Madam Speaker, to answer the member's comment about a pardon versus an expungement, an expungement can be used, and should be used, when there is a historical injustice in how a criminal record was obtained. A pardon can be used for any criminal record, but an expungement is what we need for a criminal record that came about because of a historical injustice. I will talk about that in my speech.
I would first like to again thank the member for Victoria for bringing this important bill forward. I think it is something Canadians want. He has stepped into the breach where the government has failed to go, even though it had plenty of time to get ready for this, as we have been planning for the legalization of marijuana for many years.
I will start off by saying that there are a lot of people in my riding who use cannabis and who used cannabis before it became legal. This is obviously true in many ridings. We all carry out some unofficial polling when we go door to door, and one of the things we notice when we go door to door in my riding is how many people use cannabis. It is quite a popular thing in my riding. It is not everyone who is doing it, but we notice how many people do it. It is not just people of colour or indigenous people, it is everyone. It is business people.
The whole point of this bill on expungement is that in the past, arrests for simple possession of marijuana were disproportionately handed out to marginalized Canadians. Young Canadians, black Canadians and indigenous Canadians are by far the people who have suffered the most for this. That is one of the reasons expungement is much more appropriate than a simple pardon.
As other people have said, many people in Canada have criminal records simply because they were found in possession of marijuana, something we now say is completely fine; it is legal, it should not have happened before, so let us get on with it. We are talking about 500,000 Canadians, and some have suggested that it might be as high as over 900,000 Canadians. This is not something that is relegated to the dark criminal backwaters of Canada. This is the bulk of Canadian society. It has left people with criminal records. They cannot cross the border. They have difficulty finding work, in many cases. They cannot even volunteer. A lot of times, if they want to coach a soccer team for their kid's school, they demand a criminal record check, and they cannot do that. It really affects the lives of Canadians, Canadians who we now say have done nothing wrong.
As I said, the government has had a lot of time leading up to this to prepare its legislation. Other jurisdictions, such as California, Delaware, Vermont, and I think North Dakota, are moving in this direction. They are bringing expungement provisions into their legalization legislation. However, the current government has not. We have been pressing it to have something like this since we began sitting in this Parliament. Now it is saying that maybe next year it will bring legislation that will make it easier for people to apply for a pardon.
I want to go back to the point that it is really marginalized Canadians who have been hit hard. That is why expungement is the way to go. As other people have said, someone who is indigenous is nine times more likely to be arrested for simple possession in Regina and seven times more likely in Vancouver. A black person is five times more likely to be arrested in Halifax and three times more likely in Toronto. These simple possession arrests disproportionately affect people of colour, indigenous people and young people.
I can quote what government members have said with respect to this. The Prime Minister said this:
People from minority communities, marginalised communities, without economic resources, are not going to have that kind of option to go through and clear their name in the justice system. That's one of the fundamental unfairnesses of this current system is that it affects different communities in a different way.
The Minister of Border Security said that “the failed system of criminal prohibition has resulted in the criminalization of hundreds of thousands of Canadians and contributed to an unjust disparity and impact on vulnerable communities.” The Minister of Public Safety said that “the law as it stands today has been an abject failure”. The MP for Hull—Aylmer said, “We do know that black Canadians have been disproportionately charged with and are imprisoned for possession of small amounts of cannabis.”
Much of the cabinet is admitting that this is what has been going on, but this can only be justly dealt with through a simple expungement of all of those criminal records so that these people can get on with their lives and get work or cross the border. In Toronto, 15% of people on social welfare say that their cannabis possession records are a key barrier to their getting work. We all want those people to work and to take part in this economy and society. However, that is the barrier they are facing, and only an expungement would help with it.
I see that I do not have much time left. The government says that it is going to bring in pardons. time. I will just say—