Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak in the debate about Bill C-38. It has been a long time in coming. We have had this sort of strange situation where on the one hand it appeared that there was a lot of emphasis to get this bill moving, yet we are only today now debating it and sending it off to committee.
I would concur with the comments of the member from the Conservative Party who questioned what the government's real intention was with the bill and whether it would ever see the light of day in terms of something being acted upon, given the time frame in which we are operating. It is sort of politics in the twilight zone.
That aside, decriminalization as a measure to recognize the failure of our prohibitionist policies is something that many people now accept. For sure it is better to have a fine than to end up being in jail and having a criminal record. However there are a number of problems with the bill.
While decriminalization is something that we could see as a progressive step forward in dealing with the failure of prohibitionist policies, the bill as it is presents a very contradictory and confused approach. On one hand it offers a measure of decriminalization. On the other hand the political rhetoric that has been surrounding the bill, and we heard from the minister today, and the system of penalties outlined in the bill actually point to a tougher and a wider enforcement stance.
I want to put forward the remarks made by Eugene Oscapella from the Canadian Foundation for Drug Policy. He has said that the bill really perpetuates the myth that the criminal law can resolve problems related to drugs. That is one concern we have. The bill relies upon the premise that somehow if we end up even with a system of fines and it is still within the criminal law that marijuana is still an illegal substance, then we are controlling the drug and controlling the use of it.
As was shown in the special committee report on the non-medical use of drugs, of which I was a member, it became very clear in the evidence that we had that whether a substance was legal or illegal had virtually no impact on its use. In fact we would be far better off providing real education for Canadians about drug issues, about the potential health issues related to drug use and focusing our financial and educational priorities on that.
As we know with smoking, for example, it is not illegal. The decrease in smoking has not come about because smoking is illegal. It has come about because it has been highly regulated and because we have spelt out what can and cannot be done. A vast amount of education has been given to people individually and within society as a whole to make them aware of the dangers of smoking. That is with a legal substance.
The argument of prohibition as a tool for dealing with drug use and the harms that can flow from drug use has been shown to be a failure.
The Senate report on marijuana came out in September 2002 and it was a very wide-ranging and excellent report. The report pointed out that 30% of the population has used cannabis at least once. That is approximately 100,000 Canadians daily. In fact of the over 90,000 drug related incidents that are reported annually by police, more than three-quarters of those incidents relate to cannabis, and over 50% of all drug related incidents involve possession of cannabis. That is from the Senate report.
Given the magnitude of that problem and the use, we have to ask ourselves whether the regime as presented in this bill will respond to the reality of what Canadians are actually doing. Certainly one concern we have with the bill is that it does not contain any provision for personal cultivation. The special committee on the non-medical use of drugs recommended that there should be some provision not only for possession for personal use but also for cultivation.
Unfortunately the government chose not to do that so we have this contradictory position where the government is saying that people will get a fine for possession of marijuana if it is 15 grams or less, but they cannot go out and buy it anywhere because it is an illegal act.
In fact, as Dan Gardner, a critically acclaimed journalist from the Ottawa Citizen , pointed that out in a series of articles he did on the drug issue. In his article on May 28, he said:
Criminologists have often found that lowering, but not eliminating, a punishment results in more punishment. It's called the “net-widening effect.”
Replace charges with fines, and people the police would have let off with a warning and a wave under the old system will instead by hit with a fine. In other words, decriminalization could lead to more people being punished, not fewer.
Then I have an image in my head of the Prime Minister in one hand holding a joint and in the other hand holding his fine. What is this actually saying? Are we saying that somehow by having a fine we are trying to give people the illusion that we will be preventing them from using marijuana? We have the Prime Minister saying, “Oh well, this is the way you do it. You smoke a joint, you pay your fine and away you go pretty happy”.
What is the purpose of the fine? If it is there as a deterrent, then again the evidence will show that as a deterrent it simply has no use. All it becomes is a source of revenue and a widening of police enforcement on the basis that municipalities will now see a way to collect more money.
I did want to respond to the question put forward by the Canadian Alliance that we had to be very careful about this bill and that we would have to talk to the Americans because it had to do with the borders. I know that some Liberal members have been off courting the drug czar and getting all the arguments from the drug czar about why this is so bad.
I truly believe the objection of the Americans to this bill has nothing to do with border crossings. It has everything to do with their political war on drugs, which in effect is a war on poor people, and the fact that they do not want to see Canada take a different kind of approach, an approach that has been successful in Europe in terms of decriminalization. That is what their objection is truly about. I really do not think it has anything to do with the border. It has to do with them not wanting to see another approach that will show the gaping holes and their own failure on the war on drugs.
We very much look forward to the debate at the committee. There obviously will be a whole variety of amendments. The NDP members will be introducing amendments because we have questions about the lack of provisions around cultivation. We have questions about the fines system. We have questions about the enforcement that underlies this, the fact that it continues this prohibitionist policy and that somehow the criminal law will deal with this issue.
We certainly look forward to what goes on in the committee and hearing from the witnesses. Hopefully the bill can be improved to better reflect the reality of what Canadians want to see, given that the use of marijuana is very prevalent in our society. I think there is a very common understanding that we do not want to see Canadians criminalized.
One other issue we will be bring forward is why there is not an amnesty provision for the approximately 600,000 Canadians who have a criminal record for simple possession. There is nothing in the bill that would give relief to people who live under the negative effects of a criminal record, for example, who cannot go across the border.
I know constituents in my own riding have faced terrible situations because they have a record from simple possession. We want to see some of these issues addressed, and we look forward to the debate in the committee.