A lot of these things depend on your interpretation as representing the free market/black market. I would say that's more business for us if the government wants to neglect that area.
What we're really looking for in legalization is a reduction in the price over time because something that's legal should be cheap. Right now the price of marijuana is artificially high, and all the derivatives are way too high. People are spending far too much money on marijuana, and that's created a lot of the problems. It's attracted gangs and it's attracted criminals. It's attracting government. All I've heard from these fellows from the municipalities is, “How can we gouge the public for more money? We need more money.” Somehow, legalization is going to cost every single bureaucracy more than it did before. The cities are going to spend millions, and the cops are going to spend millions more. You'd think we were doubling up on the criminalization, which we may well be doing, and that's why we have to spend all this money.
It doesn't sound like legalization from anything I've heard from a municipality, from a provincial government, or from anybody here. It sounds like you're all into control and gouging as much money out of a vulnerable population of pot smokers as you can possibly get.
That, to me, is the real reason for this legislation. It's not to legalize pot. If it was to legalize pot, Mr. Trudeau would say, “Mr. Speaker, we have a majority, and we've just removed cannabis from the schedule. My health minister will direct that and, from now on, the provinces are free to regulate it.” That would be the whole legalization campaign. Instead, you have 300 pages of a cannabis act that recriminalizes everybody and makes a huge bureaucracy of government at all levels, which we don't need. It spends a lot more money and gives police more power. That sounds like prohibition.