Madam Speaker, there has been a lot of debate about the question of the legalization of marijuana, but even many of those who supported legalization in principle identified the fact that the devil was in the details of this legislation. There are many problems with the way the government approached it, and residual concerns about impacts.
My colleague is right that we are here at this late stage debating the bill. A member of the government, in response to a question from the NDP about this, said they are going to work right until the end. That is all well and good, but the reason we are concerned about the timing is that it raises questions about whether the government is actually serious about getting it done. When a bill is started this late in the process, it increases the likelihood that it will not actually get done. The marijuana legalization legislation was so extensive that it could have contemplated issues around this.
Again, we continue to have concerns about various aspects of the application of the bill. There are aspects of the bill that require significant study and that will, I suspect, require study in the other place as well. Starting late has real consequences. It is not just a question of the arbitrariness of the calendar, but it does have consequences for those who are impacted in some way by the bill.