Karen McCrimmon

[Expungement of Certain Cannabis-related Convictions Act, April 11th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to the debate on Bill C-415, an act to establish a procedure for expunging certain cannabis-related convictions. I thank the hon. member for Victoria for his involvement in this file.

I know that we have different points of view on the terms, but we agree that people with criminal records for possession of cannabis should no longer have to deal with obstacles when it comes to employment or housing or any other aspect of their life.

We committed to legalizing and regulating cannabis as part of our platform for the last election. We upheld that commitment, and last October the new system took effect. At that time, we said we would introduce legislation to make it easier for people with criminal records left over from the old regime to have those records cleared. We have upheld that commitment too with Bill C-93, which was debated earlier this week.

It is worth remembering that while we were advocating for legalization, the NDP was merely calling for decriminalization. In other words, if the NDP had had their way, cannabis prohibition would still be in effect, and people found to be in possession of cannabis would be getting hefty fines. That would obviously be a bad idea, because many of the people who have been disproportionately impacted by cannabis prohibition are from marginalized and low-income communities.

Instead of adding to their financial burden, we have proposed legislation that will eliminate the fee to the Parole Board to apply for a pardon, which is normally $631. As well, we have proposed eliminating the waiting period, which can be as long as 10 years. Under our proposal, the pardon application will be reviewed and decided expeditiously by Parole Board staff, rather than being referred to an appointed Parole Board member for review, as is the current process. The usual subjective criteria, like evaluating whether the applicant has been of good conduct and whether the pardon will bring them a measurable benefit will not apply. Plus, the Parole Board will implement an outreach strategy that will involve community partners and civil society organizations to help people take advantage of this new process.

Once a successful pardon is issued, the relevant authorities will be notified and the record will be sealed. It will not show up during a criminal record check, and can be reopened only in extraordinary circumstances, such as the commission of a new criminal offence.

The bill proposed by the member for Victoria would use the mechanism called expungement rather than expedited pardons. As I said during debate on Monday, the practical effect of expungement is for all intents and purposes the same as a pardon, unless the person commits a new offence. At that point, they are going to have a criminal record again anyway, so the reinstatement of the old cannabis possession conviction will have minimal impact.

When it comes to international travel, expungement may cause unnecessary complications. For example, if the United States had previously noted a person's conviction in its records, they could still have that information, despite one's pardon or expungement. If U.S. authorities ask someone to provide evidence of their pardoned conviction, they can get that from the Parole Board. With expungement, there would likely be no Canadian records to provide.

We created expungement as a concept in Canadian law last year as a way to deal with historic convictions for consensual sexual activity between same-sex partners. That was a situation of grave injustice, where the law at issue itself was a violation of fundamental human rights and contrary to the charter.

That is distinct from the situation we are discussing today. The criminalization of cannabis was a bad idea, but it was not a charter violation. Nevertheless, because of its differential impacts on racialized communities, we have proposed a dramatically expedited pardons process. The NDP has also called on us to follow the example of some American jurisdictions that have moved to automatically clear past misdemeanour convictions for possession of cannabis.

In Canada, while federal records are held by the RCMP, there are also records, including paper records, held by provinces in local police offices and local courts. Going through all those records to find all the drug possession convictions and then digging into the details of each conviction to determine whether the substance involved was cannabis is a process that would take years.

There was a suggestion on Monday that we hire an army of summer students to go through hundreds of thousands of police and court records in cities and towns across the country. I could not tell whether it was serious or not. The fact is that an application-based process will result in people getting their records cleared much faster.

After careful and deliberate consideration, we chose a streamlined pardons process as the best approach. Under the bill that we have proposed, Bill C-93, there would be no waiting period and no application fee. Applications would be dealt with through an expedited administrative process, with no subjective criteria. People who have served sentences for simple possession of cannabis with nothing else on their records would get their pardons, full stop.

Once again, I want to thank the member for Victoria for his work, his contributions to this discussion and his thoughtful concern for the people of his riding and across this country. I know we have a difference of opinion about the modalities, but we share the objective of letting people who have criminal records for simple possession of cannabis move on with their lives. Those individuals should be able to get jobs, find places to live, study and travel without the burden of a criminal record for an activity that is now legal. We are all better off when people living law-abiding lives can put their criminal records behind them and contribute fully to our communities. I look forward to the passage of the government's bill, Bill C-93, which would allow for exactly that.

[Criminal Records Act, April 8th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, we wanted to achieve something that would make this happen quickly and give people a chance to build new lives. The impact on individuals, whether an expungement or a pardon, is virtually identical and a pardon allows us to move this along a lot quicker.

We are going to be reaching out to civil society organizations, community outreach people and community partners to make sure that this information gets out there. That connection with the people who are looking after people at the community level is going to be key.

[Criminal Records Act, April 8th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague is absolutely right. We understood the kind of impact this could have on the lives of people and really wanted to make sure we rolled it out well. We have talked to a lot of people and we have listened. However, we decided that this approach to a pardon, making it quick, accessible and at the community level, will have the most significant impact, not only in the short term but also the long term. The impact on the individual is the same whether it is a pardon or an expungement. We just want to make it happen sooner.

[Criminal Records Act, April 8th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, the cost of a pardon at $631 makes it prohibitive for people, especially people who have been disadvantaged their entire lives. This is what we are trying to change. We are trying to make it so that people have access to this, so they can get a job, rent an apartment and change the trajectory they are on.

The waiting time commenced at the time of the conviction. With this bill, people who were convicted four years ago could apply today. They do not have to wait that extra year. They can move forward with their lives and shed the stigma of having a criminal record. That is exactly what we are doing.

[Criminal Records Act, April 8th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, I think it was quite clear through the process of the legalization of cannabis that this would be one element of it. We could not introduce it before the original bill was put forward, as this is part of that process.

The way this bill was drafted, it is quite clear what we are trying to achieve. Having it come to the House for debate is an important first step. We believe there is time in the legislative calendar to make it happen.

[Criminal Records Act, April 8th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, I have seen news reports that they are tracking that change. They have seen it. Of course, this is not going to happen overnight. We are only six months in, but they have already seen changes.

We still have more work to do in order to get the full effect of the bill that we are looking for. However, we are heading in the right direction.

[Criminal Records Act, April 8th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for her advocacy.

I think that what we are trying to do is to make this happen quickly. The Parole Board has made it quite clear that part of its plan is an outreach strategy to connect with community organizations, to connect with the people who do this kind of work and who support these kinds of changes. The member will find them in her community. They will be out there and will be active in order to help people take advantage of this.

[Criminal Records Act, April 8th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, I have the pleasure to begin our debate on Bill C-93, which will amend the Criminal Records Act so that individuals who have criminal records for the simple possession of cannabis can quickly clear their record and live their lives to the fullest.

This bill proposes the unprecedented and exceptional measure of eliminating the waiting period and the application fee for people seeking a pardon for cannabis possession. This means that instead of waiting five years and paying the Parole Board $631, applicants would not have to wait a single minute and would not owe the Parole Board a single cent.

Bill C-93 is the next logical step in a process that began during the last election campaign, when we committed to ending the prohibition of cannabis in Canada. The result of decades of prohibition was that Canadians were among the heaviest and youngest users of cannabis in the world. Under the former system, the illegal cannabis trade put $7 billion annually into the pockets of organized crime, and Canadian law enforcement agencies spent over $2 billion every year trying to enforce an ineffective and counterproductive legal regime.

Last October, we finally put an end to the old way of doing things, and cannabis is now legal and strictly regulated, as promised. However, one of the lingering consequences of the previous system is that it saddled many Canadians with criminal records, making it harder for them to get jobs, rent apartments, travel or volunteer in their communities. The people affected are disproportionately from minority communities.

To be sure, they broke the law. They committed what, at the time, was a criminal offence, and there were consequences for that. However, people who were convicted only of possession of cannabis for personal use, an activity that is now legal, should be able to shed their criminal records and the associated burdens and stigma as quickly and as easily as possible. That is exactly what Bill C-93 would allow. This proposed legislation would create a pardon process for people convicted of simple cannabis possession that would be streamlined and simplified in multiple important ways.

Currently, to apply for a pardon or record suspension, which has been the legal term used since 2012, a person who has completed a sentence has to wait several years before submitting an application. It can be five or even 10 years, depending on the circumstances. Under Bill C-93, there would be no waiting period at all.

Currently, the Parole Board charges a $631 application fee, which is obviously a major barrier. That is especially true for low-income Canadians who need to clear their records so that they can get jobs and earn salaries. However, without those jobs and salaries, they cannot afford the fee. Bill C-93 would eliminate the application fee.

Ordinarily, in addition to requiring police and court records, the law puts the onus on the applicants to demonstrate that they have been of good conduct and that receiving a pardon would provide them with measurable benefits. These subjective factors are considered by government-appointed Parole Board members who make a judgment call about whether to grant the pardon. Under Bill C-93, for people whose only offence was simple possession of cannabis, the good conduct and measurable benefits factors would be eliminated. Applications would be quickly processed by public servants at the Parole Board, because there would be no judgment call to make. If the police and court records showed that a person's only conviction was for possession of cannabis for personal use, that person would get a pardon.

In short, there would be no application fee, no waiting period and no need to convince the Parole Board to grant a pardon based on subjective criteria. This would dramatically simplify and accelerate the process.

However, these are just some of the measures in the bill. There are additional practical steps the Parole Board is taking to make it even quicker and easier for people to apply. For instance, it is redesigning the application form to make it simpler to understand and faster to complete. It is devoting resources to work with people to ensure that applications are properly submitted. It is updating and clarifying the information on its website and preparing a step-by-step application guide, a 1-800 number and a dedicated email address specifically to help people with cannabis possession convictions make use of this new expedited process. Plus, it is developing an outreach strategy that will involve community partners, civil society organizations and social media to make people aware of the new process and how to access it.

It should not be harder for people to work, go to school, travel, find housing or volunteer because they once committed an act that is no longer illegal.

All the legislative and operational amendments that I just mentioned will ensure that individuals who have a criminal record for nothing more than simple cannabis possession will be able to move forward in life as fully reintegrated members of society.

The process of developing our approach for dealing with criminal records for cannabis possession involved a great deal of discussion, both internally and with stakeholders, such as the Campaign for Cannabis Amnesty. We ultimately settled on the streamlined pardons process I have described, but we carefully examined other possibilities, such as amnesty and expungement, and I will address both approaches to explain why we did not choose them.

The amnesty approach is being used in California, where the state is proactively and automatically clearing people's records without requiring applications. I completely understand the appeal of that approach, but in Canada at the moment, it is, unfortunately, a practical impossibility.

Canadian law has never had an offence known as “cannabis possession”. The record of a person convicted of possessing cannabis might say something like “possession of a controlled substance in Schedule II”, without referring to one of the several substances in that schedule.

Therefore, to find everyone who was ever convicted of cannabis possession, we would first have to find everyone who was ever convicted of possession of a controlled substance in the same category as cannabis, and then, in each case, go through the court documents to find out what the substance actually was. That would be challenging enough if all those records were held in one central repository, but that is not at all the case. We have a patchwork of different law enforcement authorities at various levels of government, each with its own records and record-keeping systems.

Some of these systems are sophisticated and computerized, but others are literally papers in locked boxes in a courthouse basement. In other words, proactively clearing people's records for cannabis possession would require a massive amount of resources at all levels of government, and it would take a very long time. People would still be waiting to have their records cleared years from now. It is much simpler to receive applications in which people provide the specifics of their particular cases. That would allow the Parole Board to process the files much faster and would allow applicants to have their records cleared much sooner, and that is the point.

There have also been calls for expungement instead of pardons. The difference is that a pardon sequesters a person's record so that it does not show up in a criminal records check, whereas expungement eliminates any mention of the offence from all records, as though it never happened in the first place.

Expungement actually did not exist in Canada until last year, when we used it for the very first, and thus far only, time to deal with historic convictions for consensual sexual activity between same sex partners. The idea was that the laws in those cases were unconstitutional. They should never have existed, and they were, by their very nature, fundamentally and inherently unjust.

The prohibition of cannabis was bad public policy, but it did not violate the charter. Still, there is no question that in its application, it had a disproportionate impact on certain groups of Canadians, especially members of black and indigenous communities. It is in recognition of that fact that we are proposing the exceptional and unprecedented measures contained in this bill.

Practically, for the applicant, the effect of a pardon or an expungement would be virtually the same. With either approach, a prospective landlord or employer would not be able to find out about a past conviction. In fact, the Canadian Human Rights Act expressly prohibits discrimination on the basis of a pardoned criminal record. The goal of letting a person move on with his or her life without the burden of a criminal record would be achieved in both cases.

The only realistic scenario in which a pardoned record for cannabis possession could be reinstated would be if a person committed a new offence, and at that point, because of the new offence he or she committed, the person would have a criminal record anyway. The impact of reinstating the cannabis conviction would be pretty minimal.

When it comes to international travel, in particular to the United States, an expungement could cause additional complications that a pardon would not. That is because the U.S. might have a previously existing record of a person's conviction, likely from when that person crossed the border or tried to cross it in the past. Even if a criminal record check came up empty today, which would happen with either a pardon or an expungement, the American border officer would have a note in the file from the last time. The officer could insist that a person get a waiver or provide more information about the conviction. If the record was pardoned, the person could contact the Parole Board and get the information needed to satisfy the U.S. border officer. However, if the record was expunged, there would be no documentation for the Parole Board to provide, and one might simply be denied entry.

The bottom line is that the approach we are proposing in Bill C-93 is a practical and efficient way of clearing the criminal records of those who were charged with simple possession of cannabis.

We would waive the fee, which is $631, and we would waive the waiting period, which is usually five years. We would eliminate the subjective factors, such as whether the applicant has been of good conduct and whether the pardon would provide a measurable benefit. We would make the application process simpler and more user-friendly.

I am proud that during the last election campaign, whether others were talking about maintaining the status quo or proposing timid half-measures, such as decriminalization, our party had the courage to recognize that bold action was needed. We made a commitment to legalize and regulate cannabis, the better to keep cannabis out of the hands of Canadian youth and the profits out of the hands of criminals. We upheld that commitment, and now we have put forward a bill that would help people criminalized by the previous system turn the page so that they would no longer bear the stigma and the burden of a criminal record.

I invite all hon. members to join me in supporting this important legislation.

[National Defence Act, February 28th, 2019]

Madam Speaker, it is important that more people are advocating for our seniors. I am happy to know that our life expectancy is extending, and therefore some of our government programs and policies will also need to change. I would like to thank the member for bringing up that particular issue.

[National Defence Act, February 28th, 2019]

Madam Speaker, my reading has indicated that it goes back even further than the Boer War. It goes back to the Civil War in the United States. I know it is an issue. I know it is being studied. There are a lot of people out there who believe that this needs to be changed. We need to find a way to support the spouses of military members and others, even if the members remarry at or after the age of 60. People are living longer now. It is not as unusual as it might have been in the past to get married over the age of 60. It is an issue the government is taking seriously, and it is being looked at.