—present company excluded, of course. That's number one.
You're going to have people who simply won't know, and you know why? When you look at what's important in their lives, they might just not care. They might have learned to live with a criminal conviction and its consequences. That's number one; you have a communications problem.
That problem is further compounded when you look at the population groups that are disproportionately affected by the criminal prohibition of cannabis, people who have educational challenges or mental health challenges who might live on the margins of society. If we can improve their lives by removing a barrier to employment, financing, travel, etc., in my respectful view, Parliament should do everything it possibly can to reach those people, because the people who will be reached and will know about it can probably hire lawyers like me.
Forget hiring your predatory pardon application people. They'll probably have counsel, and they have probably dealt with this a long time ago, and they probably got a proper record suspension by going through that process a long time ago. We want to reach the people who really need to be reached.
In my respectful view, the bill needs to be amended significantly.