Mr. Speaker, I always appreciate the opportunity to share thoughts on important pieces of legislation the government brings forward, such as Bill C-93.
During the last federal election, the Prime Minister, who was then the leader of the third party, made a commitment to legalize cannabis. Today we are discussing the second part of the legislation, which I believe will fulfill the commitment we made in 2015.
I have had the opportunity to go over a couple of our election commitments, and I have been listening to the debate today on the matter of legalization, as I have done previously. I want to highlight at the outset what the NDP said in the last federal election when Thomas Mulcair was the leader of the New Democratic Party. When asked about the NDP's position on this issue, he said that the NDP did not favour the legalization of cannabis.
That is why I find it interesting that today, NDP members are saying that we should expunge the records of those who were found in criminal violation of our former cannabis laws. On the one hand, prior to the election, NDP members said no to legalization. They were okay with decriminalization but not with legalization. Fast-forward a couple of years and now they have changed their minds. In fact, I recall that in one article, the current leader of the New Democratic Party took the position that everything should be legalized. He believes that any sort of illegal drug should be legal. Only now is this something NDP members want to talk about.
If we were to look at the the way the Liberal government has managed this file, I believe we would see that Canadians, in general, have been very supportive of it.
It has been interesting to listen to members of the opposition parties talk about the issue. The NDP has made a complete flip-flop, even suggesting now that the government can do more. Then there is the Conservative Party. One of the questions I posed to members across the way was whether the Conservatives, if they were in government, would make cannabis illegal again and retract the work the government has done over the last couple of years. They completely waffled on the question. In fact, they have implied that they would not change the law. Even though they voted against the legislation, they are not going to change it.