Mr. Chair, our Green Party amendment PV-2 attempts to do the same thing the NDP amendment attempted to do. It's at least in the same ballpark, I think. My amendment recasts, or tweaks, if you will, the definition of “prescription cannabis drug”. What I'm attempting to do here, and I hope it will be effective, is to ensure that medical use of cannabis is not exposed to a GST/HST charge.
I appreciate the support down this whole side of the table. It's nice to be working with Dan Albas again. We worked on “free the grapes”. Maybe we can help people who need medical cannabis at the same time and get everybody on board.
What I've done with this amendment is to say the following:
prescription cannabis drug means a cannabis product that is intended to be sold for medical purposes in accordance with the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act or the Cannabis Act or a cannabis product
This will get us out of the requirement for a DIN. We do know, according to testimony before this committee, that 269,000 Canadians are using cannabis for medical purposes on the authorization of their health care providers, but very, very few of those products actually currently have a DIN. Many of them may not be able to get through all the hoops to do so. This broadens the definition of “prescription cannabis drug” to a real-life example of how such drugs are used right now.