I think we're absolutely going to have problems with the maintenance of the criminalized approach in this bill. I think it's not just a little bit misguided; it's deeply misguided.
I think there are probably some practical and some political reasons why the government has chosen to proceed in this fashion. The political reasons are quite clearly to legalize cannabis and to try to deflect political criticism from the right, typically, but from some aspects of the left, about this process and these steps that we're taking, and therefore to try to do it in the most small-c conservative way possible.
The practical consideration may well be that we know the Supreme Court of Canada in a ruling in the Malmo-Levine case said that Parliament retains the power to prohibit simple possession of cannabis as an aspect of criminal law power. If this is not a criminal law enterprise, it becomes a little less clear what the jurisdictional basis for the federal government's involvement in this area of commerce actually is.
I think those are surmountable obstacles. At the end of the day, I think we need to look at some fundamental fairness. Cannabis is safer than alcohol. Fundamentally, empirically, that is beyond question. Cannabis is safer than tobacco. There's no good reason why we're going to treat cannabis in a way that's significantly stricter than we do alcohol. Alcohol in our society is a source of tremendous harm, and it's also a source of tremendous pleasure and joy. I enjoy a good glass of wine. I like to go to my local vineyards. I'm a regular patron at the small batch, craft-brew pub down the street from my house. I have a keg of their beer in my garage. I'm not anti-alcohol, but I recognize the harm it does to our society.
All those things by the way, the vineyards down the road here in the Cowichan Valley—we have probably 20 wonderful vineyards, many more in the interior of our province—the small craft-brew industry that's growing rapidly here in British Columbia are provincially regulated enterprises, as well they should be. The federal government's role really ought to be minimized in this area, and quite frankly with the greatest respect for what the government has done so far, it hasn't done a very good job regulating access to medical cannabis. The medical cannabis system that was started by court order in 2001 has been struck down by the courts repeatedly in litigation that I'm sure has cost the Government of Canada tens of millions of dollars.