Evidence of meeting #72 for Health in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was cannabis.
A video is available from Parliament.
Bloc
Rhéal Fortin Bloc Rivière-du-Nord, QC
Mr. Chair, with your permission, I would like to quickly reply to the arguments we just heard.
I understand my Liberal Party colleagues' contention that this would cause delays. I would point out that these delays will not last several years, as my colleague Mr. Oliver pointed out. There will certainly be delays, but they would only last a few months.
I am addressing my colleagues here. In adopting such an important act, should we really be attempting to spare a parliamentary study? Must we really go so fast that we disrupt everything, regardless of the effect, regardless of legislative chaos or chaos in the enforcement of the act?
This morning, we were talking about the height of the plants, and so on. This bill contains all sorts of important things and the provinces are asking for time to apply the act that will be passed, since there will be important consequences for health and safety. The provinces and police forces want some time to prepare to enforce the act. We think that these important questions that will be delegated to public servants should be studied in Parliament. All of this leads me to think that we may find ourselves in a deplorable situation in a few years' time, and perhaps even in a few months.
I want to insist on this, and I ask my colleagues to revise their position. The Bloc Québécois is in favour of legalizing marijuana, but we have to do this right. We cannot botch this; It is too grave a matter.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bill Casey
Thank you very much.
There are no further speakers, so I'm going to call for a vote on BQ-1.
(Amendment negatived)
(Clause 139 as amended agreed to)
Now we go to the series of clauses from 140 to 151. I see no amendments proposed.
(Clauses 140 to 151 inclusive agreed to)
That takes us to Liberal-16. It's a new clause.
Who is going to speak on that?
Mr. McKinnon.
Liberal
Ron McKinnon Liberal Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC
Thank you, Chair.
I'd like to note that there appears to be a miscommunication in the drafting. I'd like to move that as three years instead of five years with respect to both the French and the English versions of that.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bill Casey
Is says, “Five years after this section comes into force”. You want that to be “three years”.
Liberal
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bill Casey
Does that need to be a subamendment? We'll just accept it as three years.
Liberal
Ron McKinnon Liberal Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC
It has been said that this bill, this initiative, is an experiment. I disagree. It puts an end to an experiment that began 90 years ago, an experiment that was initiated without debate or study, or any evidence to justify it, simply by adding cannabis to a list of prohibited substances.
But 90 years is too great a distance to travel in one giant step. There are 90 years of history to overcome, and 90 years of societal attitudes, myths, and misunderstandings to change. It's too much to achieve in one great leap. In order to succeed, in the end, we need to follow a middle course.
That's what this bill attempts to do, in my view. It's a transformational bill, but I believe it's also a transitional bill. I don't expect that this will be the final step along this path. I think that it will be appropriate to revisit this as we go forward, and that's what this amendment intends to do. It is to mandate a review in three years' time so that we can make any course adjustments, as may seem warranted, from the new perspective and experience we will have gained at that time.
This amendment is modelled after a similar provision in the Federal Public Sector Labour Relations Act and the Public Service Employment Act. It would give us a chance to adjust our course as we go forward.
Thank you.
NDP
Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC
Thank you.
I support this amendment insofar as it recognizes what we all can fairly acknowledge as certain gaps—at the very best, gaps, at the worst, deficiencies—in the bill. To the extent that this amendment would require a review of this bill within three years, I think that's good.
Where I might part ways with Mr. McKinnon's statement is that, yes, the legal regime has been in force for over 100 years in this country, but criticism of the criminalized approach, and not only suggestions but evidence research and commission inquiries, have been recommending since 1972 that cannabis be decriminalized or legalized. It's not like we just thought of this in the last two years. There has been a mountain of evidence, a mountain of academic work, a mountain of sociological data amassed over the last 40 years that points to this. I'm reminded of the dictum of Mackenzie King, where he said, “Liberals never do by halves what they can do by quarters.” I think this bill is a good example of that. On the other hand, Liberals often accuse New Democrats of being Liberals in a hurry.
I really think we need to take an evidence-based approach that is faithful to the principles and avowed purposes of this bill. That's where I'm a little disappointed with this bill. We know that prohibition doesn't work. We know that criminalizing cannabis has really done nothing positive whatsoever, yet this bill maintains a criminalized, prohibitionist approach to cannabis. We know that the purposes of the bill are to bring production out of the illegal black market and to bring it into the regulated markets so that we have regulated supplies of quality-controlled cannabis and we reduce the impact of organized crime. Yet we leave a gaping hole for edibles, concentrates, and non-smokable products to remain in the black market. Why? Because the Liberals say, “We're not ready.” What more do we need to know about those products than we know now?
We keep pointing to the example of Colorado, which claims they went too fast by legislating edibles. What they failed to point out is that Colorado, then, with the experience, corrected their legislative regime. Frankly, we have gold standards of regulatory provisions concerning edibles and other products. But instead, this government wants to leave those products to the black market. I've said this repeatedly. Organized crime is not going to sell edibles in childproof containers. They are not going to stamp their products with THC. Canadians cooking brownies on their stove are not going to have any way of ensuring that the brownies in their pan have an even spread of THC throughout the cannabis. The cannabis brownies are not going to have a stamp on them so that a child or another adult won't unwittingly pick up a brownie not knowing that it has THC in it. That's how the Liberals are leaving edibles, and all because they're saying, “We must move slowly and we have to review this in three years.”
What I fail to understand is why this government isn't moving now on the clear evidence that they have. They do that partially. I'll answer the question. The Liberals are trying to have it both ways. They are trying to look like they are hip to the issue of cannabis by pursuing so-called legalization, but they want to appeal to the conservative side of their party by making it seem that they are not really wanting to go there. The result is that we have a bill that's neither fish nor fowl. We have a bill that is neither full legalization nor is it full prohibition, but somewhere in between.
While I agree we should be reviewing this bill in three years, my position is that it's not an excuse for us to fail to make necessary amendments to this bill now. I'm fairly disappointed that Liberals have voted down just about every amendment that has been proposed by the New Democrats. Some of that I respect because it's a question of philosophy or approach, but some just plainly ignores the evidence before this committee and that Canadians are aware of.
I will support this, but I ask my Liberal colleagues to have the courage to make the changes that they know need to be made to this bill now, at committee.
My final point is that Mr. Trudeau campaigned on the idea of making committees more responsive, to loosen the control of the ministries over committees and let committees operate independently. What I've seen from the voting on the Liberal side—on amendments that my colleagues on the Liberal side know are amendments that arose, in many cases, squarely from the evidence we heard—tells me that this promise that Mr. Trudeau made to Canadian parliamentarians about committees being free to act more independently has not really come to bear, at least not for this bill.
Liberal
John Oliver Liberal Oakville, ON
I come back again to the issue of this being rushed. It's been very clear that this was a campaign issue for the Liberals in the last election. The task force travelled for six months across Canada, heard thousands and thousands of witnesses, and received tens of thousands of submissions. It brought very good advice forward. The legislation has been drafted and before this committee for some period of time now. We heard from over 100 witnesses. We did it in a very efficient way, rather than doing it over about three to four months, which is what it would normally have taken to do that many. We did it in a consolidated sitting.
I think the advantage of a consolidated sitting is that we heard from different perspectives, and we could hear more easily where there were differing views. We did hear, I think, from our witnesses that there are very different perspectives on this bill. It is a big social change for us. We heard from health people and health providers who said to go slow because cannabis needs to be treated with great caution. We heard from the user community that this is happening right now, that they're “overgrowing the government”, and that things need to move faster.
What we do know for sure is that our youth are using this drug. They're getting it from black markets. They're buying it from unknown vendors of unknown production. It's just not safe as it sits. There's a need to move forward with the legislation and get it back to the House.
We heard from the provinces and territories and our police forces. They need clarity from the federal legislation as to what's happening so that they can go to their next level of work to make sure that the provinces and territories and the municipalities understand this.
I don't think this is rushed, but I do feel that we need to keep moving it forward. I think some of the suggestions from Mr. Davies would have put it on pause while parts of it were reopened and re-examined. I think coming back to this in three years' time will give enough data and enough understanding of the implications and consequences of this legislation that if fine-tuning or improvements are needed, they can be introduced.
Mr. Davies has mentioned edibles a few times. We have a motion coming later in the amendments that would require that this happen within a year, not within this three-year cycle. I think we all heard that testimony and feel a need to respond to it, but we need to do it in a safe, thoughtful, regulated way, which is the goal of this.
I do support this motion. I think it's important that there be a review for many of the reasons that Mr. Davies has raised, many of the points that he's made. I just think we need time to see this at work in Canadian society before we make any further big changes to this particular act.
Conservative
Dave Van Kesteren Conservative Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON
I was going to let this one slide, but Mr. Davies and Mr. Oliver opened the door.
First, on the campaign promise, let's look at the reality that took place, which was that a third-place party—which I don't think too many Canadians thought had a hope of ever achieving government, let alone a major majority—with a promise that was in the back of the books.... I'd love to do a poll of how many of the people I approached at the door said they wanted to talk about this marijuana deal. Not one. It wasn't on anybody's radar. To suggest that this was a hot campaign item, I don't think is fair.
Second, history was brought up twice. I love history. Mr. McKinnon first mentioned the fact that we've had 90 years of bad history. Mr. Davies said since the 1970s, but I'm reminded of a Chinese general—I forget his name—when they asked him after the Chinese revolution what he thought of the French revolution, he said it was too early to tell.
That's so true because in the same breath, Mr. McKinnon, you're forgetting why, in the early part of the 20th century, Canada, a young democracy, which had very little experience in these things, had such strong drug laws. It was because we had from that period of time an example of how drugs can destroy a society. We've forgotten. I argued that earlier today, and I think it needs to be recognized that there is good reason. It isn't a bunch of killjoys and then the young people want to smoke up so why should we stop them? There is a collective history, a lot of wise people enacted a law for good reason. I don't think the history argument is at all a fair argument. If we're going to use it, let's go back in history and let's talk about those things.
Again, as for the campaign promise, I don't buy it. I don't think Canadians expected us to have a government in place that would enact this type of legislation. I'll be voting against this amendment as well.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bill Casey
Thank you very much.
Seeing no further speakers, I'd like to call for a vote on Liberal-16.
(Amendment agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])
Now we have a series of clauses here, 152 to 158, to which I see no amendments.
(Clauses 152 to 158 inclusive agreed to)
(On clause 159)
Now we come to Liberal-17.
Mr. Oliver.
Liberal
John Oliver Liberal Oakville, ON
Thank you.
This is a technical amendment. It clarifies that the transitional provision that deals with the applications for a licence or permit under the narcotic control regulations of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act would only apply to applications that deal with cannabis, so it was just a concern that it might look to be including other applications.
Conservative
Marilyn Gladu Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON
I notice that in paragraph (b), the words have been added, “and to any narcotic”.
My concern is that this legislation concerns cannabis, and I worry that this opens the door to do the same thing with other narcotics. I don't know if anyone can clarify.
Conservative
Liberal
Conservative
Marilyn Gladu Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON
I'll take an answer from anyone who has the legal knowledge to understand. If we have the words “and to any narcotic”, could we then legalize other narcotics?
