Mr. Speaker, I cannot help but acknowledge that there is a little inconsistency here, because I recall that during the last federal election campaign and also during nearly a year of debate on the cannabis bill, the member opposite and his party strongly advocated not for legalization but for decriminalization. The effect of decriminalization is to maintain the prohibition. It is to maintain the prohibition and simply swap out a criminal penalty for a civil one. Maintaining the prohibition is worse than a half measure, and it would not have enabled us to come forward and deal effectively and appropriately with these records.
By the way, just as another minor correction for the member opposite, under the protection of the Canadian Human Rights Act, what is actually protected is that an individual Canadian can say “I do not have a conviction for which a pardon has not been rendered.” The pardon is in fact protected under the Canadian Human Rights Act; the Canadian Human Rights Act is silent on the issue of expungement.