Health committee  Yes, and I'm very glad that he's actually here now.

Health committee  Thank you, honourable members. It's great to be here and to share some thoughts with you. My name is Benedikt Fischer. I'm a senior scientist at the Institute for Mental Health Policy Research at CAMH, and chair in addiction psychiatry of the Department of Psychiatry at the Uni

Health committee  Eighteen, or 19 as decided in Ontario, is a good political compromise, I'd say. It's a good political compromise because it makes the age limits consistent with alcohol and tobacco regulations. It wouldn't make sense otherwise. It wouldn't make sense to let people drink at age 19

Health committee  I supported all along a publicly controlled, public monopoly distribution system. Whether LCBO stores alone will be the best system, I think is in question. I question that personally. I advocated for a hybrid model between public, LCBO-based sales and community storefront outl

Health committee  I'll just add here that of course part of the issue or the challenge is that the genie is out of the bottle a bit, because the bill allows private commercial producers, and quite a few of those issues are tied to that. You cannot really have commercial producers without any brand

Health committee  Since you're asking me that question so directly, I'll tell you that in my opinion the home-growing provision is one of the worst pieces of the current legislative draft, for several reasons. I think it's a very bad idea for public health, because we should not rely on private ho

Health committee  Overall, home growing is probably the worst or the most inappropriate place for cannabis to be produced. We should leave that to licensed production, distribution, and retail outlets.