Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I have just a few comments before we move to the vote. I can't let another reference to 109 witnesses pass. That's simply wrong. If this committee is going to ignore flat-out evidence....
I'll read the motion or a portion of it:
...and that the Chair be empowered to coordinate the witnesses, to a maximum of 90 witnesses, the resources, and scheduling....
That's Mr. Oliver's own motion. His motion said “a maximum of 90 witnesses”, but he says we heard from 109. If that's the kind of disregard for the truth in evidence that we're going to hear, then this is truly a bit of a kangaroo hearing.
I don't think there's a wide audience watching, but it was my motion to televise this hearing because I think Canadians have a right to watch what's going on with what the Liberals call this groundbreaking legislation. They should be able to see how their representatives talk about this.
We're not going to get very far if people use straw-man arguments. I didn't say benign. I said relatively benign, and I did make references to having penalties relative to tobacco and alcohol, which I've heard not a word about. You don't get 14 years for an adult selling a carton of cigarettes to a 17-year-old. That carton of cigarettes will hook that person, and it will kill that person. Used exactly as designed, it will give them cancer.
Where do I see the Liberal government bringing in 14-year sentences for tobacco or alcohol? They don't do it. I don't know why. Maybe it's because the big tobacco or big alcohol lobbies are too strong and they don't want to take them on.
I want to bring it back to the motion. We're talking about the importing and exporting section of the act. It says, “Unless authorized under this Act, the importation or exportation of cannabis is prohibited,” and, “It is prohibited to possess cannabis for the purpose of exporting it.” This section has nothing to do with children. This has to do with exporting cannabis and what the proper penalty should be for importing or exporting.
If criminalization of cannabis and giving hefty jail sentences protected children, then maybe Mr. Ayoub or other Liberal members could explain why Canada has the second-highest or the highest rate of use of cannabis by young people in the world when we have full criminalization and life sentences. The argument that's being made is absurd and it's belied by the evidence.
You can't say we have a 14-year sentence here because we want to protect our children. Life sentences didn't protect our children. That's the evidence that we heard. In fact that's the very reason the government says they want to legalize cannabis, to better control it and get it out of the hands of criminals. The criminalization approach doesn't work and if anybody in this room sat through the evidence and came out with a conclusion that criminalization of cannabis works to protect children, then they weren't listening to the evidence that I was listening to.
Finally, for my last point, Mr. Ayoub made a reference to giving judges full discretion. One of the reasons 14 years is a bad choice for this is that it does not give judges full discretion. As I've been pointing out repeatedly, any sentence of more than 10 years, or any provision that has a maximum sentence of more than 10 years, ties the judge's hands from giving a conditional sentence to anybody. Whether a first-time offender or a third-time offender, they can't give a conditional sentence to them because of the use of 14 years. If you move that to nine years, you then give judges full discretion, yet for some reason the Liberals on this committee and the Conservatives continue to vote against that, tying the judges' hands so that no conditional sentences can be offered to anybody convicted under this section.
That's not only poor policy-making; it's contrary to how the Liberals acted in last Parliament when they voted against Conservative legislation that took away the discretion of judges to give conditional sentences in this manner.
Those are my points, Mr. Chair. I think we're ready for the vote when you're ready.