Madam Speaker, I listened with interest to the member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough. I want to ask him to develop the theme he raised, which is that we may be going in a slightly different direction than the Americans are. I agree with him very much on this.
In our speeches we both raised the fact that the U.S. supreme court has taken a very different position on the use of marijuana for medical purposes. Last week the justices voted 8 to 0 against allowing it. We have gone in a different direction in this country. I think some 400,000 Canadians have been designated to use marijuana for medicinal purposes. There does seem to be some science that goes with it to suggest that this is a good thing.
In regard to the broader idea of taking a direction that is different from the American direction, I do not want to bring up politics, but the member's party and our party have a different view of free trade. It is my contention that globalization and NAFTA are placing greater impositions from the United States on Canadians and Canadian law.
If we were to go in a significantly different direction than the Americans would appear to be going—and there is nothing to indicate that they are about to decriminalize anything related to so-called soft drugs—I wonder how much latitude we would actually be given as a country. I would be interested in the member's comments on that.