honestly, if people have been buying pot from someone for the past five years, getting a great price, and having it delivered to their door, are they now going to trudge down to the local government-run store, 9 to 5 only, Monday to Friday, of course, and on camera, to buy weed at a higher price? I do not think so. Mind you, Kathleen Wynne would offer them Air Miles points, so there is something.

Continuing on with the Liberal plan, it states we will, “create new, stronger laws to punish more severely those who...operate a motor vehicle while under its influence, and those who sell it outside of the...framework.”

Here is a great one. We have no standards on measuring impairment. The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police recently met and narrowed down the roadside testing devices to two. We have not yet decided on the best one, much less have them in the hands of the police. More importantly, the failure rate on the device is as high as 13%. Let us think about that. Every single person charged will have a lawyer begging to take on his or her trial. What judge is going to say, “Hey, a 13% failure rate, that's pretty good. You're guilty”? None.

If the courts are jammed now, what happens once every one of these offences is taken to court? The government is letting accused rapists and murderers walk free under Jordan's principle because of its absolute ineptness and inability to appoint judges, and we are about to add thousands of new cases.

We could do blood testing, but that would require the officer to take someone to an emergency room. Our emergency room wait times are legendary as it is. Do we think any nurse or doctor is going to keep someone with a broken arm or a child with a runaway fever waiting just to draw blood for a cop for a weed DUI?

The costs of these roadside devices are $45 to $90 per use. The training for every one of these operators is about $20,000. How many locations are there to train these officers? There are two in all of North America, in the United States. Edmonton currently has only 24 officers trained out of a force of 1,800. Calgary has fewer, about 10. Maybe the Liberals are hoping that, contrary to decades of experience with drinking and driving, people just will not drive when high.

Let us again look at the statistics in the U.S. In Washington state, after legalization, DUIs with pot increased from 18% to 39%. In Spokane, youth pot DUIs grew 1700% versus pre-legalization.

The Liberal plan goes on. Next is those who sell cannabis outside of the regulatory framework. Our police forces are already stretched to the limits. We are not enforcing casual possession right now to focus on hard criminals, yet somehow, by waving a magic wand, we will have people available to go after those who are selling illegal drugs.

We have told the public that they can set up a legal grow op in every house and apartment in town. In Alberta, people are allowed to buy 30 grams of pot per store visit, not per day. That is 75 joints just from one store. How are we going to monitor every single person who can legally buy 75 joints at a time to make sure that they are only those of age, those who are not driving, and those who are not part of a criminal gang?

Finally, the Liberals have said that they will create a task force with input from experts. The experts in public health say that smoking pot before the age of 25 is damaging to brain development. Law enforcement is similarly clear. The chiefs of police are near unanimous. They have said they are not ready, that we should decriminalize not legalize, and that we should slow down.

The government simply dumped sales and distribution onto cash-strapped provinces and municipalities, so we will have a patchwork framework across the country. The Liberals have not listened to the task force.

I realize we are on the road to legalization. However, I implore the government to slow down until our police and communities are ready. It should not put public safety at risk just to meet an arbitrary political deadline.

I met with Edmonton's chief of police last Friday, and he had a poignant warning. He said that in 20 years we would look back at this as the worst piece of legislation ever tabled in Canada.

Let us slow it down and do what is right for our youth and our country, not what is right for the Liberal mandate tracker.

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Salaberry—Suroît, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we in the NDP are very troubled by today's time allocation motion on Bill C-45. This is the 25th time allocation motion since the Liberals came to power. The committee has only held eight meetings on Bill C-45, and a proposal from my colleague from Vancouver East was rejected. She had requested two additional hearing days to give young Canadians, authorized producers, and edibles manufacturers time to testify.

The Liberals say they have been open and have listened, but these people did not get a chance to be heard. What is more, the 38 amendments proposed by the NDP were all shot down. Not one of the NDP's amendments to improve this bill was approved.

How can the Liberals claim to be open and transparent? How can they say they consider every proposal aimed at improving this bill and at making sure youth are sufficiently well-informed to know that drugs must not be taken lightly? The Liberals say they want to protect youth and take drugs out of criminal hands, but many questions are still unanswered.

Why do the Liberals want to rush the process even more? Quebec and several other provinces have asked for the process to be extended to allow enough time for a comprehensive study.

What does my colleague opposite have to say about that?

[David Lametti, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Innovation]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today to speak in support of Bill C-45, the cannabis act.

Protecting the health and safety of the public is a key priority for all orders of government in Canada. In fact, that is why we introduced Bill C-45. Its goal is to create a strict national framework for controlling the production, distribution, sale, and possession of cannabis in Canada.

Bill C-45 would legalize access to cannabis, but only for adults, and would allow a limited amount to be grown at home or purchased through an appropriate retail framework, to make sure it is sourced from a well-regulated industry.

The bill would establish controls to protect youth, including prohibitions on selling and providing cannabis to anyone under the age of 18 and restrictions on marketing and promotional activities directed at young people.

Commercial growers and manufacturers of cannabis would require a federal licence and be subject to strict oversight to control product safety and quality.

While Bill C-45 would use the federal criminal law power to create a strict framework to control and regulate the production, distribution, sale, and possession of cannabis, the effective oversight and control of cannabis cannot be achieved without working with our partners in the provinces, territories, and municipalities.

From the outset, our government has been clear that the control and regulation of cannabis requires a pan-Canadian approach, involving all orders of government, at all stages of development and implementation.

This is reflected in the important role that our provincial and territorial partners have played in the work of the task force on cannabis legalization and regulation. This task force was established in June 2016, with a mandate to provide advice to the federal government on how to legalize, strictly regulate, and restrict access to cannabis.

Input from the provinces and territories was essential for the successful work of the task force. The provinces and the territories nominated experts to serve on the task force and make suggestions as to who should be consulted. They met with the task force and shared their views on cannabis legalization and regulation, and on how to best achieve our shared objectives of better protecting health and safety.

It should not come as a surprise that the views of the provinces and territories helped shape, to a great extent, some of the important provisions of Bill C-45. Like the task force report, Bill C-45 proposes a shared framework for the control and regulation of cannabis based on ongoing federal, provincial, and territorial collaboration.

The bill sets out clear controls and standards around cannabis, but provides the flexibility for each government to work within its own jurisdictional authority and experience. Each aspect of the framework would be implemented by those best placed to do so.

At this time, I would like to explain how the different levels of government would share their various roles and responsibilities, beginning with the federal role.

Under the proposed cannabis law, the federal government would be responsible for establishing and implementing a national framework for the regulation of cannabis production, establishing health and safety standards, and creating criminal prohibitions.

This would include: establishing restrictions on adult access to cannabis and establishing serious criminal penalties for those operating outside the legal system; creating rules to limit how cannabis or cannabis accessories can be promoted, packaged, labelled, and displayed that are in line with the rules that are in place for tobacco products; instituting a federal licensing regime for cannabis production that draws on lessons learned from the current system for access to cannabis for medical purposes; establishing industry-wide rules and standards, for example, serving sizes or potency, as well as the tracking of cannabis from seed to sale to prevent diversion to the illicit market; creating minimum federal conditions to provide a national framework to protect public health and public safety; and enforcing cannabis importation and exportation prohibitions at the border, except when legally authorized.

At the same time, Bill C-45 recognizes that provinces and territories, as well as municipalities, have an important role to play in the new system. Similar to provincial and territorial oversight over the distribution and sale of alcohol, the proposed legislation would recognize provincial and territorial legislative regimes that would oversee and regulate the distribution and retail sale of cannabis in their respective jurisdictions.

The legislative measures would also take into account the fact that the provinces and territories, together with municipalities, have the authority to adapt certain rules to their own jurisdictions and to enforce them with a variety of tools, including tickets.

As per the recommendations of the working group, the provinces and territories, together with municipalities, could establish rules governing the location of facilities for the production, distribution, and sale of cannabis in a community, and locations where cannabis can be consumed in public.

Provinces and territories could also set additional regulatory requirements to address issues of local concern. For example, provincial and territorial legislatures have the authority to set a higher minimum age for cannabis possession or more restrictive limits on possession for personal cultivation, including the lowering of the number of plants or restricting where they may be cultivated. As a result, Bill C-45 is drafted in such a way that provinces and territories can establish these stricter rules under their own authority.

Key roles for our municipal counterparts would include setting and enforcing local zoning bylaws, inspecting buildings, and carrying out local enforcement for matters related to minimum age for purchase, personal cultivation, personal possession limits, smoking, and place-of-use restrictions as well as public-nuisance complaints.

As the framework is implemented, I am convinced that our government will be able to work closely with its provincial, territorial, and municipal counterparts.

I am pleased to note that provinces and territories have already begun to prepare for legalization. For example, our partners in Manitoba have already introduced legislation amending provincial traffic safety laws to help police crack down on drivers who are driving while impaired by drugs and to restrict how cannabis can be transported in a vehicle.

The active involvement of our provincial, territorial, and municipal counterparts will be vital in helping to ensure that young people do not have access to cannabis and that those who sell cannabis outside of the legal framework will face stiff penalties.

Our government has said many times that it will be working with the provinces and territories to raise awareness and educate Canadians on the risks of cannabis use and to monitor the impact of tougher controls around access to cannabis.

In the 2017 budget, the government committed to investing $9.6 million over five years in a public education and awareness campaign and in surveillance activities.

As health is a shared responsibility between the federal, provincial, and territorial governments, provinces and territories complement federal public health programming, including through the management of public health and safety issues and school-based education and counselling.

In partnering with the provinces, territories, municipalities, and local communities, our government has announced that it will invest to provide law enforcement with the necessary equipment and education to ensure road safety. It said that it would also meet with the provinces and territories to continue discussions on how cannabis will be taxed.

Strong collaboration between the federal, provincial, and territorial governments, as much in areas of security and supply chains as in public education, is essential to reaching the goals of strict cannabis regulation, including that of keeping proceeds out of the hands of criminals.

Our government will continue to work tirelessly with all levels of government to realize our common goal of protecting the health and safety of Canadians.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I might be a little more gentle than my colleague suggests, but the entire Liberal government, the frontbench, all those ministers who were wheeled out to defend the proposed legislation certainly would not smile with expectations of great things for Canadian society, but they constantly express their concern. They think they can use predatory pricing to undercut organized crime. That is not real; it is absolutely unrealistic. We have seen it in American situations and we know it will happen here. Organized crime will use predatory pricing.

We have seen the inability to enforce the illegal tobacco laws in Canada. Schools in my riding of Thornhill in Toronto deal out of the back of trunks of cars in front of the schools. The police enforcement has been absolutely insufficient because the burden of prosecution is simply too great. I fear we are going to see exactly the same thing when organized crime rises to the bait and exploits the loopholes the Liberals are leaving by rushing to implement Bill C-45 far too soon.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, if I might use the word “wacky” one time again, that is an outrageous question. We, on this side of the House, certainly the official opposition and the NDP, recognize the inevitable. This Liberal majority, rushing through using the guillotine legislative tool today to cut short debate, is going to pass Bill C-45. The Liberals are determined to force it on Canadians, Canadian communities, police forces, and society, and are doing it far too soon.

The Liberals talk about not rushing and having had exhaustive consultation, but they are not listening to Canadians. They are not listening to the advice of the police forces, medical associations, and of small towns and large cities. Talk about being out of touch. The Liberal government is on a misguided crusade to impose the Prime Minister's ill-considered off the wall campaign promise made in 2015, whatever the cost to Canadian society.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, of all the ill-considered, unsound, and wacky campaign promises made by the Liberals in the 2015 election campaign, several dozen of which the Liberal government has broken, Bill C-45 most deserves to be broken, or at least seriously postponed.

The House may recall that when the legislation was first introduced, the Liberals assembled five ministers, whom they trotted out and sat down at the table at the press theatre just across Wellington Street, to defend the proposed marijuana legislation. There were the Minister of National Revenue, the Minister of Public Safety, the Minister of Justice, the Minister of Health, and the government's front guy for recreational marijuana, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice.

This was not a celebratory unveiling of new legislation. It looked like middle school detention time. There was not a smile among the group. The “marijuana five” sat grimly during the almost hour-long news conference and not one of the ministers spoke the word “marijuana”. They contorted themselves and their talking points into more coils than a hookah pipe, talking of their concerns about vulnerable kids, of the risks and dangers of the product they were about to make recreational, of any attempt to engage in a price war with organized crime, and repeatedly emphasized that they were not actually advocating marijuana consumption. As I said, not one of the “marijuana five” managed to actually speak the word. Instead, they stuck to the Latin, “cannabis”.

Since then it has all been downhill, and here we are with the Liberals cutting short an essential and important debate for all Canadians to hear by using the legislative guillotine of their Liberal majority.

The parliamentary secretary has reminded the House many times that in his words, “we all care about our kids. We care about their health, their safety, and their outcomes.” The PS has reminded us that he spent most of his adult life fighting crime, that crime and violence can be reduced in society through smart action.

We in the official opposition absolutely recognize the member's service and certainly agree that we all care for Canadian children and that crime and violence can be reduced in Canadian society through smart action, but we strenuously disagree that the Liberals have approached this matter in any way that could remotely be characterized as smart.

The Liberals have rushed to crank out Bill C-45, but in doing so have downloaded almost all of the real responsibilities and costs to the provinces and municipalities. From top to bottom, we have heard serious and worthy concerns from the medical community, from law enforcement, from small town and big city councils, and from provincial legislatures that the Liberals' rush to legalize recreational cannabis by July 2018 is simply going too far, far too fast. It is far too fast for effective education of consumers, young and old. It is far too fast for thorough and rational training of law enforcement officers and agencies. It is far too fast to think through the matters of home-grown marijuana and the volumes that will be produced, access by young children to it, and a variety of landlord-tenant issues.

The proposed federal law allows for four plants per home. In testimony at the health committee, witnesses calculated that four plants of 100 centimetres in height could produce up to 600 grams of marijuana, yet that height limit has now been removed from the bill. No one on the government side has explained how 600 grams fits with the maximum possession limit of 30 grams.

The health committee also heard in evidence from the United States that whereas Colorado allows home grown marijuana, Washington State does not, the exception being for frail medical consumers. The rather stark results are that in Washington state, where no home grown marijuana was allowed, organized crime's share of the marijuana market was reduced to less than 20% in less than three years. In Colorado, where home grown marijuana was allowed, organized crime jumped into the game and continues to flourish.

We learned last week that some provinces will heed the lessons from those two states and some will not. Quebec's draft legislation will outlaw home grown marijuana, with a purchase and consumption age of 18. However, there are other disparities in the area of distribution. Ontario says that it will only allow distribution through its liquor control board, as will Quebec, but Alberta is going to go the free enterprise, retail route, regulated by provincial regulation, but with no set limit on the number of private stores.

Coming back to testimony from south of the border, we also learned from Colorado that there has been a 32% increase in drug-impaired driving, which brings us to the repeated concerns, expressed both individually and collectively, of the Canadian chiefs of police. These chiefs of police say there is no possible way, zero chance, they will be ready to enforce new laws for the legalization of recreational marijuana by next July, or any month soon thereafter. They have pleaded for more time to properly train officers about the new laws, about the science, and the details of what is allowed and what is not. They want more time to certify an adequate number of officers to conduct roadside drug-impaired driving testing.

They have also asked, along with a variety of other groups, for more time for public education. Without a delay, the chiefs of police warn that there will be a gap between actual legalization and what the Liberals originally, grandiloquently proclaimed would be “Canada cannabis day”, before they backed off to a now vague commitment of sometime in July. There is a gap between actual legalization and the ability of the police to properly enforce the spectrum of new laws and regulations. That gap, the police chiefs warn, will give organized crime an opportunity to exploit these new laws and, as Ontario Provincial Police Deputy Commissioner Rick Barnum warned, for organized crime to flourish.

The Liberals claim they will squeeze organized crime out of the marijuana market through predatory pricing, undercutting street prices. The Liberal Government of Ontario is talking about a $10 a gram price, with sales tax on top of that, of course. The federal Liberal government is talking about another tax, a $1 a gram federal levy.

The street dealers, the distributors for organized crime, are laughing out loud about prices in the $8 to $12 a gram range putting them out of business. On radio talk shows in Toronto the last couple of weeks, it was clear that both sellers and buyers in the market today believe that the illicit market will continue to exist, and quite possibly grow. A year ago a marijuana dealer in Seattle in Washington state was selling marijuana for less than $5 Canadian a gram.

Coming back for just a moment to the Liberal government's proposed $1 a gram levy, to be split, it says, 50-50 with the provinces, that is a non-starter. We know it is a non-starter with the provinces, and certainly the municipalities, who are carrying the lion's share of the costs and responsibilities of bringing the Liberals' wacky campaign promise to a too-early reality.

As I said at the beginning of my remarks, of all the ill-considered promises made by these Liberals during the 2015 election campaign, several dozen of which they have reluctantly but realistically broken, Bill C-45 most deserves to be broken, or at least seriously postponed.

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

Mr. Speaker, I last rose in this House to speak to Bill C-45 back in May. I began my remarks then by speaking favourably of the government for taking an important first step in the move toward rectifying the failed crime-and-punishment approach that we have held in this country since the 1920s. It is quite obvious from all of the literature and evidence in the history of our country and indeed around the world that the war on drugs has been a complete and utter failure. The billions of dollars that have been spent and the countless lives that have been lost in that approach speak volumes about this failed approach. I believe that our resources as a country can be spent on a different approach, especially when the results have absolutely nothing to do with the objectives that were set out. We have a country where our youth are among the highest users of cannabis, despite decades of an approach where the use of cannabis and the trading of cannabis were criminalized.

Since that time in May, much has transpired with this bill through the committee stage in the Standing Committee on Health, and there was an enormous amount of witness testimony packed into a very short amount of time. We were optimistic that there were opportunities that could have been used to improve the bill that the government had introduced, but sadly that did not happen.

While the government introduced this legislation in a clumsy attempt to keep an election promise, it is now shutting down debate at report stage and limiting our debate at third reading on this very important and revolutionary change to Canada's drug laws. The Liberals are in a sense disenfranchising us as parliamentarians from doing our due diligence on this bill, from speaking for our constituents in this the people's House, and all for the reason of meeting some arbitrary deadline of July of next year. The government members know the government has a four-year mandate. The Liberals are going to be in power until October 2019, and yet they have set the date of July 2018 to get the bill passed into law. It just feels like a very slapdash approach to the whole thing, where we are not taking the time to get it right, because there is obvious room for improvement. While we do support the bill in principle and we have a lot of witness testimony to go on, it is clear that much could have been done to improve the legislation.

I would like to continue by focusing my remarks on a few key areas where I see the serious shortcomings in the bill at this stage.

I have to recognize the outstanding work of my colleague the member for Vancouver Kingsway, on the Standing Committee for Health. As our health critic, he did yeoman's work on that committee and was responsible on behalf of the NDP for bringing forward 38 amendments to the bill, which would have gone a long way toward improving it. Unfortunately, every single one of those proposed amendments was rejected by the Liberal majority on the committee. Amendments that were brought forward included a proposal to remove the 30-gram possession limit for adults. In his speech, the member for Vancouver Kingsway noted that any adults in the room could go to a liquor store and purchase enough alcohol to kill themselves. That is a legal thing, yet we are proposing an arbitrary 30-gram limit on cannabis, and if people step outside of that limit they would meet with the criminal justice system.

The member proposed decriminalizing the penalty section to bring it more in line with the Tobacco Act. Regarding the removal of the 100-centimetre plant height restriction, the member proposed that first but the Liberals decided they were going to vote against it so their own amendment to get rid of the 100-centimetre plant height restriction would pass and they could get all the credit for it. The member was also looking to allow the provinces to have the capacity to create their own licensing framework so that small producers and craft growers could exist within the government's legalization scheme. I certainly hope that, when the government members draft the regulations under the bill, they pay attention to the existing reality, especially in my home province of British Columbia. We have a number of dispensaries that are opening everywhere. This is just the reality on the ground. If the bill and the government fail to take notice of that reality, not much would be done to counter it.

It is very much a legal grey area that exists on Vancouver Island and, indeed, most of British Columbia. I certainly hope that there is room made so that this industry is not solely dominated by big weed producers that have an undue amount of influence on the government through their lobbying activities.

The other thing my colleague moved is to allow for the legalization of the sale of edibles. Government members have been very fond of quoting the Hon. Anne McLellan as the head of the task force. I would like to read into the record some of her testimony at the Standing Committee on Health. She stated:

Obviously, if you're concerned about public health....

If you want to move from the illicit market into a regulated legal market, then you have to offer the quality and choice that the illicit market can provide. It's fair to say that we heard that over and over again from a wide variety of people we talked to. There are public health reasons and public safety reasons why you would want to authorize or allow edibles in various forms.

That was said by none other than the chair of the task force.

The government claims that this bill is going to legalize cannabis, but I contend that this bill would merely make cannabis less illegal. In fact, more prohibitions would exist when this bill comes into law than currently exist under the Criminal Code or the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. It is a bit of a misnomer to say that we are legalizing cannabis, because it is going to be very tightly regulated, and if someone were to step outside of the boundaries or the confines of this law, the punishments are quite severe. For example, a Canadian in possession of 31 grams would be a criminal, a person in possession of five cannabis plants would be a criminal, and an 18-year-old kid sharing a joint with a 17-year-old best friend would be a criminal.

The penalties associated with some of these offences under this “legalized regime” are extremely harsh, and I look no further than the 14 years that are provided for under clause 9 of the bill. I will read into the record the testimony at the Standing Committee on Health from John Conroy, the lead counsel in Allard v. Canada. He stated:

...having this maximum of 14 years, hybridized by indictment, and so on, is frankly totally unrealistic in terms of what goes on on the ground. Even in the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal, which is not known to be the most liberal court in the country, the range for trafficking, for example, is 12 to 18 months. Most sentences are up to two years. For tobacco and alcohol, all your maximums are two and three years.

Therefore, this 14-year provision is completely unrealistic and flies in the face of the government's stated aim to reduce the burden on our criminal justice system, especially when we would be operating under the constraints imposed by the Jordan decision of the Supreme Court of Canada.

The Criminal Code is going to be designed to regulate gardening. There was some very colourful testimony from defence lawyer Michael Spratt in that regard. When this bill comes into force, the criminal regime would still be quite onerous on our criminal justice system.

The government likes to say it operates in the spirit of being open, accountable, and transparent, but now we are operating under time allocation. I do not believe many members have had the chance to voice their concerns, all the while marching toward this arbitrary deadline of July 2018. We are doing a disservice to Canadians and our constituents who sent us to this House to make sure that the bill we pass is the very best possible.

We know the legalization regime is coming, but we owe it to Canadians to make sure it is done in the best way possible and recognize the government's stated objectives in this very bill. Clause 7 states that it would “deter illicit activities in relation to cannabis through appropriate sanctions and enforcement measures” and “reduce the burden on the criminal justice system in relation to cannabis”. Those are two stated objectives in clause 7, and there are very valid questions as to whether this bill would actually accomplish that. I do not believe we are able to fully explore those with a rushed committee process and a rushed process in this House. This is a revolutionary step to Canada's drug laws, so that is a disservice.

I will end by offering my qualified support for this bill, recognizing that a much better job could have been done, and when New Democrats form government in 2019, we will be looking to improve it.

[Linda Lapointe, Liberal, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague.

It is my honour today to speak to Bill C-45, our government's bill to legalize and strictly regulate cannabis consumption in Canada.

The future cannabis act represents a new approach to cannabis, one that puts public health and public safety at the forefront and will better protect young Canadians.

The current approach to cannabis does not work. It has allowed criminals and organized crime to profit while also failing to keep cannabis out of the hands of Canadian youth. In many cases, it is easier for our kids to buy cannabis than cigarettes. Canadians continue to use cannabis at some of the highest rates in the world. It is the most commonly used illicit drug among young Canadians.

In 2015, 21% of youth aged 15 to 19 reported using cannabis in the past year. That is one out of five young people in this country. In the Laurentian region, it is almost 50%.

Too many young people see cannabis as a benign substance. They are often ill-informed about the harm it can do, and they do not realize that early use of cannabis increases susceptibility to long-term effects. Youth are especially vulnerable to the effects of cannabis on brain development and function. This is because the THC in cannabis affects the same biological system in the brain that directs brain development.

At the same time, too many young people today are entering the criminal justice system for possessing small amounts of cannabis, potentially impacting their long-term opportunities. Clearly, there has to be a better way of educating and protecting our young people.

Given these facts, I would like to focus my comments today on the benefits of this legislation for youth. This is one of our government's primary objectives for Bill C-45, to protect youth by restricting their access to cannabis.

I would first like to note that this legislation is just one piece of the overall approach to addressing cannabis use by youth. Our government's commitment to keeping cannabis out of the hands of children comprises several complementary measures to protect their health, keep them safe, and ensure their well-being.

Our government is trying to reduce cannabis use by youth, to restrict their ability to obtain the product, to provide them with better information on its harms to health and its risks, and to keep them out of the criminal justice system for possessing even small amounts of cannabis.

This approach requires legislative and regulatory measures, and support for public education and awareness. To that end, our government has begun a public education campaign with a focus on youth and their parents to better inform them about cannabis, its harm and risks to health.

Considering all of these measures combined, I am confident that our government's overall approach will be effective in better protecting our youth from the potential harm of this mind-altering substance.

I would like to explain the specific measures in the cannabis bill that would help safeguard our youth. As a society we have learned from the health and safety controls that have been put in place for other potentially harmful substances, such as cigarettes, alcohol, and prescription medication.

Bill C-45 uses these best practices as the starting point, and contains a number of measures that are designed to protect youth.

At the outset, Bill C-45 prohibits the sale of cannabis to anyone under the age of 18 and prohibits adults from giving cannabis to anyone under 18. It also creates an offence and penalty for anyone caught using a young person to commit a cannabis-related offence. Any adult found guilty of engaging in these activities could face a jail term of up to 14 years.

To avoid the kind of enticements to use cannabis that we have seen in the past with cigarettes, Bill C-45 would prohibit any form of cannabis designed to appeal to youth. This means that things like cannabis-infused gummi bears or lollipops would be illegal.

To further discourage youth from using cannabis, cannabis producers or retailers would be prohibited from using any kind of packaging or labelling that might be appealing to youth, or to use any kind of endorsement, lifestyle promotion, or cartoon animal to promote their product. The promotion or advertising of cannabis products will not be permitted in any place or in any media that could be accessed by youth, such as grocery stores, movie theatres, or on public transportation, just to name a few examples.

To further reduce the chance that youth might be able to access the product illegally, cannabis will not be sold in any kind of vending machine. Bill C-45 also includes authority to make regulations that could require cannabis to be sold in child-resistant packaging, to protect our youngest ones from accidentally consuming this product.

Taken together, these measures constitute a comprehensive approach to protecting the health and safety of our youth.

In addition to protecting public health and safety, one of our government's goals is to avoid criminalizing Canadians for relatively minor offences.

Having a criminal record for simple possession of small amounts of cannabis can have significant consequences. Having a record can seriously impact opportunities for employment, housing, volunteerism, and travel. The question we have to ask ourselves is do we want to continue to saddle Canadians with these burdens for the possession of small amounts of cannabis? Our government's response is an emphatic no.

The proposed legislation sets out a 30-gram possession limit for dried cannabis in public for adults aged 18 and over. As I stated earlier, it would also establish offences and strict penalties for adults who give or try to sell cannabis to a youth, or who use a young person to commit a cannabis-related offence.

Under Bill C-45, youth would not face criminal prosecution for possessing or sharing very small amounts of cannabis. Any activities by youth involving more than small amounts of cannabis, defined as over five grams, would be addressed under the provisions of the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

Our government will be working with the provinces and territories to support the development of legislation in each jurisdiction that would allow law enforcement to confiscate any amount of cannabis found in the possession of a young person. This would allow authorities to take away any amount of cannabis they may have in their possession.

Let me be clear, the proposed approach addressing youth possession of cannabis does not mean that such behaviour is encouraged or acceptable. It is not. Rather, it recognizes that a more balanced approach that uses a range of tools, and does not rely on the criminal justice system, would provide a better way to reduce cannabis consumption among youth.

This approach is consistent with the findings of the Task Force on Cannabis Legalization and Regulation. The task force's final report noted that cannabis use among youth could be better addressed through non-criminal approaches that discourage youth from possessing or consuming cannabis. I believe this strikes the right balance between avoiding the criminalization of youth for the possession of small amounts and ensuring that cannabis remains tightly regulated and controlled.

In conclusion, our government has put the health, safety, and well-being of youth at the core of this proposed legislation.

I am convinced that, through this balanced approach, our government will be able to help Canadians access recreational marijuana in a way that is safe and regulated and that will take this substance out of the hands of our children.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-45 on the legalization of marijuana.

Does the Prime Minister really think that legalizing marijuana will protect Canadian youth and my 12- and 14-year-old children? When I hear him say that sort I thing, I cannot help but think that he lacks judgment or that he is being insincere. What I find even more troubling is that the member for Scarborough Southwest, a former long-serving police officer, also believes that organized crime is simply going to disappear as soon as Parliament passes Bill C-45. These men are living in a world of make-believe, where botched, simplistic bills can be used to magically solve extremely complex problems and where heroes can simply sprinkle some fairy dust and make organized crime disappear. Problem solved.

Here in the House, we have to forget that world of make-believe and deal with the real world like grown-ups. We have to make sure that our actions produce real results, keep Canadians safer, and protect young people from a life of drugs. Bill C-45 only complicates the drug-use problem in Canada. No, legalizing marijuana will not make it harder for our children to get their hands on drugs. Yes, organized crime will find ways around laws it has no intention of obeying. No, police officers cannot use fairy dust to fight drug-related crime, violence, and death.

The Liberals say that Bill C-45 will regulate the industry. What a joke. Once Bill C-45 comes into force, the government will have to come up with a retail pricing strategy. How is organized crime likely to respond? Are criminals going to step back and do nothing? I have a feeling criminals already have a plan to deal with this new reality. When the government raises tobacco taxes, organized crime adjusts its prices accordingly. The market is constantly adjusting. History has shown that to be the case every time, and marijuana will be no exception.

Also, young people are more easily drawn to the black market's low prices because they do not have the same means as adults. They cannot afford to pay higher prices. If he wants, the Prime Minister will be able to buy marijuana at any price, but our young people cannot. They will have to choose between the government's price and the criminals' price.

During the last election, the Prime Minister said that he wanted to legalize marijuana to keep it out of the hands of young people, but Bill C-45 shows us that youth 18 and over will be able to buy cannabis. I have some figures I would like to share, and I hope to make things clear.

Bill C-45 says that those 18 and over will be allowed to buy cannabis. However, in Colorado, you have to be at least 21. That should be the minimum. Another problem is that young people will still be allowed to carry marijuana. This means that people will have to be 18 to buy it, but they can have it on them at age 12. That does not make any sense.

In addition, minors aged 16 and 17 are often friends with people who are 18. They are less likely to be friends with people aged 21 and older. Thus, an 18 year old, who has reached the age of majority and can legally purchase cannabis, can give it to his or her 16- and 17-year-old friends. I am not the one saying so. All the witnesses, especially those from the medical community, are saying that the minimum age should be at least 21 years.

I am thinking of my kids, who are 12 and 14. Under this bill, they will be allowed to possess up to five grams of marijuana. To be sure that everyone understands clearly, that is the equivalent of 10 to 15 joints. If my 14-year-old son is caught with 10 joints in his pocket, that will be completely legal. He would not be able to purchase it, but he would be allowed to have it in his possession. That is one of the gross inconsistencies of Bill C-45.

In addition, under this bill, youth aged 12 to 17 will be allowed to distribute it among themselves. I would like to see Bill C-45 prohibit young people from possessing marijuana altogether.

Young people should not have any opportunity to get their hands on drugs.

There are also questions about the various cannabis-based products and the as yet undefined licensing strategies. Rental property owners are having problems as well, because the legislation currently allows up to four plants per home, and the height is not regulated at present.

Four healthy, well-fertilized plants up to eight feet tall can yield up to 600 grams of home-grown marijuana. Incidentally, most of the witnesses were against the idea of allowing plants to be grown at home. Medical groups, law enforcement, and everyone else said home growing should not be permitted.

I am very proud of the Province of Quebec right now. The Quebec government has drafted its own law based on what the federal government had proposed, and it has decided to ban home growing. To the Quebec government, I say well done.

Another problem is that police forces are not getting any answers to their questions. They want to know how they are supposed to properly enforce traffic laws starting July 1, 2018.

Furthermore, how will those provinces that do allow plants to be grown in houses and apartments monitor what people are doing? How will they check every apartment in Canada to make sure there are only four plants, not five, six, seven, or eight?

A lot of questions remain unanswered. This government is quick to ram Bill C-45 down our throats by claiming that it is a national priority. In Canada, there is nothing more important than legalizing marijuana. That is just great.

Police officers are also telling us about other problems that will arise with plants in homes: odour, the number of plants, the height of plants and the nuisance that could be created. Once again, there are many unanswered questions about this bill.

What will happen with plants at home? Young people will be able to make joints with these plants, and then they are going to take these joints and visit their buddies. The joints will be sold, and then resold, creating a criminal network from plants legally grown at home. Young people will be able to sell pot to their friends. The black market will not shut down. It will be legal at home, but illegal in the streets. It is just a lot of nonsense, and I have not even touched on insurance problems resulting from having plants in homes.

There will also be problems at the border. We saw that recently with the serious problem of illegal immigrants at our borders. The RCMP and the Canada Border Services Agency are devoting much of their resources to the borders. Now the government wants to legalize marijuana and border services officers are wondering what they are supposed to do.

Are the officers supposed to arrest Americans who come to the border with marijuana? Do we tell the American authorities? It is illegal on the other side of the border. If Americans show up here with their pot thinking they can come to Canada to smoke their joints, are we to report them to the American authorities and leave them on the other side of the border? Those types of questions still remain unanswered. If people go on vacation thinking they can bring their own pot with them across the border, they are mistaken. All of these questions are left unanswered.

The Liberals want us to vote in favour of this bill. This is amateur hour. If the Parliament of Canada, the House of Commons, votes in legislation like this, we will truly be a bunch of rank amateurs. Those of superior rank are often referred to as pros, but here, we are dealing with rank amateurs who will never make it to the big leagues.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Madam Speaker, adults who are found in possession of a small amount of cannabis, up to a maximum of 30 grams, will no longer be treated like criminals. Instead, Bill C-45 will give responsible adult consumers a way to legally obtain this substance, which will be strictly regulated in order to meet the high national safety and quality standards.

This new approach will help reduce the disproportionate burden imposed on the 18,000 individuals who were charged with possession of cannabis in 2016. We know a simple possession charge can have life-long impacts on a person's life prospects. Bill C-45 will reduce this travesty. It will also reduce the burden on the criminal justice system.

Our government believes that law enforcement and the courts should devote their resources to criminal activities that are truly detrimental to society, as well as to education and prevention in the case of public health issues like cannabis use.

The expert witnesses who appeared before the Standing Committee on Health agreed with our government's proposed approach. For example, Karey Shuhendler, from the Canadian Nurses Association, stated:

Bill C-45 promotes the removal of harms associated with the prohibition model, while recognizing the need to protect vulnerable populations, including youth.

Under our current regime, Canadian youth have one of the highest rates of cannabis use in the world. In 2015, 21% of youth aged 15-19 reported using cannabis in the past year. Some Vancouver Quadra citizens have expressed concerns that legalization of cannabis will increase its use by young people. I think the evidence will show that use will decrease over time with the prevention and education programs put in place by the government.

Let us be clear that many youth are using cannabis now under a system controlled by criminal gangs. That is why the bill includes strict controls and penalties to protect young people, and measures to deter and punish adults who provide cannabis to under-aged Canadians. Deterring the illegal market is necessary to protect Canadian youth.

Experts such as Dr. Christina Grant, from the Canadian Paediatric Society, have cautioned that too high an age limit will preserve an illegal market that provides a supply of illegal, unregulated, and unsafe cannabis to Canadians between the ages of 20 and 24. These are the young people who currently have the highest rates of consumption among Canadians and among their peers from other developed countries.

It is also important to keep in mind that the bill gives the provinces and territories the flexibility to establish additional restrictions that can go even further than those set out in the federal framework, depending on their own specific needs and circumstances.

This includes raising the national minimum age if a province or territory so choses.

Beyond the proposed minimum age restriction and severe penalties for selling cannabis to youth, Bill C-45 proposes a number of additional controls to protect young Canadians. For example, the bill includes provisions that would prohibit the sale of cannabis and cannabis products that are considered appealing to youth. It would ban the advertising and promotion of cannabis, except in limited and very restricted circumstances. It would also set out requirements for packaging and labelling to ensure they are not appealing to youth.

Also, as various expert witnesses who testified before the Standing Committee on Health reminded us, these measures need to be supported by significant and effective public education to explain the risks and harms associated with cannabis consumption, especially for youth. Our government fully agrees with these experts and we have already started a national public awareness and education campaign, in collaboration with the provinces and territories. This campaign will be augmented by the additional $36.4 million announced recently.

Finally, in light of the tragedy of the current opioid crisis, I would like to note how an evidence-based public health approach to drug use can save lives. We know that cannabis use for medical purposes like pain relief is safer and less addictive than opioids. In the United States, the legalization of medical cannabis in many states has resulted in a 25% drop in opioid-related deaths compared to states where medical cannabis remained illegal. In Canada the opioid crisis took at least 2,458 Canadian lives in 2016 and it is only growing worse. British Columbia and Vancouver have a disproportionate share. However, I am optimistic that those tragedies will be reduced by the legalization of cannabis.

To sum up, this is a thoughtful and comprehensive piece of legislation that has been designed to protect the health and safety of Canadians while saving lives.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board]

Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak strongly in support of Bill C-45 through which our government is ending the failed approach of criminalizing cannabis. This is an opportunity to protect our youth, to take profits out of the hands of criminals, and to treat drug use as the public health issue it actually is.

I have actively worked to advance this policy since hosting the Liberal caucus in discussions back in the fall of 2011 about the potential legalization of cannabis, so I am proud to stand in the House and see this policy come to fruition.

I would like to start my comments today by giving some thanks to organizations that have been advocating for this very practical and positive new policy. I would first like to thank Dr. Evan Wood, an emergency room physician, who led a coalition called Stop the Violence BC, when he saw the gang and gun violence on the streets of Metro Vancouver, including in an award-winning restaurant in Vancouver Quadra, where two people were injured by a gang shootout around the drug trade.

I would like to thank Brett Harvey and Adam Scorgie, who created a documentary called The Union: The Business Behind Getting High, which documented the role of organized crime in controlling the cannabis trade. Years ago, I had the privilege of hosting them and their film in Ottawa, where I opened up an event to all members of Parliament and senators of all parties to learn about why we needed to move beyond our failed policy, which we are actually moving beyond today.

I want to thank all of the sound drug policy advocates, like Donald MacPherson of the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, who brought forward evidence as to why this shift was needed, and the many other health care professionals, criminal justice professionals, and policing professionals who have pushed for this change in our country.

Lastly, I would like to thank our Prime Minister for including this in our platform, and the health minister and the justice minister for delivering on this mandate, as well as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health for his leadership, and all members of the Standing Committee on Health for doing good work toward this change that we have positioned our country for over two years.

This week we were reminded once again of the importance of this discussion by the RCMP's seizure of 64 pounds of cannabis and 94 mature cannabis plants from the Hells Angels in Kelowna. This is the reality of our current system: organized crime produces, distributes, and sells the cannabis, and uses it to fund its other criminal ventures. It is Hells Angels and other criminals who regulate and control the product and what is actually in it, and how to sell more of it to our youth. It is criminal gangs who recruit young people to be part of this terrible criminal enterprise, so it is far better that the government regulate and control cannabis. That is what Bill C-45 is all about.

The bill before the House of Commons today was developed on the basis of the excellent work of the task force on cannabis legalization and regulation, which conducted an in-depth study of the various implications of the legislation and the strict regulation of cannabis.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Madam Speaker, today we are discussing Bill C-45, an act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other acts.

The intention of Bill C-45 is to legalize marijuana. This bill has numerous objectives; however, unfortunately, many of those pertaining to public health and public safety will not be achieved. This bill fails to protect the health of young persons by restricting their access to cannabis, fails to deter illicit activities in relation to cannabis, and fails to reduce the burden on the criminal justice system.

With the Liberal government's rushed deadline, law enforcement will not have the time or resources to train or prepare for the legalization of marijuana. Doctors are extremely concerned about the well-being of youth if this legislation is passed, as marijuana can be an extremely harmful substance. Numerous municipal and provincial governments will also not have the time or resources to respond to the tremendous impact that Bill C-45 will have on all Canadian communities.

More than 68,000 police officers in Canada will need specific training in the wake of this monumental legislation, and a few months is not a realistic timeline. As a result, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police has asked the government to extend this deadline. If police are not prepared to deal with the legalization through adequate training, this could lead to poor decisions resulting in bad case law for any new legislation.

We want our law enforcement to have the ability to properly uphold the law. Police will require final legislation from all the levels of government before being able to begin their preparations. The government needs to provide police with a clear direction regarding both funding and training.

The bill is also of grave concern for anyone on Canadian roads, as law enforcement agencies are also lacking the resources to deal with marijuana-impaired driving. There are no current reliable roadside testing methods to measure marijuana impairment as there are presently with alcohol. This is extremely challenging from a public safety perspective.

One of the purposes of this legislation is to ease the burden on law enforcement, but it is likely it will in fact do the opposite. Although there may be fewer charges of simple possession, those efforts will be replaced by those needed for ticketing. There are also severe concerns with home growing and allowing the possession of up to four plants. This will be extremely difficult to enforce. Jurisdictions such as Colorado in the United States that have already legalized marijuana have seen tremendous difficulties with this, especially with individuals selling their homegrown marijuana for a lower price than what is legally regulated. This is problematic as it will not incentivize the elimination of a black market.

Some elements of plain packaging could further hinder the enforcement of the black market as it will be very difficult for law enforcement to distinguish between legal and illegal marijuana products.

Youth access to marijuana is another grave concern. It has been medically confirmed that there are severe long-term effects from marijuana use by youth, such as cognitive delays and mental health issues. All of these are likely to affect their goals in school, as well as future careers.

Smoking marijuana doubles the risk of developing schizophrenia, which is especially worrying for those who are already at a greater risk. These risks do not just stop at the age of 18, when one becomes an adult, but rather can be experienced up to the age of 25. There needs to be increased awareness of these risks for those 25 and under, not just those under the legal age.

Research suggests that youth typically begin use in a social setting and do not recognize that as harmful. Youth also perceive the risks of marijuana impairment when driving to be minimal. The government should not be dismissive of the evidence we have seen in Colorado after it legalized marijuana. The state experienced drastic increases in deaths caused by marijuana-impaired driving. It is crucial for youth to be informed of the facts of these dangerous realities, and not be relying on myths and word of mouth.

Having homegrown marijuana is also a substantial risk to youth, as it is easily accessible through the home. Despite provisions to restrict youth access, marijuana use by youth was frequent, and most of the marijuana obtained was originally bought from legal sources. This is particularly concerning in relation to the production of edibles. Although they have been excluded from this bill, they are likely to be produced privately by individuals or even sold on the black market. With marijuana more easily accessible through legalization, edibles will be more prevalent. When marijuana is put in food, children may mistake it for delicious treats, which can be extremely dangerous.

I would like to note that Quebec's legislation for marijuana will forbid homegrown cannabis for personal use, for likely just those reasons. The Province of New Brunswick is also addressing the dangers of homegrown marijuana by making individuals lock up their plants. Provinces and municipalities are creating legislation in anticipation of Bill C-45, but it is evident that they do not have the resources or infrastructure to deal with its implementation by July 1, 2018. This is why the Province of Quebec also recently asked the federal government to extend the deadline to 2019.

There are a number of indirect results of legalizing marijuana, and municipalities will need to be prepared to deal with additional medical costs due to more emergency room visits, as well as poison centre calls. Areas that previously legalized marijuana also saw significant increases in homelessness, as well as crime, as a direct result. We should not be rushing this bill through, but rather, taking our time so we can learn from those who have already legalized this substance, so we do not make the same mistakes. We need more time to fully implement this legislation and minimize the risks to public safety.

There are also significant international ramifications from implementing this bill. Canada will not be complying with three United Nations treaties and may cause disputes with our southern neighbour, the United States. Officials at United States border crossings have asked individuals whether they have consumed marijuana and, if yes, individuals have been denied entry. This can be very problematic when marijuana is considered legal and individuals are being denied entry into the U.S as a result of its use. This issue remains unresolved.

This bill is extremely worrisome as it contains some major oversights. The Standing Committee on Health heard numerous witnesses in relation to Bill C-45, and the government failed in many areas to implement their recommendations. There are concerns from reputable organizations, such as the Canadian Medical Association and the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police.

If my colleagues across the floor were concerned about the well-being of Canadians, they would not be putting this bill forward. I ask my colleagues in the House to stand up for the public safety of all Canadians and vote against this bill.

[Marco Mendicino, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House of Commons today to speak about the motions moved by the member for Sarnia—Lambton.

Before I begin, I would like to acknowledge the work of the Standing Committee on Health in its study of Bill C-45, an act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code, and other acts. The committee heard from nearly 100 witnesses in five days. The committee's deliberations resulted in the adoption of 20 amendments that contributed to improving various aspects of the bill. These were informed by the insight and advice of the many witnesses, both domestic and international. I want to thank the members of the committee for this thoughtful review of the bill and its efforts to improve the proposed legislation.

Bill C-45 follows through on our government's commitment to legalize, strictly regulate, and restrict access to cannabis in a way that protects Canadians, including our youth, and removes profits from the hands of criminals and organized crime. In my remarks today, I would like to further explain some of the reasons our government's approach to cannabis is the right one.

The motion put forward by the member for Sarnia—Lambton would effectively prohibit adults from cultivating any cannabis plants on their own property. This stands in sharp contrast to the approach proposed by our government, which would allow adults to grow up to four cannabis plants on their property for personal use.

First, let me remind members of the House that our proposed legislation was informed by the sound and extensive advice of the task force on cannabis legalization and regulation, which was chaired by the Hon. Anne McLellan. The task force consulted extensively with Canadians across Canada on how best to approach the legalization and regulation of cannabis. The members heard from youth, cannabis consumers, industry, indigenous communities, provincial and territorial governments, law enforcement, municipalities, regulators in other jurisdictions, public health and safety experts, and researchers, and the list goes on. Overall, the carefully weighed and diverse range of perspectives expressed during these extensive consultations suggested that small amounts of cannabis for personal use can be safely and responsibly grown at home by adults.

The proposed new framework for cannabis, which permits a small number of plants to be cultivated by adults on their own property, is consistent with the approach recommended by the task force. There is no doubt that our government's proposed approach, allowing a small number of cannabis plants to be cultivated at home, is balanced and supports the objectives of Bill C-45.

One of those objectives is to avoid criminalizing Canadians for minor offences related to cannabis. The current approach to cannabis has resulted in thousands of Canadians being charged, convicted, and sent to jail for possessing small amounts of cannabis, which indeed is counterproductive. Should the motion moved by the member for Sarnia—Lambton be adopted, Canadians would continue to be exposed to criminal charges for minor, non-violent offences. This would create an unnecessary burden on the criminal justice system, which is one of the reasons these motions should not be supported. We all know that criminal records can result in lifelong consequences by, for example, limiting employment opportunities.

Another key objective of the bill is to reduce illegal activities in relation to cannabis. Significant profits are generated by the illegal cannabis market every year, and some of this profit ends up in the hands of organized crime. Allowing adults to legally cultivate a small number of cannabis plants on their property would represent an alternative to the illegal market and should not be prohibited completely. Completely prohibiting personal cultivation, as proposed by the member for Sarnia—Lambton, may undermine the government's ability to displace the illegal market and reduce criminal activities.

Setting a limit on the number of plants an adult may grow is a reasonable way to distinguish between responsible adults who wish to grow a limited number of cannabis plants at home and cannabis cultivated to supply and drive the illegal market. This is why other jurisdictions have taken a similar path.

As the federal framework has also been informed by international experience and best practices, I would note that in jurisdictions where cannabis is legal and strictly regulated, only one, Washington state, has maintained a prohibition on personal cultivation. Other jurisdictions, including Colorado, Oregon, and California, set provisions that restrict the number of plants that can be grown, such as the ones included in Bill C-45.

Permitting personal cultivation in limited amounts is consistent with our government's approach to allowing Canadians access to a legal source of cannabis while setting a clear threshold to help law enforcement identify criminal organizations that are supporting an illegal market.

To be clear, permitting personal cultivation of a limited number of plants would not mean open season for cannabis. On the contrary, the selling of home cultivated cannabis would still be a criminal offence, and growing more than four plants would be prohibited and prosecutable.

Finally, it is important to clarify that under the proposed framework, the provinces, territories, and municipalities would have the flexibility to impose further restrictions related to personal cultivation, beyond what is found in Bill C-45. This is an important point, as our government believes that they would be in a better position to assess the necessity and feasibility of such additional restrictions and their enforcement.

Through our government's proposed approach, Canadians would no longer run the risk of having a criminal record for possessing, sharing, or growing small amounts of cannabis. Canada is more than ready for a new approach, one that includes the ability of Canadians to grow small amounts of cannabis plants at home for personal use.

Again, the motion moved by the member for Sarnia—Lambton goes against the key objectives of the bill. Therefore, we recommend that all members of this House vote it down. It would also undermine our government's efforts to displace the illegal market and reduce criminal activities around cannabis. I am confident that the new legal framework we are proposing, including the current provisions of the bill that would allow personal cultivation of a small number of plants at home, is the best path forward for all Canadians.

The House resumed from November 9 consideration of Bill C-45, An Act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other Acts, as reported (with amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

Bill C-45—Time Allocation Motion

[Jody Wilson-Raybould, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Madam Speaker, I have to reiterate the comprehensive nature of Bill C-45, the consultations, and the ongoing discussions we have had, and will continue to have, with provinces, territories, and municipalities to ensure that we can establish the comprehensive framework that will legalize cannabis, and strictly regulate and restrict access to cannabis. This is an ongoing effort.

As we have seen, six jurisdictions have instituted their own measures with respect to the regulation of cannabis. We are going to continue to work with them and the other jurisdictions to ensure, come July 2018, that we have a comprehensive framework in place that obliterates the status quo and ensures that we keep cannabis out of the hands of kids and the proceeds out of the hands of criminals.

[Jody Wilson-Raybould, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Madam Speaker, in fact I do recognize that these individuals are in Ottawa, and we have been listening. We have been talking to municipal officials. We have been looking them in the eye and having substantial conversations about Bill C-45 and the provisions contained therein. We are committed to ensuring that we change the status quo, a status quo that simply is not working. We want to move forward with the legalization of cannabis and strictly regulate and restrict access.

In order to have a comprehensive framework in place by July of 2018, we have to work with provinces, territories, law enforcement, and municipalities. We are committed to continuing to do that and look forward to the discussion that will happen today in ongoing debate, which has been substantive in this place.

[Jody Wilson-Raybould, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Madam Speaker, I know the member opposite has asked this question in previous forums.

Nothing in Bill C-45 makes it legal for a young person to possess cannabis. In having the five grams in Bill C-45, we have sought to ensure that we find a balance between the over-criminalization of young people and to ensure we do everything we can to protect the health and safety of, and restriction of access for, young people.

In the legislation, the provinces and territories have the ability, much like they do with respect to tobacco and alcohol, to put in place measures to ensure that cannabis can be seized from a young person by law enforcement officers, much the same way they do with respect to alcohol and cigarettes.

[Jody Wilson-Raybould, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Madam Speaker, my thanks to my colleague for his reiteration of our commitment in the campaign in the lead-up to the election, a campaign commitment we are moving forward with in a substantive and comprehensive way, while taking a health and safety approach, to ensure we address the dysfunction of the status quo and the ability for young people access to cannabis. Canada has the highest rate of usage of cannabis by young people as compared to other places in the world.

We made a commitment to the legalization, strict regulation of cannabis, and the restriction of access to cannabis to keep it out of the hands of children and the proceeds out of the hands of criminals.

We have undertaken to achieve this commitment with vigour. We have introduced Bill C-45. It has benefited from the substantive expertise of the task force on cannabis. Most of their recommendations were incorporated into the legislation. We have also benefited from recommendations and amendments that were made at committee.

I look forward to the continued debate and discussion over the course of today and to the passage of the legislation. I also look forward to the discussion that will happen in the other place.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Madam Speaker, what contempt for indigenous peoples, civil society, and the individual communities across Canada. What contempt for the provinces.

The government says it is listening, but it is as deaf as a post. It is incapable of listening. Maybe that is why I am raising my voice, so that it might reach their ears at some point.

While the Government of Quebec is asking for more time, the Liberals have the nerve to impose time allocation to speed up the passage of Bill C-45. It makes no sense. The government wanted to usher in a new era of collaboration with the provinces and establish new federal-provincial relationships. Well, that ended just as quickly as it began, thank you very much. The government could not care less about raising awareness or training police officers. It could not care less about health and social services or the cost to the provinces. There is just a need for speed.

What is the rush? My Conservative colleague was right. July 1, 2018 is an absolutely arbitrary date and it makes no sense. The only logical reason for rushing through this is to cater to cannabis producers who have received authorizations and permits, many of whom are former Liberal ministers and organizers.

Are they not the reason why we are voting on this time allocation motion today?

[Jody Wilson-Raybould, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Madam Speaker, I want to confirm that we are listening. We have been listening for two years, and we will continue to listen. We will continue to engage with the provinces and territories, six of which have introduced their own measures with respect to responding to Bill C-45. We will continue to support them in that regard, as well as the other jurisdictions that will likely move forward in some manner.

On public education and communications, we have implemented substantive measures in this regard, including investments. Very recently we announced $36.4 million for public education and awareness, and that campaign has begun. For example, we have engaged in many initiatives via social media. We have issued 110,000 leaflets for a drug-free Canada. There are ongoing efforts by my colleagues, the Minister of Health and the Minister of Public Safety, to ensure we continue to communicate the risks related to cannabis, particularly with respect to young people.

We will continue to have this campaign. We will continue to work in collaboration on this campaign to ensure the provinces, territories, municipalities, and law enforcement are prepared for the legalization, strict regulation, and restriction of access to cannabis.

[Jody Wilson-Raybould, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the comments from my colleague across the way. I am not disavowing any vision with respect to indigenous peoples. Bill C-45 would, and is committed to, legalize, strictly regulate, and restrict access to cannabis to keep it out of the hands of children and the proceeds out of the hands of criminals. That has been the agenda of this government for two years. We have engaged in substantive discussions right across the country, including within this place. We value the feedback we have received from members of Parliament. We look forward to the discussion that will happen in the other place.

With respect to indigenous communities, we will continue, on an ongoing basis, to engage with indigenous communities. We have and will continue to engage with provinces and territories, as well as law enforcement, to ensure they have the tools necessary to meet legalization in July of 2018. We have invested a significant number of dollars to assist the provinces and territories and to assist in an education and public awareness campaign about the harms of cannabis. We will continue to proceed in this manner to ensure that in legalization, we have and bear the utmost priority of the health and safety of Canadians. That is our commitment to Canadians.

[Jody Wilson-Raybould, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Madam Speaker, I consider it vitally important to hear from all members of the House in terms of discussions and debate with respect to proposed legislation. We have had substantive debate on various pieces of legislation throughout the course of the last two years. Particularly with respect to Bill C-45, we have had eight committee meetings. We have heard from nearly 100 witnesses at committee. We have received 115 briefs. In this honourable place, we have heard from 86 speakers. We have had 31 hours of debate. This is an incredibly important piece of legislation that we are wanting to move forward in order to legalize cannabis, to strictly regulate and restrict access to cannabis in order to keep it out of the hands of kids and the proceeds out of the hands of criminals.

The status quo simply is not working. We have had two years of substantive discussion right across the country. I was very pleased to hear from the 86 members of Parliament in this place who have submitted their concerns, as well as the views from committee that made some amendments to the bill. Discussion will be ongoing in the other place.

[Jody Wilson-Raybould, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Madam Speaker, we are committed to the passage of Bill C-45 in order to legalize cannabis in the country, to strictly regulate and restrict access to cannabis in order to, as my friend articulated, keep it out of the hands of children and keep the proceeds out of the hands of criminal organizations. We are committed to doing it right, and we are working and will continue to work with all levels of government. We started that engagement and discussion and received substantive feedback through the efforts of the task force that was constituted by our government. We received 30,000 submissions, including from provinces and territories, municipalities, and law enforcement agencies. We are continuing to engage with them through my parliamentary secretary and the Minister of Health.

This is something we are committed to doing. We are injecting substantive monies into the provinces and territories, and into a substantive public education and communications campaign. We have engaged, and will continue to engage, in a substantive way with indigenous communities to recognize their specific interests and desires with respect to their communities. My colleagues and I are committed to engaging in that conversation on an ongoing basis in the lead-up to the legalization of cannabis and strict regulation.

[Jody Wilson-Raybould, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, the purpose of Bill C-45 is in terms of respecting the health and safety of Canadians. We have had substantive discussions around this particular legislation from pre-election, through two years that we have been in government, through a substantive task force focused on health and safety that engaged with Canadians right across the country. This legislation received 30,000 submissions in terms of what we have committed to doing, which is legalizing cannabis and strictly regulating access to cannabis in order to keep it out of the hands of children and the proceeds of its sale out of the hands of criminals.

The current status quo is simply not working. It is easier for a young person to get cannabis than it is, for example, for that young person to get a cigarette.

We are doing something substantive. We are addressing this matter in terms of health and safety. We are putting in place a comprehensive framework while working in partnership with the provinces, territories, and municipalities. This framework will protect children and will do as much as possible to keep marijuana out of the hands of organized crime.

Report Stage

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased today to speak in the House in regard to Bill C-45, an act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other acts.

I am trying to think of an appropriate word to use that the people across the aisle would possibly accept and understand. The bill is harmful to young people. It is harmful to our society. It is poorly thought out. It is extremely rushed, and as a result, it is very dangerous legislation for us to be putting forward in Canada.

The Liberals claim that it will protect the health of young persons. That is one of their virtuous goals in putting this forward. Medical professionals have talked about mental health issues, including addiction, and the impact on the developing brain. Data shows that 30% to 40% of young people under the age of 25 who use cannabis will develop psychotic disorders, depression, or anxiety disorders. This is information from professionals, as my colleague was trying to present to the House to enable the Liberal Party to read and possibly discern that there are dangers in what they are suggesting they legalize in Canada.

The Liberals also talk about restricting access by young people. I have never heard a more confusing argument: trying to restrict the use of a dangerous substance by legalizing it and actually making it more available to young people. We know that the bill would allow young people between the ages of 12 and 18 to possess five grams at any one time. This would not say to young people that this is not something they should do. It would say it is okay for them to have this. Maybe it is because they do not want them to have a criminal record. It is irrational to say we do not want them to have a criminal record, so they can take and hold this much. It is not right, because it would encourage them to consider this.

In grade seven, I was part of a debate team. Our class was given this topic: grade seven students are juvenile and immature. Of course, we wanted to debate against that, because we were in grade seven, and we were not juvenile and not immature. My teacher told us to debate the other side, and somehow he convinced us to do that. We won that debate, because grade seven students are juvenile and immature. They are not grown up yet. They are formulating what their values are, and here we are with a government that is saying to them to go ahead and have five grams in their possession at any one time. It does not take long to realize that it would be a risk to them on many levels, besides their trying to process it with their own moral values. They could be coerced to carry it for others, possibly parents, or possibly older teens in the family who want more available. They could carry it for their siblings or their parents or a friend.

These young people also could be very much drawn into the black market to be handlers. I think especially of youth at risk. We like to think that this is not going to impact them in any way, but it will, because they are already at risk. They are vulnerable, and they are an easy target for people who are immoral and dishonest and will teach them behaviours that are not right and will draw them into a life of crime. There is also the opportunity to simply sell it personally and make money on something the government is saying they can have in their possession. Finally, there is the potential for them to say that they can have this, so why not just try it.

All these reasons totally negate this irrational argument that somehow, by legalizing this and making it available to children aged 12 to 18, it would restrict access. I have never heard a more disjointed, inaccurate, and inconceivable argument put forward. The government also said that it wants to protect young people from the inducement to use. Well, I have already said that just by putting the bill forward in this way, it is actually encouraging young people to consider using.

Another member on the other side of the House came back with the argument, on the question of youth having it in their possession, that it is the parents' responsibility. It is just like any other thing in the house they might have. The parents are responsible. On one level, I totally agree that parents are and should be responsible, above all other influences, for determining what direction their children should be guided. Parental rights, responsibilities, and privileges in raising children, which are our most precious and valuable resource as a nation, need to be protected. They actually need to be encouraged by government. Government should be supporting Canadian families through legislation. However, here it is working in opposition and challenging parents by telling teenagers between the ages of 12 and 18 that it is okay, and legal, to have five grams of marijuana on their person.

I have worked a lot with teenagers, and I actually survived raising three amazing young adults myself. I have to tell members that at that point in life, the right thing for them to be doing is challenging things around them and trying to determine where their values are in relation to their parents and in what direction they are going to go.

When I tell my children that something is not right, and it is something they are thinking about, but their government turns around and tells them that it is okay and that it is legal, that is not supporting parents. The government is pushing this responsibility on them, just like it is pushing the responsibility on provinces and municipalities. The Liberals created the bill because they made an election promise, and they are having trouble finding one they can keep, so this is the one they will pull it off on.

This is entirely wrong. If youth should not use it, then they should not carry it.

The government also uses the argument that it is going to reduce illicit activities in relation to cannabis. In other words, it will somehow shut down the black market with the legal use of marijuana. We know how well that is working with contraband cigarettes.

I know from conversations with people I have helped in 10-step programs that there are rehab centres where black market drug dealers go to get healed. While there, they develop relationships with people they then meet on the outside, and they help them to become part of the process. This is not going to shut down the black market. It is money driven, it is greed driven, and it has nothing to do with caring for our society. The government is playing into its hands.

Canadians are very concerned all over this country. They are concerned about the workplace, law enforcement people, and our children, and they do not know what to do. They are throwing up their hands and asking how the government can do this.

Well, I have a few words I want to say to Canadians. I am going to post it, actually.

I will tell them that they have been amazing on so many fronts in dealing with issues this government has brought forward over the last two years, and they have made a difference. Opposition parties have a role to play, but we are here to represent Canadians, and as a result of their work and their telling this government what they will and will not accept, electoral reform is not on the table. They did that with their advocacy.

Punitive and unfair tax increases on the middle class, small and medium businesses, and farmers are not going to take place the way they would have if the Liberals had just been allowed to go ahead with their policies. Canadians made the difference.

They shut down the removal of section 176 and are protecting the right to freedom of religion in this country. They caused the Surgeon General to relegate the dangerous anti-malaria drug mefloquine to a drug of last resort, after decades of causing harm to our servicemen and women.

Canadians can do this. They can make a difference. I know that they see this law as irrational, dangerous, and rushed, everything that is not good. Therefore, I encourage them to do what they have done. I know they are exhausted. They should keep going.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to Bill C-45.

Before I start my comments on Bill C-45, let me take a minute to reflect on the upcoming weekend and the remembrance services that many of us in this room will be attending this coming weekend, and to thank our veterans for the freedoms that we enjoy. Last weekend, I had the privilege of attending a number of remembrance services in New Dundee, New Hamburg, Linwood, and Elmira. This coming weekend, I will be in New Hamburg, Waterloo, Kitchener, and Elmira again. Let us just to think of the sacrifice that our veterans have made, and thank our legions for the great work that they do in not only supporting our veterans but also in helping us never to forget. I want to highlight that before I get into my remarks on Bill C-45.

There are a number of really important issues that are dealt with in this chamber on a daily basis. Over the last number of weeks, we have discussed a number of them, from rising debt to taxation, supposedly fair taxation, the economy, the deficit that is growing every day, and the amazing excessive interest we will be paying on that over the next four years of $33 billion per year. All of these things are important. However, in relation to the topic before us today, really they are of minor significance. This topic we are discussing today will have a life-changing impact not only on our youth and our citizens but on the very nation of Canada. I think it is important that we think clearly and soberly about the changes we are making, especially as it relates to three areas.

I first want to refer to our youth. That has been referred to many times today, the health, safety, and well-being of our children and our grandchildren, the safety of all Canadians on the roads, and the social risks that are involved in our communities with complaints and issues that will arise between neighbours.

However, let me first refer to our youth.

In question period today, my colleague from Richmond—Arthabaska, and I just happened to catch it, made this great statement that the decisions we make reveal the values we hold. How much do we, as members of Parliament, in this room value the youth of Canada? That is a question that we need to ask. I believe youth are a sacred trust that every one of us in this room has an obligation to guard seriously. We cannot take this obligation lightly.

The Liberals claim repeatedly that the purpose of this legislation is to protect our young people and to increase public safety. How can we keep this drug out of the hands of our youth when we are actually allowing four plants per household? How can we say we are keeping it out of the hands of our youth when we are allowing 12-year-olds to have up to five grams in their possession? We often hear of people being polled about whether they favour the legalization of marijuana, and the polls are all over the place, but it is somewhere around 50:50 or 60:40. However, I am convinced that if we were to give the details of what this bill entails with respect to the availability of four plants per household and up to five grams for 12-year-olds, we would get a much different answer.

The Canadian Medical Association and the Canadian Psychiatric Association have both stated that Canadians who consume marijuana recreationally under the age of 25 have a higher risk of developing mental illness, such as depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. We can all probably tell some anecdotal stories of family members or neighbours who have been derailed by the early use of marijuana.

The Canadian Psychiatric Association says:

Regular cannabis use in youth and young adults can affect aspects of cognition...attention, memory, processing speed, visuospatial functioning and overall intelligence. Worse performance is related to earlier adolescent onset of use.

I do not know how much earlier an onset one could get than offering this availability to a 12-year-old. Therefore, parents and grandparents are very concerned about the direction in which this bill is going.

Dr. Diane Kelsall in the Canadian Medical Association Journal wrote, “Most of us know a young person whose life was derailed because of marijuana use. Bill C-45 is unlikely to prevent such tragedies from occurring—and, conversely, may make them more frequent.”

There are far too many young people who have already been derailed. These are not just opinions, these are medical and psychiatric experts, and it is important that we listen to them.

I want to use the bulk of my time today to listen to one of the youth of Canada, who is concerned that this legislation and the actions we approve here in this House would, or could, in fact derail young people. She does not want to be one of those derailed, and she does not want her friends to be derailed. This young person is my granddaughter who wrote this two years ago, in November 2015, when she was 15 years old. She wrote:

Marijuana, the dangerous substance that damages our lungs, brain, educational value and social activity is the substance the government of Canada is trying to legalize. Claims say that legalization will erode the black market but in reality, legalizing marijuana will give people easier access to the drug. Recently I heard the testimony of a man who at age 14 was heading to Toronto for 420 with one hundred dollars worth of Marijuana. The fact that ten years ago a 14 year old boy who had no job and no car was able to get his hands on one hundred dollars worth of weed blows my mind. Can you imagine how easy it would be for someone to get marijuana now, especially if it were to become legal? Easier access to Marijuana will have many negative effects for Canada such as major health damage, ruining our educational system, our workplace and our society. The future of Canada rests in the hands of our generation, there is no way marijuana will be a positive tool in that regard....

With long term and short term effects the list of things that marijuana does to damage your health is endless. Short term effects include impaired memory, impaired body movement, changes in mood, hallucinations, paranoia, difficulty thinking and problem solving. Along with temporary damage Marijuana proves to once again be a dangerous substance having a long lasting effect on your brain and mental health. A study showed that people who started heavily smoking marijuana in their teens lost an average of eight IQ points between ages of 13 and 38. Even after quitting as an adult the lost mental abilities did not fully return. There are many different ways to consume Marijuana but no matter which way, it is harmful. Marijuana smoke contains the same tar and chemicals that are found in tobacco smoke which will lead to the inflammation of bronchitis. The drug harms cells lining and respiratory tract leading to precancerous changes that are associated with lung, head and neck cancer. Marijuana also stimulates your heart rate and blood pressure which can increase the risk of heart attack among individuals. I have named only a few of the health risks that occur when marijuana is consumed however, I hope that this is enough to strongly discourage you from believing the legalization of medical marijuana will infact be a positive thing in any way shape or form.

She went on:

The damage of marijuana does not end with your health, the drugs negative effect leads into your educational life as well. A review of 48 different relevant studies all found that marijuana use is associated with reduced chances of graduating. A recent analysis of data from studies in Australia and New Zealand found that youth who have used marijuana regularly were significantly less likely to finish highschool and obtain a degree than their non-using peers. Marijuana is encouraging lazy work habits and a 'don't care' attitude, leading students down the path of becoming a high school dropout. The National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) reports that while under the influence of marijuana the still developing brain will have difficulty retaining memories, when related back to school this can seriously affect your learning skills as a student. “Falling behind in school is par for the course when marijuana use is a factor. It's not an issue solely based on loss of memory; they also report that psychological skills are reduced among students as well, decreasing their ability to sustain their self-confidence and remain focused on achieving academic and other goals”—NIDA. Even though marijuana is an illegal drug it has not stopped teens and students from buying and using the drug, what is to happen now if marijuana becomes legal? By legalizing this drug we are practically encouraging students to go out and get high, ruining their high school career and affecting whatever may lay beyond that....

Believe me when I say that marijuana not only negatively affects your health, your education but your social and work life as well. Studies show specific links between the use of marijuana and the workplace such as increased risk of injuries and accidents. One study among postal workers found that employees who tested positive for marijuana on a urine drug test had 55 percent more industrial accidents, 85 percent more injuries, and 75 percent greater absence compared with those who tested negative for marijuana. After all of the papers you wrote, tests you studied for and emotional trials you went through over the minimum of 16 years of schooling, is it really worth it to throw that all away for the temporary high of marijuana?

....Before make the decision to legalize this dangerous substance lets first think of all of the health risks caused by this drug, the negative effect that it would have on our educational system and how different and harmful the workplace and our economy would be with marijuana easily accessible and legal.

I have so much more to share.

Let me finish with some comments by Dr. Diane Kelsall, director of the Canadian Medical Association, in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. She says, “If Parliament truly cares about the public health and safety of Canadians, especially our youth, this bill will not pass.”

I hope my colleagues will listen.

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

My question, Madam Speaker, is about an aspect of Colorado policy, which I think is very good and is not present in Bill C-45. In Colorado, individual municipalities and counties can decide whether to allow marijuana sales. Some have allowed it; some have not. There is no availability of this kind of local option in Canada. Could my hon. colleague comment on that distinction?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Thank you, Mr. Davies. Your time is up.

That completes our testimony today.

To the guests, thank you very much on behalf of all members on the committee. You certainly brought a different dimension to our study and made us think about a lot of different things, I'm sure. I want to thank you all for taking the time to come and provide us with your expertise and information.

Members, we have a little committee business to attend to.

First, we have agreed on our letter for Bill C-45. Is it the committee's wish to make it public?

Are there any comments?

Mr. Davies.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-45, the cannabis act. I have been here since 2004 and it is probably one of the most badly written pieces of legislation I have ever seen, and there is some frustration on this side in that regard because we have heard the Liberals are going to bring in time allocation. For a bill of such importance and such reach within our provinces and territories, the requirement to have different Houses of Parliament coordinated on this is totally irresponsible.

I want my colleagues, especially on the Liberal side, to understand that there are certain important points to bear in mind in my speech. First of all, everyone agrees that too many kids are smoking marijuana. In my community of Oshawa, no one wants to see a kid who has a couple of joints get a criminal record or get thrown into jail. Most Canadians would agree with that, and that is why it is really important that Canadians recognize that the Conservatives favour making the possession of small amounts of marijuana a ticketable offence only. This is exactly in line with the position of the chiefs of police. This is a responsible approach, one that Canadians would be very supportive of, but not of the bill that we see in front of us.

The Liberals claim that the status quo is not working, but how does the Liberal government define that? According to a Statistics Canada report dated April 2015, based on data collected from the Canadian community health survey on mental health, the total percentage of teens aged 15-17, which is the target group, reporting having used marijuana had dropped from 40% in 2002 to 25% in 2012. That is a 15 percentage point decrease. This means that something in the status quo is working, but why are the Liberals not telling Canadians about that? What are the Liberals saying? They are saying they want to legalize marijuana because it will it out of the hands of our kids and keep the profits out of the hands of organized crime. We agree with that. These are good ideas, but does C-45 accomplish that objective? Anyone who has read the bill would say no.

At the health committee we had scientists testify, and the science is clear. Any use of marijuana under the age of 25 can cause permanent psychological damage to our kids, and currently the bill allows kids aged 12 to 17, as young as grade 6, to possess up to five grams of marijuana, equivalent to 10 to 15 joints. That is ridiculous in light of the medical evidence of the harm it can cause our youth. There is no provision to prevent them from selling or distributing cannabis. The amount should be zero.

I am asked if a child in grade 6 could share it with younger kids. That is an important question. It is a great concern of parents and teachers. It would allow drug dealers to target kids and use them for profit.

Bill C-45 allows up to four plants to be grown in the home. Any home can become a grow op. Four plants under the right conditions can yield up to 600 grams or 1,200 to 1,800 joints. This is a concern for homeowners, landlords, law enforcement. Moreover, there is no mandatory testing for the potency or toxicity of the homegrown plants, and no money for inspection. There is no federal requirement to lock up the marijuana. This is going to expose kids and even pets to the drugs. Grow ops lead to a 24-fold increase in incidents involving fire. Landlords are concerned that they will not be able to forbid grow ops or smoking if they are already renting their properties.

Other jurisdictions that have legalized marijuana have said that home grows were hugely penetrated by organized crime. We know it from the science and the evidence out there. For this reason, Washington state does not allow home grows, except for medically fragile people who cannot get to a dispensary. It has been able to reduce organized crime to less than 20% of the market.

The legal opinion is that allowing four plants per dwelling will end up being challenged in court as well. The government has not thought through the bill. There will not only be danger in the homes of Canadians, but on the roads too. Drug-impaired driving is not addressed in Bill C-45. It is encompassed in Bill C-46, but a study recently issued by the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse and Addiction put the cost of impaired driving from cannabis at one billion dollars. The AAA found there has been a large increase in the number of fatal accidents in Washington state involving the use of marijuana after the state legalized the drug. In fact, impaired driving has increased in the American states that have legalized it, and there is no current instrument that can accurately measure one's level of impairment on the roadside. The science is not there yet.

Canada is unable to train our own officers in Canada and needs to send our officers to expensive, lengthy training in the United States, and this training currently has wait lists.

The legalization of marijuana will definitely impact our ability to trade internationally. Have the Liberals noticed that we are negotiating NAFTA? Do the Liberals think that having a drug policy way out of sync with our American neighbours will improve trade or thicken the border? For Oshawa and my community, this is a huge problem, as it is for other communities as well.

Let us look at the treaties. Passing Bill C-45 would violate three UN treaties to which Canada is a signatory. In order to legalize marijuana by July 1 and not be in violation of the UN treaties, Canada would have had to withdraw by July 1 of this year, and the Liberal government did not do that. How can Canada hold other countries to account on their treaty obligations when Canada does not even honour its own?

This leads me to this question. Why the rush? There are only 241 days to go until this arbitrary date that the Liberals selected. Provinces, municipalities, police forces, and our indigenous communities have stated they are not ready to implement this legislation. The government knows this; members have heard it in committee.

So many questions have been left unanswered. Will Canadians who use marijuana be able to cross the border into the United States where marijuana is still illegal? No department has been able to answer this question, and Canadians deserve an answer before the legislation is implemented.

How will enforcement officers test for drug impairment on the roadside? Can these tests be constitutionally challenged? Is the science valid? Canadians deserve an answer.

What education programs are in place now to inform youth about the dangers and consequences of marijuana? If they are not in place now, when will this education process begin? The health minister said today $43 million, but there is no timeline.

What will happen to the current medical marijuana system and how will recreational sales impact medical marijuana pricing and distribution?

Canadians deserve answers to these questions before the legislation is passed.

The Liberals talk about the black market. One of the stated goals is to eliminate the black market by creating a legal framework for marijuana, but this is a flawed way of thinking. A variety of factors are being left up to the provinces, such as pricing, distribution, which products are included, and packaging.

We need to listen to the real experts on the ground.

Assistant Commissioner Joanne Crampton, of federal policing criminal operations, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, said:

As Kathy mentioned, organized crime is a high priority for federal policing, in particular, for the RCMP. We target the highest echelon within the organized crime world. We're very cognizant...and realize that the chances of organized crime being eliminated in the cannabis market would be.... It's probably naive to think that could happen.

Naive, that is what the experts say about the Liberal approach.

Our Conservative position is the same as the Canadian chiefs of police position, to issue tickets for the simple possession of small amounts of marijuana. This approach is more sensible regarding marijuana possession. Instead of rushing to legalize marijuana, Conservatives are working with law enforcement to protect the health and safety of Canadians. Canadians would be spared a criminal record for simple possession of small amounts.

To summarize, the Liberals promised that they wanted to keep marijuana out of the hands of kids. They also promised that they wanted to keep profit out of the hands of organized crime.

My speech ultimately has proven that the Liberal approach is wrong. This bill would not accomplish what they are promising Canadians. This is like a big bill of sale. The bill would actually place children further in harm's way by permitting possession for kids as young as 12. That is grade 6. Home grow ops will expose children living in a dwelling to dangerous living space and increase the production of marijuana and diversion to organized crime. This approach will increase the rate of impaired driving.

The bill leaves so many questions unanswered, which has blindsided law enforcement and other levels of government.

The question is why the Liberals are force-feeding us this deeply flawed bill. The only answer I can come up with is that the government has no problem being deceitful to Canadians in order to keep the Prime Minister's irrresponsible election promise, muddying the water about the implications of full legalization under the bill.

Instead of blindly trying to keep campaign promises at the expense of Canadians' health and safety, perhaps the Liberals should refocus their attention on protecting kids and protecting the public, protecting our trade agreements, and not putting international relationships in jeopardy, particularly the one we have with the United States. They have had no problem breaking other promises, whether it is the balanced budget, electoral reform, or openness and transparency.

It is time the Liberals put the brakes on this legislation until the science supports the ability to ensure the health and safety of Canadians, particularly our kids.

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

Madam Speaker, while the government often talks about reducing the backlog in our courts, what this legislation may actually do is increase the backlog. For example, this legislation provides that Canadians could possess up to 30 grams of marijuana. However, it contains provisions that if they possessed 31 grams of marijuana, they would be criminals, with serious penalties. We have sentences in Bill C-45 of up to 14 years. Arguably, those are not consistent with other similar offences. On that front, I think the government has really not thought this through, and what Bill C-45 would result in is a further backlog in our courts. The bottom line is that no matter how one looks at this, Bill C-45 is a complete and absolute failure.

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

Madam Speaker, I rise this afternoon to speak to Bill C-45, the government's marijuana legalization legislation.

It is a little more than 200 days until July 1, 2018, and a little more than 200 days before the Liberal government plans to legalize marijuana in Canada. With a little more than 200 days to go, the provinces are saying that they are not ready. The municipalities are saying that they cannot be ready. Law enforcement agencies are saying that they are not ready and they cannot be ready for July 1. In turn, the government is saying it really does not care that they are not ready, because it is moving ahead with July 1, 2018, ready or not. Talk about irresponsibility on the part of the government. Then again, we are dealing with a reckless government that is prepared to put the health and safety of Canadians at risk, all so their pot-smoking Prime Minister can actually keep an election promise.

The issues the municipalities and the provinces face in order to deal with the effects of legalization are manifold. The provinces will have to deal with issues around workplace safety, employment standards, and traffic safety. The municipalities will have to deal with issues around licensing, zoning, enforcement, and inspection.

With so much work to do and so little time to do it, no wonder the provinces and the municipalities are saying to the government, “Slow down. Give us time to do what we need to do”. In that regard, some provinces have not yet even unveiled a plan, not even announced a plan to deal with issues around implementation and regulation of marijuana.

Lisa Holmes, who was the mayor very recently of Morinville, about 10 kilometres north of my home town of St. Albert, appeared before the health committee in her capacity as the president of the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association. She indicated that 96% of urban municipalities in Alberta did not have bylaws or policies in place to deal with the regulation of marijuana in their communities because there was a lack of clarity about the breadth and substance of regulations, both at a provincial and federal level. I think 96% of urban municipalities in Alberta is not unique to Alberta. I think we would find a similar pattern right across Canada.

With respect to law enforcement agencies, it is clear they are not ready. They are saying that they are not ready, and they cannot be ready. The government has basically put them in an impossible position with the rush and the arbitrary July 1, 2018, deadline.

Let us look at the facts in this regard. The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police indicated that in order to deal with impaired drivers and more Canadians who would be consuming marijuana, and in order to train their officers, there was a need for about 6,000 officers to receive training. That training takes about 100 days. The association is saying that it cannot take 6,000 officers off the streets for 100 days by July 1, 2018, that it is just impossible.

Then there is the issue of drug recognition experts. Right now, there are approximately 600 drug recognition experts in Canada. It has been said that there is a need for as many as 2,000 drug recognition experts to deal with the effects of marijuana legalization. When an official from Public Safety Canada came before the justice committee during its study of Bill C-46, I asked that official where things were with respect to drug recognition experts and where we would be by July 1, 2018. The response I got was that by July 1, 2018, there might be an additional 100 drug recognition experts. In other words, we would go from 600 to 700 drug recognition experts, when there is a need for as many as 2,000 drug recognition experts.

I know that a little earlier the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice alluded to the fact that this House had passed Bill C-46 in conjunction with this legislation, Bill C-45. One aspect of Bill C-46 is per se limits for THC levels for drug-impaired drivers. The only problem with that is that there is absolutely no correlation whatsoever between drug impairment and THC levels. What that is going to mean is that people will get behind the wheel impaired and get away with it. They will get off because of the government's arbitrary and unscientific per se limits.

Municipalities, provinces, and law enforcement are not ready, and frankly, Canadians are not ready either for the July 1, 2018, date.

In the justice committee's study of Bill C-46, and when I read the transcripts from the health committee, there were a number of witnesses who cited various surveys and studies that indicated that a large percentage of Canadians, particularly young Canadians, have misconceptions about the effects of marijuana usage. This was recognized by the government's own marijuana legalization task force as an issue. The task force, in its report, recommended to the government that it have an early and sustained public awareness campaign. What we have seen from the government is not an early and sustained public awareness campaign. We see a campaign that is barely off the ground, with little more than 200 days before the July 1, 2018, date.

Do members know who else is not ready for July 1, 2018? The government is not ready. Its marijuana legalization bill, Bill C-45, is an absolute shambles of a piece of legislation. It is going to create more problems than it solves.

Let us look at the whole picture. Bill C-45 is going to make our kids, our roads, and our communities less safe. We have a government that has absolutely no plan in terms of a coordinated effort with the provinces and municipalities, Law enforcement does not have the tools and resources to be ready for July 1, 2018, and there has not been a sufficient public awareness campaign to get Canadians ready. Taken together, the government needs to put the brakes on July 1, 2018, and go back to the drawing board.

The House resumed consideration of Bill C-45, An Act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other Acts, as reported (with amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

Bill C-45—Notice of time allocation motion

[Amarjeet Sohi, Liberal, Minister of Infrastructure and Communities]

Madam Speaker, I would like to advise that agreement could not be reached under the provisions of Standing Orders 78(1) or 78(2) with respect to the report stage and third reading stage of Bill C-45, an act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other acts.

Under the provisions of Standing Order 78(3), I give notice that a minister of the crown will propose at the next sitting a motion to allot a specific number of days or hours for the consideration and disposal of proceedings of the said stages.

Cannabis Act

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak again to Bill C-45 now that it is at the report stage, having previously commented on certain aspects of the bill at the second reading stage. I will not go over that again, but I would like to address certain elements that were changed in committee, especially the 100-centimetre limit on plant height, which seemed a bit arbitrary to me. I could not understand where that number had come from.

In committee, experts told us this limit might actually backfire, because shorter plants tend to have higher concentrations of THC, producing stronger psychoactive effects. The 100-centimetre limit was therefore removed, which was a good thing.

In committee, it also became clear that the Liberal government is not interested in getting the best bill possible. It was so partisan that when the NDP proposed an amendment to eliminate the 100-centimetre limit, the Liberals insisted on voting it down and proposing their own version a few minutes later saying the exact same thing, just because they did not want us to beat them to the punch. That may not be the best way to treat such a serious issue. I am disappointed.

Initially, we did not plan for edible products to be allowed, but this has changed. We will allow them but only in one year. I would like to speak to this particular issue, which I believe is quite important.

Dried cannabis has to be smoked, which is toxic for the lungs. Any inhaled smoke has a certain degree of pulmonary toxicity, whether it comes from a cattail or a cigarette. However, according to the studies I have read, cannabis smoke is apparently 10 times more toxic for the lungs than tobacco smoke. Let me be clear: I am not telling people to smoke cigarettes. All I am saying is that cannabis is highly toxic for the lungs when it is inhaled.

Thus, by allowing that substance to be included in food, we would at least eliminate the issue of pulmonary toxicity. In spite of that, it was decided to allow people to smoke cannabis before allowing them to eat it, which is illogical. Many people in my riding did not understand why people were being encouraged not to smoke tobacco just about everywhere, while at the same time, smoking another substance would become legal. I can see why people might be confused.

Furthermore, when cannabis is ingested in its edible form, be it as a syrup or lozenge, it is much easier to determine accurately the concentration of its two active ingredients. I would like to say a few words about these two ingredients, because they are important. These studies have yielded some interesting results.

First, cannabis contains two cannabinoids: THC and CBD, also called tetrahydrocannabinol and cannabidiol. These two substances seem to have a different effect on our body's endocannabinoid system. THC is the psychoactive ingredient, and it is believed to act on the immune system in such a way as to reduce inflammation, alleviate pain, enhance the mood, trigger euphoria, increase appetite, relax the muscles, reduce certain types of seizures and relieve nausea.

We must not forget that it is also the substance that produces euphoria.

Cannabidiol does not produce a euphoric effect. It is used much more for pain relief, reducing nausea and anxiety, controlling epilepsy, immunosuppression, and muscle relaxation. It is also an anti-psychotic, it reduces inflammation and insomnia, and it is calming.

The reason I wanted to take the time to explain this is that many studies have shown the pot available on the streets has increasingly high concentrations of THC and lower and lower concentrations of cannabidiol. That is why we are seeing more and more episodes of toxic psychosis: cannabidiol tends to neutralize the more psychotic effects that may occur.

The product on the streets has higher levels of THC, which means that it is becoming riskier.

The reason I wanted to explain this is because it would make it possible to have edible products in which all chemical substances could be carefully controlled. It would also make it possible to prevent some of the side effects that are common with the increasingly stronger strains of street drugs. One way to better control side effects and psychosis is to increase cannabidiol and reduce THC.

When it comes to dried herb products, it is really hard to control the concentration of substance in each product. What that means is that we are about to legalize a product that is much more difficult to control, but we are waiting to legislate on edible products, even though they would be much easier to control and it would be easier to limit THC and cannabidiol concentrations.

I find that a little strange. It would have made a lot more sense to legalize edibles right away, while imposing limits on the various substances, such as THC and CBD, to determine how much of each substance could go in the products.

The other reason it might be particularly useful to allow edible products and to be able to control each chemical is for the purposes of research and improving our understanding of this substance. Even though medical pot has been in use for a decade or so, the fact remains that knowledge of its effects on the human body is often based on anecdotal evidence. Essentially, this means someone started taking it on their own and found that it helped with a condition they had. Our knowledge is not based on conventional clinical research, but on personal experiences compiled over time. Since some discoveries were based on anecdotal medical evidence, the results are not 100% reliable.

It is important to bear in mind that even though we are talking about recreational use, many people still take cannabis for medical purposes. Even though they do not have a prescription, they decide to try cannabis and find that it helps with their insomnia or other health problems.

Singling out recreational use and completely ignoring those who use cannabis for self-medication is not right. We need more information so we can better educate people on the actual effects of cannabis.

One of the problems is that we currently do not have that information, and many people who might decide to take cannabis could be endangering their health, because they do not fully understand the substance or the circumstances in which it might be useful or dangerous.

This bill should have placed more emphasis on health and the prevention of side effects. I also sincerely believe that not allowing edible products, only dried herb products, is somewhat illogical.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Madam Speaker, I am glad to have a chance to speak to Bill C-45 regarding the legalization of cannabis across Canada. I would like to recognize the work of my colleague, the member for Sarnia—Lambton, and thank her for her tireless efforts in ensuring all aspects of this matter are considered before the legislation moves forward.

There are many areas of concern surrounding the bill, mainly in the areas of how the legalization of cannabis will affect the general health of population and issues surrounding youth. I have some deep-rooted concerns about what the legalization of cannabis could do to Canada's youth. I will discuss these concerns in my remarks.

It is necessary to point out just how rushed this legislation is. The government has set an arbitrary date of July 1, 2018, for the legalization of cannabis. This means that by that date, all provinces and territories, including the municipalities and the police forces within these regions, will need to have implemented legislation that allows members of the public to access recreational marijuana. This is a huge ask.

There needs to be time for the appropriate authorities to figure out just how they will handle this new endeavour. It is a serious matter, and should absolutely not be rushed. I worry that the Liberals are more focused on keeping a campaign promise than they are about the health and safety of our communities. Indeed, this is one promise we wish they would not keep, given the wide-ranging implications it could have on society. The legislation needs to be picked apart with a fine-toothed comb to ensure that every aspect of it is considered by the provinces and territories, which will have the responsibility to implement it. Less than one year from now is not enough time, and the government needs to realize that.

In my previous life, before becoming a member of Parliament, I was a chiropractor in my hometown of Estevan. Having a medical background allows me to see the bill through that lens and gives me a unique perspective on just how the legalization of cannabis could affect the general health of our country. I have also been very involved with sport in both a medical capacity and as a coach for youth. I will draw upon those experiences when discussing the use of recreational cannabis.

As most of the members of the House likely know, Bill C-45 recommends the age of 18 as a federal minimum for access to recreational cannabis. While the provinces will be given the power to set a higher age, the federal legislation puts it at 18. This creates an issue from a medical perspective. Given what we should all know and given what health care professionals have testified before committee, the brain continues to develop until the age of 25. In fact, the use of cannabis before the age of 25 increases one's risk of developing mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety by up to 30% compared to those who have not used cannabis under the age of 25.

This is a very significant number and should not be ignored. For this reason, the Canadian Medical Association, CMA, recommends raising the age at which a person can consume cannabis to at least 21. This reflects the assumption that if the age is raised too high, illegal consumption of cannabis will continue.

I need to reiterate the fact that the CMA is bending when it says that the minimum age for cannabis consumption should be 21. All scientific evidence to this point states that there are significantly increased risks with the use of cannabis under the age of 25. It is simply irresponsible for the government to set the minimum age at 18, let alone at 21.

That also leads me to this question. What is the government's motivation? It says that it is a party of scientists and constantly remind us of just how important science is. However, on this issue, the government chooses to ignore the facts. It is clear and utter hypocrisy. The science is clear on this health issue.

Could this be because the Liberals are trying to appeal to a younger demographic of voters in hopes they will win the next election? Is it appropriate for them to ignore the health and safety of young Canadians so they can rush through legislation that will make them appealing to young voters?

Furthermore, if it comes out 10 years from now that the effects of cannabis use are much more damaging than was initially thought, as it was with tobacco, will the government be responsible for that? Given that there is not a plethora of medical-based research on the long-term effects of cannabis use and given how rushed this legislation is, will these Liberals take accountability for the results of legalizing recreational cannabis use? I think not. I do not want to be the person who said, “I told you so”, but I will. The Liberals need to do their job to ensure the health and safety of all Canadians, and the bill simply does not do that.

Another issue I have with this bill, and that many others have expressed to me, has to do with the marketing and, more specifically, the packaging. All Canadians know that in recent years there has been a serious crackdown on how tobacco is marketed. We have all seen the grisly warnings on cigarette packaging. I am sure that many of us are familiar with the idea of plain packaging and other measures that serve to deter people from tobacco use. We know the consequences of smoking tobacco, such as breathing problems, emphysema, and lung cancer, but 50 years ago we did not. When the same happens in regard to cannabis, who will pay that bill? It will be the taxpayer once again, whom the Liberals have no problem deferring their expenses to.

Bill C-45 has absolutely zero provisions on how cannabis can be marketed. While tobacco products need to be covered in warnings and hidden from view behind store counters, cannabis will be allowed to have bright, flashy packaging, with no limitations on how it can be marketed. To me, this is a clear double standard. Both products are harmful to one's health, so why is one regulated and the other not? It is yet another major oversight that this bill does not deal with.

Of course, there is also the matter of public safety in general and how the legalization of cannabis could have serious negative impacts on the well-being of Canadians. Drug-impaired driving is simply not addressed at all in Bill C-45. A recent study by the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse and Addiction put the costs of impaired driving from cannabis at $1 billion. If we look at our neighbours in the U.S. who have legalized recreational cannabis, we see that there has been a dramatic increase in fatal car accidents involving the use of cannabis, not to mention the fact there is currently no instrument that can accurately measure a person's level of impairment roadside.

We cannot forget about the impact this legislation will have on our businesses, manufacturers, and employers. There are too many questions and no answers with respect to liability and workplace safety. This will affect on-the-job employee performance. Again, how do we test for this? The increased cost to employers to account for this in policy, procedure, and implementation will further add to the increased economic burden they are already experiencing under the current government.

The legal technicalities and challenges will be astronomical, not to mention the costs of training a police officer, which will be charged to municipal governments, as well as provincial and federal police agencies.

It is absolutely irresponsible to move forward with legislation that is clearly missing some major provisions that would keep our country and Canadians safe. There needs to be some sort of public education program before the legislation can be put in place so that Canadians, especially our youth, can understand the risks associated with partaking in recreational cannabis. One month, two months, three months, even nine months, assuming education starts today, will not be enough. It astounds me that this was not considered by the federal government when drafting this legislation.

As with other matters, such as the framework for palliative care, I would not be surprised to hear that the government is hefting the responsibility over to the provinces and territories, rather than taking on this task itself. It needs to put on its grown-up pants and take on the responsibility to look at all aspects of this legislation instead of focusing on what makes it look cool.

In conclusion, we on this side of the House oppose the legalization of recreational cannabis based on evidence and testimony from professionals, such as doctors, lawyers, scientists, law enforcement officials, and many others. We will do everything possible to ensure that cannabis does not end up in the hands of children, something this bill would actually allow.

Unlike the Prime Minister, we will listen to the experts on this matter who say the bill is flawed. I call on the government to stand up and do what is in the best interests of Canadians, and not what is in the best interests of the government in achieving its political goals. This issue is more than about politics; it is the health, safety, and well-being of our country that is on the line here.

[Alain Rayes, Conservative, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to talk again about Bill C-45, a bill that will legalize cannabis, which has been illegal for nearly 100 years in Canada. This bill will come into effect in the next eight months.

The hasty passage of this bill raises several concerns, as was pointed out by a very large number of provincial organizations, experts, police forces and health-sector groups. Such a huge and complex bill requires time for reflection and a comprehensive study. It is difficult to understand the Liberals' sense of urgency on this bill, unless they are thinking of the next election, which is slowly but surely approaching. I will add “fortunately” to that.

I oppose this bill because it simply does not meet the objectives that it claims to achieve. To prove it, I propose that the various objectives announced by the Liberal government be reviewed to see whether they pass a reality check, what we call in Quebec l'épreuve des faits, the smell test.

First, the government claims to be protecting the health of young persons by restricting access to cannabis while protecting them from inducements to use it. This objective will simply not be met. To begin with, if we allow Canadians to grow up to four cannabis plants at home, it will be impossible to control children's access to the drug. Therefore, it will be impossible to regulate consumption by the young people who live in these homes. I am not claiming to be an expert in this area. I only observe and listen to what the experts tell us.

Even Health Canada is warning us that marijuana is a dangerous drug for young people. This is what is posted on the department's website: “Youth are especially vulnerable to the health effects of cannabis, because adolescence is a critical time for brain development”.

We know that the brain continues to develop until age 25. During those years, the brain is especially vulnerable to the health effects of marijuana, and use is associated with a disturbing increase in the risk of developing mental disorders such as schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety. It is estimated that young people who use marijuana are 30% more likely to develop these disorders. When we talk about those under 25, that includes 12-year-olds, who, under the bill, will be able to possess up to 5 grams of marijuana. Yes, members heard me right, children in grades seven to twelve, and even those in grade 6, will be able to have an equivalent of 10 to 15 joints on their person. In short, there is nothing to protect the health of young people. It is more likely that they will be encouraged to use.

Second, the government believes that it will deter the illicit activities associated with cannabis. For now, that is by no means a given. If no improvements are made to the price, packaging, and distribution of cannabis, it is rather unlikely that we will be able to take this market away from organized crime. This is what we have seen in the states of Washington and Colorado, and in several countries such as Uruguay, where home growing did not reduce the involvement of organized crime. In fact, nothing prevents homegrown from being sold for illegal purposes.

That is what Cynthia Coffman, Attorney General of Colorado, said. She is not a Conservative here in the house. She said that criminals were still selling marijuana on the black market, that a host of cartels were operating in Colorado, and that crime has not gone down since marijuana was legalized.

Third, the government claims to be making our roads safer. However, in every state and every country where cannabis was legalized, the drug-impaired driving rate increased. That is what Kevin Sabet, a former advisor to Barack Obama, said about drug policies. He said that there has been an uptick in marijuana-related car accidents in Colorado.

I would like to remind members that drivers who have used marijuana are six times more likely to have a car accident than sober drivers. Also, we recently found out that the government still does not have reliable scientific data on the quantity of marijuana that an individual can use before it hinders his or her ability to drive a vehicle or on how long a person should wait after smoking marijuana before driving. The paper that was presented shows that everything is still vague, even though we are eight months away from legalization. There are no facts and no evidence, but the government is rushing the bill through anyway.

Fourth, the government thinks it will be providing access to quality-controlled cannabis. That is an odd goal considering that this government cannot in any way regulate the home grow that it is allowing.

It is impossible to measure the toxicity, the use of fertilizer, the amount produced, or the presence of mould. Furthermore, in Ontario and Quebec, building owners will not be able to prevent renters from growing marijuana, with all the risks that entails, such as a 24 times greater likelihood of fire, according to experts.

The government thinks it can raise awareness of the health risks associated with cannabis use. If it really wants to achieve that objective, it must address the growing concerns expressed by police officers, provincial governments, municipal governments, and indigenous leaders, all of whom have said they will not be prepared to implement the proposed measures eight months from now.

The government should start by listening to these groups of elected representatives and citizens who have sounded the alarm about the Liberal government's pie in the sky objectives. Raising public awareness means launching massive campaigns and providing law enforcement training for police officers and addiction treatment training for mental health workers. These measures will cost Canadian taxpayers dearly, but responsibility for them will most certainly be downloaded onto the provinces, which will have to pick up the tab for the Liberals' promise. Just as they are getting no help now, they will not get any then either.

To sum up, we have reason to seriously question why the Liberal government is in such a hurry to pass this bill.

Perhaps it is so everyone will quickly forget its promise to reform the electoral system or the many other promises I could mention that have really disappointed Canadians, and especially young Canadians, in this case. This kind of commitment requires a great deal of preparation, but instead we are seeing nothing but improvisation in this case.

I therefore urge the members to look at this bill with a critical eye, be prudent, and vote against it. As the many experts I consulted and discussed this with said, this bill does not in any way meet the government's objectives, which are to keep drugs away from kids, make our streets safer, and eliminate organized crime.

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

Mr. Speaker, when I look at Bill C-45, for me, personally, it is saying that we need to do what we can for our children. I hear a lot of the arguments from the Conservative benches that under the new law, somehow our children would be worse off, not recognizing that Canada already has the highest participation of youth in the consumption of cannabis in the world. A big part of that driving force is the criminal element. Criminals realize that they can sell and profit by selling to our kids. Would my colleague not at the very least concede that for criminals, it is a viable option to make money by selling to minors? That is something that is happening today.

This is a step in the right direction to deal with crime and deal with young people and the issue of cannabis and marijuana.

The House resumed consideration of Bill C-45, An Act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other Acts, as reported (with amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

Business of the House

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, as a small footnote in history, I used to have the honour of serving as the government House leader. After an absence of 807 weeks, it is my privilege to answer this question once again on behalf of my colleague the current government House leader. Again as a historical reference, members might be interested to know that 807 weeks ago, what we were discussing in the Thursday question was reproductive technologies, public safety, competition legislation, species at risk, and pest control. In some ways, things never change. However, to get to the answer, this afternoon we will continue with the report stage debate on Bill C-45, which is the proposed cannabis legislation.

First, let me associate myself, and I am sure all members of the House, with the comments that the opposition House leader made about the respect we all have, and must have, for our veterans and members of the Canadian Armed Forces.

After we return from this constituency week, we will commence debate on Bill C-59, which deals with national security. I would inform the House that, in the interests of transparency, we will be referring this bill to committee before second reading, which will allow for a broader scope of discussion and consideration and possible amendment of the bill in the committee when that deliberation begins.

Following that, we hope to be back to the debate on Bill C-24, which would amend the Salaries Act. Our focus for the rest of the week after we return will be disposing of Bill C-45 at report stage and third reading.

Finally, Thursday of that week will be an allotted day.

Cannabis Act

[Celina Caesar-Chavannes, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Development]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my hon. colleague's concern for education. We are taking a public safety approach with Bill C-45, with $240 million to support law enforcement to detect and deter drug-impaired driving, $161 invested in training front-line officers, another $81 million for provinces and territories, and $46 million for a public awareness campaign. Does he not agree that this is a comprehensive approach to providing education and training?

[Len Webber, Conservative, Calgary Confederation, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to contribute to the debate on Bill C-45, which proposes to legalize recreational marijuana use here in Canada. The medicinal use of marijuana in Canada is, of course, already permitted when prescribed by a doctor, and I support that measure. However, what we are considering here today is the recreational use of marijuana, using drugs for fun.

The health committee, on which I serve, heard in September from more than 100 witnesses from across Canada and from all parts of the world. They presented their thoughts and their concerns on a number of issues related to the legalization of marijuana. We heard from many who literally called marijuana a miracle drug, a miracle antidote for relieving and in some cases eliminating conditions such as epileptic seizures, migraine headaches, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, arthritis, and I can go on. The testimony from these individuals was heartening.

Even hearing about the option for physicians to be able to prescribe marijuana instead of opioids such as OxyContin and fentanyl for treating chronic pain is enough to convince many that medicinal marijuana has a place in our society. However, Canada is now on the verge of normalizing recreational marijuana use, and we have heard a number of serious concerns from a variety of stakeholders.

A couple of weeks ago I spoke at length on Bill C-46 and the issue of drug-impaired driving, so I will not reiterate what I said back then, but I will say that drug-impaired driving is of deep concern to many, and we heard that day in and day out at committee. I will focus on a couple of other serious concerns.

As we have heard many times, there are many studies that show marijuana does have a negative impact on the developing brain. The Canadian Medical Association, which represents 83,000 physicians in Canada, said:

Existing evidence on marijuana points to the importance of protecting the brain during its development. Since that development is only finalized by about 25 years of age, this would be an ideal minimum age based on currently accepted scientific evidence...

Last month at the World Psychiatric Association's world congress in Berlin, the community was presented with further evidence that marijuana use by youth can facilitate the onset of schizophrenia and other psychosis conditions in certain people. Complications may include cognitive impairment, social isolation, and even suicide.

These are the doctors who are talking. These are the physicians, the scientists, and the health care providers who are saying this. The reality is that not all our youth are aware of this body of scientific research and so they are not making informed decisions when it comes to marijuana drug use, and that has to change. It is imperative that we inform our young people that using this drug, marijuana, will likely have serious, permanent, and negative effects on their brain and their mental health.

Without question, the largest single concern that we heard at the health committee is the Liberal government's complete failure to properly execute a public education campaign.

In just eight months, we will most likely have marijuana for sale as a fun recreational drug. Is that not great? Witnesses testified that, if we are going to achieve the primary results we want—and that is to reduce marijuana use and lower youth consumption—then we need to educate Canadians well in advance of the proposed July 1, 2018, legalization timeline set by the Liberal government. Unfortunately, there has been no real education campaign started by the government, and time is running out.

It has not gone unnoticed that we are spending a great deal of time and money to legalize marijuana, but very little time and money on a public education campaign. An immediate public education plan is critical. The Liberal government claims it has committed $46 million to a plan, but I have not seen it in my community. I have talked to health care people in my community, and they have not seen a dime of that.

Even the former Liberal cabinet minister and head of the task force on cannabis, the Honourable Anne McLellan, said at committee:

I think the most important part of prevention, which we have learned from tobacco, alcohol, and probably some other things—I might include gambling—is public education. That's the lesson you hear over and over again in states like Colorado and Washington. You have to have robust public education, and you need it out of the box early.

Not a single witness in committee advocated against an early and intense public education campaign, so why is the Liberal government not starting now with an education campaign?

Another serious concern that was brought forward in committee is the impact the proposed legislation would have on Canada in the eyes of the world. We heard in committee that there are three United Nations international treaties that we are bound to violate if this legislation is passed.

We heard great testimony from Dr. Steven Hoffman, who is a professor law at the prestigious Osgoode Hall Law School. He is also an expert in international law. He is very concerned, as are we Conservatives, that Bill C-45 would in fact violate international laws. The United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988 is one of the three major UN drug control treaties currently in force that we as a nation have signed onto and committed to. The treaty provides additional legal mechanisms for enforcing the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs and the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances, which is to limit exclusively to medical and scientific purposes the production, manufacture, export, import, distribution of, trade in, use, and possession of drugs.

The passing of Bill C-45 would put us in contravention of these three UN international agreements. The Liberal government has failed to tell Canadians how it will handle the situation. It should tell us, but it has refused to. As Dr. Hoffman said:

I really would love to emphasize that the consequences actually are quite severe in the sense that it's not just our reputation. It's not just Canada's standing on the global international scene. If we violate international law we are actually undermining the best mechanism we have to get countries to work together and solve some of the biggest challenges we face in the world. One only needs to think about examples like serious use of chemical weapons, or North Korea testing nuclear weapons, or even closer to home, the United States imposing illegal trade barriers against softwood lumber. Canada wants to be in a position that we are able to rely on our fellow countries, our partners around the world, to follow these rules that make Canadians safer, that make Canadian businesses prosper, yet it's very difficult for Canada to be taking moral stances on international laws if Canada is also violating them.

We are not ready as a nation to rush into marijuana legalization, and the consequences will be severe.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Mr. Speaker, of course, that is exactly what I am speaking of today. After listening to the people at the five town hall meetings and other events I attended throughout the summer in my riding, I felt it necessary to offer the plan that I did.

I even sent a letter to the parliamentary budget officer back in June, before the House rose for the summer, requesting all of the information around Bill C-45 and the enforcement bill, Bill C-46. I had many questions about how much money would be spent on enforcement, what would be needed for administration, and how it would be done. I had two pages of questions. We got back a reply from the parliamentary budget office that basically said that the government had the information but had not given it to them, and thus they could give none to me.

I find that atrocious. If the money to be made in this process is broadcast, and then the government is so ashamed of the results that it cannot even put out there what it will cost, including administratively, it shows that the government does not know what those costs are, that this process has been done too quickly without the necessary detail behind it, just like the government has done with its small business tax program.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Mr. Speaker, today the House deals with one of the largest changes regarding controlled substances in my lifetime. Throughout the debate on the larger issue of legalizing recreational marijuana, I have discovered that the issue is not as black and white as some members have put forward in their arguments. I agree with many of the points my colleague from Markham—Unionville raised. However, I said that it is not as black and white, and I will give an example. Every time the Liberal MPs talk about how marijuana legalization would keep the substance out of the hands of youth, it is asinine. For anyone to think that youth currently do not have ready access to illegal marijuana is also rather absurd. I am well aware that Canada has some of the highest rates of adolescent marijuana consumption in the world. It is available far too often in our high schools and I have heard horrible stories of how marijuana consumption has led to disastrous life decisions.

This can also be said of alcohol. It can also be said of crystal meth, fentanyl, and cocaine. I do not for a moment believe that marijuana is in the same column as the illegal substances I just referenced, and it is not my intention to degrade those who consume marijuana for recreational purposes. My intent is to emphasize that we parliamentarians should wade very carefully into legalization of recreational marijuana, which would soon allow every household in Canada to grow four plants.

I have carefully reviewed many of the submissions to the health committee, such as by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Nurses' Association, and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. These are just a handful of the over 185 briefs tabled with committee members, and in many respects the concerns these well-respected organizations put forward were almost identical to those voiced by my constituents during the five town halls I hosted on this topic this summer.

The best way to describe Bill C-45 is by quoting a Brandon Sun article published the morning after one of our town halls. I can assure those who think the Brandon Sun is under the umbrella of Postmedia that it is not. The article stated, “If a consensus could be drawn from a wide-ranging town hall in Brandon about the proposed legalization of marijuana, it’s an acknowledgement the legislation is flawed.”

I fully agree with what the article said. That is why I submitted a brief not only to the justice and health ministers, but also to the entire committee tasked with studying this legislation. It was not surprising, but still unfortunate, to report that I received a boiler-plate response from the Minister of Justice that did not even acknowledge the recommendations I put forward. If a duly elected member of Parliament cannot even get the correspondence team in the Minister of Justice's office to go above and beyond just copying and pasting a response, it begs the question of whether the current government has any intention of listening to concerned Canadians.

For a government that pretends it listens, the only way to get its members to back down from a proposal is for thousands upon thousands of angry taxpayers to show up en masse at town halls and write some of the funniest tweets I have ever read. For example, during the taxpayers' revolt this summer, many farmers took pictures of themselves sitting in their combines while harvesting, referring to them as their tax shelters.

I ask the government not only to implement my recommended change to push back the bringing-into-force date of Bill C-45 to 2019, but also that its members listen to the brief by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, which stated, “Canadian police services will not be equipped to provide officers with the training and resources necessary to enforce the new regime within the existing contemplated timeframe,” or to the Canadian Medical Association, which recommended a comprehensive public health strategy with a health education component before Bill C-45 is implemented.

If the government thinks that police services, the medical community, and our education system will be ready within the next six months, and that municipalities and provinces will be fully prepared for July 1, I would humbly remind it on its own part, two years later, it still cannot accurately pay public service employees.

It is sad to say, but the government's credibility in implementing and executing effective policies within a reasonable time frame is not that believable. My hon. colleagues across the way have essentially ignored the plea by provinces and municipalities for more time to properly prepare for the government's politically driven July 1 deadline.

Not a single member of this House has any idea what the rules will be in their communities, because their municipal governments have yet to determine what they will be. It will cost serious money for municipal governments to properly train their law enforcement and bylaw officers, and even more, they will not receive adequate financial assistance to do so. They will be stuck with all of the headaches, while the Prime Minister, on Canada Day, will proclaim that marijuana is now legal.

To expand on my recommendations to the government, the majority of my constituents believe that the federal government should not look to marijuana as a cash cow, but should provide a significant portion of the federal taxes it collects from marijuana directly to municipalities in the same manner as it does with the gas tax fund.

For any of my colleagues who believe that police and law enforcement agencies will see cost savings from the legalization of recreational marijuana, it would be naive at best to think that such a highly regulated, controlled substance that will have even more strings attached to it than alcohol will somehow free up their time. Any time a government has decided to legislate, regulate, and control something, I have failed to see the resulting cost savings.

Regardless of the flaws of this piece of legislation, there is still no overall consensus among my constituents that marijuana should be legalized for recreational use. There were many questions about the effects on someone's cognitive abilities and the lack of general education about its long-term impacts.

While we debate this legislation and put a heavy emphasis on educating our youth, we must not forget that millions of middle-aged adults have next to zero experience with recreational marijuana and, therefore, that any educational programs must include this demographic.

It is absolutely imperative that the legalization of recreational marijuana not be rushed until the various law enforcement agencies, provinces, and municipalities are fully prepared.

I urge the government to rethink how the tax revenues will be distributed to those who will have to absorb many of the costs of regulating and policing marijuana use. I ask the federal government to heed the advice of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities not to move forward with this legislation until it receives further direction from its municipal partners.

In closing, I am under no illusion that the government has any intention of listening to the concerns of the good people of Brandon—Souris. It would be an understatement to say that I have hesitations regarding the legalization of recreational marijuana. Regardless of my personal trepidations, it is clear that the country is not ready for the July 1, 2018 implementation date. It is my hope that even if the government ignores every other concern or recommendation put forward, either by me or stakeholders, that it at the very least would push back the bringing-into-force date to allow more time to properly prepare for legalization.

With that I will finish my remarks and urge my Liberal colleagues to break ranks with their whip and the government to listen to its local law enforcement agencies, provinces, and municipalities to do the right thing.

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak on an issue I care deeply about. I am thankful to have the opportunity to speak to Bill C-45. This is a piece of legislation that pertains to an issue very close to my heart. Today, I am going to speak to why Bill C-45 cannot be passed.

I want to provide some context. Marijuana is a dangerous drug. With all the pro-marijuana publicity lately, it can be hard for many Canadians to remember that marijuana is indeed a damaging and addictive drug. Further, it causes harmful effects on youth brain development, and a greater incidence of psychosis and schizophrenia.

The Conservatives oppose this legislation on marijuana in Canada. Our opposition is based on the concerns we heard from scientists, doctors, and law enforcement officials, who said that the government's plan is being rushed through without proper planning or consideration for the negative consequences of such complicated legislation.

Most concerning is that this bill does not keep marijuana out of the hands of children, nor does it eliminate organized crime or address issues with impaired driving.

Canada will be in violation of three international treaties if this bill passes. The three UN treaties to which Canada is a signatory are as follows: the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances, and the 1988 Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances. This legislation will be compromising Canada's integrity on the world stage. How can Canada hold other countries to account on their treaty obligations when Canada does not honour its own?

Almost daily, I hear about another new report on the harmful effects of marijuana, yet the Liberal government refuses to consider the mounting evidence and is recklessly pushing ahead with this legislation. The government claims it wants to protect our youth and that this legislation will be regulating the industry and eliminating the black market. However, Bill C-45 will not accomplish even one of these goals. The Liberal government is not listening to medical professionals. It is not listening to the police forces. It is not even listening to concerned Canadians who believe this bill is fundamentally flawed and is being rushed through Parliament in order to meet an arbitrary and irresponsible deadline.

For these reasons and many more, I am entirely opposed to this legislation. When it comes to our youth, I want to ensure that they are safe, and able to have a better life and more opportunities than we did. Allowing easier access to drugs does not achieve that.

Currently, the bill recommends the age of 18 as a federal minimum. However, the provinces are being given the power to set a higher age. If we look to our southern neighbour the United States, the states of Washington and Colorado, which have legalized marijuana, have used the age of 21 as the minimum. As of now, Ontario says it will set its minimum age at 19, and Alberta at 21. This is not safe. A number of medical professionals have testified that the brain continues to develop until the age of 25. According to the Canadian Medical Association, the increased use of marijuana before the age of 25 increases one's risk of developing mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety, by up to 30% compared to those who have not used marijuana under the age of 25. Is this what we want for our children? This is most certainly not what I want for my children, my constituents, or Canadians. For these reasons, the Canadian Medical Association and various other medical professionals recommended increasing the age at which a person can consume marijuana to 21 at the very least. The government would fail our children if it goes through with this proposed legislation.

The second goal the Liberals claim would be achieved through the bill would be regulating the industry. I will explain why they will not reach this goal either.

Bill C-45 would allow for four plants per household with no height restriction on the plants. If grown in optimal conditions, this could yield as much as 600 grams of marijuana. The vast majority of witnesses at the health committee spoke strongly against home grow in their testimony, including most medical groups and the police forces that appeared.

Allowing home grow will most certainly not regulate the industry. Further, the police have said before the health committee that, because they cannot see inside homes, they would be unable to enforce a four-plant household quota. Even more concerning is that a large network of legal home grows could easily become an organized crime network. This would not be regulating the industry. It would not eliminate the black market. It is internally inconsistent.

This brings me back to my worry for our youth. The bill would not keep marijuana out of the hands of youth, which is one of the stated goals of the bill in clause 7(a). If marijuana is in the home, youth will have access to it, not to mention the issue of impaired driving, which will increase as a result of legalization.

There is currently no instrument that can accurately measure the level of marijuana impairment roadside. Canada is unable to train officers at home on how to recognize marijuana-impaired driving. We do not have the technology or resources, so the government needs to send officers for expensive, lengthy training in the United States. Our police forces do not currently have the resources and the training required to manage the increased threat of impaired driving associated with the legalization of marijuana. This training currently has backlogs and wait lists. Canada is not ready for this.

As it stands, the proposed legislation is not what is best for Canadians. Canadian families expect safe and healthy communities in which to raise their children. Elected representatives can and should provide guidance on drugs to reflect the views of all Canadians. Let us all remember that we are talking about the health and safety of Canadians, and they deserve better.

There are only 233 days to go until the arbitrary date of July 1, 2018. Let us not rush through this proposed legislation. We need to do what is right for Canadians. The provinces, municipalities, and police forces are not ready to implement this legislation. I cannot support Bill C-45.

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

Mr. Speaker, my colleague made many good points. It is clear that the government is not going to achieve its stated objectives with Bill C-45. It is certainly not going to offload from the criminal justice system, because there is more criminality in this bill than there was already. It is certainly not going to keep cannabis out of the hands of children, because it would allow home grow, and it is certainly not going to get rid of organized crime.

If we want to implement something, we tend to look at who else did this and who else did it with positive results. If we look at Washington State, it actually reduced organized crime to less than 20%. Young children there are finding it hard to get hold of marijuana. What did it do? It did not allow home grow, except for the medically fragile, and it controlled all the distribution. It took its medical marijuana system, which was very well regulated, and expanded it.

It seems to me that this bill falls really short in many areas, but especially in the area of public awareness. There was clear testimony that we needed to get on that. We only have 234 days left before the government would arbitrarily roll things out. Can the member comment on the public education needed?

[Bill Blair, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada and to the Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin with a point of clarification for the member. I thank her for her conditional support for Bill C-45. I want to simply advise her that the government has, in fact, announced $46 million for a public education program that will begin to roll out very shortly. I hope that addresses one of her concerns.

I seek clarification from the member. She has stated that she supports decriminalization, but let us be really clear about what decriminalization is. Decriminalization maintains the prohibition and simply replaces the criminal sanction with a civil penalty: a ticketing scheme with a fine. In an environment in which the prohibition remains, one cannot regulate the substance.

When the member described her vision of decriminalization, she said that the law would not be enforced, not that it would be enforced in a different way with a different outcome, a civil penalty. I submit to the member opposite that what she was describing was, in fact, legalization without regulation.

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Salaberry—Suroît, QC]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-45 will legalize cannabis use within the limits my colleagues have already mentioned.

Many decisions fall to the provinces, including the legal age for using cannabis, the development of a point-of-sale system, and education. The government is pushing for a very short deadline. We are talking about passing this bill before July 1, 2018, which is only eight months from now. In politics, eight months goes by fast.

However, we are still waiting to see how the federal government intends to make sure that the law is applied from Vancouver to St. John’s, Newfoundland, by way of Quebec. Despite everything, I think it is very clear that we must go ahead with this bill. I support the legalization of marijuana, provided that it is done effectively and that we can prevent the sale of cannabis to children, that a reliable long-term source of revenue is devoted to public health, prevention and research, and that a comprehensive strategy to fight impaired driving is adopted.

We know that the prohibition and criminalization of cannabis, which the Conservatives have maintained in place in the past 10 years, have proven to be completely ineffective in reducing cannabis use and related criminal activity in Canada.

Earlier I touched on the statistics concerning drug-related offences reported in 2014, when the Conservatives were in power and had already implemented an extremely repressive system with longer minimum sentences, in an attempt to manage drug use. One year after the Conservatives passed their repressive laws, cases of methamphetamine and heroine possession had increased by 38% and 34%, respectively. Methamphetamine and heroine trafficking had increased by 17% and 12%, respectively.

Thus, drug use was not reduced, but actually increased, as did trafficking. We need to determine a strategy for making sure that those who use cannabis the most, young people aged 25 and under, are truly taken into consideration, and that we stop hiding our heads in the sand and practising denial. We must realize that the war on drugs has not worked, and that we need to find new solutions.

We agree with the solution proposed by the Liberals, namely adopting a public health approach. There are, however, many flaws in their approach, hence the need for discussion. Unfortunately, we are already at the third and final reading stage. We are concerned because we proposed several amendments that were rejected out of hand by Liberals at committee.

The government set up a task force, and in their report, the experts on the task force explained that legislation must be enacted to do the following:

reduce the burdens on police and the justice system associated with simple possession of cannabis offences; prevent Canadians from entering the criminal justice system and receiving criminal records for simple cannabis possession offences; protect public health and safety by strengthening, where appropriate, laws and enforcement measures that deter and punish more serious cannabis offences...

The bill addresses those issues by legalizing the consumption of up to 30 grams of dried cannabis and the possession of up to four plants per household.

However, as I said, the bill is scheduled to come into effect on July 1, 2018. Around 100,000 people have been given criminal records over the past two years for simple cannabis possession even though the government is planning to legalize it in less than a year. How many more young people is the government willing to put in jail for something that will be legal in about 10 months? Will it at least direct the police and judicial authorities to stop enforcing the existing law until such time as the new law is in force?

The Liberals' own working group was given a recommendation to decriminalize marijuana. They do not agree amongst themselves. The Prime Minister recently said that granting pardons would certainly address some of the backlog in the justice system. We know that, since the Jordan decision, a number of investigations have been halted and charges have not been laid in cases involving offences much more serious than simple marijuana possession.

We are going through the same thing with Bill C-45, as they do not want to proceed with decriminalization in the interim. This will only add to the burden on the judicial system and to the monumental costs associated with arresting people for simple possession.

Statistics Canada and other organizations have repeatedly demonstrated to us that these arrests and ensuing criminal records disproportionately affect young people, racialized persons and aboriginals. I wonder how many criminal records from young people arrested for smoking a joint end up on the desks of my colleagues from Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. How many applications for pardon do they process each year?

As elected members, do we not want the Liberal government to fulfill its promise while making the right choice for Canadians, regardless of their age or the colour of their skin, meaning to go ahead with decriminalization, at the very least, and consider granting pardons? I cannot understand why this would be a problem in light of the fact that it appears in the Liberal Party's platform in 2015.

These long overdue amendments will only come into force in 15 months, at the earliest. Delays and lack of resources are causing a crisis in the justice system. We cannot afford to continue to allocate police and court resources to charging and convicting people for simple possession of cannabis, a substance that will be legalized in a few months.

The working group will continue working toward meeting its objectives, which now focus on youth, prevention and education. The bill must protect Canada's youth by keeping cannabis out of their reach, and must ensure that Canadians are well informed through public health campaigns so that young people especially are made aware of the risks of cannabis use.

Bill C-45 imposes heavy sanctions on whomever traffics, sells or gives cannabis to a minor. How is this a public health matter, I wonder? First off, we need more scientific research not only on the short and long-term effects of cannabis use, but also on the properties of this plant. Some people already use it for medicinal purposes. We have often heard of patients undergoing chemotherapy or veterans using it, for example.

Since they claim to want to protect youth, will the Liberals increase funding for research on the chronic and long-term effects of consumption on the health of young people in particular?

I am also looking at the 2017 budget, which announced a ridiculous budget of less than $2 million per year over five years. Last week, it was announced that this budget will be increased to $6 million per year over five years, but it still totally ridiculous. On top of education, awareness campaigns and prevention, we need federal funds for frontline community organizations. Along with the schools, they will be ready to engage with young people on the ground when they want information. However, how will $6 million ever be enough to help the millions of community groups in Canada? Will the burden fall on the provinces? It is a fair question.

If we do a comparison with American states such as Colorado, we are far from doing all we can. Colorado spends nearly $37 million per year in prevention alone. That is seven times what the Canadian government provides for in this major bill on the legalization of marijuana. I would remind members that will happen in less than eight months.

I also know very little about what the government intends to do with the money that will be made from the sale of marijuana. What types of prevention programs will be available? Who will they be targeting? Will there be funding for community groups? We should keep in mind that this is extremely important.

The bill also raises a lot of important questions concerning the provinces. Will they need additional time to establish their regulatory system? This is another reason why we would have wanted the process to start earlier or go beyond July 1, 2018. The issues relating to the sale system and the legal framework are also very important to minimize the risks associated with the legalization of marijuana.

Another issue we need to clarify has to do with the nature of the cannabis tax structure and revenue. How will they be shared among the provinces and the federal government? The provinces and Canadians are looking to the Department of Finance to make a decision on this issue. In Quebec, Minister Charlebois has already expressed her displeasure about the time granted to the provinces, and Premier Couillard did the same regarding taxation.

I would like to talk about many other things, but I see that my time is up. I want to simply point out that the NDP proposed 38 amendments in committee and that all 38 amendments were rejected. That is rather absurd.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for the opportunity to engage in this debate. Bill C-45 is, of course, the bill that would legalize marijuana in Canada.

When we talk about legalization, we have to understand what this legislation would do. It would normalize the use of marijuana in everyday life across Canada. Like cigarettes, which were normalized many years ago, and the same with booze, marijuana would now become an accepted part of Canadian life. The message we send to our children would be a terrible one. It is one that says we give up, we surrender, because we are no longer going take action to eliminate the use of marijuana and other drugs in our society. We are simply going to go, as my colleague said, the coward's way: acquiesce and legalize it.

I am absolutely confident that Bill C-45, which represents the normalization of the use of marijuana in Canada, would become a massive public policy failure for the Liberal government, just like its tax reforms, where it attacks small businesses, diabetics, those who are getting employee discounts, and the mentally ill. That has become a massive policy failure, and Bill C-45 would also become a massive policy failure for the reasons I will articulate.

The bill would effectively legalize the sale, use, and cultivation of marijuana. As I said, it would normalize its use. We have worked so hard as a society to discourage cigarette smoking, and yet here we are opening the door to what is arguably an even more dangerous substance. The irony is that the current government, while it would pass the bill to legalize the use of marijuana, would then engage in a public relations and communications strategy telling young people who would be purchasing marijuana that they should not buy it because it is very dangerous and they should not use it, but it would be legalized and normalized. I mean, the hypocrisy of that is jaw-dropping.

I was an elected official in the City of Abbotsford for many years. I was very pleased to serve there as a city councillor. I can tell members that, as a council, one of the biggest challenges we had was the growing of marijuana plants at home. Many of these were illegal grow ops. Eventually, medicinal marijuana was approved for use in Canada, and homes are now growing this under the auspices of providing some kind of medicinal relief. What has happened is that we have communities and neighbourhoods within Abbotsford that are wonderful neighbourhoods, but they have houses in which marijuana is grown. Historically, they would cover the windows with foil, and the stench emanating from those properties was overwhelming. There was a constant stream of neighbourhood members who would come to us council members and complain about it.

This bill would authorize the growing of marijuana plants at home. I can assure members that many Canadians, unfortunately, will take that opportunity to grow more than the four plants that would be allowed under the proposed legislation. This would result in continued challenges with our neighbourhoods across Canada.

There was a stated objective of the government that it wanted to protect youth, and that the regulation and legalization of marijuana would achieve that end. The Liberals stated that they also wanted to eliminate organized crime, but we know that children under the age of 18 are not supposed to be buying marijuana. Anyone over the age of 18, under the proposed legislation, would be able to legally purchase and consume marijuana, but those under the age of 18 would not. Ironically, those between the ages of 12 and 17 would be allowed to possess small amounts of marijuana. Where would they acquire that marijuana? They cannot buy it legally. Who are they going to go to? Well, organized crime would supply that drug.

There is a bigger problem. All of the medical and and scientific research says that marijuana use among young people has a very negative impact on their developing young brains.

Why would the Liberal government want to legalize a drug that we know will be used by our youth in increasing numbers, because it will be that much more available to them? Why would we allow this to happen when it is very clear from the medical literature that the use of marijuana amongst young people invariably leads to significant mental health issues? In fact, I am predicting that if this legislation passes, in 5, 10, 15 years from now, Canada will face a mental health crisis. All of these youth who have had greater access to marijuana will be suffering from significant mental health challenges. What a terrible legacy for us to leave for our children.

I want to address the issue of the timing of this legislation. As we know, the Prime Minister has said he is going to ram this thing through and implement the legislation by July 1, 2018. However, we have heard from police chiefs across Canada that it is impossible for them to get ready and implement this legislation with all the challenges this bill represents. We have heard from communities across the country, including from my own city of Abbotsford, which communicated with the federal government, made a submission to the committee that studied this bill, and said, “Please, you cannot do this by July 1”. The provinces and territories are saying to the Prime Minister that July 1 is way too ambitious a date to implement this plan by, that they will not be ready for it. Their police services will not be ready, their educational system will not be ready, and Canadians will not be ready for it.

Generally speaking, it is going to result in a fiasco. However, that is what we have to expect from the Liberal government. Whatever file it touches, it it ends up being a huge mess. That includes ethical failures like those of the finance minister and the Prime Minister and his fundraiser having offshore accounts. No one trusts the government anymore. There has been a fundamental breach of trust.

Let us look at some of the other challenges. I want to be very clear that we support ticketing the possession of small amounts of marijuana. We are supportive of decriminalization of small amounts of marijuana. We do not want to leave young children with a criminal record.

However, this bill goes far beyond decriminalization. It is clear-cut legalization of the use of marijuana and the normalization that will follow. We run a huge risk as we normalize the use of marijuana in Canada, where people will be entitled by law to possess small amounts of marijuana. Many Canadians will be travelling. They will have used marijuana regularly. They will have some of it in their glove compartments. When they get to the U.S. border, suddenly the border agents will be asking, “Hey, what do you have in your car? Do you have any guns or drugs?” People will say, “No, we do not.” The agents will rifle through the car and find marijuana in the glove compartment. Those people will probably be apprehended on the American side of the border. They will have a criminal record on that side of the border. They will have to go through the legal process there. That is one of the many small consequences the bill will generate.

Finally, it is very clear that the government has run out of money. That is why it is taxing Canadians to death. It has gone after small businesses, diabetics, employee discounts, the mentally ill, and now it is going after marijuana. The government is going to tax marijuana. More and more, it is because the government is running short of money. Can members imagine that being the reason for passing a bill like this that will have enormous consequences for Canadians?

I say to my Liberal friends across the way in closing that they should give their heads a shake and reconsider what they are doing here. This is bad policy that will hurt future generations of Canadians. They should not do it.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Madam Speaker, first of all, I want to congratulate the member for Winnipeg North on being nominated for hardest-working MP. Well done, dear colleague.

I have tremendous respect for my colleague, but I would add the caveat that just because a person is hard-working does not mean everything they do is right.

I also want to take this opportunity to remind members that November 5 was municipal elections day in Quebec. The 28 municipalities in the beautiful riding of Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier voted in a mix of new officials and re-elected incumbents. The day after the elections, I wasted no time in congratulating the mayors and councillors. However, a warning was in order as well. In eight months' time, these municipal councillors and mayors will have a problem to deal with. These elected officials will be responsible for making sure life goes on in their municipalities after July 1, 2018. They will have decisions to make. They will have to keep an eye on their parks. What will be happening around schools?

My colleague said earlier that 12-year-olds could be walking around with drugs in their pockets. We must not forget that children are more impressionable than adults. I am deeply troubled.

Municipal elected officials will also have to look at what this means for highway safety codes. Those are under provincial jurisdiction, but municipalities do have local responsibilities. Recently, the Government of Quebec enacted legislation giving municipalities additional responsibilities, including speed limits in residential areas. Municipalities handle that. What a gift for our newly elected officials.

I take no pleasure in rising in the House today to speak to a Liberal bill that will destroy our youth, theact respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other acts.

I was talking about municipalities. We also have to talk about the other level of government, the provincial government, which will have to deal with all these problems in return for a portion of the federal government's revenues from legalizing this product.

Many studies have made it abundantly clear that using marijuana affects people's health, especially the health of our young people. We must not forget that health is under provincial jurisdiction.

We also have to talk about road safety. We have no idea how our hard-working police officers are going to enforce that. There has been talk of training and investment, even of sending people to the United States for training. Nobody is ready for this. We should be taking our time.

As for personnel management, the Quebec minister of labour does not know what to do about the problem. People will be going to work after using drugs. It is a lot harder to verify people's state after they use drugs than after they drink. This is just one more thing being downloaded onto the provinces.

A university president from the Quebec City area asked how they are supposed to deal with this and manage it on campus. A myriad questions remain unanswered, and yet the government is fixated on one thing: July 1, 2018. Why is there such a rush to get this bill into law?

I recognize that drug use exists and that we need to do something. However, just because the government cannot control an existing problem does not mean that we should trivialize and legalize it. We should be taking more responsible steps and taking the time to come up with better solutions. I do not think this is the right way to tackle the problem.

We need to work on prevention. We need to encourage our youth to play sports and get involved in the arts and in their community. Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier has 500 organizations. Their problem right now is that they cannot renew their membership lists or find new volunteers.

Why has the federal government not developed a program to encourage our youth to get involved in their community? When they are involved in sports, dancing, singing, or arts and crafts, whatever the activity, that is all they think about. They do not have time for mischief or smoking marijuana.

The government opposite outlined specific purposes in the legislation. They are:

a) protect the health of young persons by restricting their access to cannabis;

However, it will be sold everywhere. Furthermore, people will have easy access from home since they will be allowed to grow their own pot plants. I will continue:

b) protect young persons and others from inducements to use cannabis;

Once again, it will be available everywhere. Here is the the third purpose:

c) provide for the licit production of cannabis to reduce illicit activities in relation to cannabis;

In other words, the government is saying that it will kill organized crime, but the Canadian Police Association said that it was naive to believe that organized crime activity could be restrained, reduced, or influenced. That is the word the Canadian Police Association used to describe this government. Then, the bill goes on:

(d) deter illicit activities in relation to cannabis through appropriate sanctions and enforcement measures;

Young people from 12 to 17 will apparently be able to go around with 5 grams of marijuana, which is the equivalent of 10 to 15 joints depending on their size. I will keep reading:

(e) reduce the burden on the criminal justice system in relation to cannabis;

Yes, we agree on decriminalization, but let us make the distinction between decriminalization and legalization. All 338 members of Parliament probably made some mistakes in their youth. It is certainly better to pay a fine, as we do for speeding, than it is to have a criminal record. The bill goes on:

(f) provide access to a quality-controlled supply of cannabis; and

(g) enhance public awareness of the health risks associated with cannabis use.

The government is saying that marijuana is not good for people's health, but it is going to legalize it. The government is saying that people should not use it, but it is going to put measures in place that will make it more accessible to our young people. I rise in the House today to protect our young people. That is important for any self-respecting society. It is naive to think that this is going to get rid of organized crime.

My goal is to protect young people under 25. All studies show that the brain development is complete by age 25. Why put young people between the ages of 18 and 25 at risk? The government is treating our young people like lab rats. We are the first G20 country that wants to legalize this drug. Why? We will become a testing ground and that is unacceptable. We are sacrificing a generation. That shows a lack of respect for our young people and makes it seem the government does not believe in the future of our country.

This government is here for the wrong reasons. It is spending money hand over fist and now has backed itself into a corner, so it is looking for a way to make some fast cash. First, that is an irresponsible way for a government to behave, because it has no vision. Second, it is using our young people to fill its coffers. The government has failed to mention what the cost of the consequences will be. We need to take the time to find a more respectful solution.

Even the tax is set out in budget 2017. We are wasting our time here today. The Liberals want this measure to take effect on July 1, 2018, and they did not agree to any of the amendments proposed by the NPD. They are looking forward to July 1, when they can raise some money for the friends of Pierre Elliott Trudeau's heir, our famous Prime Minister.

It does not take a genius to understand that this government is implementing measures that will take money out of the pockets of Canadians and harm our young people. That is unacceptable. This government needs to listen to reason. I am calling on the government to take more time before implementing this legislation, to be serious, and to show some respect for our young people. I am rising today on behalf of our youth.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Madam Speaker, when an apple is rotten, we do not cut it up to try to salvage what we can from it. We throw it out. That is what we should have done with Bill C-45.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Madam Speaker, I do not detect much enthusiasm when my colleagues on the government side are talking about Bill C-45, the marijuana legalization bill. Many of them simply read out prepared speeches and do not really believe everything they are saying.

Since I live in a rural area, in a community that is very worried about what is happening in Canada for the first time in its history, I cannot honestly imagine that, deep down, the members opposite are happy about moving forward with Bill C-45. I am not the only one who thinks so. There is very strong opposition in my riding, of course. Police bodies, municipalities, and provincial governments are also opposed to having this kind of legislation imposed on them and especially object to the government's utterly irrational agenda with regard to Bill C-45. Doctors, psychiatrists, scientists, and leaders everywhere are speaking out.

Just before coming here to give this speech, I asked some of my constituents about their thoughts on Bill C-45. Here are some of the comments I received:

I no longer live in the area, but I am still 200% against it. People are not allowed to smoke anywhere, but soon people are really going to start complaining when they realize just how much pot stinks. Legalizing the drug is a really stupid idea.

Here is another comment:

We have enough trouble dealing with drunk driving, and now they want to add another driving problem with this legislation. The accident rate went up in countries where they legalized cannabis, and we will be no exception.

I am not the one who is saying this. Here is another quotation:

I am 100% against. I have seen the havoc drugs have wreaked on the lives of users and their loved ones, and it really is not pretty. We cannot forget that this “soft” drug is a stepping stone to other hard drugs. Therefore, people will be saying that it is no big deal because it is legal. This is very dangerous, especially for our youth.

That is not all. Here is another one:

It seems that politicians have not consulted, or have not consulted enough, with experts on the subject.

Here is one final comment:

They are already having a hard time providing mental health care, so how are they going to deal with growing demand because statistics show that marijuana use often leads to problems like that and makes a lot of people depressed. This makes me worry about the future.

If the proper process had been followed, these people would not be so worried. If this bill were addressing an actual need, these people would already have answers to their questions. They would not be so worried about how marijuana legalization will affect our roads and our young people, the very young people the government claims it is helping by legalizing marijuana.

I recently read a comment about how this legislation will normalize marijuana to the point that young people may be even more interested in using it. I am trying to keep my feelings out of this, but I must admit I am having a hard time.

July 1, 2018, is nine months from now. In September, the Ontario Provincial Police Deputy Commissioner told the Standing Committee on Health that more time and more resources are needed to train police officers. Those two elements are lacking here. This is how the Deputy Commissioner described the likelihood that police officers will be ready by July 1, 2018:

...it's impossible. The damage that can be done between the time of new legislation and police officers being ready to enforce the law...can make it very hard for us to ever regain that foothold.

We heard the same message from Mario Harel, the president of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, when he appeared before the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights:

...are we delivering on the public safety objectives Canadians would expect of us? We are 10 months away, so allow me to put this into perspective.

We have 65,000 police officers in Canada who require training to understand the new legislation once it is passed into law....Provincial governments for the most part are still developing regulatory and delivery schemes, which directly impact law enforcement.

Quite frankly, the capacity currently is not there to deliver the amount of training required.

The police themselves are the ones saying this.

Why are the Liberals so determined to rush Bill C-45 through? What are they hiding? What is the hurry? Who do they have to answer to, if not Canadians, police chiefs, doctors, and psychiatrists? Who is the government trying to pander to by rushing to legalize marijuana?

This will have a serious impact on young people. We know this. I have heard from many people who are saying the same thing. What the government is claiming is totally false.

If young people under 25 are allowed to use cannabis, this will have a serious impact. It has been proven that this can have a permanent and possibly very serious effect on their mental health and brain development. I will not start quoting scientists and all the studies that have been done on that, for there are too many to name.

All I know is that if the government goes ahead with this on July 1, 2018, Canada will not be the same, Canadian society will not be the same. The Liberal government and every Liberal member will be to blame. The hon. member for Compton—Stanstead, the hon. member for Shefford, the hon. member for Saint-Maurice—Champlain, the hon. member for Québec, the hon. member for Lac-Saint-Jean, the hon. member for Argenteuil—La Petite-Nation, the hon. member for Gaspésie—Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine, the hon. member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, the hon. member for Louis-Hébert, the hon. member for Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, the hon. member for Brome—Missisquoi, and the hon. member for Saint-Jean and all the others will be to blame for everything that happens after July 1, 2018.

They still have a chance to get this right, but, if they continue to impose Bill C-45 on Canadians, after July 1, 2018 it will be too late.

Police chiefs have said that they are not ready. The damage will be done and we will never be able to go back. This is where this government is taking us. This is where this government is taking our society. This is where this government is taking Canada after July 1, 2018.

History will be defined by what came before July 1, 2018, and what came after July 1, 2018.

Those are the facts and that is what we are up against. I hope that the members I named and all the others, such as the hon. member for Pontiac, the hon. member for Thérèse-De Blainville, the hon. member for Pierrefonds—Dollard, the hon. member for Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, the hon. member for Bourassa, and the hon. member for Laval—Les Îles will understand this before the damage is done.

We are at a point where individual members of the Liberal government must assume their responsibilities towards their constituents, the youth in their ridings, and Canada.

I regularly see the member for Scarborough Southwest defend this irresponsible date of July 1, 2018. I invite him to come and tour our regions and to speak with our mayors and police chiefs so that he will understand once and for all that the date of July 1, 2018 is premature. Canada is not ready to deal with these changes.

Personally, I prefer the Canada as it exists now prior to July 1, 2018, to the Liberals' Canada after July 1, 2018.

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

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak in support of Bill C-45, an act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other Acts.

I think all members will agree that protecting the health and safety of Canadians is a key priority for all orders of government in Canada. With this in mind, on April 13, Bill C-45 was introduced in the House. Its goal is the creation of a strict national framework for controlling the production, distribution, sale, and possession of cannabis in Canada. The bill would provide for legal access to cannabis where adults could obtain it through an appropriate legal framework, sourced from a strictly regulated industry or by growing it safely and in limited amounts at home.

The bill would also establish safeguards to protect youth, including prohibiting the sale or distribution of cannabis to anyone under 18 and restricting marketing and advertising activities geared towards youth.

Growers and manufacturers of cannabis would require a federal licence and be subject to a strict oversight regime intended to control product safety and quality, and to prevent diversion to the illegal market. Effective oversight and control of cannabis cannot be achieved by working in isolation from our partners in the provinces, territories, and municipalities.

From the outset, our government has been clear that the control and regulation of cannabis requires a pan-Canadian approach, involving all orders of government, at all stages of development and implementation. This reality is reflected in the important role that our provincial and territorial partners played in the work of the task force on cannabis legalization and regulation.

The task force was established in June 2016 with a mandate to provide advice to the federal government on how to legalize, strictly regulate, and restrict access to cannabis. Input from the provinces and territories, as well as from indigenous communities, was essential to the successful work of the task force.

The provinces and territories nominated experts to serve on the task force, and made suggestions as to who should be consulted. These individuals met with the task force, and shared their views on cannabis legalization and regulation and on how best to achieve our shared objectives of better protecting public health and safety.

It should come as no surprise that the input from the provinces and territories was instrumental in shaping many important provisions of Bill C-45.

Consistent with the task force report, Bill C-45 proposes a shared framework for the control and regulation of cannabis that would require ongoing federal, provincial, and territorial collaboration. The bill sets out clear controls and standards around cannabis, and provides flexibility for each government to work within their own jurisdictional authority and experience. Those who are best placed to implement each aspect of the framework would do so.

At this time, I would like to explain how the various roles and responsibilities would be shared between our governments, beginning with the federal role. Bill C-45 proposes that the federal government would be responsible for establishing and maintaining a national framework for regulating the production of cannabis, setting standards for health and safety, and establishing criminal prohibitions.

This would include establishing restrictions on adult access to cannabis and serious criminal penalties for those operating outside the legal system; creating rules to limit how cannabis or cannabis accessories could be promoted, packaged, labelled, and displayed, in line with the rules in place for tobacco products; instituting a federal licensing regime for cannabis production that would draw on lessons learned from the current system for access to cannabis for medical purposes; establishing industry-wide rules and standards, for example, serving sizes or potency limits, as well as a tracking of cannabis to prevent diversion to the illegal market; creating minimum federal conditions to provide a national framework to protect public health and public safety; and enforcing cannabis importation and exportation prohibitions at the border, except when legally authorized.

At the same time, Bill C-45 recognizes that provinces and territories and municipalities have a key role to play in the new system.

The legislation would respect that provinces and territories, together with municipalities, have the authority to tailor certain rules in their own jurisdictions and enforce them through a range of tools, including administrative sanctions. Consistent with the recommendations from the task force, the provinces and territories, working with municipalities, would be able to establish rules with respect to where cannabis-based businesses could be located within a community, and also where cannabis could be consumed in public.

Provinces and territories could also set additional requirements to address issues of local concern. For example, provincial and territorial legislatures would have the authority to set a higher minimum age for cannabis possession. Provinces and territories could also set more restrictive limits on possession or personal cultivation, including lowering the number of plants or restricting where they may be cultivated.

Thus, Bill C-45 is drafted in such a way as to provide the provinces and territories with the ability to establish stricter rules under their own authorities.

We are pleased to see that the provinces and territories are already taking action to prepare for the legalization and regulation of cannabis. From coast to coast to coast, provinces and territories are continuing the conversation with Canadians about how best to regulate the sale and distribution of cannabis in their towns, cities, and communities.

While provinces and territories will decide on a system that responds to their particular circumstances, it is clear that all jurisdictions share our government's responsibilities to keep cannabis out of the hands of youth, to shut out organized crime, and to protect public health and safety. This is true for all orders of government.

The House resumed from November 1 consideration of Bill C-45, An Act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other Acts, as reported (with amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you all for being with us this morning. I apologize for the discord that we had earlier, but this is a place of battle.

Many of us feel that Bill C-45 is the most destructive piece of legislation that's ever been introduced in this House. We all have children. We all have grandchildren. I was pleased this morning to hear of the arrival of my 36th grandchild. You heard that right, the 36th.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

There is some advice that disagrees, Mr. Van Kesteren, but if you look at the results of the task force that investigated this issue for the better part of last year and that talked to everyone, including the medical experts and the legal experts, and those with international experience, the task force demonstrated that what's embodied in Bill C-46 and embodied in Bill C-45 is the best way forward, and it has a greater likelihood to be successful than does the law you endorsed, which has failed.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Because, Mr. Van Kesteren, after the very best and careful consideration and judgment, Bill C-45 and Bill C-46 with it will give Canada a better chance to deal with the very issues you have referred to than will the existing law.

The existing law has failed. The existing law has resulted in a situation in which young Canadian people are the heaviest users of marijuana in the Western world.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

—walked through, so I'm going to go through that as well.

I have in my hands here a document from Health Canada that talks about consumer information on cannabis. Amongst other things, it states that using cannabis or any cannabis product can impair your concentration, your ability to think and make decisions, and your reaction time and coordination. This may affect your motor skills, including your ability to drive. It can also increase anxiety, cause panic attacks, and in other cases, cause paranoia and hallucinations.

There's also a segment here right on the top that says the product should not be used if you're under the age of 25.

My question to you, sir, as the minister in charge of our public safety and national security, is how can you stand by and allow Bill C-45 to be passed?

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

My last question has to do with your public education allocation, the $2.5 million.

If that's to educate young people, as you stated previously, why is it that in Bill C-45 we're allowing children aged 12 to 18 to actually possess? If we didn't allow them to possess in that piece of legislation, wouldn't your public education issue with respect to driving and the use of this drug be irrelevant?

Also, in Bill C-46, which contains provisions about random testing for alcohol, why are other drugs not included in that bill?

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

We look forward to you tabling all of those so that we have an idea of how you are supporting the RCMP and our front-line workers.

My other question has to do with cannabis and its relationship to Bill C-45. We know that the importation and exportation of cannabis in the past was illegal. In the new legislation, it's still illegal.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Ms. Leitch, as I've said in response to other questions, not all of our financial asks are in these estimates, and there will be further estimates coming forward. The total commitment we've announced so far in support of Bill C-45 and Bill C-46 is for $274 million. At this stage, about $161 million is focused on needs with respect to Bill C-46. This is the first instalment. There will be more.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

I'll call the meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 77 of the Standing Committee on Health and our study on antimicrobial resistance.

I have a couple of little things.

I understand our sound system is not working yet on our teleconference, but hopefully we'll get that fixed shortly.

I'm leaving a bit early, and the vice-chair is going to take over.

At the very end, we're going to have a look at the letter we wrote about Bill C-45 to see if everybody approves of the letter.

I'll introduce our guests, and we'll get into our discussion.

From Halton Healthcare, we have Dr. Neil Rau. He is an infectious diseases specialist and medical microbiologist. Welcome very much.

From the Canadian Patient Safety Institute, we have Sandi Kossey, senior director of strategic partnerships and priorities. Welcome.

Also from the Canadian Patient Safety Institute, we have Kim Neudorf, patient advocate with Patients for Patient Safety Canada. I understand you two are going to share your opening statement.

As an individual, by teleconference we have Dr. Yvonne Shevchuk, associate dean for academics and professor at the College of Pharmacy and Nutrition, University of Saskatchewan.

We'll open with 10-minute opening remarks, starting with Dr. Rau.

Dr. Rau, would you like to fill us in?

[Josette Roussel, Senior Nurse Advisor, Policy, Advocacy and Strategy, Canadian Nurses Association]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for the invitation to be here with you this afternoon.

I'm a registered nurse representing the Canadian Nurses Association, CNA, the national professional voice representing more than 139,000 registered nurses and nurse practitioners. Across Canada, there are close to 5,000 nurse practitioners who provide care to over three million people in Canada.

I am pleased to be here today to speak about the specific measures related to nurse practitioners, or NPs, in Bill C-63, budget implementation act number two. We are pleased to be here to discuss this important bill ahead of nurse practitioner week, which starts on November 12 and ends on November 18.

On May 17 of this year, CNA appeared before this committee to inform members about the important role played by NPs in our health care system. Our official testimony before the committee on Bill C-44, budget implementation act number one, noted that NPs conduct physical assessment, order and interpret tests, write admission and discharge orders, and prescribe medications.

As an update, I am pleased to say that NPs enthusiastically joined our October 24 webinar entitled “Updates of Form T2201 Federal Disability Tax Credit Certificate: New Authority for Nurse Practitioners”. NPs have certified the DTC since March 22, 2017, budget day, the day the changes took effect. The proposed amendments in Bill C-63 will provide Canada's NPs with the capacity to treat patients to the full extent of their qualifications. As this committee is aware, these qualifications include the ability to complete documentation about their patients' medical conditions.

CNA has gone through the proposed amendments in Bill C-63. We are pleased to let the members of this committee know that the amendments complete the remaining clauses where NPs needed to be added to fully modernize the legislation. As a result of these changes, NPs will be identified in the Income Tax Act and the income tax regulations as eligible to provide certifications or reports related to other tax measures wherever certification or reports are currently provided by medical doctors.

We are pleased to see that these changes will lead to amendments to the medical expense tax credit, the child care expense deduction, the definition of qualifying student, the registered disability savings plan, and the registered pension plan regulations. We therefore encourage members of the committee to accept the proposed changes. These changes will enhance access for patients whose primary care is delivered by an NP in rural/remote and urban communities across Canada.

As we move forward, CNA anticipates that similar changes will be made to the Canada pension plan disability benefit. CNA has met with both ministerial and departmental officials at ESDC about changes that will authorize NPs to complete the disability-related medical reports for patients. These changes will not only enhance access to care but also lower health care costs.

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to encourage members of the committee to support the recommendations that were outlined in CNA's 2018 pre-budget submission. The recommendations outlined in our brief aim to strengthen public health education of health care providers, including nurses. Our key recommendations to the federal government include investing $125 million over the next five years in public education in advance of the passage of Bill C-45, including a one-time investment of $1.5 million to increase the level of cannabis education for nurses. We also recommend an investment of $45 million over the next five years to scale up provincial and territorial acute care and community-based antimicrobial stewardship programs, including a one-time investment of $1.5 million to increase AMS competence and capacity among nurses through a nursing profession-led knowledge, education, and mobilization program.

In closing, I encourage members of this committee to support Bill C-63. We are pleased that the bill builds on the important changes that were found in Bill C-44.

Thank you. I look forward to your questions.

Business of the House

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister of Small Business and Tourism]

Mr. Speaker, this morning we started second reading debate on Bill C-63, the budget implementation act. We will continue debate on this legislation this afternoon.

Tomorrow we will commence second reading debate of Bill S-5, concerning amendments to the Tobacco Act.

On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of next week, we shall continue with debate on the budget bill. Last Thursday I indicated to the House that we would allot four days of debate at second reading, which means we would expect the vote to send the bill to committee to take place on Wednesday evening. I would like to thank opposition House leaders for their co-operation in finding agreement on this timeline.

On Thursday, we will resume debate on Bill C-45 on cannabis, and hope to conclude the debate at report stage. We will also be working to pass Bill C-17 on the Yukon before the next constituency week.

The House resumed consideration of Bill C-45, An Act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other Acts, as reported (with amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

Motions in Amendment

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-45.

As a pediatric surgeon, I spent most of my professional career putting children back on the playground to play. This bill does exactly the opposite of taking care of kids. This bill will make it easier to put marijuana in the hands of Canadian children. Liberals like to talk about evidence-based decision-making, and the importance of science. The science on this issue is clear: marijuana is a dangerous drug for our young people. It affects their developing brains.

We know that children's brains develop until the age of 25, and that marijuana can have an impact that is negative on that development. The results lower graduation rates from high school, fewer opportunities as adults, as well as high rates of mental health challenges. These are the evidence-based facts.

I accept that in limited circumstances marijuana can and should be prescribed by a qualified physician for purchase in a pharmacy for those who need it for medical purposes, whether that be someone with cancer, or a veteran with PTSD. However, as I stated earlier, I disagree with the Liberal government's proposed legislation. The government should be working on making sure marijuana is less accessible to our youth, not increasing its availability.

I have had the opportunity to meet with children in clinic regularly, and as a parliamentarian. I am always amazed at how well informed they are about current issues. Young people know about the proposed changes, and the reaction has been clear. They say they do not understand, as they have been told not to do drugs, but now want to know if they can do this drug.

Young people know that marijuana is a drug. They know that it is dangerous for them, and yet we now have a government that is telling young Canadians that using drugs is okay.

After years of respecting the science, and telling kids that drugs are harmful for their growing bodies, the Liberals are simply throwing these evidence-based facts out the window. Kids are confused. They know that marijuana is bad for their health, but they are now wondering if it is okay to do this based on the messaging from the government and the Prime Minister.

These are the kinds of messages Canadian parents do not want portrayed to their kids. Leaving aside the mixed messages the government is sending out to youth, as a physician I want to focus on the science of this issue.

Human bodies develop continually into their 20s. As I mentioned earlier about the science, the brain experiences the same development schedule until the age of 25. We do our best to ensure that youth are making healthy choices for their developing bodies.

Giving kids access to marijuana in their homes and throughout society is putting them in danger.

Let us begin with some disturbing statistics. The Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse reported, in 2013, on the Canadian tobacco, alcohol, and drug use survey that 10.6% of Canadians aged 15 and older reported cannabis use in the last year. It also reported that cannabis use is generally more prevalent among young people, with 22% of youth from 15 to 19, and 26% in young people 20 to 24. Approximately 28% of Canadians aged 15 and older, who used cannabis in the last three months, reported daily use.

In addition, in 2014, a study published by The Lancet found that youth who utilized marijuana on a regular basis have a 60% lower chance of graduating from high school or university.

Fergusson, in a 1996 study published in the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology; Ellickson, in a 1998 study in the Journal of Drug Issues; and Lynskey, writing in the journal Addiction in 2003, all found a strong and direct correlation between the increased use of marijuana in teenagers and an increase in dropout rates in high school.

Talk about limiting the opportunities for young Canadians in the future. Let us give them marijuana, so they can dropout of school.

Gilman, writing in The Journal of Neuroscience is also very clear on the impacts of marijuana on the developing brain. In a study published in 2014, Gilman demonstrated that people between the ages of 18 and 25, that used cannabis on a regular basis, will experience structural changes to the brain.

These are not temporary changes that happen when people are high. These are permanent structural changes to their brains for the future, which correlate with the negative impacts that I have been talking about.

The Canadian Medical Association has done some excellent work compiling and conducting research on marijuana use. It includes its submission to the government's 2016 task force on cannabis legalization and regulation. It talks about its long-standing concerns of the health risks to Canadian youth, given that their brains are undergoing rapid and extensive development. The CMA has also noted that the lifetime risk of dependency on marijuana is estimated at about 9%. That means about one in 10 Canadians, who use marijuana, has a chance of becoming dependent, with all of the serious negative health ramifications and social consequences of this drug use.

The CMA went on to further note that the risk of dependence actually doubles to 17% if this is initiated in adolescence. Again, we see that the earlier children start to use marijuana, the higher the chance of addiction, and the higher the chance of lifelong structural brain changes. Further, the CMA has also warned Canadians of the increased risks of anxiety, depression, and schizophrenia in marijuana users, particularly among youth. Those who are already prone to psychosis, for example, if they have a family member suffering from a psychosis, are especially at risk of developing psychosis with cannabis use.

Andreasson's extensive 15 year follow-up study of over 50,000 men, published again in The Lancet, reported that those who tried cannabis by the age of 18 were two to four times more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia than those who had not. The study further estimated that 13% of schizophrenia cases could have been averted if cannabis use had been prevented. Just imagine what would happen if we did not allow children to have access to marijuana, as this legislation would allow. Do we want to protect Canadian kids?

There is also a public safety concern with this legislation. First, regarding young people, cross-Canada student alcohol and drug studies show 13% to 21% of students who try this are actually driving within an hour. Hall found, in his study in 1994, that short-term memory, attention deficits, motor skills, and reaction times are impaired while intoxicated with cannabis, but the evidence shows, and it is no surprise, that associated with this is a higher risk of motor vehicle accidents.

These are serious situations that place individuals and the public at risk. However, despite this substantive evidence, as I have outlined in multiple journals so far, the Liberals are pushing ahead with this legislation.

Now let us look at some additional evidence from Colorado, the state that was mentioned earlier. This includes a rise in traffic-related deaths, increased hospitalization, and cyclical vomiting syndrome. Most disturbing are the overdoses in children due to marijuana use in edibles, and those that are accidentally ingested. Negligence by caregivers is leading to increased overdosing in kids.

I wonder how many young people might have access to marijuana now that it is being grown in their own homes. Save for these shocking facts in Colorado, all of this research has primarily been done in places where this is actually illegal, not legal. I shudder to imagine how those statistics will escalate with this legislation.

Now the Liberals will say that this is not going to happen, and that this approach is better for children. I completely disagree.

As this legislation states, children would be allowed to possess, and parents to grow marijuana in their homes. Access would be easy, and that access is harmful to young Canadians. Young Canadians and children know they should not do drugs, and there is good reason for that. We do not allow children aged 12 access to alcohol. We spend millions of dollars telling children not to do drugs. Why is our society flip-flopping now? It is because we have a Prime Minister who has to justify his own use. By doing this, he is putting all Canadian children at risk.

I encourage all members of the House, especially those in the Liberal Party opposite, to have a hard look at the science and their consciences, because they are putting the children in their own ridings at risk with this legislation.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise and speak in support of Bill C-45, an act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code, and other acts.

The principal objectives of the bill 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 on those operating outside the legal framework. My constituents of Oakville have expressed that these concerns need to be addressed and Bill C-45 does exactly that.

As a member of the Standing Committee on Health, I would like to report the committee undertook a comprehensive review of this legislation. We took a focused week, meeting for five full days to hear testimony from a wide array of individuals and groups. We heard from over 100 witnesses on this legislation. Witnesses ranged from lawyers, law enforcement, department officials, tenant associations, community groups, activists, medical professionals, researchers, producers, retailers, and provinces. This built on the work of the Task Force on Cannabis Legalization and Regulation, which travelled for six months and received over 20,000 submissions. The committee heard from most witnesses that they supported the direction the government was taking with Bill C-45.

Based on this background I would like to focus on why a new approach to cannabis is needed, why we need to act now, and how well suited we are to moving forward.

The evidence is clear. The current approach is simply not working. All that we have managed to achieve is to criminalize Canadians for possessing small amounts of cannabis, encourage Canadians to engage with criminals, and require Canadians to consume products of unknown origin, potency, and quality. It has also allowed criminals and organized crime to profit.

The committee heard quite clearly that the current model has not protected our youth. Despite the prohibition that has been in place for decades, Canadian youth use cannabis at some of the highest rates in the world.¸

We cannot allow this to continue. A new approach is required as soon as possible to better protect youth and to make sure that adults have access to products that are quality controlled, have a known origin, and no longer run the risk of having a criminal record for possessing small amounts.

During the committee hearings, Mr. Ian Culbert, the executive director of the Canadian Public Health Association, said:

Unfortunately, we don't have the luxury of time, as Canadians are already consuming cannabis at record levels. The individual and societal harms associated with cannabis use are already being felt every day. The proposed legislation and eventual regulation is our best attempt to minimize those harms and protect the well-being of all Canadians.

That is why our government is committed to bringing the proposed legislation into force no later than July 2018.

Upon the coming into force of Bill C-45, Canadians who are 18 years of age or older would be able to possess, grow, and purchase limited amounts of cannabis for personal use. This would mean that the possession of up to 30 grams of cannabis in a public place would no longer be a criminal offence.

The bill would, for the first time, also make it a specific criminal offence to sell cannabis to a minor and create significant penalties for those who engage young Canadians in cannabis-related offences.

Canada is more than ready for a new approach that would better protect the health and safety of Canadians. Our existing model that provides access to cannabis for medical purposes is recognized as one of the best in the world.

Let me tell members more about some of the features of that system that we can build on.

Under the existing regulations that have been in place since 2014, Health Canada is responsible for licensing and overseeing cannabis producers. These producers are required to operate within the regulations to provide quality-controlled cannabis to registered patients. This rigorous licensing process ensures, for example, that entrants to this market have gone through a thorough security check and that producers have appropriate physical security infrastructure around their facilities.

Canada also has a world-class compliance and enforcement regime intended to ensure that licensed producers fully comply with the rules in place. Over the course of last year, a licensed producer in Canada was inspected an average of seven to eight times for a total of approximately 274 inspections.

In May 2017, Health Canada announced that it would require all licensed producers to conduct mandatory testing for the presence of unauthorized pesticides in all cannabis products destined for sale. This adds to the system of controls in place that oversee the quality of federally regulated cannabis products.

The commercial industry now has more than four years of experience and serves over 200,000 active patient registrations. This licensed production under the existing medical regulations provides a solid basis to support recreational cannabis production under this legislation.

Industry representatives have indicated that they are getting ready to support the timely implementation of the new regulations and to ensure that high standards are met in the production of regulated product.

The committee also heard that while the government has been working very closely with provinces, territories, and municipalities to support the implementation of the new framework, more work is needed. The collaboration will be critical to ensure that all levels of government are ready to support the new legislation.

We were pleased to note that progress is being achieved by our provincial and territorial partners in developing their respective approaches. Provinces and territories have a key role to play in the success of the new system. They are responsible for the oversight and regulation of the distribution and retail sale of cannabis.

The timely passing of this federal law is important to provide clarity to our provincial and territorial partners. In circumstances where provinces or territories do not have a functional retail system at the time of coming into force of the bill, adults would be able to purchase cannabis directly from a federally licensed producer by ordering online with secure delivery at home by mail or courier.

A representative for the Cannabis Canada Association, Colette Rivet, pointed out:

Licensed producers are eager to work in collaboration and compliance with the federal and provincial governments to quickly establish effective, low-risk distribution and retail models that are well regulated, highly secure, and tailored to the needs of each province.

Upon the coming into force of the bill, adult Canadians would have access to a range of quality controlled products including dried cannabis, fresh cannabis, and cannabis oil, which could be consumed in a number of different ways including smoking. The committee heard from health groups that limiting legal cannabis to forms primarily suited to smoking had negative health impacts. They identified the need to permit the legal sale of edible cannabis products as part of the federal framework as soon as possible.

The committee also heard expert testimony that experience in other jurisdictions, such as Colorado, underlined the unique health and safety challenges associated with edible products.

It is important that the government takes the time to enact appropriate regulatory controls to address the health and safety risks posed by edible products. In this regard, I was pleased to introduce an amendment to Bill C-45, which clarifies the timelines for the government to develop regulations and legalize the sale of edible cannabis products and cannabis concentrates.

The amendment stipulates that the sale of edibles and concentrates would be permitted no later than 12 months following the coming into force of Bill C-45. Under this proposed timeline, the government would have the time to safely develop regulations and mechanisms to put these edible cannabis products on the market correctly.

I think it is important that we let Canadians and the industry know that we are listening and that these products will be coming. However, we must heed the advice from other jurisdictions, get this right the first time, and not put the health and safety of Canadians at risk.

As I mentioned earlier, one of the purposes of Bill C-45 is to prevent youth from accessing and consuming cannabis. Yesterday, the government announced a $36.4-million investment for cannabis education and awareness campaign aimed, in particular, at Canadian youth, to ensure that they understand the health and safety risks of using cannabis. Young Canadians need to know the facts.

The bill contains a range of provisions that would restrict promotion or packaging that could make cannabis appealing to youth. For example, the bill would ban the advertising and promotion of cannabis, except in limited and restricted circumstances, as well as set out requirements for packaging and labelling of products.

As I have outlined, protecting the health and safety of Canadians, and most importantly the health of our youth, is at the centre of the government's approach to legalizing, regulating, and restricting access to cannabis.

The Government of Canada is committed to a comprehensive, collaborative, compassionate, and evidence-based approach to drug policy, which uses a public health approach when considering and addressing drug issues. I believe that is consistent with the wishes of the people in my riding of Oakville. I am confident that this public health approach, which focuses on reducing harms and risks of cannabis, rather than on criminalizing Canadians for possession, is the best path forward.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise to speak in support of Bill C-45, the cannabis act, and the amendments that I and my fellow colleagues on the health committee introduced.

Back in August, I held a town hall in my riding regarding the legalization and regulation of cannabis. Not only am I in support of this legislation, but so are many of my constituents. Teachers, parents, and seniors, groups the loyal opposition regularly lists as being concerned about the legalization of cannabis, have all approached me either at my town hall or by contacting my office about their concerns.

They have concerns that a youth who makes a mistake by possessing a small amount of cannabis may be thrown in prison; concerns that this youth will have to carry a criminal record for the remainder of his or her life and that it will hinder the ability to find employment and lead a regular life; concerns that fellow citizens are unknowingly ingesting products that could be laced with dangerous substances; and concerns that the prohibition of cannabis is not helping to fight drugs but instead allows criminal elements to terrorize communities and profit, just like they did during the American prohibition of alcohol. These are the concerns of my constituents.

As a member of the health committee, I spent several weeks intensely reviewing this legislation. This included a week of back-to-back meetings where we heard testimony from over 100 witnesses. Most of these witnesses were in favour of legalizing and regulating cannabis.

This legislation strikes a balance between addressing the need to end prohibition while addressing the challenges other jurisdictions faced when regulating cannabis.

Bill C-45 would allow an adult to possess up to 30 grams in public, a measure that would ensure that no one would be criminalized for possessing a reasonable amount of cannabis, while ensuring that those who continue to illicitly sell cannabis on the street would be charged.

The legislation would allow home cultivation, with up to four plants per residence, an amount that is within reason for an individual while making it unfeasible for criminal elements to profit. This bill would also protect consumers by implementing industry-wide rules and standards for basic things such as sanitary production requirements, restrictions on the use of unauthorized pesticides, product testing, and restrictions on the use of ingredients and additives. We would create a framework so that Canadians could trust that the products they purchased would be safe and free of dangerous chemicals or substances, without having to take a criminal's word at face value.

As a physician who has spent over 20 years in the emergency room, I have treated patients who unknowingly ingested what they thought was just cannabis. This is indeed a concern worth resolving, and I applaud the government's commitment to the health and safety of Canadians.

This legislation would also protect youth by creating a framework for a minimum age of purchase of 18, through licensed retailers; requiring childproof packaging and warning labels; and providing for public education and awareness campaigns about the dangers associated with cannabis.

I will add that yesterday the government announced a new investment of $36.4 million over the next five years for an education and awareness campaign. This investment is in addition to the funding announced in budget 2017, bringing the total investment in education and awareness to $46 million.

The act would also prohibit products or packaging that were appealing to youth; selling cannabis through a self-service display or vending machine; and promoting cannabis, except in the narrowest of circumstances where the promotion could not be seen by a young person.

This act would also create two new criminal convictions to protect youth by making it illegal to give or sell cannabis to a youth and to use a youth to commit a cannabis-related offence. This bill also has a provision that would protect youth who made a mistake when in possession of five grams of cannabis or less to ensure that they would not carry a criminal record for the rest of their lives.

I want take a moment to address the notion raised by the opposition that we are normalizing cannabis use among youth. The truth is that cannabis use in Canada has already been normalized. With the second highest rate of youth usage in the world, it is obvious that the current system does not work. We need to stop focusing on a prohibitionist model for cannabis, hoping to get a different result in the future. We need to use an evidence-based approach that restricts access to youth while removing the financial incentives that embolden criminal elements.

I would like to touch on another item the opposition regularly states, which is that vehicle collisions and fatalities in jurisdictions that have legalized recreational cannabis have increased. This statement is incorrect. While statistics before and after legalization indicate an increase in impaired driving, public safety officials in the states of Washington and Colorado are in agreement that this apparent increase was the result of improved detection methods.

In a letter from the Governor and the Attorney General of the State of Washington addressed to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, they wrote:

...several of the statistics quoted in your letter on the increasing incidence of marijuana DUIs are distorted by the fact that the testing regime has changed with state legalization. Any amount of drugged driving and collisions is too high. Prior to marijuana legalization, blood testing for THC at suspected DUI traffic stops was substantially less common. Consequently, comparable statistics do not exist.

Additionally, in a letter from the Governor and Attorney General of Colorado, again to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, they stated that they have enacted new laws, giving state and local law enforcement additional tools to prosecute individuals driving under the influence of marijuana, and have significantly increased the number of law enforcement officers who are trained to detect drug-impaired driving, allowing the state to identify and detain more individuals who are driving impaired than previously. More importantly, they wrote that the number of impaired drivers went down. The letter states:

In the first six months of 2017, the number of drivers the Colorado State Patrol considered impaired by marijuana dropped 21 percent compared to the first six month of 2016.

If the House wishes, I can table these two letters from Washington and Colorado for review.

It is evident that any amount of impaired driving or collisions is too high, and that is why I am pleased that the government is progressing with Bill C-46 in an effort to address and curtail impaired driving. It has also committed up to $161 million to train front-line officers in how to recognize the signs and symptoms of drug-impaired driving, to provide access to drug-screening devices, and to raise public awareness about the dangers of drug-impaired driving.

In May of this year, I had the honour of rising and speaking in favour of this legislation at second reading. Since then, the legislation has been amended by my fellow colleagues and I on the health committee. Many were technical elements to strengthen the bill, but there were several amendments of consequence as a result of our witness testimony during our intensive review.

One of the more consequential amendments made was the removal of height restrictions on cannabis plants for home cultivation so that no one who let a plant accidentally overgrow would be deemed a criminal. Additionally, the legislation was amended to ensure that it was in line with the Good Samaritan Drug Overdose Act, which was introduced by my fellow health committee colleague, the member from Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, and which I was proud to second, to ensure that an individual who committed a cannabis-related offence would not be charged if he or she called the police or medical services to report an overdose.

I should add that I was disheartened when the Conservative members on the committee unanimously voted against this amendment that would save lives.

Additionally, our committee amended the legislation to ensure that edibles and concentrates would be entered under schedule 4 of the legislation as a class of cannabis that an authorized person could sell. It would be entered by either an order in council or a clause that would allow it to come into force on the first anniversary of the day on which clause 33 came into force. Essentially, this would ensure that edibles and concentrates would be legalized and properly regulated within a one-year time frame of when this legislation was enacted.

Given the transformative nature of this legislation, our committee introduced an amendment to require the minister to conduct a review of the act after three years and to table a report before Parliament. This would enable us, as parliamentarians, to determine if changes to the legislation were necessary to ensure the protection of public health and safety.

Our committee also amended clause 139 to provide the Governor in Council with the authority to make regulations that would restrict the characteristics of certain items, set limits on the amount or concentration of chemical compounds, and ensure that regulated products under the legislation would be consistent with the provisions found in Bill S-5.

The opposition has been constantly counting down to remind us how many days until legalization and have today reminded us that it is 243 days. While I am glad that my colleagues across the aisle can count backwards on a calendar, I think we should look at it in a different way.

In 243 days, we can end a system that victimizes ordinary Canadians and emboldens criminal elements in our society. In 243 days, we can end a system that ruins lives through lost opportunities and social stigma. In 243 days, we can end a system that should never have been put in place.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Vancouver Kingsway for his speech and for his work on the health committee.

Does the member think that Bill C-45 meets the stated objectives, which were restricting children from access to cannabis, getting rid of organized crime, reducing the burden on the criminal justice system, and enhancing public awareness of the health risks?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to start with the general context within which this bill comes before this House. That is that we in Canada, like other states, have spent the better part of the last 150 years pursuing a criminalized and prohibitionist model toward the regulation of cannabis. Colloquially, it is known as the war on drugs, where successive governments have regarded cannabis as a substance that is dangerous and that citizens do not have a right to access, possess, or use in any way. The official policy of successive Liberal and Conservative governments for the last 150 years has been to make it a crime to possess or use cannabis.

We all know, through long experience and reams of data, that this approach to regulating cannabis is a completely failed policy and it failed for a variety of reasons. Some people believe that what folks choose to ingest is fundamentally an individual decision, that as long as it does not affect others, the state really does not have a right to tell citizens what they should or should not put in their body. Others believe that if it is a crime it is a truly victimless crime. If someone chooses to smoke a joint on a Friday night, people have great difficulty regarding that in any way, shape, or form as a crime.

Canadians can legally ingest alcohol or tobacco, both substances that overwhelmingly and demonstrably have more serious adverse health effects when compared to cannabis. Most people have long believed it is an unacceptable contradiction to allow the state to criminalize cannabis while leaving these other substances that are carcinogens and substances that when used exactly as directed can cause death. I want to pause for a moment and speak about one of the most stark moments of testimony heard when we were studying this bill in committee. A person said that people can walk into a liquor store and walk out with a 26-ounce bottle of liquor and there is enough liquor in that bottle to kill them, to kill a child. I do not think we have to remind any members in this House of the effects of tobacco, which is a carcinogen that kills Canadians unacceptably every year.

The other thing that lies behind this context is that, I would argue, every harm associated with illegal drug use stems from the criminalization of the drug use, not the drug itself. That is because people who choose to smoke a joint on a Friday night or have a drink of scotch on a Saturday or share a bottle of wine do not feel that it is inherently a criminal act. There are problems associated with those substances because they are serious substances that have mind-altering properties. Obviously, regulation of these substances is in order. When people have a problem with cannabis and other substances like that, we in the New Democrats do not see that as a criminal justice issue; we see it as a social justice issue. Therefore, when we see a person with a drug problem, we see a health issue or an addictions issue or a poverty issue; we do not see a criminal issue. If experience has taught us anything after spending billions of dollars in Canada and the United States and other jurisdictions to try to stamp out drug use, we know that it does not work. In fact, the statistics before our committee were very clear that Canadian youth are among the first- or second-highest users of cannabis in the world. That is in a context where it is totally criminal and we have life sentences for trafficking in the Criminal Code, so in that context it has not done a darn thing.

Most important, we live in a democracy. The vast majority of Canadians, across party lines I would argue, overwhelmingly see the criminalization of cannabis as an unjustified approach. They want it changed. Last election, some 65% voted for parties that explicitly campaigned on decriminalizing or legalizing cannabis. Even some Conservatives believe, on individual liberty grounds and other such philosophies, that cannabis ought to be legalized. After the 2015 election, Canadians were entitled to assume that their expectation that marijuana would be legalized would finally be enacted. They are disappointed because this act would not legalize cannabis, and I will speak to that in a moment.

When we examine Bill C-45, I would describe it truly as a horse of two colours. On the one hand, it is a definite improvement over the status quo. Finally, Canadians would no longer be criminals simply for possessing and growing small amounts of cannabis. Second, it would create a production and retail market for legal cannabis, albeit highly regulated and controlled by the state.

On the other hand, it is a great disappointment for all those who believed that the Liberal government was going to legalize cannabis, because this bill would not. It would create more cannabis offences than we have at present. It would maintain the criminalized prohibitionist model of cannabis policy, would fail to capture the huge economic potential of cannabis as a sustainable, high-value product worth billions of dollars to our economy, and would be informed by and perpetuate many of the worst, unfounded myths of cannabis. This is truly unfortunate, because the Liberal government had an opportunity and the mandate from the Canadian people to bring in comprehensive legislation based on evidence and science to fix this long-standing social and legal injustice, but it failed to do so.

What would Bill C-45 do? It would allow the personal public possession of cannabis up to 30 grams. It would allow every household to grow up to four cannabis plants, originally limiting it to 100 centimetres in height. It would create a process for those who want to grow cannabis for commercial recreational production to obtain licensing from the federal government, would set the legal age for possessing cannabis at a minimum age of 18 years, and would delegate to the provinces the ability to design the retail distribution model they want to apply in their particular jurisdictions. This bill fails to eliminate criminal penalties for a host of offences, with many subjecting Canadians up to a maximum 14 years of imprisonment.

It would continue to make edibles and concentrates illegal in stark contradiction to the recommendations of the McLellan report and the purpose of the bill, which is explicitly to bring the production of cannabis products outside of the black market and into the licit world. It would prohibit the importing and exporting of recreational cannabis products and perpetuate the discriminatory application of criminalized cannabis laws to the most marginalized Canadians, including poor, racialized, indigenous, and young people. Finally, it fails to deal with pardons for the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who bear convictions for simple possession offences, which, as the Liberal government acknowledges, has devastating consequences for Canadians employment-wise, travel-wise, socially, and economically.

The NDP believes strongly in the legalization of cannabis. In fact, no party in this House has the record of consistency on this issue than the NDP has, working since the 1970s to decriminalize cannabis use in Canada. New Democrats set out to work proactively and positively to examine this bill and improve it. We called the most diverse and informed witnesses before the health committee to obtain the best evidence we could to inform committee members, and we moved 38 amendments at committee to improve this bill. Unfortunately, the Liberals joined with the Conservatives to defeat every single NDP amendment. In fact, it was so bad that the NDP amendment to remove the ridiculous 100-centimetre limit on plant height was voted down by the Liberals, only to have them introduce the identical amendment so they could take credit for passing it. That is okay, progress is progress.

Liberals rejected the NDP amendments to add pardons to this bill. They were ruled outside the scope of the bill. Can anyone imagine ground-breaking cannabis legislation to change 100 years of a criminal approach to cannabis and the Liberals forgot to put in the bill any provision that would allow Canadians with simple possession records, to have at least a streamlined approach to obtain pardons after this bill becomes law? A Canadian could be convicted on June 30, 2018, for simple possession of cannabis for doing exactly the same thing that will be legal on July 1, 2018, and the current government is content with that.

New Democrats want to work proactively with the government and support this bill because it absolutely is an improvement over the status quo, but we will continue to work for legislation that actually reflects the science, the evidence, and the huge economic potential of this.

I will conclude by saying that the restriction on importing and exporting cannabis is absolutely going to hamstring Canadian business. We could be a global leader with first market access with high-quality cannabis products, as the rest of the world comes to the same conclusion that Canada has, which is that criminalizing cannabis is a mistake and poor public policy, and they will be moving to legalize cannabis in their jurisdictions as well. The NDP will continue to work towards those ends.

[Bill Blair, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Vancouver Kingsway for his very strong contribution to the health committee and the discussions around this issue and this debate.

I pointed out in my earlier remarks that cannabis was a controlled substance. With the passage of Bill C-45, it will remain a controlled substance. We propose to control it through strict regulation rather than criminal law. However, until we have lifted the criminal prohibition and put in place a well-structured framework of strong regulation for the production, distribution, and the consumption of cannabis, until we replace that current prohibition, the law remains in effect so we maintain control.

The member has suggested that we should also deal with issues of record suspension and pardons within this bill. With great respect to the member opposite, there is other legislation. I have heard him speak against omnibus bills, and I am confident he would want us to deal with the cannabis control regulations in this bill separately. If he wanted us to turn to a different discussion on legislation that would control licence suspension and pardons, that would be a discussion for a future date.

[Bill Blair, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada and to the Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak to the motions before us. I will focus my remarks primarily on the motion from the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands, that Bill C-45 be amended by deleting clause 9 in its entity.

I would like to first begin by acknowledging and thanking the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands for her thoughtful contribution to this ongoing debate and to this important issue. She has made a very significant contribution, and I very much value her opinion and her advice.

I would also like to commend the work of all members on the Standing Committee on Health for their study of Bill C-45, an act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other acts.

The health committee returned to Ottawa in advance of the commencement of our fall session of Parliament, worked extensively throughout the month of September, and heard from many learned witnesses who provided their perspective on a wide range of issues from law enforcement to public health.

I would remind all hon. members that Bill C-45 would provide a legislative framework for legal and regulated access to cannabis when it would be provided by authorized sources. Beyond that, cannabis would be subject to certain prohibitions.

With that in mind, I would like to point out a number of important features of the bill that relate to the criminal law.

The architecture of the legislation is such that cannabis remains a controlled substance. It cannot be accessed legally by youth and it can only be accessed legally by adults by way of an authorized source.

Division 1 of part 1 of Bill C-45 shows that many of the offences that currently apply to cannabis under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act will continue to exist under the proposed cannabis act. This is very much in keeping with the final report of the task force on cannabis legalization and regulation, which recommended to the government that criminal offences should be maintained for illicit production, trafficking, possession for the purposes of trafficking, and possession for the purposes of importing and exporting cannabis.

Clause 9, the proposed distribution clause, is also consistent with the task force's recommendations that our government seek to limit criminal prosecution for less serious offences and create exclusions for social sharing. The proposed clause allows adults to share cannabis privately and to share up to 30 grams of cannabis in a public place. It exempts young persons from criminal liability for sharing very small amounts, up to 5 grams of cannabis.

It is important to recognize that every province and territory will also enact provincial legislation, which will enable those jurisdictions to enforce an absolute prohibition for the possession, purchase, and consumption of cannabis by a person under the age of majority in those jurisdictions. However, the enforcement of that will result in a provincial offences ticket and not a criminal record for that child, thereby eliminating one of the significant harms the task force and Canadians have recognized can be occasioned upon our young people as a result of enforcement of the current law.

I will discuss momentarily how the penalties proposed in Bill C-45 are already less stringent than the current penalties for cannabis offences under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. Before I do that, I would like to review how clause 9 is designed to operate.

Clause 9 of Bill C-45 provides for the distribution offence. The term "distribute", as defined in clause 2 of the bill, includes administering, giving, transferring, transporting, sending, delivering, providing or otherwise making available in any manner, whether directly or indirectly, and offering to distribute.

Subclause 9(1) sets out prohibitions respecting the distribution of cannabis. Unless authorized under the act, for instance under a license or permit, the legislation would prohibit an adult 18 years of age or older from distributing more than 30 grams of any dried cannabis or its equivalent to another adult, any amount of cannabis to an individual who is under 18 years of age, any cannabis to an organization or any cannabis that he or she knows to be illicit cannabis.

The proposed clause 9 will also prohibit a young person from distributing more than five grams of any dried cannabis or its equivalent to another person or from distributing cannabis to an organization.

Subclause 9(1) includes prohibitions related to the distribution of plants as well as distribution by organizations.

Subclause 9(2) would prohibit the possession of cannabis for the purpose of distributing it contrary to any of the prohibitions described above, and again, unless such possession would be authorized under the act.

The penalties for adults who commit an offence under clause 9 would range from a ticket up to a maximum of 14 years imprisonment, depending entirely on the circumstances. Young persons who offend would be subject to a youth sentence under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

The distribution provisions, along with other offence provisions in the proposed cannabis act, represent a marked departure for how cannabis is currently dealt with under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

Whereas most cannabis related offences under the CDSA are straight indictable offences, including the offence of trafficking, which includes most of the activities contained in the new definition of “distribute” under the cannabis act, and are punishable by up to life imprisonment, the criminal offences proposed in Bill C-45 are all what are commonly referred to as “hybrid offences”. This means they can be prosecuted by way of an indictment or as a summary conviction offence. In most cases under the proposed legislation, the maximum penalties, when prosecuted by indictment, will be up to 14 years imprisonment and up to six months imprisonment for prosecution on summary conviction.

It is very helpful for the members to understand that the maximum penalty, up to 14 years, is not for those circumstances that have previously been described as some young person passing a joint to another person who they mistakenly believe to be of age but might be under the age of 18. It is for those offenders and those offences that are deemed to be the worst case. The worst offence would be distribution to a very young child and the worst offender would be a repeat offender, someone who has done it many times.

The maximum penalty in our criminal justice system is deemed to be appropriate for those individuals who are the worst offenders and for those offences which are deemed to be the worst. In an overwhelming majority of circumstances, and certainly in the one described earlier by the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands, those would be dealt with in a more appropriate and proportional way by the police, the prosecutors, and the criminal justice system.

I would also point out that the cannabis act proposes, as an alternative to the summary conviction and indictment procedures contained in the Criminal Code, a ticketing scheme for minor violations of certain criminal offences, including some of the distribution offences. This is entirely consistent with what law enforcement asked us in 2013, by its resolution at the CACP convention seeking such a ticketing scheme.

During clause-by-clause consideration of Bill C-45, clause 9 was the subject of seven motions to amend, none of which were carried. Several of these clause 9 motions sought to lower the penalties proposed for the distribution offences. One of these motions sought to remove the defence of mistake of fact where the mistake was as to age. These defences are necessary. They ensure that an accused who wants to raise the defence of mistake of fact as to age must show that he or she took reasonable steps to ascertain the age of the young person. Removing these defences would be contrary to the bill's purpose of protecting the health of young persons by restricting their access to cannabis.

The present motion from the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands proposes simply to remove all prohibitions and accompanying penalties. If passed, it will serve to defeat many of the key objectives of Bill C-45, which is to deter illicit activity in relation to cannabis through appropriate sanctions and enforcement measures, and to protect the health of young persons by restricting their access to cannabis.

By removing the offence of distribution, this amendment would allow for the unlimited distribution of cannabis between adults. Perhaps more concerning, it would allow adults to distribute cannabis to young persons under the age of 18.

I urge all hon. members to oppose the amendment. It is contrary to the purposes of Bill C-45. It would create a means whereby children and young persons could legally access cannabis from adults. It would result in what could only be described as a free-for-all in relation to cannabis in Canada. That is not the intent of Bill C-45 and it does not accord with our government's intentions.

[Bill Blair, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada and to the Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Sarnia—Lambton for her actions and activities on the committee, to which she is a well-contributing member.

Under Bill C-45, the act would create an offence in criminal law for the cultivation of more than four plants. It would also create an offence for the distribution of any portion of that. It is only for personal cultivation, and any attempt to commercialize it, sell it, or distribute any of it to other persons would result in a criminal charge. Those controls are in place.

The law would also allow for provinces, territories, and municipalities to implement such regulations as they deem appropriate for their jurisdictions and circumstances which may be necessary to exercise control on the circumstances under which those plants may be grown, to place additional limits on the number of plants, to put in regulations and requirements with respect to safety, security, sanitation, air quality, and its access to children.

There is also provision within provincial regulations for restrictions on where that can take place, whether it can take place, for example, in multi-use dwellings, such as apartment buildings or condo buildings. Given that, the criminal law addresses an offence for growing more plants, and contains provisions to prevent people from selling what is being produced, along with the appropriate level of legal jurisdiction for other restrictions and controls at the provincial, territorial, or municipal levels.

Does the member feel that level of control could be appropriately exercised to address the concerns she raised in her speech?

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

Mr. Speaker, I am here today in the House to address Bill C-45, the cannabis act, and the amendment I brought forward, which has been grouped together with the amendments from the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands.

I would have preferred to delete the whole bill, because it is a seriously flawed piece of legislation. However, in addition to deleting the section that I will talk about today, which is the section on home grow, I would point out that the government is rushing ahead with this legislation.

There are 243 days left before the Liberals are going to arbitrarily legalize marijuana, even though the provinces, municipalities, and police have said they will not be ready. There are numerous provinces and territories that have not even come out with a plan on how they will implement it. This legislation has not gone through the House or Senate. There has been no public awareness and education campaign launched. Therefore, I would again encourage the government not to rush forward with an arbitrary date as there are serious implications to this bill.

One of the many flaws in the bill is with respect to the subject of home grow. I will read from the bill what its intent was, and then show how this does not align. The bill states its goal are to:

protect the health of young persons by restricting their access to cannabis;

provide for a...[reduction in] illicit activities in relation to cannabis;

deter illicit activities...

reduce the burden on the criminal justice system in relation to cannabis;

provide access to a quality-controlled supply of cannabis; and

enhance public awareness of the health risks associated with cannabis.

In this legislation, the government is allowing the growth of four plants. We heard testimony at the health committee stating that those four plants, at a height of 100 centimetres, could produce up to 600 grams of marijuana in a house with no provision for storage and lockup. That was when there was a height restriction of 100 centimetres on those four plants, which has since been removed. I am not sure how the 600 grams of marijuana even lines up with the possession maximum of 30 grams. However, failing that, this will absolutely not keep marijuana out of the hands of our children.

In addition, we heard testimony from Colorado and Washington states, which had legalized marijuana. Colorado allowed home grow and the State of Washington did not, except in the case of medical marijuana users who were too fragile to get to a dispensary. In Colorado, where home grow was allowed, organized crime was involved in home grow, and it was a huge factor.

Obviously, if the intent of the bill is to keep it out of the hands of children, and to deter organized crime, home grow is not the way to go about it. The State of Washington saw that, by not allowing home grow, children and young people were having difficulty getting their hands on marijuana, and the organized crime portion of the marijuana trade had been reduced to less than 20% in less than three years. Therefore, with respect to keeping it out of the hands of children and deterring organized crime, we can see that removing home grow is absolutely essential.

Some of the testimony we heard was from the folks who grow medical marijuana. This is a very regulated process that traces all of the production, distribution, and who it goes to. There is also rigorous quality control testing to ensure there is no mould, to look at the potency, and numerous other factors with respect to cannabis. We can see that one of the goals in this bill is to provide access to a quality controlled supply of cannabis, and medical marijuana, as it is regulated today, meets that.

However, let us talk about that criteria with respect to home grow. There is absolutely no quality control testing in home grow. In fact, there are serious issues related to mould and ventilation. We heard testimony as well that home grow-type operations are 24 times more likely to have a fire. Therefore, there are hazards associated with these operations.

I had people from the Real Estate Association come and visit me in my office, to talk to me about what is required for them today when they sell a house that has had a marijuana grow op inside of it. They have to do a certification to make sure there is not any mould, and to address any of the issues that may have arisen. Their question was around what would be required when the bill passes. They wanted to know if they had to do that on every house where somebody had grown marijuana.

Those answers do not exist, because this flawed legislation is not well thought out, and nobody has the implementation plan that will occur at the provincial and municipal detailed levels. Of course, with 243 days left to go, we would think those answers and that information would be well in hand, but they are not. These issues continue not to be addressed by the government by having home grow in the bill.

With respect to the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands, her amendment is talking about all of the extra criminal charges that exist in this bill. For example, if people have four plants, they are well within the law; if they have five, they then are criminals. If people possess 30 grams, they are okay; if they have 31 grams, they are criminals.

The member talked about some of the sentences of up to 14 years, which are not in alignment with other judgments on the possession of alcohol and drugs, which are more like two to three years. There are a huge number of issues with respect to that criminality, but all of those different charges will continue to plug up the courts. One of the things this bill was supposed to do was to off-load the courts, because there are murderers, rapists, and all kinds of court cases being dismissed because the Minister of Justice has not appointed enough judges. The courts are clogged up with these minor possession-type charges.

Again, this legislation is not meeting its goal in any way, but especially within the home grow area. I am really disturbed the government thought it was going to improve the legislation by removing the height requirement on home grow plants. Originally, it was a maximum of 100 centimetres, and if a plant got to 150 centimetres, then of course, that meant another criminal charge. The government took that away.

It is really disturbing, because right now there are videos out on YouTube that will show people how they can grow their marijuana plants with chicken wire, so that it can be stretched out and moved around. We saw pictures of trees from the folks who came and testified at committee. If four plants of 100 centimetre-size could bring 600 grams of marijuana, then how much more could we get if we grew four trees of marijuana. There is no specification now in the bill to restrict that amount.

The member for Saanich—Gulf Islands is quite correct when she said there were issues with break-ins. There is a lot of evidence of that from Colorado, where organized crime would break into and raid various grow ops. The police have testified they are unable to police this home grow section. They cannot see into people's houses. They believe they will receive a lot of nuisance calls from Joe, the neighbour, saying his neighbour has five plants not four plants, or there is a smell, or there is a mould problem.

All of these kinds of things will put a lot of burden on the police force. They did not feel this should be part of the bill. The testimony they provided was that it was not enforceable, and they did not have the resources.

For the numerous reasons I have stated, this home grow section of the bill that I would like to see deleted does not protect children. It does not keep marijuana out of the hands of children. I would argue it makes it easier for children to access. It certainly does not keep organized crime out, as we saw in Colorado. It certainly does not provide access to a quality controlled supply of cannabis, which we see with the medical marijuana business, but not in home grow. There was no public awareness done.

The time is ticking away. There are 243 days remaining before the arbitrary legalization of this flawed bill by the government.

Speaker's Ruling

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

There are 10 motions in amendment standing on the Notice Paper for the report stage of Bill C-45.

Motions Nos. 1 and 4 to 10 will not be selected by the Chair because they could have been presented in committee.

All remaining motions have been examined, and the Chair is satisfied that they meet the guidelines expressed in the note to Standing Order 76.1(5) regarding the selection of motions in amendment at the report stage. Motions Nos. 2 and 3 will be grouped for debate and voted upon according to the voting pattern available at the table.

I will now put Motions Nos. 2 and 3 to the House.

The House proceeded to the consideration of Bill C-45, An Act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other Acts, as reported (with amendment) from the committee.

Criminal Code

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for listening carefully to my speech.

I was not digressing or off-topic. I was talking about Bill C-45 because it directly relates to this bill. At one point, the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness said that we should have voted in favour of the bill and that we needed it because it was the carbon copy of Bill C-45. Once again, Bill C-45 is flawed and yet we want to hastily pass Bill C-46, which is deeply flawed. It is not that we do not want to do things right, as my colleague for Mégantic—L'Érable said. We want to help and we want it to work, but we need to do the job properly.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Madam Speaker, I listened very carefully to my colleague's speech, and I acknowledge his wealth of experience. He has done extraordinary work on this file since he was appointed as shadow minister for public safety and emergency preparedness.

The government members should listen to what my colleague has to say about the government's improvisation, on the time needed, and on the tools and resources that police officers are lacking to adequately enforce this bill.

We support any measure that will help decrease drug- and alcohol-impaired driving. Bill C-45 will not solve the problem. It will compound it by leaving the police with inadequate resources.

Does my colleague agree?

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Yes, Madam Speaker, it is a fantasy land. That is an appropriate expression.

Seriously, maybe the Prime Minister thinks that this will be someone else's problem, but he owes it to Canadians to govern with diligence and discipline. So far, we are not convinced that the Prime Minister understands the importance of his role. We know that he likes to take photos and deliver platitudes to the United Nations, but for the rest we are in the dark.

Bill C-46 introduces an imbalance between civil rights and public safety. As Canadians, we have rights, but those rights come with responsibilities. As I have said, having a driver's licence is a privilege, not a right. That is clear.

The Liberals are in a hurry to get Bill C-45 and Bill C-46 passed because they need money. It becomes crystal clear when we consider the fact that our police forces have repeatedly said that they do not have enough time and resources to enforce the law. They need to hire experts, acquire new technologies, and train their officers. It is impossible to bring this legislation into force properly before July 2018. The police knows it, we know it, and even the Liberals know it.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-46, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (offences relating to conveyances) and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.

Where do I begin? How can I explain to the House just how bad this bill really is? When I read it, it raised a lot of questions and provided very few answers. You would think that it was written by the Minister of Finance or someone at Morneau Shepell. There are so many questions and very few answers.

The Liberals are in the habit of making promises that are long on enthusiasm, but short on details. This bill is no exception. It is sorely lacking in detail and logic. The question that comes to my mind is the following: did the minister really take the time to read this bill before introducing it? No one in the House is questioning the ability of the minister or her officials, but something is not right here.

If the minister had introduced this as a draft and told us that the bill was still in development and that she wanted our ideas for creating a balanced and credible bill, I would have said that is a good idea and we could work together. However, that is not what happened.

This Liberal government is not at all interested in hearing the opposition's amendments or ideas. Madam Speaker, you can see how these Liberal ministers rarely answer the most basic questions. Their speeches are nothing but platitudes and empty promises.

They talk about helping the middle class, and meanwhile they are increasing taxes on the middle class and taking credits away from the most vulnerable. They give millions of dollars to a terrorist, but they cannot find a couple thousand dollars to clear the snow from the National Holocaust Memorial in the winter. They are pushing drug legislation, knowing that the provinces will have to foot the bill.

The Liberals are no strangers to offloading the costs onto the provinces. Not too long ago, they reduced federal health care funding for the provinces. They eliminated this funding to balance the federal budget. At the time, the federal government provided about 50% funding to the provinces, but the Liberals reduced that to 14%. Only after a public outcry and the resulting Romanow report were they forced to reverse their decision. At the time, they bragged that their Minister of Finance was the best financial manager in the G7. However, it does not take much management know-how to send the bill to the provinces. The same thing is happening with Bill C-45 on the legalization of marijuana.

The bill we are debating today is missing a number of details, and the government needs to more seriously reconsider this bill. Two years ago, we said that the Prime Minister was simply not ready to govern this country. Two years later, we have ample proof that he is still not ready. Sure, he has some nice, hip coloured socks and is known around the world as the selfie wonder, but those two things are not enough to govern our country.

The Prime Minister's entourage also seems to suffer from memory loss. For example, his Minister of Finance forgot that he was the owner of a villa in France worth millions of dollars. The member for Peterborough—Kawartha forgot where she was born. Then there is the former Minister of Defence, who forgot what role he actually played in Kandahar. These examples are only the tip of the iceberg. Two years ago, the Prime Minister announced that his government would run a deficit of just $10 billion. Now look where we are. The Prime Minister forgot his promise too, because his government is spending money like there is no tomorrow while our country's debt continues to mount.

The bill before us today is another example of the Liberals' thoughtlessness and lack of preparation. First of all, the bill they propose is far from complete. Again, the bill raises questions the government makes no attempt to answer. When I read it, I wondered how the minister could possibly have thought it was a good idea to proceed with the bill in its current form.

We heard testimony from over 70 witnesses, and I can assure the House that their comments are in no way reflected in this bill. For example, its proposed minimum fines for impaired driving causing death or bodily harm are utterly pathetic. This bill also fails to strike the right balance between civil rights and public safety.

The rights we enjoy as Canadian citizens come with a duty to act responsibly. A driver's licence is a privilege, not a right. We need to send a clear message that taking a life by driving while impaired is an extremely serious crime.

For many years now, all levels of government and groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving have been working hard to educate the public on the consequences of impaired driving.

However, today, we have a government that wants to hastily pass a bill without seriously considering the safety of Canadians. That makes no sense.

Obviously, the Liberals have always been more concerned about the rights of criminals than about those of law-abiding citizens. Just recently, this Liberal government gave a terrorist $10 million. Did the courts order the government to make that payment? They did not, but the government paid it without any hesitation. Did the terrorist expect to receive any money? I doubt it, but what I can say for sure is that the message the Prime Minister's government is sending is that crime pays. That is what people will remember, and that is shameful. Did the Prime Minister think carefully before making that decision?

This bill seems reasonable at first glance, but it does not provide any clear information about how the police will enforce it. The bill does not provide any explanation as to how police will be able to effectively determine whether or not a driver is on drugs. Obviously, this bill is a half-baked measure.

For alcohol, we have the technology to determine blood alcohol content and whether a driver's BAC is over the limit. Police officers can administer that roadside test on the spot. Detecting drug impairment is not so easy. Marijuana can be detected in a person's blood, but the technology cannot tell us when the drug was consumed.

It is even harder to determine when the drug was consumed in the case of chronic users. If someone smokes a joint every hour or two, there is no way to tell exactly when he or she consumed it. It is impossible. These two examples make it clear that the proposal before us today makes absolutely no sense.

When the committee discussed Bill C-45 on marijuana legalization, the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness told us that marijuana sales grossed over $7 billion a year for organized crime and that Bill C-46 would cut into that market and legally redirect a big share of the revenue into government coffers.

That would explain why the government wants to rush through Bill C-45 and Bill C-46. It does not really care about the details or what this will cost the provinces. What matters most to this government is finding a new source of revenue, that's it, that's all.

Let us be honest. The government cannot control its spending, and it is gradually starting to run this country in the same way certain third-world countries are run. What will happen to our economy if it continues to govern our country like this?

A few days ago, the Minister of Finance presented the update of economic and fiscal projections. Once again, there is no plan to return to a balanced budget. We are not running a third-world country here. We are parliamentarians in a G7 country, one of the largest countries in the world. If the Liberal government is presenting deficit budgets when we have a strong economy, what would its budgets look like if a recession were to hit?

The economy is cyclical; what goes up must come down. What do the government and the Prime Minister plan to do when the economy slows down? Does he ever think about that? Maybe he thinks that an economic downturn will not happen as long as he is in power, either by magic or through the power of his socks and his selfies. No problem.

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

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles.

Certainly, I am pleased to rise in the House to speak to Bill C-46, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (offences relating to conveyances) and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, also known as the impaired driving legislation. As we know, this bill is the accompanying legislation to Bill C-45 on the legalization of marijuana, which I studied at the health committee with my hon. colleague from Vancouver Kingsway.

This particular bill, Bill C-46, seeks to create new and higher mandatory fines and maximum penalties for impaired driving, as well as to authorize mandatory roadside screening for alcohol. I am in favour of taking a strong stance against impaired driving, but there is so much wrong with this bill that I am not sure I can cover all of it in just 10 minutes. However, I will try.

First of all, as I have said and will continue to say many times in the House, there are only 246 days left until the government can meet its arbitrary deadline for the legalization of marijuana. The provinces, police, and municipalities have made it clear that they are not ready. When this legislation passes the House, which will take some time, it then needs to go to the Senate. If the Senate amends it, it will come back to the House. When it is finalized, the provinces can have certainty about their legislation, which they need to line up with this legislation. When the provinces are finished with their legislation, the municipalities can then line up their legislation with the provincial legislation that in turn lines up with the federal legislation. It is at the municipal level that many concerns have been expressed about this bill, because it is the local police who will have to address the drug-impaired driving issue.

We already have a big problem with impaired driving. Right now, 16% of traffic fatalities are related to alcohol-impaired driving, and 24% to drug-impaired driving, of which the most frequent kind of drug involved is marijuana, and then there is another 18% involving a combination of the two. If we look at other jurisdictions that have legalized marijuana, all of them have seen an increase in drug-impaired driving. In Washington state, fatalities from drug-impaired driving, in this case from marijuana, doubled. In Colorado, it increased by 32%. There will be a lot more of these impaired cases to deal with. With that in mind, it is extremely troubling that there is no test for impairment.

The Liberal government always talks about being fact and evidence-based and taking a science-based approach. Well, here is what the science can do. Today, it can detect THC in the saliva and in the blood, but there is no research or correlation indicating whether that is related to impairment. There are a number of factors at play. For example, someone taking a huge dose of medicinal marijuana on a long-term basis might always have THC show up, but may be so used to it that they are not impaired. Other people who may have experienced second-hand smoke, for example, may have THC show up in their blood, but are also not impaired. By coming before the science we need to test for marijuana impairment, this legislation is just irresponsible.

As for the drug recognition training needed by police officers, the police have said they will probably need about 2,000 of these officers across the country. Right now, we have 600. To train 1,400 people will not just take a day. This training requires multiple sessions, and a lot of those sessions happen in the United States. We can appreciate that the U.S. training sessions are all booked up because of the many states that are legalizing marijuana. For that reason, I find it really hard to believe that in the next 246 days we will have trained 1,400 police officers to the level they need to do the job.

Municipalities testified at the health committee about the lack of resources and lack of understanding of the rural reality on the part of the Liberal government. One municipality testified that they had nine RCMP officers in total to cover everyone in a very widely spaced riding. If someone is impaired or suspected of being impaired by marijuana, that RCMP agent has to accompany that person to the next jurisdiction where the only available blood testing is available, and stay with them until the results are known. They consider this to be a huge burden on their resources. Of course, that has not been taken into account.

Every one of the places that has legalized marijuana has strongly advised Canada that public awareness and education is needed before legalization. That was not disputed by anyone. We know that Colorado spent about $10 million for a population of five million, and Washington state spent $7 million for a population of seven million.

In Canada the government has pledged $9.8 million over five years for a population north of 30 million. It is completely inadequate. The program has not been created or even started to roll out. There are 246 days left, and the public education awareness RFP bids just came in on October 16. It was key advice by everyone we heard from that we need to have that in place before legalization. Thus, we would think that the government would act responsibly to protect public safety and say that when it gets everything in place, it will legalize marijuana. Rather, it is rushing ahead toward the arbitrary date of July 1, 2018.

One of the other topics of discussion in this bill that I find a little hypocritical is the mandatory and random testing. To give members some history of my background, I was a director of engineering and construction in the petrochemical industry. In the United States there is mandatory medical screening of prospective employees before they are hired for a job and the right to randomly test at any time. When I was with Dow Chemical, I had an office in Midland, Michigan, and was subject to random tests because that is the law of the land there.

There is a real concern at nuclear, chemical, or petrochemical plants about this, because they do not want to have people who are high on marijuana operating their facilities. As the employer has the whole liability, it ought to have the ability to do something.

In Anne McLellan's report on marijuana and how the government should move forward with legalization, there was a section included on this concern after hearing testimony from employers across the country. There were only a couple of lines in their report with recommendations, but the Liberal government refused to adopt them.

I think it is quite hypocritical for the government to say that we need mandatory testing because it is dangerous to drive a car, and not say the same thing about operating a nuclear plant, a chemical plant, or driving a huge train. I am the co-chair of the parliamentary rail caucus, and we had the railway association here this week. The association was extremely concerned that it has not been allowed to implement any kind of random testing.

There are some promising precedents. There was a TTC case in which the courts did allow the employers to start random testing because of the prevalence of drug use. There was another case recently by Suncor that also allowed random testing.

I think we have to be consistent in our approach. If it is okay to do roadside mandatory testing or random testing, then it should be done as well, assuming there is a test that can show impairment. I have already talked about the fact we do not have one currently.

When we think about drug-impaired driving, the message has not gotten out there, especially to young people. In the 18 to 35 year old demographic, 40% of people are consuming cannabis. They do not recognize it is harmful to them and do not understand that 30% of consumers under the age of 25 will experience schizophrenia, psychotic disorders, depression, or anxiety, all of which are lifetime conditions. As well, they do not understand that it is hazardous to get behind the wheel of a car when smoking marijuana.

I am hugely concern about this bill for that reason. I urge the government to do the right thing to protect the Canadian public. Do it right. Quit rushing, and wait until the test exists.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Madam Speaker, I had the privilege of sitting on the health committee while it studied Bill C-45, the companion legislation that would legalize cannabis. My colleagues and I heard time and time again how important it is to base sound policy on facts, on evidence. A lot of mythology has accumulated over the last decades, about cannabis in particular. We also heard clearly that Canadian youth are among the second-highest users of cannabis in the world. In order to have an impact on them, we have to learn how to speak properly to them. That starts with giving them credible information.

The government has claimed over and over again that it is taking an evidence-based approach to this legislation. However, so far, I have heard no clear answers on a number of questions. Is finding two nanograms of THC in a millilitre of blood truly a sign of impairment? Do we have the equipment that can actually measure it? The government answers by saying it does not really know. I do not know how it can have an evidence-based approach to this legislation, and at the same time legislate, when it does not have hard science to back it up.

I am wondering if my hon. colleague could comment on that, and whether this legislation will be successful if Canadians, particularly youth, do not find the underlying concepts to be legitimate or valid.

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-46, an act to amend the Criminal Code, offences relating to conveyances, and to make consequential amendments to other acts.

I will address a couple of things with respect to the bill, and one is the timetable for this bill and Bill C-45.

The government is making a mistake, quite frankly, first for even bringing in the marijuana bill and then pushing it forward to try to get it in by Canada Day of next year. Even though I have heard the minister say that the government will try to push through this bill in conjunction with Bill C-45, the whole thing is a mistake.

We heard considerable testimony from different groups that they thought this was being jammed through too quickly. The Canadian police services asked that the legislation be delayed so they would have the ability to train and put resources in place.

I suggest that the government has not done enough to put effective educational campaigns in place, despite statistics showing significant increases in fatalities due to drug-impaired driving. We have a problem already with drug-impaired driving. The Liberals tell us that by legalizing this, they somehow have come up with some solutions to this, but it is the exact opposite.

Mandatory roadside testing, in addition to the large number of officers who still do not have sufficient training to adequately detect drug-impaired driving through drug-recognition training, is another part of this, as well the refusal of the government to mandate proper storage restrictions of cannabis plants in homes. The government, in its excitement, was pleased to announce that everyone would be able to have a small grow-op in the kitchen. We were very much against this, for the reasons I stated at committee and before this. How can we make it any more accessible and easier for kids if the plants are in the kitchen?

I thought I received some good news a couple of weeks ago when a woman in my office, Cheri, said that I would be interested to know that the Liberals had made some changes about grow-ops in kitchens. I thought that was wonderful and that the Liberals had listened to us. However, the government said that the three feet was not high enough, that the plants would have to grow taller than that. Therefore, after getting criticism about this, the Liberals did the exact opposite. They would let people have four-, five-, or 10-foot plants. I guess there would be more joints available the higher these things grew. This is a huge mistake, one that we will hear about in the future if the bill passes.

Canadian police services from across the country have called on the government to delay the legislation beyond 2018 to allow law enforcement time to properly manage the threat of increased drug-impaired driving and the association that this would take place with the legalization of marijuana. The Canadian police services stated that there was zero chance they would be ready by July 2018.

Why are the Liberals so intent on not listening to Canada's law enforcement? They have imposed this deadline, again, with little regard to the health and safety of Canadians.

During the recent meetings our committees had, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police warned that it needed more time to train officers under the proposed new law and more than double the number of police officers certified to conduct roadside drug-impaired testing. It also called for more time to implement public education. If we look around, officials in Washington State and Colorado have stressed the importance of implementing educational campaigns on drug-impaired driving as soon as possible and long before legalization.

The government's timetable is just too tight. The Liberals say that they will get Bill C-46 in before Bill C-45. However, with the timetable they have insisted upon for Bill C-45, we will not be ready.

The Liberals have not taken the advice of members of the police association or Canadian premiers who have voiced their concerns. The provincial governments need more time to get their rules and regulations in place.

The minister mentioned MADD Canada. It has also called for the government to ensure the legislative framework is in place under the Motor Vehicle Act, giving police the powers to lay drug-impaired charges. Currently, the standard breathalyser will not detect drugs, This was one of the things we heard.

My colleagues mentioned how challenging it was to exactly measure the level of THC and thus measure the level of impairment. It is further complicated now that we are encouraging people to smoke marijuana, especially in combination with alcohol. This is going to become more complicated. In the hearings and testimony on Bill C-46, it became very clear how difficult this would be. We heard different experts say that THC could be in a person's system for days afterwards. The THC level spikes with the first couple of joints and then it goes down. How quickly it goes down is the question and what happens when marijuana is used in combination with alcohol.

Again, we need to have people who are expert in this area. The police services have said that they need at least 2,000 experts to do this. I will quote Ms. MacAskill from Mothers Against Drunk Driving. She said, about the disposable saliva test, “If every officer can have that in their vehicle it will certainly have a positive impact on road safety.”

Unfortunately, the government is not in a position to guarantee that those drug experts will be in place. It has not made the necessary provisions to make this happen. Again, the Liberals are focused on getting this through. Somehow it will be a wonderful that on the next Canada Day, everyone will be smoking a joint. However, this has been a huge mistake.

As well, I have to mention the penalties. The Conservative party is very clear that a $1,000 fine for a person who kills because of drunk driving is unacceptable. Quite frankly, it sends the wrong message. My colleague talked about mothers for justice. They were very clear that it was not enough to say a person was arrested. We want to send a very clear message that if a person is drunk, starts to drive and kills people, that there are serious consequences, not just a $1,000 or $1,500 fine with a slap on the wrist. Our job is to ensure people get the message that they have to take responsibility for the crimes they commit. When we were in government, that message was consistent. There has to be serious consequences for people who commit serious crimes and victimize others.

Statistics show that impaired driving due to drugs is on the rise. This is why we need to have nationwide public education. We know, having looked at Washington State, what will happen in our country. Fatal crashes among drivers who test positive for marijuana went up from 8% in 2013 to 17% in 2014. In Colorado, between 2005 and 2014, the number of drivers in fatal crashes who tested positive for marijuana, without other drugs in their system, went from 3.4% to 12%. It multiplied four times when marijuana was legalized in that state.

Dr. Mark Ware, co-chair of Ottawa's marijuana task force, stated, “Canada should immediately boost spending on intensive public education and research into the impacts of marijuana and not wait until 2018.” I would go beyond that and say not to be forced into putting this in place by next Canada Day.

Dr. Ware told a drug policy conference in Ottawa that a bill to overhaul Canada's marijuana laws was the first step in what he predicted would be an unbelievably deep and tangled web with the provinces, territories, and the municipalities, which would be responsible for much of this scheme.

Here is what is going to happen when this legislation gets enacted. The federal Liberals will blame the provinces when this thing becomes a complete national mess. They will say that they legalized it but it is the responsibility of the provinces. They will point the finger and claim that it is not them who have made the mess. Once they get this off their hands, it will be up to the provinces, or they will say that the police services are screwing this up, that they are not doing enough. That is what is so unfortunate about this.

The government has been warned about the implications of legalizing marijuana and the required safeguards that should be in place. The Canadian Automobile Association has made the case that a public education campaign has to be put in place.

This will complicate our judicial system. It was made very clear that there would be charter challenges. I understand that whenever new legislation is put in, there is always the possibility that people will challenge it. Nonetheless, there will be a lot of cases that will compound the challenge this will have on the courts. We have raised this with the government on many occasions. We have told it to ensure enough judges are appointed. This has been a slow process, and not enough judges will not help the situation. When these cases are before the courts and there are delays, et cetera, it will not help things if the Government of Canada does not move forward as expeditiously as possible in appointing judges.

The other thing we have to worry about is not just people smoking marijuana, but people who will turn marijuana into edibles. The Liberals will again say the that provinces are to blame if this is the case. I understand that, but we all have a responsibility. When this gets turned into an edible product and children have access to that product, it will be a serious problem. I appreciate that not all children will go after the pot plants in the kitchen and nor should they, but edibles will be another danger to young people and a danger that the government does not seem to take with the seriousness it should take.

I do like some sections in the legislation. The minister talked about one section that refers to marijuana tests being taken about two hours afterwards. Among other things, this will go after those individuals who will try to avoid an impaired driving charge by having a couple of drinks after the accident, using the excuse they needed those drinks to calm down. We all know that this is a way of avoiding or complicating an impaired driving charge. I actually agree with that section.

However, when my colleague from St. Albert—Edmonton came forward with a group of reasonable amendments to ensure people would live up to their responsibilities when they finally were convicted of impaired driving and impaired driving which resulted in somebody being killed, those penalties were completely rejected by the Liberals on committee. When somebody kills a child and receives a $1,500 fine, the whole justice system is compromised. It decreases people's confidence in the criminal justice system when people are not given penalties that are commiserate with the crimes they have committed.

My Liberal colleagues do not want to put these tough penalties in the bill because they believe they will not stop people from committing these crimes. However, I think it does send a message to people that there are serious consequences for what they are doing. Yes, there are people who say that they had better be careful because there are serious consequences for their impaired driving.

I appreciate that Bill C-45 and Bill C-46 go together and that the latter bill complements the first, but my colleagues and I want the government to reconsider everything about this, its implementation and the whole question of legalizing marijuana and what it will do to our children. I promise that if the government implements this and the Liberals start to run away from it and say, “I don't know, you better talk to the education department, or the police, or the provinces”, we will hold them accountable for everything, the complete mess this will create. We will not let them off the hook by pointing to someone else.

I have appreciated the opportunity to make comments on this. I know the government has not listened to us up to this point, but I hope it will in the future.

[Jody Wilson-Raybould, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Madam Speaker, I believe that this question speaks to the previous question of the hon. member across the way in terms of the objectives of Bill C-45, and Bill C-46, the cannabis act, and also wanting to improve the impaired driving laws in this country. What we are trying to combat is that the status quo simply is not working with respect to ensuring we do everything we can to keep cannabis out of the hands of kids and the proceeds out of the hands of criminals, as well as to keep individuals out of the driving seats of their car while they have been consuming alcohol or drugs. The objective of both of these pieces of legislation is to ensure that we move away from the status quo and put in place significant laws and regulations. There is no question that the Government of Canada is tackling these important issues and ensuring the safety of Canadians.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Madam Speaker, I thank the minister for bringing this to the House today. My question builds on some of the questions from my colleagues across the way, which were similar to questions asked during the debate on Bill C-45. My question to the minister is with respect to the timing of Bill C-46 and Bill C-45. I want to know how they work together, as well as the strategy of having Bill C-46 in place before Bill C-45 to ensure we have safe communities, safe people, safe roads. What is the importance of the legislation in the way it is now being presented to the House moving forward? Could the minister comment on that, please?

[Jody Wilson-Raybould, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for the question and his ongoing work in this regard. Of course, we took into account the reality and the impact of bringing in Bill C-45, the cannabis act, and its companion piece, Bill C-46, to ensure that we have the toughest impaired driving rules throughout the world. Impaired driving on drugs and alcohol is an offence right now. We are working to ensure that we have the best scientific evidence and the necessary oral fluid screeners to detect that at the roadside. We are committed to ensuring we do everything we can to improve that process, which Bill C-46 significantly does, and to detect more individuals who are behind the wheels of their car while impaired by drugs or alcohol. This is a real opportunity to significantly strengthen our impaired driving laws in Canada.

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Madam Speaker, there are a number of sections of this bill that make sense. I will not repeat the comments with respect to making sure that there at least is a penalty that people who kill somebody when driving drunk can and should pay. That being said, the minister, on a number of occasions during her speech, and in the comments, said we would like to do something to reduce impaired driving, yet she admitted that legalization could increase impaired driving. Would that not, in and of itself, give the minister pause that this is overall going to be a bad idea, if the minister is even acknowledging at this point that we will probably have more impaired driving on the roads? Did the Liberals take that into consideration when they brought forward these two bills, Bill C-45 and Bill C-46?

Business of the House

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister of Small Business and Tourism]

Mr. Speaker, in a few minutes, we will begin examining Bill C-17 on the Yukon. Tomorrow, we will begin debate at third reading of Bill C-46 on impaired driving.

On Monday and Tuesday, we will continue debating Bill C-49.

On Wednesday, we will commence report stage of Bill C-45, the cannabis act.

Finally, on Thursday, we will start second reading debate of our second budget implementation bill. We intend to allot four days of second reading debate for this bill. We look forward to that debate as well as the discussions at committee.

Criminal Code

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Mr. Speaker, over the course of the summer, I took on the task of holding five town halls on the government's legislation to not only legalize recreational marijuana, but also on Bill C-46, which we are debating in the House today. I threw open the doors and invited constituents who cared to attend, so everybody would have a full understanding of what was being proposed in both pieces of legislation. It was from those five meetings that I got a better understanding of the concerns of not only everyday residents, but also from community leaders such as mayors, reeves, and councillors.

Listening to one's constituents should not only happen during town halls, it is a practice that every elected official should subscribe. If truth be told, not many members of the government hosted a no-holds barred public meetings on either Bill C-45 or Bill C-46.

I would argue that legalizing recreational marijuana is one of the largest changes to the Controlled Substances Act in my lifetime. However, not many government MPs took the opportunity to meet with their constituents in an open door forum. If they did, they would have quickly become aware that not only was the Liberal government's political deadline of July 1, 2018, to implement legal recreational marijuana usage untenable, it would unnecessarily raise the risk of bodily harm and injury on our roads and highways.

At a recent Council of the Federation meeting, Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister requested an extension of the Liberal government's deadline of July 1, 2018. for marijuana legalization. In response to Premier Pallister's request, the premiers established an official working group on marijuana, co-chaired by Manitoba justice minister Heather Stefanson. Since then, it has been closely following the debate in the House and in committee meetings that were held on this legislation.

As was stated by many expert witnesses at committee or quoted in the news, it is simply unfathomable to expect that police departments and the RCMP will be prepared for the July 1 deadline as currently set out.

I would like to quote Director Mario Harel, the president of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, who stated at committee on Wednesday, September 20:

The question many in policing have is what level of readiness the government, and more importantly, our communities, expect law enforcement to deliver. We can be ready at some level July 2018, but are we delivering on the public safety objectives Canadians would expect of us?

That question gets to the very heart of the concerns that many members of Parliament, including backbench Liberal MPs, have publicly voiced.

We know the science surrounding the impairment of one's ability to drive after consuming cannabis varies widely from one individual to another. We know that one's level of impairment can be impacted by how long an individual has either legally or illegally consumed cannabis. For instance, if one has been consuming cannabis on a daily basis for 20 years, that person's mind and body will be impacted differently than someone who consumes it on a monthly basis. Let me give the House a specific example.

During one of my town halls, a constituent stated that she had taken medical marijuana for years. She consumes cannabis in an edible form for her chronic pain. She said, not only in our public meeting but also publicly in the local newspaper, that it would be more dangerous for her to drive while not under the influence of medical marijuana. While I am not a medical expert, nor proclaim to understand the precise impacts of one's cognitive functions, driving under the impairment of marijuana is just as dangerous as driving under the impairment of alcohol or other prescription drugs.

While this is my belief, it was quite a shock to hear that some individuals who had consumed marijuana for years, if not in some cases for decades, pushed back on this premise. They pushed back because they felt that under no circumstances was public safety at risk because of their consumption of cannabis while driving a vehicle. This is a huge concern and I am quite certain that if a Conservative member of Parliament is being told this, it begs the question, What other long-term beliefs are held by Canadians who have long consumed marijuana?

In respect to the legislation, beyond a shadow of doubt, as it is currently written, it will be challenged almost immediately when brought into force. The reason I am so confident in saying this is that unfortunately Canadians will be caught and charged for driving under impairment of cannabis. It is safe to suggest that criminal defence attorneys will be looking at every available avenue to lessen the client's charge. There is empirical evidence to suggest this is exactly what will happen.

We know that the current drinking and driving laws are some of the most heavily litigated areas of criminal law. In respect to determining the exact nanograms of THC per ml of blood, it was good to hear even Liberal MPs, such as the member for Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, ask about the objectively determined standards for marijuana that the police could measure against.

What was disconcerting was that the Minister of Justice did not respond directly to her colleague's question. She noted that the government had set up a drug impaired driving committee, but neglected to answer his question of setting the benchmarks to determine impairment.

Now, I am not the only one who is asking these questions. The Canadian Bar Association recommends that the federal government base any measurement of blood drug concentration on proven scientific evidence that links the concentration of THC to impairment. According to the briefing to the Minister of Justice, it outlined the difficulties of introducing specific blood drug concentrations of setting an objective standard for penalizing a person and then linking the findings to impairment. It even goes as far as saying that legislating specific blood drug concentration levels is problematic.

While the Canadian Bar Association is probably well aware of the legal quagmire that will soon engulf our nation's courtrooms, it is wise to take a moment and reflect on whether the government is rushing ahead without the scientific data to back up its legislation.

We all want our roads and highways to be safe from those who make the callous decision to get behind the wheel after one too many beers, and soon to be one too many tokes. With that in mind, it is troubling to hear from legal experts and marijuana users that the Liberal government's legislation may not hold up under heavy scrutiny of a well-funded legal defence team.

The other aspect of concern is that the costs associated will be borne by the provinces and municipalities regarding Bill C-46. This was one of the most concerning matters raised by other levels of government.

Earlier this summer, I wrote the parliamentary budget officer requesting a costing analysis for implementing the Liberal government's legislation to legalize marijuana. I received a response from the PBO last month, describing both a lack of transparency by the Liberal government and an intention to offload costs onto provinces.

According to the PBO's letter, Justice Canada responded to its requests for information by stating that the estimated costs of marijuana legalization were a cabinet confidence. Similar responses were provided to the PBO by Public Safety Canada and Health Canada. In response to my letter, the PBO wrote:

This clearly indicates that the federal government does have access to some cost estimates of Bills C-45 and C-46, but without that information it would be difficult for the Office of the PBO to provide a reasonable cost analysis.

I requested an in-depth costing analysis for several areas of concern for my constituents, including the cost of education campaigns and workplace health and safety regulations. We know the Prime Minister has thrown out the idea of sharing any federal excise tax equally with the provinces, but even that was not enough to calm the nerves of the premiers and their respective finance ministers.

May there be no illusion of any member in the House that with the passage of Bill C-45 and Bill C-46, the policing, legal costs, and court delays will go down. The fallacy purported by some well-meaning but ill-advised commentators about how police resources will now miraculously be shifted from cracking down on simple pot possessions to much more serious matters is but a dream.

First, as with anything the government regulates, legislates, and oversees, there will be no cost savings when equipment, training, bureaucracy, and simple paperwork are all accounted for. Second, as the provinces have announced, the government will make the purchase of legal recreational marijuana so restrictive that the neighbourhood pot dealer just gave a loud round of applause as his business will prevail in the near future.

The issue of legalizing marijuana for recreational purposes, while also updating the Criminal Code so police officers have the necessary tools and legal framework to keep our streets and highways safe, are not necessarily bound by one another.

Under no circumstances should the legalization of recreational marijuana be pushed forward without at least some time after Bill C-46 is brought into force. Not only should Bill C-46 be allowed to be tested, prodded, and probed, but the federal government has the responsibility to fund the vast majority of upfront costs of doing so. The provinces and municipalities should not be taken for granted and their cause of concern on the timelines proposed in the Liberal legislation should be heeded.

As I have stated on many occasions, the Liberal government should wade carefully into the full legislation of recreational marijuana. It needs to move beyond its politically motivated deadline, disclose the true cost of marijuana legalization, and provide municipalities and provinces with the resources they need to ensure safety for all Canadians.

Until that time, the legislation should not move forward. I encourage the Liberals to listen to the myriad of voices that echo similar apprehensions.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would also like to acknowledge the excellent work of my colleague from Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, who is always on point and keeps partisanship to a minimum, although she sometimes gets carried away, which is entirely normal, since that is the game we in the House play. She is very concerned about this issue.

When a member of the House asks a colleague a question, it might be a good idea to stay in Ottawa long enough to hear the answer. I understand why government members are unclear on all of the nuances of parliamentary language and the excellent comments made by people on this side of the House. When people ask us questions, they should take the time to listen to the answer. This is just something I’m throwing out there, because I was a little angry at the lack of respect I just witnessed in the House.

To return to my colleague’s remarks, I would like to know whether what I see as the government’s off-the-cuff attitude as it rushes to push through the marijuana issue might cause problems for the police and addiction workers down the line. I do not think we are ready.

What is my colleague’s opinion concerning Bills C-45 and C-46?

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this bill seeks to clearly set out the offences of and the sentences for people who decide to drive under the influence of marijuana and to update provisions on drunk driving.

We supported this bill at second reading and since then we have been examining it. Unfortunately, impaired driving is the leading cause of criminal deaths in the country. Canada has one of the worst impaired driving records in the OECD.

We need to implement an effective and well funded public awareness campaign. As we have been repeating from the start of today's debate, it is important for the government to quickly implement this public awareness and education campaign.

Earlier today, my colleague from Mount Royal, the chair of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, said that we were here to talk about Bill C-46, not Bill C-45, which deals with the legalization of marijuana. However the government chose to introduce these two bills around the same time, one after the other. We cannot talk about one without talking about the other. It is therefore important to make sure that the awareness and education campaign is done right and that it is launched immediately, well before marijuana is legalized.

The NDP has always stood for sensible measures to prevent impaired driving. We need to focus on powerful deterrents that can actually help prevent tragedies. I just said it, but I want to reiterate that the government needs to launch a robust public awareness campaign before the marijuana legalization bill comes into force.

Bill C-46 does not clearly define the levels of marijuana in saliva that would qualify as impairment. That needs to be made clear. We need an unbiased, science-based strategy for stopping drug-impaired drivers.

Under the bill, the police will no longer need to have reasonable grounds to suspect that the person consumed alcohol in order to demand a breath sample. Civil liberties groups and the legal community have expressed concerns over the constitutionality of the proposed measures. In fact, earlier, my colleague from Essex illustrated how this might lead to profiling during arrests, which is problematic.

These civil liberties defence groups also wonder whether marginalized groups will be targeted. That is why, upon reflection, it is important to have experts provide testimony at committee to ensure that Canadians' civil liberties are respected and protected.

The NDP leader, Jagmeet Singh, was outspoken during his time in the Ontario legislature about the ability of the police to go after people simply on the basis of their race, be they aboriginal, black, or Canadians of other minorities.

The discriminatory police practice of carding was central to his work in the Ontario legislative assembly. Mr. Singh says that as Prime Minister, he will enact a federal ban on racial profiling to end it once and for all.

In fact, he said in a Toronto Star interview that he had been stopped more than 11 times because of his appearance. He said:

I've been stopped by police multiple times for no other reason than the colour of my skin. It makes you feel like you don't belong, like there's something wrong with you for just being you.

I find meeting with our constituents to be a very interesting part of our work as MPs. I have been asked how we come to decide how to vote in the House. Of course, the discussions like the one we are having today, as well as the ones with our colleagues, are key. My colleagues' speeches today have been very enlightening.

During caucus discussions, we draw on our personal experiences and our own judgment, but also on the experiences of our colleagues in the House. As such, I would like to talk about my colleague fromVictoria's speech, which was very enlightening for me on this issue. I had the chance to sit on the Special Joint Committee on Physician-Assisted Dying with my colleague from Victoria, and his legal and constitutional expertise was very enlightening for me. The bill before us today, Bill C-46, is also very enlightening.

I would like to read part of a speech he gave, one that I feel is very important.

Currently under the law as it exists, one has to have reasonable suspicion before stopping someone. If one no longer has to have that reasonable suspicion, which is what this section at issue would do, then there is the potential, indeed, the certainty that there will be disproportionate targeting of racialized Canadians, indigenous people, youth, and other marginalized groups. That is the nub of the problem and why this is such a difficult bill for the House to deal with.... However, we have to get this balance right. We are not convinced that it has been achieved. We are still studying it and will continue to study it before the vote takes place in the next while. At the committee, the NDP did manage to get one amendment that would somehow address this issue. That amendment would add the proposed section 31.1 to the bill, which would require that this issue be studied and reported to Parliament within three years of enactment. The committee agreed with that, and I hope the House will accept that final amendment as well. We will see whether the concerns that so many experts have brought to the attention of the committee will prove true in practice.

I want to quote something else he said, because, unlike him, I did not have the privilege of taking part in the deliberations of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. He said:

We heard from Mothers Against Drunk Driving and other countless witnesses at the justice committee, telling their heartbreaking stories of the loss they had suffered. However, the bill poses serious concerns, particularly in the area of mandatory alcohol screen....What is the concern with mandatory alcohol testing? The new police powers enacted through the legislation would remove the reasonable suspicion requirements for roadside inspection by peace officers that presently exist in the Criminal Code, instead moving to a mandatory system by which, at the discretion of the patrolling officer, motorists must submit to random breath samples without any justification whatsoever, in other words, on a whim.

I was saying earlier that our personal experience can inform our discussions of this type of bill. I often tell the House that before being elected, I worked for the Quebec ministry of agriculture, fisheries and food, was a municipal councillor, and also worked with youth for almost 20 years. In light of my experience with a youth round table and as the director of a community housing organization that served troubled youth, I cannot help but have concerns about the impact of this type of bill, which requires a very balanced approach. I sincerely hope that the only NDP amendment to be retained will remain intact. It is important that we do not target certain groups in society when we address impaired driving. As parliamentarians it is our duty to ensure that each and every citizen is treated fairly and that the laws we pass make that possible.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise today to speak to Bill C-46, an act to amend the Criminal Code and to make consequential amendments to other acts. I would also like to thank the member for Essex for her very kind words and thoughts. As a mother, I am on the same page on this. I would like to thank her very much for sharing that.

Today we are speaking about safe roads for Canadians and their families. It should be a simple discussion, but we must recognize that with the ramming through of this legislation, our cities and municipalities will not have the proper tools and resources to make sure that safety is our priority.

During the summer, I met with many people to discuss Bill C-45. Many individuals brought forward their concerns about impaired driving due to cannabis, which concerns Bill C-46.

The task force put together many recommendations for the Liberal government to review. First, the chair of the committee indicated that the best solution was to give researchers time to develop proper detection tools. Second, for many users, specifically youth, the potency and impact is greatly unknown and underestimated. Third, there should be increased funding for law enforcement authorities to get ready for the new regime. Fourth, and one of the key points I find extremely important and that was recommended by both the task force and the states of Washington and Colorado, which have legalized marijuana, was the importance of extensive impaired driving campaigns before the legislation.

To begin, I would like speak about the need for proper detection tools. Results were announced indicating that there was a pilot project using a new device to detect the concentration of cannabis in the system. It was reported by officers that the device was easy to use and successfully detected the drug. At this time, there has been no indication of what the next steps will be and how we are going to pay for it.

Second, is it the best test, and will it detect impairment? We have heard other members of Parliament speak about these tests and the equipment necessary. We do not have the silver bullet when it comes to detection devices.

It was also stated that the best method to prevent impaired driving was public education funding for public resources and education. Education is definitely a word everyone will hear more and more throughout my speech.

Another concern is the unknown and underestimated impact of cannabis on youth. Studies show that cannabis has many different effects on people, specifically on the skills that are extremely important when driving. They include loss of motor coordination, problem solving, and thinking; and distorted perception. I believe we all agree that these are important skills that should not be at risk when driving.

Keeping this in mind, we should take into account a few other factors. Statistics posted by the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction state the following:

According to the 2012 Canadian Alcohol and Drug Use Monitoring Survey, 5% of youth aged 15-24 reported driving after using marijuana during the past year, compared to 9.4% after consuming alcohol.

Data from the National Fatality Database revealed that between 2000 and 2010, marijuana was the most common illicit drug present among fatally injured drivers aged 15-24 in Canada.

The 2011 Canadian Alcohol and Drug Use Monitoring Survey revealed that individuals aged 15-24 were more likely to be passengers of an individual who had consumed alcohol or other drugs, rather than to drive impaired themselves. Riding with a driver who has used drugs or alcohol can lead to consequences just as tragic as driving while impaired.

Addressing impaired driving among our youth must be done. CCSA goes on to say:

CCSA has conducted a series of reviews examining effective approaches to preventing drugged driving among youth. Key findings include:

Factual messaging created by youth ensures that information is believable and easily understood by youth.

Empowering youth to plan and create their own prevention initiatives can increase the effectiveness and reach of the message.

Parents, teachers, coaches and so on should talk to youth about impaired driving and discuss implications to encourage youth to think critically before making decisions.

Overall, what we are talking about are awareness campaigns that centre on youth to deter them from driving while impaired, especially under the influence of marijuana. Once again, my focus here is education. The most common drug used first by Canadian youth is marijuana, and among our youth population, we have the second highest use of marijuana in the world. Where is the education regarding the potential effects and the conversation on driving while impaired?

Next, what is available for resources and financial support? Currently, the federal, provincial, and territorial governments have been speaking, but there are no decisions, and there is still one main player missing at the table. The cities and municipalities that will be in charge of keeping our roads safe have not been provided with this tool. They have been left out of these conversations. We still have to talk to them. We need to talk about education. We need to talk about potential detection devices, but currently, all we are doing is talking about reasonable suspicion.

How many officers in Canada are currently qualified? With legalization and predicting increased use, will more officers need to be trained? Where is the training, and what are the current waiting times for training? These are things I have had discussions about in my riding. I have spoken to the chief of police in the city of St. Thomas. We talked a lot about drug recognition officers. What is the cost? What is the delay? We have heard many reports indicating that there are too few officers available and that the education is not available. Right now, because we, as well as other states, are going forward with this, there is a huge delay in getting this done.

According to an article published by the Ottawa Citizen on February 4, 2017, here are the numbers: 2.6% is the proportion of drivers in Canada who admitted driving within two hours of using cannabis in the past year, according to Health Canada's 2012 Canadian alcohol and drug use survey; 632,576 people is how many this represents; 10.4 million is how many trips this represents; 2.04 million is how many Canadian drivers admitted to driving after consuming two or more drinks in the previous hour, which represents 13.3 million trips; 5.5% is the proportion of drivers who tested positive for cannabis use, according to a 2013 study in British Columbia; and 16.6% is the proportion of fatally injured drivers who tested positive for cannabis, according to an examination done between 2000 and 2010. Males are three times as likely as females to drive after using cannabis.

Therefore, this is an issue we must address. We need to provide the proper resources for our police forces to deal with this. Regarding drug recognition experts, there are currently 578 drug recognition experts in Canada, and 160 to 200 new DREs are certified every year. Some existing DREs do not recertify, or they are promoted out of the role. It is hard enough to maintain the current number of DREs, much less increase the number, said one of the people working in the department.

At the same time, training is expensive, and some of it has to be done in the U.S. Opportunities to get field training in the U.S. are being squeezed as demand to train officers increases there. This is a clear challenge that needs to be addressed.

According to the 2017 budget:

Health Canada will support marijuana public education programming and surveillance activities in advance of the Government's plan to legalize cannabis by directing existing funding of $9.6 million over five years, with $1.0 million per year ongoing.

However, Health Canada has just issued a public tender to find a contractor to develop a national marketing plan targeting youth that will focus on education and awareness of the health and safety risks of cannabis. This campaign is going to be targeted at Canadian youth aged 13-18. An important point to note, though, is that this program is going to start running after December 2017, so we are talking about putting in a program less than six months before the legalization of marijuana. There is no exact date when the ads are going to start. Just saying it will be after December 2017 is not good enough.

Why is the government rushing on this issue? Why are we rushing to not keep our roads safe? Why are the Liberals not doing more? Why are they rushing Bill C-45 and Bill C-46, other than because of extreme political views? Why are we not taking the safety of Canadians on our roads as paramount?

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is a privilege to speak to Bill C-46. We have discussed the proposed legislation at length here. The bill introduces new and higher mandatory fines and maximum penalties for impaired driving crimes as well as mandatory alcohol screening at the roadside.

The Conservative Party supports measures that protect Canadians. However, we are concerned for a number of reasons, one of which is that the police, municipalities, and premiers are not prepared for the legislation that would be enacted, and I am referring to Bill C-45.

This is good legislation insomuch that it would increase fines and the penalty for impaired driving would be less of something that people generally who are driving would consider. However, some serious complications have ensued.

I want to take us to the very heart of this legislation, which is Bill C-45, the legalization of marijuana bill. What does that entail? For starters, it means that 18-year-olds in this country would legally be able to purchase and legally be able to indulge in smoking marijuana.

There has been a lot of talk about this proposed legislation. There has been a lot of talk about what the bill would do. I would like to bring to the House's attention a recent poll in the Vancouver Sun. The question was, “Where do you think people should buy their pot?” Multiple choices were listed. The highest group of people, 82.31%, answered “None of the above. I don't agree with legalization”. If we are hearing that this is what people want, it certainly does not reflect what we are seeing at the polls. The number dwindles down from there, shops that sell cannabis, pharmacies, liquor stores, etc.

I was pleased to hear from the member for Steveston—Richmond East the same news as was contained in the Vancouver Sun, that the federal government will not move ahead with marijuana legalization if it is not ready. It is good to hear that members on the other side are starting to talk this way. The member further said, “The concerned group is right. Things are not ready yet. We are still in the process.” We are looking for more of that encouragement from members on the opposite side. It is a step in the right direction, but it is a long way from where they should be.

I have been in this place for 12 years. I have served on a number of committees. Oftentimes when legislation is being proposed or new ideas come up, I always ask: Are there other jurisdictions that we can point to that have had this experience? What have they discovered? What have they learned from their enactment?

I am pleased to say there are a number of jurisdictions, and I am going to cite a few from a study on the legalization of marijuana in Colorado. Colorado took it upon itself in 2013 to legalize marijuana. It had relaxed laws and it continued on in that direction. We must remember that when we legalize marijuana the legal age will be 18, whereas in Colorado the age is 21. I do not have time to talk about that, even though it is an important issue as well.

The Colorado experience was such that it talked about impaired driving and fatalities. Marijuana-related traffic deaths more than doubled from 55 deaths in 2013 to 123 deaths in 2016.

If this foolish legislation, Bill C-45, is passed we are going to hear moms and dads, sisters, brothers, and grandparents asking the Liberals to answer for their situation, for their circumstance, for their pain, since they brought the legislation forward.

Marijuana-related traffic deaths increased 66% in the four-year average since Colorado legalized recreational marijuana. There is more.

In 2009, Colorado marijuana-related traffic deaths involving drivers testing positive for marijuana represented 9% of all traffic deaths. By 2016, it doubled to 20%. On youth marijuana use, we are talking about 21-year-olds. Youth past-month marijuana use increased 12% in the three-year average from 2013-15. In the latest poll, 2014-15, results show that Colorado youth ranked number one in the nation compared to number four in 2011-12. Colorado youth past-month marijuana use for 2014-15 was 55% higher than the national average. We know what is coming down the pipe.

Colorado is one jurisdiction that we can point to, but we can talk about drug usage and what other countries have experienced as well. When we do that, I would like to talk about the Netherlands. I have a little tie to the Netherlands. My parents emigrated from the Netherlands and I have family who live there, so I have a little understanding of what goes on there.

Before I talk about that though, I need to say that although there are some different opinions and different laws in other countries, the current UN treaty forbids countries to legalize or regulate drugs for recreational use. We are a signatory to that. Most countries, with the exception of Uruguay, moved in another direction. Holland tried something different. It tried a two-tier system. It sounds complicated and I would explain that the Dutch have an attitude. Let me quote what Prime Minister Mark Rutte said. He is a hip guy, he is not a stuffy old guy. Mark was the guy who rode his bicycle when the G7 participants went to the Netherlands and President Obama came in with choppers and cars. Mark said during an interview that, “people should do with their own bodies whatever they please, as long as they are well informed about what that junk does to them.” He was talking about marijuana usage.

He went on to say that cannabis legalization of the Colorado model for 21-year-olds, “—where the state taxes and regulates all levels of the supply chain and adults age 21 and over are allowed to purchase weed from state-licensed stores—was out of the question”. He said “if we were to do that, we'd be the laughing stock of Europe.” In relation to the system that they tried to adopt, which would maybe allow some marijuana usage for those with the right to do so, this two-tier system where it is being sold openly but cannot produce it, is complete bankrupt. This is from Jon Brouwer, a law professor at the University of Groningen who specializes in Dutch drug policy. It is a system that is fundamentally flawed, pumping millions into the criminal underworld. Of course, the Liberals insist that this will greatly hinder the underground and the criminal element. We are finding out in Holland, which started to tamper with it, it did not work that well.

I spent some of my time yesterday reading a report by the World Health Organization. I recommend it. It is a great read. It reinforces pretty much everything I have been saying. The health and social effects of non-medical cannabis use is what we have all signed to. I encourage members to read that. I will not be supporting Bill C-45. I think Bill C-46 is moving in the right direction, but we certainly need to do a lot more work.

[Len Webber, Conservative, Calgary Confederation, AB]

Madam Speaker, today I rise to contribute to the debate on Bill C-46, which proposes a number of changes to impaired driving legislation in Canada. More specifically, this legislation is proposing a number of changes in anticipation of the passing of Bill C-45, which seeks to legalize marijuana in Canada.

I, among others in the House, along with my colleague, the member for Sarnia—Lambton, sit on the health committee. We returned a week early in September from the summer recess to hold a series of marathon meetings on Bill C-45. At the committee, witnesses from across Canada and around the world presented their concerns on a number of issues related to the legalization of marijuana. Specifically, there were a number of experts who provided commentary on the aspects surrounding impaired driving. I want to share some of their testimony with members today.

Before I do, I want to say that we all know all too well that impaired driving is a deadly activity that often claims the lives of people who are entirely innocent. Canada is now on the verge of normalizing marijuana use, which could likely see impaired driving and death rates rise. I am not suggesting for a second that drug-impaired driving does not happen now and has not claimed lives already; however, I and many others are concerned that the normalization of marijuana use will make matters much worse on our roads and highways.

On September 12 of this year, during health committee testimony, Deputy Chief Thomas Carrique from the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police stated:

What we do know is that impaired driving by way of alcohol is the number one criminal cause of death in this country. If we are to expect that the use of cannabis may go up, that causes us great concern. It puts our communities at peril....

He went on to say:

It is unknown what the combination is when you combine drugs and alcohol. We have heard all sorts of statistics from our neighbours south of the border that indicate that it has a great impact. There is...a 28% increase in the amount of intoxication. That creates a...danger behind the wheel.

Deputy Chief Mark Chatterbok, of the Saskatoon Police Service, who also represented the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, stated:

We anticipate that as a result of new legislation the number of impaired drivers will only increase. This increase will be realized in a city and a province where impaired statistics are already far too high.

...the Saskatoon Police Service has concerns about an increase in impaired driving due to drugs or a combination of alcohol and drugs....what happens when a driver already found to have a blood alcohol content of 0.07 also has the presence of THC in his or her blood. Technically, this driver may be under the legal limit for both individual substances, but what effect does the presence of both of these drugs have on impairment?

That is a very good point, and to my knowledge the issue has not been addressed. The Liberal government has set an artificial deadline to legalize marijuana use in Canada. As a result, it is left rushing through other legislation, such as Bill C-46, to try to head off a huge problem. The huge problem of the Liberals, once again, is their failure to keep their promises. Therefore, we are being asked to rush through legislation for no other reason than to enable the government to meet its deadline of Canada Day 2018. It has been my experience, whether making dinner or in making legislation, that rushing only ends in mistakes and poor results. There are aspects of this bill, Bill C-46, and also Bill C-45 for that matter, that will likely end up before the courts because a charge or conviction will be challenged.

What happens if we pass these changes and legalize marijuana and then parts of this law are struck down? We will not be able to turn back the clock at that point because marijuana use will already be rampant.

Being ready for the legalization of marijuana is a huge issue, in particular for law enforcement. There are thousands of police officers who will require specialized training on all of the anticipated legal changes. However, they do not have the time to complete this before Canada Day.

Also before the health committee this year, Deputy Chief Mike Serr, speaking on behalf of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, said:

In order to support the successful implementation of this comprehensive legislation, the CACP urges the Government of Canada to first consider extending the July 2018 commencement date to allow police services to obtain sufficient resources and proper training, both of which are critical to the successful implementation of the proposed cannabis act.

We need to remember that training takes both time and money, and law enforcement has clearly indicated that they do not have enough of either.

Sure, that government has announced that it has committed funding for training, but it is not enough and we only have 249 days to get it all done. In fact, departments cannot even put together training manuals for the police yet, as the laws to legalize marijuana have not even been made clear. Moreover, the bill still has to go the other side, to the red chamber, and how long could that take?

Just to give the House an idea of the monumental task of training thousands of police officers, deputy Chief Mark Chatterbok also said:

The International Association of Chiefs of Police website lists the process for certification for DRE training.

That is drug recognition expert training. The deputy chief continued:

Everyone who's involved in the program first has to first take the standardized field sobriety training before they attend the DRE program. Then the program itself consists of three phases. The first phase is a two-day preschool. The second phase is a seven-day classroom program with a comprehensive exam following that. Then between 60 and 90 days following phase two, the candidates attend a program in the U.S. where they have to evaluate subjects who are suspected of being impaired by drugs. My understanding is that they must participate in at least 12 evaluations successfully in order to then get the certification.

This training is going to take a long time to complete, and there is no way it will be done on time by Canada Day.

This brings me to my next point, one that was raised by almost every single witness at committee. In fact, there was a strong consensus on this issue amongst all parties as well, and that is public education. It has not gone unnoticed that we are spending a great deal of time and money to legalize marijuana, but we have not embarked on a public education campaign to educate Canadians, especially our youth.

We know that marijuana use by youth is higher in Canada than anywhere else in the world, and we know there is the strong likelihood of increased drug-impaired driving after legalization. We also know that early use, before the age of 25, has negative impacts on human brain development. In fact, the Canadian Medical Association, CMA, which represents 83,000 physicians, said that the age of legalization should ideally be 25 years of age. It says:

Existing evidence on marijuana points to the importance of protecting the brain during its development. Since that development is only finalized by about 25 years of age, this would be an ideal minimum age based on currently accepted scientific evidence....

We know that marijuana use by youth can facilitate the onset of schizophrenia and other psychotic conditions in certain people. Complications include cognitive impairment, social isolation, and even suicide. Just this month at the World Psychiatric Association's World Congress in Berlin, we were presented with further evidence of that.

Knowing all of this, and knowing the rush this Liberal government is in to legalize marijuana, why are we putting off a public education plan? We know that for a message to sink in, it must be repeated over the long term, yet we are looking at a last-minute public education plans. A last-minute public education plan will not get the message across in time. I do applaud MADD Canada, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, who have taken an early and proactive lead in public education about drug-impaired driving. However, more needs to be done in this area.

To close I would like to reiterate and summarize my main points of concern. While I support a strong stand against impaired driving, I also believe that we need to look at the bigger picture. We need to recognize that we are not ready for marijuana legalization in Canada. We have not educated Canadians adequately on marijuana and its effects. We have not educated Canadians, especially our young, on drug-impaired driving. Neither have we provided our police with adequate time to prepare for all of these changes. We do not have accurate drug detection equipment. We do not have enough trained, front-line officers to handle drug impairment.

In short, we are not—

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

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House to speak against Bill C-46, an act to amend the Criminal Code, regarding offences relating to conveyances, and to make consequential amendments to other acts, also known as the impaired driving legislation. This bill is the accompanying legislation to Bill C-45, the cannabis act, with which I am extremely familiar.

In essence, Bill C-46 seeks to create new and higher mandatory fines and maximum penalties for impaired driving, as well as authorize mandatory roadside screening for alcohol. Although I am entirely in favour of higher penalties for those driving while impaired, as this sends a strong message that impaired driving will not be tolerated, I have extreme concerns about this bill.

Similar to members of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, I and my fellow members of the Standing Committee on Health sat through an entire week of testimony on the subject of marijuana and how the proposed legalization might affect our society. Nearly every witness who spoke before the committee stressed the need to be prepared well ahead of the date of the legalization, which in our case is the arbitrary date of July 1, 2018. Witnesses highlighted Canada's lack of testing equipment, of drug-recognition experts, of training abilities, and simply of public education in this area.

Bills C-45 and C-46 are inextricably linked. It is crucial that we understand that the part of the bill on drug-impaired driving that we are discussing stems directly from Bill C-45. The overlap between these two bills is evident and although the government is still trying to deal with these two bills as separate and independent bills, that is not the case.

This morning, I would like to address numerous concerns that I have regarding the legislation, in an effort to once again remind the government just how far we are from being truly ready to deal with the consequences of legalizing marijuana in Canada.

Driving under the influence of alcohol or marijuana is one of the many causes of death in Canada. We have worked tirelessly for decades to reduce the number of drunk drivers on our roads with voluntary roadside checks, social programs, and many public education campaigns. However, that has not been the case for driving under the influence of marijuana.

Many studies have indicated that drivers who have used marijuana are more than twice as likely as other drivers to be involved in motor vehicle crashes. Fatal crashes involving drivers who recently used marijuana doubled in Washington after the state legalized the drug. Yes, that is right: they doubled from 8% to 17%. In Colorado, the increase in impaired drug driving due to the legalization of marijuana was a 32% increase at the start.

In terms of the statistics in Canada, if we look at traffic fatalities, we see we already have 16% caused by alcohol-impaired driving; another 24% were caused by drug-impaired driving, and most of that is marijuana; and then there is another 18% that is a combination of the two. That is the problem we have now. The government is rushing in 249 days to put in place the legalization of marijuana, when the police have clearly said they are not going to be ready. They are saying they need 2,000 people trained as drug recognition experts, and there are only 600 today. It is very costly to train them, and the training takes place in the U.S. The U.S. is backlogged because various states are busy legalizing. We are not going to have the trained officers we need.

Many colleagues today have talked about the testing. There is absolutely no test for impairment with marijuana. We can test for THC presence in the saliva and the blood, but that says nothing about whether people are impaired. This is really problematic because people who are on medical marijuana may have this residual in their system for days and days; people who were exposed to second-hand smoke may have it in their system; or people who may have smoked marijuana over the weekend and be driving 24 hours or more later and not be impaired might still have it in their system. It is really a problem that there is not a test in place. It will mean serious challenges to any offences charged under these new laws because there is no scientific way of telling whether somebody is impaired.

It is hugely hypocritical of the Liberal government to be introducing this bill and deciding to take alcohol limits from .08 down to .05, to be more stringent, when it is opening the barn door wide to allow people to drive impaired with marijuana without a test. Now, there is discussion of the per se limits, but of course those limits do not speak anything to impairment. We may have to take a pragmatic view and say that we are going to do what some other jurisdictions did and go with zero per se limit: if someone has any level at all, they must not drive. Then again, that will impact many people who are not impaired but who have THC in their system. The government needs to quit rushing this legislation and concentrate on developing the science.

Every testimonial we heard at committee talked about the importance of having a public education campaign in place before the legalization. They want a campaign similar to what MADD did, trying to educate people about not driving drunk. That kind of campaign needs to happen before legalization. We need to have a campaign on other things as well, such as stopping smoking and about how marijuana smoking is bad for us. However, especially with respect to Bill C-46, we need to have that education in place. The fact is that the government, Health Canada, did not even send out the RFP with bids coming back. Bids were due last week, October 16. The program is just being created and it has not started to roll out.

We have been warned and warned by these other jurisdictions that this will be a danger to public safety, and so we need to look at that.

As well, we talk about the recommendations that came forward from committee.

Ms. McLellan, chair of the Liberal task force, recommended giving researchers additional time to develop effective and reliable testing tools.

The fact that the Liberal government is ignoring that advice is shocking. It has no regard whatsoever for Canadians' health and safety. In that same report, the task force also highlighted comments from Washington and Colorado about the importance of implementing education campaigns well ahead of legalization.

The degree of impairment can vary widely depending on the potency of the marijuana used and the driver's frequency of use. This bill sets no limits on those parameters and fails to properly prepare our law enforcement officials for their role. We have only 249 days to go. We need to educate Canadian society as a whole about the dangers of drug-impaired driving.

The deadline imposed by the government is unrealistic and puts Canadians' health at risk. Canadians need to understand the risks of drug-impaired driving before we move forward with this bill. There are just too many unanswered questions, which makes me doubt whether the government is capable of enforcing this law safely or effectively.

With flawed legalization and the flawed drug impaired driving framework proposed, I join my voice to those of my colleagues in calling for the Liberal government to rethink its deadline of July 1, 2018, and to do everything in its power to ensure the health and safety of all Canadians, especially on our roadways.

In summary, we see we are rushing ahead with an arbitrary deadline when the police have said they are not ready, we do not have testing in place, we know the rates of impaired drug driving will likely increase and potentially double, and we know that 88% of Canadians do not smoke marijuana. These are the people who will experience these unintended effects, these tragic affects, so I call on the government to please reconsider and not rush toward this arbitrary date.

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

Madam Speaker, I am happy to speak to Bill C-46 today, a bill that would change the Criminal Code in relation to offences related to driving under the influence of alcohol, marijuana, and other drugs. The bill is essentially paired with Bill C-45, a bill that would legalize marijuana, so it is safe to say that it is meant to provide some comfort to Canadians concerned about the dangers of driving under the influence of marijuana or THC as much as it is about alcohol impairment.

The NDP clearly stands for deterrence to driving while impaired. Canada has a terrible record of deaths and injuries related to impaired driving. About 1,000 Canadians are killed each year in traffic accidents involving impaired driving.

Others have spoken eloquently on that aspect of the bill, but what I want to spend most of my time here today talking about are the concerns about the difficulty of testing, in any meaningful way, for impairment by marijuana.

I sat on the justice committee for one of the meetings set aside to consider Bill C-46, and we heard very interesting and compelling testimony about roadside testing for marijuana. We are all used to the concept of testing for alcohol levels through roadside breath tests. These tests produce results that accurately measure blood alcohol levels. Blood alcohol levels rise and fall in a predictable manner that relates closely to impairment. We can therefore deduce impairment from alcohol blood levels, and we do that in roadside tests every day across the country. We have per se limits for alcohol impairment, usually .08% or .05% blood alcohol.

The psychoactive ingredient in marijuana is THC, and it acts in a very different physiological way than does alcohol. Unlike what happens when drinking alcohol, THC levels rise very quickly in the blood when marijuana is smoked, and while those initial levels are high, the person may not be significantly impaired, because the effects of THC occur when the THC leaves the blood and binds to fatty tissues in the brain. THC binds to fatty tissues so strongly that blood levels generally drop very rapidly. When impairment levels are high, THC levels in the blood are usually very low, so THC levels in the blood do not necessarily relate at all to the level of impairment.

Impairment also differs significantly between alcohol and THC. Alcohol impairment involves a loss of motor control, hence the famous tests such as walking a straight line or standing on one leg. THC impairment affects faculties such as reaction time rather than motor control. People impaired by THC will often report that they know they are impaired, so some are more likely to decide not to drive, or they will drive more slowly. Alcohol impairment has essentially the opposite effect, so drunks drive more recklessly. I do not want to suggest that people under the influence of marijuana are safe drivers, just that we have to test for impairment in a very different way.

At committee we also heard from a toxicology expert that we can back extrapolate from a blood alcohol level measured at some time after an incident to assess the level that would have existed at the time of that incident. We cannot do that for THC. If a driver involved in an accident was found to have some level of THC some hours after the fact, we could not, with any scientific certainty at all, know what the THC level was at the time of the accident. Even if the level was tested at the time of the accident, we would have no way of relating the THC level with impairment.

Dr. Thomas Marcotte, an expert in testing for THC and impairment, from the University of California, San Diego, gave extensive testimony on these difficulties. He and his colleagues have found no way to usefully match THC levels with impairment. He and others have found that it is not only difficult to relate THC blood levels to impairment but that regular users of marijuana will have chronic low levels of THC in their blood, with no impairment at all. This is extremely problematic for the task of finding a meaningful way to test for THC impairment on the roadside.

We are making it legal for Canadians to use marijuana. Indeed, it is already legal for users of medical cannabis. If some of these law-abiding Canadians have chronic low levels of THC in their blood, and we use some per se limit of THC as a surrogate for impairment, then we are essentially saying that yes, people can legally use marijuana or medical cannabis, but they can never drive again or they could be charged with impaired driving, despite not being impaired.

Also at committee we heard from two witnesses from Australian police forces. Australia has used extensive roadside testing for alcohol and drugs, which others have mentioned in this debate. Much of this testing is through what they call “booze buses”, which process hundreds of thousands of Australians annually. They literally close off highways and test everyone for alcohol levels, while a smaller sample are screened for drugs.

Australian police also carry out so-called random testing at their own discretion, usually in neighbourhoods they feel need scrutiny. It is this type of testing the NDP has great concerns about, as it is clearly open to racial profiling. My colleague for Victoria on Friday covered some of these concerns very well in his speech, so I will leave this point, but I am sure members will hear more about it from my colleagues later today. However, one of the serious issues with Bill C-46 is that it undermines the present system of testing only after reasonable suspicion of impairment.

The Australian police also testified about the test they use for THC. These tests are expensive: about $30 for the preliminary test and ten times more for a secondary test given to those who score positive. Anyone found with any level of THC is charged with impaired driving and has a licence suspension. Now, this works in a jurisdiction such as Australia, where marijuana is illegal. However, as we have heard from experts at committee, people who use marijuana regularly, and there are many across Canada, including thousands who use cannabis for medical reasons, will have chronic levels of THC in their blood. If they lived in Australia, they would not be able to drive at all for fear of being charged for impaired driving, even when they were not impaired, and even if they had not used marijuana for many hours or even days.

How do we test for marijuana impairment? As I mentioned before, THC impairment presents as a slowing of reaction time and other similar faculties, but not a loss of motor control. Dr. Marcotte testified that he and others were working on developing iPad-based tests that would test for these abilities. However, we hear from the government side in this debate that its members are confident that meaningful roadside mouth-swab tests will somehow be developed in the next few months, despite expert testimony that any test measuring THC will be meaningless as a measure of impairment. If we use the Australian model, we will be criminalizing marijuana users who have chronic levels of THC in their blood, even though they have not used marijuana that day and are in no way impaired. We need a better solution to this problem.

On July 1 next year, Canadians will be able to use marijuana legally, and many will be using and driving. We need a system that tests for impairment from marijuana, not for meaningless THC levels.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Madam Speaker, again, there is no July 1 date. There was never any desire to put this on Canada Day. I do not think that is actually correct. As well, we were not studying Bill C-45; we were studying Bill C-46.

The police brought before our committee were asked questions. We asked multiple police organizations whether they could be ready. Most of them said that they could be, but they needed money and resources for testing. The government has indeed put in place an amount of $161 million for training front-line officers to recognize signs and symptoms of drug-impaired driving. Provinces and territories will be getting another $81 million over the next five years for new law enforcement training. I believe that people can be ready.

What I am concerned about, and of course, the hon. member for Sarnia—Lambton was not at committee, is that nobody was able to tell the committee that there had been an increase in deaths or fatalities, or even impairment accidents, in jurisdictions where marijuana was legalized. We spoke to police from those jurisdictions, and we did not get that feedback. Again, I think we all have that concern, and we all want to make sure the police are ready.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Mr. Speaker, we are debating something that is very important and that really has an impact on the lives of Canadians, namely, impaired driving.

What is concerning to me first is that this is being partnered with Bill C-45. The government's attitude is, let us legalize marijuana and then talk about impaired driving. Clearly, the government members know that when legalization of marijuana occurs, we are going to have more impaired drivers on the road. Although I know it is an important discussion and that we need to have better laws for impaired driving, it is very upsetting and concerning that the bill is being rushed through in partnership with another bill that would increase impairment.

Members of the House come from all sorts of legal backgrounds. We have heard some dry facts, but almost everyone in this House has been touched in his or her life by impaired driving. I just want to put some personal perspective on this before I get into some of the details of the legislation, some areas that could be improved and some areas of concern.

I worked in a rural emergency health centre and clearly remember being on call one night and getting called into the health centre. There had been a single father and his young four-year-old daughter on a motorcycle. He had pulled over to the side of the road to make some adjustments, and then an impaired driver, in this particular case a drug-impaired driver, had struck the motorcycle. The vehicle had careened off the road and struck the motorcycle, killing the dad and leaving the daughter standing on the side of the road. At that point the impaired driver took off, and then, many miles farther on, went into a ditch. I was called in to deal with a deceased young dad and a four-year-old girl who had lost her father and had been left at the side of the road for a long time beside the body of her father before someone had passed by and called an ambulance. This is what we are talking about. This is about young girls losing their fathers. It is about mothers and sons. It is about family members and friends. Everyone is affected by this, so we have to be very serious and careful with this legislation.

This brings me to my first disappointment. The amendment that my colleague suggested was for a mandatory minimum sentence when impaired driving causes death. The member was not calling for life imprisonment or 30 years. The member suggested that an appropriate mandatory minimum sentence would be five years. If we lose a relative because someone chooses to take a substance and drive impaired, causing a death, the member sees a five-year mandatory minimum sentence as being perfectly appropriate. In our system, we also have to remember that this does not mean the individual would spend five years in jail. It means that in perhaps two or three years, that person would resume his life. It is a huge disappointment. It is so wrong, and it fails the sensibilities of so many Canadians who wonder how we could say that a five-year mandatory minimum sentence for impaired driving causing death is appropriate. That really is a failure.

As has been noted, impaired driving causing death is one of the leading criminal causes of death in Canada. These are not statistics that we should be proud of. As we look at other comparable countries, Canada's statistics are not very good. Again, I have to say that we already have statistics that are very concerning, and now we have two partner pieces of legislation that will inevitably increase our concerns in those terms.

There are three specific issues that point to the rushed state of this legislation. By Canada Day in 2018, the Liberal government wants Canadians to be able to celebrate by getting high on marijuana. Perhaps the Liberals believe it will help the fireworks look a little brighter; I do not know.

They are in a rush and have Canada Day as their target, which to me is a bit appalling. In their rush to deal with Bill C-45, the legalization of marijuana, they are rushing Bill C-46 without the proper due diligence in three areas: testing ability and levels, training and resources, and education.

We have talked a lot about testing levels. The presence of something like THC in someone does not actually measure impairment. I have heard the argument that we are just measuring levels, and impairment does not matter. I would argue that with alcohol, we tend to know that .08 is a level that is consistent with impairment in most individuals, whereas with THC, there is a much bigger disconnect. The association of police chiefs agrees with that.

The Canadian Society of Forensic Science, which has been tasked by the federal government, has suggested it is a controversial exercise to set a limit and that “there is not currently substantive and consistent scientific evidence upon which to base [those] limits.” These are the experts who have some concerns about the ability of a roadside device to test limits and to test impairment, which again is a bit of an issue.

The next area of concern is the police officers who will be asked to move forward with this legislation. I think there are about 65,000 police officers in Canada. They will all require training. From everything I understand, the witnesses who testified at committee indicated very clearly that they will not be able to have all our officers trained, nor do they have the resources to do so, by this arbitrary Canada Day 2018 date that has been set by the government.

The other area of particular concern is that everyone agrees on the importance of an education campaign. They talk about $2 million. Where is that campaign? If they are going for 2018, that is not a lot of months. It takes a long time. Anyone in the public health field knows that to penetrate and actually effect change, we need a public health approach that has had time to actually penetrate the consciousness of Canadians. I am not seeing anything. Perhaps I could be challenged on that. I would love to be challenged on that. However, if I am not seeing anything, and I tend to look at what is happening in the area, we can bet that nothing has penetrated the consciousness of the 20-year-olds, the 17-year-olds, the new drivers, and the 22-year-olds in terms of the new regulations and limits. The government is severely lacking in terms of any education or public health campaign.

Tackling impairment in a more robust way is an important thing to do. However, what is the rush? Let us get Bill C-45 right. Let us make sure we get the proper training done. Let us make sure things are in order. If they have to wait another bit of time to get Bill C-45 through, so be it, but what we will be doing is protecting the health and safety of Canadians.

Motions in Amendment

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to have this opportunity to say a few words with respect to Bill C-46, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (offences relating to conveyances) and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.

Some of the areas I am going to address today have already been raised. The parliamentary secretary was just talking about one of these areas because the question was raised by a number of my colleagues. It was about measuring the level of impairment that people have. This is just one of the issues we are going to have to deal with. Part of the problem is the government's intention to ram this legislation through by July 1, 2018. In my opinion, the Liberals are not taking into consideration the increased risks to the health and safety of Canada.

The Liberals may say that this is a wonderful thing on Canada's birthday. What better way to celebrate it, they would argue, than legalizing marijuana and allowing grow-ops in people's homes? However, we heard quite a bit of testimony that there are concerns with respect to the government's pushing through both of these pieces of legislation, Bill C-45 and Bill C-46. They go together.

For instance, the Canadian police services have asked that this legislation be delayed until there is adequate training and resources put in place. The parliamentary secretary said they are going to be up and ready to go and that we do not have to worry about all the tests and everything else, but those on the front line are quite concerned. The Liberal government, in addition, has not taken the necessary steps to put in effective educational campaigns for Canadians, despite statistics that show the increase in fatalities due to drug-impaired driving. There is no greater risk that a person can have, among many things, than to get killed by impaired driving. This is one of the huge problems that this country has faced. Mandatory roadside testing and the vast number of officers who remain insufficiently trained to detect impaired drivers is another issue that is not being addressed by the government.

In addition, the government has refused to mandate the proper storage of cannabis in homes. The growing concern among jurisdictions where marijuana is already legal is that it is drawing more organized crime to operate the grow-ops and produce pot for illicit markets. This is one of the things that people told me when I was justice minister. They said that pot is the currency for guns and harder drugs coming into this country. They said that a lot of criminals do not send cheques anymore; the marijuana grown in Canada is what criminals use to buy illegal drugs and guns that come into Canada. This was completely unaddressed by the government, and I would suggest it has been ignored; it does not even play into this. My concern is that this will increase the possibility of danger that exists when we get illegal drugs and guns into this country.

Police services from across this country were very clear that the government should delay the legalization of marijuana to allow law enforcement services the adequate time they need to handle this new law. There is no chance, in my opinion, that police will be ready; I think they have it right. However, the Liberals are hell-bent on ramming this legislation through. They are not heeding those warnings from law enforcement officials. In my opinion, this puts a greater risk on the health and safety of Canadians.

The National Association of Chiefs of Police estimates that there are at least 2,000 trained officers. In July 2017, the numbers indicated that there are only 600 trained recognition experts here. They are not even close to having the number they need. Susan MacAskill, from Mothers Against Drunk Drivers, reiterated that the Breathalyzer will not detect drugs and that marijuana can be detected through a roadside saliva test. She said that it would cost $17,000 to train one person to be a drug recognition expert, and the government needs to make sure that those resources are in place to allow the training of 1,200 more officers that will be needed by the deadline.

She went on to say, “If every officer can have that (disposable saliva test) in their vehicle it will certainly have a positive impact on road safety.” Unfortunately, the Liberals have not been listening to their own experts. They have been unrealistic on what is taking place.

Again, a couple of my colleagues highlighted how difficult it would be. That is one of the things I point out for my colleague who sits on the justice committee. We heard time and again different amounts, how much marijuana, how long it would be in someone's system, what the combination between that and alcohol would be. Again, it is very problematic and I would urge the government not to push forward with the July 1 deadline.

The provincial premiers have warned the government that they may not be ready with provincial laws and regulations. Their fears are not without reason. After Washington State legalized marijuana, the death toll on its highways doubled and the fatal vehicle crashes on Colorado highways tripled. Equally concerning is that the Liberals have not launched an extensive marijuana and impaired driving education and awareness program as recommended by their own task force. It is easy to say that they ignored it because the Conservatives told them they should do it, but their own task force told them what to do.

The Canadian Automobile Association supports the findings. Jeff Walker, CAA vice-president, is quoted as saying, “It's clear from the report that work needs to start immediately in these areas, and that the actual legalization should not be rushed.” The task force also concluded that youth underestimated the risk of cannabis use. We heard this on a number of occasions, that some young people believed their ability to drive a car would be enhanced by smoking marijuana.

There are problems with the government moving forward on this. The government continuously says that it is concerned about the access to children, yet the age limits in the legislation are completely at odds with that. I ask my colleagues on the other side to consider this. What could be more accessible for young people to get marijuana if their parents have a small grow op in the kitchen? We urged the Liberals to make changes on that, and they did. They said that three foot plants would not be enough so it increased the height of them. How will this help our children?

This will be problematic for the people who have become victimized by impaired driving. We brought forward amendments to increase the penalties for those people who drove while impaired and killed someone. They should have to face up to the consequences of what they have done. Again, the Liberals have ignored that.

Just because the Conservatives have said there will be big problems with that, they will not listen. I understand we are in opposition and they do not have to listen to us. However, they should listen to police forces across the country. They should listen to our provincial counterparts and those who are concerned about impaired driving. They should listen to them for a change. I think Liberals will come to the right conclusion that for the bill should not be pushed forward by July 1of next year.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Before I present, I apologize to the committee members, but I need to put it on the record that every time I am forced to be before a parliamentary committee, I am here under duress. This committee passed a motion that requires me to be here if I want to put forward amendments at this stage. Otherwise, but for the motion of this committee, I would have had rights to put forward these amendments at report stage.

Since report stage happens only once in the chamber, you don't have the conflict that I had just the week before Thanksgiving, when both Bill C-45 and Bill C-49 went to clause-by-clause consideration at the same time, and because of the motions passed in those committees, I had to present amendments at the same time.

I would particularly urge this committee, as the committee on procedure and House affairs, that this is the committee that should have determined whether my rights as an MP needed to be curtailed at report stage. Under the former prime minister, the PMO basically did an end run around PROC to change the way legislation is treated in the House, by passing identical motions committee to committee requiring members of Parliament in parties with fewer than 12 MPs, or independents, to bring their motions to committee with 48 hours' notice. This is to create a fake “opportunity” that denies me my rights at report stage.

That's the context in which I tell you that I am here under duress. I know a lot of you are unfamiliar with this situation, even though the committee passed this motion. You probably thought it was a friendly thing, a nice thing, but it has probably taken years off my life to try to get to every committee at clause-by-clause consideration, instead of having the rights I would otherwise have at report stage. It's particularly offensive to PROC. If you were, for instance, to repeal your own committee motion, I'd find that extremely helpful.

I'll be very brief. I understand that the conflict occurs with the Liberal amendment, which deals with lines 34 to 36 on page 6. So does mine.

PV-2 stands for Parti vert-2, because the clerks of the committees decided not to call my motions “Green Party” because then they would look like government motions, with a “G”. That's why it's Parti vert-2.

Parti vert-2 is in conflict with paragraph (b) of David's amendment. What I am trying to do with my amendment is ensure that it's not precluded that the reporting take place during an election. If you go to the bill, you see that I basically change the language. Where it says, “Subsections (1) to (6) do not apply in respect of a regulated fundraising event”, my amendment, Parti vert-2, would change the words “do not apply” to “continue to apply”, so that the fundraising rules within this legislation would apply during the writ period.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Marijuana

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

The second petition, Mr. Speaker, is the first one that I have presented on this particular topic. The petitioners note that Bill C-45, the bill that will legalize the use of cannabis, contains nothing that deals with the environmental impact of cannabis production. We have found that producing cannabis indoors has a tremendous energy and water demand.

The petitioners call on the House to ensure that standards of practice for the cannabis industry are mindful of the commitment to sustainability.

Justice

[Jody Wilson-Raybould, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, as I said many times, the Prime Minister is asking to do a broad review of the criminal justice system. I am undertaking that in partnership with the provinces and territories. Review of mandatory minimum penalties in the Criminal Code is a substantive part of that review.

I hope to bring forward changes in the near future with respect to impaired driving. We are doing everything we can to ensure safety on our roads. That is why we introduced substantive legislation by way of Bill C-45, to ensure that we have as much safety on our roads and to ensure that people do not get behind the wheel of their car and drive with alcohol or drugs.

Health

[Bill Casey, Liberal, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Mr. Speaker, it is my distinct honour to present, in both official languages, the 12th report of the Standing Committee on Health in relation to Bill C-45, an act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other acts. The committee has studied the bill and has decided to report the bill back to the House with amendments.

I want to commend all the members of the committee for their contribution to this study. We did a marathon session. We had 109 witnesses and we did a lot of work. The amendments provide for two more steps, one in one year, and one in three years. It is an improvement. I want to thank all the members of the committee for their good work.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

I've discussed it with the legislative clerk. There could be occasions where it would fall in the department's regular operations so I think that's okay. I'll rule that's okay after discussion.

We'll put your other proposal to Mr. Julian, in terms of whether that's friendly or not.

I would note that I think they did a three-year review in Bill C-45.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Is there a connection to Bill C-45 in this discussion?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Thank you very much. Certainly, your proposal reflects some of the testimony we had. As the House of Commons Procedure and Practice, Second Edition, states, on pages 766 and 767:

An amendment is inadmissible if it proposes to amend a statute that is not before the committee or a section of the parent act unless the latter is specifically amended by the clause of the Bill.

Since section 4 of the Criminal Records Act is not being amended by Bill C-45, it is therefore, the opinion of the chair that the amendment is inadmissible. I'm ruling it inadmissible and we have to move along.

(Clauses 165 to 170 inclusive agreed to)

(On clause 171)

That brings us to LIB-18.

Go ahead, Mr. Eyolfson.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

As I said, I'll speak to them together. This would amend the Non-smokers’ Health Act to include outdoor workspaces on federal properties. This would include a restriction on smoking outside federal buildings, in national parks, and on federal lands.

This amendment would help to achieve the public health intent in Bill C-45 by allowing the Minister of Labour and Minister of Transport to regulate cannabis smoke in all federal workplaces both indoor and outdoor.

[Carole Morency]

I don't recall responding to that question. I think the question might have been put to the Minister of Justice. My recollection of how she would have answered that is to the effect that certainly, as you're saying, the provinces and territories would have the ability to enact legislation within their areas of responsibility to deal with different aspects of what Bill C-45 proposes to address.

I think the minister spoke, too, with respect to the issue of indigenous communities, in that they derive their authority from a number of sources, whether that's the Indian Act, self-government agreements, or section 35 of the Constitution, so there isn't a blanket answer on that, but discussions are continuing with indigenous communities as to how to implement these measures moving forward.

[Carole Morency, Director General and Senior General Counsel, Criminal Law Policy Section, Department of Justice]

To the point of Bill C-45 reflecting what the Supreme Court has said, if a person is unable to pay a fine, they cannot be imprisoned for their inability to pay through no fault of their own. As my colleague has said, the starting point is that the court has to first determine whether there is an ability to pay a fine, before it can impose a fine. It must then determine the amount of the fine. Bill C-45 provides a maximum limit on that. Alternatively, once a fine is imposed, whatever the amount is, if there is a fine option program in the province, it is possible for an individual to work towards discharging that fine through the work credit.

One thing that is perhaps causing a bit of confusion is that between the first part of the ticket process—an individual issued a ticket chooses to pay or to challenge the ticket—and the second part of the process, which I think Mr. Davies was dealing with—if the individual challenges the ticket and goes through a court process, the court makes determinations as to whether an offence has been committed, and if so, the penalty to be imposed in that situation. If the individual is acquitted, there's no need to protect the record. If there is a conviction entered, then once it's paid or however it's dealt with in accordance with whatever the court imposes for the fine, that part is protected as well under the provision at clause 54 in terms of the judicial record of conviction.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

I respect Mr. Davies' passion, but like Mr. Trudeau said, we are strictly regulating it. We want to protect our kids. One purpose of Bill C-45 is to deter illicit cannabis activity through the right sanctions, too. We really want to protect our kids and that's why we're strictly regulating it.

Thank you.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Thank you.

My next question, which is for the representatives of the Canada Border Services Agency, will apply if Bill C-45 is passed and becomes law.

How will CBSA officials deal with cases where they find marijuana among the goods Canadian travellers are taking with them abroad?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

It states, “That Bill C-45, in clause 9, be amended by deleting lines 4 to 15 on page 9.”

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

That is what I recollect, other than one person who apparently jumped off a bridge or something, and it was claimed that had to do with it.

Mr. McKinnon, I just want to clarify the result of the legislation that Parliament passed, the so-called good Samaritan bill. Are you saying that by bringing in Bill C-45, the protection of the good Samaritan bill would no longer apply to someone who was in illegal public possession of more than 30 grams of cannabis? Is that why it's necessary to put it in this bill?

My question is why they wouldn't have the protection of the good Samaritan legislation. I think Dr. Eyolfson was getting at it with the schedule, but could you explain that?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

The way I want to introduce this is this legislation has a number of sections that still retain a criminalized approach to cannabis with quite heavy criminal penalties and heavy jail sentences possible, in fact, up to 14 years. I've pointed out before that 14-year maximum sentences are similar to those for producing child pornography or leaving Canada to commit acts of terrorism. Yet a 20-year-old, according to this bill, could sell cannabis to a 17-year-old and potentially face a 14-year sentence.

From a broad philosophical point of view, I agree with the government in their general approach to legalized cannabis. I just want to point out that by retaining a prohibitionist model and retaining criminal sanctions for a whole host of offences around cannabis, you're not legalizing cannabis.

What I propose here, Mr. Chair, is I'm going to have three different types of amendments so that every time a section comes up that has a jail term criminal sanction to it, I will move amendments 1, 2, and 3.

The first type of motion I will move, and that's what I'll move here first, is to replace the criminal framework with monetary penalties modelled on the Tobacco Act. It still will retain the ability to impose a criminal sentence on the most severe or most repetitive type of commission of an offence, just like it does under the Tobacco Act or under the Excise Act, but it generally more faithfully makes this legislation change a criminalized approach to cannabis to one that is more regulatory.

The criminal framework created by this bill is inconsistent with a rational and evidence-based criminal justice policy, and I think will only serve to reduce the positive impacts of cannabis legalization. The penalties contained in Bill C-45 are drastically out of proportion with those currently applied to alcohol and tobacco offences, and I think cannabis legalization should take a regulatory approach with significant fines for offences rather than a criminal one. Again, one of the purposes of Bill C-45 as laid out in clause 7 is to reduce the burden on the criminal justice system in relation to cannabis, so penalties in the bill, I think, should be consistent with that stated intent.

I will point out, as well, that a maximum penalty of 14 years' imprisonment eliminates a judge's discretion to impose a conditional sentence. We heard evidence that current sentencing ranges for cannabis offences under prohibition are far shorter than the lengths proposed under legalization in Bill C-45.

The Canadian Bar Association said:

At present, sentences for cannabis offences are not near the length proposed in Bill C-45, as even large scale operations do not generally attract 14 year sentences. While some criminal sanctions might be appropriate for an offender distributing a large quantity of illicit cannabis, that will be the exception in a legalization regime. If cannabis is to be treated like tobacco or alcohol, penalties available should reflect those regimes. ... For tobacco, section 220 allows a person to grow up to 15 kg of tobacco for personal use, with the same allowance for other adults on the farm or premises. Selling without a license brings a fine and, for default in paying the fine, up to twelve months imprisonment. The same is true for violating section 220. Offences for selling without paying duties carry penalties on indictment of up to five years and on summary conviction up to two years.

John Conroy said that all indictable offences should be abolished, leaving only summary conviction offences and a maximum of two years less a day imprisonment for serious matters. He said there should be no imprisonment available for cannabis offences and the focus should be on monetary penalties for infractions and violations. Mr. Conroy said that having this “maximum of 14 years, hybridized by indictment, and so on, is frankly totally unrealistic in terms of what goes on on the ground.”

Even in the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal, which is not known to be the most liberal court in the country, the range for trafficking, for example, is 12 to 18 months. Most sentences are up to two years. The conditional sentence order is the last step before having to put you actually in prison, and a 14-year maximum, because of the 2012 amendments, prevents a judge from doing that.

Kirk Tousaw said:

These criminal restrictions are decidedly unlike the way our country regulates alcohol. At this moment in Canada a 19-year-old can walk into a liquor store and purchase enough alcohol to kill that person and all that person's friends and acquaintances. Similarly there are virtually no restrictions on individual Canadians' rights to brew beer or make wine for individual consumption. Given that reality, it's ludicrous, or to put it in legal terms, arbitrary, overbroad, and grossly disproportionate to allow Canadians to be arrested and caged for simply possessing an amount of cannabis or dealing with it in an illicit manner. There is no empirically, morally, or legally sound reason why cannabis should be treated more strictly than alcohol.

Finally, Michael Spratt said that Bill C-45 is an “unnecessarily complex piece of legislation that leaves intact the criminalization of marijuana in too many circumstances.“

He goes over the fact that:

An adult who possesses more than 30 grams of marijuana in public is a criminal. A youth who possesses more than five grams of marijuana is a criminal. An 18-year-old who passes a joint to his 17-year-old friend is a criminal. An adult who grows five marijuana plants or possesses a plant 101 centimetres tall is a criminal. And anyone who possesses non-government-approved marijuana is a criminal. This continued criminalization is inconsistent with a rational and evidence-based criminal justice policy and will only serve to reduce some of the positive effects of Bill C-45.

In conclusion, Mr. Chair, my first range of amendments, and the one that will be put before my colleagues first, is to remove the jail sentences and replace them with monetary fines in this clause. As you'll see, if this is defeated, the second type of amendment will reduce the 14-year maximum sentences to two years less a day. It will retain the criminal and penal sanctions but it will put the sentencing into a more reasonable and, frankly, realistic sentencing range, which is the case in Canada today, and make all other offences summary convictions only and strike out the indictable offence sections. If that doesn't pass, my third motion is simply to reduce the 14-year maximum sentence, wherever you see it, with a nine-year sentence. That's because any offence in the Criminal Code that carries a maximum of 10 years or more does not qualify for a conditional sentence ordered by a judge, and we want to restore that discretion to a judge.

Mr. Chair, that's the explanation of all of these amendments. I'll move the first amendment now, which would remove the jail sentences and replace them with monetary fines.

Thank you for your indulgence, Mr. Chair.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Mr. Chair, I have a motion which concerns the issue at hand, and as such, I believe it's admissible. I wonder if you would hear me at this time.

When the Liberal government first introduced Bill C-45, it presented three central goals that this legislation would achieve. The bill would propose to protect youth; regulate and legalize a marijuana industry in order reduce to illicit activity; and reduce the burden on the judicial system. I'd like to make it clear that Bill C-45 would accomplish none of these goals.

This bill would allow youth to possess up to five grams of dried marijuana, and permit the growth and cultivation of marijuana in the home. I'm not in favour of criminalizing youth for the possession of marijuana; however, giving youth free rein to possess as of age 12 will cause immense mental and social harm to our younger generations. This would not protect our youth, and certainly not protect our kids.

This bill would also have little effect on the illicit markets, as it does not cover the entire scope of marijuana products, and it grows home grown. Home grow creates the ideal environment for organized crime to thrive in our communities. That many witnesses have stated Bill C-45 would reduce the size of the black market is simply naive.

Several witness stated that the criminal charges in Bill C-45 are, in fact, more severe than the status quo. This bill proposes that growing four plants is legal, but if you grow five, you are a criminal, or having a plant that is 99 centimetres tall is legal, but if it's 100 centimetres tall, you are a criminal.

With more severe charges, and with an increased number of smaller charges, often left up to the discretion of the officer, the number of judicial cases would only increase. In fact, witnesses clearly stated that this legislation would put even more pressure on our justice system. I attested to that at the last meeting. I was informed by my sons, who are also police officers.

This is a fundamentally flawed piece of legislation that would not protect our youth, would not eliminate organized crime, and would only increase the burden on both the judiciary and law enforcement officials in our country. With no education program in place, and with far less than a year to go until the arbitrary date of July 1, 2018, I, along with my Conservative colleagues, move that this bill proceed no further through the legislative process.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Welcome everyone. This is meeting 71 of the Standing Committee of Health. We're going to continue our study on Bill C-45, pursuant to the order of reference of Thursday, June 8, 2017.

There are a couple of little housekeeping things I want to cover. We're scheduled today to be here from 3:30 to 5:30, tomorrow from 9:00 until 6:00, Wednesday from 1:00 until 6:00, and Thursday from 9:00 until 6:00, if we haven't completed. There is a little glitch. We've asked for televised sessions, but we can't get a room for televised sessions for Thursday. We'll still try to get it, but we may not have a televised session.

As we go through the clause-by-clause consideration, we have agreed that we will have a five-minute limit per party to discuss proposed amendments. We have clocks here for each party. We'll make sure that everybody fits in that time appropriately.

There is one other issue. There are quite a few clauses that have no proposed amendments at the moment. I may try to group them together, but if anybody wants to talk about a particular clause, don't hesitate to raise it.

Mr. Kesteren.

Marijuana

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Madam Speaker, I would also like to present petition e-1053, which calls upon the House of Commons to revoke Bill C-45, the cannabis legislation.

The petitioners are deeply concerned about how the legalization of cannabis will affect Canadian youth. For example, the government's proposal that every household will be able to contain four marijuana plants will make the possession of cannabis by children incredibly difficult to control and make it harder to prevent distribution of this thought-impairing drug by criminals.

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I want to start with putting some facts on the record.

In a letter that comes from the Governor of Colorado and the Attorney General of Colorado to the Honorable Jeff Sessions, Attorney General of the United States, it was clear that in 2016 after the national survey on drug use and health, there was:

...no statistically significant change in marijuana use among Colorado's youth since 2007-08. In fact, the most recent report indicated that between 2013-14 and 2015-2016, the period in which adult-use marijuana businesses opened their doors, youth marijuana use declined by 12%.

Also there was no increase in use by adolescents of eighth, 10th, or 12th grades following legalization.

I also think it's important to note for Mr. Halsor—and this is for the record:

In the first six months of 2017, the number of drivers the Colorado State Patrol considered impaired by marijuana dropped 21 percent compared to the first six months of 2016.

The letter goes on to say that, while this is encouraging, they are going to continue to do their facts.

So, Mr. Halsor, you said that the number of people pulled over by police in Colorado increased in that period. The Attorney General and the Governor say otherwise, a 21% reduction. So I think it's important for us, if we're going to talk about data and facts, that we get our facts correct.

Dr. Kelsall, are you aware that in 2016 your journal published an article that said, very clearly, that public health experts urge realistic pot laws. They brought together 100 people from the Canadian Public Health Association. They asked the federal government to have some of the most restrictive legalization and regulatory frameworks in the world because, in their words, what we had been doing as a country for the last 40 years has not been working and we have the highest incidence of students and young people abusing cannabis. They urged us to have a system that would tightly control this and that wouldn't have the same kind of trade-offs that we had in the alcohol system.

I'll give you an example. I'm quoting the article from 2016:

Portugal’s National Drugs Coordinator Dr. João Castel-Branco Goulão noted that decriminalization of all drugs in 2001 allowed his country to refocus on harm prevention and addiction treatment, while freeing up police resources to hunt criminal “big sharks.”

We've stayed way off C-46 tonight and we're into C-45 territory. So let's have some C-46 territory tonight. Dr. Kelsall, do you think in this framework that we proposed with C-46, interlock devices will keep repeat offenders off the roads, and would that keep people more safe?

[Dr. Diane Kelsall]

The addition that I suggested was that I believe there is not a provision in the bill for a targeted campaign on driving. There is some money. There's a provision in Bill C-45. From what I understand the amount of money that has been set aside is not gigantic. I really believe that Bill C-46 should have a built-in, specific provision for a targeted campaign on driving.

[Dr. Diane Kelsall, Editor-in-Chief, Canadian Medical Association Journal]

Mr. Chair and distinguished members of the committee, thank you for the invitation to present to you this evening on Bill C-46. I'm a family physician and interim editor-in-chief of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, of CMAJ Open and the CMAJ Group.

Just to be clear at the outset, I do not represent the views of the Canadian Medical Association or Joule, the subsidiary that owns CMAJ. CMAJ and the other journals within the CMAJ Group are editorially independent from their ownership.

I'd also like to be clear that I am not an expert in cannabis or on its effects on driving. I know that tonight you've had access to expertise and some of my fellow witnesses obviously have that kind of expertise. But I will bring you the perspective of a journal editor and a physician, as someone who assesses evidence for a living.

The mission of CMAJ, Canada's leading medical journal, is to champion knowledge that matters for the health of Canadians and for the rest of the world. Our vision is best evidence, best practice, best health.

That is why I am concerned about the two pieces of legislation, Bill C-45 and Bill C-46, related to the legalization of cannabis, and why I wrote the CMAJ editorial, “Cannabis legislation fails to protect Canada’s youth,” that was published in May of this year. I've supplied you with copies. Ironically, I was in Amsterdam at the time it was published.

That so many Canadian young people and adults believe that cannabis is a benign substance is a failure. It is our failure, our failure of public education in this country. You see, we know that it's not a benign substance.

That many Canadian young people and adults believe that it is safe to drive under the influence of cannabis, some even believing that it improves their driving, is a failure. It's our failure, our failure of public education in this country. You see, we know that driving under the influence of cannabis is impaired driving.

That so many Canadian young people and adults use cannabis regularly is a failure, our failure, our failure of public education in this country. Yet we are about to embark on what I consider to be a national experiment, an experiment on our youth to see what happens when we legalize the use of marijuana.

That's why a bill, a bill like C-46, the focus of this committee, is needed as a corollary to the cannabis act to counteract the possible increased rates of driving under the influence of cannabis as seen in other jurisdictions at least initially after legalization.

You see, as a journal editor, I worry about the research papers that will likely be submitted to CMAJ over the next years, papers that include graphs showing a dotted line vertically indicating when the cannabis act came into effect and showing an increase in cannabis use, an increase in citations for impaired driving, increased mental health issues among our youth, and perhaps even an increase in deaths related to motor vehicle accidents. That keeps me up at night. That's why I am here.

You see, any increase in the use of cannabis and any increase in impaired driving, even the most modest, after its legalization means that the legislation will have failed. This will indicate that the use of cannabis and its inherent risks are not really a concern, and that users believe that they have nothing to worry about. It will make clear our already evident inability to have communicated the dangers of cannabis effectively to the people, to the youth of Canada.

We are simply not ready.

By legalizing cannabis we are sending a message to the youth of Canada that its use is fine, that it is safe, but that's not the message the Canadian public needs to hear. While the cannabis act includes some provision for public education, Bill C-46 has no such specific provision.

On September 20, Health Canada issued a tender for a public health campaign specifically targeting Canadian young people. According to the tender this campaign will be designed to ensure that Canadians, especially youth, are well informed about the health and safety risks of cannabis use and about current laws. That campaign is not scheduled to be launched until December. Yet the Government of Canada intends to legalize access to cannabis no later than July 2018. This doesn't compute.

So it's half a year to completely change the thinking on cannabis for many Canadians nationwide, to change the thinking of the tow-truck driver I saw smoking cannabis in his truck on Merivale a few weeks ago, to change the thinking of the kids I saw standing on Bank Street in front of the cannabis clinic as I walked here this evening.

How long did it take before rates of smoking tobacco in Canada decreased? Decades. What did it take? It took a multi-year, multi-faceted, targeted approach involving all levels of government, simply to begin to make inroads.

For these bills to be successful, rates of cannabis use and rates of impaired driving should decrease after legalization. But that's not likely to happen. More likely, it will be the opposite. We are simply not ready.

Therefore, I urge you to work with your colleagues across the parties to slow all this down. There is no meaningful reason to legalize the use of cannabis this quickly.

Before this government considers moving forward with the legalization of cannabis, we need a robust, evidence-based public education campaign focusing on the health risks of cannabis, and a requirement in Bill C-46 for a campaign focused on educating the public, specifically on its effects on driving. We need to see these campaigns work before cannabis is legalized.

Rates of cannabis use and rates of impaired driving should demonstrably be seen to be decreasing in Canada before legalization. How would we know they have decreased? These campaigns must be accompanied by robust research programs that will assess the results before the cannabis act goes through.

Let me reiterate. Before this government considers moving forward with legalizing cannabis, we need to see a meaningful decrease that is both statistically significant and clinically significant in rates of use of cannabis and impaired driving as a result of these campaigns, not click-through rates, not page views, not likes or other measures of engagement with the campaigns. Those are intermediate outcomes only, and may not translate into behavioural change.

Rather, we need to see meaningful decreases in the actual rates of use of cannabis and impaired driving before legalization. Then and only then will we have a modest hope that what I consider to be a national experiment in legalizing cannabis will not irredeemably harm the people of Canada, particularly our youth.

Thank you. I look forward to your questions.

[Kathy Thompson, Assistant Deputy Minister, Community Safety and Countering Crime Branch, Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Chairman and committee members, thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you today from a law enforcement and public safety perspective regarding Bill C-46.

As you know, my name is Kathy Thompson. I'm the assistant deputy minister at Public Safety Canada and I'm responsible for the drug file, principally. I'm joined today by my colleagues. We're here and we're pleased to answer any questions you may have with respect to Bill C-46 from our organization's perspective.

I recognize that you've already benefited from hearing from Minister Wilson-Raybould and Justice officials with respect to the bill. You've also heard from many other witnesses and stakeholders and we've been tracking that with interest.

Bill C-46 proposes specific enhanced measures to deal with impaired driving and driving under the influence of both drugs and alcohol. Part 1 of Bill C-46 proposes to enact new Criminal Code offences prohibiting prescribed levels of drugs in the blood within two hours of driving and authorizes police to use oral fluid screening devices at the road side. Part 2 of Bill C-46 will modernize and simplify the transportation provisions of the Criminal Code by repealing all transportation offence provisions and replacing them with a new part. My submission today will focus on matters related to Part 1 of Bill C-46. As Minister Goodale noted recently before the Standing Committee on Health with respect to the review of Bill C-45, the cannabis act, this proposed legislation, Bill C-46, is meant to address a problem that exists currently concerning impaired driving, but also to ensure public safety in view of the creation of a new cannabis regime.

The government is committed to supporting the implementation of Bill C-46, through screening, prosecution, public education, in order to send a clear message to Canadians that driving under the influence of any drug whatsoever is dangerous and criminal.

To begin, in terms of the broader public safety in law enforcement context, impaired driving continues to kill or injure more Canadians than any other crime. While alcohol-impaired incidents are declining, recent statistics show that the number of police reported drug-impaired incidents increased 11% from 2015 to 2016 for a total of about 3,100 incidents, which accounts for approximately 4% of all impaired driving offences. The number of police reported drug-impaired driving incidents is believed to be under-reported because detection requires specialized training, as we'll discuss shortly. If alcohol and drugs are present, it's easier for law enforcement to pursue only the alcohol impairment driving offence. Drug-impaired driving is a challenging offence to prosecute, as it requires proof of driving impairment, as well as impairment caused by a drug. Unlike alcohol, there is no separate offence for driving over a legal drug limit. Additionally, there are limited tools and training at present for front-line officers to detect drug-impaired driving.

On September 8, 2017, the government announced funding in support of Bill C-46 and in support of Bill C-45 as well. For Bill C-46, for drug-impaired driving, it committed up to $161 million for training of front-line officers on how to recognize the symptoms of drug-impaired driving, building law enforcement capacity across the country in support of this, providing access to drug screening devices, developing policy, bolstering research, and raising public awareness around drug-impaired driving, which I know has been a point that's been driven home in your discussions.

An amount of $80 million over the next five years will be available in order to provide access to drug screening devices in the provinces and territories, and to improve training for all police officers so that they are able to enforce new strengthened legislation.

Public Safety Canada has already engaged with provinces and territories to identify the current level capacity used to control and determine impaired driving. This initial work will help to establish how these funds are distributed across the country, and we will continue to engage all partners to further flesh out the allocation of these funds to ensure the most effective strategic use.

Building law enforcement capacity across the country to address impaired driving will be met by an increasing number of officers trained in standardized field sobriety tests, or SFSTs, and also drug recognition experts, or DREs, as we call them. There are approximately 3,400 SFST-trained officers in Canada, which is about 15% of front-line officers. These officers perform a set of divided-attention tests at roadside, which provide evidence that a driver is impaired. At the moment they are trained to recognize alcohol impairment only.

If the driver fails the test, the officer has reasonable grounds to believe there is impairment and can have further investigative tests conducted by a drug recognition expert, who is a police officer trained to detect impairment by drugs. There are approximately 600 DREs in Canada currently. In the proposed approach Public Safety is pursuing with provinces and territories, the intention is to have approximately 7,000 officers, representing about 33% of the front line, who are SFST-trained over the next two to three years, with a 50% coverage within five years. This number will then continue to increase as training institutes implement new training into their core curriculum. The objective is to put in place a “train the trainer” program across the country as the most efficient approach to meet these levels. The number of DRE-trained officers will increase by about 250, to about 800 officers.

In addition to training, further capacity for law enforcement to pursue impaired driving is being built through the testing and deployment of oral fluid screening devices. Public Safety is working with the RCMP and the Department of Justice to establish standards for these devices and have manufacturers submit their devices to be tested against these standards, with the aim of recommending the devices to the Minister of Justice, and allowing their initial deployment by spring 2018.

Last winter, the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness and the RCMP worked with seven police agencies across the country to conduct a pilot test on two oral fluid screening devices. The police indicated that the devices were generally easy to use in various weather conditions and temperatures, as well as various lighting conditions.

Another critical element of the work under way to address drug-impaired driving relates to public awareness. As I alluded to earlier, we know that this raises an important issue. Earlier this year Public Safety and partners, including the RCMP, used social media channels to encourage Canadians to drive sober as well as to dispel some of the myths that police cannot tell if you're driving high. This included a Twitter campaign. It was launched around March of last year, and it reached more than 13 million social media users. Presently, Public Safety Canada is broadening its reach and developing a national, multi-year public awareness campaign around drug-impaired driving specifically targeting youth, which will roll out very shortly this fall with radio, television, print, in movie theatres, and of course, through social media.

In addition, these efforts will be reinforced through work with provinces and territories and law enforcement agencies, indigenous policing services, and relevant stakeholder organizations, such as MADD and the Canadian Automobile Association, to inform the public and prevent drug-impaired driving.

There will also be federal efforts to improve research and data collection, thereby creating a better understanding of drug-impaired driving issues and making it possible to assess our efforts and investments in those areas, and also to improve accountability.

In summary, Mr. Chair, through this important legislation and related efforts, the government has indicated that it is committed to a zero-tolerance approach when it comes to drug-impaired driving and is proposing to take strong action to create new laws and initiatives to combat this crime. For its part, Public Safety and the RCMP are working together to develop supporting materials, training, and tools to help all law enforcement agencies across the country as well as border services to effectively and efficiently enforce the drug-impaired driving legislation.

Thank you.

[Rob Cunningham]

With regard to cannabis, a great deal can of course be learned from the experience with tobacco, whether it be regulation, education or developing a global system and strategy, in particular as regards cannabis use by youth. Bill C-45 can do a great deal to control advertising, packaging, and illicit trade.

[Chief John Bates, Chief of Police, Saint John Police Force]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Distinguished members of this committee, I am both pleased and honoured to have been afforded the opportunity to meet and speak with you today.

As was the case for our CACP president, Chief Mario Harel, who spoke with you last week, it is my first time appearing before the committee—any Commons committee, for that matter—and I consider it a privilege, if not somewhat bewildering.

The CACP has already provided the committee with its position on Bill C-46, a very technical bill, and it is not my intention to repeat what I consider its extremely thoughtful and valid insights. Undoubtedly, though, I will touch upon and reinforce some of those positions. My remarks will speak to some specifics, and I also hope to reinforce some overarching concerns and/or principles.

However, I first want to echo what my colleagues have already alluded to, that Bill C-46 contains some very positive changes that will serve to enhance the safety and security of Canadians as they relate to the scourge of impaired driving. Additionally, the recent funding announcement has, I believe, been well received by the policing community from coast to coast to coast and will go a long way as we prepare ourselves for what will flow from Bill C-45.

My comments to you will be my own, and from the perspective of the chief of a small to medium-sized police agency. Although I'm the vice-president of the organization, I am not here representing the New Brunswick Association of Chiefs of Police. Approximately three-quarters of all police agencies in Canada fall into the category of small or medium police forces and employ about 50% of the police officers across the country.

I'm going to suggest to this committee that what Parliament faces with Bill C-46 and the legalization of marijuana pursuant to Bill C-45 is what was popularized by Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber as a “wicked problem” in public policy. It is valid in this instance to define this as a wicked problem, as Brian Head, writing on “Wicked Problems in Public Policy”, described it, because—and I'm going to paraphrase—there's no single root cause of the complexity, uncertainty, or disagreement, and hence no single best approach to tackling the issues.

You will undoubtedly have heard a divergence of viewpoints during your deliberations. Let me briefly touch upon just a few of the things I've considered when contemplating July of 2018.

It is my respectful submission that notwithstanding testing results from the oral fluid screening devices, the applicable science and/or application of the science is not ready. I believe the CACP has submitted concerns specific to the oral fluid screening devices that undoubtedly referenced language proposed in the act with regard to those devices.

Additionally, questions linger as to where and how the use of oral fluid screening devices will fit into the continuum or the regime of the “impaired driving by drug” investigations. Another question is, what is the correlation between saliva concentrations and blood or fatty tissue concentrations of drugs, and what level or levels will constitute actual impairment, from a scientific perspective, as compared with those we have for impairment by alcohol?

As we contemplated the science, it led us to wonder about the combination of alcohol and cannabis and/or other drugs. There's the additive effect, whereby simply the combination of, say, alcohol and cannabis—one plus one—will equal two. But there's synergism with regard to narcotics and drugs, whereby one plus one can equal five, because the influence of one compounds the influence of the other, and then there's potentiation, whereby one and one plus one, as you combine more drugs and/or alcohol, can equal something like 10. I just bring the potential and problematic issue of the cannabis cocktail to your attention during your deliberations.

It should be recognized that following the legalization of marijuana there will be an increase in impaired driving; the studies show that. I think I can say with confidence, and it will come as no surprise to you to hear it, that by and large police agencies are not currently prepared for what Bill C-45 may present us on our highways and byways. Even if all the stars align for us by July of 2018 and we are ready, it will be just barely ready.

By way of example, in New Brunswick the number of police-reported incidents of drug-impaired driving have increased 193% between the years 2008 to 2016, and there has been a 54% increase since 2013. We currently have 18 DRE officers in our province, with 100 standard field sobriety test officers. We have approximately 40% of the DRE officers that our province requires, and we are a small province.

With the injection of additional training dollars and hopefully the resources to deliver the training, if we were to somehow manage to even double that number over the next five years, assuming no attrition, we would still be behind in adequate numbers. If I have my facts straight, we are approaching 50% attrition with DRE officers since 2013 in this country.

I can only speak on behalf of the Saint John Police Force, but it has been my recent experience that sourcing, securing, and funding training is challenging with the travel required to disparate locations for the wide variety of training that modern-day policing necessitates.

Ramping up the numbers of standard field sobriety test officers, which I wholeheartedly support, will, as I understand the investigative continuum for impaired-by-drug driving investigations, necessitate at least a proportional increase in DRE officers. The concern, and I believe it is valid, is that the demand will exceed availability for training. It will be like trying to drain an outdoor Olympic-size swimming pool with a garden hose in a rainstorm.

There are other implications: lab-testing capacity, Jordan decision implications, and rank-and-file training of members at the front lines. As I stated, my colleagues at the CACP have presented its position to this committee regarding Bill C-46, and while we're supportive of the bill, I think they have urged a delay to its becoming law in July 2018. As it stands today, I would support that delay.

Procedural fairness dictates that the law is applied reasonably and equally, and in an equal manner across Canada. Procedural fairness presumes the resources to apply the law equally across Canada. In the potential absence or application of good science and sound and timely preparation, the courts might be left to define the process, standards, and best practices. With respect, this is a job for government, for the CACP, and for the community. It is patently unfair to expect the courts to do our job with potentially undesirable or unintended results.

I know a great deal of thought has gone into potential charter implications. If the legislation or regulations are couched in terms of complexity, adaptation, and this in fact being a wicked problem, and if adequate resources, training, and time are provided, we can be ready. I'm not sanguine to the possibility that we, policing, will get there by 2018, but I'm hopeful.

In closing, I would ask the committee to consider, as I'm confident it has and will continue to do, two guiding insights when considering this wicked problem. One, we must be very thoughtful and insightful in setting the initial conditions, the legislation. Two, we must design legislation and regulation to allow for constant, collaborative, and informed adaptation. As an example, I believe there is a current list of drug categories—seven, I believe—in the pending legislation. I don't draft legislation, obviously, but I simply ask the question: do we risk boxing ourselves in? Change will occur; we know that.

It is my earnest hope that we will get this right and we'll have the necessary time to get it right. Once the final product, the legislation, becomes law, the burden of effective enforcement and public safety will fall to the front-line law enforcement community. Training, adequate human resources, equipment, and solid law will be crucial. The burden can be a heavy one, and we in policing sincerely want to get it right.

I thank the committee for the invitation to be here today.

Controlled Drugs and Substances Act

[Marco Mendicino, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate on Bill C-338, which proposes to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to increase mandatory minimum penalties, or MMPs, of imprisonment for offences relating to the importation and exportation of certain drugs and substances.

I would like to begin by commending my hon. colleague across the way for bringing forward this private member's bill. It will encourage and foster an ongoing and important discussion regarding how we best regulate controlled substances.

Let me also say that I have been listening carefully to the debate on Bill C-338 and I would like to echo the political and legal concerns that have already been raised, including the constitutional implications of this bill.

To start, it strikes me as inappropriate to provide the same MMP for substances that have vastly different levels of potency and danger. It is exactly this type of situation that the Supreme Court of Canada has raised concerns about in recent cases in which it struck down MMPs. I refer the House to the Supreme Court of Canada case in Regina v. Muir, in which the court cited R v. Lloyd in stating that “mandatory minimum sentences that...apply to offences that can be committed in various ways, under a broad range of circumstances...are vulnerable to constitutional challenge.”

Although the bill targets the importation of powerful opiates like fentanyl and carfentanil that are lethal in very small quantities, the increased MMPs would also apply to other substances like cannabis. Hon. members will recall that the government has introduced Bill C-45 and Bill C-46 to address and introduce a new comprehensive regime so that we can keep cannabis out of the hands of our youth and vulnerable communities.

Although a highly regulated substance, cannabis simply does not share the devastating qualities of fentanyl for instance. Suffice it to say that such differences are material from a sentencing and charter perspective, so it does not make sense to treat these two substances in the same way.

That said, there is no doubt that the increasing prevalence of potent opioids in our communities has sparked a public health crisis in Canada.

The onslaught of this deadly epidemic in Canada is twofold. First, the overdose crisis has been driven by the emergence of these powerful illicit opioids on the black market, leading to an unprecedented number of deaths among illegal drug users. This unfortunate reality is exacerbated by vile and deceitful drug dealers who mix these incredibly cheap yet highly addictive and potent substances with other more expensive drugs, for instance heroin or cocaine, in an effort to maximize their profits. The relative ease with which these opioids can be produced further compounds these problems.

A secondary contributing factor has been the high levels of addiction to legal opioids across Canada. This trend has been caused in part by inappropriate prescribing practices and poor education on the risks associated with opioid use.

Unfortunately, once prescription renewals expire, many individuals turn to the black market to supply their addiction. The demand that emanates from legal opioid addiction helps fuel the demand for such substances on the black market.

To effectively respond to the opioid crisis in Canada both contributing factors must be addressed. This is partly why I have strong reservations about the approach proposed in Bill C-338. It proposes an unnecessary, costly, and likely ineffective approach to a complex drug problem. The bill is focused on increasing MMPs for offenders engaged in importing and exporting instead of focusing on the root causes of this epidemic.

Evidentiary support is simply lacking to suggest that increasing MMPs in the way proposed by the bill will reduce the influx of these lethal drugs into Canadian communities. In fact, research on the “war on drugs” in the United States reveals that increased penalties do little to deter high-level drug traffickers from engaging in this lucrative criminal conduct, nor do they do anything to help those battling addictions. Health and criminal justice experts assert that addressing the demand side is critical to comprehensively responding to complex social problems like these.

The import and export offences targeted by Bill C-338 are already punishable by a maximum term of life in prison. In Canada, this is the highest penalty a judge can impose. In my personal experience as a drug prosecutor, our judges consistently use their discretion to impose stiff penalties if and when they are warranted. In fact, courts around the country are already treating fentanyl trafficking very seriously.

For example, in a recent decision this year, Regina v. Fyfe, the judge imposed a total sentence of five years' imprisonment on a low level first-time fentanyl trafficker. I would point out that this is two more years than the mandatory minimum jail sentence proposed by this private member's bill. In the decision, the court noted that an appropriate sentence for fentanyl trafficking must be more serious than other hard drugs, for example cocaine, given the substantial risks posed by this and similar opioids.

Moreover, appellate courts across the country are revisiting sentencing ranges for those who traffic in these dangerous substances, noting that previous ranges are “out of sync” with the dangers these substances pose to society. I offer and commend to the House the case of Regina v. Smith, decided by the British Columbia Court of Appeal in 2017.

I will pause to note that it is important that we reaffirm the fundamental principle of the independence of the judiciary as that imparts a high degree of confidence among the public that the judiciary will do their job.

Let me be clear. We are talking about an unprecedented number of fatal drug overdoses in Canada. Our government fully understands the gravity of the situation, and we continue to take action to address the problem. The policies put in place to deal with this crisis need to be guided by performance measurement standards and evidence. These policies must have an immediate impact in order to reduce the number of tragic deaths.

That is why I am so pleased that our government has introduced a new Canadian drug and substances strategy. The strategy focuses on prevention, treatment, and enforcement, but it also reinstates harm reduction as a core pillar of Canada's drug policy. The strategy champions a comprehensive, collaborative, compassionate, and evidence-based approach to drug policy.

To further advance this strategy, the Minister of Health introduced Bill C-37, an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and to make related amendments under other acts. Together, these will address the serious and pressing public health issues related to opioids. That bill has now received royal assent, which is something all members in the House should celebrate.

This legislative response is one important part of our government's comprehensive approach to drug policy in Canada. Bill C-37 will simplify and streamline the application process for supervised consumption sites, clamp down on illegal pill presses, and extend the authority of border officers to inspect suspicious small packages coming into Canada, which is precisely the object of what this private member's bill tries to address.

In relation to this last point, extending the inspection powers of the CBSA officers is important, because one standard-sized envelope can contain 30 grams of fentanyl, potent enough to cause 15,000 overdoses. These numbers will increase exponentially where the substance in question is carfentanil.

In addition, our government is also investing over $100 million to support the new Canadian drugs and substances strategy. This is in addition to $10 million in emergency support that the federal government has provided to the province of British Columbia to assist in responding to the overwhelming number of overdoses.

While the private member's bill is well intentioned, its objectives will not be accomplished through the provisions set out in it. This is for all the reasons I have stated in my remarks. I therefore encourage all members to vote this private member's bill down and continue to support all the good work our government is doing with regard to controlled substances.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

I have a second motion on Bill C-45.

When we heard from the witnesses, many issues came up that were not necessarily part of Bill C-45, but very impassioned discussion and concerns were raised around them. I was going to move that we request that the analysts draft a short letter, no longer than five pages, to be sent to the Minister of Health.

The letter would summarize the most credible evidence and best advice the committee had received regarding several discrete issues that we believe are important. On the list I had of discrete issues was the need for public health education and an awareness campaign; establishing metrics and baseline measurements to evaluate the success of Bill C-45; collaborative and respectful outreach and support to first nations, Inuit, and Métis communities to ensure appropriate implementation; legalizing alternatives, especially edibles; pardons for those who were charged or convicted of crimes now legalized by Bill C-45; and concerns regarding management of international treaties.

I would move that, but I would be open to adding to that list of issues or shrinking it.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Yes, I heard he's releasing it Thursday, but Wednesday an embargoed copy will come to us, which gives us, I don't know, 18 hours to internalize the PBO's report that they took months and months to write, costing out the largest social program envisioned by the federal government in a generation. We will not be in any position whatsoever to offer meaningful comment on that PBO report on the Thursday, if the PBO comes. It will do injustice to the PBO, frankly, to invite the PBO here on a Thursday, with that level of preparation.

I'm happy to co-operate with this sort of expedited process on Bill C-45, but I hope the Liberals will work with us in a good-faith attempt to make sure that we have time next week to really work on the amendments to Bill C-45, and then we can invite the PBO back in a couple of weeks.

I see John nodding. If that's the case, and I don't want to put words in his mouth, but—

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you.

Just from a structural point of view, I appreciate the desire of the government to move quickly, but I want to put on the record that I think this is moving too quickly. I won't belabour the point or repeat points made before, but I do think that carefully considering this bill is the proper way to go. I think we can all say that we learned a lot from the witnesses last week. I know I did. There were a number of issues that I didn't think of and a lot of points made that I wasn't aware of, so I would anticipate that if we heard from more stakeholder groups, we would probably continue to hear things that we weren't aware of, and learn things that we should know.

Having said that, I can tell that the government is obviously locked into an approach on this bill to rush it as expeditiously as it can through this committee and get it into the House.

I would point out as well that we have a full parliamentary year to get this bill passed by July 1. I've been in Parliament for nine years and I'm aware of the cadence. With the power of a majority government to impose time allocation when it wishes to, there's really no reason, I think, that we have to, as Mr. Oliver said, compress four months' work into one week. I don't think that's a healthy way to legislate and to properly consider this bill. We're going to move forward without hearing from a lot of groups that we should be hearing from, and without considering things that we ought to.

I also was going to move a motion that we tour, as committee travel, to visit a Canadian licensed producer of cannabis, a cannabis dispensary, a cannabis compassion club, and a producer of edible cannabis products so that we could actually have first-hand knowledge of what's going on in the real world, but I'm not going to move that motion because I know the Liberals will oppose it and won't do it given this timeline. That being the case then, with the motion before us, which I understand is going to be pressed by the government regardless of what the opposition has to say on it, I will make a couple of small suggestions.

October 2 is the day the Governor General is being sworn in at the Senate. My understanding from our House leader and whip is that the parties have secured unanimous agreement that we're going to be treating that Monday as a Wednesday, meaning that there will be no sitting of the House. We're treating it as if we have caucus meetings. I think it would be both inappropriate for us to be meeting at the same time that every other member of Parliament is invited to go see the swearing in of the Governor General and disrespectful, frankly, to the Governor General's office, for us to schedule work at the same time that important transition is taking place.

I also would propose that we start on October 3, which is the Tuesday, so we have October 3 to October 5, which is three days. I know John hasn't indicated in the motion how the committee will sit, unless I missed it. We haven't decided yet, but I'm in John's hands on that. If we want to go for eight hours a day, as we did before, or have multiple meetings, that's fine.

Of course, it's all moot at the end of the day anyway, because the text of the motion will deem the bill passed at a certain point on October 5, regardless of where we're at, so the motion takes away any attempt by the opposition parties to try to hold up the bill or be deleterious, which, for the record, the NDP has no intention of doing in any event. We have about, I'd say, probably somewhere around 10 amendments. I plan on speaking briefly and effectively to each one of those, not with a motive to hold things up but just to get our reasons on the record, so I see no reason why we won't be able to move through the clause-by-clause easily within the three days in any event.

It also, frankly, gives us one more day to get ready. We have a lot of material to go through, and I want to take a moment to congratulate all my colleagues on this committee on all sides for what I thought were a lot of penetrating questions on a lot of different issues. I've started the process of looking through the evidence that we heard, and there's a lot of it. A lot of it was very good.

One of the reasons I don't think we should start this clause-by-clause quite so quickly is that it forces us next week to have to process all of that information we received, analyze it, internalize it, place it into effective amendments, work with legislative counsel, make sure it's within the scope of the bill, and then have it translated in both languages, all within the next seven days. That's very tight for an important bill of this magnitude, but if we're going to do that, then at least we can have Friday and the Monday to get prepared for the clause-by-clause.

I'm going to speak to this a little bit later, but I do think we cannot adequately plan for the clause-by-clause study of Bill C-45 without also knowing our schedule for next week, so I'll take the opportunity now to say that it will be my suggestion—and I will move this at the appropriate time—that we don't sit on Tuesday or Thursday. I know that the PBO is planning to release his report on pharmacare, I think, on the Thursday, and I'll speak to that when it comes to that. But these two—

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

I have two motions. I'll deal with them one at a time.

Just by way of introduction, in dealing with Bill C-45, I realize that the expert task force instructed part of Bill C-45. They travelled for six months across Canada listening to Canadians, and they received 30,000 submissions in the course of that work. Our committee, when we received the bill, heard from over 100 witnesses and received over 100 submissions. I think that was the count I had. Because of the efficient and, I think, very effective way that we dealt with it, we consolidated what would have been about four months of committee work into that one-week period. By my count, we as a committee in this sitting have not yet heard from 100 people on any other study. Even for our study on national pharmacare, we haven't heard from this many witnesses, so we have done extensive work.

We also heard that it was important that we get moving with the legislation. We heard from municipalities, police, and from one province that they really need to understand the federal legislation in order to do their next level of government work so that they can be ready to roll out in July 2018, which is the government's committed date to enact the legislation.

With that preamble, I would make the following motion:

That, the Committee, in its consideration of the Bill C-45, An Act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other Acts proceed as follows: a) that the Committee proceed with the clause-by-clause consideration of Bill C-45 no later than October 2, 2017, provided that the Chair may limit debate on each clause to a maximum of five minutes per party, per clause; b) that amendments be submitted to the Clerk of the Committee no later than 5:00 p.m. on September 28, 2017 and distributed to members in both official languages; and c) that if the Committee has not completed the clause-by-clause consideration of Bill C-45 by 6:00 p.m. on October 5, 2017, all remaining amendments submitted to the Committee shall be deemed moved, the Chair shall put the question, forthwith and successively, without further debate on all remaining clauses and amendments submitted to the Committee, as well as each and every question necessary to dispose of clause-by-clause consideration of the Bill, as well as all questions necessary to report the Bill to the House and to order the Chair to report the Bill to the House as early as possible.

I would so move.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

All right. I hope everything goes as well as that one did.

Now the second thing on our agenda is the budget concerning the Bill C-45 study. We have gone overboard. We have a deficit and we need a new motion. We need approval of the new budget, which is an additional $33,800, or our witnesses who have already been here will not get paid for their expenses. This is a reflection of our 100 witnesses or so.

Do we have a motion to approve the budget? Thank you, Mr. McKinnon.

Is there any discussion?

(Motion agreed to)

All right. That's good.

Are there any other motions? I think, Mr. Oliver, you have a motion.

Export and Import Permits Act

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I, too, thought what I had to say was very interesting. I appreciate the fact that you have brought attention to that.

Bill C-47 would also allow governments to create regulations that would demand firearm importers to report and keep all their import registry data for at least six years and have it available to government. In its simplest form, this is the start of a backdoor firearms registry. It would force the information of individuals to be registered with importers and sellers and be available to government. It sounds pretty much like a registry to me.

Moreover, these proposals will add costs onto the manufacturers and distributors of legal firearms, which will ultimately be passed down to the consumers, the purchasers of firearms. Somebody has to pay for this extra cost that will be incurred with Bill C-47.

When our previous Conservative government was in office, we listened to Canadians and eliminated the wasteful and ineffective long gun registry. Instead of treating law-abiding firearms owners like criminals, we repealed the requirement to register non-restricted fire arms, long guns, rifles, shotguns, and provided for the destruction of all records pertaining to that registry held by the Canadian Firearms Registry under the control of the chief firearms officer.

While we removed the need to hold a registration certificate for non-restricted firearms, this did not change the requirement for individuals to hold a valid firearms licence in order to acquire or possess a firearm. They also had to pass the required Canadian firearms safety course, undergo a screening process, and obtain a registration certificate for restricted and prohibited firearms such as handguns. Through these changes, we recognized that recreational firearms users were not criminals. At the same time, we ensured that appropriate measures were taken to maintain public safety through licensing and gun safety education.

Acceding to the ATT could impose another burdensome bureaucracy on Canada that would mirror the wasteful and ineffective long gun registry our previous Conservative government eliminated. The same problems that we had with the gun registry, the lack of accountability, the immense costs, and the overall uselessness of it, are highly likely again under the ATT regime, unless amendments are made to it.

Interestingly, through Bill C-47, the Liberals are trying to bring back the registry through the backdoor with as little attention as possible.

The Liberals have a tendency to do this, introduce proposals they know will not be accepted by Canadians at a time when they hope it will go unnoticed. Take their recent massive tax hikes on local small businesses, farmers, and professionals as an example. The Liberals waited until the middle of the summer to sprinkle out these proposals when they figured Canadians were enjoying time with family and friends or perhaps were out of town on vacation. Of course, they made the consultation period run right through the fall harvest season, which would severely impact the ability of farmers to interact and contribute to the discussion on this very important proposal before us.

In a similar fashion, when this backdoor gun registry bill was introduced, the Liberals hoped that no one would hear about it. They introduced it at the same time as their marijuana legislation, both Bill C-45 and Bill C-46, the day before the Easter long weekend. The expectation here was clearly that this bill would fall under the radar while the marijuana bills dominated the discussion and the news cycle.

Whenever the Liberals insist on pushing forward with an agenda they know Canadians will not stand behind, this is their standard way of going about it. However, if they know Canadians do not support this legislation, as evidenced by the fact they are trying to keep it as low profile as possible, why are they trying to pass it at all?

Canada's export regime as it stands today is already among the strongest in the world. I think the Liberals would agree on that point. Canadian governments of all political stripes have always ensured Canadian values are reflected in export decisions and have taken steps to prevent illicit transfers that fuel conflict, encourage terrorism, or organized crime. It seems to me this is another Liberal solution in search of a problem. If it were benign, it would be one thing, but because it has the potential to negatively impact law-abiding Canadian farmers and hunters, we as Conservatives must speak out against this.

The Conservatives have taken a clear and principled stand. We believe that any arms trade treaty should recognize and acknowledge the legitimacy of lawful ownership of firearms by responsible citizens for their personal and recreational use. This includes Canadian heritage activities, such as hunting, sport shooting, and collecting. More than that, the legitimacy of these activities are recognized around the world, including those state parties to the ATT. Our previous Conservative government insisted that this be a part of any serious treaty on this subject.

For the Liberals to move ahead with this legislation without having received such a basic concession is disappointing. The Prime Minister may believe it will help him secure the United Nations Security Council seat that he wants so badly, but to do so would be at the expense of the rights of Canadian gun owners.

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

Thank you, Chair.

I'm going to start by bringing in some information from another jurisdiction, Colorado. This comes from a letter that was shared with us on the health committee in our study of C-45. This was a letter from the Governor of Colorado and the Attorney General of Colorado to the Attorney General of the United States. It says:

Following legalization, the state trained approximately 5,000 peace officers on marijuana-related laws, including driving under the influence of drugs; increased by 68 per cent the number of trained Drug Recognition Experts in the state—there are now 227 active DREs in Colorado—; and trained 1,155 peace officers in Advanced Roadside Impaired Driving Enforcement. The state has also appropriated $2.3 million to the Colorado Department of Transportation's, CDOT, impaired driving education campaigns, which convey the criminal penalties and dangers associated with driving under the influence of marijuana.

It goes on to say:

In the first six months of 2017, the number of drivers the Colorado State Patrol considered impaired by marijuana dropped 21 per cent compared to the first six months of 2016.

That tells me two things. First, it shows that the police officers were better trained. They were able to recognize impairment presumably much better, yet the rate of impairment dropped. Second, it suggests the power of education, because I think that was probably a significant aspect of this undertaking. I have heard on the health committee, and on this committee as well as we studied both these bills, many witnesses speak to the effectiveness and the critical importance of education.

That brings me to you, Mr. Paris. I certainly appreciate what you're doing with your education program, and I really like your ad.

That brings me to my question. Mr. Lee, you are presumably part of the demographic targeted by this ad. Do you find it compelling, persuasive?

[Marc Paris, Executive Director, Drug Free Kids Canada]

Mr. Chair, honourable members, we welcome the opportunity to address this panel and to comment on the amendments to the Criminal Code, particularly as they relate to drug-impaired driving. Drug Free Kids Canada is a non-profit organization devoted to educating parents about drugs, raising public awareness issues surrounding drug use, and facilitating open conversations between parent and teen, in order to ensure that all young people will be able to live their lives free of substance abuse.

Since we are not legal or policy experts, nor do we have experience in law enforcement, we have chosen to focus our comments on the critical need to change how society in general and young people in particular perceive the risks involved with high driving, that is, cannabis-impaired driving. Although drug-impaired driving can involve more drugs than cannabis, our comments today mainly relate to Bill C-45, the proposed legalization of cannabis.

DFK’s position on drug-impaired driving is simple. We need to make the laws and ensure that our enforcement is as strict as possible within the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. A strong deterrent to driving while impaired by drugs must be in place, particularly when we’re about to legalize this psychotropic substance.

We have learned many lessons over the years related to alcohol, lessons that we need to consider with cannabis.

The first lesson was that wide distribution and intense marketing and promotion of alcohol created a normalization of this substance. We need to strictly control the sale of cannabis and definitely forbid any form of marketing or promotion, especially to minors.

Second, no matter what laws are in place, if we don’t educate and sensitize the public to the risks inherent with drug-impaired driving, we will continue to see carnage on our roads. Education at an early age needs to begin as soon as possible, before we legalize. People who are currently driving while impaired tend to be less impacted by public education messages. What influences their behaviour is when others, particularly their children, intervene.

There’s a great example of that from 50 years ago, when seat belts were first introduced. Early public safety messages on buckling up for safety were having poor results. Only when the focus was put on keeping kids safe by buckling them up did we see a change in societal behaviour. A positive change happened as a consequence of the child-centred focus of the new messaging. It’s when the kids asked the parents, “Why aren’t you buckling up, Dad or Mom?” that society began to see a shift in attitude and, ultimately, driving behaviour.

Last, the great and consistent work that has been done over the past 30 years by organizations like Mothers Against Drunk Driving and Students Against Drinking and Driving Alberta have contributed significantly to making drinking and driving socially unacceptable. We need to do the same with drugs now, especially cannabis. Impaired is impaired. The message has to be clear most importantly to our youth.

Our national tracking studies have consistently shown that teens don’t see driving under the influence of pot as being as risky as alcohol. This is particularly worrisome since these are young, inexperienced drivers who believe that smoking a joint and grabbing the car keys is okay.

Studies show that 16-year-olds to 34-year-olds represent only 32% of the Canadian population, but 61% of the cannabis attributable fatalities. This group also disproportionately represents 59% of the cannabis attributable injuries, and 68% of the people involved in cannabis attributable property damage-only collisions. This means that we have serious work to do with today’s young drivers and the future generation of drivers.

Another aspect parents need to be concerned about is that kids are getting into the car with a driver who is high. In a recent Ontario study, almost a quarter, 23%, of grade 12 students, admitted to having been a passenger driven by someone who had consumed drugs.

We are here to tell you that public education messaging works. In the past six years of doing national multimedia campaigns, we have seen that more parents are talking to their kids more often about drugs. We are seeing changes not only in attitudes but also in the behaviour of teens.

Drug Free Kids Canada has been creating impaired driving prevention education campaigns on our own for the past four years, but much more work will be required.

I would like to share with you our latest high driving campaign. It’s an innovative campaign using new technology to reach parents and kids. The Call That Comes After has been internationally recognized in Cannes and New York, as well as in Canada. More importantly, it has been viewed or downloaded over 40,000 times by parents and kids from coast to coast. The Call That Comes After was designed to help parents open up the conversation with their kids by using the most common communication tool between parents and kids, the mobile phone.

[Video presentation]

This campaign ran from January to June and will be repeated again next year for 17 weeks. If we don’t take preventative steps right now to educate the public, by July of next year we could be facing an increase in drug impairment on our roads, creating a significant hazard for the public. We must remind the government of its pledge to allocate a portion of the revenues towards prevention and education. To ensure that our youth and the public in general are protected, we need to provide effective education and prevention awareness strategies well before legislation takes effect.

Consistent messaging has worked for safety belts, anti-smoking, and drinking and driving. We can and must do the same for driving while high. This is the only way to make sure that young people and their parents understand that cannabis does not belong behind the wheel under any circumstance. It’s a substance that, like alcohol, causes serious impairment to driving capabilities even though it will soon become legal. Drug-impaired driving is but one aspect to consider when looking at legalizing cannabis, but it is a very critical one.

I would like to thank this committee for allowing us to present our point of view.

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

We certainly recognize that we have a quality, worldwide service that's available right now when it comes to medical cannabis in this country. Certainly, with respect to the legislation in Bill C-45, we can see that we can build on that existing service.

What's imperative, however, is that we want to make sure consumers of medical cannabis will continue to have access to the product they need, and we will continue as well to monitor that situation very closely to make sure they always have access to the medication, to the products they use.

I may ask Ms. Bogden if there's anything else she wanted to add to that.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you.

Minister of Justice, who will be responsible for enforcing Bill C-45 on reserve lands and band lands?

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

I'll just re-emphasize that the campaign has begun. It is focused upon social media to start with, because all the statistics indicate this as by far the most effective mechanism for reaching young people.

The work is ongoing. It will undoubtedly accelerate and be complemented by the work of other organizations, including provincial governments, which in a number of cases have extensive information and educational campaigns in mind with respect both to Bill C-45 and the new regime dealing with cannabis and especially with respect to Bill C-46, which deals with impaired driving. There are some very important private sector organizations, such as MADD or Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the Canadian Automobile Association, that have already been very active in putting important messages, including paid advertising, into the public domain.

[Jody Wilson-Raybould, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

We recognize that jurisdictions may be in different places in terms of the work they've done on this. If a jurisdiction, a province, British Columbia, for example, is not ready when we hope that Bill C-45 becomes law, then there is a backstop. The federal government will provide safe distribution from a licensed producer that can be securitized through the mail.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you.

I'll go back to the Minister of Justice. The McLellan task force said:

Canada’s governments, and many other organizations, will need to work quickly to prepare for the implementation of the new system, increasing or developing capacity in many areas relating to production, distribution and retail, quality control and enforcement, and research and surveillance.... Having all elements in place will be necessary for the proper functioning of the regime.

They also recommended that the federal government, “Take a leadership role to ensure that capacity is developed among all levels of government prior to the start of the regulatory regime”.

However, when asked if the federal government has been working with indigenous governments on a nation-to-nation basis to develop that capacity, Ontario Regional Chief Isadore Day told this committee:

No, they haven't....

The legislative process, the capacity, and the mutually agreed-upon processes as to how we're going to gel and work together to meet a collective outcome are going to be the challenge. That is simply not happening with this government.

Minister, given the task force's clear warning that intergovernmental co-operation is critical, and given the Prime Minister's repeated statements that his most important relationship is with indigenous people, why has your government ignored first nations' governments in building the capacity for BillC-45 to become law?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Okay.

After introducing Bill C-45, Prime Minister Trudeau told a VICE News town hall that:

...our focus is on making sure we’re changing the legislation to fix what’s broken [in] a system that is hurting Canadians…and then we’ll take steps to look at what we can do for those people who have criminal records for something that would no longer be criminal.

However, Kathy Thompson, assistant deputy minister for community safety and countering crime branch in the Department of Public Safety, told this committee that, “There are no plans at this time to introduce an automatic pardon”, as suggested, and there is zero in this bill to deal with pardons.

Minister, can you confirm that your government is considering plans to pardon criminal records for offences that will no longer be offences when the proposed legislation comes into force?

[Jody Wilson-Raybould, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

First, we are proceeding on a comprehensive review of the criminal justice system, targeted specifically to reduce the over-representation of indigenous and marginalized individuals in the criminal justice system.

What we've done with the proposed cannabis act in Bill C-45 is, as I said earlier in my comments, to put a diversity of sanctions within the act from ticketing to the more serious criminal prosecutions that could arise. There is an opportunity to proceed by way of ticketing for many of the offences that you've mentioned, for example, between 30 and 50 grams of possession for an adult. For youth there's the opportunity, when you go through the Youth Criminal Justice Act, to proceed in other manners that law enforcement officers can—

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Well, not yet.

Michael Spratt testified that Bill C-45 leaves intact the criminalization of cannabis in many circumstances that will harm vulnerable Canadians. I want to quote from his testimony:

An adult who possesses 30 grams of marijuana in public is a criminal. A youth who possesses more than five grams of marijuana is a criminal. An 18-year old who passes a joint to their 17-year-old friend is a criminal. An adult who grows five marijuana plants is a criminal. An adult who lets his one-metre tall marijuana plant grow an extra centimetre is a criminal.

This continued criminalization is inconsistent with a rational and evidence-based criminal justice policy and will only serve to reduce some of the positive impacts of the bill.

...the asymmetrical criminalization of marijuana will only serve to perpetuate the disproportionate enforcement of laws on the young, marginalized, and racialized members of our society.

Minister, you know that indigenous, racialized, and marginalized people are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system and are disproportionately harmed by a criminal approach to drug laws. By maintaining a criminalized approach to cannabis, Bill C-45 will perpetuate this discriminatory impact. Why have you done so?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

To the Minister of Justice, Michael Spratt, a lawyer, testified before this committee that Bill C-45—

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Bill C-45's objective is very clear—to legalize cannabis, to strictly regulate, and to restrict access to children.

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

As indicated, in Bill C-45 in no way are we promoting that people—

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Thank you very much for the question. It's a very important question.

Our government is completely committed to facilitating research when it comes to cannabis, with really two streams: the medical use and also the recreational use. The CIHR has put out a $1-million grant proposal specifically to do research in those two areas. We are looking forward to the findings. With regard to the Minister of Health, looking at research, when Bill C-45 becomes a reality, from there it will be easier for the Minister of Health to approve that type of research, because the product will be legal at the time.

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Yes, certainly.

Bill C-45 proposes strict regulations on packaging and labelling, and marketing and advertising. We truly want to ensure that the marketing tools won't be enticing youth to want to consume cannabis. It's very much like we've done with the tobacco legislation and with the tobacco products. The same types of rules will apply, with warnings and also making sure that the packaging is very bland, if I may say. We will also ensure that there are no sponsorships or endorsements when it comes to marketing.

Finally, the only information that will be available on the packaging will be informational-type marketing information: what is in the package, serving sizes, or whatever the case may be. That's the type of information that will be available in the packaging. Again, we want to make sure that the advertising will not entice or encourage young people to use cannabis.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to all the ministers for coming here.

To the Minister of Justice, clause 31 of Bill C-45 prohibits the sale of cannabis or a cannabis accessory whose shape is appealing or attractive to youth. Who will determine whether or not that cannabis product or accessory is appealing to youth? Is there a designated minister who will recall them? Perhaps you can explain that.

[Jody Wilson-Raybould, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

As I've said, we're working very closely with our partners and with the Minister of Foreign Affairs and have been very open with the approach we're taking with respect to Bill C-45.

[Len Webber, Conservative, Calgary Confederation, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, ministers, for being here today.

Minister Wilson-Raybould, we heard testimony from Dr. Steven Hoffman, who is a professor of law at Osgoode Hall and an expert in international law. He is very concerned, as are we, the Conservative Party, that we don't break any international laws. He proposes that this Bill C-45 legislation would in fact violate three UN treaties: the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961, which is “to limit exclusively to medical and scientific purposes the production, manufacture, export, import, distribution of, trade in, use and possession of drugs”; the Convention on Psychotropic Substances, 1971; and the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, 1988, which is to establish as a criminal offence the purchase or cultivation of narcotic drugs or psychotropic substances for personal consumption. These are three UN treaties that basically we would not be complying with when this legislation passes.

I just want to know what your government plans to do in dealing with the other countries around the world who are a part of this treaty. Do you plan on just not complying and violating the treaties, or are you going to withdraw from the treaties? If, in fact, you do withdraw from the treaties, you have to give notice, and the deadline for notice for your proposed legislation of July 1, 2017, has passed. I just was wondering what your government is going to do about dealing with these international partners of ours.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you.

To the justice minister, Bill C-45 retains a criminalized approach to cannabis in many respects, including possession limits, cultivation restrictions, and selling offences. The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police told this committee:

We know that in 2016, I believe, there were approximately 16,000 or 17,000 charges for simple possession of marijuana—

There were actually more than that.

—but we think those will be replaced with ticketing. They'll be replaced with nuisance calls. They will be replaced if, unfortunately, we do go forward with personal grows, with us having to manage those grow operations, which, of course, will be a very time-consuming and onerous process for our officers, who will then have to seize the plants and take them back to a police department or a facility to store them

This is not to mention the new enforcement provisions around cannabis-impaired driving. He continued:

We don't see this...as being any sort of time-saving for our staff.

Now, one of the purposes of the bill in clause 7 is to reduce the burden on the criminal justice system. Given that law enforcement agencies believe the proposed framework will not reduce enforcement activities, and given that your government recently announced plans to spend an additional $274 million on cannabis enforcement, how exactly will Bill C-45 reduce the burden on the criminal justice system?

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

First, again to echo what my colleagues have indicated, the evidence is clear that prohibition, the status quo, is just not working. We truly have to make sure that we follow our plan. The objective of Bill C-45 is to legalize, strictly regulate, and restrict access to cannabis for youth. That's really our priority in all of this.

Again, as you've indicated, we know there's a high rate of usage when it comes to young Canadians. I have a few quick numbers here: 21% of youth between the ages of 15 and 19 consume cannabis, and 30% of young Canadians between the ages of 20 and 24 consume cannabis. We recognize that we have to have a regulated system in place because they're having access to unregulated products at this point. We want to ensure that the products they are going to consume, if they choose to consume, are going to be regulated.

Once again, we are not encouraging youth to consume cannabis, but we want to make sure that it's safe and that we get it out of the hands of children.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Chair, members of the committee, thank you very much for the invitation. It's a pleasure to appear before you this evening. I'm glad to join my colleagues the Minister of Justice; the Minister of Health; Parliamentary Secretary Blair, who has been front and centre in dealing with this issue over the last many months; and officials from our department.

We're here, obviously, to discuss Bill C-45 and how this legislation will help keep cannabis out of the hands of Canadian children, and profits out of the hands of criminals, certainly more effectively than the failed regime that has existed in this country for many decades.

In developing our approach to the regulation of cannabis, strengthening public safety has always been our primary goal.

I will now talk about our efforts to ensure that law enforcement agencies, including the police and border services, will have the resources and training needed to protect Canadian communities.

First, it is important to be clear that Canada's current approach to cannabis, the one that has existed for decades, has simply not worked. The World Health Organization has studied cannabis use among youth in Europe and North America. In 2009-10, the WHO found that a third of young Canadians had tried cannabis by the age of 15, a higher rate than for any other country in that study. Also, in a 2013-14 study by the WHO, Canada remained in the top five for 15-year-olds and was number one in cannabis use among children 13 years of age or younger.

As well, according to a 2016 statistical compilation by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the rate of cannabis use among Canadians 15 to 64 was almost 15%, and that was higher for that whole age span than in every country except two others in the world. In other words, Canadians are among the heaviest and the youngest users of cannabis globally.

There is clearly a need to do things differently, and that's why we've proposed this new regime based on the framework set out in Bill C-45 along with enhanced measures to combat impaired driving, which are contained in Bill C-46, and room for provinces and territories to tailor approaches that suit their particular circumstances.

Essential to this new regime is engagement with and support for police and border officers to ensure that they have the tools they need to enforce the law. To this end we recently announced an investment of $274 million that includes $113.5 million over five years for the RCMP and the Canada Border Services Agency as well as for programming within Public Safety Canada, primarily to keep organized crime out of this new legalized system and to combat smuggling. The investment also includes $161 million to train front-line officers to recognize the signs and symptoms of drug-impaired driving, to build law enforcement capacity across the country, to ensure that police have access to drug screening devices, to support research, and to enhance public awareness about the dangers of driving while impaired by drugs.

Over half of the $161 million will be accessible to provinces and territories over the next five years, and my department is already engaged with them to identify the needs and the priorities for the investments, particularly with respect to training and equipment. That collaboration across jurisdictions has been a key part of our preparations for the new legislative framework, and it will remain crucial to the implementation and ongoing evaluation of the system that Bill C-45 will put in place. In that regard, as the Minister of Justice mentioned, she and I spent two days last week with our provincial and territorial counterparts at a meeting in Vancouver, where the discussions around this particular topic were particularly important.

There are three topics that I would like to address. Of the many that will need to be discussed about Bill C-45, these are the three in particular that I'd like to address in a little more detail.

First, on the subject of cannabis at the border. It is, of course, currently illegal to bring cannabis into Canada or to take cannabis out of Canada. Going both ways across the border, it's illegal. Under Bill C-45, that would not change. Border officers already examine people and goods entering the country to prevent the smuggling of contraband, including cannabis. They make use of advanced technology, intelligence gathering, and ongoing training about how to detect and interdict substances that may not be brought across the border. Their efforts will continue, bolstered by some of the new funding that I mentioned earlier.

As for the admissibility into the United States of Canadians who have previously used cannabis, we have engaged our American counterparts to ensure that they understand how our new regime will function and what it will achieve, and we have made clear that we expect travellers heading in both directions to be treated in a fair, professional, and respectful manner.

At the same time, the United States is, of course, entitled to make its own admissibility decisions. I would certainly encourage Canadians to be forthright with border officials and to keep in mind that cannabis remains illegal at the federal level in the United States. In fact, some of the new funding for the CBSA will go toward communications and signage to ensure that travellers are well informed about the state of the law.

The situation in the United States is also complicated by the fact that there are a number of state jurisdictions that either have already legalized cannabis or are planning to do so in the immediate future, so the situation with respect to American law is evolving.

Second, on the subject of organized crime. At present, Canada's non-medical cannabis industry is entirely criminal. The illegal cannabis trade in this country puts $7 billion annually, perhaps more, into the pockets of organized crime. Over half of Canadian organized crime groups are suspected or known to be involved in the cannabis market. Canadian law enforcement spends upwards of $2 billion every year trying to enforce what is currently an ineffective legal regime. With legalization and regulation, we can enable law enforcement resources to be used more effectively, and we can dramatically reduce the involvement of and the flow of money to organized crime.

In Washington state, for example, legalization a short time ago has shrunk the criminal share of the cannabis market by nearly 75%. As with tobacco, we know that the black market is unlikely to be entirely eliminated, but we're talking about taking the criminal market share from non-medical cannabis down from 100%, where it exists today, to much lower levels, and that would be an improvement.

Third, on the subject of impaired driving. Parliament will have an opportunity, obviously, to go into this in much greater detail during the study of Bill C-46, the companion piece to Bill C-45. Bill C-46 is specifically aimed at better addressing the long-standing problem of driving while under the influence of alcohol or drugs. But I know it's an issue that touches many of us very directly, and I certainly feel a deep personal sense of urgency to tackle it head-on, both as Minister of Public Safety and as the member of Parliament for Regina—Wascana.

Of all the provinces, Saskatchewan has Canada's highest impaired driving rate. Among cities, Regina is third in the country, with Saskatoon not far behind. Too many families in Saskatchewan, and in all of our communities, mourn loved ones lost to impaired driving. This is therefore a problem that exists right now, and we would have to address it with or without the new cannabis regime. It's urgent that we do so.

As I have said, we are doing this with the legislation we introduced in the spring as well as with the additional cash investments that I mentioned a few moments ago. I welcome the strong public support and advocacy that we see coming for legislation such as Bill C-46 from such organizations as MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving. They have gone so far as to engage in a very public advertising campaign about the importance of this legislation.

To deal with cannabis-impaired driving specifically, our approach focuses on educating the public and facilitating detection and prosecution. In March, for example, Public Safety Canada launched a social media campaign targeting young drivers and their parents in order to raise awareness about the dangers of driving while under the influence of cannabis.

Last winter, seven police services across the country, from Halifax to Vancouver and to Yellowknife, participated in a groundbreaking pilot project to study two different oral fluid drug screening devices in diverse operational settings, including the dead of winter. As you can read in the report that was released in June, police generally found the devices easy to use in various weather, temperature, and lighting conditions. Part of the investment I mentioned earlier will help ensure that police officers in communities across the country have these devices and are properly trained to use them.

Finally on this point, I know this committee has heard concerns about the timeline for implementation, but cannabis-impaired driving is happening on our streets right now. The faster we get the right tools, the funding, the training, and the legislative and regulatory authorities in place, the safer Canadians will be. Legislative delay does not make the problem go away or get better. Delay only stalls more effective action.

Public health and safety have been the key drivers of our approach to cannabis and will remain our overarching preoccupation. For too long Canadians, and especially Canadian youth, have been using cannabis at world record rates to the great profit of criminals and organized crime. That needs to change, and that's why we have this bill before you now.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

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

I have a question for the Barreau du Québec.

You've identified a number of concerns, including presumption of innocence, reliability of measurement instruments, sampling, including blood sampling, and abuse of powers. Is the association putting forward a proposal on what you think will help keep Canadians safe with the approval of Bill C-45 and recreational use of marijuana?

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Minister of Health]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I'd also like to echo my colleague Minister Wilson-Raybould's comments about thanking the committee members. I know that you guys were called in a week early last week and you did a lot of work, so thank you so much for coming here and doing the good work that needs to be done regarding this legislation.

I'm honoured to be here today with my colleagues Minister Goodale and Minister Wilson-Raybould to discuss Bill C-45, an act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other acts. I'd like to start off by acknowledging the remarkable progress on this file under the previous Minister of Health. It is because of her hard work and the tireless work of her staff, and the staff of Health Canada, that I am able to speak before you today.

Protecting the health and safety of Canadians is a priority for our government and the focus of this bill. Canadians use cannabis at some of the highest rates in the world and decades of criminal prohibition have not reduced these rates. In fact, cannabis has become the most commonly used illegal substance in Canada. Today 21% of our youth and 30% of our young adults use cannabis. Our youth have the highest prevalence of cannabis use when compared with peers in other developed countries. This clearly shows that the current approach to cannabis is not working.

This is why our government is proposing a public health approach to legalizing, strictly regulating, and restricting access to cannabis. Our aim is to minimize the harms associated with cannabis use, especially for youth. Scientific evidence shows that the risk for cannabis use is higher for youth than adults, that these risks increase the younger a person starts using it, and increase further the more often they use it. The legislation before us today, better known as Bill C-45, is the foundation of our government's new approach.

Through this legislation, as well as early and sustained public education and awareness, we aim to delay the age at which youth are trying cannabis and inform all Canadians of the risk of using cannabis. Today I would like to focus on three components of this approach. Number one is protecting youth. Number two is educating and public awareness, and finally, there is product safety and quality control.

Let's start off talking about protecting youth. I would like to be very clear that in no way are we endorsing the use of cannabis, or looking to make it easier for youth to access cannabis. It's quite the opposite actually. Protecting youth is at the centre of our government's approach to regulating and restricting the use of cannabis. Youth are especially vulnerable to the effects of cannabis on brain development and function. Scientific evidence shows us that the younger someone is when they start using cannabis and the more often they use it, the greater the risk to their health. As I've already mentioned, far too many young Canadians are already accessing cannabis. In many cases it is easier for kids to buy cannabis than cigarettes or alcohol. The data support this.

In the 2015 Canadian tobacco, alcohol and drugs survey, 21% of youth reported having used cannabis during the past year. Comparatively, 10% of youth reported using cigarettes. The striking difference in these statistics illustrates the power and effectiveness of a range of measures such as regulation, advertising, and promotion controls in public education, which over time have contributed to lower usage rates.

Canada has been regulating tobacco and educating the public on the risks for the past 30 years. The percentage of youth who use tobacco has dropped from 27% in 1985 to 10% in 2015. This is why we seek to build on what we've learned by regulating tobacco. We will restrict youth access to cannabis by penalizing those who sell or give it to youth and restricting its advertising and promotion. Bill C-45 would prohibit anyone from selling or providing cannabis to any person under the age of 18, though provinces and territories could increase the minimum legal age of sale, purchase, and consumption.

The proposed minimum age of 18 reflects the advice we received from the expert task force on cannabis legalization and regulation. It also balances the need to protect our children and youth from the adverse health effects of cannabis, while at the same time recognizing that setting the minimum age too high would risk preserving the illegal market given the high rates of use among young adults between the ages of 20 and 24.

Bill C-45 would create new criminal penalties for giving or selling cannabis to youth and using a youth to commit a cannabis-related offence. The bill would also prohibit certain products and marketing practices, especially those that would appeal to youth.

Businesses would not be allowed to produce or sell cannabis products that might appeal to youth. Those marketing cannabis would also be prohibited from using any packaging or labelling that could be attractive to youth, including depictions of persons, celebrities, characters, or even animals. False, misleading, or deceptive advertising would be prohibited, as would sponsorships, testimonials, and endorsements, or any other form of promotion or branding that could entice young people to use cannabis.

Promotion of cannabis would be permitted only if it presents factual information and is communicated in a way that could not be seen by youth. Also, cannabis could not be sold through self-service displays or vending machines. We believe these safeguards will help keep cannabis out the hands of our children and youth.

The safeguards we are putting in place will help reduce youth access to cannabis, but we also know that youth today are less likely than adults to see cannabis use as a significant health risk. As someone who has spent my entire career as a front-line worker in the areas of mental health and addictions, this doesn't surprise me, and I believe strongly that it is an issue we must address.

As with other drugs, while cannabis can be used therapeutically by some people, its use can also pose health risks. We need to provide Canadians with information about cannabis so they can talk to their children about the risks. We must also educate and support adults in making informed and responsible choices that minimize risks, including the dangers related to drug-impaired driving.

To this end, budget 2017 directed an initial investment of $9.6 million to a public education and awareness campaign to inform Canadians, particularly young people, about the risks of cannabis use. This campaign has begun and will continue over the next few years. The funds will also support an initiative to monitor trends and perceptions of cannabis use among Canadians, especially youth. This information will help inform our public education activities.

The final aspect of our government's approach to cannabis that I would like to highlight is the product safety and quality requirements.

The act is designed to establish a legal and quality-controlled supply of cannabis available for sale in Canada. Under the proposed legislation and its regulations, our government would establish industry-wide rules on the types of products that would be allowed for sale. We would also have rules prohibiting the use of certain ingredients such as nicotine, caffeine, and alcohol in cannabis products and would require manufacturers to adhere to good production practices.

The dedication and hard work that have been put into designing Canada's medical cannabis system mean that we already have experience with product safety and quality requirements for cannabis. Our current system, which provides access to cannabis for medical purposes, is recognized as one of best in the world. It includes a number of safety and security features, such as frequent inspections of production facilities and clear regulations around product testing, labelling, and pesticide use. We will be using this system of licensed production as a blueprint as we establish broader cannabis production under the bill.

In conclusion, it's clear that the current system is not working. The legislation before you today is designed to address the issue that we are already facing. Our kids currently have access to cannabis, and organized crime continues to profit from its unregulated sale in our country. We are proposing a new way for Canada to address this problem by using a public health approach.

We all know that this is a far-reaching issue that stretches well beyond this particular piece of legislation. This issue demands that we co-operate across jurisdictions and sectors.

Following the advice of the task force on cannabis legalization and regulation, under this legislation all levels of government would be able to establish certain requirements with respect to cannabis, consistent with their own jurisdictional authorities and experience. The involvement of the provinces and territorial governments is critical to ensuring that young people do not have access to cannabis.

Under this bill, the federal government would be responsible for establishing and maintaining a comprehensive and consistent national framework to regulate production, set standards for health and safety, and establish criminal prohibitions. The provinces and territories could license and oversee the distribution of the sale of cannabis.

Together with municipalities, they could also tailor certain rules in their own jurisdictions, and enforce them through a range of tools such as tickets. We have worked closely with our provincial and territorial counterparts to ensure that their valuable input was taken into account from the beginning of this important effort, and our government is committed to continuing our ongoing collaboration with the provinces and territories on this very complex issue.

With its focus on protecting youth, educating the public, and ensuring product safety and quality requirements, the bill uses a public health approach to strictly regulate and restrict access to cannabis. Our government is confident that the proposed cannabis act will protect the health and safety of Canadians.

Thank you so much.

[Jody Wilson-Raybould, Liberal, Minister of Justice]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and my thanks to the members of the committee. It is indeed a pleasure to be here, and I recognize that you came back earlier to have discussions and hear from witnesses on this most important topic that my honourable colleagues, Ministers Goodale and Petitpas Taylor, are pleased to present on Bill C-45, the cannabis act.

While the committee was doing the important work of looking at this bill, Minister Goodale and I were meeting with our provincial and territorial counterparts in Vancouver. Cannabis and drug-impaired driving were significant parts of our agenda, and we feel that the engagement of the provinces and territories is an incredibly important feature in our work to date. There can be no doubt that the legalization and strict regulation of cannabis has sparked much discussion, before and particularly after the introduction of Bill C-45. In my remarks today, before I turn it over to my ministerial colleagues, I want to provide some background on the development of our legislative proposal, highlight the purpose of Bill C-45, and provide an overview of key justice aspects.

There is a broad consensus among Canadians that our current approach to cannabis is not working. Our system of criminal prohibition fosters an environment where organized crime reaps billions of dollars in profits from its sale, where thousands of Canadians each year end up with criminal records for non-violent cannabis offences, and where cannabis is not being kept out of the hands of young people.

Most Canadians no longer believe that simple possession for small amounts of cannabis should be subject to harsh criminal sanctions, which can have lifelong impacts for individuals, and which take up precious resources in our criminal justice system. Our government agrees that there is a better approach, one that is evidence-based and that will protect the health and safety of Canadians, with a focus on protecting our young people.

As a starting point, on June 30, 2016, we appointed a task force on cannabis legalization and regulation with a mandate to advise us on the design of a new regulatory system. I know that the chairperson, the Hon. Anne McLellan, and the task force's vice-chair, Dr. Mark Ware, appeared before you as witnesses last week.

As you heard, the task force conducted extensive consultations across the country, visited the states of Washington and Colorado, which have legalized cannabis for non-medical purposes, and considered nearly 30,000 online submissions sent in by Canadians. It also sought the views of a diverse community of experts, professionals, advocates, front-line workers, youth professionals, indigenous communities and organizations, territorial, provincial, and municipal officials, law enforcement, citizens, and employers.

On December 13, 2016, the task force delivered its final report containing over 80 recommendations for the development of a Canadian legal cannabis framework. It reflects a public health approach aimed at reducing harm and promoting the health and safety of Canadians. The report has been very well received, is comprehensive, and provides important background information on the issues this bill seeks to address. It also proved essential in developing Bill C-45.

The bill paves the way for Canada to become the first G20 country to legalize and strictly regulate cannabis at the national level. It was introduced last spring alongside another important piece of legislation, Bill C-46, which proposes new and stronger laws to more seriously tackle drug and alcohol-impaired driving.

As set out in clause 7 of Bill C-45, our government's intention is to protect public health and safety with a particular emphasis on protecting young people's health by restricting their access to cannabis; preventing advertising and other promotional activities that are likely to encourage cannabis use; providing for lawful production of cannabis to reduce illegal activities; deterring illegal cannabis-related activities through appropriate sanctions and enforcement measures; reducing the cannabis-related burden on the criminal justice system; providing Canadians with access to a quality-controlled supply of cannabis; and enhancing public awareness of health risks associated with cannabis use.

Bill C-45 creates a framework in which adults can access legal cannabis in an appropriate retail context that is sourced from a well-regulated industry, or grown in limited amounts at home. Adults 18 years or older will be permitted to legally possess or share with other adults up to 30 grams of legal dried cannabis, or its equivalent in other forms. Selling, or possessing to do so, will only be lawful if authorized under the act.

Under no circumstances will cannabis be sold or given to a young person. Production of cannabis will also require specific authorization. Possession, production, distribution, import, export, and sale outside this framework will all remain illegal and be subject to criminal penalties. These penalties will be proportionate to the seriousness of the offence, ranging from ticketing up to a maximum penalty of 14 years imprisonment. This graduated approach reflects our legislative objectives.

Bill C-45 will also exempt young persons from criminal prosecution who possess or share up to five grams of cannabis, rather than exposing them to the criminal justice system for what amounts to very small amounts of cannabis. Above five grams, young people will be subject to the Youth Criminal Justice Act, which emphasizes community-based responses, rehabilitation, and reintegration. For less serious offences, alternatives to charging are encouraged, such as taking no further action, warning the young person, or referring them to a community program or agency to help address the circumstances underlying their behaviour.

Under Bill C-45, the federal, provincial, and territorial governments will all share in the responsibility for overseeing the new system. The federal government will oversee the production and manufacturing components of the cannabis framework and will set industry wide rules and standards. Provinces and territories will be responsible for the distribution and sale. They will also be able to create further restrictions as they see fit, including increasing the minimum age to align with their legal drinking age. Further, the provinces and territories, along with municipalities, could create additional rules for growing cannabis at home, such as lowering the number of plants allowed per residence, and restricting where cannabis can be consumed, such as in public places and vehicles.

In addition to our working with them to establish a secure supply chain, provinces and territories will be key partners in our government's efforts to raise public awareness about the risks associated with cannabis use. As set out in budget 2017, our government has provided $9.6 million for public education and awareness, as well as monitoring and surveillance activities. This includes monitoring patterns and perceptions around cannabis use among Canadians, especially youth, through the annual Canadian cannabis survey. This work will inform and refine further public education and awareness activities to mitigate the risks and the harms of use.

I would now like to address some of the concerns that have been raised either during second reading debate, or by witnesses appearing before you last week. I want to assure this committee that in developing the bill we were aware of concerns voiced about the minimum age, youth possession of small amounts of cannabis, personal cultivation, and the impact of our proposed legislation on youth.

Let me start by saying that overall Bill C-45 is informed by and closely aligns with the recommendations of the task force report. In terms of minimum age, our government has accepted the task force's advice that we need to strike a balance between the known risks of cannabis and the reality that Canadian youth and young adults currently use cannabis at some of the highest rates in the world. In striking this balance Bill C-45 restricts the sale of cannabis to adults aged 18 and older. Provinces and territories will be able to set a higher minimum age just as they do with alcohol and tobacco.

In exempting from criminal prosecution young persons who possess or share up to five grams of cannabis, we are aware of the criticism that this sends the wrong message to youth. Our government's position is clear: young persons should not have access to any amounts of cannabis. Under Bill C-45 there will be no legal means for a young person to purchase or acquire cannabis. Criticizing our government's decision not to criminalize youth for possessing or sharing very small amounts of cannabis ignores the evidence. Statistics clearly show high usage rates among youth despite the fact that cannabis is currently a prohibited substance. Our government recognizes that for very small amounts there is a better way to deal with young people than using the full force of the criminal law.

Our government has been engaging with provinces and territories to encourage them to create administrative offences to prohibit youth from possessing any amount of cannabis similar to what is currently done with alcohol and tobacco. This measured approach would provide police with the authority to seize small amounts of cannabis from youth. Ontario has recently announced its intention to do just that. I have been encouraging and urging other provinces and territories to follow suit, most recently just last week at the FPT meeting in Vancouver.

Another issue that was raised during second reading debate was the suggestion that home cultivation could mean greater access to cannabis for children. In response I would note that the task force concluded that small amounts of cannabis for personal use can be safely and responsibly cultivated by adults in a manner that protects young persons in the home. Adults will be required to take appropriate precautions as they must do now when storing prescription drugs, alcohol, and other potentially harmful substances. Additionally the significant penalties proposed in Bill C-45 for selling and distributing to young persons, or for using or involving any young person in the commission of a cannabis offence sends a strong message to any adult who would allow cannabis to get into the hands of children.

In response to the other concerns raised, such as those related to the timing of implementation, challenges surrounding drug impaired driving, and Canada's obligation under international drug treaties I would like to emphasize that these are all issues that we continue to diligently work to address. We are continuing to work collaboratively with the provinces and territories, and as mentioned, Minister Goodale and I met with our counterparts last week.

The Ministers of Health, Finance, and Agriculture have also met to discuss the issue. In addition, federal officials will have maintained ongoing engagement with their counterparts.

Mr. Chairman, I will respect my time frame and I very much look forward to questions. I will turn it over to my colleague Minister Petitpas Taylor.

[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?

[Bill Karsten]

Thank you, Brock.

Committee members, the fact is that passing Bill C-45 will trigger an extensive implementation process across all orders of government, and I'd like to place emphasis on what our member from Alberta said, “all orders of government”. Municipalities will have to adapt local bylaws, rules, and programs as a direct result for things like zoning, land use, business licensing, enforcement, and much more. But much of this work will stem from regulatory frameworks that federal, provincial, and territorial governments still have to design and build.

FCM is pleased and proud that we have published a legalization primer for our members from coast to coast to coast, and a fuller guideline and guidebook is being initiated and is on its way to our members. These tools will help our municipalities from coast to coast to coast get moving on issues that they can address immediately and build work plans for the remainder. But for the work plans to succeed, municipalities need clarity and engagement on a whole range of various issues.

Our first recommendation is that the federal government coordinate with all orders of government to develop its regulatory framework for Bill C-45. We believe the key to meeting a July 2018 launch timeline safely and effectively—again I emphasize safely and effectively—will be concurrent legislative, regulatory, and bylaw development by all orders of government. We'll inch forward locally, based on what we see our federal, provincial, and territorial partners doing. Those partners still have important decisions to make in areas such as minimum age for consumption and what kind of retail distribution model to use.

There is also much uncertainty in the area of shared responsibility for shared impact that I would like to share with you. It's a short list of things like the personal cultivation issue, workplace health and safety issues, public education, nuisance issues, municipal zoning, municipal authority to zone in cases where federal production facilities may exist, and actually others that we haven't mentioned in the list here today.

The federal government has formalized its consultation with the provinces and territories through a working group. We understand that, and that is a great first step. However, FCM would welcome sustained municipal engagement with this group to align the needs of all governments.

As part of this coordination, our second recommendation to you, sir, and to your committee, is to prioritize decision points that prevent local governments from moving forward with implementation work. To prioritize those decision points is critical to us safely and effectively moving this forward.

There are areas where decisions at the federal, provincial, or territorial levels will drive the local response, such as provincial retail distribution models, rules around personal cultivation, as I've mentioned, first nation and municipal boundary overlaps, which has been raised by some of our members, the authority to prohibit cannabis use and sales where applicable, and municipal options if cannabis becomes legal federally without provincial or territorial laws and regulations in place.

We believe the federal government should proactively engage with all orders of government in the coming months to ensure roles and responsibilities are very clearly defined.

Our third recommendation is for federal funding to defray start-up costs for local implementation. There is absolutely no doubt that there is an expectation that municipalities will be on the front lines of enforcing issues, such as local zoning, density bylaws, things like rules around minimum age of purchase, personal cultivation, issues like possession limits, smoking restrictions, and public nuisance complaints that are bound to happen. Also, as alluded to earlier in the other presentation, there are safety concerns related to the building code. We believe these are appropriate roles for municipalities, and municipalities alone. However, growing into them will definitely impose immediate costs. Municipalities generally simply don't have the fiscal flexibility to invest what's needed under the required timeline.

I'm pleased to point out that one of your committee members is in fact a former councillor in a municipality and that other members of Parliament have also served in that capacity.

The federal task force acknowledged that implementation will require new capacity. I would urge federal leadership to ensure all governments grow this capacity before legislation comes into force, before cannabis revenues start flowing. I will point out that we were pleased to see that the government did announce funding this week for training.

Our fourth recommendation is for a smart revenue-sharing model that includes all orders of government. The administration and enforcement will impose ongoing costs on local governments. We are looking at additional staff time, resources for training, for public health, for licensing, administration, for bylaws, etc. There's a lot more we could add, obviously. We are equally as passionate about our points and our information as other speakers, so our final recommendation is to ensure that slower than hoped cannabis revenues don't jeopardize the regime's safety and effectiveness. That is our final recommendation.

A primary objective of the cannabis act is to deter criminal activity. As experts say, the way to starve the black market is to keep the price of legal cannabis low. For this reason, the parliamentary budget officer warned that revenue from cannabis sales may start out slow, small, between $356 million and $959 million per year, but local governments, regardless of what that number is, will still face significant administrative and enforcement costs. We therefore need to know that federal support will be available if cannabis revenues take time to catch up.

Mr. Chair, we can summarize our recommendations in two ideas: the government should engage municipalities in building its regulatory frameworks and revenue models, and any cannabis regime sustainability depends on equipping local governments with the tools they need to administer and enforce it out of the gate and long term.

We're proud that the municipal sector has a track record of delivering local solutions to national challenges. We look forward to working with the federal government throughout the progression of the cannabis act. We thank you for your time, and we would also be happy to take any questions you may have. Thank you.

[Bill Karsten, Second Vice-President, Federation of Canadian Municipalities]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, for having us here today. Certainly, we also want to thank you for the important work that you and your committee are doing.

As we know, Mr. Chair, we are here today to discuss the legislative and regulatory realities of legalizing recreational cannabis in this country because there's no doubt you will agree this needs to roll out safely and effectively for all Canadians. However, there's absolutely nothing automatic about this. This will require strong coordination across all orders of government and the role of local governments, I believe, is critical.

FCM's national board met this week in Wood Buffalo, Alberta, and trust me when I say that Bill C-45 loomed high on the agenda. Further to that meeting, I have clear recommendations to share with you today. I will share a little of the 10 minutes, but before I do that, I would like to introduce to you FCM's chief executive officer, Brock Carlton, and I'd like to pass the next few minutes over to him. Brock.

[Lisa Holmes, President, Alberta Urban Municipalities Association]

Good afternoon, and thank you for the opportunity to address your committee today.

My name is Lisa Holmes. I am the mayor of Morinville, Alberta, and the president of the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association, which is also known as AUMA.

AUMA is an association of all urban municipalities in Alberta, spanning all types of villages, towns, and cities, including Edmonton and Calgary, that are collectively home to almost 90% of Alberta's population.

AUMA was the first provincial association of municipalities in Canada to take action on addressing the potential health and safety implications coming from the legalization of cannabis. Several years ago, we struck a working group to develop recommendations relating to medical cannabis production facilities and actions to address illegal grow ops. Since then, and since the announcement of the government's desire to legalize cannabis, we have been working with other associations across Canada to proactively identify the importance of an integrated approach between the federal, provincial, and municipal governments on the implementation of Bill C-45. It is our desire to find ways for our three levels of government to collectively ensure appropriate systems are in place to educate the public, restrict inappropriate usage, address health and safety issues, and enable coordinated enforcement.

Our concern is with the timing of these conversations taking place. AUMA strongly supports a slower timeline for implementing this legislation, given the complex nature of the health and safety issues that need to be resolved and the need for comprehensive and coordinated legislation by all three levels of government. The speed at which the federal government intends to move ahead puts our local communities at risk. The federal government must lead this process at a much more measured pace and allow both provincial and municipal governments to work together to create an appropriate framework for each province.

The provincial regulations, including those related to alcohol and drugs, traffic safety, and employment standards need to be developed well in advance of the federal implementation date. To be frank, with this issue, we at AUMA do not feel that municipalities are being treated as an equal partner at the planning table, and it is imperative that all three levels of government be given appropriate time and support in order to prepare all of the required regulations and bylaws that are necessary for the areas we are each responsible for.

Municipalities will be at the front line of this. We are the level of government that's within the local community. We are operating closest to the people, and we will be the ones that have to implement, enforce, and address the impacts of this new regulatory regime. Our members are concerned about the downloading of these new duties related to cannabis legislation without the accompanying resources to ensure that the duties, particularly enforcement, can be effectively conducted. Funding and resources must be made available to municipalities to develop capacity and to offset administrative costs around licensing, education, inspection, and enforcement. Equipment and training costs related to enforcement must be fully funded through either a cannabis tax or by the federal or provincial government so costs are not downloaded onto our local communities.

With respect to health and safety matters, AUMA supports the federal task force recommendation around minimum age of purchase, advertising and promotion, packaging and labelling, and public education strategies, provided municipal governments are engaged in any of these matters impacting them as legislation and regulations are developed.

Public education, with respect to potential risks and harms of cannabis must be a political and policy priority for the federal government. We support early and intensive public education as well as an approach to packaging, marketing, and advertising similar to that of tobacco in order to limit the appeal of cannabis to youth.

These health and safety issues span the production, distribution, and consumption of cannabis. For example, municipalities had been advocating for sufficient fire and building code changes to regulate the growth of cannabis, particularly in residential properties, so that current and prospective property owners are protected from the adverse effects that a home-grow can create.

As well, the sale of cannabis products needs to be carefully considered to ensure it eliminates the illegal drug market while not occurring in a way that is dangerous to youth or others in our communities. Municipalities will work with you to do that by setting out restrictions on where cannabis is publicly consumed. However, around 96% of the urban municipalities in Alberta have yet to enact bylaws or policies that regulate the use of cannabis in their communities because the lack of information and certainty around what will be included in the regulations, both federally and provincially, don't allow us to move forward. Most of the municipalities that have started to work on this have only extended their current policy and bylaw around smoking to include smoking cannabis products. There is a significant amount of work we have to do, and municipalities will be left with little or no time after the federal and provincial frameworks are adopted to put our own bylaws and policies in place that are necessary to keep our communities safe.

Again, it is our belief that production, distribution, and consumption of cannabis raise significant health and safety concerns in the local community. Given that actual enforcement will take place at the local level, the federal government should engage with municipal governments and police forces to determine the best method of achieving their overarching objective to minimize harm. AUMA did a survey of our membership and found the number one issue that urban municipalities in Alberta are concerned about regarding this legislation is public safety issues such as impaired driving and policing and enforcement. Given the limitations within the current testing available for cannabis impairment, AUMA believes the additional rules to discourage drug-impaired driving, such as a per se limit, should not be put in place until there is a robust body of evidence and a reliable testing mechanism to support the measurement of impairment at a time a person is driving. We recommend the federal government invest in research to better link drug levels with impairment and crash risk, and a national comprehensive public education strategy to send a clear message that cannabis causes impairment and that the best way to avoid driving impaired is not to consume.

In Alberta, our protective services do not just include the RCMP, but also municipal police forces, community peace officers, and bylaw officers. All these groups must be a component of the enforcement activities and require funded training and equipment relating to traffic so they can detain potential offenders until other law enforcement agencies can validate and, if necessary, lay charges. The training and equipment required is very expensive and that is not a cost our municipalities, especially the small ones, can absorb. It is concerning to us as municipal elected officials to hear from the RCMP that we contract to police our communities that it will not have enough time to train its officers before the July 2018 implementation date. Without that training and the equipment necessary for the enforcement of these regulations, the laws, and the bylaws, there is a lack of confidence from Alberta municipalities that we can meet one of our core mandates: ensuring the highest degree of safety and security for our community.

Again, I offer our suggestion that the federal government take a measured and phased-in approach to cannabis legislation. This approach is essential as we are working within a complex environment and, although many of us are trying to predict what will happen, none of us can claim to know exactly what outcomes will arise as a result of this legislation. This approach will provide opportunity to adjust strategies as required after all three levels of government and the stakeholders have the time to assess how this legislation and corresponding regulations will impact them. Our main ask is simple: slow down, learn from other jurisdictions, and provide time for all of us to get this right the first time.

I appreciate this opportunity to bring forward the comments from AUMA, and I'm available if you have questions. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

I'll call our meeting back to order.

This is meeting number 68 of the Standing Committee on Health in the 42nd Parliament.

Pursuant to the order of reference of Thursday, June 8, 2017, we're studying Bill C-45, an act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other acts.

We welcome our guests. The focus of our meeting on this panel is municipalities: the impact on municipalities and the challenges they will face.

From the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association, we have Ms. Lisa Holmes, president. From Cannabis Culture, we have Jodie and Marc Emery. By video conference, from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, we have Brock Carlton, chief executive officer, along with his friend, Bill Karsten, second vice-president. Mr. Karsten is also a councillor from the Halifax Regional Municipality. They're both in Fort McMurray, and we'll be hearing from them shortly.

Welcome to you all.

The way we start is we offer each organization 10 minutes for an opening statement, and then we go to questions.

We'll start, in the order that I introduced you, with the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association.

Mayor Holmes, you have 10 minutes.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

However, ironically in Bill C-45, the focus of it first and foremost is to break out smoking cannabis, which is the least healthy way to do it and leave aside edibles and other products that many patients prefer because they don't have to smoke. We're leaving that for a future day down the road. That strikes me as perverse from a health point of view.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

There has been a very prevalent concern raised by witnesses that edibles should be part of Bill C-45 and for some very good public health reasons. The first is that otherwise people are primarily going to be smoking and inhaling and second is that the black market, or the other market, has competing goods in this area.

What we heard on Monday was that it was too soon. The experience in Colorado was that launching edibles would take some time and there are complex regulations, so it wasn't included. However, it's been three years now and I'm sure that the medical marijuana users have been advocating for manufactured edibles for sometime now, for three or four years.

It leads me to wonder what's happened. Why hasn't Health Canada addressed this? Is it you just don't think it's an important component of the market? Why haven't you addressed it for the medical marijuana group? Then you would have had the regulations and things ready for recreational.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

In the questioning, Ms. Bogden, we heard from witness after witness. It's been a long journey since we saw you Monday morning, but the importance of public education in getting this going is absolutely paramount, so it's great to hear about the initiatives that are there. You are right. We heard a very good presentation from a group that produced quite an excellent document, which I'm going to take home with me. In the presentation, they had you speaking to youth about marijuana in a very thoughtful way, and I thank you for that.

Bill C-45 is quiet, though, on public education. I think some jurisdictions suggested that they were mandated to use a percentage of the proceeds from the sale of marijuana or cannabis for education. Are you happy with Bill C-45 as it is now? Does the educational component, the public health message, reside elsewhere in the health department? Will it be a continuing ongoing strategy for health or does it need to be in the bill itself?

[Jonathan Zaid, Executive Director, Canadians for Fair Access to Medical Marijuana]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and the standing committee, for your invitation to appear here today.

We will be speaking on behalf of two organizations, Canadians for Fair Access to Medical Marijuana, also known as CFAMM, and the Arthritis Society. I am the founder and executive director of CFAMM, a national non-profit organization focused on the needs of medical cannabis patients. The Arthritis Society is Canada's principal health charity providing education, programs, and support to the over 4.6 million Canadians living with arthritis. Over the past two years, the organizations have collaborated extensively on important issues surrounding medical cannabis research, access, and affordability. The brief submitted to the committee is a joint submission between the two groups, and any follow-up can be done with me or Janet Yale, CEO of the Arthritis Society. You may recall Janet recently appeared before this committee on other issues including national pharmacare. I would also like to introduce Daphnée Elisma, CFAMM's Quebec representative and a member of our patient advisory board. She'll present in French momentarily. First, I'd like to share a bit about my personal story.

So much of what we hear about cannabis is focused on the harms and risks, which of course are important issues, but my experience and the experience of many other patients is quite the opposite. On April 22, 2007, at the age of 14, I woke up with a constant headache that still remains today, 24-7. This neurological condition known as new daily persistent headache is said to be one of the hardest pain conditions to treat. After trying over 40 prescription medications and all other therapies, I was nearly ready to give up. I had no quality of life. I could not leave the house due to noise sensitivity and low energy. I dropped out of grade 8 and struggled throughout high school. I finally turned to medical cannabis. It helped reduce painful flare-ups and allowed me to sleep. Although not a cure, the effective symptom management enabled me to concentrate and be successful in my academic studies. I advocated for insurance coverage, and was the first in Canada to be successful in getting insurance coverage for medical cannabis in this manner.

Medical cannabis patients are often looked at as stereotypical stoners, yet to me, Daphnée, and the patients we represent, effective symptom management translates to increased quality of life and functionality. Cannabis is a medicine. There are over 200,000 authorizations for the use of cannabis as a therapy to manage a variety of health conditions, including seizures, pain, insomnia, nausea and vomiting, and side effects from prescription medications.

Although there is legal access to medical cannabis, many challenges are still associated with its use. We need more research. Access to various product forms and retail distribution is an important issue, and affordability remains one of the most pressing concerns facing patients.

As the government progresses with legalization, one of the primary goals is to reduce consumption. Although laudable for recreational purposes, the government's goal ought not to be to restrict access to medical cannabis, a medicine, but rather to ensure a safe, reliable, and affordable supply for those who medically require it.

We will be highlighting three issues today: the importance of a distinct regulatory framework, research, and affordability, which Daphnée will speak to. Although we need more research, a recent review by the U.S. National Academies found substantial evidence for the use of cannabinoids in conditions including chronic pain, MS, and chemotherapy-induced nausea.

The two most studied cannabinoids are THC and CBD. THC, the cannabinoid that causes the stereotypical high associated with cannabis, has medical properties including analgesia. CBD, a non-impairing cannabinoid, which has been shown to have anti-inflammatory and anticonvulsant effects, also limits the impairment and side effects caused by THC. Many patients use these two cannabinoids in combination to gain the most effective symptom management while limiting potential impairment. Again, for most people using cannabis for medical purposes, this is not about getting high, but rather effective symptom management and increased quality of life.

Cannabis is a legitimate medication and it must be treated that way. It is important that it be treated that way in a distinct regulatory framework. In crafting Bill C-45 we want to commend the government for recognizing the need to maintain a separate and distinct regulatory approach for medical cannabis, and we want to make sure that this is maintained. Beyond the government's constitutional requirements to provide reasonable access to cannabis for medical purposes, we believe cannabis and patients' needs are best suited to be addressed in a distinct regulatory framework. Moving forward beyond Bill C-45, it is important that the government prioritize and adequately support the needs of patients by addressing their unmet needs.

Of course research is a very important issue. There is an enormous deficit of properly funded research and Canadian clinical trials in the therapeutic use of medical cannabis. This creates barriers to patient access, as many physicians express reluctance to authorize medical cannabis in the absence of robust, peer-reviewed research.

The lack of scientific and clinical research has also been cited by Health Canada as a key reason why medical cannabis is not yet regulated as a therapeutic product, which affects the ability of patients to access medical cannabis through private or public drug plans. In particular, more research is needed in terms of dose, indication, and form. To that end, we have asked, as part of budget 2018, for the federal government to commit $25 million over five years to support medical cannabis research. This investment would go a long way towards expanding the evidence base for medical cannabis, and it's a small amount compared to the $274 million already proposed for enforcement.

Although we fully support enforcement and research into the risks associated with recreational cannabis use, we believe it's necessary for the federal government to invest in research specific to the medical use of cannabis. This is an urgent and vital step towards further understanding and recognizing the legitimate medical use of cannabis and ensuring the sustainability of a distinct regulatory framework.

In terms of improving access, in addition to the continuation of mail order and personal production, we believe that pharmacies should have exclusive authority to retail medical cannabis, and that further product forms should be made available. Sales through pharmacies would go towards improving affordability, including the elimination of sales tax based on the Excise Tax Act, and increasing the potential of insurance coverage.

Pharmacists will help ensure that patients across the country receive reliable education on safe and effective use from trained health care professionals with regulatory oversight. While retail and distribution decisions are largely provincial competencies, in order for pharmacy distribution to happen, the access to cannabis for medical purposes regulations will need to be amended.

I will now pass it to Daphnée to discuss affordability.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Welcome to our Standing Committee on Health meeting number 68. We're studying Bill C-45, an act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other acts.

We're now going to focus our panel on medicinal marijuana. Our witnesses today are, from the BC Compassion Club Society, Hilary Black, founder, and Marcel Vandebeek, administrator. From the Canadians for Fair Access to Medical Marijuana are Jonathan Zaid, executive director, and Daphnée Elisma, Quebec representative. From the Department of Health, we have Jacqueline Bogden, assistant deputy minister, cannabis legislation and regulation branch, and David Pellmann, executive director, office of medicinal cannabis.

We're going to ask each organization to give an opening statement of 10 minutes. You can share the time with each other, but the maximum is 10 minutes per organization.

We'll start with the BC Compassion Club Society.

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

I'll just end with a comment then.

Mr. Larsen, with all due respect, I find your lack of respect for the rule of law in this country disturbing. It's clear that it doesn't matter what we come up with in Bill C-45. You're going to do whatever you like and obey whichever laws you like, and I don't personally approve of that.

Thank you.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Sure.

Mr. Larson, I think we've heard lots of evidence about the damage criminalization has done to Canadians. Many of the harms associated with cannabis are directly related to the criminalization of cannabis, not cannabis itself. Bill C-45, I think we all would acknowledge, makes progress, but it retains a criminalized approach. There are criminal sanctions for possession over 30 grams, criminal sanctions for growing over four plants of over 100 centimetres, criminal sanctions over selling, punishable by penalties of up to 14 years.

If criminalization has failed and caused harm, won't Bill C-45 continue to do that at least to some degree?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Bill C-45 legalizes dry flour and oil, but I'm not quite sure what that oil will be used for. What's your understanding, Mr. Larsen, of the oil that will be legal under this bill? How will people use it and can it be vaped?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Larsen, you sell products. We're talking edibles, and again, all I hear is about brownies and gummi bears. You described a range of products that under Bill C-45 would still be illegal. You mentioned creams, sprays, tinctures, patches, and tablets. These are all forms of cannabis that would remain illegal under Bill C-45.

Can you tell us, in terms of the products you sell: are these products unsafe? Do consumers want them? What percentage of your users prefer these products as opposed to smoking cannabis?

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

I'd appreciate it if you could, and to Mr. Rolles' comments I'll let Canadians decide how dramatic they think it is that Canada will breach these treaties, especially after I remember my NDP colleagues calling for action on this even in 2016, already being aware that the deadlines were approaching.

Mr. Tousaw, you made a comment about the home-grow aspects of Bill C-45, especially the very prescriptive charges around heights of plants and that sort of thing, that they violated or that you thought they would get a court challenge under section 7 of the charter. Can you elaborate on that a bit?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

You described the majority of people involved in the marijuana industry as law-abiding, non-violent, and entrepreneurial. This is the black market we talk about really. There's a tendency to think Hells Angels and Crips as organized crime, but you described a very different picture of the thousands of people who are currently involved in this industry.

You have said we have to remember that virtually all the cannabis produced and sold in this country right now is done so unlawfully, but if the government wants to eliminate that portion of the industry, this bill is not the way to go about doing it.

Can you expand on that? Should we bring those people into the legal market? Does Bill C-45 do that, and if not, what should we do to help facilitate that transition?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Tousaw, I'm going to be directing most of my questions to you.

I think you very articulately described the problems with criminalization. To give the government credit, I think that's something that it has recognized itself and is some of fundamental rationale behind this bill. I think Prime Minister Trudeau has recognized that criminalization has simply pushed products underground and has led to the creation of an illicit market that doesn't really work.

You've also pointed out, though, that this bill, Bill C-45, essentially retains a criminalized approach to cannabis. There are criminal sanctions for possession over 30 grams. There are criminal sanctions for growing more than four plants. There are criminal sanctions for selling and, in fact, with penalties of up to 14 years. If criminalization doesn't work generally, is it not somewhat misguided to take a quasi-criminal approach to Bill C-45? Are we going to have problems down the road with the maintenance of the criminalized approach in this bill?

[Kirk Tousaw, Lawyer, Tousaw Law Corporation]

Mr. Chair, members of the committee, my name is Kirk Tousaw. I am a barrister based in British Columbia. I formerly practised in the United States, which is perhaps why I am on the international panel. I represent clients across Canada, exclusively in cannabis law and policy, and have done so for the past decade.

My firm currently acts for hundreds of people charged with cannabis offences in Canada, many younger, few with other criminal records, all of whom do not deserve to be treated like criminals for their cannabis-related activities.

I was part of the legal team that successfully challenged the prior medical cannabis regime on charter grounds in the Allard case and litigated R. v. Smith, the only medical cannabis case to reach the Supreme Court of Canada. It resulted in a unanimous per curiam decision, finding the CDSA unconstitutional because of its prohibition on access to medical cannabis derivative products.

I commend the Government of Canada on its decision to move toward a rational and empirically based model for production, distribution, and possession of cannabis by Canadians.

Before making substantive comments on Bill C-45, I would like to take a moment to speak about why Canada is taking this important step. The Government of Canada posits two main reasons for legalization: to protect young people and to eliminate the black market.

As a father of four, ages seven to 17, and you may hear them outside the room later today, I certainly agree that protecting young people is an important social goal. The best way to protect young people is to stop criminalizing them. By far the most harm done to young people related to cannabis is done by the criminal justice system, not the use of the substance itself.

As a lawyer who has represented hundreds, if not thousands of people unjustly charged with violating the cannabis laws of both the United States and Canada, I support eliminating the black market in the sense of allowing those who are now involved in the cannabis industry, or wish to be involved, to do so lawfully.

When we speak of the black market as it relates to domestic cannabis production and consumption, we are not speaking of what most Canadians understand to be organized crime. We are not speaking of gangs. Instead, the domestic black market is comprised almost exclusively of ordinary Canadians, otherwise law-abiding, who make their living, pay their bills, and support their families by working in the cannabis industry. They do so for a variety of reasons. Some are committed to the plant and the cause. Some are entrepreneurs, employers, and small business people who simply want to be part of a vibrant industry that produces a product that brings people joy, with very little in the way of negative effect. Almost none are violent or otherwise harmful to society in any way.

While I agree that eliminating the black market is a critical goal, I strongly urge this committee and the governments of Canada and the various provinces and territories to understand elimination to be synonymous with transition and not with incarceration. This includes provinces like Ontario that are moving toward a misguided and unworkable government monopoly on retail sales. Private dispensaries are preferred by consumers, both domestically and in other legal jurisdictions internationally, and already do a great job of providing dignified reasonable access to cannabis.

There are other more important reasons to end cannabis prohibition. Canada is a constitutional democracy committed to notions of individual freedom and individual responsibility. This requires allowing Canadians to make autonomous decisions about their own bodily integrity, without undue interference or criminalization of their choices by the state. Prohibition has caused incalculable harm, both to society and to individuals entangled in the criminal justice system. Twenty-six thousand Canadians were charged with simple possession of cannabis just last year. Many will have difficulty crossing the border into the United States.

Over the course of this failed policy, hundreds of thousands of Canadians will be criminalized to no good end. Each time a Canadian is arrested, handcuffed, and caged for cannabis-related activity, an injustice is done, harm is caused, and we all suffer. Moreover, cannabis prohibition detracts from respect for the rule of law. Millions of Canadians violate the law by possessing cannabis each year. Some of these citizens have achieved positions of great prominence in our society. That is because, either through accident of law, social or racial privilege, or powerful connections, they've been able to avoid entanglement in the criminal justice system. Hundreds of thousands of Canadians are not so privileged.

When millions of otherwise law-abiding and decent people feel it unnecessary, impractical, or harmful to obey the law, respect for the rule of said law suffers. When police officers are tasked with enforcing laws that are ignored by millions of Canadians, the relationship between the police and citizens suffers. It is far past time to right these wrongs. Amnesty for Canadians charged with cannabis offences is long overdue, and I urge this committee to recommend amendments to Bill C-45 that would eliminate the criminal records of, at a minimum, those convicted of simple possession of cannabis. This would go a long way to restoring their ability to travel, in particular to the United States.

Turning to the substance of Bill C-45, I say with regret that much work remains to be done. This bill takes us in the right direction, but does not and in its present form cannot achieve either the goals I've identified or the goals that Canada seeks to accomplish.

Bill C-45 continues to criminalize young people for possessing more than five grams of cannabis, an extraordinarily small amount. It is very likely that, post-legalization, thousands of young Canadians will continue to be entangled with the criminal justice system, doing irreparable harm to the future course of their lives. I agree with age limits related to sales of cannabis to Canadians by commercial entities. Parents, not shopkeepers, should be making these decisions. Age limits for sales, however, are an entirely different thing than imposing criminal penalties on young people for simple possession. I urge this committee to recommend amendments to Bill C-45 to remove any possibility of criminal penalties being applied to any young people in the country for activities related to cannabis.

Bill C-45 also contemplates criminal penalties being applied to adult Canadians who possess more than 30 grams of cannabis or grow more than four 100-centimetre plants per household. These are arbitrary numbers.

These criminal restrictions are decidedly unlike the way our country regulates alcohol, a vastly and inarguably more dangerous substance than cannabis. At this moment in Canada, a 19-year-old can walk into a liquor store and purchase enough alcohol to kill that person and all that person's friends and acquaintances. Indeed, there's enough alcohol in one bottle of vodka to kill the consumer. Similarly, there are virtually no restrictions on individual Canadians' rights to brew beer or make wine for their individual consumption or for non-commercial sharing with friends and acquaintances. Canadians can also currently grow 15 kilograms of tobacco per year, enough for some 15,000 cigarettes.

Given that reality, it's ludicrous or, to put it in legal terms, arbitrary, overbroad, and grossly disproportionate to allow Canadians to be arrested and caged for simply possessing any amount of cannabis, or for possessing cannabis deemed to be illicit, which is, in any event, a wholly unenforceable distinction. There is no empirically, morally, or legally sound reason why cannabis should be treated more strictly than alcohol.

There are also practical difficulties related to these arbitrary restrictions. Cannabis, particularly outdoors, can easily grow five or more metres high in its natural state. Do we really need or want a rule that would require Canadians who wish to grow a few plants in their gardens to continually tie down the branches or otherwise artificially manipulate a plant during its growth to keep it no more than 99 centimetres high? The 100-centimetre limits are the height of absurdity.

In addition, the limit of four plants per household arbitrarily penalizes those living in large households. These limits, backed by criminal sanctions, will certainly lead to legal challenges based on section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which requires that the liberty of Canadians not be infringed by arbitrary, overbroad, or grossly disproportionate laws.

The restrictions on possession amounts and plant numbers and sizes for personal non-commercial production of cannabis also detract from the goal of eliminating the black market. Allowing Canadians to be self-sufficient and to obtain their cannabis by growing for themselves supports the transition away from reliance on the black market.

I urge the committee to recommend amendments eliminating limits on what Canadians can possess or grow for non-commercial purposes and removing the artificial and unenforceable distinction between licit and illicit cannabis. At the very least, possessory limits should be increased substantially, and plant limits should increase and be calculated per person, not per household.

Also critical to ensuring a workable transition away from the current vibrant and enormous but unlawful market for cannabis in this country is to make the process of becoming a commercial producer and distributor of cannabis as easy as reasonably possible. Most details related to becoming a commercial producer of cannabis are not contained in the bill and are instead left to regulations to be determined. If those rules mirror the current situation involving production for medical purposes, they will be too onerous, there will not be enough people or companies able to participate, there will be an insufficient amount of lawfully produced cannabis to Canadians, and the black market will continue to thrive.

The black market will also continue to thrive throughout the entire supply chain, from production to processing to sale, if legalization does not include products that are becoming increasingly popular. Edibles, concentrates, and products such as vape pens must be legal. Trends in Canada and other international legal jurisdictions, particularly in the United States, demonstrate the increased popularity of these methods of consumption, which are also potentially less harmful to the consumer and less bothersome to non-consumers.

On a practical note, there are literally hundreds of companies operating in Canada making these products right now in a professional, safe, and sophisticated manner. These products are not going away, and all rely on someone growing the raw plant material to make them. If they are not legal, then, as always, consumer demand will be filled by persons operating outside the law. It is better by far to allow the existing industry to come out of the shadows and into the light.

I urge the committee to recommend amendments to Bill C-45 that legalize cannabis derivative products, eliminate barriers to entering the lawful industry for persons currently participating in the unlawful marketplace, and carve out from federal oversight the intraprovincial production and sale of small-batch craft cannabis.

Thank you for the opportunity to address the committee. I look forward to your questions.

[Dr. Beau Kilmer, Co-Director, RAND Drug Policy Research Center]

Good evening, Chairperson Casey, Vice-Chairperson Davies, Vice-Chairperson Webber, and other distinguished members of the Standing Committee on Health. Thank you very much for the opportunity to testify before you today.

I am a senior policy researcher at the non-profit, non-partisan RAND Corporation where I co-direct RAND's drug policy research centre. Over the past two years, I've been fortunate enough to travel to Canada multiple times to meet with researchers, policy-makers, and members of the task force to talk to them about Canada's policy and provide an objective assessment about what is happening with cannabis legalization in the United States.

I was invited today to testify about my general thoughts on Bill C-45 and on some of the international implications if it passes. I want to make it clear that RAND does not take positions on legislative bills or ballot initiatives. My goal for today is solely to help inform Canada's policy debate at the federal, provincial, and municipal levels. I will divide my comments into three sections: prices, taxes, and the international implications.

With respect to prices, many of the outcomes featured in debates about legalizing cannabis will be shaped by its retail price. For example, those seeking to reduce the size of the illicit market will want the retail price to be competitive enough to move users to the newly legal market. On the other hand, those concerned about an increase in problem cannabis use and cannabis use disorders will want to prevent retail prices from significantly declining because cannabis users are price sensitive.

Over time, legalization is expected to dramatically reduce the production and distribution costs of cannabis for many reasons. Most important is getting rid of the risk. Right now when people buy heroin, marijuana, or cocaine, a lot of what they're doing is compensating the drug dealers and everyone else along their supply chain for the risk of arrest and risk of incarceration. With legalization, that goes away. Also, firms will be able to take advantage of economies of scale as they move from producing in backyards and basements to larger farms and facilities. Also it will be easier to take advantage of advances in technology if the activity is legal.

For those who are concerned about an increase in cannabis consumption and use disorders that are related to a price drop, jurisdictions have several options. I want to talk briefly about six of them. The first option to help inflate the price would be to implement a government-run monopoly and it sounds as if that's what Ontario is thinking about doing. When the government has that control, it can set the price. The second option is to minimize competition. If you are going to allow private firms to get involved, you can minimize the number that are competing so that should help reduce a drop in price.

The third option would be to cap production. A fourth option would be to impose costly licensing fees and/or regulations such as accurate testing protocols. For example, requiring cannabis producers and/or processors to submit to rigorous product testing for potency and adulterants ends up driving up costs to the firm, which are then passed on to the consumer in the form of higher prices. This can also help protect public health. The fifth option for keeping the prices higher is to require minimum pricing, and Canada does have experience with that with respect to alcohol. The final option would be to levy cannabis taxes.

Before I get into more detail about cannabis taxes, I want to make it very clear about the trade-offs involved when we're talking about prices. Realize that if your goal is to eliminate the illegal market as quickly as possible, you're going to want to minimize regulations and you're going to want that price drop to happen as quickly as possible. Now if you're concerned about the public health implications of a price drop, you're going to want to take actions to inflate that retail price. It's important to acknowledge this trade-off and realize that people have different goals for legalization. Just acknowledging that can lead to more productive discussions throughout the country.

Now back to taxes. Let's make it clear, nobody knows the best way to tax cannabis, and there are trade-offs with all the options. For example, taxing as a function of price is attractive because it's very easy to apply. For example, Washington State levies a 37% tax at the retail level, but the main drawback to that particular option is that the tax revenue per transaction will fall as the price falls.

Another option is to tax as a function of weight. For example, Alaska applies a $50 per ounce tax at the wholesale level. Once again, it's also easy to apply but some are concerned that it creates incentives for the producers to sell more potent cannabis. We know very little about the health consequences, both the risks and the benefits, of these higher-potency cannabis products that are being sold in the stores in Washington and Colorado. We realize that most of the research that's been done on the health effects of cannabis was largely based on people who were smoking lower-potency cannabis in the 1980s and the 1990s. We have a lot of research to do.

Another option is to tax cannabis as a function of THC, which would allow the government to nudge cannabis users to lower potency products. Such an approach is similar to how many countries typically tax alcohol, with higher taxes imposed on products with higher ethanol content. The final report of the task force recommended that Canada develop strategies to encourage consumption of less potent cannabis, including a price and tax scheme based on potency, to discourage purchase of high potency products, but Bill C-45 is largely silent on this issue.

I now want to focus my final comments on the international implications. I will largely focus on the movement of people and cannabis across international borders, and I want to say a few words about the banking situation in Uruguay.

I will not speak to Canada’s international drug treaty obligations and the various options Canada could pursue if it legalizes cannabis for non-medical purposes, including doing nothing. I will note, however, that what Canada does, and perhaps more importantly, how other countries respond to those actions, could send a signal to other countries about their drug treaty obligations. Given Canada’s size, its proximity to the United States, and its status as a member of the G7, national legalization in Canada could have a much larger international impact than the legalization of cannabis in Uruguay.

With respect to the movement of people across international borders, drug tourism will happen if provinces and territories do not limit sales to Canadian residents. If provinces and territories allow public consumption in cannabis cafés or cannabis lounges, this will make tourism even more attractive.

There is also the issue of Canadians being denied entry to the United States because of cannabis consumption or previous arrests. It is unclear whether the United States will change its approach if Canada legalizes cannabis, and if it does change its approach, whether that will become more or less strict.

With respect to the movement of cannabis across borders, we must acknowledge that this is already happening via legal and illegal channels. Currently, Canada legally exports cannabis products to some countries for medical or research purposes. As for smuggling cannabis and money across the U.S. border, the amount, as well as the direction, will depend on cannabis production costs, retail prices, risk of arrest, and oversight on both sides of the border.

Finally, Canada should pay attention to the cannabis banking issue in Uruguay. While Uruguay legalized cannabis for non-medical purposes in December of 2013, residents could not purchase it at pharmacies until July 2017. Then last August it was reported that U.S. banks would stop doing business with banks in Uruguay that provided banking services to pharmacies selling cannabis. In response, The New York Times noted that the Uruguayan banks warned some of the pharmacies over the last few weeks that their accounts would be shut down.

Now it is unknown whether U.S. banks would apply the same pressure to Canadian financial institutions doing business with Canadian entities suppling cannabis for non-medical purposes, but if Bill C- 45 passes, this possibility should not be ignored.

In sum, the federal and provincial governments will confront complex decisions if Bill C- 45 passes. Because it is hard to predict the international and domestic consequences of these choices, jurisdictions considering alternatives to prohibiting cannabis supply should proceed cautiously and build flexibility, especially with respect to prices and taxes, into the proposed regulations.

With that I will close, and I look forward to your questions and comments.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

I'm going to have to cut you off because I'm running out of time. I have just one more point to make. The reason I bring this in is exactly what Dr. Hammond said. The reason this has to be brought up is how much the tobacco companies have infiltrated this discussion on Bill C-45, themselves and through their lobby groups.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

I was just going to turn to you, Ms. Beck. Can I ask you a question?

Bill C-45, ironically, will legalize dried flower, which is mainly ingested by smoking, and will leave illegal, for the moment anyway, edibles and other non-smokable products. Do you have a comment on that from a health point of view?

[Mike Hammoud, President, Atlantic Convenience Stores Association]

Thank you.

Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Mike Hammoud, president of the Atlantic Convenience Stores Association, ACSA. On behalf of the ACSA, I'd like to thank the Standing Committee on Health for inviting us here today to speak on the labelling and packaging of retail cannabis as it pertains to Bill C-45.

Within the context of my presentation today, it is our understanding that the objectives of the act are to prevent minors 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. It is also our understanding that the act is intended to reduce the burden on the criminal justice system in relation to cannabis.

More specifically, the focus today is on the labelling and packaging of regulated cannabis products at retail. To that end, I believe our experience with tobacco retailing has significant relevance to the issues you are dealing with.

First, I will begin with some information about the ACSA, our members and our collaborators. Secondly, I would like to delve into the specific issues of the labelling and packaging of regulated cannabis sales, and our experiences with tobacco packaging and labelling.

The ACSA was established in 2009 as a not-for-profit trade organization to promote responsible convenience retailing and to represent the economic interests of our convenience store members. Today, our membership includes more than two-thirds of the convenience store locations operating in Atlantic Canada.

In collaboration with the Canadian Convenience Stores Association, the Western Convenience Store Association, the Ontario Convenience Stores Association, the Quebec Convenient Stores Association, and the National Convenience Stores Distributors Association, we have considerable experience with and insight into convenience retailing.

Convenience retailers are heavily regulated, be it lottery, food services, beverages, alcohol where available, and in particular tobacco. In tobacco retailing, we have experienced monumental change over the years and we have worked with regulators in our industry to achieve what we believe to be two primary goals. The first is to minimize tobacco consumption among minors; the second is to minimize the rampant distribution of illegal tobacco.

Ladies and gentlemen of the committee, I am of the firm belief that we can bring relative and pertinent insights to your deliberations, so let's move on to the labelling and packaging of federally or provincially regulated cannabis at retail.

At present, legislation—Bill S-5—has been put forward that would introduce plain packaging for tobacco products in Canada. As mentioned earlier, this legislation would eliminate the branding of products. By this we mean the trademarks, individual logos, graphics and colours that differentiate one product from another. With a standardized generic package, the only brand identification would be the product name in a small and simple standardized font. Everything inside would look the same.

The catalyst for this is Australian plain-packaging legislation that came into effect in late 2012. However, that example and others demonstrates that plain packaging doesn't work. In the case of Australia, the reality is that an examination of all publicly available, relevant and reliable data, after five years points to the same conclusion, that there's been no statistically significant decline in Australian smoking prevalence. In the Australian plain-packaging environment, there has also been a dynamic shift in market share between legal and illegal tobacco products, with consumption of illegal products increasing.

Is there a correlation between plain packaging and illegal consumption? Our Australian colleagues are of the opinion, and we concur, that plain packaging is the catalyst for a race to the bottom in terms of the lowest price point being the primary purchase motivator. When the price becomes the primary purchase motivator, that opens the door to illegal purchases that can be made at a fraction of the price of legally sold product.

In Canada, we estimate that illegal products account for some 20% of the overall consumption of cigarettes, with the illegal market share being upwards of 33%, and higher in Ontario. In the end, labelling and packaging are immaterial to many tobacco purchases relative to access to cheap smokes. How would this be any different for retail sales of cannabis?

We know that many illegal cigarettes are sold unbranded and loose in poly bags, also known as baggies, but it should be noted that plain packaging opens the door to increased distribution and sales of counterfeit or look-alike packaged cigarettes, simply because it is so much easier for illegal producers to replicate the packaging. Will your average smoker know the difference? It's unlikely.

More recently, plain tobacco packaging became mandatory in France as of January 1 this year, in what was described by proponents as a decisive weapon against smoking. To the surprise and shock of many, first-quarter sales of cigarettes in France increased 7% compared with the same period in 2016. The French health ministry dismissed the sales increase, saying that plain packaging would not influence current smokers, that plain packaging was principally targeting younger people, and that the impact would only become apparent in the medium- to long-term future. What we have, then, is a plain-packaging advocate saying that plain packaging will have no impact on established smokers, and that the target population for plain packaging is youth.

Well, look at the situation in the Canadian context. As far back as 2003, there have been strict rules in place in Canada related to tobacco marketing that prevent the advertising or promotion of tobacco, testimonials, accessories, and anything else tobacco-related that could be appealing to young people. Today there is also mandatory use of locked cabinets or screens at point of sale to hide tobacco products from display.

At the same time, a large majority of retailers are vigilant in screening out underage buyers through the widespread practice of asking for proof of age identification. Our industry takes great pride in its ability to be a responsible and diligent partner to government in the controlled sale of age-restricted products like tobacco. Such training programs as “We Expect ID” are a commitment to assist retailers and their staff in upholding the highest standards of professionalism and ethical conduct and to support public health and safety. Underage youth in Canada today have negligible exposure to cigarette packaging and labelling. In our opinion, the unintended impacts of plain packaging, such as the lowest-price mentality among consumers or the risk of increased contraband sales, far outweigh any perceived benefits.

It is notable that youth cannabis smoking rates in Canada are twice as high as youth smoking rates. According to Health Canada, the national youth tobacco smoking rate in 2015 was 10%, while the national youth cannabis smoking rate was 21%. Generic packaging would not be an effective tool in achieving what is a common goal for all of us, which is negligible rates of both tobacco and cannabis consumption among youth. We believe that if governments are serious about reducing smoking, be it tobacco or cannabis, then there is much more work that can be done in the areas of education and smoking cessation.

Convenience retailers believe that the types of initiatives in place for tobacco retail sales in Canada can be replicated effectively for the retail sale of cannabis without resorting to the questionable value and impact of plain labelling and packaging. As is the case with tobacco, industry, anti-cannabis groups, health care organizations, and governments should work together to minimize the number of youth and adults consuming cannabis.

In conclusion, we recommend to the committee that branding on cannabis retail packaging be allowed for two important reasons: one, to reduce the ability of criminals to produce and distribute contraband product; and two, to minimize the impact of lowest price point by educating and allowing legal consumers to make informed decisions on their product choices.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

We're reconvening our meeting number 67 of the Standing Committee on Health. We're studying Bill C-45 on cannabis. Our panel this afternoon is going to discuss labelling and packaging.

Our witnesses today are Dr. David Hammond, professor, University of Waterloo School of Public Health and Health Systems, by video conference.

From the Atlantic Convenience Stores Association, we have Mr. Mike Hammoud, president; and from the Non-Smokers' Rights Association, we have Melodie Tilson, director of policy, and Pippa Beck, senior policy analyst.

Each organization will have a 10-minute opening statement, and then we'll open it up for questions from the members.

We will start with Dr. Hammond for 10 minutes.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

You anticipated where I was going next, which is enforcement. Who will be responsible for enforcing Bill C-45on reserve lands and band land?

[Chief Isadore Day]

It is always important to be mindful of the changes to come in how colonial legislation includes the impact on the first nations' ability to generate revenues to appropriately govern their nations.

In conclusion, there are a lot of unanswered questions about how the legal sale of cannabis will affect first nations. This is why the AFN is calling for a national cannabis summit. How will our communities benefit in terms of economic opportunities and revenue-sharing? How will our people be affected in terms of health and safety, and how much funding will the federal government set aside for first nations in terms of education, especially for our youth, on the impacts of cannabis? How will we use the many millions of dollars generated to treat the ongoing issue of cannabis addiction?

At the AFN's AGM this past July in Regina, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale told the chiefs that there simply is no funding in the current budget to properly fund first nations police services. Canada must take funding of first nations policing services as its top priority. Before Bill C-45 becomes law next year, our communities must have the proper health, policing, and public safety resources in place.

Let me repeat, there appear to be more questions than answers. This leaves first nations—and, I might say, the feds, provinces, and territories—in a compromised state leading into an accelerated timeline on legislation.

To that end, my concluding question to the committee is, who is going to pay for the impact of hasty and forced legislation?

Thank you, and I'm open for questions.

[Chief Isadore Day, Ontario Regional Chief, Chiefs of Ontario]

Before I begin, I want to extend my condolences to the family, colleagues, and friends of Arnold Chan, a member of Parliament who passed away this morning. I'm sure he will be greatly missed by his Ontario Liberal caucus colleagues and members of Parliament, who valued his thoughtful contributions to the democratic process in Parliament. Just on a personal note, I've known Arnold Chan throughout the last 15 years, when he worked with Dalton McGuinty and in the private sector as well. He was an upstanding individual who will be sadly missed. Again, our condolences.

I also want to acknowledge the unceded territory of the Algonquin Nation. I am presenting here today as the Ontario regional chief. I'm also the national chair of the Assembly of First Nations chiefs committee on health.

As we all know, Bill C-45, the cannabis act, intends 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 safety by establishing strict product safety and product quality requirements, and to deter criminal activity by imposing serious criminal penalties on those operating outside of the legal framework. The act is also intended to reduce the burden on the criminal justice system in relation to cannabis.

As the committee has already heard earlier this week, police officials have stated they will not be prepared to deal with Bill C-45 when it becomes law on July 1, 2018. That's consistent among many jurisdictions and communities. It's accurate to say that first nations are also not prepared to deal with the ramifications of Bill C-45. In fact, this is a critical issue that is going to have huge impacts on first nations and all Canadians, but we're not yet in a position to fully understand and fully address those impacts.

In this part of my presentation I will probably put a lot of questions to the committee, because there are some unanswered questions, as you know.

The first is: does Canada even know the full impacts of cannabis yet? This is a situation where we're damned if we do and damned if we don't, and that speaks to the issue of engagement readiness. The reality is, the complexities of much of the process—just as an example, environmental legislation, or even getting communities' engagement ready, to ensure we have a substantive say on any legislative changes—make it a daunting task. It's complex in nature.

The Assembly of First Nations does not yet have a position on cannabis. It has been proposed that a national first nations summit on cannabis be held in the very near future.

In Ontario, it's accurate to say that first nations are much more engaged with the province's plan to establish a cannabis control board by July 1, 2018. Last Friday, when the Ontario government announced its cannabis plans, the chiefs of Ontario were briefed in advance by the Attorney General and the Minister of Finance. In the coming months, we will establish a bilateral table to work collectively on the Ontario cannabis control act. We are meeting with INAC minister on October 2, just prior to the first ministers' meeting. Rest assured, this will certainly be one of the major issues on the table for discussion.

Initial meetings with Ontario are proving to be respectful and focused on the real issues and challenges faced by first nations in preparation for the retail and distribution of cannabis. There will be many issues and opportunities that will need to be addressed. First, how will first nations communities regulate the sale and consumption of cannabis at the local level? Some of our communities may want to explore the potential of jointly owned cannabis operations, which will—or may—be federally approved.

What I mean is that there are going to be some jurisdictional issues and questions. As you know, unlike our brothers and sisters within the Métis community, we have a very specific land tenure under the Indian Act. Some communities may want to ban the sale and consumption of cannabis, much like dry communities ban alcohol, stemming specifically from provisions in the already embattled Indian Act.

Land governance, again, unlike with our Métis brothers and sisters, is going to be the crux of the challenges we face. All you have to do is look at the tobacco issues that we're faced with in many of our jurisdictions. I'll only speak for Ontario, but we have spent years dealing with those issues at the community level.

Any provincial legislation needs to have the flexibility to support first nations communities in pursuing development in ways that align with their own specific cultural and community values, for example the banning of recreational cannabis around community events and ceremonies. We take our protocols and ceremonies very seriously, and to a large extent cannabis has not been part of those ceremonies and community protocols. How do we deal with that? How is our jurisdiction respected if the communities set out their own laws and ordinances around that?

I remain optimistic that first nations will directly benefit from any revenue generated from these ventures. While historically Ontario first nations have been neglected in resource revenue-sharing with the Province of Ontario, this new industry provides an opportunity to turn a new leaf and to examine innovative revenue-sharing opportunities. We just need to avoid the potholes in the path going forward.

However, the biggest concern that first nations in Ontario and across the country have with Bill C-45 is the health and safety of our peoples. According to the national native alcohol and drug abuse program, cannabis is the second most-abused substance after alcohol, followed by cocaine and opioids. It was estimated as far back as 2003 in Ontario that an additional $33 million per year was needed to treat first nations drug and alcohol addictions. This is as a result of decades of underfunding.

What will happen when cannabis is legalized and more of our people are able to access this drug? We know there will be an increase in the need for addiction treatment. We know there will be a need for an increase in law enforcement as well. When the states of Colorado and Washington legalized cannabis sales in 2013, American Indian tribes were negatively impacted. This should be examined. Cannabis products were sold illegally on reservations as far as New Mexico, Arizona, and North and South Dakota. The primary targets were native American teenagers.

To quote the July 25, 2014 Denver Post article:

...tribal leaders are fighting a heroic but losing stand as state-legalized marijuana, cannibis-infused food, liquids, e-cigarette cartridges and other products make their way to young people from Colorado and Washington state-licensed dispensaries.

How are we going to ensure this does not happen here in Canada? For example, first nations policing is already chronically underfunded and understaffed. Over the past several decades the Chiefs of Ontario have passed at least 43 resolutions calling for more funding for first nations community policing.

To quote from our May 2017 “Strategy for a Safer Ontario” position paper:

The federal First Nations Policing Program fails to meet the needs of First Nations Police Services in Ontario, and its archaic assumptions place the safety of First Nations Officers and their community citizens at risk.

The Ontario Police Services Act provides a legislative basis for police services in the province of Ontario. However, first nations police services are not afforded the same protections other police services receive in the province, because there is no equivalent legislation for them specifically. Securing funding that is stable and sustainable is an ongoing necessity to improve the delivery of first nations police services. Funding is needed to build capacity to ensure the safety of first nations officers in responding to calls, to create specialized services, and to ensure there is adequate housing and infrastructure in support of first nations police services.

The need for training beyond front-line policing training is an integral part of community policing. This training should include cultural awareness training for native and non-native officers alike, so they understand the cultural norms of first nations communities. It should also include understanding social services, including dealing with addictions and other societal problems common in first nations communities.

On that list of quotes, I want to emphasize that you just had folks here from the police chiefs' organizations federally, and they were stating they are not going to be prepared, so you can only imagine what is going to need to be examined for first nations communities. We definitely are going to render ourselves hopeless here if something isn't looked at and responded to.

From the economic development standpoint to date, resource revenue-sharing agreements have largely been left to the provincial governments in relation to geological and environmental resources such as mining, forestry, and hydroelectric power. The bill has completely neglected any specific opportunity for first nations to participate meaningfully in or have any resources to appropriately respond to the implications of this emerging market.

Section 60 of Bill C-45 states that the Attorney General of Canada may enter into an agreement with the government of a province, or with any provincial, municipal, or local authority, respecting the sharing of fines and fees that are collected in respect to the prosecution of offences and for the compensation, administration, and enforcement of this act.

If the Government of Canada is serious about its dedication to a government-to-government relationship, first nations need to be included in this section to provide adequate responses to the implications of this bill within and surrounding first nations communities. This could include supporting first nations emergency responders, such as police, ambulance, and fire response, which will be impacted by manufacturing and sales within this emerging industry. A revenue-sharing agreement with first nations would ensure quality emergency response to promote community safety, which is an important factor in self-government.

While there may be some first nations that are unwilling to participate in the industry, which is their prerogative, there will be others that will want to participate as meaningful partners or even sole owners of related businesses. Within section 6.1(a), the minister may establish classes of applications for licences and permits. First nations should be a separate class and have a designated number of licences and permits attached to the class. The act permits the minister to revoke licences based on business incorporation being formed or organized outside of Canada.

As the Attorney General continues to work on federal legislation that impacts first nations' own ability to self-govern, more first nations will begin to assert their sovereignty and their jurisdictions. This could include self-regulation on cannabis but also on business licences and incorporation.

At this point, let me just make a very quick observation and suggestion. With respect to taxation in the province of Ontario, we know for sure that within the provincial and territorial regimes, when it comes to retail and distribution, that is going to be a ticket item. That's going to be part of the bottom line. We feel it's very important to examine what has happened in Ontario.

We will certainly want to explore the issue of taxation, and we know that the only way to do that within the context of the harmonized sales tax in Canada is through a CITCA. That was a heavy negotiation in Ontario. This legislation and the relevant policy-makers should be looking at that very closely, because taxation will become an issue.

[Clara Morin Dal Col, Minister of Health, Métis National Council]

Thank you.

Mr. Chair and committee members, thank you for the opportunity to participate in your hearing today. I am here in the capacity of minister of health of the Métis National Council. I am also the president of Métis Nation British Columbia. I'm pleased to be here to provide the Métis nation perspective on Bill C-45.

To provide some background, the Métis are a distinct aboriginal people as defined in section 35 of the Constitution. The Métis nation emerged with its own collective identity, language, culture, way of life, and self-government in the historic northwest prior to Canada's westward expansion following Confederation. The Métis nation continues to exist as a distinct aboriginal people and seeks to advance its right to self-determination, including self-government within Canada.

The Métis National Council is governed by five members. These governing members are Métis Nation British Columbia, Métis Nation of Alberta, Métis Nation of Saskatchewan, Manitoba Métis Federation, and the Métis Nation of Ontario. MNC governing members, through their registries and democratically elected governance structures at the local, regional, and provincial levels, are mandated and authorized to represent the citizens who comprise the Métis nation.

About one-third of all indigenous people in Canada identify as Métis. According to the 2011 census, more than 450,000 people reported they were Métis, with almost 85% located in the western provinces and Ontario. More than 70% of Métis live in urban centres, the largest concentrations being in Winnipeg, Edmonton, Vancouver, Calgary, Saskatoon, and Toronto.

I'd like to talk a bit about the overall health status of Métis people. In the Métis context, we take a “social determinants to health” approach. Everything is interrelated; what happens in one area impacts upon another.

Such historical and current events as residential and day schools, the sixties scoop, racism, loss of family unit security, loss of community wellness and unity, and loss of culture and language have had a lasting impact upon Métis health and wellness.

Métis are vulnerable to chronic diseases such as mental health disorders. These disorders include depression, anxiety, substance use, and chronic pain, including emotional pain. For example, we know from the Métis health status and health care utilization study done in Manitoba in 2010 that Métis had statistically higher rates of depression, anxiety, and substance use than the general population.

The federal task force on cannabis legalization and regulation spoke to the risks of vulnerable populations. The Métis are a vulnerable population in terms of overall health status. It is therefore important that we be involved as equal partners in the work ahead.

I would like to take this opportunity to commend the Prime Minister and Government of Canada for entering into the Canada-Métis Nation Accord in April of this year. This commitment sets out a nation-to-nation, government-to-government relationship between Canada and the Métis nation. Under this accord, we have co-committed to advancing a range of priorities, including Métis health and wellness.

Now I will speak more directly to the proposed legislation. The Métis National Council supports the stated purpose of Bill C-45, including its intent to protect the health of young persons by restricting their access to cannabis, to protect young persons and others from inducements to use cannabis, to reduce the burden on the criminal justice system, and to enhance public awareness of the health risks associated with cannabis use.

Unfortunately, we have not had the opportunity to engage with or consult our citizens and communities on the proposed bill or its regulatory framework. There are indeed a number of matters of importance to the Métis nation, including the potential impacts that legalizing marijuana will have on health and wellness, justice and corrections, and economic development.

The Métis National Council proposes four key recommendations to ensure that there are opportunities for more adequate engagement with the Métis nation in implementation matters.

Recommendation number one is that the Government of Canada ensure meaningful engagement of the Métis nation in the development and implementation of a regulatory framework for cannabis.

The task force advised the Government of Canada that successful implementation of a regulatory framework will take time and will require that governments meet a number of challenges with respect to capacity and infrastructure, oversight, coordination, and communications. It indicated that federal, provincial, municipal, and indigenous governments will need to work together on information and data sharing in coordination of efforts to set up and monitor new systems. Organizations that have appeared before the committee recognize the importance of consultations with indigenous communities on legislation, preventive measures, and interventions to meet local conditions and cultural requirements. We support these recommendations.

Recommendation number two is that the Government of Canada provide the Métis nation with resources to minimize the harms of cannabis use in the Métis population.

The Métis National Council agrees with the task force on cannabis legalization and regulations advice that a public health approach should be taken to promote health and reduce harm. This approach considers the risks associated with cannabis use, including the risks of developmental harms to youth. It is imperative that resources be provided to Métis governments to mitigate harms associated with cannabis use. The Métis nation is prepared to work with all levels of government to undertake health promotion activities and to develop approaches to minimize harms in the Métis population. Funding supports should be provided by the federal government to Métis governments to undertake this work.

Recommendation number three is that funding be provided by the Government of Canada to support prevention, education, and treatment supports, especially for Métis youth. Of particular concern to the Métis nation is the health and wellness of Métis youth.

We understand that legalizing cannabis will have impacts upon the Métis, particularly Métis youth. The Métis population is young. According to Statistics Canada, 41% of the Métis population is under 25, compared with 30% of the non-indigenous population. Many of our Métis youth are already dealing with issues surrounding drug use and addiction issues. We know from a Métis study by McCreary Centre Society in B.C. in 2013 that around half, 48%, of Métis youth had tried marijuana. Among those who had tried it, 23% had used marijuana on six or more days in the preceding month, 30% of males and 18% of females.

We want to ensure that Métis, including Métis children and youth, have access to information to enable them to make informed decisions. We also want to ensure that Métis children and youth have access to Métis-specific prevention, education, and treatment supports. On that front, we agree with the task force that governments should commit to using revenue from cannabis regulation as a source of funding for prevention. Funding should be provided to Métis governments to address these needs.

To minimize harms, we would like to see the minimum legal age set at 19 years. The age of 19 is consistent with the legal age of drinking in most provinces.

Recommendation number four is that the Government of Canada work with the Métis nation in enforcing public safety and protection. The Métis nation supports the task force's recommendations that the federal government take a leadership role to ensure that capacity is developed among all levels of government, including Métis governments, prior to the start of the regulatory regime; that it develop and coordinate national research and surveillance activities, including Métis population-specific research and surveillance; that it establish a surveillance and monitoring system inclusive of Métis; that it engage with indigenous governments, including Métis governments, to explore opportunities for their participation in the cannabis market; and that it engage with indigenous communities, including Métis communities, to develop targeted and culturally appropriate communications.

In particular, resources should be provided to implement an evidence-informed public education campaign targeting the Métis population. Métis are the experts in relation to their own health and health needs and can play a meaningful role in public education.

The Métis nation seeks to work as an equal partner in the development and implementation of regulatory matters and in optimizing help for Métis people in Canada. The Métis nation is committed to working with all levels of government to ensure that the task of legalizing and regulating cannabis is done carefully and safely. Métis governments have the ability to effectively reach Métis people and communities in ways no other government can do. We look forward to contributing to the work ahead.

Thank you again for the opportunity to participate in this panel. We welcome any questions you may have.

Marsi.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Would your advice to this committee, as part of our clause-by-clause review of Bill C-45 and any amendments or attachments we decide to put with it, then be to address those five principles that you brought forward?

[Norm Keith]

There is more attention. The companion legislation to Bill C-45—Bill C-46—is moving towards dealing with a framework for public safety, in particular motor vehicle safety, and as technology advances and law enforcement concerns are understood and reflected in legislation, that will be dealt with.

Most Canadians seem to be more worried about public safety on our roadways than about workplace safety. My experience, if I have any expertise, is more in occupational workplace safety. It is a matter for concern, because it seems as though we're valuing the travelling public on the road more than we are the worker in the workplace.

I think there should be complementary legislative proactive testing measures taken. The proviso and the theme of the legislative framework I'm recommending is hopefully striking a balance between respecting workers' privacy and their need for assistance if they're proven to be impaired. There can, however, be as much or more harm done in a dangerous workplace or to a travelling member of the public—situations in which you have public safety but also occupational safety at play—than there would be with roadway safety.

The statistics are that for every person killed on the roadway you have about one person killed in the workplace, and it seems that the workplace risk of fatalities is being given less attention. That's why I've emphasized the points I have.

[Trina Fraser]

Mr. Chairman and committee members, thank you for having me here today.

I'm going to approach the panel topic of workplace safety from a different perspective, from the employee perspective, and specifically from the perspective of a specific group of employees, those being the thousands of workers across the country who currently work within the illicit cannabis industry.

It is estimated that over 13,000 individuals in British Columbia alone participate and work in the illicit cannabis industry. This represents an estimated wage amount of over $600 million. These are obviously estimates only. We don't have reliable statistics, but I think it's safe to say that across the country we're talking about tens of thousands of workers involved in cultivation, processing, or sales of illicit cannabis. The safety of these workers is threatened in a number of ways. In the retail sector, dispensary workers face a threat to their personal safety through the risk of robbery. Dispensaries are a ripe target for thieves due to cash on hand and due to the fact that thieves know that there's a good chance the robbery won't even get reported to the police. There may be environmental risks associated with working in an unregulated grow op or lab, and of course, the personal liberty of these workers is threatened by the risk of criminal prosecution.

I'm here to suggest to you today that the risks to these workers can be mitigated while simultaneously the objectives of legalization are advanced as these workers are provided a meaningful opportunity to participate within the legal market. This can be done by codifying within the bill and the regulations to the bill a tolerance for applicants with certain prior illicit market participation.

Subclause 62(7) of Bill C-45 provides that the minister may refuse to issue a production licence if the applicant has contravened the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the CDSA, in the past 10 years. That, in and of itself, excludes anyone who has been convicted of producing, trafficking, or even possessing cannabis in the last decade. The bill also provides that additional grounds for refusal may be prescribed by regulation.

We don't yet know what those regulations will look like, but we can look to the current access to cannabis for medical purposes regulations, the ACMPR, for a sense of this. In section 36 of the ACMPR, not only is the minister required to refuse to issue a production licence where the CDSA has been contravened in the past 10 years, but the minister is also required to refuse to issue a licence where law enforcement has provided information that raises reasonable grounds to believe that the applicant has been involved in the diversion of a controlled substance to an illicit market. The use of the words “reasonable grounds” here is important because it means that a conviction is not required. Charges are not even required. A mere reasonable suspicion is sufficient to result in the refusal of your application.

In addition, the ACMPR provides that all directors and officers of a licensed producer as well as certain key employees must be security cleared. Clause 67 of Bill C-45 also refers to security clearances, so it appears that this concept is being brought forward into the cannabis act, and again, under section 112 of the ACMPR, mere reasonable grounds to suspect that the applicant has been involved in the diversion of a controlled substance to the illicit market is a factor to be taken into account by the minister in deciding whether to grant a security clearance.

Under the ACMPR clearly we have a framework that essentially denies prior illicit cannabis market participants from obtaining a licence to produce medical cannabis, and also precludes them from holding many key positions with a licensed producer. This also creates a chilling effect on licensed producers with regard to hiring those with prior cannabis convictions, and it appears that we are heading in the same direction with Bill C-45.

This can be contrasted with the approach that's being taken in the United States. Of the eight states in the U.S. that licensed the production of recreational cannabis, seven have legislation that contains what I would refer to as amnesty provisions regarding prior cannabis convictions. Massachusetts, Nevada, and Colorado deny licences to those with a prior felony conviction, but they expressly exclude certain marijuana offences from that rule. Oregon, Maine, and Washington exclude certain marijuana convictions completely from the consideration of whether a licence should be granted. The draft regulations in California are the most inclusive. They provide that a prior conviction for the possession, sale, manufacture, or cultivation of a controlled substance, not involving minors, shall not form the sole ground for denial of a licence application. At least 11 states that have legalized medical cannabis also have some form of amnesty provisions in their legislation.

What I submit to you is that this is the direction we need to take in Canada as well. We need to consider and debate the parameters of acceptable prior illicit market participation. Many of these individuals would embrace the opportunity to operate legally. They would comply with regulations. Granted, some would choose to continue to operate outside of the law, so as not to be burdened by government regulation, and so be it. They would be dealt with on the offence and enforcement side of the equation, but there should be an opportunity to comply and participate.

At the very least, mere possession offences should not inhibit legal market participation, but what I'm suggesting is that we should go further than that because the cannabis entrepreneurs that I'm referring to are producing and selling cannabis products, so they would still be excluded. We need a more nuanced approach to the issue of licensing and who should be prohibited from obtaining a licence. For example, we can exclude those convicted of offences that involve young persons. We can exclude those with established connections to organized crime. We can exclude those convicted of offences that involved guns, violence, or controlled substances other than cannabis. We can build reasonable parameters that exclude those who are likely to be a threat to public health and safety, while also providing an opportunity for those who would not be.

I am a business lawyer. I have advised the medical cannabis industry since it was privatized three and a half years ago with the MMPR. I have seen the shortcomings of this system, but I've also seen the potential of this industry. Current licence producers are not averse to an inclusive industry. What they want is for everybody to be on a level playing field and to be subject to the same set of rules. I'm certainly not suggesting this from the perspective of being a cannabis activist and I'm not suggesting that illicit market participants have somehow earned the right to participate as a reward for their civil disobedience. I'm suggesting it because I believe it's the only way legalization is really going to work. The stated objectives of the bill include the reduction of the illicit market and it attempts to do so by imposing criminal sanctions on those operating outside of the legal framework, but this, in and of itself, will not work. We know this because it hasn't worked. Those who are excluded will continue to operate outside of the law. A better approach would be to design a framework for legalization which permits the inclusion of prior illicit market participants. This will enhance the public health and safety objective by subjecting those individuals to government oversight and regulation. It will increase tax revenues, as these individuals report and pay tax on their income. It will allow the legal industry to benefit from the breadth of knowledge that is possessed by these individuals and it will protect these individuals, by allowing them to work in a safe, regulated environment, free from the risk of criminal sanctions. If we fail to create an inclusive cannabis industry, the black market will thrive, and if it thrives, cannabis will continue to be easily accessible to minors, the public health and safety objective of restricting access to unregulated cannabis products will be compromised, and we will continue to place an unnecessary burden on the criminal justice system.

I would also add that a meaningful opportunity to transition into the legal market involves having regulations which are not so onerous that they effectively exclude small operators. The task force on cannabis legalization and regulation, in fact, recommended that the government encourage market diversity by creating a space for smaller producers. Under the ACMPR, what I am seeing is that the cost of compliance, in particular relating to security requirements, is a real barrier to small-scale production, and a meaningful opportunity to transition also requires expanding the scope of cannabis products to include edibles and other derivative products. This is what the market wants and demands and it will be required in order to transition the existing producers of these derivative products into the legal market.

Thank you.

[Brenda Baxter, Director General, Workplace Directorate, Labour Program, Department of Employment and Social Development]

Mr. Chair and members of the committee, I am very pleased to appear before you to discuss workplace safety.

I am accompanied by my colleague Eric Advokaat, senior director of Occupational Health and Safety.

Responsibility for labour matters in Canada, including workplace safety, is shared between the federal, provincial, and territorial governments. For more than 100 years now, the labour program has been protecting the rights and well-being of both workers and employers in federally regulated sectors, which represent approximately 8% of Canadian workers. This includes creating and maintaining safe and healthy workplaces.

As part of its mandate, the labour program is equally responsible for the administration and enforcement of the Non-smokers' Health Act.

Enacted in 1989, the purpose of the Non-smokers’ Health Act and the non-smokers' health regulations is to protect non-smokers from second-hand smoke in federally regulated workplaces, including in the federal private sector, federal crown corporations, designated federal agencies, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the federal public service, and Parliament, as well as on certain modes of transportation, such as ships, trains, and aircraft.

The administration of the Non-smokers’ Health Act is the joint responsibility of the Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Labour and the Minister of Transport. The former is responsible for the act's application to federally regulated workplaces, and the latter for its application to common federally regulated transportation carriers.

The Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Labour is solely responsible for designating inspectors to ensure compliance with the act. Fines for offences under the Non-smokers’ Health Act range from $1,000 to $10,000 for employers, and $50 to $1,000 for individuals.

Since 2007, over the past 10 years, there have been a total of 39 complaints under the Non-smokers’ Health Act, with an average of less than two per year in the past five years. This represents 1% of all of the health and safety complaints under just one part of the Canada Labour Code. There are very few complaints under this act.

To date, no prosecution has been filed under the Non-smokers' Health Act.

Since the Non-smokers' Health Act and the non-smokers' health regulations were introduced in 1989, public views with regard to smoking and second-hand smoke have greatly evolved.

In 2007, in light of scientific evidence on the danger of second-hand smoke, the non-smokers' health regulations were amended to eliminate provisions allowing for the designation of smoking rooms and areas in federally regulated workplaces. Since then, all persons, including employees and members of the public, have been prohibited from smoking in any federally regulated workplace and on certain modes of transportation, except in highly restricted smoking areas such as living accommodations or motor vehicles to which only one person has access during a shift.

More recently, new amendments to the Non-smokers' Health Act were proposed under Bill S-5, An Act to amend the Tobacco Act and the Non-smokers’ Health Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.

The proposed tobacco and vaping products act, Bill S-5, would amend the Non-smokers' Health Act to add a prohibition against the vaping of tobacco in federally regulated workplaces and on certain modes of transportation. In addition, the task force on cannabis legalization and regulation recommended that federal, provincial, and territorial jurisdictions extend the current restrictions in place for smoking tobacco to the smoking of cannabis. As a result, amendments to the Non-smokers' Health Act are correspondingly being proposed through Bill C-45.

Bill C-45 proposes to amend the definition of smoke under the Non-smokers' Health Act to include cannabis. Provincial and territorial governments would be responsible for deciding whether to restrict the smoking and vaping of tobacco and cannabis to other public spaces. Should both these bills be approved by Parliament, the smoking and vaping of tobacco or cannabis would be regulated under the Non-smokers' Health Act in all federally regulated workplaces and on certain modes of transportation such as trains, planes, and boats where they cross provincial or international boundaries.

The changes we are proposing would assist in the protection of employees' health and safety at work under federal jurisdiction purview.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

We'll reconvene our meeting number 67.

As we ended our last session, we learned that our colleague, Mr. Arnold Chan, has passed away. We're going to take just a moment in consideration and remembrance of Arnold. He put up a long fight and passed away last night. Arnold never stopped. He worked right until the last minute. He never slowed down. He was always present. He put up a good fight.

[A moment of silence observed]

Here we are on meeting number 67. We're studying Bill C-45. We welcome our guests and our panellists. We're pleased to have you. I think we're somewhere near the 80th panellist we've had so far. They've just been incredible panellists. They have brought great knowledge, background, and experience to us.

I'm going to introduce our panellists here today. From Brazeau Seller, we welcome Trina Fraser, partner. From the Department of Employment and Social Development, we welcome Brenda Baxter, director general, workplace directorate, labour program, and Eric Advokaat, senior director, occupational health and safety, workplace directorate. From Fasken Martineau, we welcome Norm Keith, partner.

Thank you very much.

The way we do this, each organization has a 10-minute opening statement, and then we go to questions after that. We'll start with Trina Fraser.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you.

You know, on our fourth day of hearings, it's quite apparent that one of the major focuses of the testimony and the attention of committee members has been the impact of cannabis and cannabis legalization on young people, on youth. We've heard that Canadian youth are among the highest users of cannabis in the world, perhaps the second highest. We've heard about the impact on their health and their career prospects and the impact of legalization and criminalization on them. We've heard about brain development. We've heard that they apparently suffer from holding myths and misinformation about cannabis. We've heard advice from people about how to effectively talk to young people about cannabis. We've heard different thoughts about their access to cannabis and whether they do or don't have easier access to cannabis than liquor. We've heard about their attitudes towards cannabis, yet we haven't heard from a single young person at this committee.

Millions of Canadians use cannabis and have acknowledged it. They use it today, have used it, and will continue to use it. The parliamentary budget officer has estimated that somewhere between five million and seven million Canadians will use cannabis once this legislation comes into force, and of course, millions of Canadians, I think, voted very clearly last election for a legalized approach to cannabis, yet we haven't heard from a single, ordinary Canadian at this committee.

We have large, established producers of cannabis in this country right now that have been responsible, for I think a decade, for producing cannabis for the medicinal market. Dispensaries across this country, both in Ontario and British Columbia, and maybe in other provinces, have been very actively serving the market, mainly while politicians and police forces have quietly ignored them. We haven't heard from a single producer of cannabis or the dispensaries about their experience over a decade.

Finally, this legislation, we've heard, also seems, by design, to be excluding edibles and concentrates and non-smokable cannabis products, despite the health concerns and despite the obvious contradiction that the very purpose of this bill is to bring products out of the illicit market, to get rid of organized crime, and to regulate these products for the health and safety of Canadians, yet we haven't heard from a single producer of those products.

I think these are very important stakeholder groups, and I believe that it's important to hear from them for the committee's full consideration of the most comprehensive evidence on this legislation. Therefore, colleagues, I wish to serve notice that I am going to be moving the following motion, to be debated at some convenient point later in the day, because I want to give my colleagues a chance to think about it. The motion will read as follows:

“That pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), this Committee meet for an additional two days for the purpose of the consideration of Bill C-45, An Act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other Acts, and that the chair be empowered to coordinate the witnesses, to a minimum of 32 witnesses (eight per stakeholder group), the resources, and scheduling necessary to complete this task in accordance with the following guidelines: (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 this committee regarding Bill C-45; (iv) young Canadians, 15 to 24 years; (2) That witnesses for each panel block be allotted as follows: two Liberal, one Conservative, one 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 meetings be held prior to September 30, 2017.”

Colleagues, to conclude, the purpose of this is not to hold up these hearings. I'm mindful of the government's timeline. It is September 14. I believe that we are meeting next week to hear from ministers. I want to give the clerk and the chair and the parties time to put their witnesses in, but I think extending these hearings for another week and a half to hear from these important groups would be very important.

I'm going to conclude by saying that I've heard from no one but 50-year-olds and 60-year-olds about how to talk to young people. I think it's time we heard from young people about their thoughts on this bill.

[Michael DeVillaer]

I think there are some positive aspects of Bill C-45 arising from the task force report. For example, it looks as if the direction we're going in is that advertising for cannabis products will only be allowed in places frequented by adults. That would include cannabis retail outlets, perhaps alcohol retail outlets, gambling casinos, maybe in promotions before adult-rated films. There are a number of possibilities there.

I think that presumes that only young people are affected by advertising and marketing, and yes, absolutely we should be trying to do everything we can to prevent marketing advertising reaching young people. We're still not doing it with alcohol, for example. Alcohol advertising is everywhere you look these days, and there's no way of shielding young people from that.

Adults will still be exposed to advertising, and we should be very careful not to underestimate the power of that industry to influence behaviour. Remember, this is the industry which back in the 1960s convinced everybody that smoking these dried leaves in paper would make you more successful socially, and romantically, and career-wise without doing any harm to your health. Half the adult population bought it. I think we're more sophisticated these days than we were back then, and that will help, but adults are still very susceptible to advertising. Advertising works.

Public health has been making this statement for a long time now, and we see it's beginning to have an impact. We see prominent health journalists, André Picard, for example, writing about the way alcohol is so aggressively promoted and advertised. Even within the advertising industry, Terry O'Reilly is an icon in the Canadian advertising industry, and he was recently making some comments in his programs about the way in which alcohol is very aggressively targeted toward women. CAMH data shows that alcohol use among women is increasing just as it is among men.

This is why I proposed that we really do everything we can to completely ban advertising of all kinds. Plain packaging is very important. I'm glad to see that being talked about. With regard to retail outlets, one of the things I would like to see is a plain packaging approach to retail outlets as well, because of the principle that a pack of cannabis or whatever, as with cigarettes, is an ad. Every time somebody pulls it out, it's an ad. Plain packaging minimizes that to a significant degree, and I would like to see that same thinking applied to retail outlets as well.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Mr. DeVillaer, Bill C-45 proposes very strict regulation of labelling, advertising, and marketing at the outset of legalization, whereas alcohol, pharmaceutical, and tobacco products all entered the legal market with much more relaxed regulation.

Do you think this will make a difference in our ability to protect public health?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you for clarifying that.

I'll go back to Mr. Strang.

I think you mentioned that the public health goal underpinning Bill C-45 is the idea of taking products out of the illicit—I think you prefer the term “illegal”—market. Is that correct?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

You're probably aware that Bill C-45 retains a criminalized approach.

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

Very good, thank you.

Picking up on one of your points, I would say that potency has been raised as a big concern. The cannabis of today is much more potent than previously. I think it was the nurses society that said it wanted to see really good control over the quality, the dose, and the potency that people are getting.

Another way of protecting the public from things that are not well controlled is to get rid of one of the suggestions that's in Bill C-45, which is to allow home growth. Home growth has absolutely no quality control on the product, on the potency, on any of these things, and also provides easier access for children.

I wonder if the Canadian Nurses Association would like to start, and then we'll let everyone comment on whether they think allowing home growth is a good idea.

[Dr. Robert Strang, Chief Medical Officer of Health, Nova Scotia Department of Health and Wellness]

Good morning to the committee, and thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. I'm appearing on behalf of the chief medical officers of health for the 13 provinces and territories. I'm providing a collective public health perspective, not jurisdictional positions from any of the provinces and territories.

My remarks will be focused on this morning's topic of prevention, treatment, and low-risk use, but by necessity will touch base on other topics such as legal age, labelling, and packaging, which have been discussed in other sessions.

I have assumed that by prevention you mean the prevention of population and individual harm in relation to how cannabis is produced, distributed, retailed, and used, the prevention or at least the delaying of onset of use by those below the legal age, and the prevention of harm to populations that may be at increased risk.

Prevention is not just about providing information and education about risks and harms. Appropriate education and social marketing can be effective but only if they are part of a comprehensive strategy. Policy decisions related to how cannabis will be sold, how it will be priced, how it will be labelled and marketed, and the level of availability and accessibility are the most critical when it comes to preventing population harms, preventing harmful individual use, and minimizing underage use.

To be more specific, to have the strongest prevention approach, we make the following recommendations:

Cannabis should be distributed and sold through government monopolies where the primary objective is protecting public health and safety, and not revenue generation.

As recommended by the task force that advised the federal government, there should be no co-sale of cannabis with tobacco and alcohol products.

At the outset, price will need to be set to maximize purchase from the legal market, but over time, price needs to be used as a key tool in decreasing overall demand as well as encouraging consumption of lower-harm products, such as products with lower THC concentration and non-smokable forms.

Product promotion such as advertising, marketing, sponsorship, and product placement, including at the retail environment, needs to be prohibited at the federal level and complemented by similar provincial restrictions.

Product packages should be plain with clear and prominent warnings about risk.

At the retail level, prepackaged products such as cigarette-type joints should not be allowed as those can facilitate marketing, promotion, and glamorization of cannabis use.

The number, location, and density of retail locations, along with hours of operation, need to be carefully developed to balance access to legal products—and accounting for the current legislation's allowance of personal growing and online or mail order purchases—with prevention objectives.

Over the long term, a minimum age of 21 would be better than 18 or 19 at balancing between shifting young adults to legal supplies and decreasing use by those under age 18. I'm going to explain that recommendation a little more, because it is a key point that keeps coming up.

We know that one of the objectives is to move people from an illegal to a legal market. Certainly, setting age 19 or 18 will bring young adults into the legal market in the short term, but if one of our key objectives is to decrease use amongst youth who are under 18, and will always remain underage no matter if the age is 18, if they are using cannabis, they are going to have to access it from an illegal source. We know from clear evidence around tobacco and alcohol that setting an age of 21 versus 18 or 19 will, over time, have a greater impact on decreasing cannabis use rates and therefore keeping those individuals out of any market for cannabis for those under age 18. If one of our primary objectives is to have a set of circumstances that decreases use of cannabis by those who are underage, we are far better off with an age of 21 than of 19.

Moving along, public smoking and vaping of cannabis should, at a minimum, follow the current approach to public tobacco smoking and vaping, to prevent further normalization of cannabis smoking and re-normalization of smoking behaviours in general.

The approach to bringing edible and other concentrated and derivative products into the legal market needs to be done extremely carefully to minimize the normalization of cannabis consumption and protect children and youth. With respect to edible products, it must be made clear through legislative requirements that products that contain cannabis plant materials and extracts and active ingredients are not food products.

Since it is easier to loosen regulations than to tighten them, the initial regulatory approaches should err on the side of being more restrictive. Adjustments can be made as time progresses based on comprehensive monitoring and research. Such monitoring and research will need to be adequately resourced and established.

Programs that shape social and physical environments to support health and well-being in general, such as supporting healthy pregnancies, enhancing early childhood development, and ensuring adequate housing and income, are all important measures for primary prevention of problematic substance use in general and are and will be important in preventing problematic cannabis use.

Along with this submission, I'm pleased to attach a more detailed position paper from the provincial and territorial chief medical officers of health, as well as the Urban Public Health Network, who are the medical officers of health in urban centres. That more detailed report has been provided to the committee.

With respect to treatment, I do not have experience or expertise in the treatment of cannabis use disorders, but I would say that there are no treatment approaches or therapies that are specific to cannabis use disorder. There is a need for improving appropriate access to treatment of people with cannabis use disorder today as part of the need to improve treatment and access for people with a range of substance disorders. Whether the need for treatment will increase or decrease will really depend on decisions and the implementation of policies that I've discussed previously.

With respect to lower-risk use, an updated set of guidelines for lower-risk cannabis use, the development of which was led by Canadian experts, was publicly released in June of this year. Those guidelines have been endorsed in principle by the council of the chief medical officers of health. In summary, these guidelines recommend that the most effective way to decrease risk is to abstain; that the older one is when cannabis use is initiated the lower the risk of developing problematic use and adverse health effects over the lifetime. Higher THC concentration products have greater risks, so low THC concentrated products should be used. Synthetic cannabinoids, such as shatter, expose users to more acute and severe risk and should be avoided.

To protect lung health, routes of intake that involve smoking and combusted cannabis material should be avoided. Along with that, methods such as deep inhalation and breath holding that increase the psychoactive ingredient absorption also should be avoided. Frequent or intensive use has the highest risk of harm, so if people choose occasional use, one day a week or only on weekends is recommended. Avoiding driving while using alcohol and/or cannabis is extremely important.

Populations that are at higher risk from harm from cannabis and therefore should avoid use are pregnant women, people with a history or close family history of psychosis or substance use disorder. The combination of risk behaviours, such as early age of onset and frequent use, likely magnifies the risk. These low-risk cannabis use guidelines should form a key part of public awareness and educational initiatives related to cannabis legalization and should be incorporated in product labelling and should inform legalization policy decisions by all three levels of government.

With respect to Bill C-45, the provincial and territorial chief medical officers of health and Urban Public Health Network recommended in the paper I have provided that this initiative be guided by public health goals and objectives written into a statute. We were very pleased to see the public health orientation adopted by the federal government for this initiative and the explicit articulation of public health objectives as codified in the purpose section of the act, proposed section 7. We encourage provinces and territories to adopt similar public health orientation and include explicit articulation of similar objectives in their statutes.

Last, we suggest that the bill be amended to replace the word “illicit” with the word “illegal”. The term “illicit“ is stigmatizing in nature, and since stigma and discrimination reduction are important aspects of this initiative, we suggest avoiding using the term “illicit” whenever possible. We suggest using the term “illegal” instead, as it is a simple, clear, and unambiguous term that refers to the legal status of possession of the substance and it avoids the stigmatizing nature of the word “illicit”.

Thank you for your time and this opportunity. I look forward to our discussions.

[Dr. Serge Melanson, Doctor, New Brunswick Medical Society]

Thank you and good morning. My name is Dr. Serge Melanson. I am the chief of staff and an emergency room physician at Moncton Hospital here in New Brunswick. I'm speaking today on behalf of the New Brunswick Medical Society, a professional association representing more than 1,600 physicians in New Brunswick.

As a professional association, we believe that we have a key role to play in advocating for improvements to health care delivery in New Brunswick. We have led the way in various initiatives, such as the promotion of team-based health care delivery. We have also been successful in promoting healthy living initiatives and policy changes to protect youth from health hazards such as smoking and the use of tanning beds.

We recently launched a campaign to make New Brunswick one of the top three healthiest provinces in the next 10 years. We've also collaborated with schools to improve healthy food choices, and we have promoted the mandatory use of ski helmets to prevent head trauma.

I would like to thank the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health for inviting me to speak today to the concerns of the New Brunswick Medical Society about the legalization of marijuana for recreational use.

In June this year, our organization published a position paper on the recreational use of marijuana, which included recommendations to the Government of New Brunswick on an appropriate framework to limit the harmful effects of marijuana use on New Brunswickers.

We also want to inform the public about the health issues associated with cannabis use, and we recently launched an information campaign for the public on marijuana use.

Like tobacco and alcohol, cannabis use can lead to negative health impacts. While Canadians will have the choice to consume marijuana legally in little less than a year from now, it is essential that they understand the risks. Making cannabis legal does not make it safe. We understand that the goal of the federal government in legalizing and strictly regulating cannabis is to decriminalize use of the drug and reduce illicit sales of the substance, but we believe there are still substantial concerns to address when it comes to the particulars of legalization.

Our position on legalization is in line with that of the Canadian Medical Association and their recommendations built on Canada's experience regulating alcohol and tobacco. We also support the guidelines developed by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health for low-risk use of cannabis. One issue of particular concern to us in this discussion, from a prevention and low-risk use perspective, is the proposed minimum age for the legal possession and purchase of recreational marijuana. We believe very strongly that the proposed age of 18 under Bill C-45 sends the wrong message to young Canadians—that it is safe for them to consume marijuana at that age. There is clear scientific evidence that the brain of a young adult is still developing up to the age of 25 and that marijuana consumption can have adverse effects on brain development. While we would ideally like to see the legal age for recreational marijuana set at 25 in Canada, we recognize that this is not likely feasible and that 21 may be a more realistic age for the prevention of illicit purchase by young adults.

Over the past 14 years of practising emergency medicine in Moncton, I've seen first-hand a significant increase in the amount of cannabis use and its negative health effects in patients presenting to the emergency department, whether it be as the primary cause of their medical problem, something that is worsening an existing chronic disease, or something that may be unrelated to why they're there. I deal with the effects of cannabis use in the ER in a number of situations. These can be patients experiencing unexpected effects due to cannabis being laced with dangerous chemical additives, patients experiencing a cannabis-triggered issue called cyclical vomiting syndrome, cannabis triggering serious mental illness, and patients experiencing such serious health issues as chronic lung disease as a direct result of cannabis use.

I see patients who have consumed cannabis, adolescents and young adults, for the most part, who then go on to develop their first episode of psychosis, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other significant mental health issues. Teens or young adults consuming cannabis will have a higher likelihood of developing these mental health issues if they continue to consume cannabis. Some young people may also be under the impression that these medical issues are curable. The reality is that these are lifelong diseases. Young Canadians are taking a significant risk in consuming cannabis. We believe there is a clear association between cannabis use and the onset of psychotic disorders, because the brains of these young adults are still in development.

Since we know that the recreational use of marijuana will be legalized and that increased use is likely to have an impact on health care, it is important that the provinces and territories have adequate resources to deal with it.

If Parliament adopts Bill C-45, the Government of Canada will be responsible for ensuring that the provinces and territories are adequately equipped to react to increased pressure on the health care system.

In addition, the Canadian government must ensure that the provinces and territories have the resources to adequately measure the impact of legislation to better adapt their awareness and education efforts to the situation, as well as their intervention and treatment services over time. Research on public health will be needed to measure the harmful effects of increased cannabis use on our communities and our citizens.

It is also critical that governments at all levels invest the necessary resources to support a strong and ongoing education and awareness campaign. If Canadians are to be presented with the choice to consume legal cannabis, they must have easy and clear information on the risks associated with making that choice.

In closing, I would like to make it clear that a decision by the Government of Canada to legalize the use of cannabis must be advised by these precautionary principles. Government has a fundamental responsibility to protect its population. It is of particular importance, on the legalization of cannabis, for government to ensure that it is living up to its responsibilities to all Canadians.

Thank you.

[Karey Shuhendler, Policy Advisor, Policy, Advocacy and Strategy, Canadian Nurses Association]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, Mr. Chair, and members of the committee. My name is Karey Shuhendler. I'm a registered nurse and policy adviser for the Canadian Nurses Association, the national professional voice representing more than 139,000 registered nurses and nurse practitioners.

I'm pleased to be here today with Professor Lynda Balneaves, registered nurse and medical and non-medical cannabis researcher, who will be able to answer questions that are more technical in nature.

Professor Balneaves currently serves as an associate professor in the Rady faculty of health sciences college of nursing at the University of Manitoba, and is a nursing leader in the fields of shared treatment decision-making and complementary and integrative health care. She has published and presented on topics related to knowledge translation, integrative oncology, treatment decision-making, and medical and non-medical cannabis.

At the outset, I would like to thank the committee for studying this important issue and for inviting CNA to provide its recommendations. Legalization of non-medical cannabis will impact public health, and as such, requires a preventative approach to reduce the health risks and social harms associated with cannabis use. CNA welcomes the federal government's work to table Bill C-45, which would guide the legalization, regulation, and restriction of access for non-medical cannabis. CNA supports the passing of the bill and believes that legalization is an excellent option for addressing the harms of cannabis.

CNA recently conducted a national survey of nurses to assess the readiness for legalization, determine knowledge gaps and resources needed, and collect input on the sections of Bill C-45 that pertain to the scope of CNA's work.

While the two-month survey remains open until tomorrow, preliminary results indicate that a majority of nurse respondents favour the government's move toward legalization, and that the focus should be on preventing access and associated harms for young persons through a variety of mechanisms, including considerations around packaging, labelling, display, promotion, and sale of cannabis and cannabis accessories. Legalization can support the regulation of quality, dose, and potency, while minimizing social harms as well as the costs of prohibition. In addition, legalization can improve access to research potential harms or medical benefits.

In reviewing the bill, CNA was pleased with the moderate public health approach taken on the complex issue of cannabis legalization. In its current form, Bill C-45 promotes the removal of harms associated with the prohibition model, while recognizing the need to protect vulnerable populations, including youth. CNA has provided four recommendations for amending the proposed legislation, all of which are outlined in our brief. We encourage the committee to include all of CNA's recommendations in its final report, including those related to the sale and promotion of cannabis and cannabis accessories, and considerations around promotion and use related to alcohol.

Cannabis should not be treated in the same way as alcohol. The harms of alcohol use and current alcohol policy can be downplayed at times and should not necessarily serve as the model for cannabis policy simply because it is already established. Additionally, cannabis is different in that there are therapeutic indications and particular formulations for medical use. Thus, medical access should not be forgotten in the wake of legalization. While these other recommendations are not the focus of our presentation today, we would be pleased to answer any questions on the full range of recommendations put forth in our brief.

This morning we would like to focus on two of the four recommendations, namely, those related to youth criminal penalties and the inclusion of a comprehensive public health approach to the legalization of non-medical cannabis.

Our first recommendation, regarding youth criminal penalties, is specific to clause 8 and related subclauses. These state that a young person, aged 12 to 18, in possession of one or more classes of cannabis the total amount of which, as determined in accordance with schedule 3, is equivalent to more than five grams of dried cannabis, is guilty of an indictable offence, is liable and/or guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction, and is liable to a youth sentence under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

Not only can a criminal record limit an individual's ability to travel to certain countries, it can also lend itself to considerable social harms. For youth in particular, a criminal record can be a barrier to volunteer opportunities, which are often required by school curriculums, and can play a role in scholarship decisions. A criminal record can also reduce career opportunities and contribute to poverty and poor health outcomes. Legalizing cannabis while maintaining criminal penalties for youth can disproportionately disadvantage young people, particularly those from marginalized or racialized communities, potentially barring them from opportunities to equitably advance and contribute in our society.

Given the evidence that 21% of 15-year-olds to 19-year-olds in Canada have used cannabis in the past year, such legislation could potentially impact a large number of youths. Alternatives to a traditional punitive approach to addressing both minor crime as well as problematic substance use have demonstrated success. Examples such as drug courts, which use a restorative justice approach, offer an alternative to traditional justice processes. These models offer full engagement and accountability of the offender, and help to address the broader range of contributing issues such as poverty, health, or social justice issues that may have brought the person to commit the offence in the first place.

Consider a 15-year-old struggling with problematic cannabis use caught possessing more than five grams for personal use. He uses non-medical cannabis to self-medicate for undiagnosed anxiety and depression which is exacerbated by the stress associated with living in poverty. Would criminalizing possession or even imposing a significant fine help this teen, or would he be better served through a drug court system with a restorative approach, where the teen can be accountable in his own healing, provided with opportunities to link with health and social service organizations to address the root causes of poverty, and offered treatment services to address undiagnosed mental health and substance use issues?

With this in mind, CNA recommends that youth possession of cannabis not be subject to criminal penalties, that the government use a restorative justice approach as the guiding principle for addressing youth possession, and that such depenalization eliminate current or future repercussions for youth by removing the provision under clause 8 and related subclauses of the cannabis bill.

Our second recommendation is for the government's investment in a public health approach to cannabis, including a comprehensive public education program. CNA strongly supports the recommendations made to the federal task force on cannabis legalization and regulation to learn from other jurisdictions, such as Colorado and Washington, and to invest in comprehensive public health and education programs including those related to cannabis use while driving well in advance of legalization.

Canada spends more than one billion dollars annually to enforce cannabis possession laws, arresting about 60,000 Canadians for simple possession, and this accounts for about 3% of all arrests. Legalization should remove significant social harms as well as the financial costs associated with enforcement under the current model of prohibition.

With this in mind, CNA recommends that once legalization is in place, the government use a portion of the savings from enforcement and/or revenue from sales to invest in initiatives that contribute to positive health and social outcomes. Such investments should include tools, training, and guidelines to support public education programs for cannabis harm reduction strategies, programs for substance use prevention and treatment, and research to better understand the harms of non-medical use, as well as the potential benefits of medical use. Cost estimates for these measures can be derived from jurisdictions where cannabis has already been legalized, from public education campaigns that have been launched, and from current federal government investments in public education related to tobacco use.

Nurses are the largest group of health care providers in the country and are often a person's first point of contact with the health care system. As such, nurses are well positioned to contribute to the development and delivery of this kind of health education.

Results of a Nanos Research poll commissioned by CNA in August of this year, which will be tabled, note that more than nine out of 10 Canadians support or somewhat support nurses educating Canadians on the risks associated with non-medical cannabis use.

Preliminary results of CNA's national survey of nurses noted that 49% of respondents indicated that they felt comfortable initiating a conversation or responding to patient concerns about the risks associated with non-medical cannabis use. Based on these results, CNA is committed to providing additional educational resources on non-medical cannabis to support nurses caring for people across the continuum of care.

I would like to close by emphasizing that the legalization of cannabis is an excellent opportunity to reduce harms associated with non-medical cannabis use, but we must get this right. CNA encourages the committee to urge the federal government to incorporate all of the recommendations put forward by CNA.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Seeing quorum, we will call our meeting to order. This is meeting number 67 of the Standing Committee on Health. We are doing our study on Bill C-45 on cannabis. Today our panel is focused on prevention, treatment, and low-risk use.

I welcome all of our guests who are here both by video conference and at the table.

As individuals, we have here today Michael DeVillaer, assistant professor and policy analyst at McMaster University, and by video conference, Mark Kleiman, professor of public policy at the Marron Institute of Urban Management at New York University.

Welcome.

From the Canadian Nurses Association, we have Dr. Lynda Balneaves, a registered nurse and medical and non-medical cannabis researcher, and Karey Shuhendler, policy adviser, policy advocacy and strategy. From the New Brunswick Medical Society, we have Dr. Serge Melanson, by video conference from Moncton. From the Nova Scotia Department of Health and Wellness, we have Dr. Robert Strang, chief medical officer of health, by video conference from Halifax.

Thanks very much. We'll start with 10-minute introductory remarks from each organization. Then we'll go to questions from the members.

We'll start with the Canadian Nurses Association, Dr. Balneaves.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Okay, thanks very much.

That brings to a close our panel for today. Again, I want to thank all of our panellist, on behalf of the committee members, for sharing your information, your knowledge, and your experience with us.

I want to acknowledge our video conference participants, Dr. Le Foll and Dr. Levy. It's difficult to do what you've done today and we appreciate your patience with us and sharing your time with us.

Again, thanks to everybody. You've contributed a lot to our study. You've participated in Bill C-45, and we appreciate it very much.

With that, I'm going to end the meeting, but I just want to say that we're having a fifth panel tomorrow night at six o'clock, from six to eight. The last panel on Friday is moved to tomorrow night.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Let me move quickly to that other area in my limited time, because edibles and other concentrates are not covered by this legislation, and I believe you have recommended that those products be regulated. As pointed out by Ms. Hasheminejad, the lesson from Colorado is that people prefer to obtain their products from legal sources. If we keep edibles, concentrates, and other products in the black market, then this bill will not meet its full potential.

What is your position on whether Bill C-45 should include edibles and concentrates in the legalized regulated frame?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Now Bill C-45—I've used this term before—legalizes to some degree, but it's not full legalization; it'll be less illegal. There will still be criminal penalties for possession of over 30 grams, for growing over four plants, and for selling. If a 20-year-old sells to a 17-year-old, they're subject to criminal sanctions.

Would you agree with me that Bill C-45 continues to risk disproportionate harm to marginalized and racialized communities by continuing essentially a criminalized approach to some forms of cannabis?

[Elena Hasheminejad]

We would like to conclude by thanking you for the opportunity to convey the ideas and recommendations of our members. Further recommendations related to the legalization of the recreational use of cannabis can be found in our position paper, which we've left with you today, titled “The Public Health Implications of the Legalization of Recreational Cannabis”.

Our position paper expands on the recommendations that we've made today, along with other areas of focus such as taxation, age, sales, and access, and we would be happy to speak to these as well.

OPHA believes that Bill C-45 and the recent response from Ontario are steps in the right direction. We believe that, through effective public health-focused policy interventions, a comprehensive, collaborative, and compassionate approach to drug policy can be put in place that the government's commitment to legalize, regulate, and restrict access to cannabis.

We welcome the opportunity to collaborate with the federal government and others to achieve this shared goal and will continue to offer our local, provincial, and national networks our evidence-based information, knowledge, and expertise.

We thank you for your time and consideration today.

[Dr. Sharon Levy, Director, Adolescent Substance Abuse Program, Boston Children's Hospital, As an Individual]

Thank you very much for the opportunity to comment on Bill C-45, an act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other acts. As a developmental behavioural pediatrician and a researcher in the field of adolescent substance use, I'm concerned about the potential impact of these changes, specifically on the health of children and adolescents.

I've served as the chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics' national committee on substance use and prevention, and I've been the director of the adolescent substance abuse program at Boston Children's Hospital since its inception in 2000. Over the past 17 years, I've evaluated and treated hundreds of teens with substance use disorders, and while many of my comments have already been said in one form or another, I'd like to speak from personal experience.

Cannabis is an addictive drug that's particularly harmful to developing adolescent brains. Teens that consume cannabis have poorer life outcomes on a number of measures. They have more mental health disorders, including depression, anxiety, and psychosis. As a group, they complete less school and are more likely to be unemployed or underemployed than are their peers. These harms are distinctly different from the harms of use of other substances, such as tobacco, alcohol, and opioids, but they're no less serious or consequential.

As the director of an adolescent substance use disorders program serving youth aged 12 to 25, I work regularly with children and young adults who use cannabis. In fact, more than 90% of patients we see in our program have a cannabis use disorder. While almost all of them started their drug use histories with cannabis, few stick to one drug alone. Almost all of our patients in treatment for heroin addiction first used cannabis, and most use it very heavily.

We've treated a number of teen cannabis users who've developed schizophrenia right in front of our eyes, and who will never be able to care for themselves or live independently. We don't know what would have happened to them if they hadn't used cannabis, but the science and the statistics made us wonder if they might have had a different life had it not been for a completely preventable risk factor.

More commonly, we see again and again adolescents whose cannabis use more subtly impedes them. Two patients with similar histories paint a very clear picture of cannabis addiction. Both were good students in high school and were accepted to elite universities, where they began using cannabis heavily and ended up failing out. Both blame their changing academic status on heavy cannabis use. All four of their parents have been devastated. One of the fathers confided about adjusting his own hopes and expectations for his son. A few short years ago, he had envisioned his son becoming a successful professional. Now, he simply hopes he'll be able to function well enough to support himself.

The list goes on and on, with many adolescents that I care for falling short of their own educational goals, being underemployed, and struggling with mental health disorders while their families watch and wonder about their future.

Bill C-45 would prohibit the sale or marketing of cannabis to adolescents and young adults under the age of 18, and legalization is often proposed as a mechanism to reduce youth access by taxing and regulating cannabis, raising the price, eliminating the black market, and making shop owners gatekeepers. This approach has failed with other substances in the past. Marketing restrictions have historically been of limited utility when tested against the potential for substantial profits. While it's illegal for tobacco companies to market cigarettes to children, the familiar story of Joe Camel is a good example of how pernicious advertising can be.

In the U.S., the experience in Colorado, which was one of the first two states to legalize cannabis, is instructive. The number of teen users in Colorado increased by 20% in the two years immediately following legalization, while falling by 4% in the rest of the country. As a developmental pediatrician and also the parent of two teenaged children, I do not find these findings at all surprising. The retail sale of cannabis serves to normalize use. Teens are very responsive to cultural trends. When cannabis use is condoned, teens are more likely to use it. To argue otherwise is simply unreasonable from a developmental perspective.

In the U.S., evolving cannabis policies have resulted in changes to cannabis itself. The concentration of THC, the main active ingredient in cannabis, has increased dramatically over the past three decades, exposing users to higher levels of this drug than ever before. That's one of the reasons the science has been so tricky to pin down, because the product is actually changing. New edible products, including cookies, candies, and sodas have appeared on the market and are sold under the umbrella of marijuana.

Now, this market expansion is to be expected, because creating new and improved products is a tried-and-true technique for boosting sales, constantly inviting new users to try, and old users to add, new products to their repertoire.

Dabbing, a newly popular way of using cannabis, results in extremely high blood levels of THC. Higher THC exposure produces more euphoria and also causes more medical problems. In our clinical practice, kids are coming in with new problems that we rarely saw 10 years ago. Cannabis hyperemesis syndrome, which causes recurrent vomiting, was once rare but is now quite common in our practice. Psychiatric symptoms and complaints have also increased. Many of our patients have heard voices, experienced delusions, or become anxious and paranoid with cannabis use. In a study that our group is currently conducting in our primary care centre, more than 25% of cannabis users report that they've hallucinated while using cannabis, and more than 30% report having been paranoid.

As a pediatrician, I find these numbers terrifying. While there's been limited study of these questions in the past, our clinical experience suggests that these rates are increasing, just as would be expected with ever-increasing drug exposure.

Drawing from my experience as both a researcher and a clinician, I'd like to offer the following suggestions. First off, I recommend delivering clear messages to youth that avoiding cannabis use is best for their health. The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Canadian Paediatric Society both oppose marijuana legalization, and encourage parents, health care providers, teachers, and other adults to give clear and unambiguous guidance to children.

Campaigns that educate the public in an attempt to prevent use or delay initiation could be beneficial. For example, the Truth Initiative campaign that targeted tobacco use was remarkably successful in shifting the public perception of tobacco from glamorous to repulsive. Rates of tobacco use plummeted over the past 20 years with the stigmatization of smoking. Cannabis is well known as a psychoactive substance that's particularly detrimental to developing adolescent brains. Although misconceptions that cannabis is “healthy because it's natural” or “safe because it's legal” have cultural traction, they're false. They require ongoing strong messaging of evidence to the contrary.

Age restrictions are effective at reducing youth substance use. In the U.S., the enactment of the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, which effectively raised the drinking age to 21 in all 50 states, resulted in a 16% reduction in motor vehicle accidents. This was as a direct result of lower alcohol consumption. Canada, which has a lower drinking age, also has the highest rate of problem alcohol use in the Americas. These facts support higher minimum age limits as a good public health strategy.

Innovations to cannabis-based products are public health risks, particularly for adolescents. It may be that addictive substances need completely new policy approaches. Novel regulatory schemes that control or eliminate profits, control prices, and conduct surveillance at both the individual and population level should be considered. This type of approach would be expensive and would require unprecedented collaboration between branches of government and other sectors of society. History and current evidence suggest that simply legalizing cannabis and giving free rein to the industry that it will engender would be to entrust private industry with safeguarding the health of the public, a role that industry is not well designed to handle.

Finally, we need more clinicians trained to treat adolescents with cannabis addiction. This will require financial support. With the legalization of marijuana in Canada, there will be a pressing need for health care providers specialized in youth addictions and treatment of adolescent substance use disorders. I am pleased to report that the first physician to acquire specialized training in pediatric addiction medicine in all of North America is a Canadian. They are currently training at Boston Children's Hospital. Much more support and many more funded training spots and training programs are needed.

Thank you for listening and for the opportunity to address this panel.

[Dr. Eileen de Villa]

That's okay. I'm fairly flexible with the title, although I did work hard to get it.

Good afternoon, and thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for the opportunity to speak with you today.

As you heard, I am Dr. Eileen de Villa, and I am the medical officer of health for the City of Toronto, where I serve the 2.8 million residents of our very fine city.

I should point out that my comments here today represent not just my views, but also the views of Toronto Public Health and the Toronto Board of Health and are restricted to the proposed legislation for non-medical cannabis.

Just to kick off, I'd like to say that we do support the goal of Bill C-45 to provide Canadians with legal access to cannabis and, in doing so, ending the practice of criminalizing people who consume cannabis for non-medical purposes.

As you've heard from presenters thus far, the science on cannabis is indeed still emerging. We do know that it's not a benign substance. We know that it's a psychoactive substance with known harms of use. It's therefore imperative, in my opinion and in that of my organization, that the development of a regulatory framework be guided by public health principles to balance legal access to cannabis with reducing harms of use.

As you've heard already from some of the other witnesses before you today, there is health evidence that shows that smoking cannabis is linked to a number of health conditions, respiratory disorders, including bronchitis and cancer. It's also known to impair memory, attention span, and other cognitive functioning. It impairs psychomotor abilities, including motor coordination and divided attention. These are relevant public health concerns because of their connection to impaired driving in particular.

You've also heard that heavy cannabis use during adolescence has been linked to more serious and long-lasting outcomes such as greater likelihood of developing dependence and impairments in memory and verbal learning. In addition, the risk of dependence increases when use is initiated in adolescence, as rightfully pointed out by Dr. Maté.

As you may know, motor vehicle accidents are the main contributor to Canada's burden of disease and injury when it comes to cannabis. A recent study revealed that many Canadian youth consider cannabis to be less impairing than alcohol; however, as mentioned earlier, the psychoactive effects of cannabis can negatively affect the cognitive and psychomotor skills needed for driving.

In addition to strengthening penalties for impaired driving by amending the Criminal Code as put forward in Bill C-45, preventing canabis-impaired driving will require targeted public education. It's my understanding that the Government of Canada is preparing a public campaign to raise awareness about drug-impaired driving. Toronto Public Health would recommend that the government use evidence-informed messaging targeting youth and young adults in particular and launch this campaign without delay.

Further, I would recommend that the government support municipalities, provinces, and territories with local initiatives to discourage people from driving after consuming cannabis.

In its final recommendations to the government, the task force on cannabis legalization and regulation expressed concerns about the reliability of predicting impairment based on levels of THC, the main psychoactive compound in cannabis detected in samples of bodily fluids. These concerns have also been raised by other organizations, including those in the United States. I would recommend that the government make further investments in research and refinements to technology to better link THC levels with impairment and crash risk for developing evidence-informed standards.

The stated key objective of Bill C-45 to prevent young people from accessing cannabis is central to adopting a public health approach to the legalization of cannabis. We must apply lessons learned from tobacco and alcohol in developing the appropriate policy framework at all orders of government to prevent young people from using cannabis.

As mentioned by my colleague, evidence about tobacco advertising shows that it has an impact on youth smoking and that comprehensive advertising bans are most effective in reducing tobacco use and initiation. Personally, I welcome the requirements in Bill C-45 that maintain existing promotion and marketing rules in place for tobacco, including restrictions on point of sale promotion. We would also like to see these restrictions strengthened to include advertising in such venues as movies, video games, and other media, including online marketing and advertising, which are accessible to youth. Further, additional research on the impact of marketing and promotion is essential for making evidence-informed amendments to regulations and to develop prevention strategies. Federal funding should be targeted to this area.

Furthermore, we know that labelling and packaging are being used for promoting tobacco and tobacco brands. While I appreciate that Bill C-45 prohibits packaging and labelling of cannabis in a way that could be appealing to young people, a key omission in the act is a requirement for the plain packaging of retail cannabis products.

In a recent report, the Smoke-Free Ontario Scientific Advisory Committee identified plain packaging as a highly impactful tool for reducing tobacco use. The requirement for plain and standardized packaging for tobacco is currently being proposed in federal Bill S-5, and we recommend you do likewise for cannabis.

Fundamental to a public health approach for legalizing access to cannabis is regulating retail access. I am pleased with the Province of Ontario's recently announced intent to establish a provincially controlled agency for the retail sale and distribution of non-medical cannabis, separate from that for alcohol. A government-controlled retail and distribution system that is guided by public health objectives and social responsibility will ensure better control of health protective measures for cannabis use. I also urge your government to direct other provinces and territories to establish a retail and distribution system that is guided by public health principles and social responsibility.

I commend the government for not legalizing access to cannabis-based edible products until comprehensive regulations for its production, distribution, and sale have been developed. The experience in the United States cautions us of the challenges posed by edible cannabis products, including accidental consumption by children, overconsumption due to the delay in feeling the psychoactive effects, and in ensuring standardization of the potency of cannabis in edible products.

I would now like to draw your attention to some of the limitations of the existing cannabis research. While there is growing evidence about the health impacts of cannabis, some of the research findings are inconsistent or even contradictory, and causal relationships have not always been established. There is still much that we don't know. Most of the research to date has focused on frequent, chronic use, and the results must be interpreted in that context. More evidence is needed about occasional and moderate use, as this comprises the majority of cannabis use. I therefore urge you to earmark funding for research related to the full range of health impacts of cannabis use, in particular for occasional and moderate consumption.

Evidence-informed public education will be imperative for implementing an effective health-promoting regulatory framework for cannabis. There is an opportunity to promote a culture of moderation and harm reduction for cannabis that may extend to other substance use, especially among young people. The Government of Canada has stated its plan to pass Bill C-45 by July 1, 2018. However, in the meantime, Canadians continue to be arrested for possession of cannabis. Criminalization of cannabis use and possession impacts social determinants of health such as access to employment and housing. Given that cannabis possession will soon be made lawful in Canada, I urge you to immediately decriminalize the possession of non-medical cannabis for personal use.

In closing, I would like to reaffirm that Toronto Public Health supports the stated intent of Bill C-45 and recommends strengthening the health promoting requirements in the bill. I appreciate the complexity of building a regulatory framework for non-medical cannabis. Given that we're still learning about the impacts of cannabis use, the legal framework for cannabis must allow for strengthening health promoting policies while curtailing the influence of profit-driven policies. I look forward to ongoing consultations with the Government of Canada on the evolving policy landscape for this important public health issue.

Thank you for your attention.

[François Gagnon]

I do not want to repeat everything that my colleague said, and the INSPQ does not have the mandate to recommend anything other than what is already in its brief on Bill C-45. To elaborate somewhat, I would recommend including in the bill provisions to ensure there is absolutely no for-profit distribution system in Canada, but that would go well beyond the INSPQ's scope.

Nonetheless, that is essentially what we told Quebec officials when we recommended that they do everything in their power to prevent a for-profit model that would determine future regulatory options. The history of tobacco and alcohol is a history of commercialization. So the more that is done to limit commercialization, if not prevent it completely, the better it might be for public health.

[Maude Chapados]

Yes, that touches on what your colleague and I were talking about earlier. Product recognition requires that the name and brand be indicated, and so forth, whereas stimulation seeks to make a product attractive. There is a difference between the two. That is not addressed in Bill C-45. Stimulating demand and creating new client groups must be avoided. That is why, from a public health perspective, neutral packaging is one of the options preferred in the literature, for both tobacco and cannabis.

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

For sure.

My last question has to do with the definition of youth in Bill C-45. Youth are defined as people aged 12 to 17. Then there are a number of provisions, but children under the age of 12 are not included. Where we talk about a trafficking offence to people 12 to 17, they are covered as young people. But there's nothing in there for people 11 and younger.

One amendment I was considering was about defining youth as persons under the age of 18. I'm looking to anyone here for their comments.

[Maude Chapados, Scientific Advisor, Institut national de santé publique du Québec]

Thank you.

Hello.

Beyond setting a minimum age, preventing cannabis use among young people depends in large part, as my colleague said, on establishing a strict legal framework for this product, which we consider to be no ordinary commodity, as certain public health stakeholders would say.

The creation of environments where the use of psychoactive substances is not stimulated or normalized is one of the best approaches to prevention. The measures taken by the provinces and territories with regard to authorized sale and consumption sites will be decisive in creating these environments. Certain measures in Bill C-45, however, and its subsequent regulations, will also be very important for the commercialization of cannabis, in particular among more vulnerable populations such as young people, be they under or over the age of majority.

The INSPQ would therefore like to take this opportunity today to repeat certain analyses that it presented in its brief submitted in August in order to ensure a better framework for marketing practices.

Research on commercial practices in the tobacco and alcohol industries shows to what extent sophisticated marketing strategies can affect consumption and the associated health problems. Research also shows that young people are particularly easy to influence. That is why the INSPQ is calling for an immediate ban on all forms of advertising and brand promotion, which raises four specific concerns related to youth and the bill under consideration.

First, packaging that is neutral and that provides information to allow for an informed decision on the nature of the product should be immediately required. Given that packaging is itself a tool for promoting the substance, the prohibition in clause 26 on packaging that could be appealing to young persons is neither clear nor sufficiently strong. The consultation report on plain packaging for tobacco products that was published in January 2017 should certainly be informative in this regard.

Second, promotional items should not be tolerated. Hats, socks, T-shirts and cups with hemp leaves or brands of medical cannabis on them are already popular, especially among young people, and help normalize cannabis. The display of a brand on “other things”, as provided in clause 17(6) of the bill, opens the door to branded derivative products. Once again, the prohibition intended to ensure that “other things” are not associated with or appealing to youth remains vague, and this brand promotion practice should be banned.

Third, clause 17(2) allows brand promotion in areas where minors are not permitted, which raises the same problem as packaging and derivative products. First, we know that minors often frequent such places. Young adults aged 18 to 25 are the group with the highest percentage of users. Moreover, we wonder whether the legal age should be raised. The fact that this group of young people can be exposed to advertising in bars, for instance, is inconsistent with a public health approach. This kind of promotion can not only encourage the use of cannabis, but also insidiously incite customers to consume cannabis and alcohol at the same time, which is a very high-risk behaviour, as you will agree, particularly as regards transportation safety.

Fourth, any effective strategy to regulate brand promotion and advertising should ideally include the Internet. Bill C-45 prohibits the publication and broadcast of advertising in the press and on radio and television, but is silent on measures to regulate this on the Internet. Yet it is mainly on digital platforms that youth and industry are already active, and this reality warrants particular attention in future regulations.

In short, there is reason to consider setting the minimum age above the age of majority. To the extent that the age of majority is a determinant of the age of initiation, this raises consistency issues as regards alcohol and tobacco, substances that are equally or more toxic than cannabis. Setting a minimum age above 18 for cannabis should therefore be part of a broader discussion of psychoactive substances and, indeed, of the age of majority.

In the meantime, the INSPQ maintains that certain provisions of Bill C-45 and its subsequent regulations can be amended or clarified in order to reduce the commercial promotion of cannabis to young people.

We hope that the considerations presented today will be helpful in this regard.

Thank you.

[François Gagnon]

Mr. Chair, thank you for inviting us to present the work of the Institut national de santé publique du Québec, the INSPQ, on the legalization of cannabis. At the institute, we are always interested in sharing our expertise with our colleagues across Canada, something we did last winter with a presentation to the FPT program on the legalization of cannabis. We also hosted webinars at pan-Canadian hearings and a conference on the legalization of cannabis at the Canadian Public Health Association in Halifax last summer. We will continue to present our work today, and we hope that you will benefit from it.

The INSPQ is a parapublic body created by the Government of Quebec. It is a scientific expertise and reference centre with a mission to support Quebec's minister of health and social services, regional public health authorities and institutions in carrying out their public health responsibilities. It is in this capacity that we have presented work for many years on alcohol and tobacco, and now on cannabis. All have a rather important point in common, and we will come back to that in our presentation.

The marketing of psychoactive substances is an important part of the equation to reduce harm and prevent their use. We have been interested in alcohol for a long time in terms of its commercialization, and essentially in the history of public health with respect to tobacco and the tobacco industry. This is a public health problem that we have been trying to contain for 70 years. We have decided that our comments today on Bill C-45 will deal with these commercial issues. For my part, I will strictly present our position on the minimum age for access to cannabis, which is part of the strategy to contain marketing, and Maude Chapados will address other issues later.

INSPQ's position on the age of access to cannabis reflects a recommendation we made to the Quebec authorities, which is to set it at 18 years of age, so that it is consistent with the legal age for alcohol and tobacco in Quebec. In the next few minutes, I will try to explain the reasons for our position.

First, according to the scientific literature, we know that raising the age of access to 21 years could significantly delay the age of initiation to cannabis. It is a disadvantage for public health to have a slightly lower age of access. On the other hand, there are many advantages to keeping this age of access lower. If we assume that legalization can have beneficial effects, it would be nice to also have it benefit people aged 18 to 21 if our intent was to take a position for access at 21 years.

If you haven't followed our work, I would point out that the institute recommended that the Quebec authorities set up a non-profit distribution system. Whether it is run by the public or private sector, we have stressed that it be non-profit. Whether it is run by the government or by non-profit organizations, we want the primary mission of the system not to be to make a profit, but to prevent and reduce harm. That is the direction we've taken. So there may be disadvantages in raising the age of access to cannabis.

Assuming that our distribution system fulfills its mission of preventing and reducing harm, 18 to 21 year olds should benefit in at least two ways. The first is the prevention of use and the reduction of harm. It would have to apply to the 18 to 21 age group if we are thinking of eliminating this category of the bill.

In terms of harm reduction, we have done a lot of work on substance quality assurance, for example. We want the quality of the substances to be controlled so that they are also safe for 18 to 21 year olds. By raising the legal age of access to cannabis, we believe that this would, at least in part, eliminate access to a quality-controlled substance for this age group, which does not seem to be so appropriate.

If you understand this correctly, the age of access to cannabis is an important issue, but it is only part of a set of concerns we have at the institute about psychoactive substances, and on their marketing in particular.

I have spoken to you about alcohol and tobacco, but the reason this situation is of such great concern is the same as in the case of cannabis. In Colorado, there was intense commercialization and the impact on consumption habits could be observed, overall and by age group. That concerns us directly today. Among youth aged 12 to 17, from 2009—when cannabis was first commercialized in Colorado—to 2014, declared usage in the past thirty days rose from 10% to 12.5%. Among young people aged 18 to 25, usage rose from 26% to 31%. In other words, in the two age groups that we are specifically interested in today, declared usage in Colorado rose by 25% and 20% respectively. Yesterday, I believe, you heard from stakeholders from Colorado and Washington. In those states, there has been an impact on emergency admissions and traffic accidents involving persons whose THC level was tested. The repercussions on the health system are immediately evident.

Before concluding, I would like to point out that it is not simply a matter of age. The system established in Colorado led to intense commercialization. Based on our analysis, it is this emphasis on the commercialization, marketing and advertising of cannabis that led to the results observed.

I will now give the floor to my colleague Ms. Maude Chapados, who will speak to other aspects of Bill C-45 which, in our opinion, warrant examination.

[Ian Culbert]

The risk of delay is added confusion amongst the population. We've signalled that we are moving in this direction. There's always that perception of a need for more time. The foundational work in Bill C-45 is on the right track. The provinces and territories have known since October 2015 that this was coming, and they have been working towards this. Will it be perfect on July 1, 2018? No, but the provinces will be on the right track.

The harm associated with the potential delay is that you're keeping all Canadians under a criminalized model that has serious negative consequences for all.

[Len Webber, Conservative, Calgary Confederation, AB]

You are obviously concerned about Bill C-45 in your comments. One of your recommendations was that the federal government should ensure that all provinces receive payments or sufficient funding to deal with the health issues that will arise from the legalization of marijuana.

Do you see an increase in demand for your service after this legislation is in place?

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Thank you for that.

You also wrote about public education campaigns and that this has to be part of it. Again, we agree that Bill C-45 has to include robust public education, particularly directed towards our young people.

We've seen public education campaigns in the past that were, to say it charitably, a little clumsy. I think we can all remember laughing at the ad with the fried egg in the pan, "This is your brain on drugs". We know that just did not resonate with anybody as an effective deterrent. What would be the most effective way of transmitting to young people that this is something they shouldn't be doing?

[Peter A. Howlett, President, Portage]

Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the committee, Portage, of which I'm the president, has been in existence for nearly 50 years, treating adolescents, adults, pregnant addicts, mothers with small children, indigenous communities, and mentally ill drug dependents, and has provided in-prison programming and programming in some 15 other countries. Portage is here today not to debate the merits of legalizing marijuana but rather to register our concerns about the collateral impact of Bill C-45 on youth in general, and substance-abusing youth in particular. We will offer some recommendations on how these risks might be mitigated.

This past April, Health Canada released a paper that reported that marijuana is an addictive substance with significant possible impacts on both mind and body of the users, and that continued frequent and heavy use is likely to cause physical dependency and addiction. Anthony reported that, using DSM-IV criteria, between 8% and 10% of adult users, and 16% of adolescent users, fit the cannabis dependency criteria. As a further risk factor, future lung cancer in heavy cannabis users of military conscription age in the United States is discussed by Callaghan, Allebeck, and Sidorchuk in their 2013 work. The American College of Pediatricians, in an article entitled “Marijuana Use: Detrimental to Youth”, of April 2017, reports a number of studies on potential causal relationships between heavy marijuana use and a number of non-infectious illnesses such as long-term impacts on the cardiopulmonary system.

Aside from these risks caused by heavy marijuana use, there are also a number of studies described by the American College of Pediatricians showing associations between chronic marijuana use and mental illness. The findings suggest that people who are dependent on marijuana frequently have comorbid mental disorders, including schizophrenia. Some of the studies cited found nearly a 50% increase of psychosis among cannabis users versus non-users. The authors are describing the consequence of heavy, persistent use, but Portage wishes to remind the committee that 16% of young users can be described as such. It is the protection of this significant, highly vulnerable minority that is the focus of Portage's presentation today.

While the proportion of dependent, heavy users to casual users might remain the same, the size of these groups is expected to grow dramatically as a consequence of legalization. In examining some of the evidence since 2007, there has been an increase in marijuana use among young people in the United States attributed to limited legalization and the diminishing perception of drug risks. As of 2014, the number of users aged 12 and up has increased from 14.5 million to 18.9 million. In the United States, 7.3% of all admissions to publicly funded drug treatment facilities were of persons aged 12 to 17. The prevalence of usage among young people is therefore noteworthy.

A study evaluating the impact of the legalization of marijuana in Colorado found, in the area of traffic offences, there was a 45% increase in impaired driving between 2013 and 2014, and a 32% increase in marijuana-related motor vehicle deaths. By 2013, marijuana use in Colorado was 55% above the national average among teens and young adults, and 86% higher for the age group 25 and over.

The American College of Pediatricians maintains that marijuana legalization will result in increased adolescent usage, addiction, and associated risks for them. Age-specific data on Colorado cannabis use compared data from two years before to two years after legalization for the age groups 12 to 17, 18 to 25, and over 26. The increases were 17% to 63% higher, while national averages for the same group remained the same or lower. Callaghan, in 2016, cited calculations of the approximate number of cannabis users in Ontario population groups below and above age 25 for 2013 and found that adolescents, young adults, are disproportionately represented among cannabis users.

Research suggests that existing alcohol and tobacco control measures are not likely to prove to be good models for controlling youth access to cannabis after legalization. Despite existing regulations banning distribution or sale to minors, alcohol continues to be widely used by Ontario students at all levels.

The evidence for driving under the influence for those 19 and under is very disconcerting. Up to 18% of those involved in fatal accidents between 2000 and 2007 tested positive for alcohol, drugs, or both. The numbers for those reporting driving under the influence of alcohol or cannabis is similarly high, and those reporting to be passengers in a car driven by someone under the influence are even higher.

As mentioned earlier, the findings of the Colorado data for cannabis-related driver fatalities after the broad commercialization of medical marijuana underlie the concern. In Colorado, experience in restricting access to medical marijuana failed. Of the 12- to 17-year-olds who enter drug treatment programs, 70% to 72% do so primarily for marijuana addiction. Among those, 74% reported using someone else's medical marijuana.

So here we are, on the threshold of legalization, discussing permissible age and denying access through regulation to minors. Something's not right with this picture.

First and foremost, there is the messaging. Marijuana is not a harmless substance. Adolescents are heavily involved with its consumption, and age restriction and control of legal distribution is not likely not to deter them or their suppliers from continuing their practices.

Hopfer, 2014, suggests that in the United States the Surgeon General's 1964 report declaring smoking as harmful may have been the most important substance abuse intervention. It resulted, with the aid of public health stakeholders, in triggering a shift in public perception of smoking followed by a steady decline in smoking. Portage fears that the current message surrounding recreational use, and Bill C-45 in general, will produce the reverse phenomena. Has telling adolescents “wait until you're old enough” ever dissuaded the majority of them from doing anything?

I must raise the question of who benefits. There is an assumption that legalization will create a windfall of revenue for the public purse like that from alcohol, which will support an increase of expensive public health education and programming. A finding by Rehm et al. in 2007 suggests the inverse may prove to be true. Their findings suggest that social and economic costs generated by alcohol consumption may possibly be greater than the revenue derived from the production and sale of alcohol. Is there any reason to believe that this will not also be the case for legal cannabis sold through government monopolies?

Portage fails to understand how policing costs would diminish. Under legalization, importation, production, and trafficking would continue to remain criminal offences and would still result in policing and court costs. The same principle applies in other areas. Shifting the debate to age of access and mode of distribution may have clouded the challenges facing our society and our young once the act is implemented. We need to have serious thinking devoted to protecting the at-risk young people, who will continue to become dependent, perhaps in greater numbers.

In terms of recommendations, because we are dealing with a high-risk situation with important consequences for a significant number of vulnerable young Canadians, we cannot proceed with a trial-and-error approach. We have to get it right the first time.

The federal government, as the drafter and promoter of Bill C-45, must ensure that all the provinces have sufficient resources both financially and infrastructure-wise to adequately respond to the collateral physical and psychological health problems the bill is likely to create. The government must legislate strict minimum standards that apply in all jurisdictions and not abdicate its responsibility under the cloak of provincial rights.

We recommend that references to recreational use be eliminated; that the messaging and dialogue be changed to alert parents, educators, and employers to the possible challenges that legalization may create; and that we anticipate and provide for the needs for increase of service for non-infectious diseases.

Distribution should be strictly regulated as to age and amount purchased and should be tracked through a centralized registry. The government should examine the European example of cannabis clubs requiring memberships, on-site consumption only, minimum age, etc., as a mode of ensuring that little of the legal marijuana makes it way to the streets.

The bill should rescind the right to purchase for convicted traffickers, people with substance abuse treatment histories, people with significant acute psychiatric diagnoses, or those found to be driving under the influence.

We should invest massively in prevention, education, and treatment resources to meet the augmented demands likely to arise as a consequence of the legalization of cannabis.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[Judith Renaud, Executive Director, Educators for Sensible Drug Policy]

Thank you for the invitation to speak to the House of Commons about this very important act, the issue of youth use, the age for legal possession, and the impact on our young Canadians.

Cannabis prohibition has been an abject failure. As the executive director of EFSDP, I want to see educational policy and reform come from a place of progressive change, where students, parents, teachers, health care professionals, and mental health providers work together to provide a quality of schooling that reflects a place where what is learned is lived and is based on solid scientific evidence, and where truth matters.

More and more, for a variety of reasons, it has become society's role to educate, and to provide support for parents and children. Educators have a responsibility to be esteem-builders. Bill C-45 has some good intentions, but the cannabis act will not prevent youth from using cannabis. It should not subject them to further harms from the law itself.

Educators understand that despite its increasing ubiquity, research suggests that young people's attitudes towards cannabis are ambiguous. Many have conflicting positions and negative attitudes towards its use. This is not surprising considering the complexity of the substance. Unlike alcohol and tobacco, two substances almost exclusively limited in purpose to recreational use, cannabis can be used both recreationally and medically, although the line between the two is blurred.

To increase the understanding about the issues cannabis can pose to the health and well-being of young people, drug reform educators believe we should be educating them not only about the substance's possible negative effects, but also its positive ones. This can be achieved using evidence-based, unbiased, and holistic information, where truth matters.

The ubiquity of cannabis is a major health issue. Youth need to gain factual knowledge about cannabis so that they are able to make informed decisions about cannabis and its use in order to mitigate possible harm. We agree with the task force that 18 is an appropriate age for legal use. However, some EFSDP members agree with the 2002 Senate report that 16 is also appropriate.

As a society, we need to remove many misconceptions that are perpetuated by eight decades of prohibition. Educators must find common ground. As some people continue to push the prohibitionist agenda, educators are becoming more aware that teens are more at risk from alcohol, pharmaceuticals, and opioids. Neuroscientist Marc Lewis wrote a book called Memoirs of an Addicted Brain. He discusses in detail how cannabinoids are natural brain chemicals. I quote:

The cannabinoid receptor system matures most rapidly, not during childhood, not during adulthood, but during adolescence. So it wouldn't be surprising if cannabinoid activity is meant to be functional during adolescence, more functional than any other period of the life span. As far as evolution is concerned, adolescents might well benefit from following their own grandiose thoughts, goals, and plans. By doing so, and by ignoring the weight of evidence - on sheer inertia - piled up against them, they would greatly amplify their tendency to explore, to try things, to imbue their plans with more confidence.... The evolutionary goals of adolescents are to become independent, to make new connections, and to find new territory, new social systems, and most of all, new mates. The distortions of adolescent thinking might be precisely posed to facilitate these goals.

Adolescents ignore most of what parents think, most of conventional wisdom, and are spellbound by their own ideas. They follow chains of logic that nobody else finds logical, and voice excessive allegiance to their own predictions about how things will turn out. Even when they're not stoned, adolescents live in a world of ideation of their own making and follow trains of thought to extreme conclusions, despite overwhelming evidence that they're just plain wrong.

In 2001, I was offered a position as a first nation administrator in northern British Columbia. Not only was this experience life altering, but it was one that made me realize how ordinary Canadian educators and citizens have no idea what misfortunes, tragedies, and adversities many indigenous young people experience by the time they reach adolescence, how many deaths, what abuse they endure, and what despair they feel. I met Dr. Maté, a well-known drug addiction expert and author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts and Hold On to Your Kids.

He said, about the despair first nation youth feel, the self-loathing plagues them, the barriers to a life of freedom and meaning they have to face, that it is the educator who must always remember this: Don’t ask why the drug, ask why the pain.

At the core of unresolved traumas passed from one generation to the next, along with social conditions that induce further hopelessness, I witnessed untold, multi-generational traumas in several aboriginal communities. Native history resonates in aboriginal youth with their brilliant art, their dances, their music, and their wisdom. Maté said when educators see their first nation peers, they witness “their humanity, grandeur, unspeakable suffering and strength”.

Cannabis law enforcement has been shown to be racially biased. The “from school to prison pipeline” is real. Jail cells cannot be the new classroom. Our aboriginal youth are suffering. We must stop targeting marginalized people of colour, and we must learn to understand trauma and its multiple impacts on human mentality and behaviour. I agree with Dr. Maté that “the best-meaning people can unwittingly re-traumatize those who can least bear the pain and loss”.

EFSDP's goal is to promote an alternative to failed, punitive drug policies. As hard as we try, we will never convince 100% of youth to say no 100% of the time. If we can clear up the underlying problems, there will be less incentive for young people to use drugs as a way of coping with the stresses they face.

Thank you, and I welcome your questions.

[Dr. Christina Grant, Member of the Adolescent Health Committee, Canadian Paediatric Society]

Dear members of the Standing Committee on Health, I'm an adolescent medicine specialist and associate professor of pediatrics at McMaster University. Thank you for the invitation to speak as a representative of the Canadian Paediatric Society on Bill C-45, specifically regarding the age of legal possession and the impact on young Canadians of the legalization of cannabis in Canada.

I have submitted a summary of the CPS statement on cannabis and Canada's children and youth for your reading. My goal today is to ensure that you have up-to-date scientific information regarding the impact of cannabis use on young Canadians, including young toddlers, and to discuss our society's stance regarding the age of legal possession.

First, there can be no doubt regarding the scientific literature that cannabis use prior to the mid-20s is associated with structural, functional, and harmful effects on the developing brain, as has been borne out in many peer-reviewed studies. There are rigorous studies demonstrating a relationship between regular cannabis use in youth and the increased risk of approximately 40% of developing a psychotic episode. We know that early use, higher doses, and frequent use all contribute to this risk, in addition to other predisposing factors for developing a psychotic illness, such as family history.

There are also studies demonstrating a relationship between regular cannabis use and clinical depression, though results are not as robust as for the psychosis relationship. There are studies indicating that youth with certain anxiety disorders are at increased risk for developing problematic cannabis use that can inevitably interfere with their everyday lives.

Strikingly, one in six adolescents who experiment with cannabis goes on to develop cannabis-use disorder, a psychiatric illness similar to alcoholism, where the drug use interferes with multiple areas of functioning. This can include academics, social and family relationships, and extracurricular activities, all areas that require rich development during the teen years in order to leave them well equipped for life.

For all these reasons, there is no safe age for experimentation with cannabis, and we recommend that young people not consume it. However, adolescence is a time of experimentation. We know that Canadian youth are experimenting with cannabis at the highest rate compared with other countries around the world. The proposed legal cannabis industry in Canada has raised a dilemma regarding the most appropriate age for its legal use, which should minimize harm to children and youth, our most vulnerable population.

On the one hand, prohibiting cannabis until the mid-20s would protect adolescents during a period of critical brain development. On the other, adolescents and young adults are already experimenting frequently with marijuana. Aligning the legal age for cannabis use with that of other legally controlled substances, notably alcohol and tobacco, would help ensure that youth who have attained age of majority have access to a regulated product with a known potency. Also, they would be less liable to engage in high-risk, illegal activities to access cannabis.

Of emerging concern in the United States and in Europe is the number of accidental ingestions of edibles by the toddler age group. Perhaps we all know that edibles are marijuana-infused food products that come in various formats, including cookies and candies. These are highly attractive to young children and often indistinguishable from regular candies, chocolate bars, or baked goods. In Colorado, rates of unintentional ingestion in children less than nine rose by 34% after the legalization of cannabis. More than a third of those cases required hospitalization in a pediatric critical care unit because of overdose symptoms. Most commonly, the toddlers could not breath on their own.

A study from France published this month demonstrated a threefold increase in young children, mostly toddlers, requiring pediatric emergency care presenting with coma and seizures secondary to accidental cannabis ingestion.

Because of the aforementioned concerns, I would urge your committee to consider the following CPS recommendations so that as a society we are able to protect those who are most vulnerable.

First, enact and rigorously enforce regulations on the cannabis industry to limit the availability and marketing of cannabis to minors. These regulations must prohibit dispensaries from being located close to elementary, middle, and high schools, licensed child care centres, community centres, residential neighbourhoods, and youth facilities. Mandate strict labelling standards for all cannabis products, including a complete and accurate list of ingredients and an exact measure of cannabis concentration. Mandate package warnings for all cannabis products, including known and potential harmful effects of exposure, similar to cigarettes, including childproof packaging. Mandate and enforce a ban on the marketing of cannabis-related products using strategies or venues that attract children and youth, such as edibles.

Second, adequately fund public education campaigns to reinforce that cannabis is not safe for children and youth by raising awareness of the harms associated with cannabis use and dependence. These campaigns should be developed in collaboration with youth leaders and should include young opinion leaders.

Finally, send a strong message to the public that cannabis has neurodevelopmental risks by considering limiting the concentrations of THC in cannabis that 18- to 25-year-olds can purchase legally.

Thank you.

[Ian Culbert, Executive Director, Canadian Public Health Association]

Good morning, Mr. Chair and committee members. Thank you for the invitation to present to you today.

I will preface my comments this morning by noting that, throughout my remarks, my references to cannabis use relate to recreational use, not the use of cannabis for medical purposes.

On behalf of the Canadian Public Health Association, I am pleased that the Government of Canada has committed itself to a public health approach to the legalization and regulation of cannabis. We are further pleased that Bill C-45 does in fact embody such an approach.

Different from the publicly funded health care system, public health is the organized efforts of society to keep people healthy and to prevent injury, illness, and premature death. As such, a public health approach is based on the principles of social justice. It pays attention to human rights and equity. It is based on the evidence, and it addresses the underlying determinants of health. A public health approach is organized, comprehensive, multisectoral, and it emphasizes pragmatic initiatives.

As a colleague recently noted, in some ways public health is like that darling child who's always asking, “Why?” In the case of cannabis, we want to know why people use it, so that we can develop policies and interventions that meet their needs. The human relationship with cannabis ranges from abstinence to a spectrum of consumption. This spectrum ranges from beneficial to non-problematic, to potentially harmful use, to the development of use disorders. At the federal level, the legal and regulatory response to cannabis needs to be sufficiently broad to encompass the entire spectrum of consumption, while at the provincial and territorial levels, the response begins to narrow to meet the particular needs of each jurisdiction. Then at the regional or local levels, the response is honed to the specific needs of particular populations.

There has been considerable discussion and unfortunately a lack of consensus regarding the appropriate legal age for the possession of cannabis. The Canadian Public Health Association supports the provisions in Bill C-45 establishing the minimum legal age at 18 and allowing provinces and territories to set a higher age, as appropriate, in their jurisdictions. From a practical perspective, it is important and appropriate for provinces and territories to establish a legal age for cannabis consumption that matches the legal age for alcohol consumption. In that way, confusion should be reduced and education efforts can be better coordinated.

While we would prefer that no Canadian use cannabis or any other psychoactive substance, a public health approach recognizes that cannabis will be consumed for a number of different reasons, regardless of efforts to discourage it. You are already familiar with the statistics: 12% of the general population, 21% of youth aged 15 to 19, and 30% of young adults aged 20 to 24 reported in a 2015 survey that they consumed cannabis in the previous year. Since more than one in five youth aged 15 to 19 are consuming cannabis now and we have no reason to believe that rate will change, the responsible policy option is to create a legal and regulated market for cannabis that is accessible to adults 18 years of age and older.

Bill C-45 will establish a supply of cannabis of known potency and quality. Currently, anyone consuming cannabis is playing a game of Russian roulette, never knowing the product's quality before consuming it, or if it has been laced with other, more powerful psychoactive substances. From a public health perspective, the Canadian Public Health Association is encouraging provincial and territorial governments to limit the sale of cannabis to government-controlled entities to ensure that the focus remains on harm reduction, not profit.

The prohibition model currently in place in Canada has severely hampered health promotion and harm reduction efforts. The only message we had at our disposal was, “Just say no”, and clearly that has failed. Beyond simple health education, health promotion is the process of enabling people to increase control over and to improve their health. It is our view that legal cannabis sales must therefore be preceded by comprehensive, non-judgmental, non-stigmatizing health promotion campaigns across Canada that have a clear and consistent message. These campaigns must be supported on an ongoing basis and should be complemented by in-person health promotion and harm reduction messaging at the point of sale. We need to normalize the conversation about cannabis, not its consumption.

There are concerns that the legalization will result in significant increases in cannabis use, especially among young people. While the Canadian experience may be different, two recent reports from Washington state both indicate that youth cannabis consumption has remained stable since legalization in that jurisdiction. One of these reports, however, indicates an increase in older adults' cannabis use, while another indicates an increase in the number of people who consume cannabis daily or near daily.

These early reports out of Washington remind us that we need to pay attention to the entire population, with a particular focus on why certain individuals go on to potentially problematic use.

Concerns have also been raised about the impact cannabis consumption has on the developing brain. While the studies quoted are important pieces of the research puzzle, they focus on young people who are daily and heavy cannabis users. I think we can all agree that if a child is consuming a large amount of cannabis on a daily basis, there is a cause for concern. If a child were drinking alcohol heavily on a daily basis, there would be a similar cause for concern. Once again, from a public health perspective we want to know why that child is consuming heavily and daily; then we can focus our interventions accordingly.

At the moment, we lack robust data on the health impacts of casual use of cannabis and we hope that legalization will allow research on that issue to take place. Having understood that people are going to continue consuming cannabis for various reasons and in various amounts, it is crucial that our policies and interventions focus on harm reduction efforts. Harm reduction can take many different forms, including ensuring a product of known potency and quality; effective education and health promotion activities; ensuring that consumers and health and social service providers know about safer consumption methods; and adopting and promoting the lower-risk cannabis use guidelines.

I understand that you have a panel dedicated to that subject later today, so I won't go into these guidelines in detail but I will say that they are an important tool that should be adopted in all jurisdictions.

The Canadian Public Health Association does have one recommendation for an amendment to Bill C-45 that I believe one of your witnesses mentioned yesterday. As it currently stands, subclause 10(5) of the bill will result in the crime of possession for the purpose of selling becoming an indictable offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison for those convicted, including young people between the ages of 12 and 18. Clause 8 concerning possession and clause 9 concerning distribution provide similar sentencing options for people over 18 years of age, but permit referral to sentencing under the Youth Criminal Justice Act for those between 12 and 18.

The Canadian Public Health Association's viewpoint is that an option for sentencing under the Youth Criminal Justice Act for young people should also exist under subclause 10(5). In many cases these offences are related to possession for sale by young people to their peers, and the stigma established by such a conviction may cause irreparable harm to their futures, outweighing the actual offence. Care should be taken to apply the proposed rules concerning possession for the purpose of sale to reflect the severity of the crime.

You have also heard calls that we are not ready for legalization. Unfortunately, we don't have the luxury of time, as Canadians are already consuming cannabis at record levels. The individual and societal harms associated with cannabis use are already being felt every day. The proposed legislation and eventual regulation is our best attempt to minimize those harms and protect the well-being of all Canadians. Our first efforts may not be perfect, but perfection is not required as we can modify our approaches as we learn from our experiences. At the end of the day, we all want to do the right thing for the broad range of Canadians who already consume or may choose to consume cannabis for a variety of different reasons.

The Canadian Public Health Association believes that Bill C-45 and provincial responses such as Ontario's are steps in the right direction. Key lessons learned from jurisdictions that have travelled this road before us include the following: regulators must have the flexibility to adapt to changing conditions in the marketplace; upfront investments in education and health promotion are essential; law enforcement and public health need to work together; and the interests of the private sector cannabis industry are rarely aligned with the interests of public health.

[Scott Bernstein, Senior Policy Analyst, Canadian Drug Policy Coalition]

Thank you.

Good morning, honourable members. Thank you for the opportunity to make comments on Bill C-45 this morning on this important panel.

I'm representing the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition or CDPC, a non-governmental organization comprised of over 70 organizations and 3,000 individuals working to support the development of a drug policy in Canada that is based in science, guided by public health principles, and respectful of human rights.

CDPC supports the passing of Bill C-45 and the legal regulation of non-medical cannabis as a way to minimize the social and individual costs of prohibition while ensuring the cannabis policy supports public health and human rights to the fullest extent possible.

Legalizing and regulating cannabis will ensure there is adequate oversight of the complete market of non-medical cannabis including control over dose, quality, potency, marketing, and access. From decades of prohibitionist drug policy in Canada, evidence clearly and unequivocally demonstrates that criminalizing people for possessing and using drugs leads to great social and individual harms. As such, CDPC supports the legal regulation of all drugs within Canada as a route to retaking control of a dangerous, unregulated market for drugs that supports criminal organizations and puts countless Canadians at risk of criminal sanction.

We believe this is the path to minimizing infectious disease such as hepatitis C and HIV, reducing overdose and social stigma, and promoting public health and safety objectives. Similarly, we believe that evidence strongly supports decriminalizing all drugs and further improved public health and public safety.

I would like to make comments this morning on recommendations that CDPC has put forward to this committee in our submitted brief.

First, I'll address the minimum age of access. The cannabis act establishes a federal minimum age of 18 years to access cannabis with provinces having the ability to raise the minimum age as Ontario has done to align with its alcohol age. CDPC supports maintaining the federal minimum age of 18 years in the legislation.

Despite the existing system of cannabis prohibition that has been in place in Canada for decades, there remains a consistent one in three people in the 16 to 25 age range who are active users. In a UN study it was shown that youth cannabis use was lower in countries with more liberal drug policies than in Canada, demonstrating that strict enforcement policies are not a deterrent for young people.

It is unrealistic to conclude that all youth will completely abstain from consuming cannabis regardless of set age limits and sanctions against consumption. Having a minimum age that's too high will maintain the illegal market and put numerous young Canadians at greater risk than the risk to them of consuming cannabis. That approach should be rejected in favour of a public health approach that looks at the entire spectrum of risk to young people from not only the substance itself but the policies as well. Protecting youth must consider the harms to youth of engaging with illegal markets as well as the harms of consuming cannabis, a policy balance that supports a lower minimum age of access.

Second, regarding criminal penalties in youth, the cannabis act prohibits possession of dried cannabis of more than five grams by a young person, creating either an indictable or summary conviction offence, and if convicted, a sentence under the Youth Criminal Justice Act. Notably, the Province of Ontario has chosen to close even the small gap and create provincial crimes for a young person carrying any amount of cannabis.

Seeming to recognize the harms of a criminal record, the cannabis act provides in some circumstances allowances for a peace officer to issue ticketable offences to both adults and organizations. Such allowances, though, are not available to young people.

It is now well documented that a criminal record contributes to considerable social harms from limiting international travel, diminishing career and volunteer opportunities, exacerbating poverty, and leading to poorer health outcomes, creating stigma, and consuming scarce public resources.

As mentioned, evidence also supports the fact that the potential for criminal sanction is not a deterrent for adolescent use of cannabis. Instead, as was recommended by the task force, achieving the public health and safety goals of the cannabis act with respect to youth should be addressed through education and soft approaches to discourage use as opposed to criminal punishment.

Overwhelmingly, respondents to the task force took the view that the criminalization of youth should be avoided, and that criminal sanctions should be focused on adults who provide cannabis to youth, not on the youths themselves. One such approach might be found in the state of California, where the regulatory scheme provides that young people found possessing cannabis will receive non-criminal infractions, and must attend mandatory education or counselling and perform community service. CDPC recommends that youth not be subject to criminal penalties at all, and that the cannabis act be amended to substitute similar soft approaches to youth drug use, such as counselling and community service. Removing these sanctions of criminality will increase public health and safety, particularly with respect to youth, by decreasing the harm and stigma of criminalization, while still discouraging unlawful use through a balanced and realistic approach.

Additionally, social sharing, which is a common practice among young people, is something the task force recommended be allowed, but it has also been prohibited by the cannabis act through the criminalization of any form of distribution to a young person, with a draconian penalty of up to 14 years in prison. This would penalize an 18-year-old sharing cannabis with a 17-year-old friend, or a parent sharing with his or her son or daughter.

In the case of alcohol, there are clear exemptions to criminalization for adults sharing with their minor children in a private home, and all provinces regard social sharing of alcohol with far less punitive penalties than in the cannabis act. CDPC recommends that social sharing with a young person not be criminalized but rather treated in a similar manner to youth use, with counselling and community service. CDPC further recommends that adults be permitted to provide cannabis to their own minor children in a private residence, similar to alcohol.

My final point concerns social justice. Underlying the legal regulation of cannabis is the notion that our historical policies of criminalizing cannabis have led to unacceptable negative outcomes in Canadian society, including supporting a thriving illegal market for cannabis nationwide, and capturing hundreds of thousands in the criminal justice system for cannabis offences. Criminal law, though, is rarely applied equally, and cannabis prohibition has had a greater negative impact on marginalized communities, people of colour, youth, and indigenous persons. Legislation crafted to repair past policies should also aim to repair the damage done to those punished under an unjust system, including creating opportunities within the new economy and clearing past criminal records.

CDPC recommends two changes to the act to better serve the social justice aims of the legislation. First, prior drug convictions should not be the sole reason for denying a licence to participate in the cannabis economy. Paragraph 62(7)(c) allows the minister to refuse to issue, renew, or amend a federal licence or permit required for participation in the cannabis industry if the applicant has contravened the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, or committed other drug-related offenses in the past 10 years. This would of course include any drug conviction for activities that would now be legitimate under the new regime. There is no logical reason for creating a specific ground related to drug offences in this provision, compared to any number of past offences that might make a person ineligible for a licence, such as theft or fraud. A preferred approach would be one similar to California's, where prior convictions for non-violent drug offences are actually prohibited from being the sole reason for denial of a licence.

Second, there should be clear mechanisms for those convicted of cannabis-related drug offences in the past to apply for the suspension of convictions on their criminal record, or for cases where sentences are still being served, of having these cases dismissed or re-evaluated under the new legislation. CDPC recommends amendments to the cannabis act that allow for the reconsideration of ongoing sentences and record suspensions for prior convictions.

The cannabis act is a remarkable piece of legislation that forges new policy standards regulating previously illegal substances.

It is important that these new standards be centred on evidence, public health, and the well-being of Canadians young and old. Thank you.

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

Thank you, Chair.

I have a couple of questions. I share the concern that Mr. Oliver raised earlier about the potential of having 600 grams in a home-grow operation. I'm not so concerned about kids eating. I'm more concerned, especially with the 12- to 17-year-olds, that they're going to try to dry it, roll it, and smoke it.

There are no provisions that I can see in Bill C-45 about protected storage. Mr. Page, are there best practices in terms of how you would recommend storing this material to keep it out of the hands of children?

[Jonathan Page]

Back to your question about outdoor and sustainability, the submission you referred to is one that I did as a team, not the one I'm doing as a witness here.

It really highlighted the issues around the carbon footprint of indoor cultivation on a commercial level, but less regarding the four-plant, personal production area. That is, when you put a large cannabis production facility in a concrete bunker, put it under intense lighting, and have HVAC and all the air control to do that, you have significant power needs. You've built a concrete structure maybe on farmland or something, so there's an ecological footprint to that industry, and you know, cannabis is a plant. It doesn't need intense sunlight. It can grow in a greenhouse. It can grow in the field as hemp does now with sunlight, and so the argument would be that the regulations arising from Bill C-45 should allow outdoor growing as well.

[Jonathan Page]

I'm not clear on whether Bill C-45 restricts indoor or outdoor.

Mr. Conroy.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here.

Dr. Page, in your submission to the committee, you pointed out that among the task force's six specific recommendations was promoting “environmental stewardship by implementing measures such as permitting outdoor production with appropriate security measures.” Despite these clear directions, as of yet there has been no indication from the federal government that outdoor production of cannabis will be part of the new cannabis regulations.

So my question is, is that the case? It's unclear from Bill C-45 whether outdoor production will be permitted, and if so, is it your opinion that it should be allowed, and why?

[Jonathan Page, Chief Executive Officer, Anandia Labs]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to the committee for the invitation to speak on this important topic. It's really an honour for me to be here.

I'm a scientist who has worked on the cannabis plant for more than 18 years. My research is mainly on the biochemistry and genetics of this very fascinating plant, and I'm very familiar with its cultivation, both in a scientific context and then in the new commercial industry we have in Canada. I'm also an adjunct professor in the botany department at the University of British Columbia and am the founder and CEO of a cannabis testing and biotechnology company in Vancouver called Anandia Labs.

There's a lot to speak about, but I've confined my comments specifically to the subject of cultivation of cannabis, hopefully to educate and eventually answer some of your questions.

I think it is fundamentally important that this legalization include the ability to grow cannabis for personal use. I was happy to see that Bill C-45 included some provision for this. The cultivation of plants is a foundational aspect of human culture. In fact, the advent of agriculture via the domestication of plants has been one of the key forces in the creation of human societies.

Cannabis has been grown by humans for thousands of years as a source of food, fibre, and drug. Given the long-standing relationship between humans and cannabis and the fact that we will soon be allowing adults to consume it legally, it is important that the cannabis act allows Canadians to grow the plant. The absence of personal cultivation from the act, as for example might occur if the provision were stripped from Bill C-45 in response to pressures from law enforcement, would surely lead to Canadians facing fines or charges for the simple act of planting seeds.

I also think we are dealing with a relatively small number of people who may choose to cultivate, since most consumers of cannabis would rather purchase from a store. This is the same situation as with the home-brewing of beer or making wine. I suspect we will not see apartment buildings overrun by cannabis gardens.

The fact that Bill C-45 includes allowances for personal cultivation doesn't mean everything is fine. There are a number of points that cause me concern. Bill C-45 restricts the number of plants that can be grown for personal use, with a limit of four plants per household. I see the purpose of this restriction in that the ability to grow larger numbers of plants might result in diversion into an illicit commercial market. Indeed, all the limits of plant cultivation, including plant height, plant number, and seed possession limits, appear to have reduction in diversion as their main goal. However, these limits expose the awkwardness of applying strict legal definitions to a living organism, a plant, and might criminalize Canadians who are simply gardening.

The proposed limit of four plants per dwelling doesn't take into account the practical challenges in growing plants or the biological characteristics of cannabis. As I think every gardener or farmer knows, plants are difficult to grow and might fail to thrive or might succumb to disease. In growing tomatoes, one might sow a dozen seeds on a windowsill and select the foremost robust plants to transplant to the garden.

Cannabis plants may be male or female, with the male plants unusable as a drug. Without cross-seeds, which are a proportion of the seeds that are available, 50% of the plants will be males and therefore discarded. In many cases, cannabis cultivators maintain so-called “mother plants” to be used as a permanent source of cuttings, producing so-called “clones”, which are vegetatively propagated cuttings to be used for growing, and then have one or two plants in flower at one time. In my opinion, the cultivation limit should be adjusted to account for these non-flowering and non-producing plants required for normal cultivation practices. In fact, Bill C-45 already distinguishes between non-flowering and flowering plants. Therefore, I would propose that the act be amended to allow adults to grow perhaps 10 plants in total, of which four may be in flower. This allows cultivators the flexibility to grow for personal use without running afoul of the law.

I also want to address the limit on plant height of 100 centimetres, or about three and a half feet. Cannabis is a highly variable species, and I have seen plants of 30 centimetres that are flowering, and others that are several metres tall. The limit of 100 centimetres is potentially problematic from the perspective that cultivators might break the law simply by providing fertile soil and water and then going away for a week's vacation. Their plants might grow from 95 centimetres to 105 centimetres during that time. I wonder what the goal of the 100 centimetre limit is, which was also contained in the legalization task force report. Is it to reduce the amount of cannabis that each Canadian is capable of growing so they don't go on to sell it, or is it to reduce the visibility of plants grown on private property?

If it is the latter, I think this is best dealt with by municipal bylaws. If it is the prevention of diversion to the so-called black market, I would suggest that achieving this through enforced pruning is quite silly, and that the 100-centimetre height limit should be removed.

I also wanted to comment on the awkward treatment of cannabis seeds in Bill C-45. Cannabis seeds are individually smaller than a peppercorn, weighing about 15 milligrams each and are devoid of cannabinoids such as THC. Yet schedule 3 of Bill C-45 indicates that one seed is equivalent to one gram of dried cannabis. One gram of dried cannabis may contain up to 250 milligrams of THC and is fully usable as a drug.

Bill C-45 proposes that this is equivalent to a single small seed that is not useable as a drug at all. The possession limit in public is therefore 30 seeds or about a thimbleful. Since there will be limits on the number of plants that can be grown, this equivalency factor seems very arbitrary. Cannabis seeds for the purposes of personal cultivation should not be restricted at all.

The cannabis act also makes a distinction between illicit and licit products, which also applies to seeds and plants. Under the ACMPR, our current medical regulations, patients and licensed producers may only purchase seeds and clones from licit sources, yet most of the patients choose to source their seeds and clones from the Internet, store displays, and trade with other growers. All of these are considered illicit.

Licensed producers are also under very tight restrictions on the access to cannabis genetics used for starting their commercial operations. As any plant breeder will tell you, genetic diversity is important. The genetic diversity of cannabis is important for its future breeding and improvement.

We need to make sure that the regulations—I respect the fact that this may not be in the act itself but in regulations arising from it—need to allow broader access to sources of cannabis genetics without criminalizing growers who use their own heirloom seeds as starting materials.

On the commercial side, licensed producers also need to access a rich supply of cannabis genetics, which now exists in Canada and around the world.

I have a brief comment on quality-control testing. My laboratory in Vancouver does a lot of this work. Cannabis can be safely grown at all scales, and the cannabis produced by home-growers is no more dangerous than the tomatoes, basil, and lettuce that others grow at home. There are always hazards inherent in gardening, and careful application of fertilizers, manure, and pest control products is always advisable. That said, allowing everyone access to accurate quality-control testing by certified testing labs will help to ensure the safety of the product. This is currently the case for patient growers under the ACMPR, and access should be continued and expanded under legalization.

The last point I'd like to make is from my perspective as a scientist who has done research on cannabis for many years. My request to the government as legalization and regulations are crafted is to allow our scientists to work on cannabis. Cannabis is a plant that in many ways has been left out of mainstream science because of prohibition and restrictions on research. As far as I know, there are currently no Canadian university labs licensed to grow drug-type cannabis or marijuana. So we have more than 200,000 authorized patients as well as 56 or 58 licensed producers, and yet our universities are lagging behind.

On Monday in this panel, Dr. Mark Ware made a strong statement about Canada's leadership in cannabis research from plant science to clinical trials and epidemiology. I echo his thoughts and add that if we allow cannabis to be grown in our homes and sold in our stores while keeping it out of our university, government, and private-sector labs, then we will not maximize the benefits and reduce the negatives arising from legalization.

Mr. Chair, I conclude by saying that I support this bold policy move. The time for legalization has come. Bill C-45 is not perfect, but I am sure your committee will recommend changes for improvement.

Thank you very much.

[Amy Porath, Director, Research and Policy, Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction]

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. My name is Dr. Amy Porath-Waller, and I'm the director of research and policy at the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction, or CCSA.

CCSA was created in 1988. We're Canada's only agency with a legislated national mandate to reduce the harms of alcohol and other drugs on Canadian society. We welcome the opportunity to speak to you today on the topic of age for legal possession of cannabis and its impact on youth.

CCSA's subject matter expertise on cannabis is founded on the research, policy advice, and knowledge mobilization activities that have been the priority area of focus for us since 2008. Accordingly, the issue of cannabis legalization is of great interest to our organization, and we believe we are well positioned to contribute meaningfully to the discussion on Bill C-45.

In respect of time constraints, my presentation today will be brief. CCSA submitted a brief on Bill C-45 in advance of our appearance today, and we would be pleased to cover the areas in the brief beyond the scope of youth and age of legal possession.

As many of you may already know, Canadian youth have among the highest rates of cannabis use in the world. Despite a decrease in use among youth in recent years, cannabis remains the most commonly used illegal drug among Canadian youth aged 15 to 24. Canadian youth aged 15 to 24 are also more than twice as likely to have used cannabis in the past year, as compared with adults aged 25 and older.

Youth are also at greater risk of experiencing harms associated with cannabis use than adults are, because adolescence is a time of rapid brain development. The risks associated with use increase the earlier youth begin to use and the greater the frequency and quantity they consume. Accordingly, delaying the onset of use and reducing the frequency, potency, and quantity of cannabis used can reduce this risk.

An important point that I want to make today is that when we speak of a comprehensive approach to reducing cannabis use among youth, we refer to regulatory tools, but equally important we also speak of a comprehensive, evidence-informed approach to prevention and public education. I will speak more on this latter point soon.

First, minimum legal age of access is an important component of a comprehensive approach to reducing youth cannabis use. Given the number of youth aged 18 to 24 who currently use cannabis illegally, the increased risk of health impacts must be considered alongside the risks associated with the continued use of cannabis obtained outside the regulated market.

Setting the legal limit at 18 years of age at the federal level means that young people will not face adult criminal charges for cannabis possession. Setting the age at 18 also provides the opportunity for the provinces and territories to set additional regulations that can discourage use without the harms of criminal justice involvement.

For example, the provinces may consider increasing the age of cannabis access from 18 to 19 to align with the minimum legal drinking age in most provinces. This provides a consistent message to youth of legal age that we trust them to use impairing and potentially harmful substances in a responsible way.

A second regulatory tool that is an important component of a comprehensive approach to reducing youth cannabis use is pricing. We know that youth are price-sensitive. Evidence from the alcohol literature indicates that standardized minimum pricing is an effective mechanism for reducing overall levels of alcohol consumption and that indexing—or rather, setting the price according to product potency, and in the case of cannabis by level of THC—can incentivize the use of lower-risk products. Certainly, ongoing analyses will be important to ensure that pricing maintains a balance between reducing consumption and encouraging diversion to the illegal market.

In addition to these regulatory considerations, there is also a need for a comprehensive, evidence-informed approach to prevention and public education in order to provide young Canadians with the knowledge and skills they need to make informed decisions about their personal use of cannabis. Accumulating evidence suggests that a multi-faceted approach, one that involves several components, including programming in schools, resources for parents and families, community interventions, as well as mass media, will help to maximize outcomes among our youth. A comprehensive approach to prevention and education also requires proactive and ongoing investment, as well as ongoing monitoring and evaluation to ensure that it has the desired impact.

CCSA has conducted focus groups with youth to understand their perceptions of cannabis and cannabis use. In these discussions, youth told us that they want information about risk that is linked to tangible outcomes, and they want harm reduction strategies so that they can reduce those risks if they decide to use cannabis. The evidence indicates, and we've heard directly from youth, that they want to hear both sides of the story on cannabis, both the benefits as well as the harms. To that end, education and prevention initiatives need to incorporate what we've heard from youth in order to be impactful.

We also know that youth continue to hold fast to certain misperceptions about cannabis, including the perception that everyone is using cannabis all of the time. We've also heard from our youth focus groups that while they recognize that drinking and driving is dangerous, they don't view cannabis in the same way.

We know from our focus groups as well as from the broader research literature that young people are influenced by the Internet, the media, and public discourse on cannabis. Clear, consistent, and factual information that addresses myths and misperceptions is therefore essential, to cut through the many sources and types of information and messages that youth are exposed to about cannabis on a daily basis. Such information will help to establish actual social norms that lower rather than promote the use of cannabis.

We also know from our research that youth want to receive information from sources they trust who can speak credibly about cannabis. Depending on age, this includes parents and educators, but perhaps most importantly it also includes peers. A comprehensive approach to prevention, therefore, means providing the needed training, resources, and consistent messaging for parents, educators, health care providers, coaches, youth allies, as well as peers. It also involves providing young people with the skills to critically evaluate the information they are receiving. This can include digital and media literacy.

It's also important for a comprehensive approach to include targeted messaging regarding high-risk cannabis use in order to assist young people in making informed decisions and reducing harms. This includes information about the effects of frequent and heavy cannabis use, use at an early age, use in combination with other substances—because we know youth often use other substances in combination—use by youth with mental health conditions, as well as use by young women who are pregnant.

In conclusion, regulations, prevention, and public education can work together to promote healthy decisions among youth by increasing awareness of risk and awareness of strategies for risk reduction. Effective prevention and public education requires clear, accurate, and consistent messaging that is targeted and relevant to the key audiences, and it needs to be delivered by trusted messengers.

I would like to thank the committee for the opportunity to speak today on this issue of vital importance to Canadians. I will be pleased to respond to your questions.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to correct the record. Washington has medical homegrown.

My question is for Mr. Freedman. You have been quoted as saying that the looseness of the homegrown laws in Colorado can cause an access point for the illicit market. The Bill C-45 limit is four plants of no more than one metre in height. Could you comment on how this regulation would prevent a diversion to the legal market from home-based production?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

.We're reconvening meeting number 65 of the Standing Committee on Health to study Bill C-45.

This afternoon on our witness list we have, as an individual, Mr. Marco Vasquez, retired police chief from the Town of Erie, Colorado. Thank you very much. That's by video conference.

We also have Andrew Freedman, director of Freedman and Koski, a consulting firm that specializes in implementing marijuana legislation, and on behalf of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, we have Kevin Sabet, president. Washington State Department of Health has allowed us to have Kristi Weeks, government relations director, appearing by video conference from Hawaii.

The way we work is that each person has an opportunity to make a 10-minute introductory presentation and then we ask questions for three rounds. We'll start with Chief Vasquez. Perhaps you would start with your 10-minute presentation and give us an introduction. Again, this is from Colorado, and we thank you for doing this.

[Abigail Sampson]

With regard to personal cultivation for adult use, the cannabis act recommends a four-plant limit for individuals over the age of 18 in a single household. While that is a step forward from zero plants, some of the limitations are pretty arbitrary with regard to how the plant grows and how adults can manage this type of growth. Currently under the cannabis act, plants can be no taller than one metre, which is very restrictive with regard to certain strains of plants that may, just by nature, grow more robust than that limit.

Marc-Boris, would you like to add anything?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. St-Maurice, I have a few moments left.

You said that badly managed legislation would be problematic, and I agree with you. What do you see as the flaws in Bill C-45?

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for giving that valued information. I appreciate it.

My question is for Mr. Garza of the Colorado department.

My riding in Peel region is similar to many other communities across Canada when it comes to youths' use of marijuana. A Peel health report by the region of Peel in 2015 said that first-time users of marijuana increased from 5% to 11% over a two-year period. The same report said that 44% of Peel students felt it was very easy to access cannabis.

We need to take action to reduce youth use, as the present model is not working. Given your experience of cannabis legalization in Colorado and Washington, do you feel that Bill C-45 is a reasonable place to start with cannabis legalization in Canada?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

I'm going to end with a bit of a policy philosophy question for all of you.

I'm going to start with the last line of your submission, Professor Boyd, where you said, “we should acknowledge a more general but important point: the reasons for individual use—the pursuit of pleasure and relief from pain—are not always dichotomous categorizations, but often overlapping motivations for the consumption of cannabis.”

I think I've heard all of you say in some fashion that you've questioned the idea of continuing to treat cannabis in a criminal manner whatsoever, and you said C-45 still draws on criminal law, but it should be regulatory for what should be a legal product.

I think, Professor Boyd, you said cannabis doesn't deserve criminal sanction. I've heard the phrase that people who use cannabis should not be treated as criminals. You said it's inconsistent with human rights, yet Bill C-45 continues to do exactly that. It is a criminal sanction-based approach to cannabis. You can't possess more than 30 grams or you risk up to five years in jail. You can't grow more than four plants or you risk incarceration. A 19-year-old selling to a 17-year-old risks 14 years in prison.

Given that we have legalized alcohol—there are no criminal sanctions around the possession or use of alcohol—should we be taking a truly legal approach to cannabis and a purely regulatory one? Is this bill getting it right or wrong in that regard?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Boyd, you've said in your submission that mail-order access for recreational cannabis will appropriately be a critical part of the system of cannabis distribution. Canada is a geographically large country, with many remote or relatively remote communities, yet Bill C-45 does not have a permanent national e-commerce distribution system, that I can detect, in the bill. Would it be your advice that we should be looking at constructing such a national distribution system?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you.

Whenever this bill becomes law, whether it's July 1, 2018, or not, there will be tens of thousands and maybe hundreds of thousands of Canadians who are walking around with criminal records for offences that this bill will no longer make an offence. I'm talking about simple possession.

Michael Lacy, who is the vice-president of the Criminal Lawyers' Association, said it would be very easy for the government to amend the Criminal Records Act to automatically pardon any convictions for an offence that is no longer an offence. To you, Ms. London-Weinstein, should Bill C-45 be amended to do that?

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Thank you very much for your testimony today and for being here.

The committee's goal when we're through with testimony will be to do a clause-by-clause review of the legislation. A large part of what we're thinking about is what we're hearing. I've listened carefully to your thoughts and recommendations on where the bill is working, in your minds, and where it isn't.

There's been some questions raised at the committee table about whether the status quo is actually better than Bill C-45. I think I've heard all of you say that you support this bill, that it is better than the status quo.

Is there anyone who disagrees, who thinks that the status quo is better than this bill? You've had lots of concerns, but generally do you see it as a right step forward?

[Luc Hervé Thibaudeau, President, Consumer Protection Committee, Barreau du Québec]

Thank you very much.

Good day, Mr. Chair and all members of the committee. Thank you for hearing us today.

It's undeniable for the Quebec bar that strict labelling rules will be necessary to reach the goals. There are three main goals of information, prevention, and also in many cases and especially in the cases of young people, either below 18 or below 25, dissuasion. These strict labelling rules must be set up to govern the legal framework related to cannabis, just as is being done with alcohol, and just as is being done with tobacco.

To this extent Bill C-45 provides right now for neutral packaging, what we can identify as being neutral packaging, but there are not too many details being provided at this point to inform us on what the specific conditions will be for marketing and commercialization of cannabis. We feel there is a need for strict national standards that must be established by the federal government, either by amending Bill C-45 or probably by way of bylaws and regulations that will provide us, again, with a similar framework as we're seeing right now with the tobacco legislation warnings and descriptions of contents.

We see there are already, at paragraphs 139(1)(o) and 139(1)(k), provisions in the act that provide for the establishment of regulations with respect to the strength of the cannabis that will be put on the market.

There is nothing right now concerning comestible cannabis, either ingestible food or beverages. The bill right now authorizes the provincial legislatures to regulate the distribution and sale of cannabis, but the list provided at clause 69 of the bill right now is, in our opinion, not exhaustive enough and not detailed enough to give clear indications to the provinces with respect to the framework that must surround the commercialization of cannabis. This can lead to some confusion as to what the provinces must respect when they will table or when they presently are tabling bills governing the commercialization and marketing of cannabis. All this is in a context, of course, of protecting the consumers and also protecting the producers.

Thank you.

[Paul-Matthieu Grondin, President of the Quebec bar, Barreau du Québec]

Mr. Chair, Vice-Chairs, and distinguished members of the committee, good morning.

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Paul-Matthieu Grondin and I am president of the Quebec bar. On my right is Pascal Levesque, president of our criminal law committee, and, on my left, is Luc Hervé Thibaudeau, president of the consumer protection committee.

Mr. Chair, thank you for inviting the Quebec bar to share with you our position on legalizing and regulating cannabis in Canada. Without taking a position on the opportunity to legalize cannabis, the bar is generally in favour of Bill C-45, which proposes a complete system and clear measures pertaining to the production, distribution and sale of the substance.

From a public protection perspective, however, we have to focus on some major issues that deserve to be pointed out.

We must repeat the importance of the awareness, prevention and education measures, especially from a legal point of view, that are intended for the public and, more particularly for the young. In order to allow the public to make an informed choice about recreational cannabis use, it is essential to allocate funds to research in a wide variety of areas, especially in health, in sociology and, of course, in law.

We must remember that younger people use cannabis more. In fact, Statistics Canada informs us that the age group using cannabis the most is the group between 14 and 24, as you know. So young people should be the targets of awareness and prevention efforts to a greater extent.

I will now step aside to allow Mr. Levesque to talk about the system as it applies to minors, which is one of the issues that is important to the Quebec bar.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

It being 10:45, I call our meeting back to order. This is meeting number 65 of the Standing Committee on Health, studying Bill C-45.

I'd like to welcome our panel today, and we're looking forward to hearing from you.

As individuals we have Neil Boyd, professor of criminology, Simon Fraser University. We have Christian Leuprecht, from the department of political science, Royal Military College, by video conference from Australia. I didn't realize the Royal Military College of Canada was in Australia, but that's fine with me. From the Barreau du Québec we have Paul-Matthieu Grondin, president of the Quebec bar; Luc Hervé Thibaudeau, president of the consumer protection committee; and Pascal Levesque, president of the criminal law committee. Also, from the Criminal Lawyers' Association, we have Anne London-Weinstein, former director.

I want to thank you all for coming, and we're looking forward to your contribution to our committee.

Each of the individuals will have a 10-minute opening statement, then the Barreau du Québec will have 10 minutes, and the Criminal Lawyers' Association will also have 10 minutes.

We'll start with Mr. Boyd, and after everyone makes their presentation of 10 minutes, we'll have questions.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thanks.

Mr. Chatterbok, you mentioned, I think, if I had your testimony correct, that you felt that once Bill C-45 comes into place, investigations will increase. Can you elaborate on that? How do you think investigations are going to increase under this bill?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Briefly, to the point of order, I've struggled with the same concept that there's a separate piece of legislation dealing with the impaired driver regime, but in fairness to Dr. Carrie and all members of the committee, I believe it's companion legislation that's necessitated by this legislation. We probably wouldn't be talking about the need to amend the Criminal Code to deal with impaired driving if we were not legalizing marijuana. I wouldn't want any member of this committee to be restricted from talking about that, if they wish. I will be limiting myself to Bill C-45 as much as possible, but I do want to speak in favour of Dr. Carrie's ability to venture into that if he wants, particularly from a health point of view.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Sorry to interrupt. Impaired driving is a very important topic. It's a concern for all Canadians that we have proper control of it, but we're dealing with Bill C-45. At some point in time, in the future, we're going to have to do a clause-by-clause review of Bill C-45, which does not deal at all with impaired driving. Bill C-46 deals with all of those kinds of questions, concerns, and the training. The justice committee is dealing with that. I'm concerned that we're taking very important time away from being able to question these witnesses about Bill C-45 by directing it to Bill C-46, which is another committee's job and another bill.

I don't know whether it's a point of order, Dr. Carrie, but at the end of the day we have to do a clause-by-clause review of Bill C-45, and it's silent on this topic.

[D/Chief Mark Chatterbok, Deputy Chief of Operations, Saskatoon Police Service]

Good morning, distinguished members of this committee.

My name is Mark Chatterbok. I'm the deputy chief of operations for the Saskatoon Police Service. I'm also the co-chair of the human resources and learning committee for the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, along with Steve Schnitzer from the Justice Institute of British Columbia.

I am pleased to be here with you today to offer a perspective from the Saskatoon Police Service, as we, like all municipal police services across the country, look ahead to the implementation of Bill C-45. I would like to begin by telling you a bit about some of the challenges currently faced in our community and province and how the careful and thoughtful implementation of new legislation is vital.

Saskatoon has been a city of rapid growth and economic boom, largely due to its resource sector, but in recent years the growth and the economy have slowed. This has resulted in changing pressures on policing. We have seen an increase in property-related offences. Much of this increase is related to the illicit drug trade, specifically methamphetamine.

We have seen a consistency in the percentage of our citizens who live each day at a socio-economic disadvantage. Some become subject to addiction and criminal victimization, become involved in criminal activity, and live in poor housing conditions or become homeless. While this is a larger and broader community issue, it contributes to the overall environment in which we police.

I would like to address the topic of impaired driving. We anticipate that as a result of new legislation the number of impaired drivers will only increase. This increase will be realized in a city and a province where impaired statistics are already far too high.

Saskatchewan has had a long and unfortunate distinction of having the highest rates of impaired driving in the country. In an effort to reduce those numbers, the province introduced new legislation to toughen penalties for impaired driving, including a zero tolerance for motorists under 21 years of age who are impaired by alcohol or drugs.

As a police service, we are already proactive in terms of impaired driving enforcement. Each year, we conduct numerous impaired driving spot checks and openly communicate these spot checks to the public through traditional and social media, yet our numbers still remain high.

As a result, the Saskatoon Police Service has concerns about an increase in impaired driving due to drugs or a combination of alcohol and drugs. As our chief of police, Clive Weighill, has publicly stated, he would like to know what happens when a driver already found to have a blood alcohol content of 0.07 also has the presence of THC in his or her blood. Technically, this driver may be under the legal limit for both individual substances, but what effect does the presence of both of these drugs have on impairment?

There were 43 homicides in 2015 in Saskatchewan. That compares to 53 people killed as a result of impaired driving in Saskatchewan for the same year. In a province with a population the size of Saskatchewan's, those numbers are very concerning. Unfortunately, our police service has yet to see a significant shift in behaviour when it comes to alcohol-impaired driving. As a result, we strongly recommend considerable federal investment in public education prior to legislative implementation.

We support the proposed amendments in Bill C-46, and the Saskatoon Police Service wants to be a part of the successful implementation for legislative change. We believe this will require continued collaboration by all levels of government and support for law enforcement agencies, especially for our front-line officers, who will be facing the impact of these changes on a day-to-day basis.

As we move closer to the date for legalization, the importance of creating a strategy to educate the public is becoming increasingly important. We echo the CACP's position that the development of such a strategy should begin immediately.

A public education strategy should focus specifically on information for youth, parents, and vulnerable populations. This component needs to be developed with input from all appropriate agencies, and the police would like to be a part of this conversation and preparation. Such a strategy should be non-judgmental, relatable, open-minded, and understandable. Education programs should provide real information, and evidence needs to be developed to resonate with this target audience.

We will need to work closely with health and the school boards to adequately deliver this information to youth in our communities. Achieving a unified position will require close co-operation. Resources in our schools are already at capacity in terms of delivering drug awareness and other programming to youth, and this legislation will only increase the demand for delivery of more education.

I would now like to discuss the impact this legislation will have on police training. Considerable training will be needed in order to have specially trained officers able to detect persons who are impaired from drugs.

According to the Colorado State Patrol, drivers who were stopped and found to be impaired by marijuana had been pulled over 91% of the time as a result of speeding. Studies in Colorado also showed that the number of drivers testing positive for THC was highest during daytime hours. We know that daytime is considered the peak time, when the highest number of vehicles, bicycles, and pedestrians are using the roadways.

Both of these statistics verify the need for specialized training for our front-line officers.

The Saskatoon Police Service currently has 11 drug recognition experts trained, and I anticipate that we will need to at least double this number in the very near future. I expect this will also be the case for many other police agencies across the country. However, this training is expensive; it is currently offered only in the United States; and there is limited capacity, which means this training is often delayed until a space becomes available.

For many agencies this training will be cost prohibitive, which may ultimately result in delays at the roadside, yet the courts—and justifiably so—will not see this as a bona fide reason to deny people their charter rights. As a result, I would strongly recommend that the federal government provide the funding and assistance required to implement a DRE program here in Canada, which will help to address the training costs and capacity issues I have mentioned.

One of our concerns is regarding the unknown; specifically, not knowing to a great degree what impact this new legislation will have on our existing resources. Our resources are already stretched in many different directions. The Saskatoon Board of Police Commissioners recently hired a consulting firm to conduct a review of our operations, and the study found that the amount of time our front-line officers have available to conduct proactive activities is 29%, with a suggested goal of 40%.

We already know that major drug investigations take considerable time and specialized resources and they are very expensive to conduct. Can we expect that the number of major drug investigations will increase with this legislation? I believe we can.

There is the potential for an increase in what I would describe as regular complaints to the police; for example, neighbour disputes, domestic disputes, suspicious activity, and so on. We know that alcohol is often a contributing factor in these types of complaints. The unanswered question is whether or not the usage of marijuana will have similar results.

Many municipal agencies, including in Saskatchewan, have identified possible hidden costs that may arise with the new legislation. They would come in the form of social issues, which typically fall to the front-line police officers to deal with.

I will end my time by commenting on the proposed legislation around personal cultivation and possession within a dwelling. The Saskatoon Police Service supports the concerns raised by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police and recommends that personal cultivation be reconsidered. We do not support home growing regardless of size and number of plants, as this will create opportunities for diversion, and it will increase complaints of overproduction, which will be difficult to investigate and will have a negative impact on our existing resources. Arguably, home growing will provide more opportunity for cannabis to get into the hands of children.

In closing, as a municipal police agency that will be on the front lines of the implementation and impact of Bill C-45, the Saskatoon Police Service wishes to express its appreciation for the government's commitment to consultation of stakeholders. We support the government's desire to implement the most effective legislation possible. We are committed to protect the public safety and to serve our citizens on a daily basis no matter what challenges we face.

On behalf of the Saskatoon Police Service, I appreciate your kind invitation to present our comments to you here this morning.

Thank you.

[D/Commr Rick Barnum, Deputy Commissioner, Investigation and Organized Crime, Ontario Provincial Police]

Good morning, Mr. Chair, and thank you for the opportunity to appear before this committee here today.

As Ontario's provincial police service, the OPP has a unique mandate. The OPP delivers front-line policing services to more than 70% of Ontario municipalities, which is over 13 million people. It is also responsible for a wide array of programs and services for the province, including criminal investigation, technical expertise, indigenous policing, traffic safety, and specialized response. In particular, the investigations and organized crime command is dedicated to safeguarding Ontario's communities against those individuals or groups involved in organized and serious crime. We are committed to engagement and education augmented by enforcement to reduce harm and victimization.

In preparation for the proposed Bill C-45, it is important to consider the impact this act will have on policing operations across the country. As a member of the CACP, the OPP supports the comments and recommendations presented here by our esteemed colleagues. My remarks today will focus on those key elements within the legislation that are most alarming for the Ontario Provincial Police and could, if not implemented in a strategic and staged approach, compromise the safety and well-being of Ontarians.

The first subject I would like to address is the cultivation of cannabis within the home. The OPP is concerned about the impact home production will have on our communities and does not support the federal approach of growing up to four cannabis plants per residence. A number of risk factors arise with personal cultivation, including exposure to youth; health and safety matters, such as mould and fire hazards; overproduction; and the potential for trafficking. The report provided to the standing committee by the CACP highlights the exploitation that has occurred under the various medical marijuana schemes, and it is the OPP's belief that this abuse would be even more prevalent under the recreational system.

Even though Health Canada currently estimates that one indoor plant will yield 28 grams, this does not represent the reality of marijuana cultivation. OPP drug enforcement experts estimate average yields of 60 to 100 grams per indoor plant. Likewise, most indoor cannabis plants grow to a height of approximately four feet, exceeding the 100-centimetre restriction. If we consider a 200-unit housing complex in any urban or suburban centre, where half the units cultivate four marijuana plants, or more, we can estimate anywhere from 400 to 600 plants being grown in one building throughout the year without proper ventilation or adequate electrical capacity and in close proximity to children. This scenario would severely jeopardize public safety. In addition, we may see a rise in home or property invasions, known to police as “grow rips”. The frequency of these occurrences in communities policed by the OPP has steadily increased over the past three years and continues to increase.

OPP experts expect that they will encounter a hefty workload and investigative pressures related to the overproduction of marijuana in the home; possession limits; break, enter, and thefts; and the diversion to the illicit market. All of these cannot be adequately managed within existing resource allocations.

I would now like to bring your attention to the challenges related to training. Given the tight timelines of federal legalization, the OPP, like many policing partners, is apprehensive about the level of our enforcement readiness come July 2018.

There are approximately 6,000 uniformed members of the OPP who will require training on the laws and the ticketing system. It is anticipated that there will be significant cost implications for additional training resources and tools to ensure that officers are aware of their authorities and the proper procedures.

The OPP foresees numerous challenges as we transition to a new enforcement environment. How will officers determine weight for possession charges? Will confusion occur around possession age and limits for different forms of cannabis? How will police agencies manage seizures and return of property? Will validation testing occur? What will the police role within the Health Canada inspection process look like?

Bill C-45, in the subsequent training and enforcement considerations, will also greatly impact Ontario's indigenous policing programs, including the 20 indigenous communities administered by the OPP. Some communities are already experiencing a substance abuse crisis, and it is feared that there will be additional health impacts, particularly for indigenous youth, when cannabis is legalized. It is expected that indigenous police services, whose resources are already underfunded and which are unable to increase capacity, will experience significant enforcement challenges as well.

One of the greatest concerns for the OPP is the protection of youth, including indigenous youth. The OPP recognizes that difficulties will arise in attempting to enforce youth possession and the social sharing of cannabis. It is our belief that social sharing opens the door for illicit drug trafficking to be concealed as sharing among youth. Although the federal legislation sets a minimum age of 18 and permits youth to possess and distribute up to five grams of cannabis, the OPP supports a minimum age of 19, with a zero possession limit for youth below the minimum age. This would allow for ticketing for youth possession, consumption, and sharing of cannabis as a provincial offence, along with the authority to seize cannabis from young persons.

It is the OPP's view that a provincial ticketing mechanism will prevent youth from entering the criminal justice system when charged with cannabis-related offences. In co-operation with the provincial government and our policing and community partners, the OPP will engage in an education campaign directed at youth to address the new possession laws, drug-impaired driving, and the dangers of illicit cannabis.

With respect to organized crime, it is difficult to deny the opportunities for criminal enterprise in the cannabis marketplace. The illegal cannabis trade generates billions of dollars annually and has established a foothold within the medical marijuana industry. The OPP has investigated dozens of medical marijuana grow operations authorized by Health Canada where plant yields grossly exceed the permitted amounts. For example, while investigating a grow operation in a commercial building, it was determined that a total of 508 plants could be grown under four Health Canada authorizations. In fact, we found that 979 plants were located in the building. Some of the mature plants were between eight and nine feet tall.

If we applied the Health Canada yield estimate, the 508 plants should have produced 31 pounds of dried marijuana. Instead, the actual yield was 2,032 pounds. If not seized by police, this illicit product would have been sent to street-level dealers and supplied to illegal dispensaries throughout the province.

While the Ontario government has announced plans to pursue an enforcement strategy to shut down illegal operations, it is anticipated that these dispensaries will continue to pose problems for law enforcement, and that, just like the contraband tobacco industry, organized crime will seek to subvert the legal cannabis retail system by selling it at a lower price. This includes the sale of seeds, cloned plants, and dried cannabis. The federal government must ensure that pricing for marijuana is reasonable; if not, it will promote growth in the illicit trade.

It is also the OPP's belief that Health Canada's security clearance processes do not go far enough to prevent the infiltration of organized crime in the medical marijuana industry. As the legalization of cannabis approaches, individuals who make applications to own and administer federally regulated production facilities, along with their employees, and any contract businesses, must be subjected to a more rigorous screening process.

We also support this approach for the provincial retail environment. A lack of oversight in the production and sale of cannabis will also increase the likelihood for abuse.

Further, the OPP backs the recommendations put forward by the CACP to combine the medical and retail cannabis production models, and, as such, eliminate the personal and medical production authorizations. This streamlined structure would assist the OPP and our policing partners in tackling illicit grow operations controlled by organized crime.

In closing, it is important for the federal government to provide clear direction to impacted stakeholders and consider time frame extensions in order to ensure the successful implementation of this act. The OPP appreciates that the legalization of cannabis, marijuana, is a complex process, and that we as a provincial police organization have a significant role to play. The members of the OPP are committed to upholding the laws of Canada. We look forward to working within the legislative construct provided to ensure that our communities remain safe and our youth and vulnerable persons are protected.

On behalf of the OPP, once again, I am very pleased to contribute to this forum.

Thank you.

[D/Chief Mike Serr]

Thank you very much.

Distinguished members of this committee, on behalf of director Mario Harel, president of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, I am pleased today to be given the opportunity to meet with you. In addition to my role as deputy chief of the Abbotsford Police Department, I am chair of the CACP drug advisory committee. I am joined by York regional deputy police chief, Thomas Carrique, who is chair of the organized crime committee, and Lara Malashenko, a member of the CACP law amendments committee and legal counsel for the Ottawa Police Service.

The mandate of the CACP is safety and security for all Canadians through innovative police leadership. This mandate is accomplished through the activities and special projects of some 20 CACP committees and through active liaison with various levels of government. Ensuring the safety of our citizens and our communities is central to the mission of our membership and their police services. Bill C-45 is a comprehensive bill, and we will address it from a high level in our opening statement. In addition to our appearance today, we are providing you with a detailed written brief for your consideration.

Our role from the beginning has been to share our expertise with the government to help mitigate the impact of this legislation on public safety. Extensive discussions within the CACP membership and various committees form the basis of our advice. We participated in a number of government-held consultations and provided a submission to the federal task force. We produced two discussion papers, entitled “CACP: Recommendations of the Task Force on Cannabis Legalization and Regulation” on February 8, 2017, and “Government Introduces Legislation to Legalize Cannabis” on April 28, 2017. Themes from both discussion papers have been included in our written brief.

Police leadership across Canada identified seven key themes specific to this bill that impact policing. These are: training and the impact on police resourcing, personal cultivation and possession, organized crime, medical marijuana, packaging and labelling, return of property, and youth and public education. Police leadership also identified that drug-impaired driving and our ability to effectively manage it will impact policing. However, we will leave this theme to be addressed under Bill C-46.

We would like to acknowledge the announcement made by the federal government on September 8, 2017 with respect to the allocation of funding. We are interested in learning the details related to the distribution of funds dedicated to our federal, provincial, and municipal police resources. We wish to emphasize that administering police services requires the necessary training, tools, and technology to assist with addressing public safety concerns, and disrupting the involvement of organized crime in the illicit cannabis market.

In order to support the successful implementation of this comprehensive legislation, the CACP urges the Government of Canada to first consider extending the July 2018 commencement date to allow police services to obtain sufficient resources and proper training, both of which are critical to the successful implementation of the proposed cannabis act. Second, we ask that an established legislative framework be put in place prior to legalization that will provide law enforcement with clear direction and assistance regarding funding and training. Third, provide sufficient detail to allow law enforcement to assess the availability of funding, recognizing the need for a more standardized and consistent approach among provinces and territories, vis-à-vis the implementation of police resources necessary for the legalization of marijuana, and the need to obtain further guidance regarding the training of front-line officers, which would include plant seizure and identification of illicit cannabis. Fourth, increase funding for public education and youth programs and the issuance of tickets under the ticketing provisions of the act. Fifth, due to the foreseeable concerns surrounding personal cultivation and enforcement, we ask the provisions permitting adults to grow up to four marijuana plants be revoked. The CACP predicts that these provisions would be problematic to enforce, would provide additional opportunities for the illegal sale of marijuana, and would pose a further risk to youth due to increased exposure and accessibility.

We were pleased to see in the September 8, 2017 announcement that Finance Canada will consult on a new tax regime on cannabis. This is critically important because, despite the proposed cannabis act, organized crime will continue to look for opportunities to exploit the market and to profit. We will continue to advocate that the cost of legal cannabis remain as low, or lower, than cannabis sold on the black market in order to discourage price undercutting and illicit sales. We would also ask the federal government to enact strict security clearance requirements, which would ensure that criminal organizations do not become involved as licensed growers, which has been observed under the medical regime.

Police agencies must prioritize drug investigations on the basis of public safety. It is well documented that many police agencies are currently concentrating on the opioids that are responsible for an unprecedented number of overdose deaths. However, it is important, as we move to a regulated regime for cannabis, to recognize that strict enforcement is necessary at the onset to protect youth and help disrupt organized crime.

While the commitment made on September 8 to provide funding to policing to enforce a proposed cannabis act is positive, questions still remain in regard to how this money will be allocated. We wish to reiterate that dedicated police cannabis enforcement teams are necessary to disrupt organized crime and keep cannabis out of the hands of our youth.

Given the infiltration of organized crime into the medical marijuana industry, the CACP recommends merging the cannabis act with the access to cannabis for medical purposes regulations to avoid confusion, to align the efforts of Health Canada and law enforcement agencies, and to limit organized crime activity by reducing the number of licensed producers and distributors.

The CACP recommends that packaging requirements be stringent, in order to provide clear labelling to allow police to identify between legal and illegal cannabis, and to give users adequate information to make informed choices about their cannabis consumption. We further recommend that labelling include notice regarding penalties for providing cannabis to youth as a further protection mechanism and deterrent.

The CACP has concerns regarding the return of property provisions that appear to require the police to maintain and return seized cannabis plants. Police services across Canada do not have the facilities or resources to accomplish this. Accordingly, we ask the act to address these concerns by relieving police services of any responsibility associated with the deterioration of seized cannabis plants or having to provide compensation.

Lastly, there should be a continued focus on protecting youth through education and other non-Criminal Code means. The cannabis act, for example, will permit youth to possess or social-share five grams or less, which is inconsistent with the bill's intended objectives. Examples from Colorado and Washington have demonstrated that legalization may encourage increased marijuana consumption among youth. Therefore, police-driven education on the effects of marijuana use is critical to discourage consumption by youth.

Our recommendations are not intended to dispute the government's intention of restricting, regulating, and legalizing cannabis use in Canada. Instead, we bring these issues forward because the answers remain unknown. We are concerned about the impact of this act and, as previously stated, we have the responsibility to mitigate the impact on public safety, which is our primary goal from a policing perspective.

We certainly commend the government for its commitment to consultation with stakeholders and the public. We also commend the efforts of ministers, parliamentarians, and public servants who are dedicated to bring forward the most comprehensive legislation with a mutual goal of putting forward a responsible framework prior to legalization and recognizing that the world is watching Canada throughout this process.

In the interests of public safety and preserving the quality of life that we are fortunate to enjoy in Canada, we appreciate the opportunity to share our crime prevention and law enforcement experience with the government. We recognize that illicit drugs are a global issue that dramatically affects local communities, families, and individuals. As the world watches Canada throughout this complex process, we are committed to working with the government and the Canadian public to ensure that comprehensive regulations that mitigate the public safety concerns associated with cannabis are established prior to legalization. We support many of the overall goals of the act while recognizing that other stakeholders are better equipped to provide specialized knowledge in the area of public health and in social services. We also support efforts to deter and reduce criminal activity by imposing serious criminal penalties for those breaking the law, especially those who import and export cannabis and who provide cannabis to youth.

Sincere thanks are extended to all members of this committee for allowing the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police the opportunity to offer comment and suggestions on Bill C-45. We look forward to answering your questions.

Thank you.

[Dr. Sam Kamin]

Thank you very much.

My name is Sam Kamin and I am the Vicente Sederberg Professor of Marijuana Law and Policy at the University of Denver, Sturm College of Law. I hold a J.D. and a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley and I've been teaching both constitutional and criminal law for more than 18 years.

In 2012 I was asked by Governor Hickenlooper to serve on the task force that he was appointing to implement amendment 64 that legalized marijuana for adult use in Colorado.

The next year I was appointed by California's lieutenant governor, Gavin Newsom, to serve in a similar capacity on a blue ribbon commission that he put together in California to consider best practices for marijuana regulation and legalization.

Since that time I've continued to consult with both state and local governments about marijuana regulation. I've written extensively on the interaction between state and federal law in this area, and I've taught law students courses on marijuana regulation and public policy.

Last week I submitted a brief to this committee outlining my impressions of how marijuana regulation has proceeded in Colorado. As I outlined there, I believe that Colorado has largely been successful in spite of a number of challenges. In fact, many initial opponents of legalization in our state have come to appreciate the successes of marijuana regulation there.

As you have a number of witnesses who can speak directly to the specifics of the Colorado regulatory experience, particularly to my right, I would like to use my time today to talk about what Canada can hope to learn from the American experience as it considers adopting regulations of its own to legalize and regulate marijuana for adults.

In my brief I outline five take-aways that I think Canada and this committee can take away from our experience and I'd be happy to answer any questions you have about them during that period.

First, I think it's important to understand the limits of marijuana regulation. Robust regulations, like those implemented in California and Washington, can keep organized crime out of licensed marijuana production and can help ensure that marijuana products are consistent, well-labelled, and free of contaminants. But regulation alone cannot solve all the problems currently associated with marijuana prohibition. In fact, I believe that regulating licensed businesses may be the easiest task in the legalization of marijuana, and I'll explain what I mean through an example.

The diversion of marijuana from Colorado, where it is legal, to other states where it is not, is rarely attributable to the malfeasance of businesses regulated under Colorado law. In fact, I think that there are two primary factors that are responsible for the diversion of marijuana out of Colorado. The first is criminals who have taken advantage of the prevalence of marijuana production in Colorado to produce it there for export to other states.

This conduct is prohibited by both state and federal law and can be addressed only by law enforcement, rather than by regulatory agencies. Colorado continues to work with its partners in the federal system to ferret out illegal production of marijuana and to arrest those responsible for it.

The second principal factor in the diversion of marijuana outside of Colorado is that people are buying it lawfully within Colorado and then taking it and reselling it illegally elsewhere. Again, there is only so much that the regulatory system can do to limit this conduct. While consumers can be educated as to the applicable law, if they choose to ignore that law that is a question for law enforcement rather than regulators.

My second principal lesson from the American and Colorado regulatory experience is that it is crucial to establish relevant metrics for the evaluation of a marijuana regulatory regime and to begin measuring those as soon as possible and, in any event, prior to the implementation of regulations.

One can only know whether legalization is meeting its goals if one clearly establishes those goals in advance and has settled on the relevant measures of success. For example, Bill C-45 expresses as a principal goal a reduction in the use of marijuana by young people—though one might wonder whether moving from prohibition to regulation is the best way to reduce use.

Other harms of marijuana consumption should also be studied, including use of marijuana by vulnerable groups, heavy or problematic use by adults, and use that poses a danger to others, for example through impaired driving.

It is also important in this context that marijuana not be considered in a vacuum. While no one wishes to see marijuana use rise among vulnerable groups, it is important to determine whether marijuana use supplements or displaces the use of other substances such as alcohol, tobacco, and harder drugs. If teens are choosing to use marijuana over alcohol, for example, that is certainly less serious than if they are adding marijuana use to the combination of substances they are already consuming.

Furthermore, it is important to understand that changes in law enforcement practices can impact behavioural measurement in ways that may confound data analysis. For example—and we have experienced this in Colorado—if patrol officers are trained as they should be to identify the characteristics of marijuana intoxication, we can expect more arrests for driving under the influence of marijuana, whether more of that conduct is occurring or not. It may simply be that training more officers on how to do this leads to more arrests in ways that might indicate an increase in impaired driving when none is occurring.

My third principle takeaway is this. By legalizing marijuana at the federal level, Canada would create an opportunity for the provinces to adopt regulatory models that are not currently available in the United States. As long as marijuana remains prohibited by federal law in our country, the states are necessarily limited in the types of regulatory regimes they can implement.

For example, the ongoing federal prohibition makes the dispensing of marijuana by federal mail impossible in the way that Canada is able to. Similarly, it is impossible for American states to develop a state-run distribution model akin to the one used to sell alcohol in Canada and some American jurisdictions and that apparently Ontario is considering for the distribution of marijuana here.

There are many potential advantages to state control of distribution. It allows the government to control price, to easily identify the licensed purveyors, to collect all revenue rather than simply taxing it, and to control the way the product is marketed to consumers. However, because such a model would put state employees in the position of directly violating federal law, such a model would create a direct conflict between state and federal law in the United States, and no American jurisdiction has attempted to implement one.

The freedom that Canadian provinces will have in determining how and whether to regulate cannabis distribution within their territories thus presents a great opportunity. If the various provinces adopt a diverse array of regulatory models, we might be able to greatly expand our understanding of how different kinds of regulation impact consumer behaviours. We have not been able to measure that in the United States. Most of our regulatory systems look quite similar. If there were a variety of distribution models here in Canada, coupled with the modelling and metrics that I spoke about beforehand, we would be able to learn a great deal about which regulations are effective and which are not.

Fourth, it is important not to oversell the fiscal benefits that legalized marijuana can bring. It is tempting to see marijuana legalization as a double fiscal win. Less money needs to be spent on law enforcement while more money comes in from the taxation of a substance previously sold only on the black market. I believe caution is necessary with regard to both of these, for two reasons.

First, as I described above, regulating marijuana for production and sale is hardly the end of marijuana law enforcement. Steps will need to be taken to stamp out illegal production and sale in order to channel marijuana production into the licensed market. Furthermore, the costs and the ongoing costs of establishing and operating a robust marijuana regulatory regime are not to be discounted.

The second reason to be cautious about the fiscal impact of marijuana is that lawmakers should not expect game-changing revenue from marijuana taxes, particularly at first. Regulatory compliance by producers will be expensive, and in order for regulated marijuana to compete on price with the black market, tax rates will need to be kept low initially. I believe there are good reasons to move away from marijuana prohibition, but enriching state coffers is not among them.

Fifth and finally, it is important to understand that the decision to legalize and regulate marijuana rather than to prohibit it is merely the first step along a path. Marijuana regulation is an iterative process rather than a one-time pronouncement. One of the crucial lessons Colorado and other states have learned in the last five years is that consumer behaviours change quickly in response to regulation and to market forces. Legalization will have unintended consequences, and regulators will need to be flexible and nimble in order to keep up. Patience will be needed as loopholes and other regulatory gaps are identified and closed.

I believe the experience of Colorado and other American jurisdictions indicates that this effort is worth the candle, but the process will not be without its complications and frustrations.

I thank you for your time this morning and for the invitation to appear before this hearing. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

All right. It's 1:45, and we'll resume our 65th meeting of the Standing Committee on Health. We're studying Bill C-45.

We welcome our guests today, those who are present and those who are here by video conference. We are looking forward to your contribution with great interest, because many of you have gone where we're about to go and can provide us with a lot of information.

We'll start with a 10-minute introduction and presentation by each presenter and then go to questions for seven minutes, then for five minutes, and then for three minutes.

First of all, I'll introduce our panellists.

We're pleased to have with us Dr. Sam Kamin, professor of marijuana law and policy at the University of Denver, appearing as an individual; from the Colorado Department of Revenue, Mr. Michael Hartman, executive director; from the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, Marc-Boris St-Maurice, regional director, and Abigail Sampson, regional coordinator; and from the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board, Mr. Rick Garza, by video conference.

We're very interested to hear what you're going to have to say.

We'll start with you, Mr. Kamin. Is it Dr. Kamin?

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

Yes, they're ongoing, but in 290 days they'll matter more.

I also wanted to mention to the clerk that with respect to the data we were talking about earlier in terms of the increase in impaired drugged driving that we've seen in Colorado and also Washington, I can provide you with the data my information came from. In fact I think tomorrow we're going to hear from Smart Approaches to Marijuana, who show a 145% increase in impaired drugged driving for marijuana in the 2013 to 2016 time period. I will send that to you, along with other information reported by sam.org that Washington saw a doubling once they legalized marijuana. It was a doubling from 8% to 17%. I'm happy to send that to the clerk as well.

I'd like to hear from the Canadian Medical Association a little more discussion about prevention. It seems to me that with all the effort spent to try to criminalize trafficking and all these various things, we're not focusing as much, or I don't see as much in Bill C-45, on trying to prevent people from getting on drugs in the first place. Could you comment?

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Do you think there is a need to implement the education now, before we implement Bill C-45?

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Thank you.

To the CBSA, what kind of public awareness and education campaign relating to cannabis use will be implemented, prior to the coming into force of Bill C-45, in regard to border-crossing? Many cross every day. To escape the hassle, what kind of education will need to be in place before the enforcement of Bill C-45?

[Jennifer Lutfallah]

That was identified as an issue with respect to our assessment of Bill C-45. First and foremost, obviously any Canadian travelling to the United States has to answer truthfully to all questions. That said, there have been initial discussions with counterparts, but it has not been resolved.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Of course. Thank you. I appreciate that.

Now I'm going to reverse it, because we heard some testimony this morning. Once we legalize cannabis possession in this country according to Bill C-45, it will no longer be a crime for adults in Canada to possess certain amounts of cannabis and to consume it. I'm concerned when those Canadian citizens go to the border with the United States and are asked by a U.S. border officer if they have ever taken drugs. That happens routinely, not convictions but they ask if you have used drugs. I've had Canadian citizens who have been denied entry to the U.S. for answering.

Has CBSA had any discussions with their counterparts on the U.S. side to work out an agreement so that Canadian citizens aren't placed in the awkward situation of either having to lie to U.S. border officials, which is wrong, or if they admit to doing what is perfectly legal in Canada, they run the risk of being denied entry into the U.S. Are you aware of any discussions in your department to resolve that issue with the American border authorities?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

If it weren't a crime in Canada, if Bill C-45 passes, after July 2018 or whenever it passes it's no longer a crime in Canada to possess 30 grams of cannabis. If you have an American who was convicted in the past of possessing under 30 grams of cannabis, that would no longer be a crime in Canada. Would that be a barrier to them entering Canada at that point, it no longer being a crime here? It would still show up on their criminal record, right?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Yes. Thank you.

To our CBSA colleagues, it's funny. This summer I think a lot of us, as MPs, were in our ridings and I know that I always have an experience with people having trouble crossing the border, both ways, Canadians who get turned away from the U.S. border and Americans trying to come into Canada who are turned away by CBSA.

In fact, I had two young gentlemen from Los Angeles who were turned away by CBSA because they had prior convictions. I've had cases where someone has been turned away for having an impaired driving, a “DUI” as they call them in the United States. How will CBSA treat Americans with cannabis possession convictions after Bill C-45 becomes law? Will that still be a ground for denying entry to an American citizen who wants to come into Canada?

[Inspector Martin Bruce, Organized Crime Section, Vancouver Police Department]

Good afternoon. I am Inspector Martin Bruce of the Vancouver Police organized crime section. With me is Staff Sergeant Bill Speam. Bill is the subject matter expert in investigations related to organized crime.

On behalf of Chief Adam Palmer, I would like to thank the honourable members of the committee for the opportunity to make a submission on Bill C-45. Being mindful of the committee's time, I will be brief.

The concerns of the Vancouver Police Department are very likely to be those echoed by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police and other public safety partners. However, in the local context, our concerns fall into four main areas: access by youth, personal cultivation, the role of organized crime, and the implementation timeline.

With regard to access by youth, our view is that allowing 12 to 17-year-olds to possess or socially share up to five grams of marijuana will create issues when police need to interact in a number of settings where youth are present, but particularly in our schools. For example, what powers will our officers have to intervene and seize marijuana that's being offered to a vulnerable student by another youth, or to deal with any other nuisance calls involving youth effectively? We note that the proposed ticketing scheme will apply to those aged 18 years and over.

This possession ability combined with personal cultivation in the home appears to conflict with the government's stated objective to create a highly regulated environment that minimizes youth access to the drug.

With regard to personal cultivation, we oppose it and believe it will be a catalyst for overproduction that will flood the illicit market and effectively undermine the pricing structure and supply offered by the regulated regime. It will also bring with it the potential for home invasions, break and enters, robbery, theft of electricity, nuisances, and other calls for service that make communities less safe and further stretch police and other first responder resources that are already grappling with the opioid overdose crisis in this province and elsewhere.

The four-plant maximum will be impossible to effectively enforce and as the new act will be layered over existing medical marijuana regulations, it will be difficult for front-line officers to determine what authorities they have in the myriad of potential circumstances that will exist. Seizures later determined to be unlawful may leave police agencies liable for degraded marijuana stored over time that has to be returned to owners. Officers will also have the potential to be the subject of British Columbia Police Act complaints for misinterpretation of the various provisions.

As to the role of organized crime, if the pricing structure and availability of regulated marijuana isn't set at realistic levels, organized crime will take advantage in the same way they have done with illicit tobacco products. To meet any increase in demand, criminal elements will also have the potential to increase output especially in urban settings under the cloak of personal production and through a proliferation of residential marijuana grow operations.

With regard to the implementation timeline, the implementation of Bill C-45 leaves us with many unanswered questions, especially around where responsibilities will ultimately lay and around how and when that information will be conveyed. In the absence of that detail, we have concerns that the remaining timeline poses significant challenges with regard to the appropriate training and equipping of our members, amending our procedures, and potentially adapting our facilities.

Finally, we would seek assurances that funding will be in place for a comprehensive public education strategy, that it will be implemented well in advance of legalization, and that such a campaign will focus on the developmental harms associated with youth, other known harms linked to marijuana use, and the dangers associated with the impaired operation of motor vehicles.

Thank you again for providing us with this forum. We would be pleased to answer any questions the committee might have.

[Trevor Bhupsingh, Director General, Law Enforcement and Border Strategies Directorate, Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Good afternoon, Chair, committee members. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you from a law enforcement and public safety perspective regarding Bill C-45.

My name is Trevor Bhupsingh. I'm the director general of law enforcement and border strategies at Public Safety Canada. I'd like to briefly introduce my colleague, Jennifer Lutfallah, who is the director general for enforcement and intelligence programs at the Canada Border Services Agency.

My colleague and I are here today to answer your questions about our respective organizations' roles in relation to C-45.

The government has taken a balanced approach to the cannabis legalization and regulation. We are confident that the necessary law enforcement and public safety considerations are incorporated into the bill, and are informing the development of the regime that will be put in place to regulate cannabis.

Bill C-45 reflects the collaborative work that has been accomplished by Health Canada, the Department of Justice, Public Safety, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the Canada Border Services Agency, along with provincial and territorial governments and law enforcement stakeholders.

Public Safety Canada has taken a leadership role in working with law enforcement from across the country and with our international partners to ensure that the legalization and regulation of cannabis is accomplished through a public safety lens. In preparation for the cannabis task force work, Public Safety held a round table discussion on the legalization of cannabis with law enforcement and provincial and territorial government representatives. The discussions provided clear direction on elements and perspectives that required consideration and needed to be reflected in the proposed cannabis act and the legalization regime. This information was provided to the task force and helped guide their consultations with law enforcement, other stakeholders, and Canadians.

Law and border enforcement recognize that a legalized cannabis regime needs to protect public health and safety, particularly among youth. In this regard, Public Safety Canada and its partners, such as the RCMP and the CBSA, have focused on several key objectives in the development of the bill. First, the need to keep criminals and organized crime networks from infiltrating the legal cannabis market, strengthening laws to reduce the cannabis black market, and protecting youth.

Legalizing cannabis is a significant change in social norms, but what we know is that cannabis has been a very lucrative commodity for criminals. This too needs to change. The RCMP and law enforcement across the country can attest to the fact that organized crime has been heavily involved in the illicit cannabis market, making significant profits that are used to fund illegal activities. It has been estimated that there are up to 650 criminal organizations in Canada, and up to 50% of those have been identified as being involved in the illicit cannabis black market.

It's difficult to fully anticipate how organized crime and the illicit market will react once the cannabis regime comes into effect. Organized crime involvement and any commodity or activity can change as the supply and the demand shift and the opportunity for their profits are affected. However, much work is under way to keep cannabis profits out of the hands of organized crime. Public Safety Canada is supporting other federal departments that are leading discussions on cannabis taxation and pricing. These are important aspects that will help ensure that projected revenues from the production, distribution, and sale do not flow to organized crime.

As the new regime is built, requirements under the act, such as the criminal record checks for those who want to produce cannabis, will keep criminals presently operating in the illicit cannabis market from moving into the legal regime. RCMP, federal policing, and other Canadian law enforcement will continue to work nationally and with international partners to target organized crime and criminal networks. Public Safety Canada will support these efforts by monitoring change in the illegal drug market.

Regarding border security, the CBSA currently investigates and interdicts the unauthorized cross-border movement of cannabis at Canada's ports of entry while maintaining the free flow of legitimate travel and trade.

The new legislation will maintain the existing cross-border framework with respect to the illegal movement of cannabis. As such, the Canada Border Services Agency will continue to examine persons and shipments for cannabis at our ports of entry, pursuant to the Customs Act. The agency will also continue to work closely with law enforcement partners, such as the RCMP and local policing agencies, who are responsible for investigations pursuant to the new cannabis act.

It is important to note that the proposed cannabis act does not impede law enforcement's ability to target and dismantle cannabis operations. The bill sends a strong message about the seriousness of crimes that involve cannabis. For example, the maximum penalties for criminal offences under the proposed act for producing, distributing, selling, and importing and exporting cannabis can result in 14 years' imprisonment.

Another very important objective of the government is that Public Safety Canada and our law enforcement community will work to support protecting youth. The act clearly reflects the view that we want to keep cannabis out of the hands of youth by restricting access to cannabis and deterring unlawful activities with cannabis through appropriate sanctions and enforcement measures. This is why adults who use youth to commit a cannabis crime would face the same 14-year maximum penalties as those who illegally sell or traffic cannabis. Further, provinces and territories have the ability to establish their own provisions to prohibit persons possessing any amount of cannabis under the minimum age. This will also give police the authority to seize cannabis from youth, while not subjecting them to criminal prosecution for possessing or sharing very small amounts of cannabis.

The government has been clear that strictly regulating cannabis within the legalized framework is of the utmost importance. As such, a ticketing scheme is put forward under the proposed legislation. This would allow law enforcement to issue a criminal ticket to an individual 18 years or older for relatively minor violations of the rules set out in the act, including possession of cannabis beyond the legal limit of 30 grams but up to 50 grams, or five or six plants for home cultivation, and/or outside the prescribed restrictions. The penalty for these acts is a monetary fine of $200.

Public Safety Canada recognizes the degree of effort required to ensure the necessary public safeguards are in place as we move forward with the proposed cannabis legislation. We will continue to work with Health Canada and the Department of Justice on all aspects of the new regime, including licensing and compliance, and a robust public awareness campaign specifically targeting youth. We will be communicating the new law and enforcement regime to police and all Canadians through online training modules and by leveraging media and social media opportunities. Furthermore, we'll be undertaking continuous research, data collection, evaluation, and open dialogue across Canada with law enforcement stakeholders. We'll work to support law enforcement to implement and operationalize the new legislation.

The proposed new cannabis act will be an important piece of legislation from a law enforcement and public safety perspective.

Thank you. My colleague and I are happy to take questions.