Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Picking up where we left off yesterday, we're talking about the penalty provisions of clause 11 that have to do with importing and exporting. In keeping with the government's approach to this bill, the provision I seek to amend with this proposal is the 14-year maximum penalty for violations of this section.
I pointed out, throughout our amendments, that the bill continues the criminalization and prohibitionist model as an approach to cannabis regulation. In my respectful submission, this is completely contrary to the vast bulk of the weight of testimony we heard from witnesses on this bill. We heard that the harms around cannabis are caused not really by the substance but by the criminalization and prohibition model that has been applied against this substance for the last 100-plus years.
Interestingly, not one witness of the 90 witnesses that came before this panel testified that these penalties were appropriate. Not a single justification was offered by a witness that 14 years was an appropriate penalty for a violation of any section of this act.
On the other hand, every single witness who is directed to these penalty provisions—mostly called by the New Democrats by the way—testified that these figures, these maximum penalties were unreasonable, were disproportionate, and were completely out of sync with the reality of what's going on in Canadian courts today, and worse, are harmful.
We heard that these penalties actually are applied disproportionately to young people, marginalized Canadians, racialized Canadians, and poor Canadians. The stigma and the harms on the social determinants of health by incarceration and getting criminal records for possessing or dealing with a relatively benign substance of cannabis does a lot of harm to Canadians.
Yet this committee rejected every one of the New Democrat amendments yesterday, and I expect will do so with this one, to reduce that 14-year penalty down to a reasonable amount, either a fine or a short jail sentence for a repeated or serious offence.
That is completely ignoring the evidence that this committee heard. The government can go ahead; the Liberals can do what they want. They can go ahead and pass the bill, but Canadians watching this should know the Liberals are passing this bill with 14-year sentences and with total disregard to the evidence that was heard before this committee, in total disregard for the harm that criminalization is going to cause. They can pass this but they've basically rendered moot, completely academic, the real evidence that was heard before this committee about the appropriateness of this penalty.
This amendment would reduce the 14-year penalty down to fines. The evidence also suggested this was much more appropriate. If we're going to legalize cannabis, and regulate it as a commodity, then the proper way to regulate this is similar to alcohol and tobacco, where monetary fines are used as a way of enforcing what is going to be a commercial commodity.
That's an appropriate way, not to jail people but rather to deal with this through fines, exactly like you do for tobacco and alcohol.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.