Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I welcome the intervention of Ms. Rudd, which just contradicts everything the Liberals have been saying up until now. They have been saying there's no problem. Now they're saying that there's a problem, but they'll give them a rebate eventually. People who consume medical cannabis aren't necessarily wealthy. They can't go into debt to wait for eventually getting some relief from the government.
If what we are hearing is that this amendment needs to be tweaked so that it removes the excise tax now, so that the 250,000 users of medical marijuana who depend on that medication, particularly for pain relief, can actually access it without paying this massive penalty—which is the excise tax on top of it—we should endeavour to remove it. If what I hear is the cannabis product with the words “prescription cannabis drug”.... I think by taking out the word “prescription” and adding “prescribed by a physician”, we would address the concerns that Mr. Mercille raised.
We obviously have a problem. I'm not one to stare at my shoes when there's a problem. Obviously there's a problem if Health Canada is now looking into a rebate system to try to compensate users of medical marijuana who are now finding themselves deeply in debt or having to pass on their medication for pain relief. It's a serious problem, so we need to deal with it.
I would suggest that if we change it to a medical product as a cannabis drug “prescribed by a physician”, we get around the error by the legislative drafter that put the words “prescription cannabis drug” in there. According to Mr. Mercille, and I don't doubt his word, that particular wording doesn't address the issue of the excise tax that has been imposed on all medical cannabis.
It was done accidentally, as you'll recall, Mr. Chair. When I first asked questions about this last spring, there was a denial that there was any problem. Then we found out there was a problem and now Health Canada is looking into a rebate program for the problem. Why don't we just fix the problem? Instead of ramming the legislation through, let's just get together as members of Parliament paid for by taxpayers to fix problems and fix this problem now.