Mr. Speaker, I want to speak in favour of Bill C-17. I was a member of the special committee on the non-medical use of drugs, one of the two committees that are quoted as having studied this issue. We spent a great deal of time not only studying the issue in the literature, but we had appearing before us educators, enforcement officers, addictionologists, physicians, and various people with a great deal of understanding of these issues.
Moreover, this committee travelled to the United States and Europe, and looked at various jurisdictions and the ways in which they dealt with this particular issue. We clearly recommended what is seen in this piece of legislation.
We did not believe, as some people said, that we should legalize the issue. We felt that it was far more important to deal with a specific component of the use of this substance and deal with it in the manner in which we are dealing with it in this bill, which is to treat it as an infraction.
Some people have said that most people do not understand the difference between legalization and decriminalization. The committee felt that the legalization is the removal of all sanctions regarding sale, possession or production of a given substance. Whereas, decriminalization is the removal of criminal sanctions for some activities relating to the substance, while retaining legal prohibitions on the others. This is exactly what has happened here.
Bill C-17 deals simply with the simple possession of a particular amount, 15 grams. This would be dealt with in the same way that we deal with any kind of infringement in a motor vehicle accident or in other ways that we deal with provincial legislation dealing with that kind of thing.
One of the things that we felt was really important dealt with that fact that many of the criminal charges brought against people for cannabis use and cannabis possession was very inconsistent across the country. In some places it was ignored. In many places there were charges brought and it was beginning to take up 90% of the criminal justice resources in terms of court time on something which many of us felt, when we looked at the issue, we could deal with in a very different manner thus freeing up the justice system to deal with other areas.
What people forget is that this bill and other parts of the legislation is going to allow for continued criminal prosecution for sale, production and trafficking in this particular substance. In fact, the prohibition against this particular drug has been increased with regard to production, trafficking and sale.
One of the things that I have also heard people say is that this will allow people to use this substance, more people will be smoking cannabis, and this will create a sort of a free for all for everyone. In fact, we looked at what has happened seven years later in countries such as Australia where this was done.
We found that what was most important is that this should not be a stand alone. It is important to see this piece of legislation not simply as a stand alone piece of legislation. It is part of an overarching national drug strategy. Some $245 million dollars has gone into this overarching drug strategy. A big chunk of that will be dealing with increased awareness, education, prevention of the use of illicit substances, treatment, harm reduction and enforcement. This is a continuum of a strategy. This is just one small piece with which we are dealing.
By removing the criminal sanctions from simple possession, we are in fact going to be increasing education, awareness, and prevention strategies. We will be increasing the penalties for those who traffic, produce and grow this substance. In fact, we are talking about moving forward in the enforcement area in a larger manner and increasing all of those other areas, which are components of a good strategy.
We also need to look at legislation that will be coming forward that is going to look at impaired driving. It does not matter what impairs the driver, whether it is cannabis, alcohol or whether it is some other drug or whether it is puff medicine that impairs the driver.
The point is that there are very real physical side effects that occur when one is impaired, so testing for those physical side effects would be the same. Deciding what actually caused the impairment becomes a moot point after that. One of the things to remember is that currently we have two very legal substances that are far more dangerous from a medical point of view and from any words we have heard from any addictionologist, and those are tobacco and alcohol. Yet, they are legal; they are licit. The violence that occurs with the use of alcohol, the impaired driving, and the loss of life that occurs with the use of alcohol is continuing and it is still a legal drug.
We are saying that we have cherry picked one drug. We have found that very few people actually drive under the influence of this particular drug because it is a drug that decreases motivation so that one tends to want to sleep, as far as I have heard from all of the addictionologists, rather than go out and do any kind of activity at all, never mind drive a car. The amount that would have to be used to cause an impaired driving offence is going to be large. By that time, I understand the person would be passed out cold and not be able to get behind the wheel of a car.
We need to take something like this and put it into perspective, and not merely knee-jerk to it. We are trying to make consistent the way we deal with certain drugs and bring cannabis into the same realm in terms of the way we apply sanctions to it as we do with tobacco and alcohol. Everyone must realize it is still an illegal drug. We are only taking a small part of what we are doing and building some sanctions over it.
I have heard people complain that this could cause a problem in Canada-United States relations, but when we visited the United States we found, and the literature told us, that in California and in certain other states this kind of decriminalization has been going on for many years.
It has been found that if paired with good awareness, education and prevention, especially among young people and in the school system, that in fact the use of a substance went up for a very short time, levelled and then began to fall. As young people became more and more educated with regard to the harm caused by the use of the substance, they were more concerned about the harm caused by the use of the substance in the long term, and that itself is what drove down usage whether it was tobacco, alcohol or cannabis.
This bill is part of a drug strategy that is comprehensive, integrated and has a continuum from the very beginning. It allows young people to begin to understand that the use of substances, whether they are legal or illegal, whether they are prescription or off the counter, carry with them impairment of some kind and a risk of addiction. That is where we want to focus our message.
In the meantime, taking young kids of 16 who are caught with a joint in their car and for the next 10 years are not allowed to travel across borders or able to find a job is a difficult thing because it does not happen if those kids are found with alcohol or cigarettes.
We need to look at this as part of an overarching substance strategy in a national drug strategy. We want to eventually bring down the use of substances and allow people to have an informed understanding about what substances can do to them, and to be able to make good choices in the long run.
I support this bill. We should think about it as part of an overarching strategy and not as a stand alone piece of legislation.