Mr. Speaker, the comments offered by my colleague from Beaches—East York were very thoughtful and reasoned. He clearly is speaking to members of his community and has given this issue a great deal of thought.
I am glad that he recognized the distinction between this and the approach that was taken in Colorado and Washington, which was overwhelmingly a commercial model for the regulation of cannabis. They passed referendum and ballot initiatives that really focused on legalization and revenue collection. The Canadian approach has been fundamentally different, in that our approach has been a public health approach directed entirely at reducing both the social and health harms.
I have travelled across the country and talked to parents who are concerned about their kids and they are worried about three things basically. They are worried about the health of their kids. They are worried about the effects that cannabis can have on their health and on their developing minds, and they want to restrict their access to it. They are worried about the social harms to their kids: whether they are going to finish high school; who they are going to be associated with; and, if they do get involved with cannabis, what type of people they will have to do business with. Finally, what I have also heard overwhelmingly from Canadians is that they are worried that their kids are going to end up with a criminal record.
Our government has approached all of those harms in a very comprehensive way to look at how we can do a better job of reducing those social and health harms. Could the member perhaps expand on his experience and his reflections after conversations with families and parents in his community?