Thank you, Mr. Chair.
In fact, this is the only amendment the Bloc Québécois is moving to this bill, but we think it is extremely important.
Since yesterday I have been following the work of the committee, and I note that a great deal of importance is rightly being given to the matter of penalties and sanctions for breaching the law in any way.
However, if you read clause 139, you see that almost of the details of this act will be decided by regulation.
I refer among others to paragraph 139(1)(b), which permits the establishment of other classes of cannabis. What will be done with those other classes? We see that provisions will apply differently according to the category in question.
Further on, the issuance of licences and permits are mentioned, as well as all of the related conditions.
Clause 139 also discusses the composition, content, concentration and purity of the cannabis. In fact, we were just talking about that. In our opinion, these are all questions that should be discussed in committee and submitted to the entire House. We don't agree that these decisions be made in camera by public servants of the department.
The bill also discusses the classification of violations. This is in paragraph 139(1)(z.3), where it refers to classifying “each violation as a minor violation, a serious violation or a very serious violation”. Afterwards, paragraph 139(1)(z.4) discusses modulating the penalties in light of that classification. Thus if the decision is made to establish new levels of violations, they could be minor, serious or very serious, and penalties would be adjusted accordingly. This means that the work we are currently doing in committee may be somewhat superfluous.
In addition, as I was saying, according to paragraph 139(1)(z.5) and the following ones, the criteria according to which a penalty for a violation may be increased or reduced will be set by regulations. The clause discusses amounts, agreements, ranges of amounts and so on.
We all agree that this is an important bill, because it is going to change a lot of things throughout Canada. We think that a bill as important as this one has to be managed properly. These matters are important and should be discussed in committee. That is why we move that clause139 be amended as proposed in amendment BQ-1 which is before us now.