Health Committee on Sept. 12th, 2017

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Yes, thank you.

There are lots of questions. I wish we could have more time with you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Ms. Sidhu.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all for being here today.

My question is to the OPP. Thank you for serving 13 million people.

I did a round table in my riding. I heard very loudly that some people are accessing illegal cannabis that is laced with some dangerous drug. Imagine allowing four homegrown plants in the legal market. Wouldn't it make cannabis use a lot safer, instead of our youth taking laced drugs?

Can you comment on that?

[D/Commr Rick Barnum]

I guess if somebody were to grow their own marijuana and use it in their house for personal consumption, then they would have control of the product from the beginning to the end. That would probably be better than reaching out to somebody on the street and getting a product that they don't know. Yes, I would agree that in a perfect-world scenario that would be good.

I also would recommend that you be careful about how your home-grow is wired, how it's being ventilated, and who has access to it. Is somebody going to come in and decide they want your four plants instead of leaving them with you?

There are a lot of layers there. On the perfect nirvana where somebody is smoking their own marijuana in the privacy of their own home, there are a lot of layers before you get to that point. I think that's what we're trying to point out here.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Thank you.

Could you talk a little about the current landscape of cannabis sales in storefronts otherwise linked to organized crime?

[D/Commr Rick Barnum]

Currently in Ontario, we believe there are approximately 140 dispensaries throughout the province. As to whether they are directly related to organized crime, we haven't done the investigation in all of those communities. Many of them are in municipal policing communities. We work with our partners to try to understand the landscape.

I'll share this answer with my colleague from the organized crime committee as well. I would say there is definitely organized crime involvement, some of which we specifically know about in some of the dispensaries. To give you an exact number, I would say it would probably be 10%.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

You also spoke about how 6,000 officers need training. Our federal government committed $161 million for training front-line officers on how to recognize the signs and symptoms of drug-impaired driving. In the law enforcement capacity across the country, don't you think it will help to control that crime?

[D/Commr Rick Barnum]

If I got your question, you're saying the money that has been committed will help for the training...?

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

No. You said that 6,000 police officers need training up front. Our government has committed $161 million for training front-line officers. Don't you think it will help in legalizing when they train the officers more on that?

[D/Commr Rick Barnum]

I believe the money will help with training our officers, but I also believe there will be more costs involved. Again, you can look at the diversity of the OPP and the geographical challenges we have to train 6,000 officers. It takes a long time to bring somebody in from a community in the far northeast or northwest to a central location to have them trained. It's expensive, and it takes us a long time. We've been rolling out naloxone for over four and a half months now to every one of our officers, and that includes a training regime. It does take a long time.

I don't think we're trying to be unreasonable or saying that it can't be accomplished. We look forward to actually doing it and working alongside, but all we're asking for is the reasonable opportunity to do it in an organized fashion that can be effective.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Serr, you said that youth consumption of cannabis is very much.... Everyone knows that it's a serious problem. To deal with that, we need to educate youth. What kind of education program will be needed? Can you comment on that?

[D/Chief Mike Serr]

Yes. Certainly, we need an education program that's specific to youth and resonates with youth. I would certainly look to the experts for that as far as a public messaging campaign goes. I think that's part one. Part two is that we have school liaison officers who we believe need to be trained, in addition to the training we've just talked about, in order to work with schools and educators to educate on the dangers of youth consumption and change the perceptions that are currently out there.

I think we also have to remember that we have to educate parents, because it starts at home. We have to see that the parents are understanding the concerns and dangers with regard to youth consumption. For example, we have observed that in Colorado, I believe it was, 22% of youth have obtained marijuana from their parents, which is certainly concerning to us. That education has to extend not just to youth specifically but really to the whole community, so that we can start to change those statistics we see about youth consumption in Canada.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Your time is up.

Mr. Davies, you have three minutes.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you.

I understand and respect that there are different philosophical approaches to drug policy in this country, but I want to press a bit on the general idea of moving to legalization. In terms of alcohol prohibition from the thirties, if we look at what happened then, when it was illegal and prohibited, we had organized crime, illegal stills, machine guns in the streets, and thefts and break-ins and that sort of thing.

As we've moved to legalize that product, which, by the way is a dangerous product—I think we all recognize that alcohol is responsible for a lot of health problems, a lot of death, and a lot of violence—we have moved to a situation now where people can access it legally and you can home-brew your own wine and beer. I dare say that every person in this room has a liquor cabinet of some type at home. Alcohol is in the home. We're not seeing a diversion of alcohol to the black market. We're not seeing people break into houses to steal liquor on any grand scale.

My question is, why would it be any different if we simply add cannabis to that as the intoxicant that people choose? I recognize that there would be a transition period, but over time wouldn't we expect to see a very similar social rollout with cannabis? What's the difference between cannabis and alcohol and the way society has dealt with them?

[D/Chief Thomas Carrique]

It's interesting when we talk about pre-prohibition, because we do talk about statistics and evidence, and I don't know what evidence or statistics we have for the pre-prohibition of alcohol. It would be very interesting to learn what the crime rates were back them.

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 if there is even one more incident of impaired driving impaired by drug, which we know happens today. 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 up to a 28% increase in the amount of intoxication. That creates a great danger behind the wheel.

You are correct that we're not seeing as many residential break-and-enters for alcohol, but I can tell you that back 10 to 15 years ago, a primary reason for young people to break into places was to get alcohol. We all know that youth take alcohol from parents' liquor cabinets. So you're right, we really do need to concentrate on the education and the awareness of our youth, our parents, our educators, and our health care practitioners, so that we can mitigate the impact of legalizing cannabis and keep our youth as safe as possible.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

We're ahead of schedule, so if there's unanimous consent, we'll go for another round of four- or five-minute questions. I know Dr. Carrie is anxious to have a few more questions.

I want to compliment the panel. You give the most concise answers of any panel we've ever had, so we're ahead of schedule, partly because of that.

We're going to start off the five-minute questions with Mr. Oliver.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Thank you very much.

There was a suggestion that you are being rushed by the committee. If our normal committee meeting was on a day, we would have two hours of questioning and testimony, and that's exactly what's unfolding here. Thank you very much for your participation in this.

I thought I heard from one of your testimonies that there was a concern that organized crime had infiltrated the medical marijuana production facilities. My understanding is that the RCMP does quite extensive background screening for any of the applications for licensed marijuana producers for the medical system. They go back over 20 years. They look into the owners' associations, current and past. They look at the criminal intelligence that they've gathered around those applications. It includes looking at the spouse's and family members' associations over 20 years. The example I had is that if your brother-in-law owned a bar that was frequented by the Hells Angels, you could be denied a medical licence to be a producer.

I guess I'm a bit concerned by that comment you made. Do you feel the RCMP isn't doing their job adequately? Did I misunderstand your testimony? Could you elaborate on that for me, please?

[D/Chief Mike Serr]

The licensed producers we know are vetted strongly by the—

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Point of order, Mr. Chair.

We have a guest here, Parliamentary Secretary Blair. I respect our guest very much, but throughout these meetings he's actually been leaning over, having conversations with our witnesses. It's totally inappropriate. I realize these are former colleagues of his. As I said, I do respect him. I respect the fact that he has this file as his responsibility, but if he's going to be at this committee table, he needs to stop leaning over and interfering with our witnesses. I don't know what he's saying to them, but this is at least the second time I've seen him do that, so on a point of order, Mr. Chair, I'd like you to address this right now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

As a member of Parliament, he is entitled to be here. He's entitled to be at the table.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

And, what is he doing?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Well, he's at the table, and I would ask if maybe he would offer a thought on this.

[Bill Blair, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I accept the concern from the honourable member, and I'll refrain from any further conversation.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Thank you.