Mr. Speaker, being the only member of the House who has had the honour of voting for the member for Mount Royal during the last election, I wish to thank him for the pleasure of sharing his time with me.
I rise to respond to the motion from the member for Victoria, which calls for the immediate decriminalization of the simple possession of marijuana for personal use.
I will explain how our government cannot support this way of doing things because it will ultimately increase the revenue of criminal organizations.
Until such time as we legalize, regulate, and restrict marijuana, which was our platform commitment, we need police officers to continue to enforce the law related to marijuana.
Under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, marijuana possession, production, and trafficking are illegal in Canada. Simple possession of up to 30 grams is an offence, with a possible fine of up to $1,000 and up to six months in jail.
More than half of all drug offences reported by police are for marijuana possession. In 2014, they amounted to 60,000 offences reported and just over 22,000 charges laid. Most, if not all, of that marijuana is supplied at the moment by organized crime.
As the House is aware, the government was elected on a platform that included the legalization and strict regulation of marijuana. The Minister of Justice and her colleagues in health and public safety are pursuing an orderly and responsible approach to fulfilling this commitment.
We will legalize marijuana, regulate it, and restrict access. We will prevent children from accessing it. Furthermore, we will prevent organized crime from profiting from this lucrative business.
We will also provide for harsher punishments for those who supply marijuana to minors, who operate a vehicle while under the influence, or who sell marijuana outside the regulatory framework.
We hope to achieve this by the end of next year, after carefully consulting the provinces and territories, law-enforcement representatives, and other stakeholder groups.
To that end, we are striking a task force on marijuana legalization and regulation to consult with Canadians broadly as well as a wide range of stakeholders. These stakeholders will include provincial and territorial governments, experts in public health, substance abuse, law enforcement, criminal justice, and economics, as well as indigenous and youth groups.
The member for Victoria would like us to decriminalize without a proper legal framework in place. It is important to keep in mind that there are unintended consequences to doing so. Of all of the unintended consequences of decriminalization, perhaps the most dangerous is the opportunity it would provide to organized crime groups to profit from illegal drugs.
If we were to adopt the member's motion for the months remaining until legalization received royal assent, marijuana would continue to be illegal, but users could acquire it illegally without fear of criminal justice sanctions. This gives criminals an opportunity to ramp up their operations. Therefore, the unintended consequences of the member's motion would be to aid the criminal organizations that are currently involved in importing, growing, and selling marijuana in Canada. Make no mistake about it. They have no qualms about selling it to our youth.
Overwhelmingly, organized crime groups that operate in Canada are involved in illegal drugs and have established networks to grow, procure, and sell marijuana, and launder the profits. About 80% of crime groups identified in Canada are involved in the illicit drug market, particularly at street-level traffickers.
The sale of marijuana is currently a big business. The profits give organized crime even more power. These criminals can use the profits to move into such activities as illegal migration, trafficking of human beings, money laundering, economic crimes, cross-border smuggling of counterfeit goods, and even environmental crimes such as the dumping of toxic waste.
I know that the member for Victoria does not intend to promote such criminal activities, but that is what his motion could do.
By legalizing and regulating marijuana, the government is also seeking to restrict the role of organized crime in selling and distributing marijuana.
If we decriminalize before fully exploring all of the elements of legalization, we are giving organized crime an opportunity to further entrench its involvement in the illegal marijuana market. It will be even harder to get these criminal enterprises out of the marijuana trade once we legalize.
There are many other aspects of marijuana legalization that will need to be considered, and the task force will do that. It will look at such issues as the impact on criminal records for simple possession, for example, and I know the impact on ordinary Canadians is a major impetus for the motion before us.
We must consider how the new regime will impact organized crime. If we were to decriminalize marijuana without implementing a legal and regulatory framework at the same time, we would be fully and completely surrendering to organized crime groups, which must be combatted, punished, and deprived of their sources of income.
It would be irresponsible for us to decriminalize marijuana before legalizing it. Until it is legalized, the existing laws must be upheld and enforced.
I therefore invite and urge all members to vote against this motion.
