Madam Speaker, I would like to point out to my colleague that even under former Liberal governments and Conservative governments, the trend line for years was actually going down. I think there was a 50% increase in use by 2015. It will be interesting to see if it has gone down since legalization, but my understanding is that it has not.
As my colleague points out, we are in the last minute here. Marijuana has been legalized since October 2018, and we are rushing to put the bill through as an important part of the Liberals' platform. However, the Liberals' tendency is not to listen to stakeholders. I wanted him to comment on the Canadian Police Association, which suggested two amendments calling for the Parole Board to retain limited flexibility and discretion to conduct investigations to ensure that the small number of applications from habitual offenders were vetted. This would ensure that individuals would not take advantage of a process that was clearly not intended for their cases. This could include looking into court records to determine if an individual was charged with something more serious, such as trafficking, and pleaded down to simple possession.
The member knows that the health and safety of Canadians is what all of us want to look after. Sometimes these more hardened criminals have pleaded down. For some reason, the government did not accept those amendments. I wonder if the member could explain why.