Evidence of meeting #66 for Justice and Human Rights in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was marijuana.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Felix Comeau  Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Alcohol Countermeasure Systems Corp.
Gérald Gauthier  Vice-President, Railway Association of Canada
Simon-Pierre Paquette  Labour and Employment Counsel, Railway Association of Canada
Savannah Gentile  Director, Advocacy and Legal Issues, Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies
Abe Verghis  Supervisor, Regulatory Affairs, Alcohol Countermeasure Systems Corp.
Kathy Thompson  Assistant Deputy Minister, Community Safety and Countering Crime Branch, Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness
Kevin Brosseau  Deputy Commissioner, Contract and Aboriginal Policing, Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Patrick Leclerc  President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Urban Transit Association
Megan MacRae  Executive Director, Human Resources, Toronto Transit Commission
Brian Leck  Head of Legal and General Counsel, Legal Department, Toronto Transit Commission
Rachel Huggins  Manager, Policy and Development, Serious and Organized Crime Strategies Division, Community Safety and Countering Crime Branch, Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness
Greg Yost  Counsel, Criminal Law Policy Section, Department of Justice
Jan Ramaekers  Professor, Maastricht University
Randy Goossen  Psychiatrist, As an Individual
Diane Kelsall  Editor-in-Chief, Canadian Medical Association Journal
Richard Compton  Director, Office of Behavioral Safety Research, U.S. Department of Transportation, International Council on Alcohol, Drugs and Traffic Safety
Chris Halsor  Founder and Principal, Understanding Legal Marijuana

7:05 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather

We are back.

Before we begin our next panel, I will tell you that Professor Ramaekers was kind enough to stay behind.

Thank you so much, sir. We again really apologize for the delays.

You had asked if we could ask a couple of questions of him before we move to the next panel. So we're just going to ask a couple of short questions of Professor Ramaekers, and then we're going to move to our next panel, if that's okay with everyone.

Mr. Liepert has the first question.

7:05 p.m.

Conservative

Ron Liepert Conservative Calgary Signal Hill, AB

First of all, thank you for hanging around. I'm not sure what time it is in the Netherlands, but it's got to be three or four in the morning by now, I would think. I appreciate that.

7:05 p.m.

Professor, Maastricht University

Dr. Jan Ramaekers

It's one o'clock in the morning.

7:05 p.m.

Conservative

Ron Liepert Conservative Calgary Signal Hill, AB

Okay, for me that would still be way beyond my bedtime.

If you had any specific cautions or words of advice based on some of the things you've seen and had the opportunity to be enlightened on, what would be the one or two things that you would have as advice for our government relative to...? Maybe even a little broader. Obviously this impaired driving law is tied into the legalization of marijuana.

So if you take that whole package, what are a couple of things you would want to pass on to our government?

7:05 p.m.

Professor, Maastricht University

Dr. Jan Ramaekers

Perhaps one issue that I would like to bring forward is that if you look at DUI statistics, the number of drivers who test positive for cannabis alone is really not very impressive. In Europe, it's really somewhere down to 3% or 4% at maximum. In the U.S. it's maybe twice as high. In Canada I'm not quite sure, but probably it's comparable to the U.S. But if you look at the percentage of drivers who are positive for THC as well as any other drug or alcohol, then we're actually looking at a more significant number of drivers that I think may even be a more important target for any DUI legislation than just the driver who is under the influence of marijuana per se.

Of course that's not unimportant, but from statistics you can actually say that the combination of cannabis and alcohol is actually much more common. What you've seen, at least in the scientific literature, is that any combination of cannabis and alcohol already increases drug impairment and increases crash risk.

My advice would actually be to copy some of the laws that have been installed in Europe that basically take a zero-tolerance position for any combination of cannabis and alcohol, independent of the actual concentration. Even with BACs below .05 and THC levels beyond five nanograms, the combination will always lead to a very significant increased crash risk. I see that, in your bill, there is an effort to also make a law for combined use of cannabis and alcohol, but it actually has lower limits. Anything above blood alcohol concentration of .05 is considered relevant.

I would argue that any combination, independent of the actual level of concentration, should be an offence. It would actually make more impact, because this is really the most frequent occurrence on the road.

7:05 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather

Our next question will be from Mr. McKinnon.

7:05 p.m.

Liberal

Ron McKinnon Liberal Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC

Thank you, Professor, again for hanging in here with us.

I'm not exactly sure what your field is, but I'm wondering if you can give us any insight into the relationship between THC in oral fluids and blood alcohol content, whether they align closely, and whether you can comment on oral fluid testing apparatus in measuring those.

7:05 p.m.

Professor, Maastricht University

Dr. Jan Ramaekers

To say something about my background, I'm trained as a psychologist, and I work in the field of psychopharmacology at my university.

In terms of oral fluids, I don't think that there is a single relationship between THC concentration and oral fluid relative to blood. It depends really on the device that people are using. There are many differences between the devices themselves that can lead to a different level of THC that has been traced in all fluid. Also the oral fluid devices are usually not able to detect THC levels for a very long time, so there's really a narrow time window of about three to four hours that would enable you to pick up recent THC use. Even more important, I think, is the real cut-off value that these oral fluid devices are operating by. They can vary quite a lot between devices.

If the sensitivity of such a cut-off level is really high, meaning that if the cut-off level is really low, then the rate of false negatives would be very low as well. If the cut-off level were higher, for example 30 nanograms or so, then I predict that the false negatives raised with oral fluid devices would easily be up to 50%, even if people smoked a cannabis cigarette 30 minutes before.

7:10 p.m.

Liberal

Ron McKinnon Liberal Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC

Thank you, Professor. I didn't quite get your answer. We had some testimony earlier today that the THC measures in oral fluids corresponded pretty closely to THC in the blood, but I'm not getting that from you.

7:10 p.m.

Professor, Maastricht University

7:10 p.m.

Liberal

Ron McKinnon Liberal Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC

Thank you.

7:10 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather

We want to thank you, Professor Ramaekers, for having stayed with us. If we have any further questions we'll send them to you by email, but I really appreciate how late it is, and I want you to be able to sign off. We want to thank you very much for having stayed with us, and if we have any further questions—the same with Dr. Goossen—we'll send them by email.

We'll start our next panel now. We are very pleased to be joined, for our last panel of the day, by Ms. Diane Kelsall, the editor-in-chief of the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

We also have Richard Compton, who is the director of the office of behavioural safety research of the U.S. Department of Transportation.

We are also joined by Mr. Chris Halsor, who is the founder and principal of Understanding Legal Marijuana and is joining us from Nevada.

Welcome to you all.

We're going to take your opening statements and then go to questions. Opening statements can be no longer than eight to 10 minutes. We will start with Ms. Kelsall.

7:10 p.m.

Dr. Diane Kelsall Editor-in-Chief, Canadian Medical Association Journal

Mr. Chair and distinguished members of the committee, thank you for the invitation to present to you this evening on Bill C-46. I'm a family physician and interim editor-in-chief of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, of CMAJ Open and the CMAJ Group.

Just to be clear at the outset, I do not represent the views of the Canadian Medical Association or Joule, the subsidiary that owns CMAJ. CMAJ and the other journals within the CMAJ Group are editorially independent from their ownership.

I'd also like to be clear that I am not an expert in cannabis or on its effects on driving. I know that tonight you've had access to expertise and some of my fellow witnesses obviously have that kind of expertise. But I will bring you the perspective of a journal editor and a physician, as someone who assesses evidence for a living.

The mission of CMAJ, Canada's leading medical journal, is to champion knowledge that matters for the health of Canadians and for the rest of the world. Our vision is best evidence, best practice, best health.

That is why I am concerned about the two pieces of legislation, Bill C-45 and Bill C-46, related to the legalization of cannabis, and why I wrote the CMAJ editorial, “Cannabis legislation fails to protect Canada’s youth,” that was published in May of this year. I've supplied you with copies. Ironically, I was in Amsterdam at the time it was published.

That so many Canadian young people and adults believe that cannabis is a benign substance is a failure. It is our failure, our failure of public education in this country. You see, we know that it's not a benign substance.

That many Canadian young people and adults believe that it is safe to drive under the influence of cannabis, some even believing that it improves their driving, is a failure. It's our failure, our failure of public education in this country. You see, we know that driving under the influence of cannabis is impaired driving.

That so many Canadian young people and adults use cannabis regularly is a failure, our failure, our failure of public education in this country. Yet we are about to embark on what I consider to be a national experiment, an experiment on our youth to see what happens when we legalize the use of marijuana.

That's why a bill, a bill like C-46, the focus of this committee, is needed as a corollary to the cannabis act to counteract the possible increased rates of driving under the influence of cannabis as seen in other jurisdictions at least initially after legalization.

You see, as a journal editor, I worry about the research papers that will likely be submitted to CMAJ over the next years, papers that include graphs showing a dotted line vertically indicating when the cannabis act came into effect and showing an increase in cannabis use, an increase in citations for impaired driving, increased mental health issues among our youth, and perhaps even an increase in deaths related to motor vehicle accidents. That keeps me up at night. That's why I am here.

You see, any increase in the use of cannabis and any increase in impaired driving, even the most modest, after its legalization means that the legislation will have failed. This will indicate that the use of cannabis and its inherent risks are not really a concern, and that users believe that they have nothing to worry about. It will make clear our already evident inability to have communicated the dangers of cannabis effectively to the people, to the youth of Canada.

We are simply not ready.

By legalizing cannabis we are sending a message to the youth of Canada that its use is fine, that it is safe, but that's not the message the Canadian public needs to hear. While the cannabis act includes some provision for public education, Bill C-46 has no such specific provision.

On September 20, Health Canada issued a tender for a public health campaign specifically targeting Canadian young people. According to the tender this campaign will be designed to ensure that Canadians, especially youth, are well informed about the health and safety risks of cannabis use and about current laws. That campaign is not scheduled to be launched until December. Yet the Government of Canada intends to legalize access to cannabis no later than July 2018. This doesn't compute.

So it's half a year to completely change the thinking on cannabis for many Canadians nationwide, to change the thinking of the tow-truck driver I saw smoking cannabis in his truck on Merivale a few weeks ago, to change the thinking of the kids I saw standing on Bank Street in front of the cannabis clinic as I walked here this evening.

How long did it take before rates of smoking tobacco in Canada decreased? Decades. What did it take? It took a multi-year, multi-faceted, targeted approach involving all levels of government, simply to begin to make inroads.

For these bills to be successful, rates of cannabis use and rates of impaired driving should decrease after legalization. But that's not likely to happen. More likely, it will be the opposite. We are simply not ready.

Therefore, I urge you to work with your colleagues across the parties to slow all this down. There is no meaningful reason to legalize the use of cannabis this quickly.

Before this government considers moving forward with the legalization of cannabis, we need a robust, evidence-based public education campaign focusing on the health risks of cannabis, and a requirement in Bill C-46 for a campaign focused on educating the public, specifically on its effects on driving. We need to see these campaigns work before cannabis is legalized.

Rates of cannabis use and rates of impaired driving should demonstrably be seen to be decreasing in Canada before legalization. How would we know they have decreased? These campaigns must be accompanied by robust research programs that will assess the results before the cannabis act goes through.

Let me reiterate. Before this government considers moving forward with legalizing cannabis, we need to see a meaningful decrease that is both statistically significant and clinically significant in rates of use of cannabis and impaired driving as a result of these campaigns, not click-through rates, not page views, not likes or other measures of engagement with the campaigns. Those are intermediate outcomes only, and may not translate into behavioural change.

Rather, we need to see meaningful decreases in the actual rates of use of cannabis and impaired driving before legalization. Then and only then will we have a modest hope that what I consider to be a national experiment in legalizing cannabis will not irredeemably harm the people of Canada, particularly our youth.

Thank you. I look forward to your questions.

7:20 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather

Thank you, Dr. Kelsall.

We will now move to Mr. Compton.

7:20 p.m.

Richard Compton Director, Office of Behavioral Safety Research, U.S. Department of Transportation, International Council on Alcohol, Drugs and Traffic Safety

Thank you.

We have in the United States, as I'm sure you're aware, for many years now been altering, on a state level, our legal prohibitions about marijuana. We have quite a few states that have passed measures authorizing what's called medical marijuana use. Some of them contain very few restrictions. We've had some jurisdictions decriminalize the use of marijuana, and as you know, now we have eight jurisdictions that have legalized recreational use of marijuana. We are confronting a sea change, and I think the expectations are this will continue over the next few election cycles.

I work in our Department of Transportation, in our road safety organization. I have focused on impaired driving for over 35 years now, on alcohol and drugs, a specialty of mine. We like to be evidence-based.

What can I say about marijuana and driving? I think there is ample evidence from laboratory research, driving simulators, in-vehicle research on closed courses, and even in traffic that marijuana has the potential to impair driving-related skills. It is a psychotropic drug, that's why many people use it recreationally, so I think there's no question it impairs driving. Certainly it does not make one a safer driver, so it's not a good thing from a road safety point of view.

Our ability to actually talk a bit about the crash risk of driving under the influence of marijuana is quite limited at this point in time because of the complexities in conducting that type of research. I know there's a tremendous desire for someone to come up with an impairment level for marijuana, and that really is just not feasible at this time. It's not clear if it will ever be feasible that you will have an analog to blood alcohol concentration or breath alcohol concentration.

People are all very familiar with the alcohol model. It really does not apply much to many other drugs, whether they're prescription or illegal drugs, and it does not apply to THC, where you do not get a correlation with the psychoactive ingredient, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol. You can measure blood levels, you can measure oral fluid levels, but you do not see this nice correlation between blood or oral fluid levels and impairment that you see with alcohol.

It is certainly reasonable and feasible for police officers to detect marijuana-impaired drivers, and arrest them, and prosecute them. As I always try to point out to people in our country, research we've done shows that many people in the U.S. refuse to take a BAC test. In many states they have that right, and it may result in the suspension or revocation of the driver's licence. It's almost approaching 25% of the people arrested for alcohol-impaired driving who don't take a BAC test, and the vast majority of those are prosecuted, and successfully. We've compared cases where there is a BAC available to the prosecution, with cases where there isn't, and it results almost in identical conviction rates between them.

The fact that you don't have an equivalent to BAC is not a bar to the successful prosecution. It's important that police receive training in detecting. They need to know how to recognize signs of marijuana impairment. They have to be trained in careful observations and note-taking.

I will agree with the witness who preceded me, Ms. Kelsall. I do think that when you legalize a substance like marijuana, people get a very positive impression, and they think it's safe. They do not realize—just like with alcohol, which is a legal substance—that it's not safe to drive impaired by alcohol, marijuana, or many other psychoactive drugs. It's critically important as part of legalization that the public be informed that impaired driving is impaired driving, whether it's by a legal or illegal substance. There is a lot of education that needs to be done.

I know there is a lot of interest in these oral fluid drug-screening devices. I do think those would probably be useful for law enforcement. I know that in most of the United States there are tremendous backlogs in conducting drug tests. This is a real disincentive for law enforcement to get a blood sample, send it off to a lab, and wait for months—sometime three, four, five, six months—to get a test result. The available evidence right now seems to show that screening devices are fairly accurate. They're not of the same quality as what we would call evidential tests—qualitative tests done at a laboratory—but they seem to be fairly accurate. I would expect to see their use increase over time. I am hopeful that there will be proper testing of these devices before their use becomes too widespread. There have been some studies done to date, but most of those have been funded by the manufacturers, which, of course, are very interested in marketing their devices.

At that point, I'll just stop and welcome any questions you might have.

7:25 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather

Thank you very much, Mr. Compton.

Before we get to questions for you, we're going to go to Mr. Halsor.

September 27th, 2017 / 7:25 p.m.

Chris Halsor Founder and Principal, Understanding Legal Marijuana

Mr. Chairman, and distinguished members of the committee, my name is Chris Halsor. I am a Colorado lawyer and a former 14-year prosecutor. Just so you guys have background on me, I was a line deputy district attorney who tried cases. I've tried everything from off-leash dogs to first-degree murder. I did that job for eight years and then I became Colorado's first traffic safety resource prosecutor. In essence, I was charged with the responsibility of training law enforcement personnel and prosecutors about all things to do with impaired driving.

I began that job in 2008. In about 2009 medical marijuana really took off in Colorado, which has developed a reputation as the epicentre of legal marijuana. I was a first-hand observer of all of that. I participated in and oversaw legislation that went through our state legislature. I was a sitting member on one of the regulatory committees that dealt with edibles, packaging, and serving. And I was a substitute member dealing with growing caps. Over the five or six years that I was the traffic safety resource prosecutor in Colorado, I developed an expertise in legal marijuana overall and, more specifically, in marijuana-impaired driving.

In 2014, I jumped ship and formed my own company called Understanding Legal Marijuana. Now, what I mainly do is travel the United States. I have in fact been to Canada a couple of times to offer training, speak at conferences, and basically share my knowledge with other people. In addition, in September 2015, I created a class on marijuana DUI investigations in which I host something I call a “green lab”. We get volunteers to come in—not my law enforcement students, mind you—to dose on marijuana so that my police officers have an opportunity to see people actually under the influence of marijuana and perform roadside tests such as a standardized field sobriety test.

That has led to many things. I am speaking to you right now from Nevada because voters in Nevada passed a recreational marijuana ballot. Beginning in January of this year, the Nevada attorney general's office hired me as a contract lawyer to serve their state in a capacity similar to the position I previously held as a rural traffic safety resource prosecutor. I feel that I can offer the committee a substantial amount of expertise in this area. I don't want to take an advocacy position, but I am happy to answer any questions.

There are obviously some differences between Canada and the United States. One of the severe limitations in the United States, which has already been alluded to, is that in the U.S. marijuana is illegal federally, yet the states have largely been permitted to run their own marijuana systems without interference from the federal government. This has set up some difficult questions concerning public safety. It is difficult, for example, to answer questions concerning impairment and toxicology because our federal system requires an application process involving several federal agencies just to conduct a human study on marijuana. Where such an application is granted, researchers would be provided access to marijuana from the only legal source permitted for federal studies in the United States, namely, the University of Mississippi. However, the marijuana produced at the University of Mississippi grossly understates the typical THC levels of medical and recreational marijuana available in states where the drug is legal.

In addition to that, we cannot conduct studies concerning...just for smoked THC, but there is almost no research when it comes to edibles. Nor is there any research to the best of my knowledge concerning concentrated marijuana. I apologize; I have not kept up with all the legislation that is taking place in front of Parliament, so I can't speak to any details.

That being said, when it comes to determinations of whether there is a nanogram level, as some of the previous witnesses have testified, the scientific literature suggests that this is a question we cannot resolve right now.

Understanding that a per se level legislation makes things easier, I would suggest to you that there a number of things to contemplate and consider with legalization moving forward, at least in the context of impaired driving.

One is going to be training for law enforcement. Certainly, that is going to have to be a significant investment. I would assert to you that the methods that have been developed over decades for detecting alcohol have served as the template for detecting drugs. While some of those things are certainly relevant and applicable to the detection of marijuana-impaired driving, it's not as sensitive in some areas. Additional research would be helpful. Additional tools and training for law enforcement officers, basically to be trained in more advanced techniques, would be necessary.

Further, there was a discussion of oral fluid devices. Obviously, I was not tuned in to listen to the previous panel and what you heard. My understanding and knowledge of this is that the best oral fluid testing devices will test delta-9-THC, the active impairing ingredient. However, that is only in saliva, and there is no correlation to blood. The value of these is that they will indicate that the person recently had THC in them.

It's a huge challenge, because I think that going forward, what people aspire to do is to have a system like we have for alcohol. That includes having these devices we can use, and having a number we can definitively point to and say, “Yes, they are impaired.”

However, I think that going forward, the marijuana question is much more challenging. What I have been doing in the last two years in particular is trying to teach law enforcement prosecutors that you have to prove impairment, and impairment with marijuana is different than with alcohol.

Public perception is going to drive a lot of this. Regardless of what the scientists and experts say, your general public may just latch onto the conventional things they find and discover, such as, “Well, it's not as bad as alcohol,” and for part of your population, “I drive better high.”

I think there are going to have to be resources that come to bear if Canada goes forward with legalization, and tracking the data becomes a critical component. That's something that law enforcement agencies and other people who are recording this may not be equipped for. Is there money for that?

Furthermore, in terms of fatalities, when people do die on Canadian roads, are there rules and requirements for what is required in an autopsy? What are they testing for? Can we make corollaries as to whether they only had the presence of marijuana in their systems, or did they have the presence of something like delta-9-THC?

I could go on and on. I understand that my time is limited, so I will stop right there and certainly entertain any questions.

7:35 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather

Thank you very much to all three of you.

We'll start the questions with Mr. Nicholson.

7:35 p.m.

Conservative

Rob Nicholson Conservative Niagara Falls, ON

Thank you very much.

It's much appreciated by the members of this committee that all of you would take this time and make this effort to assist us.

Let me start with you, Dr. Kelsall. Thank you very much for your testimony as well.

You seem to understand the bill very well, so you probably are aware of the fact that, despite your recommendations with respect to educating and making sure there is a rollout of the public dialogue on this, the government is quite determined to have this in place just in time for Canada's next birthday. However, you have some concerns that the rollout for this public thing is just not going to work. Is that the case?

7:35 p.m.

Editor-in-Chief, Canadian Medical Association Journal

Dr. Diane Kelsall

I would like to reply to the member that this is the case. I would have to say that to have the public health education campaign that is required to reverse the rising increase in use in half a year would be a miracle. I know that. I've looked at the tender from Health Canada, and it's good. It's innovative. It looks like there are some really interesting ways to reach youth. However, we're talking about a fundamental shift in thinking for so many people. As I said, I think six months would be a miracle.

7:35 p.m.

Conservative

Rob Nicholson Conservative Niagara Falls, ON

One of the things the government has consistently said every time they talk about this is they want to reach out, they want to protect young people. That's part of their focus. Do you think that's consistent with the legislation that will allow every house to have a small grow op consisting of four plants, three feet high? Do you think this is consistent with the government's concerns to keep this out of the hands of young people?

7:35 p.m.

Editor-in-Chief, Canadian Medical Association Journal

Dr. Diane Kelsall

No, I don't think it's consistent. When I wrote my editorial, that was one of the things that I highlighted in it. I am concerned that by allowing people to grow at home, we have no control over the quality, the concentration, or its diversion. I don't think it's consistent with a public health approach to the legalization of marijuana.

7:40 p.m.

Conservative

Rob Nicholson Conservative Niagara Falls, ON

Thank you very much.

Mr. Compton, you've predicted that we'll see an increase in impaired driving. You pointed out that youth, when everybody is celebrating Canada's birthday next year, along with that they will get a very initial, positive impression of marijuana. Can anything be done? I take it you probably agree with Dr. Kelsall, that there has to be a considerable amount of education. How effective do you think that will be in the next six months?

7:40 p.m.

Director, Office of Behavioral Safety Research, U.S. Department of Transportation, International Council on Alcohol, Drugs and Traffic Safety

Richard Compton

I would agree with Dr. Kelsall. Again, six months is a very short time for a public health campaign to change attitudes and behaviours. Most previous ones on smoking, exercise, and other things, have taken a number of years to penetrate to thinking and behaviour. I don't think you'll get all that far in six months.

We've seen in the United States that recreational marijuana, even medical marijuana, has contributed to an increased use in marijuana. We have not yet seen a big effect on crashes, but I suspect there is one. It's almost inevitable. I think for road safety, this is not positive.

7:40 p.m.

Conservative

Rob Nicholson Conservative Niagara Falls, ON

Thank you very much.

Mr. Halsor, I'm following up on some of the comments you made. Did they see an increase in drug-impaired driving in the state of Colorado after its legalization?