I come back again to the issue of this being rushed. It's been very clear that this was a campaign issue for the Liberals in the last election. The task force travelled for six months across Canada, heard thousands and thousands of witnesses, and received tens of thousands of submissions. It brought very good advice forward. The legislation has been drafted and before this committee for some period of time now. We heard from over 100 witnesses. We did it in a very efficient way, rather than doing it over about three to four months, which is what it would normally have taken to do that many. We did it in a consolidated sitting.
I think the advantage of a consolidated sitting is that we heard from different perspectives, and we could hear more easily where there were differing views. We did hear, I think, from our witnesses that there are very different perspectives on this bill. It is a big social change for us. We heard from health people and health providers who said to go slow because cannabis needs to be treated with great caution. We heard from the user community that this is happening right now, that they're “overgrowing the government”, and that things need to move faster.
What we do know for sure is that our youth are using this drug. They're getting it from black markets. They're buying it from unknown vendors of unknown production. It's just not safe as it sits. There's a need to move forward with the legislation and get it back to the House.
We heard from the provinces and territories and our police forces. They need clarity from the federal legislation as to what's happening so that they can go to their next level of work to make sure that the provinces and territories and the municipalities understand this.
I don't think this is rushed, but I do feel that we need to keep moving it forward. I think some of the suggestions from Mr. Davies would have put it on pause while parts of it were reopened and re-examined. I think coming back to this in three years' time will give enough data and enough understanding of the implications and consequences of this legislation that if fine-tuning or improvements are needed, they can be introduced.
Mr. Davies has mentioned edibles a few times. We have a motion coming later in the amendments that would require that this happen within a year, not within this three-year cycle. I think we all heard that testimony and feel a need to respond to it, but we need to do it in a safe, thoughtful, regulated way, which is the goal of this.
I do support this motion. I think it's important that there be a review for many of the reasons that Mr. Davies has raised, many of the points that he's made. I just think we need time to see this at work in Canadian society before we make any further big changes to this particular act.