Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to all of the ministers for joining us tonight. I especially want to congratulate the new health minister on her role. I'm looking forward to working with you to get good outcomes for Canadians.
I'm going to start my questions with the justice minister. Everything that all of you have said sounds very nice, but the reality of what's happening is a bit different. We had the Liberal members of this committee shut down the request from both my NDP colleague and me, to hear from young people and maybe from Uruguay, the only other country that has legalized marijuana. We heard testimony from the police that it will be impossible for them to be ready for the July 1 implementation date. Many of the provinces have not come with a plan and certainly not with legislation. We heard from municipalities that they're not going to be ready for that implementation date. The indigenous people said they're not going to be ready.
If we consider that 88% of Canadians don't consume cannabis and we have 283 days remaining until this arbitrary date, why are you in such a hurry to risk public harm? We haven't got testing in place with the police and training for impaired drug driving. We had 100,000 parents trained for the public awareness campaign that has been mentioned, and that's it. That's the only testimony received. Are you willing to consider putting off the date until all these stakeholders are ready?