Proceedings of the Special Committee on
Illegal Drugs
Issue 15 - Evidence - March 18, 2002 (morning meeting)
OTTAWA, Monday, March 18, 2002
The Special Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs met today at 9:07 a.m. to review Canadian drug control laws and policies.
Senator Pierre Claude Nolin (Chairman) is in the Chair.
[Translation]
The Chairman: I see that we have a quorum and therefore, we resume the public debate of the Special Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs.
Colleagues, I am very pleased to welcome you here today.
I want to take this opportunity to welcome those who made the effort to come here and attend this hearing as well as those who are listening to us on the radio, on television, or on the committee's Internet site.
Without further ado, I would like to introduce to you the senators who will sit on the committee today: the Honourable Shirley Maheu, who represents Quebec and the Honourable Tommy Banks, representing Alberta; I am Pierre Claude Nolin, I belong to the Quebec group in the Canadian Senate.
Also members of the committee but who could not attend our meeting today are the Honourable Senator Eileen Rossiter, representing Prince Edward Island and the Committee's Vice-Chairman, the Honourable Colin Kenny, representing Ontario. Next to me are the Committee's Clerk, Mr. Blair Armitage, as well as the Research Director for the Committee, Dr. Daniel Sansfaçon, who is a sociologist.
[English]
The Special Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs has received a mandate to study and report on the actual Canadian policies concerning cannabis in this context, including the efficiency of those policies, their approach, as well as the means and controls used to implement them. In addition to its initial mandate, the committee must examine the official policies adopted by other countries.
Canada's international responsibilities with regard to the conventions on illegal drugs, to which Canada is a signatory, will be examined today. The committee will also study the social and health effects of Canadian drug policies on cannabis, and the potential effects of alternative policies.
[Translation]
Finally, the committee must table its report by the end of August 2002. In order to fulfill the mandate we have been given, the committee has adopted a plan of action. This plan is based on three important issues. The first of these is knowledge.
In order to meet that challenge, we have heard an impressive range of experts, both from Canada and from abroad, from the academic, police, legal, medical, social and government sectors. These hearings are held primarily in Ottawa and, occasionally, out of the capital city.
The second challenge is sharing the knowledge. To my mind, this is certainly the most noble one. The committee wants Canadians everywhere to be informed and to share the information we have collected. Our challenge is to plan and organize a system ensuring accessibility and distribution of this knowledge. We also want to know the views of the Canadian public on this knowledge. To that effect, we will be holding public hearings in various places in Canada in April, May and June.
Finally, as its third challenge, the committee has to examine closely the guiding principles on which a Canadian public drug control policy should be based.
[English]
Before I introduce you to our distinguished experts, I wish to inform you that the committee maintains an up-to- date Web site accessible through the Parliamentary Web site. All committee proceedings are posted, including the briefs and the appropriate support documentation of our expert witnesses. There are also more than 150 links to other related sites.
[Translation]
A few words regarding the committee room we are using today. This room, identified as the Aboriginal People's Room, was designed by the Senate in 1996 as a tribute to the peoples who first occupied the North American territory and who, still today, actively participate in Canada's growth. Five of our colleagues in the Senate are proud representatives of these people.
Today we shall complete the hearing of expert witnesses and review the nature and scope of various international conventions which cover illegal drug control, as well as their consequences for Canada. To do this, we welcome Dr. William B. McAllister, professor at the University of Virginia. In the second stage, we will be hearing from representatives from the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade; from the International Crime Division, we will hear the Director, Mr. Terry Cormier and Mr. Stephen Bolton, International Drug Officer. At the end of the meeting, we will hear from the Executive Secretary of the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission, Mr. David Beall.
Before introducing you as I should Dr. McAllister, I would like to mention that Senator Rossiter has just come in to join us.
[English]
Dr. William B. McAllister received his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in 1996. He is currently a lecturer in history and a faculty consultant at the Teaching Resource Centre of the University of Virginia. Dr. McAllister's Ph.D. dissertation concerned the history of international efforts to control drugs in the 20th century. Since 1996, he has written and presented extensively on the main issues related to international drug control policies. Dr. McAllister is the author of Drug Diplomacy in the 20th Century: An International History, published in the year 2000. He is also a member of the American Historical Association, a reviewer for the Routledge Press and a referee for the Journal of Policy History.
Dr. McAllister, good morning, and thank you for your interest in our committee. As I outlined in my introduction, the concern of the committee is focused on cannabis in this context. That does not limit you to informing us only about cannabis, because information about other illicit drugs would be appreciated. However, for now, our report will concern cannabis.
In the course of the questions and answers, if there are more specific questions that the researcher of the committee wishes to ask you, I will write to you and await your response. The questions and the answers will also be put on the Web site of the committee.
Dr. McAllister, please proceed.
Dr. William B. McAllister, Professor, University of Virginia: First, I want to say that it is lovely to be back in Canada. I am not sure if the committee members are aware of this but I received a research grant from the Canadian Government eight years ago to do research here in Ottawa, at the other end of Wellington Street. It was a valuable and important time in my research. I learned much here that was incredibly important.
I deem today an opportunity to return your investment. I was a graduate student without any particular credentials and the government and people of Canada enabled me to come here and do some important research for my overall thesis and to explore much more carefully than I could otherwise, the role of Canada in the creation and implementation of the international drug control system. I hope you will count your money well spent. I am happy to be here, especially for that reason.
I am really not able to restrict my remarks to cannabis as such because that is not the way that I view the drug issue or the drug problem. Cannabis is in some ways a special case; otherwise, it is really not at all. Therefore, my remarks will be global, after which I will be happy to follow up in discussions to some extent.
We will begin with the drug issue by categorizing the drugs in a certain way. One way to look at the drugs under discussion is the way in which they are controlled by international treaty and national systems of control. The strictest level of control is what I call ``organics,'' which is not really a good term because the chemists do not like it. The point is that those are the classic drugs that are difficult to control such as opiates, heroin, morphine, codeine, coca products, et cetera. Those are the primary classic drugs. Those drugs suffer under the strictest international controls.
The second level of controls, which are somewhat less stringent, are generically referred to as the psychotropic drugs. This is a large group of pharmaceutical drugs that we would typically call ``depressants'' and ``stimulants'' and other such drugs that work on the central nervous system. Their control is somewhat less. As we know, there are no controls at the international level for alcohol and tobacco in terms of consumption. There are various trade controls and all nations have some level of control as well, but it tends to be different.
We have a fourth class of drugs as well, which can often be a drug of abuse — the inhalants or intoxicants. These are toxic substances such as found in glue and paint. Many young people in particular will inhale. This is the only class of drugs that is characterized by the way it is consumed.
When we talk about drug control and drug issues, part of my point is that there is really no way to regulate all of this — especially the last category I mentioned. We tend to have these different levels of control that have historically come about for various reasons. However, they do not match up with what we now consider to be the dangers or the advantages of the drugs involved.
Part of my job today is to explain why things have turned out the way they have. I know this committee is interested in what you might wish to do differently in the future. I will try to direct my remarks to that.
To provide an historical sequence, I will speak briefly to each of the time periods that I think will be of most use to the committee.
The first time period is roughly between 1880 and 1920. This was a period when international drug control became a topic of discussion among the nations of the world and they decided to do something about it. Drugs had been trafficked for a long time previous to that, but a series of factors that became important in the late 19th century made it a topic of diplomatic discourse. My own interpretation of this is that the main factor involved was not medical and nor was it racial prejudice. Rather, it involved geopolitical, strategic and trade issues.
The important country to consider here is China. At the turn of the century, China was falling apart as a nation. One of the main reasons for that was an incredibly problematic situation with opium in the country. There had been many thousands of tonnes of opium imports into the country for a couple of centuries. By the turn of the 20th century, China itself was also producing domestically a huge amount of hope yum. The opium situation in China was frightening for the people who lived there. It was very problematic for the countries that had imperial interests in China, and there was also a lot of fear that this sort of use would spread to other places.
These are the main reasons in my interpretation as to why you begin to get an international movement for drug control at this particular time. It is focused on these particular drugs because they appear to be the most threat to the imperial interests of the countries involved — not just imperial but commercial interests.
Many traders and commercial companies in various western countries were interested in drug control, because they assumed that they could sell more of other products to the Chinese were they not spending all their money on opium. Many different constituencies were in favour of control: For example, missionaries often saw negative impact from opium use in China because it interfered with what they wanted to do. There were many liberals in various countries that believed this was not something in which governments ought to be involved.
By the way, dealing with drugs has always been a problematic issue for governments. One of the early attempts to address this in the 18th century in European colonies in Asia was to have what was called a ``farm system.'' The government would sell the rights to sell opium to some group of entrepreneurs within a particular area. They were typically overseas Chinese who sold to other overseas Chinese. That became problematic in the late 19th century. Many people objected to it.
The governmental policy solution to the drug problem was to create opium monopolies that were controlled and run by the government. The idea was to take the profit out of it. The government would then regulate the opium trade by registering users. Only current users were registered, not new users. The strategy was that the government supplied those current users with opium and as they died out over time, they would eliminate the problem because there would no longer be any legal users.
That did not work. A subsequent difficulty arose when the governments got into the business of deriving some of their revenue from direct distribution of the drugs. That became a real problem morally, ethically and in other ways.
The next attempted solution was to go the international route and to figure out a way to deal with this problem that was more global. By the turn of the century, the trade was really quite global, too, both in licit and illicit substances. Some of the original multinational companies on the planet were pharmaceutical companies, which were selling all over the world early in the 19th century into the mid-19th century.
Between the early 1920s and the mid-1930s there was a series of international discussions and a couple of treaties were negotiated. Those treaties formed the basis for the system that exists today.
Let me make this point before I proceed. The key point to the first segment is simply that there are a number of interests that animate the system. They are geopolitical, strategic commercial and religious — more than medical, racial or nativist, which are often given as some of the reasons.
By the early 1930s, a system was put in place — more or less today's system — that is based on several key tenets, which I will discuss for a few minutes. This will sound familiar to you, but I think it is important to look at the global approach.
Supply control is the first constituent element. The system is clearly intended to limit supply. The thinking has been to reduce the supply to licit needs. Those licit needs are defined as medical, scientific, commercial and research. The assumption has been that if the supply could be limited to those levels, then the excess that would leak into the illicit traffic would no longer be available, and therefore, the problem would go away.
That seems to be problematic thinking from our early 21st century point of view. However, this was very much a point of view that has been with people who have thought about this problem for a long time. There was some historical precedent to indicate that it might have actually worked that way at one point in time. I think that that was fallacious thinking at the time, but people — because of some agreements among the Indians, the Chinese and the British in the early 20th century — had some reason to believe it might actually work. However, the supply control way of thinking about the issue still animates the system very much.
The second thing — especially important for this committee — is that there were a lot of discussions in the 1920s about whether it would be possible and advisable to have an international agency that would have a lot of power. The agency would be able to dictate to states how they should behave in this issue area. Those attempts were all defeated.
National controls retain pride of place in the system. The international system provides a guide and a veneer as well as all sorts of rules and regulations. However, governments were never willing to give up their prerogatives as nations to an extent significant such to allow an international agency to interfere with traffic in licit substances, which is what this is about. The system is set up to facilitate the traffic of licit substances around the globe without too much prejudice and also to try to cut down on illicit traffic, hence the supply control approach.
Third, the system is set up in what is referred to as ``indirect control'' rather than ``direct control.'' There were discussions in the 1920s and 1930s, and also in the 1950s and 1960s, that direct control might be possible. Direct control would have been a supranational agency — an international agency that would have had the power to a approve drug transactions before they took place. A government or a company that wanted to import or export a particular drug for licit purposes would have had to get approval from some international agency before the trade would take place.
That is a more powerful and robust system. Yet, that was also defeated partly because governments were not interested in giving up that level of prerogative. The traders and pharmaceutical companies involved were not interested in allowing that level of control over their legitimate business.
Instead, we have an indirect control system through the International Narcotics Control Board and the Commission of Narcotic Drugs. Basically, they collect statistics after the fact. They look at those statistics after the fact. If they see some anomaly or problem, they bring that to the attention of governments after the fact.
That is the way the system is built, for better or for worse.
Fourth, and very important, the system has always been steeped in the principles of free trade. All governments — especially a government like Canada — have always been interested in being able to acquire medicinal substances for licit purposes at a reasonable price. If you limit access too much, if you limit production too much or if you limit manufacturing too much, the price goes up. Governments are not interested in that, nor are the pharmaceutical companies that often import the raw materials and create the finished products.
These two tenets of the system are fundamentally opposed to each other. You cannot have a system in which the idea is to eliminate illicit use by controlling the supply and also have a system in which you have low prices. To have low prices, you have to have more supply than there is need. Therefore, the system is fundamentally problematic in the way it was created. This is part of the problem we have to deal with now.
The free trade imperative will not go away. There will always be more supply than demand because that is the only way that they are affordable. We have to keep in mind that there are many licit uses for most of these drugs, as well.
I am sure that you are aware of the schedules for control in the international treaties and in our national legislation. This approach was invented in 1931 to placate the Germans. The Germans were the main purveyors of opium products at that time, including heroin, which was still used a lot in medicine, morphine and codeine. The Germans objected during the 1931 negotiations to lumping codeine in with morphine and especially with heroin. They believed that there was no reason to put those two drugs under this same level of control because codeine is a better drug. It is less addictive. The Germans were able to argue that if codeine were placed in a less restrictive schedule, doctors would use it more and there would be less need to use morphine and heroin.
It was a plausible argument and governments felt that they had to accept it because if they did not, the Germans would not sign the treaty and the whole system would be upset. There have always been governments that have been able the play the rules to their own advantage. These governments have primarily been those who represent major pharmaceutical interests in the 20th century. It all adds up to this: The system is not meant to prohibit drugs, it is meant to regulate and control the flow of drugs.
The functional effect of this is what I call a ``comparative regulatory advantage.'' That means that a particular pharmaceutical company will try to create drugs that will be scheduled at a lower level than their competitor's drugs. That gives them a comparative advantage in the regulations systems around the world and they can sell more of their drugs than their competitors can sell.
This system drives research and development agendas and much of what occurs in terms of making the regulations at the international level. The vast majority of discussions during the 20th century were not about how to help addicts get off drugs. The main discussions were about how to protect commercial and manufacturing interests and how to limit the supply of these classic, organic drugs — those primarily from Third World countries — to reduce the illicit traffic.
That is how the system developed. It has much to do with power and many other complications. For example, strategically, opium has been an important drug for national defence considerations. During the early part of the cold war, when it was thought that there might be a nuclear exchange, after which there would be survivors, although the casualties would be massive, western governments had to stockpile opium, which could then be turned into morphine in case their citizens had need of it. No one had any interest in making the supply so restricted that it was not possible to buy what was needed to protect the citizenry from various catastrophes.
There are many factors involved that are not medical. It will always be that way. If your intent is to take this out of the economic/geopolitical realm and move it into the medical realm, it will not work.
After the mid-1930s, there was a long period of time when the people who ran the system attempted to make it work. They implemented the system and fiddled with the rules to try various ways to make it work. That continued until the drug explosion of the late 1960s.
The system is not monolithic. There have always been discussions about what the rules ought to be and how they ought to be interpreted and implemented. You are not facing an international regime that is so overwhelming that you have no room to manoeuvre. There have always been questions about what to do and how to do it. Sometimes the discussions have been open and other times quite subterranean. Certain governments have been able to control that debate, but there is room to think about this and to consider alternatives.
During the fourth period, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, there was a great deal of drug use. I think I discovered in my research that it was really quite global — it was not occurring in just the U.S. or Canada or Western Europe. There was also an explosion of drug use in Third World countries as well as inside the Soviet Union and the east bloc countries. Interestingly, I came across some data in the Canadian archives provided by the attaché in Havana who said that there was a big upswing in drug use in Cuba in the late 1960s.
Something happened in the mid-to-late-1960s that changed use of drugs across the world. Drug use became more prominent among groups of people who were much more mainstream — not members of ethnic minorities or other outcast groups. They were children of senators and other higher profile individuals.
This caused much consternation within the international system and the way it developed. People asked many questions about what we should do. I would argue that we are still in that same period, even though the 1960s and early 1970s kicked this off.
There are three things that have characterized the system since the 1970s: It has become more bureaucratized, more professionalized and more globalized. This is true at all levels, not just the U.N. and not just the national drug control agencies. This is true of pharmaceutical companies, drug traffickers and police organizations. Everyone has become more professional, bureaucratic and global in the way that they deal with the drug issue.
For this committee, it means that it is more difficult to effect a change in the system. Until the early 1960s, things could have turned out differently if a few key individuals had made alternative decisions. It is not true any more; it is much more difficult to nudge the system in different directions. However, it is possible to do.
Individual governments must deal with the issue — even though the problem is transnational and global at this point. They can make individual changes that have a cumulative effect over time. That has always been the case and always will be the case and is still possible to do.
That is the historical sequence.
With respect to the way I have characterized the countries involved, Canada plays an important role. We have a number of states that I have called ``producing states'' where opium and coca are grown. These would be Latin American countries for coca and countries along the southern tier of Asia for opium. They have traditionally had a particular point of view on the subject such that if a nation has a demand problem, they must deal with it domestically. The countries of origin will not do anything about it, beyond a certain point. Although at times that viewpoint has been disingenuous on the part of those governments, it is also quite accurate.
The ``manufacturing states'' that have significant pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity have been interested in supporting their pharmaceutical industries. These are the usual suspects: the Swiss, the Germans, the Americans, the British, the Japanese and, to a lesser extent, the French.
Canada falls into a third category, which includes the vast majority of states, which is the ``consuming nations.'' These nations do not have a large pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity and they do not grow organic substances themselves. These are the end users in the supply chain. Canada has always been a leader among this group. Since the 1920s, Canada has played an important part in arguing for a balance within the system — a balance in which Canadian national medical needs could be met at a reasonable price and at the same time, Canada was never interested in a free- flowing, open market for drugs.
In a way, this committee represents Canada's continuing role as a moderate player arguing in favour of and looking for a middle solution to this problem. That would allow various constituencies involved to have their needs met without, at the same time, becoming mired in a system that is so open it would lead to a serious new level of drug abuse.
I read some of the committee Web site reports. My sense is that you are currently trying to determine a way in which to deal with these issues that is, perhaps, a bit different.
Some key themes have animated the system. Contrary to most of the writing on this topic, the people who make the rules at the international level — which usually involves much national representation — have been acutely aware of the geopolitical, religious, cultural, commercial and economic factors. This has not been a matter of ignorant people who did not like the Chinese and did not want them to have opium, or did not like Black people and did not want them to be using cocaine. It is necessary, if one is going to deal in the international system, to look at all the factors involved and take them into account.
Additionally, attitudes about drugs have not changed much and have not been very different from one western industrialized state to another. Although it is popular to blame the United States for the domestic legislative woes of other countries, it is only accurate to some extent.
Canada has had its own approach to the drug issue for a long time, and I am not sure it would have been radically different if the United States had not attempted to impose its own solutions on other countries. In the early 20th century, Canadians were heading in the same directions in terms of their concerns about the drug issue and what they wanted to do about it. There have been times in the 20th century — for example in the mid 1950s — when the Canadians openly challenged certain aspects of the American approach to drug control and enforcement. Obviously, Ottawa did not fall off the map at that point.
It is possible to steer your own course, and Canada has done so many times in the past. One of the most interesting parts of my research is to resurrect the role of Dr. Robert E. Curran, a Canadian who is most important for the single convention as it now stands. He took made a great effort to reconcile the various factors and players involved to come up with a typically moderate, Canadian-hewed approach to this issue.
At the national level, Canadians have been able the steer their own course when they chose to, and at the international level individual Canadians and the Canadian government have been important in producing the system as it now exists. Hence, it is your issue as well — not something imposed by the United States.
The key distinction enshrined in the system is the difference between medical, industrial, commercial and scientific uses on the one hand, which are considered to be legitimate, and recreational use on the other hand, which, since the early 20th century, has been considered to be illegitimate. Governments have choices in dealing with this issue. One choice is to work within the paradigm — continuing to consider recreational use to be fundamentally illicit. Another choice is to reject the notion that people's recreational use of the drug is illegitimate. Those are fundamental choices.
The latter direction leads you into certain regulatory territory. If you choose to stay within the 20th century paradigm, legitimate uses are acceptable, while people illicitly self-medicating for whatever reasons they choose leads to a different set of regulatory choices.
I would urge you to consider the power of informal controls. The clearest case we have is tobacco. Access laws to tobacco have not changed for a long time, yet in many western countries tobacco use has decreased substantially. The best controls are those people impose on themselves. It is possible to use the media, legislation or the bully pulpit to encourage people not to use substances without passing laws against it. For example, one of the things the Dutch claim about their system is that opium and heroin users have a loser status in the Netherlands. Most young people do not want to be like that because they see this cohort of older heroin users who have not done anything with their lives and they are not the type of person young people want to emulate. That is an example of an informal sort of control.
Is it possible to craft legislation and an approach to this process that fosters informal controls, which can be more effective than the formal ones? I think it is possible, but it depends on how that is done.
An important question is not whether there ought to be access to a particular substance, but, rather, who should be granted the authority to regulate access and under what conditions. There is no society in the history of the planet that we can find that has allowed unfettered access to drugs. All societies have some sort of controls. Previous to the modern era, it was typically religious control by members of the religious elite, cultural or, sometimes, governmental control.
No societies allow people to use and access drugs at any time. The reason is that the public will not tolerate it. What we have seen, in many centuries previous to the 20th century, is that drugs that have psychoactive properties will be abused by some people and people who live in that society will not tolerate that indefinitely. They want some sort of control. The question is who gets to decide who uses what and when.
Finally, I would urge honourable senators to try to avoid ``bottleneck thinking,'' which is something I have noticed about the control system, but it also applies to other aspects of the drug question. The control system has always had this thinking that if the key bottleneck areas in the illicit supply — a particular king-pin or cartel — are choked off, the problem can be eliminated.
The classic number you should listen for in the news is 80 per cent. Throughout the 20th century, there has been a particular country or area of the world that has been tagged as the primary purveyor of a certain drug. In normal political times, the number is 70 per cent — for example, 70 per cent of the world's heroin supply comes from Asia. However, when the number reaches 80 per cent there is a political or commercial factor involved.
The most recent example of this is Afghanistan. How did Tony Blair justify British intervention in Afghanistan? Suddenly, 80 per cent of the heroin in the world is coming from there. The implicit assumption is one of supply and control. If the supply is stopped, the problem will go away. Of course, this does not happen. Bottleneck thinking has suffused approaches to try to deal with the drug problem throughout the 20th century. I would urge you to stay away from that path. It is not realistic; the problem is more elastic than that.
It is also possible to see bottleneck thinking at the other end. For example, if more money were spent on drug treatment in this country, you would be expect to have a certain number of people to fill your beds — you set up the system so that you have enough drug treatment programs for all the addicts in your society. What might happen is that you find that more people want it and need it than you think. Another thing that might happen is that even if all the people who want treatment get it, other people still will not want to make use of it, or they will make use of it and will have continuing problems.
My point is that getting away from supply control and moving completely towards treatment is another form of bottleneck thinking. The trick is to look at the entire problem and attempt to craft solutions that are balanced and apply to all of its aspects.
Can you define success objectively? Is it possible to define criteria that are measurable? In this and all countries, people do not say that we have an evil transportation problem. We have tens of thousands of people who are killed on the roads every year. People do not suggest we do away with the roads or vehicles. We do things to make the roads, vehicles and drivers safer. We have drunk driving laws and so forth. We understand that to have transportation, there will be a certain amount of deaths accompanying it.
Is it politically conceivable to identify a target for acceptable drug abuse? If we could get our drug abuse level down to a particular percentage of our population for a particular drug or of drug use overall, would we consider that to be good enough? If we can hold it there, we can move our resources around and keep it that low.
Politically, that is difficult to say because we have always wanted to say that all drug abuse is bad. We want to get rid of all of it. We always tend to talk about this issue in terms of our children. It is easy to talk about children and drug abuse because they do not vote.
What is the lowest level that is acceptable to a society? If it is possible to have that discussion openly and arrive at a number or a target range, it is more likely to have a realistic set of expectations as to what one can do.
The pyramid that I put up originally indicates that there are many drugs that society wants, uses and needs. They tend to fall into category B. We already categorize drugs in our societies and it is possible to do it more. It is possible to be more careful and explicit about it.
However, it is a difficult and thorny political issue, and it will always be. I want to commend the committee for taking it on in such a straightforward way.
The Chairman: Thank you. I will start with questions, and then I will open the discussion. Let us return to the point that you made about deciding whether is it illegal to have recreational use of a substance. Do you remember that one?
Dr. McAllister: Yes.
The Chairman: Last week, we heard a lawyer who is in front of the Supreme Court arguing that moral values have changed. I do not know if you are familiar with the constitutional framework in Canada. Since 1982, we have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms enshrined in our constitution. We can now say that Canada is a constitutional democracy. Prior to that date, it was a parliamentary democracy where Parliament was the ultimate decision maker. Under the rule of law principle, everything decided and legislated by Parliament was final. That was the ``déluge,'' as we say in French.
The argument we heard was that this is no longer the case because we are now a constitutional democracy. If moral values are not supported by fundamental rights, enshrined and protected by the Charter, the court will have to decide that morality is no more a base or a support to decide if it is right or wrong. Do you understand what I mean?
Dr. McAllister: I think so.
The Chairman: I go back to your recommendation. Do you think that this committee can support such a principle, keeping in mind that the three conventions in force specifically outline the principle that those conventions are not to contravene a national constitution or fundamental law? Basically, morality is not a principle. It is not a value. Would you comment on that?
Dr. McAllister: I would not argue that. I would argue that one's definition of morality is important. The classical moral viewpoint has been that these ``substances'' are bad and that illicit use of them is bad. It a moral hazard to society. That is based on real life experience.
At the same time, all of these substances have licit uses. There are many substances that really do not suffer at the same level of control that one might think considering their level of danger to society. The psychotropic drugs suffer under a less rigorous regime of control and regulation than the traditional drugs of abuse, even though it is clear that societies have major abuse problems with those substances.
It is possible to argue from a moral standpoint in which one says that we have a Charter of Rights in Canada, and we have a moral view that it is important to protect the individual rights and liberties of our people. There is much discussion about whether implementation of drug laws is too invasive into people's personal lives.
The Chairman: I would like to give you the bigger picture behind the argument. First, it is focused on recreational cannabis use. It is also built around the ``harm principle,'' in that if there is no significant harm to others, then maybe — they use the word ``maybe'' because there is no evidence of harm to the individual — it should be allowed. There should be no invasion of the individual's freedom and liberties. That is the global picture of the argument.
When you say that the substance is bad, the word ``bad'' is qualified in the argument.
Dr. McAllister: It depends own how one wants to argue. The treaties are not so restrictive that one cannot argue that decriminalizing marijuana usage is forbidden absolutely by the treaties. That is an interpretation to which one must ascribe.
Societal responsibility versus individual freedoms has been one of the great debates of the 20th century. This has been true on many different issues. This is one example where the balance is in question once again.
Whether the drug causes harm to other people depends on one's view of harm. In the early 20th century, the notion was ``if we do not stop drug use immediately, it would potentially cause huge harm in the future.'' This was based on misinformation and lack of information.
From the point of view of someone in 1900, it is not unreasonable to say ``these drugs look like they are dangerous and as some of them have caused huge problems in other countries, cut it off now.'' It was not an unreasonable point of view when one looks it from a societal aspect and wanting to do something proactive.
A century later, we have more experience. We have a wider drug problem and it is possible to define ``harm'' in a different way. Rather than saying that use of a particular drug needs to be stopped immediately so that it does not cause more harm later, we could say that our system causes harm because of the enforcement and other things. That is a perfectly reasonable and moral point of view to adopt.
The Chairman: We say that it is an ethical question.
Dr. McAllister: It depends on what calculation you want to make about a person's individual freedom versus his or her responsibility to society, and how one chooses to construct our responsibility to one another in society.
I cannot answer absolutely. I cooked this up on the plane yesterday. I will display this. Perhaps it will give some perspective. This is what has happened throughout the century in which people have talked about this. There are anti- control sentiments at one end and pro-control sentiments at the other. The arguments tend to fall in the same categories, and they have for the whole century.
One argument is in respect of responsibility: The anti-control advocates have tended to say individual liberty is more important whereas people who have been favour of control have tended to say societal obligation is more important. With respect to governmental regulations, you can be a Conservative or Liberal and argue either way. You can be a Conservative and say, ``We should not have control because that is governmental interference.'' You can be a Liberal and say, ``Personal freedom is involved.'' A Conservative can say, ``The government ought to protect people.'' A Liberal can say, ``The government ought to medicalize the problem and become involved in it.''
In terms of the drug's effects, the anti-control argument throughout the 20th century has focused on specificity of effect. That is an argument that says a particular drug does not have the same effects on everyone; it can vary from person to person. Those arguing for control will say that the effect of the drug is universal; it is always bad therefore, we need to control it and regulate it. You can think about yourself falling into some of these sorts of arguments.
With the competition demand-supply question, people who are anti-control tend to assume the supply and the demand are infinite, and therefore we have to deal with it from that point of view. People who are pro-control tend to argue that there is a finite level of both supply and demand and that, if we can cut it down, we will deal with a lot of the problems.
People who are anti-control tend to see the problem as domestic, saying that this is something we have to deal with ourselves. People who are pro-control see it as a foreign problem, saying that we have to deal with it out there. People in favour of control tend to emphasize the cost of use and abuse, and the people opposed to control tend to emphasize the cost of the control itself.
These types of arguments have animated this discussion in the 19th century, throughout the 20th century and in the 21st century as well, and that is just with the one example I mentioned earlier.
Plenty of people in 1900 understood that alcohol was a major drug problem. Some of those people were called temperance people and others were called prohibitionists. Many of those people figured that one way to deal with it was to impose some controls at the national level and perhaps attempt to impose some controls at the international level. One of their strategies was to support drug control over opiates and cocaine and other drugs like that, the thinking being if we can establish that there is a way to transnationally control those addicting substances, and then later on we can transfer that to alcohol.
In previous times people have understood that alcohol was a drug that carried with it a certain level of moral hazard. They have argued from either a pro-control or an anti-control point of view according to how they make that moral judgment about societal responsibility and obligation versus individual freedom.
Senator Banks: I have a week's worth of questions.
Dr. McAllister: I am not sure I have a week's worth of answers.
Senator Banks: I have come to a personal conclusion: A good analogy is a vacuum and that — whether the substance is alcohol, tobacco or heroin — trying to stop air from rushing into a vacuum is a waste of time. If one wants to do something about the problem, one has to deal with the vacuum, because the other way is just not possible to do. In other words, controlling supply as long as the demand is there will not happen. It is delusional to think otherwise.
You said something this morning that has piqued my curiosity: that decriminalization has been tried before. You said that before the turn of century, there was an attempt by Britain, India and China to decriminalize it by registering the users at the time and supplying them so that the supply does not have to come through criminal organizations. In doing so, they hoped to solve the problem of drug abuse but they did not.
Do you think that that failure on that occasion has any application to the kind of thinking that is going on today?
Dr. McAllister: The answer is yes. Let me elaborate to explain the historical situation a little more. Originally, in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, opium was trafficked around India, what is now Indonesia, Southeast Asia and China. It was just a drug of trade like cloves, spice and everything else. Nobody thought much about it.
When tobacco was introduced into the area, people started smoking it. Then they thought, ``What happens if we mix tobacco and opium?'' They started smoking tobacco and opium mixed together and that turned out to be pretty interesting. Finally, people got rid of the tobacco and simply smoked the opium. By the late 18th century, there was a substantial trade in opium smoking and the opium was being trafficked around, but it was a licit item of commerce.
After an initial period of time in which the trade was completely unregulated, colonial governments decided they could profit from the trade by creating the farm system. They regulated access through a particular conduit. They would find a merchant willing to pay them a commission, and that merchant would then import as much opium as he wanted and he would sell it to whomever he wanted. It was basically a monopoly and the government took a cut. That system was the one that was opposed in the 19th century by various moral reformers. Then the thinking was to take out the middleman and the profit out and let government civil servants handle it.
Senator Banks: That has an application to some thinking today: Let us remove that from the criminal element and make it available on a legal, at least non-criminalized, basis.
Dr. McAllister: The question is: Who gets to regulate access — the government or private entrepreneurs? Historically, when governments get into the business of purveying drugs, they tend to become addicted to the revenue attached. I am sure you are fully aware of the budget here in Canada and how dependent it can be on such things as taxes on alcohol and tobacco. There is no great solution here that will solve the problem. In one sense, you can take the profit out of it in one sense if you have government-controlled shops, but that puts the government in a position of moral hazard.
These opium monopolies were still going on in the 1940s and the Dutch, for example, had a substantial one that they tried to resurrect after World War II when they reoccupied the Dutch East Indies. That was quite embarrassing to a lot of people. Finally, the Americans manoeuvred to get those opium monopolies eliminated. The French had one in French Indo-China, which is now Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, well into the 1950s. The government was selling opium to people. The theory was: We will sell it to them; it will be regulated, controlled and pure. It was making up one-third of the French Indo-Chinese budget in 1952 and 1953. Clearly, there was no incentive to eliminate the trade that way either.
You have a problem no matter what you do. You need to pick your poison, I guess, and be aware of the choices you are making. While government regulation and government sales eliminate some problems, it puts the government in a difficult situation in other ways as well.
Senator Banks: It does. As regards the moral argument, there is an old gag that everyone knows: We have already established what kind of lady the government is; the only question is the price. We are already in the business of purveying two out of the four sins.
With respect to psychotropics, is it not patently absurd and impossible to expect a system to be in place which, on the one hand, is trying to facilitate the international — let us use the same word in each case — traffic in these drugs for certain purposes, yet, on the other hand, at the same time and in the same policy is trying to restrict exactly that traffic? In other words, I want to make it easy for me to sell it to you, but I want to make it hard for that pipeline to be invaded to sell it to that guy over there. Is that not patently absurd?
Dr. McAllister: I would say that it is the way of the world. I would not say that it was absurd. It is the way things are. It is hard to imagine another system that is workable.
One approach might to attempt to eliminate these substances entirely. That will not happen. That is not in anyone's interests. Another option is to go to a system with no controls whatsoever. That is not politically acceptable. It is not workable either. You are left with these lousy choices somewhere in the middle.
The ``B'' drugs — psychotropic drugs — are drugs that we are culturally predisposed to view favourably because they are produced by pharmaceutical manufacturing firms that use a scientific method that has been in place for 150 years. These drugs are imbued with the veneer of science and research and peer review and clinical trials. These are all those that we as westerners like. We feel more safe and comfortable with these sorts of drugs rather than the other drugs that are fundamentally foreign to us. They come from other places; they are administered in ways to which we are not accustomed. Part of this is a cultural bias built into viewing the psychotropic drugs as more acceptable.
At breakfast this morning, we talked about some of the interesting discussions among the diplomatic traffic between the Canadians and the British in the 1950s and 1960s. They were saying that it is funny that the United States seems to have 90 per cent of all the people diagnosed as depressed in the entire world and need a supply of all these drugs. How can that be?
We put ourselves in a situation where it is not so much absurd as it is part of the cultural milieu in which we live. We will not do without this class of drugs. They present all sorts of abuse hazards, but we also need them. The distinction remains between medicinal use on the one hand and illicit use on the other hand, which is considered to be voluntary and not for some sort of medical purpose.
That which is considered medically purposeful has greatly expanded in the course of the 20th century. We are talking about marijuana as an example of a drug that might be used as a painkiller. That definition did not exist a hundred years ago. There was no way to conceive of a medical use of a substance such as that. Culturally, there has been an expansion of the notion of what counts as medical in order to counteract the effect of the control system.
Senator Banks: This is my last question. You talked about the capacity that you think that governments might have to nudge things a little bit. Things cannot be changed on a 90-degree turn on a dime. If you had the unrestricted capacity to do so, where would you nudge what?
Our emphasis is on cannabis. You say that it is inextricable from other things. What would you nudge? In which direction would you nudge it?
Dr. McAllister: Do you mean nudge programmatically or legislatively?
Senator Banks: Legislatively.
Dr. McAllister: I was hoping to avoid that question.
Senator Banks: I know.
Dr. McAllister: I have not studied the marijuana issue in the same detail that you have. For my purposes, the historical study of marijuana over the course of the 20th century shows it to be largely a marginal substance. I have been arguing, to a certain extent, by extrapolation from some of the other drugs that have been more in the front of my own radar screen.
Senator Banks: Give me a global answer then.
Dr. McAllister: This may not be a good answer for you, but the trick is to reduce the level of rhetoric below the level of an absolute moral, ethical and cultural hazard. We should treat the drug question as we do other sorts of issues that have medical, psychological, social and commercial aspects.
Transportation may not seem like a particular good example. Hazardous chemicals may be a good example. Nobody is saying that we need to get rid of all of the hazardous chemicals in the world because they are a threat to humankind. We need them for industry and so forth. However, there is not the moral opprobrium attached to the traffic in hazardous chemicals, as there is in drugs that are potentially psychoactively addicting.
The trick is to figure out how to normalize the discourse so that it is less fraught with some of the weight that has been put upon it over the last century or century and a half. Does that make any sense?
Senator Banks: It would depend on one's moral view. I understand what you mean.
Thank you very much.
Dr. McAllister: Did I dodge that one sufficiently? My goal today as a historian is to have some impact, but not leave fingerprints for another historian in the future.
The Chairman: We have many of questions, and we will write to you on that one. Let us go back to the history of those conventions. Do I understand that it was basically a trade issue more than a criminal issue?
Dr. McAllister: Originally, trade was the primary motivating factor. It was not the only factor. There were many other factors involved, but it was more a trade issue than a medical or criminal issue in the beginning.
There was an attempt to regulate the licit supply to create essentially a barrier so that the ethical pharmaceutical industry could supply the drugs needed, and the unethical suppliers could be knocked out of the system. The original attempt was to track the flow.
It took a long time to figure how much was out there. They had to do many studies in the 1920s. The League of Nations did many studies to determine the actual capacity. The capacity for opium turned out to be an astoundingly high amount. Once they started to ask the questions and collect the data over a couple of years, the low estimate was that the amount of opium in the world was 10 times the medicinal need. The highest estimate was that the amount of opium was 100 times the medicinal need.
The trick then was to figure out how to track the flow and get rid of the excess. To a large extent, it was successful in one sense. In 1880, China alone probably consumed 10,000 or 20,000 tonnes of opium — an astounding amount. That traffic declined greatly over time.
It is not fair to say that the system has been totally decrepit or unsuccessful. The system does — whether you like it or not — designate that which is licit and that which is not. There was no definition until the late 1920s, early 1930s. That which was kosher traffic was not clear. There were many marginal players who would fly into the picture. Many medicines and drugs were flying all over the place without regulation by anyone.
They then put the rules together. Many governments and many pharmaceutical companies tried to ignore or bend the rules. It took until the mid- or late-1930s to get most governments and pharmaceutical companies to play by the rules. It was more clear who was inside the system and who was not. It then became a matter of trying to eliminate those outside the system and regulate those inside the system.
The Chairman: I follow you on opium; it worked in China. Everyone recognizes that when you compare the level of use before and after. When you look at the effectiveness of more control over the century, you must admit that the effectiveness of those conventions was less than average.
Dr. McAllister: In policy history, we almost always see the unintended consequences of policy decisions. It is impossible for legislators to make guesses as to how their policy will affect the generation hence.
One of the dynamics of the 20th century is this ying-yang, or thesis-antithesis, situation in which controls are placed on the system. That, therefore, de facto creates illicit demand and supply, and there will always be players willing to run the risks because the financial reward is higher. What happened in the 1920s and 1930s, the 1950s and 1960s, and the 1980s, was a ratcheting up of the control process and mechanism. In response to that, there was a ratcheting up of trafficking organizations, such that they are much more professional, ruthless and violent than they were at the turn of century. I am not sure they are much more violent than the Chinese traffickers were in the 1930s, because China was in a very bad way until after World War II.
The system itself has created a dynamic that has actually made the problem more difficult and diffused over time.
The Chairman: One of your slides referred to the level of bureaucracy involved in the control process in the latter part of the century. When you have trade and policing as two main objectives in the same framework, at the top of the process, individuals are taking decisions and influencing it. Do you not think it would be preferable to have a clear framework to go after the trading and controlling of the substances on one side and have a coordinated framework aimed at policing, trafficking, money laundering and so on? Would not two sets of objectives work? This is not only about governments, but the people who are paid to follow and be involved in that on a daily basis.
Dr. McAllister: You can argue that is the way the international system has evolved.
The Chairman: I am referring to the WTO.
Dr. McAllister: If you look at the three treaties that are now extant, we have two trade treaties and the third is a policing treaty.
This issue has always been that organizations such as the WTO and its predecessors in the UN and the League of Nations have always been on the outside. Their interests and viewpoint have always been heard, but it has been marginal. It is because of the moral implications that are fraught here in this particular item of trade. It is, in the end, an item of trade — albeit a very special one, because it does not always obey the normal laws of economics. Even with food, people reduce their intake when the price gets too high. That is not always the case with drugs. Sometime it is, but often it is not. It is a special case with a substance that does not obey the normal laws of economics.
To a great extent, the trade organizations have always deferred to the police, medical or control authorities on this particular set of substances because of all the other factors involved that make them special.
The Chairman: In your books and the summaries of what you have written, you have said that the medical and the health concern throughout the process in the last century was never central.
Dr. McAllister: Yes, it has been subordinated.
The Chairman: That is a concern because it is now the big argument. People are harming themselves, so we will impose the rule of law on them. You state that it is trade. That is fine. We agree with that. We are a trading country as is your country and we have sets of international rules that we respect. It is not always easy but we go through the process.
However, the process is blurred. We are not saying that controlling criminality is not a good thing. If the criminals are mixed in the trade, the objective is not being met, at least when you look at the results over the century. It is creating more harm than good.
Of course, we hear people, even today, saying no, it worked relatively well.
Dr. McAllister: ``Relatively well'' is the key phrase. The question is: What are the alternatives? It is impossible for me to imagine a society or a global society that would allow no controls on these substances. On the other hand, the attempts to limit drugs for the last century have proven to be problematic.
I cannot imagine a system in which you could have trade in one area, arrangement of the medical aspects in another, and enforcement in a third, because it seems to me that trade implies a level of enforcement at some point.
Can you give me an example?
The Chairman: What about alcohol? We have not heard anyone argue that there should not be any control. We are hearing that we should be more ``surgical'' in crafting control legislation.
You have mentioned, in your books, the scheduling problem. It is a problem for us as well. We tried to solve it in 1996 with new legislation. However, it continues to be an open debate.
We keep using the example of alcohol when we are trying to craft the proper set of rules to control or regulate. Wine is a very good example. It is a natural substance that you can make in your basement for your own purposes, but you cannot sell it. I keep coming back to the trade issue. We are not saying that the trade concerns or regulations do not imply sanctions. If anyone is familiar with that, Canadians certainly are.
However, it is not the head of the RCMP or the FBI who is directly involved in enforcing of trade regulations at the WTO. That is our concern. It is not that those people are doing a poor job; they are doing the job that the legislation has asked them to do. Maybe they are not at the right place at the right moment.
Dr. McAllister: I will defer to a written question on this one. I want to think about that. I would like to respond to it, and see what I can tell you, arguing from historical extrapolation and offering some comments.
The Chairman: We have very good questions prepared for you, to the effect of your being an American citizen and the reaction of your country if we even talk about changing the sets of controls.
Dr. McAllister: I am not sure I will be able to speak for the American people in any way, but I will give you my sense of it.
The Chairman: Thank you, Dr. McAllister, for appearing before us today.
[Translation]
I want to remind all those interested in the work of the committee that they can read and find information on the subject of illegal drugs by visiting our Internet site. They will find the presentations of all our witnesses, their biographies, all the supporting documentation they felt should be given to us, as well as more than 150 Internet links to other related sites. Finally, they will be able to use this site to write to us.
From the Foreign Affairs and International Trade Department, we are happy to welcome Mr. Terry Cormier and Mr. Stephen Bolton, from the International Crime Division. I want to thank you for accepting our invitation to appear as witnesses before the committee.
You were able to see this morning how interested we are in the international dimension of this issue. You probably know that the committee is primarily concerned with the issue of cannabis. Words, in their context, have a lot of importance and we cannot make a distinction between one substance, even if it is the most popular, and the other substances which are also governed by the conventions. We will have plenty of time to deal with the other substances in another mandate, but for the time being, we are dealing with cannabis.
Your presentation will be followed by a question period and if there are questions arising from your testimony, either from the Research Director or the various Research Officers from the Library of Parliament, I will write to you and look forward to your answers. I wish to mention that the questions and your answers will also be posted on the committee's Internet site.
Mr. Terry Cormier, International Crime Division, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade: First of all, may I thank you for giving us the opportunity to appear today to give you the perspective of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade on international drug policies.
Of course, many components and factors are involved in this issue. I would like to make a 15-minute presentation and if you have questions during this presentation, please feel free to ask them. I will talk about the challenges and the problems that drug issues represent from our point of view.
I will talk about the existing international legal architecture and I will mention some of the most recent international developments, which you are most probably aware of already. In conclusion, I will make a few remarks on the challenges that drug issues represent for our country.
[English]
Mr. Cormier: This is a multi-dimensional issue. There are many facets to the drug question. The first one I would note is the health issue. Other aspects include law enforcement and diplomacy in terms of the international architecture and the conventions that exist.
There are many policy questions that people are grappling with. There are new issues in the question of the use of certain substances in society. There are new policy questions that we, as a country, have to face. I will briefly allude to those. There are financial implications to this; Canada contributes over $2 million per year to international drug control efforts. There are also humanitarian aspects to this in terms of some of the efforts that are made internationally and some of the implications that flow from that.
I would also note that, internationally, the question of substance abuse or question of drugs is one that shows up in many different fora and types of institutions. Substance abuse issues are important in the UN context and the UN architecture is, perhaps, the most important one. They are also important in the OAS context and they turn up in other regional fora, such as in the discussions we have in Asia. Some of the Asian countries want to discuss with us their own experiences with substance abuse, which are different from our experiences.
I would note that different countries have different preoccupations concerning substance abuse. Almost all countries that are members of the United Nations have signed the three UN conventions. These are universally agreed-to conventions. However, different countries do have different preoccupations. For example, for some countries, the use of amphetamine stimulants is a much bigger problem than it is for other countries.
Why is the Department of Foreign Affairs involved in this work? I have made a few notes about the kind of work that we at foreign affairs do on international public safety issues — the kind of work that we are doing in the international crime division.
The work that we do flows from the fact that the world is increasingly integrated. The increasing integration of economies and the ease with which people, money, goods and ideas flow across boundaries is changing the policy environment. It represents enormous benefits to our society in terms of economics, cultural exchanges or any aspect of society that you can imagine.
However, it also represents certain threats — transborder in origin — to the safety and security of Canadians. That is the nature of the work we are doing. We are attempting to protect the safety and security of Canadians from transboundary or international threats. Our work in this area is necessary because these are global threats and only a global response can deal with these types of issues. We see our role as being at the point of the intersection where the domestic hits the international.
All of the issues with which we deal — beyond the drug file — including all the other public safety issues, are broadly horizontal. There are many other government departments and agencies with whom we necessarily work — we do nothing alone.
[Translation]
We work closely with the Department of Justice, the Department of the Solicitor General, the RCMP, CSIS, and depending on the crime involved, other departments. For instance, regarding money laundering, the Department of Finance is very active, and the Department of Industry is very interested in cyber-crime issues.
[English]
The Minister of Industry is very interested in electronic commerce in the government. This public safety international agenda is growing and is the result of the fact that the world is increasingly integrated and there are more of these kinds of threats. This is a situation for you — the work that we are doing.
We must remind ourselves of some of the problems that the international drug trade represents for our societies. These are significant challenges for our societies. It is a debate whether the fact that they are criminal is the cause of these challenges or would we face these challenges no matter the regime in place?
For example, from the enormous international drug trade, we see the issue of corruption. The profits are such that in many countries, the authorities are tempted by that attraction. It engenders violence and can undermine states. The best example of that is in Afghanistan. Narco-traffickers and the regime took control of the state and 70 per cent of the world's production of heroin. The subsequent lack of rule and law created a vacuum that allowed al-Qaeda to set up extensive terrorist training bases and to perpetrate their own objectives. That was directly related, no doubt, to the narco-trafficking that comes out of Afghanistan.
There are economic dislocation consequences to the drug trade internationally. There are health issues and consequences. Money laundering is estimated at $500 billion per year. Profits of the drug trade are laundered internationally. The work that the international community has done with respect to money laundering has been inspired by an effort to try to reach the profits from the illicit trading of substances. Trafficking in firearms is another issue.
These are the problems that the international drug trade represents internationally and the reasons that we are working on them.
I know that your committee has studied this and has had excellent research projects on some of the commissioned studies. However, I would note two large structures that we may want to discuss: the UN, because the three conventions in which you are interested are UN instruments, and the Organization of American States, OAS. Mr. David Beall will be here later to speak to the OAS context.
In the UN context, you are aware that the Economic and Social Council, ECOSOC, is the governing policy board. There is the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, the UN Drug Control Program and the International Narcotics Control Board. The Commission on Narcotic Drugs just held meetings in Vienna last week. The World Health Organization is also an element of this large puzzle and has the ability to make recommendations about the scheduling of drugs under the various conventions.
You have taken a look at these conventions but the first single convention of 1961 had, as its objective, the limiting of production of and trade in prohibited substances. The convention brought together the previous existing instruments to try to structure the UN approach to illicit drugs.
The convention deals with the question of control largely by criminal penalties. That is the inherent approach in the 1961 convention. There are four schedules and cannabis is listed in Schedule 4, which is subject to the highest levels of control, and also in Schedule 1.
The 1971 Psychotropic Convention deals with —
[Translation]
... the availability and use of synthetic psychotropic substances.
[English]
This followed the same template as the single convention. It recognizes medical necessity and has four schedules of control. It has an interesting feature in that it specifically requires that specific drugs be listed. Of course, in the area of psychotropic substances, a change to a molecule on the end of a drug changes it to a new drug.
Normally at meetings of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs there would be additions to the list of drugs in the schedule to the 1971 Convention, because there are new drugs being created all the time.
The 1988 Trafficking Convention is an instrument of international criminal law. It has obligations in it to create and implement specific criminal laws that deal with the trafficking of drugs and psychotropic substances. It specifically obligates parties to fundamentally respect human rights. All of the conventions have clauses in them with respect to consistency with national constitutions and domestic law. Those are the three International UN Conventions that deal with illicit drugs. My language was carefully chosen, but I will repeat it. It is not possible to decriminalize cannabis and be in conformity with the three conventions. That being said, parties to the conventions have latitude with respect to the penalties and sanctions that they impose. As I mentioned, the conventions explicitly recognize the need for harmony with domestic law.
The multilateral evaluation mechanism of the OAS is an example of the direction in which the international debate on substance abuse issues is going. The multilateral evaluation mechanism is an instrument of the Organization of American States Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission — CICAD. It is a peer evaluation mechanism. It takes a look at the substance abuse issue in a very broad context. There are, I believe, over 80 indicators on which countries are asked to report. The indicators are not only on the interdiction and supply side and the enforcement side but also on the demand side and on rehabilitation in areas such as harm reduction. It is a helpful exercise because it broadens the debate and understanding discussion of the issue in a large community.
This commission would make observations about Canadian law and Canadian reports, for instance. Canada finds that kind of dialogue with this organization extremely helpful.
With respect to the challenges relating to substance abuse, our objectives as a ministry of foreign affairs are quite simple. Our primary objective is to protect Canadians and Canadian interests whether they are health concerns, political concerns or human rights. Our other overarching objective is to project Canadian values. In the work we do internationally on these issues and other issues, we are always attempting to reflect who we are as a country. We try to reflect our values, the rule of law and the tolerance and freedom that are very important parts of what Canada is.
With respect to future challenges on substance abuse issues, I would say that we have a big concern about amphetamine-type stimulants and about chemical drugs. We are concerned about the developing technologies that allow the easy production of different substances. It is very easy for someone who has a basic understanding of chemistry to download recipes from the Internet and easily obtain the chemicals to produce an amphetamine-type stimulant. This happens all the time. The profits are enormous. It costs about 50 cents a pop for the raw materials to create the stuff. They are sold for $25 to $30 a pop.
Nanotechnology is something else I would flag. The developing engineering processes allow us to produce, in smaller and smaller quantities, substances that we want. People have told me about the possibility that in the medium- term future — 10 years or less — of having a small unit, not much bigger than a package of cigarettes, that can allow you to produce any kind of molecule you want to adjust your body chemistry.
We as a society will have to deal with those kinds of technologies. This is not science fiction; they are coming at us.
The other big challenge we face is to ensure there is equilibrium between the positions we take domestically and our international commitments and the international environment. There is a constant need for us to be assessing our domestic priorities, in the broader environment of the globe in which we live and the implications that our decisions would have for others.
Those are some of the challenges I would mention.
[Translation]
The international situation is evolving. There are changes.
[English]
I have a Home Office press release dated March 14, 2002, last Thursday. It says that government medical experts recommend reclassification of cannabis. This is the U.K. Home Office. It is a changing environment. You are aware of the approaches that are being taken in some European countries. It is not static. It is changing.
Substance abuse issues now are probably understood internationally in a broader context than was the case 20 years or 30 years ago. There is more attention paid to the demand, the rehabilitation and the harm reduction side of the equation and balancing that with efforts on interdiction and the supply side.
There is also a growing recognition that we have to continue to differentiate between different classes of drugs. There is, today, a broader appreciation of the full range of social, economic, health, political and economic impacts that substance abuses cause in our societies and cause in our interaction with other states.
The point is that it is not a static environment. The international environment is changing.
In conclusion, Canada approaches this work as we approach other work. We attempt to ensure the multilateralization of the norms and standards that we would appropriate for ourselves in the international community. We promote multilateralization of international rules. That has implications for us vis-à-vis our stance on the three conventions.
Substance abuse issues are critical issues and they engage many different actors. That is my presentation to you. I am happy to take any questions.
The Chairman: Does Mr. Bolton have something to add? Are you there for the answers?
Mr. Cormier: Exactly.
Senator Banks: Thank you for the presentation. You may have overheard one of my questions to the previous witness. This is my personal opinion now. You referred a moment ago to more attention being now paid to the demand side than the supply side. As I said to the earlier witness, it would be pointless to try to solve the problem on a vacuum by trying to eliminate air. We cannot do that. I equate those two things. Perhaps it is not a perfect analogy.
I am looking at page 5 of your presentation, which lists the problems of the international drug trade. While I do not think anyone on earth would say that drug trade, licit or illicit, ought to be totally uncontrolled, I would like your comment. Each of those problems — with the sole exception of health issues — exists specifically because of the illegality of the drug trade. No one proposes it but if the drug trade were not illegal, every one of those problems, excepting health, would at least be substantially mitigated, if not eliminated.
That argument is made by those people who are in favour of either decriminalization or lesser sanctions against all sorts of things having to do with drugs, including trafficking and their personal use.
Would you comment on the fact that all the problems, except for health, exist because of the illegality of the drug trade?
Mr. Cormier: That is a position many people take. I am not sure it is 100 per cent the case. For instance, although coffee shops exist in the Netherlands, more than half the cannabis consumed there is purchased in the street. Therefore, there are still some of the challenges of low-level violence or agreements that do not go right.
The fact that this activity is criminal has other implications flowing from it. That seems to me to be obvious.
Senator Banks: A great deal of harm is done to society by people who have, by whatever means, become addicted to drugs — not so much with respect to cannabis. Addiction is something that is hard to understand, but it is the same as food. It is like saying that a person cannot have any food now. They will do horrible things to get food.
Can you comment on the harm by way of that crime inflicted? Not just gang-to-gang, but on each of us, with cars and stores being broken into.
Mr. Cormier: The question comes down to one of balance in terms of a political appreciation as to whether or not other harm is being done to society. The point of view had been taken at some point that harm was being done to society by the use of these substances.
I agree with the premise that the criminalization of a certain activity clearly leads to negative implications.
Senator Banks: I am thinking of the conventional wisdom that the day prohibition ended was the saddest day in Al Capone's life. His business was destroyed on that day.
Mr. Cormier: It is a statement of fact that you have a type of behaviour that is reasonably popular in our society. There is no legal way in which to engage in it so there are necessarily all kinds of illegal activities flowing from this behaviour, which, seemingly, a significant percentage of Canadians engage in.
Senator Banks: What if we wanted to change that? I am referring to your carefully chosen language that said we cannot decriminalize cannabis possession and still be in compliance with the treaties. However, if we wanted to change the nature of the sanctions or sentences imposed in that regard, do we have any room to proceed? There is recognition in those three treaties that they, to some extent, submerge their provisions or they allow domestic law in each case to rise above them and be superior.
Mr. Cormier: I think we have a certain amount of room in terms of the kinds of sanctions that could be applied, yes.
Senator Banks: How much room? How is it restricted? What can we not do?
Mr. Cormier: In terms of our criminal laws, you should be asking someone from the Department of Justice this question.
Senator Banks: They said we should ask you.
Mr. Cormier: That is the problem with many of these kinds of horizontal issues, Senator Banks. I am prepared to take a stab at it.
If Canada was to seek to change the sanctions or the approach with respect to cannabis, there is a whole range of things we would do. These things take place against a backdrop of a range of other discussions, international developments and discussion through the UN agencies or other regional forums. Canada would seek to make any changes to its own approach with respect to substance abuse issues while remaining in compliance with the three conventions.
For decriminalization to occur under the present conventions, they can be reopened, or rewritten. That is a possibility. There are other avenues. One could seek to reschedule drugs in the schedules that are attached to the conventions.
Senator Banks: In respect of the single convention, is it not the case that Canada was not in favour of cannabis being at the highest level of control with respect to those drugs?
Mr. Cormier: I was not there in 1961. I do not know the history of the negotiations. I cannot give you an informed answer to that question.
The Chairman: As I mentioned to Dr. McAllister before you, the Supreme Court of Canada has been asked to rule on the recreational use of marijuana. The defence is using the harm principle as their main argument. They are saying there is no significant harm caused to others and some harm to the user. On the basis of that, they are saying section 7 of the Charter protects an individual in Canada against invasion, not only by the police, but also by the law.
Let us talk about a hypothetical environment. Let us say that next December the Supreme Court of Canada decides our national framework is encroaching on the fundamental rights of individuals, and they will give us a year to change that. What is the department going to do? Those conventions say, first, that they are not to go against national laws. You mentioned that. What will Canada's position be?
Mr. Cormier: That is a truly hypothetical question. A number of cases have gone through the court system seeking redress on exactly the same grounds and they have not been successful. I do not think it is appropriate for me to comment on the attitude that the Supreme Court of Canada might have on this issue. However, the Supreme Court would weigh the arguments put before it and render its judgment, and then the government would, perhaps, be required to respond, depending upon whatever judgment the Supreme Court made.
It is an extraordinarily hypothetical question. From what I understand of the case law that has taken place to date, none of those types of appeals have been successful to date.
The Chairman: This is the first time the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case concerning the possession of a small quantity of marijuana for recreational use. It is the lowest crime in the scheme. In the three previous cases, there is one of small quantity, there is one of possession with the intent of trafficking, but definitely the existence of the convention was evidenced. As you know, conventions are not law in Canada so that, too, is part of the environment in which the Supreme Court will have to decide.
I know it is hypothetical but it is there. That is one of the options. I am sure that you must be preparing for such an outcome from the Supreme Court.
Mr. Cormier: Without knowing what kind of judgment the Supreme Court would make or what kind of comments the Supreme Court would make about the Charter and our international obligations, it is difficult to try to envisage the approaches that could be taken to deal with this gap in our international responsibilities. My department, and I think the Government of Canada, would take very seriously any judgment that the Supreme Court would make.
There are possibilities in terms of either the depenalization of cannabis, rather than decriminalization, or the approaches taken in some jurisdictions where the behaviour remains a criminal offence but is simply not enforced.
The debate, including in the court system, is part of the larger understanding of the question of substance abuse in our societies.
The Chairman: Which countries are currently the principal players in international drug control now?
Mr. Cormier: Which countries? The United States of America is a key player. The International Narcotics Control Board's recent report notes that the United States of America is one of the important players with respect to the control of substances. It challenges countries that move in certain areas. Those are observations in the International Narcotics Control Board's report.
Other countries that are players are countries that are dealing with the problems that are associated with drugs in society. The U.K. has significant problems of substance abuse, including heroin. It flows that U.K. is a player internationally on this.
Canada is a player on the question of illegal substances in our societies. Work has been done, for instance, in the OAS context with a Canadian in the chair. The former Deputy Solicitor General of Canada chaired the OAS process that resulted in the multi-lateral evaluation mechanism.
Many countries are players, because every country is dealing with the problems that substance abuse represents in our societies.
The Chairman: Are there discussions regarding possible amendments to the conventions that will allow some room to manoeuvre and allow a country to have approaches that are more novel?
Mr. Cormier: There are no formal discussions or even informal discussions of which I am aware to reopen the conventions.
The Chairman: Is the CDSA, the Controlled Drugs and Substance Act, adopted by Parliament in 1996, compliant with our international obligations?
Mr. Cormier: Yes, I have never heard any indication that the 1996 law does not in any way meet all of our international obligations.
The Chairman: You have mentioned in your text that it was impossible to adopt a decriminalization scheme in respect to conventions. What was the international reaction 25 years ago, and since, towards the actions of the Netherlands?
Mr. Cormier: The reaction was quite varied and mixed, depending on who is talking. There is no one international reaction. Those favouring a more liberal approach to substance abuse issues would have applauded the Netherlands' initiatives. Those who believe that making these substances readily available is wrong and harmful to society would have been highly critical. There is no one international reaction.
The Chairman: I want to be a little more specific. When I mention international reaction, I am referring to the other signatories of the conventions. Has there been, or is there currently, any discussion pertaining to how to deal with those countries that are adopting changes? As you know, the Netherlands are not alone. Belgium has issued notice to their police and to the controlling bodies of the country that basically decriminalizes personal possession of marijuana for personal use. Switzerland is not a signatory to the 1988 convention, but they are basically looking at a specific bill to legalize personal use of marijuana. Spain, Italy and Portugal are considering the same. Probably the only country in Europe not doing that is Sweden.
What is Canada's position towards that?
Mr. Cormier: What is Canada's position towards what?
The Chairman: That which is happening in Europe. It is almost a revolution.
Mr. Cormier: Our position is one of a very interested observer in the initiatives and approaches that other countries are taking with respect to substance abuse issues.
You are asking if we can find some way to capture how the official international community responds. The report of the International Narcotics Control Board just came out in February. Your researchers might want to have a copy of this. The report contains a section on control of cannabis in this report that is only several weeks old. The board makes observations about the Netherlands. You can read the kind of language that is used. It also makes observations about Switzerland's draft legislation, which goes quite a ways. The draft Swiss legislation is very far-reaching.
The Chairman: Yes, we have heard officials from Switzerland.
Mr. Cormier: This International Narcotics Control Board report, for instance, states that the draft Swiss legislation, if enacted, would contravene not only the letter but also the spirit and essential objectives of international drug control treaties. For international bureaucratic language, that is pretty stiff language.
The Chairman: It is like having lawyers in front of you. They will say that. The Swiss government has asked three independent opinions on the treaties.
We have access to those opinions. I do not know if you have read them or if you are informed of them. I see Mr. Bolton nodding; perhaps he wants to comment.
Stephen Bolton, International Drug Officer, International Crime Division, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade: I was here when the Swiss witnesses were making their presentations. I spoke with them on the margins of their testimony. I also spoke with them at the meeting of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs last week in Vienna.
You are asking about the existing concerns. Last week at the meeting, it became clear that, although many West European countries are moving towards a more liberalized approach — or at least exploring that direction, towards cannabis — there are many countries in the developing world that view such an approach with some trepidation and concern.
That became clear to us at this Commission on Narcotic Drugs. When the International Narcotic Control Board, INCB, made its presentation, it was clear that there are two camps: the West European camp and the rest of the world. If you are looking at concerns, the international community looks at the findings of the International Narcotics Control Board's report closely. The point of the INCB is to monitor compliance with the three conventions.
The Chairman: You have almost read my mind when you raise the issue of current concerns, which we should label. Are they economic interests, trade concerns, health-related concerns, criminal activities, including trafficking and money laundering — which we should label as a criminal concern? How will we name all the concerns? Let us be more specific. Are they afraid of losing international financial support? We can ask if that is a concern.
Mr. Bolton: Are you speaking about the concerns of the developing countries?
The Chairman: I am talking about the concerns of both camps that you mentioned: the more developed countries of Europe and the developing world.
Mr. Bolton: Countries are looking to the International Narcotics Control Board for consistency. The INCB is looking for compliance and consistency with the three conventions.
When the developing looks to what is happening — we cannot speak for them — the opinions expressed have been that there has to be one system. If we have an international drug control regime, it must be consistent and it must be global. If one part of the world is moving this way on cannabis, and the other part of the world is still moving that way on cannabis, there has to be some sort of discourse or dialogue in a body such as the Commission on Narcotic Drugs. That is its place — to round up the differing opinions and voice them.
Perhaps the importance is not the name of the concern but that there is consistency in the international community when dealing with the problem. There are concerns that developing countries are making progress when it comes to dealing with cannabis in their countries. It is an understandable position for them to say that there must be consistency.
Senator Banks: My question pursues the same line in respect of Mr. Bolton's comments. It seems that there already that inconsistency and it has existed for some time. You are right; people have to look for a rationalization.
Mr. Cormier, your specific concern is international crime and Canada's relations with others having to do with international crime. Mr. Bolton, you are familiar with this as well.
I will narrow the question to the matter of the United States. Whereas we might have one opinion or attitude about what is happening in Western Europe, we would have a different attitude with respect to the United States because we are next door to them. That is similar to the sense that the Netherlands has a different attitude in respect of Germany because of their proximity.
We have heard, by the way, that, whereas the pendulum swung far in one direction in Germany and on behalf of the German government when the Netherlands first introduced its liberalization, the pendulum has swung back towards the middle, as they are wont to do.
Specifically concerning this question addressing cannabis and the reaction of the United States, with whom we have con-commitments of interest in many areas with the long border, trade, et cetera, I am asking personal opinions of you. What do you think the reaction of your counterparts would be — the people with whom you deal in law enforcement in the United States, about 23 different agencies — if Canada were to substantially and publicly change, liberalize and reduce the effect of the sentences having to do with simple possession?
There are many considerations to be made before doing that. We do not want to become a vacuum. We do not want bad guys coming here from all over the world. It would be easy for someone from Montana or Oregon to come into Canada if they can suddenly obtain all the grass they want.
Aside from that fact, how tough would it be for our diplomats? How tough would it be for you in terms of the enforcement agencies? Would we become a North American pariah if we were to do that?
Mr. Cormier: That is another hypothetical question.
Clearly, the reaction of the United States of America to any changes to our drug laws would be an important consideration for our government. It is difficult to imagine and it would depend on the circumstances.
Senator Banks: Let me narrow it down.
You said ``law.'' My question will be less hypothetical: We do not change the law; and we are still in compliance with the three international conventions. However, we change, without changing the law, the sanctions that we apply under the law.
Mr. Cormier: Again, it depends on to whom you are referring in the United States of America. There is a debate in the U.S. on this particular issue, just as there is in Canada. You are well aware that there are six U.S. states that have passed referenda, or moved motions with respect to decriminalization.
You are aware also that there are moves in various parts of the United States that advocate a greater liberalization. Then there are law enforcement and other communities that take a strict line in terms of substances in society. The U.S. law is such that ``three strikes and you're out.'' For instance, you can end up in jail for a long time in some parts of the United States if you are caught with a small amount of rock cocaine for the third time. It is a broad discussion and debate, and it would depend on to whom you are talking.
It would also depend at what point you are talking to them because this is a dynamic situation, not static, in Canada and other countries as well. It would depend on the current political posture of the Government of the United States on that particular issue, and that could change easily, of course.
It would depend on the perception of our friends to the south of what the impact of a Canadian move would mean for them and for the international regimes. That would depend on the kind of measures we took; how we took those measures; how we implemented them; what kind of advance notice was given; and what kind of measures, if any, we took to ensure that the steps taken in Canada did not make the substance abuse issue a more difficult one in the U.S.
In the abstract, it remains a difficult question. I do not think it is helpful to try and narrow it down to one specific reaction. You would find important groups in the United States that would be supportive of any liberalization movement in Canada. You would also find very important lobby groups that would be vehemently opposed. It would depend on the exact nature of the move, the circumstances in both Canada the United States and where our own understanding of the challenge in our societies of, in this particular case, cannabis is.
You can try to pin me down further, Senator Banks, but I am not sure I can give a specific reaction. I have spoken to American officials, who, informally, take a less rigorous view or are prepared to consider a wider range of parameters or effects of the policies that are implemented. I have also spoken to U.S. officials who maintain the approach that has been taken by the United States, both domestically and internationally, as being the appropriate one. It is part of the broader debate and discussion, and a very important consideration for Canada in any moves that we would take.
The Chairman: Their reaction would definitely be strong. What would their next step be? I am sure you have in mind some reaction or specific reaction. Can they use economic sanctions against Canada? We have in mind the question of the border. If some food or clothing has traces of THC, ONDCP from Washington may decide one day to stop people with such food or clothing from crossing the border. Could they have that kind of reaction?
We unsuccessfully tried to invite them here. The invitation is still open, because, since November, we have heard one side of the equation from the U.S., not the other side. We want to hear what the administration's reaction would be. Not only what they would do towards us, but what would they say to whomever has an opinion on what they are doing.
Mr. Cormier: We have a very substantial relationship with the United States on public safety issues. Threats to the physical safety and security to Canadians and Americans have many points of intersection. There is a whole range of activity that takes place in cooperation between law enforcement authorities on both sides of the border, such as integrated enforcement teams that work together. We have had substantial discussions with the Americans about public safety issues, not only bilaterally but also in a wide range of multi-lateral forums.
It is important that Canadian decisions be taken in as broad a context as possible. That would be an important feature in our relationship with the United States of America on a full range of public safety, political and economic issues.
We share the continent. We share some kinds of problems. While we are at a similar level of development, we have different approaches to substance abuse, and somewhat different patterns of consumption. Consumption patterns in Canada tend to be lesser across the board than in the United States. That seems to be the evidence we are able to discern.
You are aware that a small amount of cannabis is exported from Canada into the United States. Hydroponically grown B.C. cannabis crosses the border, and there are reasons in terms of the relatively small penalties that exist in Canada if you are caught with a grow operation. If you are caught with a grow operation in the United States the criminal sanctions are likely to be more severe than if you are caught with a grow operation in Canada.
That being said, the amount of Canadian-grown cannabis that leaves for the United States is small compared to the total U.S. production and consumption of cannabis. It is not a significant element of the full picture of cannabis usage in the United States.
However, it is a two-way trade. The drug issue has to be considered in a common space. Most of the cocaine coming into Canada comes across the land border. Some people will say that is a more serious problem for our society than is cannabis. I would not want to be asked to make those judgments.
There are other unintended aspects of the drug trade, such as gangs that are setting up shop in our cities, today, with ties to the U.S. The illegal trafficking in firearms that exists, and the differences in our gun control policies and the violence that is then associated with activity such as drug trading.
It is not a simple picture. There would be a significant reaction in the United States. It would depend on how our policy was prepared clear across the board. Politically, we would have to explain to our American friends and neighbours the reasons why Canada developed a democracy with a Charter of Rights and Freedoms and why a safe society might choose a particular course of action with respect to a particular substance. It will all be in the selling. You are correct that one would expect strong reactions — both positive and negative.
The Chairman: That is why I was asking about the Supreme Court. It would help tremendously if the Supreme Court would say something on one side or the other.
Mr. Cormier: You would not want the Supreme Court of Canada to take the position the Supreme Court of the United States has taken.
The Chairman: I want to remain polite and respectful of the court system in the U.S., however, to use your words, politics, geopolitics and the international environment have nothing to do with how courts in Canada decide. They are not asked to support a particular political environment or geopolitical situation. As Canadians, we must admit we have a very good judicial system and we want to ensure that it is independent, impartial and respectful of fundamental rights.
Having said that, I do not want to compare our judicial system at the eye level with what is happening in the southern part of our continent.
You have heard my question to the previous witness on the trade component of those conventions and trade being the impetus towards shaping this framework of international conventions. Licit trade of substance is still an important aspect of your responsibilities. You ensure that Canadians have access to licit drugs at a reasonable price with good quality. I am sure that it is a focus.
Your division is called the International Crime Division. That says a lot about the concerns I expressed to the previous witness. We are trying to be everything in the same conventions. We are trying to cover safe trade, good trading, free trade, and lower price at the same time that we are trying to control criminality, money laundering and international trafficking.
Do not you think that we have a problem with all those objectives in the same conventions? Would it be better to have separate instruments?
Mr. Cormier: The International Narcotic Control Board and its role in the control of the flow of licit and illicit substances perform the duties we need it to perform. We do not feel the need to reopen that convention from a trade point of view. We have in the convention adequate protection and monitoring mechanisms and controlling mechanisms for the flow of licit and illicit substances.
The answer to your question would be no. It depends on the objective you set for yourself with respect to whatever international instrument you have. The purpose of these international instruments was control and was from a criminal kind of mindset.
The Chairman: We heard earlier that that was less the case at the beginning of the various discussions. Then the situation increased and now it is almost only that.
Mr. Cormier: It is almost only trade?
The Chairman: No, criminal control.
Mr. Cormier: There are pendulums. My sense is that the international discussions taking place at meetings of the International Narcotic Control Board and meetings of the OAS are leading towards a broader understanding of the issue than just the criminal dimension. We are moving internationally to discussions, fora and instruments that put these issues in a broader context than simply the criminal element.
The Chairman: I would like to touch another subject unless senators have other questions on the trade issue.
As you know, we were reminded by the Auditor General that most of the federal money is spent on police enforcement and supplier control. We still advocate that we have a four-pillar national drug policy.
I agree that we are a federal system, we have provincial partners. The prevention and treatment side of the equation is more provincial. That is good. I think that Ottawa should spend more money on prevention but that is another question for our report.
What kind of relationship does your department entertain with the provincial and territorial partners on the drug question?
Mr. Cormier: The Department of Foreign Affairs has no contact with the provinces on these issues. The department of health clearly has the leadership role. This goes to the question of horizontal management of issues.
The Department of Foreign Affairs does not seek to manage these issues by itself. We manage these issues interdepartmentally and horizontally with a wide range of other actors, including the department of health and the Solicitor General. The RCMP would have extensive contacts with their provincial interlocutors and counterparts. However, on this particular issue, the Department of Foreign Affairs does not have contact with the provinces.
The Chairman: Let us parallel that with free trade negotiations with the Americans. Of course, we had all the authority at the federal level to negotiate and to ratify and adopt trade treaties. However, we all know that throughout the process, the provinces and territories were involved in the discussion because at the end of the day, not only Ottawa but all the partners had a say in the implementation of those treaties.
Only a stupid individual would say that it is only Ottawa that is dealing with drugs in Canada. Every police organization, even in remote villages, is involved in the drug question. Your answer is that you do not deal with that. Health Canada is doing it.
Mr. Cormier: We, the Department of Foreign Affairs, do not. Health Canada, the RCMP, the Solicitor General and others do. I am sure that there is a range of other actors that have extensive contact with their provincial interlocutors.
Canada would not request a reopening of a convention of proposals — a dramatic move — without an extensive process of consultation. We would be using the partnerships that exist with Health Canada and their provincial counterparts for the work that gets done in dealing with these issues in our communities. It would be the same with the our police agencies who are on the front lines in many ways in terms of dealing with the question of illegal drugs in our communities.
I do not want to leave you with the impression that the Department of Foreign Affairs is unconcerned with the provinces. We have an extensive process of talking to the provinces on a range of issues. At this particular time and on this particular issue, there is not a question to be discussed with the provinces.
Senator Banks: Along Senator Nolin's line of questioning, the conventions are dealing with in the one case the trade and in the other case traffic. I am not sure which is which.
Health Canada probably does not have that much international intelligence-gathering capacity, but you must have some. I presume that while policing, including the enforcement of federal law, is a provincial matter, when you see something coming, at 90-miles an hour down the track, you must tell somebody about it. One would not have to have international intelligence-gathering capacity, which I suspect you do, to know that whatever else they did, the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan certainly reduced, for a time, the production of the agricultural production of opiates. Since they are gone, one assumes that there will be more production in Afghanistan. I am presuming that you would know by international intelligence gathering — which is part of your business — that that is probably going to coming down the pike. You would let the enforcement authorities in this country — which happen to be provincial — know those things. Is that assumption correct?
Mr. Cormier: That is correct. Perhaps we are not letting the provinces know this, but the criminal intelligence work that gets done is shared. The police agencies work cooperatively and share their analyses and intelligence with other partners.
Your assessment of the current situation in Afghanistan is information that the provinces will also have through various means, but not through the Department of Foreign Affairs.
Senator Maheu: I would like to follow this a bit further and touch on something that Mr. Cormier mentioned — an extensive process of discussions with the provinces — and that Senator Banks said about policing being a provincial matter.
I am trying to straighten this out. I do not believe that policing in all provinces is a provincial matter. The RCMP is present in some provinces and they fall under the Solicitor General. We have the area of health, which I will not touch on, but that is, obviously, a totally provincial matter.
When we talk about policing, however, Ontario and Quebec do not have federal policing, which is done by the RCMP. Those provinces have provincial drug control units. I tend to agree with our Chair that the government has much more spending to do on prevention and on issues of policing. In your extensive discussions, do you cover any of these issues? There is unfairness, at least in my opinion, because the RCMP assists provinces out west but does not assist Ontario and Quebec.
Does that become part of your discussion?
Mr. Cormier: Honestly, the answer is no. It really does not become part of our conversation. We have excellent policing in Canada. That is one comment I would freely make to anyone. We are very fortunate in this country to have the national police force that we have; it is exemplary.
With respect to the structure of policing, the RCMP is under contract, I understand, to provide provincial policing in all the provinces except Ontario and Quebec. As a Newfoundlander, I would like to mention that the Newfoundland Constabulary still exists as an independent provincial police force.
Senator Maheu: I was not aware of that.
The Chairman: We often talk about the subject of partners — provincial and territorial partners. Today we will talk with Mr. Beall about the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission, CICAD and the partnership with the countries. We share our knowledge with them and, I would hope, that is not only police knowledge but also the prevention, education and treatment knowledge.
Mr. Cormier: Of course.
The Chairman: That is why the provincial component of the equation is huge in that specific sector of the drug question. Prevention, education and treatment must be part of your dealings with the provinces.
Mr. Cormier: It is part of the development of a national drug strategy, if you like. It is part of the process by which the federal government arrives at an approach in terms of how to deal with substances or drugs in society.
Mr. Bolton will take the floor, but I would like him to talk about an innovative project on the harm reduction — rehabilitation — side that we have put in place in the hemisphere.
Mr. Bolton: I will touch on several issues that arose. First, in talking about drug control, we have two main roles. One is to represent Canada and the Canadian drug control policies abroad, and to communicate that to other countries and international organizations such as the UN and the OAS.
Another main role for us is the reverse: to communicate the drug control policies and messages from other countries and international organizations to Canada.
For the most part, when we do this, we are dealing with other federal agencies. When we receive information that has to do with a policing policy, we will communicate that to the RCMP — to the Solicitor General — and then it will disseminate the information as it sees fit and appropriate. I wanted to clarify our role in this matter.
In terms of prevention, treatment and advocacy by the department, we make a contribution to the Organization of American States, to CICAD and to the UN's International Drug Control Program. When we do this, we make an allocation between supply reduction and demand reduction activities. We do that in a ratio of half to supply reduction and half to demand reduction. When we make our contributions, we are conscious of the necessity to address both aspects of the issue.
Mr. Cormier mentioned the virtual clearinghouse on alcohol, tobacco and other drugs. Through the Human Security Program at DFAIT, we have been making contributions to this. It is basically a Web site, but it is also a repository of credible information on the drug problem. The Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse hosts it currently, but the idea is such that it is for everyone and it will eventually be hosted by either another Canadian organization or an international organization.
That should drive home the point that we are very conscious of both aspects of the problem: supply reduction and the demand reduction. We work hard to build that into our programs, our policies and into the messages that we convey internationally.
The Chairman: Mr. Cormier, you have observed the current activities in other countries. In some European countries — almost all EU countries — there are what they call ``observatoires,'' which are independent bodies that monitor almost everything on the subject for the individual countries and for the EU observatoire in Portugal.
Do you think we should have a similar observatory in Canada?
Mr. Bolton: My opinion is that there is value in having any central repository of information that is accessible to the public and to policy-makers. The vehicle does not matter, provided there is something available to inform policy- making.
The Chairman: If you read the transcript and the various briefs we received from our committee and the Commons committee, you will know that scientific data clearly indicate that the effect of cannabis and the harm caused by it are not significant. What should be Canada's role in sharing the information that we are gathering here?
Mr. Cormier: Canada ought to be as a partner with our international friends in understanding the issue in all of its dimensions and in sharing our assessment and ideas about the appropriate way in which our societies should deal with this. The report of your committee on substance abuse issues, for instance, will be widely read by other international players. The kinds of recommendations you might make to the government will be part of the international discussion and debate that is taking place.
We would, as a matter of course and as a statement of viewpoint, share your report and the government's response. I assume the government would respond to the report that you are aiming to produce by August of this year. We would, as a matter of course, share that with our international partners in an effort to try to ensure that we are sharing our own knowledge, information and best assessment of this particular challenge to our society.
Canada's role is not unique. The discussions that we are having in Canada are taking place in the United Kingdom, the U.S. and in many other jurisdictions. The discussion and debate are international.
Our own perspective on this will carry, in my opinion, considerable weight. On the international stage, Canada is viewed as a body that believes in the international community and in multilateralism; that the international community has to have norms and standards; that these should be developed collaboratively; and that we should work together on these issues.
We have credibility, not only because of the positions we take internationally — which are not seen as self-serving — but because we make helpful contributions to difficult questions. Our voice carries considerable weight internationally, and the views and recommendations of your committee, the Commons committee and the government's response to those recommendations will be an important part of the international debate on this question.
Changes in international norms and standards are not achieved easily and certainly not quickly. It is important that as we move domestically, we move in a coordinated fashion on the international stage.
The Chairman: Are there other questions or comments?
[Translation]
I thank our witnesses. Before concluding this committee meeting, I want to remind all the persons who are interested in the work of the committee that they can read and get information on the topic of illegal drugs by visiting our Internet site at the following address: www.parl.gc.ca. You will find the presentations of all our witnesses as well as their biographies and all the supporting documentation they have provided. You will also find more 150 Internet links related to the issue of illegal drugs. You can also use that address to send us your e-mails.
On behalf of the Special Committee on Illegal Drugs, I wish to thank you for your interest in our important research.We will resume at 1 p.m.
The committee adjourned.