Critic pleads against pot with poem
‘Keep our great country safe from all the weed’
OTTAWA — With the Liberal cannabis legalization bill now being debated in the Senate, the Conservative Party’s health critic used poetry Friday to ask for sober second thought.
Marilyn Gladu implored the upper chamber to “keep our great country safe from all the weed” Friday after the Senate’s first debate on Bill C-45, a federal framework for legal marijuana, got underway Thursday afternoon.
The House of Commons passed the bill Monday. It must get through an unpredictable Senate before it can become law. So far, eight provinces and territories have unveiled plans ahead of the government’s July 1, 2018 deadline for Canadians to access legal pot.
Gladu laid out her party’s concerns in verse before question period Friday morning:
“I want to protest an ill-thought out bill that is passing through Parliament here on the Hill.
“The bill that is bad is called C-45. It has so many flaws it just should not survive.
“The Grits will allow four pot plants in each dwelling, regardless of how bad each place will be smelling.
“With mold, ventilation as issues unplanned, this bill will not keep pot from our children’s hands.
“There are more new infractions within this new rule that our courts will be flooded, as will every school.
“With drug impaired driving and challenges there, the doubling of traffic deaths and Liberals do not care.
“The provinces and the police in every town have all asked the Liberals to slow this bill down.
“With nearly 200 more days left ’til the day, nobody but our party stands in the way.
“We hope that the Senate will do its true deed, and keep our great country safe from all the weed.”
Tories have raised eyebrows with some of their arguments against cannabis legislation. Former Conservative environment minister Peter Kent recently suggested pot is similar to fentanyl. Last week he said during a House debate that he felt a family growing a cannabis plant on its property would be “virtually the same as putting fentanyl on a shelf within reach of kids.”
Fentanyl is a powerful opiate that has caused the deaths of hundreds of people in Canada this year alone, but studies have shown marijuana is far less likely to cause substanceabuse death than alcohol.
Earlier this year, Gladu predicted children would become drug mules under the Liberal policy. The bill exempts 12-to-17-yearolds from criminal prosecution for the possession of up to five grams of pot.
“Does the minister not agree that this would put cannabis in the hands of youth? In fact, they would probably become the drug mules at school,” Gladu told the Commons in May.
Former Conservative Senate leader Claude Carignan raised the same concern with the bill’s sponsor, independent Sen. Tony Dean, on Thursday, suggesting the bill would make it A- OK for kids to bring joints to school hallways.
Dean said the government is trying to reduce youth consumption of marijuana with public education, but avoid giving them criminal records. The Canadian Tobacco Alcohol and Drugs survey found in 2015, almost 29 per cent of 15-to19-year-olds had tried pot at least once, and more than 20 per cent had smoked in the past year.
Despite issues raised by his caucus and his own distaste for the bill, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer has publicly acknowledged it would be “very difficult” for a future Tory government to undo legalization if Liberals succeed with what was one of their major campaign promises.
The Senate is separately debating a government bill that adds penalties for drug-impaired driving.
Gladu’s Friday statement was not the only recent attempt to sway senators with poetry: rhymes were recently invoked as a lastditch plea for a Senate vote on the ill-fated national anthem bill. (And the House has a storied history of political rhymes.)