Mr. Speaker, as the health critic for the New Democratic Party, it is a pleasure to rise in the House and speak to Bill C-74, the budget implementation bill, on behalf of our party. I am going to focus my remarks on a particular part of the budget bill that I believe is very much misconceived and in fact would do a lot of harm to Canadians across the country. I hope that the government will listen to these remarks and take them seriously, and be willing to make changes to the bill that is before us.
The issue on which I want to focus the attention of my colleagues in the House today is the proposal in this budget for the federal government to levy an excise tax on medical cannabis. Currently, the situation in Canada is that we do not tax medicine. Pharmaceuticals go through a process and get something called a “drug identification number”, or DIN. When that happens, the drugs are sold and purchased by Canadians tax-free, as they should be.
On the other hand, medical cannabis, which has been recognized as a medicine by the Supreme Court of Canada, and the medical cannabis industry is currently operating in every province of this country, does not currently enjoy that status. The result is that patients across the country who rely on medical cannabis for a variety of conditions and ailments are forced to pay sales tax on that medicine, whether that is the federal GST or an HST in the province, which is anywhere from 5% upward. In addition to that, most health insurance plans in this country do not reimburse patients for the cost of cannabis, so it is a double-edged sword for patients who rely on cannabis for relief of their conditions.
On top of that, in this budget the government is proposing to add an additional tax on medical cannabis, an excise tax, which would further increase the costs of this medicine for patients.
I want to speak for a few moments about the patients in this country: what patient groups think and why medical cannabis is such an important part of health treatment for so many Canadians.
CBD and THC are two of the prime operative molecules in cannabis, and it is now well known and established in the literature and in Canadians' anecdotal experience that these two substances have incredible medicinal properties. Among them, interchangeably, are the following: they are anti-inflammatories; they are antispasmodics; they help control nausea and provide nausea relief; they are ocular pressure reducers; they are very effective in helping to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD; they are proving to be very effective in helping people who are addicted to opioids to get off opioids and replace that with cannabis therapy; and they are very important in seizure control.
That is just a sample of the documented, experienced attributes of cannabis, when used medicinally and under the care of physicians and other medical practitioners. It is a medicine. Again, we do not tax medicine in this country.
I want to talk about what an excise tax is. The Liberals want to add an excise tax on medical cannabis, and this is particularly inappropriate. An excise tax is colloquially known as a “sin tax”. That is, it is a tax specifically designed to discourage the use of something or to encourage the more responsible use of something. Typically, we see excise tax levied on things like tobacco, alcohol, and gasoline. This tax, though, would actually work to discourage the use of a medicine.
I want to talk for a moment about my exchange with the Prime Minister when I raised this issue directly with him last Wednesday and asked him to reconsider the excise tax on medical cannabis. After refusing to commit to withdrawing the excise tax, the Prime Minister, somewhat shockingly, went on to impugn the entire motive of the medical community by saying that he thought that medical cannabis was being misdirected and misused as a recreational substance. That is a shocking thing for any prime minister to say. He impugned the motives of every single physician in this country by suggesting that doctors are mis-prescribing cannabis to their patients, who are then misusing it for recreational purposes.
He impugned the motives of the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who use cannabis on a daily basis in a variety of forms: tinctures, creams, sublingual tablets, concentrates in edible form, and tea. He suggested that those people are not using cannabis to relieve the conditions of their illnesses but rather to get high.
What does that say to the thousands of veterans in this country who are using cannabis to help them deal with their PTSD? Is the Prime Minister saying that they are simply misusing that substance to get high? If that is the case, why is Veterans Affairs paying for it? That was shocking.
I cannot get any better than to quote from something a doctor said after this was posted online. Dr. Michael Verbora, who is on the faculty of McMaster University and is a physician who also holds an MBA, said:
Not sure why @JustinTrudeau thinks my children patients are faking seizures (to use CBD oil which has no recreational value) and my adult patients are faking their cancers, MS, and chronic pain! Completely clueless and uneducated. Spend a day in my clinic so you can see & learn.
That is what a physician said to the Prime Minister when he suggested that medical cannabis is actually some sort of front, some sort of excuse, for people to access recreational cannabis.
New Democrats have done what New Democrats do in the House. We do our homework. We work hard to make good policy. We listen to witnesses. We do evidence-based policy-making.
Every single patient group that appeared before the committee that studied the bill, every single patient group in this country that knows anything about cannabis, has stated that this excise tax is wrong and should be withdrawn.
My colleague moved nine amendments at committee, four of which dealt with withdrawing the damaging provisions of this excise tax on cannabis, and all four of those amendments were opposed and shot down by Liberal members on that committee.
Instead of listening to Canadians, listening to patients, listening to the opposition, and listening to the evidence, the Liberals are doubling down on a bad policy that is going to damage public health and patient health in this country.
The very first concept in medicine physicians learn in medical school is do no harm. That is the first principle of care. What the government is doing by taxing cannabis, by taxing a medicine and making it harder for people to access their medicine, is actually harming the health of patients in this country, and it is doing it deliberately and in full knowledge of the evidence that it is wrong.
I want to talk for a moment about children. There are children in this country who are using medicinal cannabis now, particularly for things like epilepsy control. Why would any government want to put a damaging excise tax on top of a sales tax on a substance that probably is not covered by that family's health care insurance plan, making it more difficult for children in this country to get medicine they need to control their seizures? That is what the Liberal government is doing. That is bad policy. It is bad health care. It is bad tax policy.
I urge the government to listen carefully to the evidence it is hearing from everyone who is knowledgeable about this issue and withdraw this ill-conceived, poorly-conceived, damaging, and harmful tax on medicine.