I'll just briefly say I don't disagree with that position. The spirit of this amendment respects that, because it gives a jail sentence of up to two years less a day. I would just point out again that this is what the courts are giving now for large-scale trafficking. That's the evidence we heard from Mr. Conroy. We heard no evidence to the contrary.
Second, the other advantage of this is of course that it would allow the sentence to be served in a provincial institution, not a federal institution.
My final point is going to be that if criminalization and jailing people were an appropriate way to deal with those who deal with cannabis, we would have no problem with cannabis in this country today. That's why the NDP thinks we should really be moving towards a regulated, non-criminal, non-prohibitionist approach to cannabis as a matter of public policy.
It's not that we don't think there should be consequences for violating a regulatory regime. What we're proposing here is to have an appropriate regulatory response, one that actually will be effective. If there's one thing we know in this country, it's that criminalizing cannabis has done nothing but create harm.