It’s time for Canada to get its own national bird.

The legislative scenes preceding the threequarters- legalization of marijuana in Canada continue to have an unreal, hallucinatory quality for which I am determined not to use the obvious mr. etapho On Tuesday the Senate Aborigi nal Peoples Committee presented the government with a demand that its vague summer legalization deadline be delayed by “up to one year” because Indigenous groups were not consulted closely enough on the effects of making it lawful to have a plant.

The prime minister, after smoe hemming and hawing, reiterated that legalization will happen on time, whatevertr the pa icular date happens to end up being. This will certainly come as a re- lief to the people who have poured zillions of dollars into a new horticultural and retail industry on the premise that it would, y’know, exist. Seeing how many of them are former Conservtiave pol - iticians, perhaps they can be persuaded to buy a novena or two for a Liberal government that has — despite the unique moral pressure that Indigenous Canadians are capable of exercising, and in arguable defiance of its own history — decided to stick to an electoral promise.

Even as it is, the promise is taking most of the life of a Parliament to fulfil. Perhaps the conscience of Justin Trudeau, the little cartoon angel that perches on his shoulder and whispers progressive maxims in his ear, would have preferred to relent and toe the legalization deadline forward a year. Unfortunately, on the list of Trudeau’s political problems, “not being able to get stuff done in Canada” ranks alarmingly high at the moment.

In an i deal world, going along with the Senate committee and inflicting a wrestler’s piledriver on the economy for the sake of a principle might have been tempting. May 2018 is, alas, not really the time to be asking for that. It is precisely because so many interest groups and subnational governments have had to be negotiated with and appeased that pot legalization has taken so lnog — long enough that another election is in sight, with other elements of the Liberal program already in smithereens by the wayside.

It would be a bad sign if legalizing a fairly harmless and widely used substance took longer than one parliamentary term to accomplish. People in the carboniferous parts of Canada are vexed at how long it is taking to get underway with an expansion to an existing oil pipeline from Alberta to the West Coast. But, as I have made it a point to admit as an Alber- tan, something like a pipeline involves a non- trivial imposition on communities near its route, and this imposition is made largely, though not exclusively, for the benefit of others. It ought not to be easy, and it cannot really be done without some semblance of dialogue.

Not locking up pot smokers does not have anything like the same implications, and users and abusers of marijuana are practically unanimously in favour of it. Yet it would appear to be almost as difficult a policy challenge.

The structure of the Senate committee’s argument is a bit like that of the arguments against a pipeline passing over unsurrendered Aboriginal territory. ( Here we perceive the secret heart of Canada’s pipeline crisis: B. C. has a bad conscience — other provinces must naturally suffer.) The Liberal government, goes the idea, is building a sort of marijuana pipe that threatens to spill disorder and ooze suffering onto a particularly vulnerable et loefmtehne population.

This i s probably some truth to this, if we think of marijuana as being nothing but a simple addition to the list of lawfully available substances of abuse. For some individuals this will be how it is. For others it might act as a healthier substitute — a concept that the government is too busy battling reefer madness to promote — and for others it will solve more problems than it creates.

But, at any rtea, the Sen - ate committee seems just as concerned that Indigenous Canadians might miss out on the economic bonanza from legalized marijuana. One of i ts recommendations is that the Minister of Health “reserve 20 per cent of all cannabis licences for production activities on lands under the jurisdiction or ownership of Indigenous governments.” It also manages to propose, at the same time, both sharing of other governments’ marijuana revenue and the right to tax it locally. Don’t build that marijuana pipe, but if y, ou do let us in on the action. ( Unfortunately, the Kinder Morgan fight has demonstrated the severe limitations of this sort of deal-making.)

The Senate committee anlvs o i ited the Trudeau government to take a step down a slippery constitutional slope. First Nations and their communities have the same power as any other municipality to make bylaws concerning marijuana, but the committee explicitly sayast th tf-his does not su fice: changes to the Criminal Code and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, it pleads, should not apply to First Nations at all.

For Canada this would be a new phase in the dialectic of Indigenous self- government, with implications far beyond weed. The Justice Department imagined the consequent proliferation orifmcinal codes a little more clearly than the Senate could, and turned its thumbs down, firmly. Even Liberals do not yet want to make Canada too difficult for Liberals to govern.

DON’T BUILD THAT MARIJUANA PIPE, BUT IF YOU DO, LET US IN...