Health Committee on Sept. 13th, 2017

[John Dickie]

Well, it seems to me that the federal government is legislating in this area, in part because of its power over criminal law. I realize that with respect to criminal procedure, there are differences in the different provinces, but with respect to criminal law, for the most part, it is uniform.

I think there is some value in uniformity on the basic prohibitions, in part because people do move around Canada quite a bit, and it seems to me it would be quite onerous for someone who grows up in one province where they're allowed, say, eight plants, who then takes a job somewhere where they're only allowed four plants, and to grow five plants risks 14 years of imprisonment, yet they don't know. I think that on the basic prohibition there should be uniformity.

With respect to procedures for allowing consent to be given or to be dispensed with, for example, I think that could well be a provincial issue, because it is already. That issue comes up with respect to other aspects of landlord and tenant law.

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

That's why I said, “C'est un cadre.” They can go lower, but they can't go higher than the maximum.

[John Dickie]

I see.

Well, in that respect that might be a partial solution. Certainly, as I understand it, the provinces, under their power with respect to civil property and civil rights, could in fact ban the home production. They could ban various forms of cultivation. They're being given the power, I think, to regulate the production and distribution system, so they could be given the power to make more restrictive rules.

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Dickie.

Mr. Page, I would like to take advantage of your expertise on growing marijuana plants. In short, there are two opposing points of view.

On the one hand, we do not want to regulate the number of plants. The intention is to permit the cultivation of cannabis in the same way as there is no limit on the number of tomato or tobacco plants. There is no limit on the allowable quantities. It can be grown as long as there is land or soil, no matter where. On the other hand, we want to ban the individual cultivation of cannabis completely.

Is there no middle ground? Isn't there an intermediate solution where people can grow cannabis? Is it too complicated to legislate on the height? These are rather complex details to manage. I must admit, managing the cultivation of cannabis has a certain complexity.

How does it work between these two extremes? I would like your opinion.

[Jonathan Page]

I do think that we can strike a balance between a free-for-all, wide-open “You could plant 10 acres of cannabis if you wanted to,” and very restrictive limits. What I was getting at before was that I do agree that some plant limits for personal production are appropriate. We do see those in, say, U.S. states like Colorado and Oregon, where cannabis legalization has occurred. It is often six plants, not four.

I guess where I was going is that we want to have a limitation that also takes into account the cultivation realities of cannabis, the idea that you could have a limit on the number of plants in flower, which are really the producers of the drug. If that were to be four plants in flower, I think I could support that. There should be some sort of leeway so that you could have these additional four or six plants in a vegetative state, a non-flowering state.

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

I have just one more question. I don't have a lot of time.

Is it easy to cultivate cannabis? I have never grown cannabis in my home. Is it as easy as tomatoes?

[Jonathan Page]

Yes, it's as easy as tomatoes, though a lot of growers make all sort of complexities with cuttings, hydroponics, and all this kind of stuff.

In general, it's like a weed. It grows easily.

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

It grows like that.

[Jonathan Page]

Where I was going though was my recommendation around plant height: that's a hard one to regulate. The plant does grow. Limit the number of plants and maybe the number of flowering plants, but after that, do not get into this idea that if we hit 100 centimetres, that's suddenly illegal.

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

How can you regulate that? Is there a way to regulate that?

[Jonathan Page]

As your colleague asked before, could you expand that to 150 centimetres or 200 centimetres and encompass more of the typical growing that might occur, and therefore Canadians wouldn't be offside if their plant has sort of inched up in those directions?

I would say that police carry guns and all sorts of handcuffs and things; do they have to have tape measures as well? That's sort of where we're going with 100 centimetres. Just count the number of plants, and don't worry about how tall they get.

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

The time is up. Thanks very much.

Now we're going to our five-minute round.

Mr. Webber.

[Len Webber, Conservative, Calgary Confederation, AB]

We'll go with Mr. Carrie. I'll go next time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Mr. Carrie.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Again, you are fascinating witnesses. I wish I had more time. I have a lot of questions for you.

There are a lot of things we've agreed upon, I think, with some of the witnesses coming forward, but home cultivation is one that there's not a lot of agreement on. I think it's important to point out that cannabis isn't tomatoes. It's not aloe vera. It's not carnations or roses. According to the CMA and the Canadian Paediatric Society, it is potentially dangerous, especially for our young people.

Like you, Mr. Dickie, somebody close in my life developed schizophrenia and lifelong psychological problems that have been attributed to cannabis use. I'd like to bring it down to talking and listening to my constituents, who have concerns about these. I have mostly talked to individuals and small business people—or as the Liberals call them, tax cheats—but one lady came in to see me and identified herself as a former drug user. She identified herself as addicted to marijuana and it took her many years to get off it. She lives in an apartment, an older building, and she is concerned about the smell. She's concerned about how it's going to affect her. This is an extremely difficult situation because now with the government legalizing it, we have the rights of one group, recreational users, and then the rights of others, owners and neighbours who may be in apartments.

Mr. Dickie, I was wondering if you could maybe give us an example. How are governments going to manage the competing interests of the rights of one group versus another group, and historically how has that played out?

[John Dickie]

Typically it's a question of this test of substantial interference with reasonable enjoyment. There has to be not just an interference with the other person's enjoyment, but a substantial interference. Medical problems will meet that test. If someone has asthma, someone's affected, or if someone coughs when they smell smoke; it's those kinds of things. Then the question is about the reasonable use. In other words, say if someone is playing the piano loudly at 7 p.m., or playing the bagpipes, God forbid—although I'm a Scotsman, by heritage at least, so everyone should love the bagpipes.... I'm sorry, I'd better go back to the piano, because the bagpipes probably would be a substantial interference; but with the piano, if someone wants to sleep at 7 p.m., it's kind of too bad. People get to play the piano at 7 p.m., but they don't get to play the piano after 11 p.m. Now with smoke, it's not that easy because smoke you can't adjust. You can't separate the interests by the time of the day. What typically happens now is that smokers are required to take steps to minimize their interference. Maybe it's to smoke on the balcony. Maybe it's to smoke on the side of the apartment that's away from the person who has the problem. Maybe it's to run a fan to push the smoke out of a window.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

For somebody who's a former addict, for example, the onus would be on her, then, to get out there. If one of her neighbours is growing marijuana, and the smell is maybe triggering her, she was really concerned about falling back into—what she said—her addiction.

[John Dickie]

Yes. She could certainly address the issue herself, but that takes a certain fortitude to do. She can, I think, in most of the provinces go to the landlord and say, “Look, the neighbour's interfering with me; will you please do something about it?”

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Can you see landlords—

[John Dickie]

But that's when it gets into whether the landlord has the right, because remember that 90%—well, hell, it's 99% right now—of leases do not prohibit marijuana smoking or marijuana growing. They didn't have to, because it was in the law.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Yes.

[John Dickie]

Effectively, the legal regime of today is going to be turned on its head. Gradually landlords can take it back through a lease prohibition, but again in Ontario and largely in Quebec, you cannot impose a new lease term on a tenant. So there will be all those grandfathered leases where the landlord doesn't have any right under the lease.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Again, some of my constituents are retirees who are renting out. Could you foresee landlords, then, being hit with huge bills to comply with these conflicts? I know that Ontario just rolled out its plan, and a lot of people thought that landlords could simply prohibit homegrown marijuana in leases. What you've said is that, for some of these grandfathered leases, this is going to be very problematic for certain people. Did Ontario put anything in its plan, that you're aware of, that will help in settling these issues for home cultivation?

[John Dickie]

As to the second question, no. I don't think Ontario has focused on this either. People tend not to get this distinction between rental dwellings with these other competing interests and detached homes. As to the first question, the question of damage, yes, Ottawa, for example, has a marijuana grow op remediation bylaw, and there is within it no test.

Any grow op could trigger a report by the police to the city, which then triggers the city to go to the owner and say, “you had marijuana growing in your unit or in your dwelling that you own. Prove to us that there's been no damage.” One would hope the police would not go with six plants or eight plants or 10 plants or 12 plants or whatever. But if the police go with that, then that owner is basically looking at $10,000 of expert reports from engineers, air quality control, and electrical safety to prove there's been no damage to the unit. Plus they're on this registry, which might knock $10,000 or $20,000 off the value of their house.