Marijuana rules remain hazy
Federal minister, provincial counterparts meet to establish common ground on issues
After two days of meetings in Vancouver, the nation’s justice and public safety ministers were vague and hazy Friday about what the looming legalization of cannabis will actually look like.
The ministers said they had a “robust” discussion about the weed, but seemed to agree only that many challenges remained — not the least of which was meeting what was called an “ambitious” July 1 deadline for ending the near-century-old pot prohibition.
“All jurisdictions discussed the issues of supply and demand of cannabis and the importance of addressing youth issues and road safety,” Federal Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould said.
She stressed “the goal of protecting the health of young persons” and emphasized that protecting Canadians was paramount in creating a regulatory framework covering cannabis product safety, labelling, packaging and advertising.
“I think jurisdictions agree generally this process must continue and it must focus on the protection of public health, keeping profits away from criminals, protecting public safety on our roads and keeping cannabis out of the hands of children,” Alberta’s Justice Minister and Solicitor General Kathleen Ganley added.
“We have significant work to do on this file.”
Ganley said her government had already completed the first stage of a consultation process in which it had received feedback from more than 45,000 Alberta residents.
The province was using those survey responses to formulate a legislative framework for legalized cannabis that will be available in a few weeks for public comment.
“Obviously again, this is not an area where you can reach complete consensus,” she noted. “There’s going to be divergent views when you are trying to balance public health, public safety and the protection of our children.”
B.C.’s two hosts of the event — new NDP Attorney General David Eby and Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth — admitted to playing catch up.
“We are a bit behind other provinces because of the election and the subsequent delay in the new government being sworn in, but certainly that issue (consultation) is critical to the framework of how we are going to deal with the issue in B.C.,” said Farnworth, the minister responsible for legalization.
“It was very much an initial meeting for us and an opportunity to hear (things) firsthand. We think it was very useful, certainly helpful for us in terms of our deliberations and the strategies we are going to be taking in terms of implementing the framework, in terms of the needs we have in B.C.”
Since being sworn in July 18, Farnworth’s attention has been focused on the raging wild fires. He only lifted the provincewide state of emergency at midnight Friday.
In spite of his recent appointment, though, it should be remembered Farnworth visited the U.S. to study the experience of the handful of states that have legalized and is familiar with this brief.
“We are looking right now with considerable interest at the program, the model Ontario has announced,” he said.
“What we have said is we have not landed on any specific model at this particular point. Where we are right now is starting the consultation stage — we think that is critically important.”
Farnworth promised he would have more to say about that process at the upcoming meeting of the Union of B.C. Municipalities and insisted no decisions would be made until consultations were finished.
“What was great was to hear not only what is being done,” Farnworth enthused about the meeting, “but to get a good solid understanding of the commonality of the challenges that we face whether it is around the issues of timelines, whether it is around issues of education and enforcement, issues around retail for example, all those things which we are now in a position to make decisions upon. I think we have had some very important discussions.”
Different age limits for consumption of pot and separate regulatory regimes across the country were not considered issues, Alberta’s Ganley said, because there already was a patchwork quilt of tobacco and alcohol regulation covering the nation.