I just have a couple of remarks in response to some of the points that were made.
I don't think anybody in this room would suggest that provinces are any less sensitive to ensuring that their populations have access to safe, quality-controlled cannabis. Certainly, that's not the exclusive purview of the federal government. I think it would be unfair to suggest to provinces that they would take any less rigorous of an approach to licensing production in their province than the federal government would.
It is true, as Mr. Oliver pointed out, that, unfortunately, despite inviting a number of provinces, this committee has heard from precisely one province. One province agreed to appear before this committee. I would argue that, in keeping with Ms. Gladu's statement, part of it was that they weren't prepared to appear. Surely, there is some reason why, after this committee had two panels on federal-provincial relations, we couldn't get more than one provincial government to appear before this committee and tell us about their preparations for this bill.
Also, this is the second time I've heard the Liberal side refer to scrupulously adhering to the recommendations of the task force. You can't suck and blow, or pick and choose, at the same time. The task force, equally, recommended clearly that this government regulate edibles, concentrates, and other non-smokable forms, and the government mysteriously and inexplicably chose not to proceed with that, with some vague reference that we need to go slowly, even though there is absolutely no rational basis for moving slowly and it's contrary to the purposes of the act.
Just like provinces regulate small craft breweries and wine production—that's not the federal government; that's the provincial government—we want to make sure that we give the flexibility to provinces to do that. That's the basis of this amendment. Also, perhaps, there could be a sort of second tier of production regulation that is responsive to those small growers, where we can construct a regulatory regime that preserves the safety and quality controls that we want, but is not so onerous of a system that it freezes them out from participating.
My final point is that, as we've heard time and time again, if we do not craft a legislation that is successful in bringing those out of the dark into the light, they will continue to produce illegally. That's not what we want and it's not what the bill proposes to do.