Go further on pot amnesty
The Trudeau government deserves only half a cheer for promising to make it easier for people convicted of minor cannabisrelated offences to obtain pardons.
Now that cannabis has been legalized in this country, it’s the very least the government could do to redress the injustice for the estimated 500,000 Canadians who have a criminal record for possessing pot.
But we won’t offer a truly enthusiastic round of applause because the pardon measures announced last week by Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale don’t go nearly far enough.
It is disappointing, to begin with, that the government could offer only a sketchy outline of what it intends to do to right this injustice.
The government has been working on legalizing pot ever since it was elected three years ago, and the date that would come into effect had been known for months. Yet it was not ready with legislation on the much-discussed issue of pardons. All Goodale could do was promise that a bill to put this into effect will be introduced by the end of the year.
That keeps many thousands of Canadians waiting months longer to have the shadow of a cannabis conviction lifted from them. As has been well documented, that can have profoundly negative effects on their ability to get housing, obtain a job, volunteer or enter another country.
Goodale did spell out some important and positive steps last week. He said the normal application fee of $631 will be waived, and the standard waiting periods (five or10 years, depending on the type of conviction) will be eliminated. That’s all to the good.
However, he made it clear that what the government has in mind amounts to what is known as a “record suspension.” That would not erase a past offence; rather, it would set the conviction aside and keep any record of it out of the main national police database. Anyone asked on a form whether they have been convicted of a criminal offence would still have to answer “yes.”
The government’s plan falls well short of eliminating all records of a past offence, known as expungement. That’s what many defence lawyers, advocates for those with cannabis convictions and the federal New Democrats are calling for, and there’s a strong argument for going in that direction.
By legalizing cannabis, the government is effectively conceding that nearly a century of prohibition of the drug in this country has been at best wrong-headed, and at worst a grave injustice perpetrated against hundreds of thousands of people. Yet from what we know now, its intended remedy will be a half-measure that will put the onus on those convicted to seek a pardon and still leave them vulnerable to potential negative consequences.
One argument against going all the way to full “expungement” of past convictions is that it won’t erase records held by U.S. authorities and so those with past convictions may still find themselves prevented from crossing the border. But the Americans have already made it clear that the pardon policy won’t cut the ice with them anyway, and their policy is that it’s “business as usual” at the border.
Beyond that, the government argues that expungement should be reserved for crimes that amounted to an historical injustice. It has gone that route with Bill C-66, a law passed in June that automatically expunged the records for some past offences related to same-sex relationships. For those affected, it’s as if the conviction never happened.
There’s a good argument, however, to treat cannabis convictions in much the same way. Considerable research has shown the law was applied unevenly, that Indigenous, Black and poor people were penalized much more severely because police and prosecutors chose to use the pot laws as a weapon against them. They disproportionately suffered the effects of a criminal conviction in the past and continue to live with that stigma today.
There may be technical or logistical reasons why past pot convictions can’t all be erased immediately. But, in principle, the government should do all it can to right this injustice as quickly as possible and as fully as possible.