Madam Speaker, it is pleasure to rise to speak to Bill C-330, which is the initiative of my colleague from Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo.
As I understand the initiative, when she introduced it on December 14, 2016, the member moved that this be an amendment to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to deal not with recreational cannabis but rather to the issue of medical marijuana grown in homes and the impact it would have on landlords. Her remarks today illustrate that was the objective of the bill, that medical marijuana grown at home should be done so only, she claims, with the written consent of the landlord. That is what we are here to talk about, not, as I understand it, the issue of recreational cannabis, as seems to have been understood by others.
The initiative is well intentioned. The story that was recounted by my colleague from the CBC program At Issue, or whatever the CBC program was, is a poignant one. I, however, believe the bill would not do the job. I have several reasons for that, but I certainly understand the challenge she has put before us, which has to be addressed by insurance companies.
We have to provide more authority for landlords to address their legitimate interests. If there is the ability to have 120 plants for four people in an operation, if a person has a licence to grow seven grams a day as the member indicated, it seems to me we should do some serious analysis of how that could be. The intention of the regulations, which I will talk about in a minute, was not to allow that to occur, with all of the intended consequences that she eloquently described.
First, and in our view, the bill would create an unjustified barrier to patients' charter-protected rights to have reasonable access to medicinal cannabis. That is the law of the land, for better or for worse, since the Federal Court so decided in the Allard case.
Second, there is already a housing crisis in my part of the country. To the extent that this would be even a tiny impediment, that is something we ought to look at as well. I concede it is not the main issue here, but if one lives in a housing crisis, as I do in the city of Victoria, any restriction on tenants is something we need to address. I recognize the bill would apply, by the way, to residential and commercial landlords as well.
Third, I do not believe, despite what my friend said, that this is a federal matter at all. Landlord-tenant legislation has been the provinces' jurisdiction since Confederation. If there are problems with the federal Privacy Act, let us fix it. However, amending the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to deal with landlord consent is, in my judgment, unconstitutional and would never be accepted by the Supreme Court of Canada. Whether this is motivated by fearmongering over medicinal cannabis I do not know, but it has been repeated by our courts on many occasions that patients have a charter right to reasonable access to medicinal cannabis. Therefore, an additional obstruction to that, a restriction on that right, is something we should look at very carefully.
Municipalities have the authority to deal with this. I certainly believe the rentalsman in our province. If necessary, attendant legislative reform when we bring in legislation to address cannabis in a more holistic way is where we need to deal with this. However, to suggest that we would change criminal law to do so is overkill, unnecessary, and is likely inappropriate constitutionally anyway.
The bill purports to amend the whole Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. Despite its wide breadth, it is intended to respond to the access to cannabis for medical purposes regulations. Although we do not see that in the face of the bill, I think that is the objective. However, it applies beyond that as well.
That regulation allows individual patients to produce a limited amount of cannabis for their own medical purposes or to designate someone to produce it for them. Designated people can only grow for a maximum of two individuals, including themselves.
The member made a good point in describing how that could be abused and how we could have, in her judgment, up to 120 plants in a house. Anybody who has been in a grow-op, as I have, will know the impact that can have on property values, and of that there is no doubt. I am not here to deny for a moment the devastating impact that can have on property.
The Constitution now allows, thanks to the Allard case from 2016, that there be this reasonable access to cannabis for a patient. If that is abused, it can be addressed in other ways. I think that is what the gravamen of the member's concern really is—that the abuse is obvious—but I am not entirely sure that to grow a couple of plants for use is going to cause the concerns that she has suggested in the worst extreme examples that she has given us.
A story from Global News in February of this year demonstrates the growing need for access to medical cannabis. We have heard a lot about this from veterans and others. Their claim is as follows:
The most recent Health Canada figures show that at the end of [2016], almost 130,000 Canadians had signed up with the country’s 38 licensed cannabis producers .That’s a 32 per cent jump from the more than 98,000 registered at the end of September 2016 and up from the 7,900 granted access to medicinal cannabis in mid-2014.
There has been an enormous increase in access to medical cannabis under the legislation that was brought in by the government, the medical cannabis regulations that were addressing a specific response to the Allard decision. The government had to do something; they did it, and that is what they did.
Bill C-330 seems designed to create a new barrier to reasonable access to cannabis for medical purposes. In addition, subsection 177(7) of those regulations already requires owner consent if the proposed site of production is not the ordinary place of residence of the applicant or of the designated person. Anyone who would be cultivating more than the permissible amount or selling marijuana out of a residence would already be engaged in an illegal activity, irrespective of whether written consent by the landlord is obtained.
I think the fear that this proposed bill is addressing, as was made clear in the hon. member's remarks, is the potential impact on property values and the potential damages. I think that is an issue that should be addressed separately.
With respect to provincial jurisdictions, it is up to the provinces to determine how they choose to regulate rental properties. I think the member has demonstrated that there is a need here to address this issue, but that does not mean that it should be an amendment to the Criminal Code or the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to deal with this issue. It is an issue that needs to be changed.
Every province in the land is now addressing the challenge of cannabis. This is about medical cannabis. I understand that, but that is no reason why we cannot use this opportunity to amend our legislation. Municipalities and the provinces are making changes. We can change the landlord-tenant law to address it. Just as a landlord has every right to say that there will be no smoking of any substance in a property, for these kinds of property damage issues some kind of regulated access may need to be provided from time to time.
When safety is an issue, if there is any reasonable cause to suspect those kinds of electrical wires that the member spoke of, or if there are other obvious concerns, they should be addressed. The issue is where we address them. I do not believe they should be addressed in essentially federal criminal law, as the member would do.
Many jurisdictions in the United States have regulations about cannabis and landlord consent, although most are determined by state or municipal governments. For instance, the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act provides that an owner can prohibit the smoking or cultivation of marijuana in a written lease. That state is not one of the states, by the way, that has legal marijuana for recreational use.
In Colorado, where cannabis use for medical and recreational purposes is permitted, one of the cities there, Gunnison, has a municipal code and marijuana business licensing regulations that require landlord consent as part of the application to operate a marijuana establishment. Therefore, suitable regulations are available.
In conclusion, first, this is the law of the land, whether we like it or not. Second, it is using a sledgehammer to kill an ant. Third, it is no doubt unconstitutional anyway.
