Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  We founded it in 1993.

Justice committee  Yes, it's coming shortly.

Justice committee  No. Its primary goal is to examine Canadian drug laws and policies to see where they're deficient, and if they're deficient to recommend alternatives. First of all, legalization is a very dangerous term to use, because it means many different things to many people. To some peopl

Justice committee  I personally believe there is no value in maintaining the application of the criminal law to the simple possession, production, or distribution of cannabis and that it could be very effectively regulated based on the alcohol model, only without advertising and without excessive c

Justice committee  No. Our foundation has been a public education vehicle. That's most of what we do. Occasionally I appear before parliamentary committees, but essentially our work is.... If you go to our website you'll see we report on this bill, for example. It's listed there, and the background

Justice committee  The RCMP for many years in many of its reports has been saying that the principal source of income for most criminal groups in Canada is the drug trade. What they don't say—what they omit to say—is the very obvious: the reason the drug trade is so lucrative is because of drug pro

Justice committee  No. I'm telling you what the RCMP is telling me. I'm not in a position to go ahead and investigate the revenues of organized crime myself, obviously. I'm relying on reports of the RCMP over probably a period of decades now where they have made such statements. The U.S. President

Justice committee  No, you're not going to wipe out organized crime's finances. Look at Colombia. In Colombia there are two main vehicles for the left-wing guerrillas and the right-wing paramilitaries to get income. One is the drug trade or taxing the drug trade and the other is kidnappings. Kidnap

Justice committee  Yes, certainly, Mr. Harris. Thank you for the question. Portugal about ten years ago introduced a system of essentially a drug-dissuasion committee. Instead of being criminally charged for possessing small quantities of a drug or selling small quantities of drugs, people who wer

Justice committee  I believe it's been done by changing the law. One of the problems is that the international treaties are sometimes cited as an impediment to doing that. I'm not so sure they are the impediment. The Netherlands, for example, has had a long-standing policy of non-prosecution for po

Justice committee  I think Mr. Head would be in a better position to answer what percentage of people who are in there have a drug crime or drug offence as their principal offence. It will vary. As you pointed out, one quarter of all the prisoners in the United States--which incidentally incarcerat

Justice committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm here to speak about the parts of Bill C-10 introducing mandatory minimum penalties for many drug offences, and generally ramping up the so-called war on drugs. I have worked in the criminal justice and drug policy fields for more than three decades. I d