Evidence of meeting #64 for Health in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was medical.
A video is available from Parliament.
12:15 p.m.
Conservative
Marilyn Gladu Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON
Thank you, Chair.
We see that there are not a lot of countries in the world rushing to legalize marijuana. I think Uruguay was the only other one. Could you comment on how long it took them to actually legalize?
12:15 p.m.
Senior Advisor, Bennett Jones LLP, As an Individual
Do you mean the country of Uruguay?
12:15 p.m.
Senior Advisor, Bennett Jones LLP, As an Individual
They used a phased approach. Once they made the decision to legalize, they introduced it, if you like, in stages. Their system is quite top heavy with government control, if you like. I don't think it's a system that would fit nicely or easily with the expectations of Canadians.
12:15 p.m.
Conservative
12:15 p.m.
Senior Advisor, Bennett Jones LLP, As an Individual
I think it's fair to say that they have, for a number of years.... It's also because of changes in government, an election, and we all know how elections intervene and might change things up a bit.
But, yes, to your point, to get where they are today it has taken them some time.
12:20 p.m.
Conservative
Marilyn Gladu Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON
Right.
One of my concerns, of course, is that allowing the provinces all to do something different will be very confusing for Canadians. What's the age here? What's the age there? How much am I able to use here? Regarding the time frame of having 290 days left, it seems to me that when I hear testimony about medical marijuana, it seems to be extremely well controlled and to have very good quality control. They seem to be able to market that down to the organization or individual in multiple forms, including the oil and including pills.
If that were opened up to be the mechanism of delivery for recreational marijuana, that would eliminate a lot of the concerns we're hearing about the home-grown thing, where five inches more can turn you into a criminal, or five plants versus four would be a problem, and there's no control of potency, and all of those things.
Would the price point of the medical marijuana system be competitive if that were opened up to be the recreational model?
I'll let anybody comment who wants to.
12:20 p.m.
Associate Professor, Department of Family Medicine, McGill University, As an Individual
Maybe I'm misunderstanding but I think that's exactly what is being proposed, that licensed producers will evolve to inform and to provide to the legal, non-medical market.
12:20 p.m.
Conservative
Marilyn Gladu Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON
But they're also going to allow home growing. To me there's so little control on the quality, the potency, and whether you're putting fertilizer on, whether you have more plants or not, whether your kids have access. I mean you have people who are essentially breaking the law today by smoking it, and you are trusting them to be responsible in the way they're doing it.
I think the home growing is the part that is problematic, and the other distribution is better.
12:20 p.m.
Associate Professor, Department of Family Medicine, McGill University, As an Individual
I'll weigh in with a perspective that we heard several times from the task force. That was that people choose to grow cannabis for many reasons. It's an easy plant to grow, and there are probably many people who will continue to do it whether it's legal or not. The reality is that, if people were able to purchase cannabis through licit supply at a reasonable cost and reasonable access, the choice to grow their own cannabis would actually disappear or reduce because it is easy to obtain through licit supply.
We were told and shared ideas that you're allowed to grow your own tobacco and to brew your own alcohol, or beer and wine. There are some people who choose to do that. They do it for their own benefits and give it to friends at Christmas, who then put it away and never touch it.
The idea is that it exists. Leaving that framework in place was considered reasonable. Given the fact that if there was sufficient access elsewhere, the actual demand for that would reduce considerably.
12:20 p.m.
Conservative
Marilyn Gladu Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON
All right.
Ms. McLellan, I have one other thing.
In addition to trying to make sure we keep cannabis out of the hands of children and control public safety, to get people ultimately not consuming cannabis, because we've seen that there's harm, there should be some sort of prevention. What do you think about the prevention part of Bill C-45?
12:20 p.m.
Senior Advisor, Bennett Jones LLP, As an Individual
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. We heard from parents and from school boards when we did our round table discussions. Virtually everybody in this piece agreed on one thing, and this was that we need good public education. Parents wanted to be able to have factual, fact-based information they could share with their kids. School boards and teachers wanted the same thing.
We've learned from tobacco. There were a number of reasons why tobacco use has dropped dramatically, even from the time I was federal minister of health—or dropped somewhat, I shouldn't say dramatically, I suppose. A lot of that is around public education. Yes, it's price, too, and again, that goes back to the conversation we had, Mr. Webber. Price point is important here but so is public education, understanding the risks, understanding why you shouldn't start to use early, and if you do, don't use heavily but use casually in moderation. These are the things you need to watch for. Don't use and drive. Public education, I think, is the best preventive strategy there is.
Then there are lots of other things you can add to that, whether it's price point or whether it's labelling or restrictions on marketing and access, but at the end of the day, I think the more public education you have.... To Mark's point, we need research to understand what we should be telling people. You need good information that you then convey to the public at different demographics and different age cohorts. You provide that information so they can make an informed choice.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
Ron McKinnon Liberal Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC
Thank you, Chair.
My question is for Ms. McLellan and Dr. Ware.
The task force recommended personal cultivation with the limit of four plants and a maximum height of 100 centimetres. I was wondering, what is the reason, to start with, for the maximum height?
12:25 p.m.
Associate Professor, Department of Family Medicine, McGill University, As an Individual
It had to do with fence heights and outdoors and not being visible from outside, so there's a privacy concern, which is if you're growing this outside, you can't be seen having trees that are growing above your fence.
We looked at existing legislation in other states where they have numbers of plants and we just considered that this was a reasonable way to allow people to cultivate cannabis for themselves.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
Ron McKinnon Liberal Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC
It wasn't to limit the amount of psychoactive substance that could be produced. It was really to keep it out of the public view. Is that the point?
12:25 p.m.
Associate Professor, Department of Family Medicine, McGill University, As an Individual
Primarily, unless I'm not recalling additional....
12:25 p.m.
Senior Advisor, Bennett Jones LLP, As an Individual
We also consulted and heard from experts, especially in the United States, who told us that they felt four plants 100 centimetres high would provide adequate supply for a moderate/reasonable user of cannabis.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
Ron McKinnon Liberal Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC
My extensive research on Google here indicates that at 100 centimetres.... You can get a lot of product out of a smaller plant as well as a taller plant, so in terms of controlling the amount of product that can be produced, the size doesn't really correlate. I guess I'm wondering why those experts would have made that recommendation.
I understand this point of visibility. I'm wondering why we would use criminal law powers to limit the visibility like that. That seems to be something that the provinces might be better placed to regulate. Would you like to comment on that?
12:25 p.m.
Associate Professor, Department of Family Medicine, McGill University, As an Individual
If I recall, we did suggest that provinces and municipalities, specifically, could consider mechanisms to get permits for people who wish to grow. That's something that we left to the municipalities and provinces to consider. They would register as somebody who has a plant, and they would at least have a permit that said that they were allowed to do so, and that would be a municipally—
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
Ron McKinnon Liberal Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC
Except it's still, in this law, 100 centimetres, which would put a criminal penalty on a higher height, when really, the objective is not.... It doesn't seem to me to be a criminal—
12:25 p.m.
Senior Advisor, Bennett Jones LLP, As an Individual
But it's a gradation. I don't have the legislation in front of me. I see, Mr. Spratt, that you do.
12:25 p.m.
Senior Advisor, Bennett Jones LLP, As an Individual
You came very well prepared.
I can't find it right now, but I think that there would be a gradation. That would be the anticipation.
In our report, we talked about the fact that you could have so-called administrative penalties. You could confiscate. You know, if somebody is growing a hundred plants for so-called personal use, one might use the criminal law there, especially if you had other evidence around the number of plants.
Mr. Spratt, I would think the plants themselves would not suggest prima facie evidence of trafficking, but there might be other things, baggies and all sorts of things, in the home that might lead to a prima facie evidence case for trafficking, in which case you would clearly use the Criminal Code. If you simply had a few plants over and above four, you might very well use a ticketing regime. You might confiscate the plants with a warning.
That's what we thought would be pragmatic and reasonable as we worked through this.
