Mr. Speaker, from the beginning of this debate on cannabis legislation, New Democrats have advocated for full expungement for all convictions for offences that the new law no longer considers a crime.
We have already seen that the government has gone for the half measure of pardons versus expungement, and it has also limited the scope to simple possession. The law now is that a people can grow up to four plants in their house; there are people who were convicted who were growing a plant or two in their house and who still have criminal records. This legislation will continue the stigma of a criminal record on those people.
What is shocking to me is the confusion this member has about expungement versus pardon. I am going to read the definition of expungement. It is a ”process in which the record of an arrest or a criminal conviction is...erased in the eyes of the law.” When a conviction is expunged, the process may also be referred to as “setting aside a criminal conviction”. That is as if the conviction had never occurred.
A pardon maintains the presence of the conviction; it just states that the individual has received a pardon. Those individuals always have to say, “I have have a conviction, but I have received a pardon.”
The other thing that this member is misleading Canadians about is that when people go to the border, American border guards have access to CPIC and other Canadian record databases. A pardon in no way obligates them to erase their records or to not deny entry to a Canadian seeking entry into the United States. A pardon will not have that effect for Canadians.