Well, if I may just speak to the amendment, then, but for the waiting 12 months, I think it's an excellent amendment for a number of reasons.
We are the health committee, and the thing about edibles, concentrates, and non-smokable forms of cannabis is that they are a healthier way to ingest cannabis than smoking. It's ironic that we're going to be legalizing the one form of cannabis that is most heavily ingested by smoking and not legalizing the other forms of cannabis that present a less harmful health impact, at least on the respiratory system.
The thing about regulating edibles, of course, is that it allows us to regulate them properly, supervise businesses to control the dosages, and to control the titration to make sure that there's uniformity of THC, CBD, and the other chemicals in the product. It allows us to apply the labelling requirements. We all agree and understand that we want to make sure that the labelling of all products, particularly edibles, is not marketed towards children, and that products are contained in single-serving packages, that they're in childproof containers, and that they're properly labelled and marked. Most importantly, of course, is to make sure that we take these products out of the hands of the black market.
While we wait the 12 months, Canadians are still going to be getting edibles, but they're going to be getting them from sources that are completely unregulated.
I wanted to refer to an article that was in the National Post, that ran on September 26. It said a report has come out, released by Dalhousie University last Tuesday, that said that 68% of people agreed or strongly agreed with legalizing recreational cannabis; another 45.8% agreed that they would buy marijuana-infused food products if they hit the Canadian market; 46.1% would opt for bakery products such as brownies or muffins; and 65.6% of respondents said they don't know enough about marijuana to cook with it on their own.
One of the dangers of this legislation and waiting a year, of course, is that it leaves Canadians to cook their own edibles on their own without any controls over titration or dosage and, of course, leaves them to obtain their products through the black market.
I congratulate the Liberal side for moving on edibles, and I'm going to support that amendment accordingly. I want to go on record as saying there is no reason whatsoever to go slowly on this because there's nothing that we're going to be learning in the next year about these products that we don't know now.
We know other jurisdictions, including Colorado, Washington, Alaska, and others, have years of experience in regulating edibles. The errors that they made have been repaired, and we already have best practices, gold standards of regulatory directions as to how to regulate these products well.
My last point, of course, will be as I've said before. Given that there's no real reason to wait on regulating edibles, given that we won't be learning anything new, given that we know what the aspects of regulation around edibles—sound regulation—consists of, all we're doing by waiting that year is giving organized crime another year to make these products and to subject Canadians to another year of obtaining products that have no regulation whatsoever. As a member of the health committee, I can't support that as being a wise approach to health.
I will support this amendment because, as my father said, wisdom comes so seldom, it shouldn't be rejected because it comes late. I would re-emphasize that I see no reason that we shouldn't be amending this bill now to put edibles into the schedule now.
