Thanks for the privilege of being with you today. This is a matter that's dear to my heart, and I've been following it closely.
I've submitted a brief to the committee, and I'm hoping to take you through some of the highlights from that brief.
There seems to be a bit of confounding with regard to the common logic that underpins all this. People are smoking cannabis, so we might as well just legalize it. On that premise, we might say that kids are drinking at the age of 18, so we may as well just get rid of the drinking age altogether. Some of the underpinning logic confounds me.
The medical research we have suggests that brains continue to develop until age 25. Since this development is adversely affected by smoking cannabis, generally scientifically based public policy would set the age of purchase at 25. Any other age would be entirely arbitrary.
The approach for legalizing cannabis seems to be completely inconsistent with the government's goal of reducing smoking. As you know, there is public legislation that works on plain packaging, apparently in an effort to reduce smoking, yet here, the government is quite happy to induce and encourage the Canadian population to smoke more. I'm not quite sure what exactly the difference is in terms of health consequences.
Evidence from Washington State and Colorado suggests that there are considerable costs associated with the legalization of cannabis, and that cost will largely be borne by the provinces—public health costs, social services, law enforcement, the justice system—so I think we need to cost these out. I think the expenses associated with that warrant some equalization payment from the federal government, because essentially, the federal government is legalizing cannabis largely on the backs of the provinces and provincial taxpayers.
By way of example, impaired driving cases involving drugs are less likely to be cleared by charge—59% as opposed to 71% for alcohol-impaired driving. They take longer to resolve in the court system—28% of them take more than 30 days as opposed to 16% for alcohol-related incidents. The median time for processing in court was 227 days as opposed to 127 days for alcohol-related incidents. They are also less likely to result in a guilty verdict, so in effect, we're going to tie up already busy courts even more as a result of this legislation for impaired driving.
The rate of impaired driving incidence in 2015 was the lowest on record in 30 years of record-keeping. In roughly 72,000 incidents, young people are represented disproportionately. One in six of them were repeat offenders. About 2,700 incidents involved drug-impaired driving. That's almost double the roughly 1,400 incidents in 2009. That might simply be a function of record-keeping, but there does seem to be a suggestion that as drinking while driving declines, there is an increase in drug-impaired driving.
There were about 2,500 fatal motor vehicle accidents in 2012, of which 614, about 24%, involved drivers who tested positive for drugs. The most common drug was indeed cannabis. Another 407 involved both alcohol and drugs. In other words, cannabis is responsible for about a quarter of the fatal motor vehicle crashes in Canada. The trend seems to be positive, so this legislation will make Canada's roads less safe, and more people will die in accidents as a result of the legislation. The only way around this that I see are draconian measures in the Criminal Code to contain the problem.
Canada also risks becoming the Uruguay of North America. When Uruguay legalized cannabis, it became the epicentre of cannabis growth and export throughout South America. In Canada's case, Canada and Paraguay are the two single largest sources of origin of contraband cigarettes in a market such as Mexico. Due to Canada's relatively lax laws for growing and manufacturing, we have seen transporting streams.
In selling the product, legalizing will increase the incentive to produce the product in Canada and then export it throughout the continent, so the profit for organized crime is not just to be made in Canada but also by exploiting the favourable circumstances within Canada to manufacture the product.
The challenges around contraband tobacco suggest that the legalization of cannabis should be accompanied by creating an ombudsperson who can coordinate the law enforcement efforts among federal agencies and among federal, provincial, and local governments and agencies. In comparing contraband markets in Ontario and Quebec for cigarettes, the case of Quebec demonstrates that the impact of systematic, methodical enforcement reduces substantially the size of the illicit market while increasing tax revenue.
On the tax revenue side, I might add that the government is unlikely to raise the amount of tax revenue that it's hoping for. By virtue of the tax being imposed on the product, there will be by definition a contraband market for a cheaper product. Given the size and the maturity of the contraband market for cigarettes in Canada in general, and in Ontario in particular, one can reasonably infer and expect an equally outsized contraband market to persist because it will likely be run by the same people who run the illicit cigarette market. In part, some entities with licences would likely produce cannabis legally and then will have an incentive to sell the product illegally at a higher profit margin. That may possibly be what is currently motivating the Ontario government not to hand out licences to individual manufacturers.
In conclusion, I would say, “Decriminalize? Perhaps. Legalize? No.”