Health Canada adding staff, launches new branch, in preparation for legal pot
Health Canada is taking the lead on the marijuana file in Ottawa in advance of the summer deadline for legalization, overseeing product licensing and regulations, quality monitoring, health research, and public education. In preparation, the department is transforming significantly, according to experts and a former Liberal health minister, adding new inspectors and staff to deal with backlogged licensing […]
Government falling behind on cannabis public education, say critics
Health Canada says it will launch a national public education advertising campaign on cannabis in the spring, though critics say it should have already been in place in order to educate the public ahead of the July 1 legalization deadline. The impaired driving campaign run by Public Safety,“Don’t Drive High”, has been popping up in […]
Must cannabis be grown in Fort Knox?
As the first federal party in Canada to advocate for an end to the futile and counter-productive prohibition policy towards cannabis, the Green Party of Canada welcomes this government’s commitment to legalization. Unfortunately, these efforts are marred by something of a “reefer-madness” mindset. I attempted to amend the legislation to eliminate the extremely severe penalties […]
Sen. Unger relies on incomplete representation to argue her case against marijuana legalization
Re: “Marijuana legislation will not achieve its objectives and should be defeated,” (The Hill Times, online, Dec. 20, 2017). There are so many unsubstantiated or categorically false claims in Conservative Senator Betty Unger’s opinion piece that selecting only a few to discuss seems an impossible task. As we have already seen countless times by her […]
Senate delays: just another urban myth
Everyone knows that the Senate delays government legislation. Don’t we? Well, no we don’t. In fact, the House of Commons tends to take almost three times as long to deal with government legislation as the Senate does. This incontestable fact is based on an actual count of official parliamentary records over the last ten parliaments […]
Marijuana legislation will not achieve its objectives and should be defeated
It’s difficult to remember the last time the federal government and the provinces came to an agreement on revenue sharing in a single day. But that’s what happened last week when the feds agreed to give the provinces 75 per cent of tax revenue generated by the sale of marijuana. Initially, the Trudeau government was […]
Taxing medical cannabis hurts vulnerable patients
With so much attention focused on the Trudeau government’s plans to legalize recreational cannabis, it is important to not forget the thousands of Canadians currently benefiting from treatment with medical cannabis. Unfortunately, some of the decisions the government is making today are disadvantaging those patients. In order to legally purchase medical cannabis, patients require the […]
The nervous, joyless journey to legalize marijuana
GATINEAU, QUE.—The adults of Canada are deeply conflicted about marijuana. By “adults,” I mean most politicians over 30 years old. By “conflicted” I mean that our leaders are in the process of legalizing recreational pot, but they don’t want anyone to think they approve. The grudging message seems to be: you can smoke, as long […]
Pot bill sponsor wants to shake up Senate schedule, but Tories push for status quo
The man who’s set to sponsor the Liberals’ priority cannabis legalization bill in the Senate wants to shake up the normal legislative process, even proposing a field trip to a pot-production facility, but opposition Senators are pouring cold water over his ideas. The Senate should tackle the bill in the same way it approached the […]
Cannabis Act, finance minister’s ethics controversy to be front-and-centre for last sitting stretch of 2017
The House is back for the final four-week legislative stretch of the year and while the government is looking to make progress on its Cannabis Act, Bill C-45, opposition House leaders say they will continue to hammer away at Finance Minister Bill Morneau in the daily 45-minute drama Question Period. “We have a prime minister […]
