Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Legal and Constitutional Affairs
Issue No. 40 - Evidence - April 19, 2018
OTTAWA, Thursday, April 19, 2018
The Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs met this day at 10:35 a.m. to study to the subject matter of those elements contained in Parts 1, 2, 8, 9 and 14 of Bill C-45; and in camera, for the consideration of a draft agenda (future business).
Senator Serge Joyal (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Welcome, senators. It’s my pleasure to open our morning session on our study of Bill C-45, An Act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other Acts.
We are pleased to welcome this morning Mr. John Dickie, President of the Canadian Federation of Apartment Associations. Welcome. We will ask you to make a presentation, after which honourable senators will have an opportunity to exchange views, questions and comments with you.
Please proceed, Mr. Dickie.
John Dickie, President, Canadian Federation of Apartment Associations: Thank you for inviting me.
The Canadian Federation of Apartment Associations — and I’ll always call it CFAA, because it’s too much of a mouthful otherwise — represents the owners and managers of close to 1 million residential rental units across Canada through 11 associations and direct landlord memberships.
The private rental housing sector provides close to 4 million rental homes for 9 million Canadians of all ages, incomes and situations. The rental homes range from apartments and high-rise towers, to apartments in smaller walk-up apartment buildings, to rented single-family homes, and everything in between.
As well as leading the CFAA, I am an Ontario lawyer, and I specialize in residential tenancy law.
In a single-family home, what an owner occupant does largely affects only themselves, whereas in multiple-unit dwellings, an occupant’s actions in one unit can very often have significant effect on the occupants of other units.
With some restrictions as to grandfathering, landlords in most provinces can ban smoking in rental buildings. Non-smokers’ rights groups want landlords to ban smoking in all apartment buildings, and I speak of both tobacco and marijuana in saying that.
Health Canada is considering whether to advocate for provincial bans on smoking in multi-unit dwellings, whether those are apartments in condos or rental buildings, even though those are people’s homes, of course.
With respect to growing cannabis, that is even more problematic than cannabis smoking. Concerns include safety hazards, health hazards, interference with other residents, and potential damage to the building.
The bill would allow up to four plants of any height in all dwellings, which includes rented dwellings and multi-unit dwellings. That position is problematic. CFAA urges Parliament to prohibit all cannabis-growing in all dwellings for reasons I’ll get into.
We support the position of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, CAMH. On March 29, their senior scientist, Benedikt Fischer, told this committee that “the current bill includes the provision for home growing, home cultivation, as if this was a necessary endeavour to legalize cannabis and make legal consumption available.” We categorically believe this is a misguided position. In other words, cannabis can be legalized, and it can be used without also permitting home growing.
A ban on home growing is also the position of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. I also note that Quebec and Manitoba have either announced or enacted that they are banning all home growing.
We also agree with the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police that whether home growing is allowed or not, there needs to be a limit on the possession of cannabis in private dwellings as well as a limit on possession in the public sphere.
My further remarks go to the ideal cannabis-growing conditions, which are not conducive to human health. For optimal cannabis growing — and I get this from a website called ilovegrowingmarijuana.com, a pro-marijuana website. Until I went to that site a year and a half ago because of this exercise, I didn’t know much about marijuana. Now I think I know a certain amount.
To grow marijuana well, or cannabis well, you need higher humidity and temperatures than are good for people or buildings. You need ample light. In a Canadian winter, ideally you’re going to use a 600-watt high-pressure sodium light, which has quite the power draw. Think of ten 60-watt bulbs. It’s the equivalent of that or more.
In addition, a substantial amount of cannabis can be harvested from a single plant of less than one metre in height. This site describes the “screen of green technique” called ScrOG in which a grower takes a plant, puts a chicken-wire mesh above it and cuts off the top. Then the plant sprouts widely. So from one plant, you could be covering an area a yard or more wide as well as deep, and you could grow considerable marijuana with that technique.
The site suggests a single plant can yield up to a pound — 500 grams — of dried cannabis. Given two or three months for a plant to be ready for harvesting, that would allow four or six crops a year. That would enable someone to grow 16 to 24 pounds of cannabis per year, which is substantially more than anyone would ever use personally.
There are also issues with respect to drying it in ovens, which again adds to power draw. These things lead to potential electrical problems and fire safety problems.
We submit that it is not practical to limit home growing in multi-dwelling units without limiting it to single-family homes. There is too much of an argument of discrimination involved in that. We submit that for everyone’s sake, what is important is that the home growing of marijuana be banned.
I will say one more thing. In my 15 years leading CFAA, I have never received as many calls from landlords and from tenants as I have on this issue. The vast bulk of those callers do not want home growing. Also most, quite frankly, don’t want cannabis smoking near them, but I believe we’re primarily focusing on marijuana growing today.
That’s all I have to say by way of opening. I’m happy to take questions.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Dickie, for being concise and to the point.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: Mr. Dickie, thank you very much for being here this morning. I understand that your main concern is the production of marijuana at home. I will not talk about it any further. There was a recent incident in the Laurentians, I believe, where people were seriously injured. Young people were producing cannabis oil at home. Does your association keep an inventory or statistics of events that may have occurred across Canada where people have produced, for example, cannabis oil, and where there has been damage to property or bodily injury to those who were producing that substance?
[English]
Mr. Dickie: Regrettably, I do not have any statistics on that.
Anecdotally, we also see the news reports of problems with cannabis oil production. Also, crystal meth labs can be devastating. I’m more familiar with damage from crystal meth labs. Recently, there was a case in London where several people were killed in an explosion. There was a case in Montreal.
Cannabis oil production I would say is also a problem, but regrettably, I do not have statistics.
[Translation]
Senator Dupuis: Mr. Dickie, thank you for being here this morning. I have a few very short questions for you. Does your association distinguish between smoking cigarette or pipe tobacco and smoking cannabis? Or is the matter of “smoking” problematic for you? Do you have less of a problem with edibles, such as cannabis that would be consumed in food?
[English]
Mr. Dickie: There are some differences in our sense of smoking cannabis and tobacco. Tobacco, of course, has a long history of common use, but it is more and more being seen as a problem in itself.
With respect to the smoking of marijuana, until this bill is enacted, it is a criminal offence, and landlords in most provinces can try to evict a tenant for a criminal offence. But in Ontario and some of the other larger provinces — B.C., I think — the landlord and tenant board would not normally give an eviction for moderate cannabis use. They would regard it as the public does now: It’s a crime, but it’s not going to be a crime soon and it’s really not a serious crime.
So the issue for both types of smoking is the interference with neighbours. Someone with asthma objects to tobacco smoke as much as marijuana smoke.
There was a second component of your question.
[Translation]
Senator Dupuis: In your association’s view, is the main problem consuming it or using it by smoking rather than eating it, for example? Is that the case?
[English]
Mr. Dickie: With respect to eating cannabis, the only concern would be if cannabis were not well labelled and if there were unduly high doses available. That’s a packaging and labelling issue, as well as a health and safety issue.
The consumption of edibles would have a much lower impact on neighbours. It has a “my kids can get in there and swallow too much” problem, but kids can kill themselves with a bottle of Aspirin. It’s just people being sensible and the packaging being labelled properly to avoid that.
We almost advocate the legalization of edibles because it gives people a way to consume cannabis without having to smoke it.
[Translation]
Senator Dupuis: From your association’s experience, do you have data on the complaints that have been filed? It’s still an illegal activity, but we know that cannabis is grown at home, in some apartment buildings, condos. Do you have data on complaints from other tenants or other owners about second-hand smoke circulating through ventilation systems in newer or even older buildings?
[English]
Mr. Dickie: Again, there are no hard statistics, but there is a level of concern from apartment owners and managers. There is also a question of the fact that rental buildings tend to be older, so they tend not to be sealed as well between units. In low-rise buildings, they might have been built as single-family homes and divided into three. At that point, there’s hardly any separation at all. The penetration of smoke from one unit to another is a big concern, because our interest in this is not so much us; we’re not living there. Our interest is the other tenants. They have been calling me and saying, “Yes, Mr. Dickie, go. Try and get it stopped.” That’s part of the reason I’m here today.
[Translation]
Senator Carignan: Thank you for your testimony. Most building owners have the same concerns as the ones you are sharing with us today. Tenants and condo owners also share your concerns, as they also experience this. I have some buildings and condos. The prohibition on cannabis and the consumption of smoked cannabis have been the subject of several meetings of condo owners. You represent this point of view well.
You said that you have read a bit about cannabis. I would like to draw your attention to how this plant is grown. The higher the degree of humidity, the higher the risk of developing fungi, which is bad for the building. However, if we decrease the humidity level to grow cannabis, we risk causing another phenomenon, the appearance of insects and spider mites, which attack the plant in huge numbers. Expert growers must find a balance to avoid fungi and mites. To do so, they must demonstrate a high level of professionalism.
Have you looked at the issue of contamination of buildings, either by fungi or by insects, especially spider mites, that can spread through buildings?
[English]
Mr. Dickie: Yes, the question of mould has been in the forefront of our minds. It was actually in the written notes I provided, but I cut it out of my opening remarks because of time.
With respect to the spiders and insects, people have not specifically drawn that to my attention, but certainly to the extent that one reads that exact measures of things have to be achieved to avoid problems, that raises serious concerns because the average home grower may not be paying that much attention. The average home grower may raise the humidity a bit.
That’s part of the problem: The plants themselves will apparently raise the humidity, according to evidence accepted by the B.C. Supreme Court in the Allard case about medical marijuana. The plants apparently give off 10 times more moisture than the average house plant. That’s quite substantial. If you have three or four plants and you’re using a “screen of green,” you could practically have a humidarium in there, almost a hothouse situation.
That would be the extreme, but we would certainly want, for building safety, to avoid these problems.
Senator McIntyre: Some provinces have announced their intention to further restrict the number of plants or even prohibit cultivation. I have two short questions for you.
First, do you anticipate such a prohibition will be challenged by the courts? Second, would such a prohibition help or hinder the federal government’s purpose of keeping cannabis away from youth and keeping organized crime out of the cannabis industry?
Mr. Dickie: I would say that a prohibition on home growing would help with the question of keeping organized crime out of the industry because, as I’ve indicated, a home grower could grow a considerable quantity of marijuana. Well, that could be a source for the illicit industry.
To the question of keeping cannabis away from youth, again not having it grown in people’s homes would help with that because then it won’t be down the hall or upstairs. Presumably, it will be bought by the adults and looked after the way tobacco is looked at, rather than being grown there.
I apologize, but what was the first question?
Senator McIntyre: Would this matter be challenged by the courts?
Mr. Dickie: I’m a lawyer and I have studied constitutional law. I’m not a great expert on constitutional law, but I think the question of the federal government banning home growing would be perfectly legitimate. Parliament has the criminal law power. Indeed, regulatory offences are created all the time around such things as health and so forth, so clearly Parliament can ban home growing.
I think it’s also open to Parliament to leave it up to the provinces. We would rather it not be left up to the provinces. We would rather it be a Canada-wide thing, which would then be clear for everyone.
My personal view is that if Parliament allows the provinces the room, they could exercise it.
Senator Gold: I want to follow up on the line of questioning that my colleague Senator McIntyre began.
As you mentioned, and as we know, both Quebec and Manitoba have, in fact, announced that no home cultivation will be allowed. We do have a medical marijuana regime which does allow for home cultivation and presumably that, at least until the courts decide otherwise or Parliament legislates otherwise, will remain in place. So it’s complex. The Minister of Justice has also argued that there are legitimate policy reasons, in the government’s view, to retain the right of individuals to grow.
Putting that all together, are you not satisfied that provincial legislation, city-specific bylaws, condo association rules and the like would be a sufficient answer to this admittedly real problem?
I’m a landlord too, so I totally appreciate the scope of the problems. But wouldn’t the proper way to deal with it be to allow the provinces, municipalities, bylaws, tenants’ associations and landlords to deal with this to their own regulatory powers?
Mr. Dickie: First, to the medical marijuana issue, as I read the cases which drove the government to the regulatory regime for medical marijuana, they were driven in part by the fact that, at that time, unless someone grew their own in their own home, they couldn’t get it legally. They had to deal with organized crime. That he was regarded as an infringement on their safety and security.
Whereas in the new regime where marijuana will be available, the need for the medical user to grow their own really falls dramatically, particularly when the product is available, when the prices stabilize and with all these rules about the labelling of it and safety checks and so forth.
At that point, to me, the various needs for the medical user to grow their own really will have disappeared.
Why are we not satisfied that the provinces, the cities, condos and landlords make the rules? One major reason is one then has an immense patchwork quilt of rules. There are certainly landlords in this country who have a significant number of units spread across six or eight provinces. The governments are not usually rushing to leave landlords to deal with social issues. The governments tend to want to tell us what to do about social issues, so it’s a bit ironic if you raise the thought that we should deal with them.
I concede there are some benefits to it. I mean, you might have some buildings where all the condo owners want to be able to smoke and maybe even want to be able to grow, but it just makes for a patchwork that is difficult to enforce.
Part of the rationale for the Quebec ban was that the landlords did a survey and asked to what extent they thought the police could be relied on to enforce a limit of four plants. I forget the exact percentage, but about 80 per cent said, “No way. They won’t be able to enforce a ban on more than four plants.” That was one of the arguments the Quebec government responded to when they decided to ban all home growing. That’s a bright-line test, to echo Mr. Morneau on his tax reforms, which are another bee in my bonnet — but not for today.
The Chair: Not in this committee.
Mr. Dickie: No, I know. Although the relevance is that I’ve had a lot of calls on the tax reforms, but I’ve had more calls on this marijuana issue than even on that.
The bright-line test of no home growing — that’s easy. If it’s everywhere, then you don’t have people who move from Alberta to here or from here to Quebec and get themselves in trouble, because all of a sudden, it’s against the law in Quebec, but they spent all their life in Ontario.
Senator Gold: Thank you for your answer, but whatever the scope is of the federal criminal law power, clearly the provinces have primary and exclusive jurisdiction over property and civil rights in the province. So do I understand that, as a fallback position to your recommendation that it be banned nationally through Parliament’s legislation, would you nonetheless support — as I think I understood you as saying — the provinces being given clear leeway to regulate, including banning home cultivation, if they so chose?
Mr. Dickie: Yes, as a fallback, definitely. I would want the provinces to be able to ban it under whatever power it takes to enable them to do that.
Senator Eaton: Mr. Dickie, I would like to talk about Ontario. Ontario landlord law stems from the province’s strict tenancy laws that make it illegal to modify a rental lease before that lease comes due. As such, landlords will be unable to regulate marijuana consumption in their apartment buildings with existing tenants. They will only be able to do so with those who apply for tenancy after legalization takes effect. Am I right in saying that in?
Mr. Dickie: I would vary from that in two respects. The question of someone with an existing lease is a significant concern, but the concern for someone with an existing lease extends as long as they remain in the building. It doesn’t end at the term of the lease. This is something I said to the House of Commons committee, and a number of people looked at me, thinking, “This is news.” Because in Ontario —
Senator Eaton: You can’t kick somebody out.
Mr. Dickie: You can’t kick anyone out. If the tenant wants to stay, they can stay on a month-to-month tenancy under the old terms.
The second part is that landlords — not all but many of the bigger ones — have a power to make new rules and regulations. A number of them are moving forward to put a ban on both home growing and home smoking. But the question is enforcement. Again, under Ontario’s law, it is not sufficient to point to a lease and the breaking of the lease, no matter how clear the lease is and no matter how clear that power and the rule are. The landlord, to actually enforce the rule, has to prove that the breaking of it causes a substantial interference with the reasonable enjoyment of other tenants or a substantial interference of the lawful rights and interests of the landlord.
For the tenant one, the problem is more evidentiary, because tenants don’t like to come forward and testify against the neighbours they will have to keep living with. It’s a problem for us.
Senator Eaton: What about people who have permission to buy and smoke medical marijuana? There is a woman down the hall. She showed me her tin this morning. What do you do about that in apartment buildings? “I have a prescription.” What do you do?
Mr. Dickie: We are required to allow that smoking to take place. We are required to do that under the Human Rights Code of Ontario because we must accommodate people with disabilities. The fact that they have a medical need for the marijuana — and it’s legal when it’s medical — gives them the right to smoke it and, indeed, to cultivate it up to the limits of the permit.
The tenants still don’t have the right to do it willy-nilly. Admittedly, we are meant to have an ability to get them to control the amount of humidity and ensure they don’t damage the building. But the problem there is that we don’t even know they have this permit from the federal government. That is another problem that might be for this committee. The medical marijuana regime is defective in that. We don’t get told that someone is smoking or going to grow in our buildings.
Senator Eaton: In Ontario, residents are permitted to consume the substance in private, self-contained living quarters, including multi-residential buildings, while all public spaces will be off limits. So it’s almost like I can go downstairs in my building and light up a joint. I wouldn’t be allowed to do that, right?
Mr. Dickie: Correct. You have to do it within your apartment. The problem is that the smoke doesn’t respect the boundaries of your apartment.
Senator Eaton: I agree, so you’re up against a rock and a hard place.
Mr. Dickie: Exactly.
Senator Batters: Thank you for being here. You probably never thought even five years ago that you would be in front of the Senate Legal Committee and that you would have had to learn this much about marijuana growth in your legal career.
I’m wondering if you could tell us a little more about the damage to rental units from marijuana growth, which is something I’m sure your particular association members would be quite concerned about.
Mr. Dickie: Certainly. We’re concerned about damage because of the humidity. We are concerned about damage because of the electrical and fire safety issues, as well as the smell getting into the paint. It’s similar to the problem now with heavy smokers. After 20 years, you have to paint the apartment with like six coats to get rid of the smell of the paint. I don’t know if you get rid of it or if you overpower it with the stink of paint.
The other related issues will be the municipalities untangling what they are going to do. At the moment, many of them have marijuana grow-op — MGO — remediation bylaws such that if there is a grow-op in the building, the owner has to go through hoops to prove to the city that the building or unit is safe to live in.
As a lawyer, I represented a woman — I was really sorry for her. She was living downstairs, and her tenant upstairs had a grow tent. He grew about 50 small cannabis plants. It was a confined area. Well, he got arrested. The police noticed this. He was charged. The police didn’t do anything. Then, a year later, when he pled guilty, they woke up and gave notice to the city about this marijuana grow-op, because it was 50 plants, or at least because it was a marijuana grow-op.
The woman had to shut the house down, get an engineer and hire an air quality tester. The mortgage company said they were foreclosing. It was a nightmare. It cost her $10,000 or $15,000, before us, all because this tenant had grown this amount of marijuana.
Again, legalization and the legal grows — one presumes the cities will amend their MGO bylaws so they don’t apply to that, but they will probably still keep them in force because illegal grow-ops will continue.
Senator Batters: How much can mould damage be?
Mr. Dickie: In that unit, there was nothing. In that unit, she spent all this money to prove there was no damage.
Senator Batters: But in other cases you have seen?
Mr. Dickie: There are cases where people do a commercial grow-op.
I’m here to be frank with you. From someone growing two plants, without a “screen of growth,” no, there isn’t much damage.
Senator Batters: But from cases you have seen where that happens —
Mr. Dickie: There can be considerable damage. I know of homes in Ottawa that have cost $100,000 or $150,000 to remediate because of the mould damage, chemicals and so on, because of a substantial MGO.
Senator Batters: On the issue of edibles, I was thinking that if someone is potentially growing a significant number of marijuana plants and making edibles from that, that process of making edibles can be dangerous.
Mr. Dickie: I would be very reluctant to see that made legal, yes.
Senator Boniface: I really appreciate you being here. I just wanted to follow up on Senator Gold’s question around what you refer to as the patchwork process. From a tobacco perspective, would you say that you live in a patchwork system now?
Mr. Dickie: It’s true. I would say it’s not as much of a patchwork because tobacco is not illegal and people are more used to it. At the same time, the non-smokers’ rights associations are quite active. So yes, it is a patchwork.
Again, laws tend to be changed over time, by evolution sometimes, but they can also be changed quickly. When I went to France 20 years ago, everybody smoked everywhere, and now they have banned it in public places. That was right across all of France. It’s not just Paris for the tourists.
Senator Boniface: From the perspective of your association, you have a vested interest in ensuring that your residences are able to be re-rented undamaged. I come from rural Ontario, and when I talk about this in some of the rural areas, it’s an accessibility issue for them that they see coming forward. These would be people who own their own property. So an outright ban, as you say, would actually impact people who own their own house,their own property, and you would say, no home growns would include growing four plants in my backyard?
Mr. Dickie: I would, just to keep it a bright-line test, to make it very clear, very straight forward. Apart from getting over the bright-line test and the enforcement issues, then, yes, certainly home growing in owner-occupied single family homes is much less of a concern to my members.
Senator Boniface: Would it be an equality issue?
Mr. Dickie: But are we then going to have a geographic patchwork quilt?
Senator Boniface: This is the difficulty.
Mr. Dickie: At least in Ontario, the cannabis is to be available by mail order; mind you, they are planning to limit the stores to a ridiculous degree, I think. There are equality issues whichever way you go, or human rights issues, people’s interests. It’s a very tangled question. Who knew two years ago that it was this complicated a question?
Senator Boniface: It’s complex.
Senator Pratte: Mr. Dickie, Statistics Canada published a survey yesterday of Canadians and their use, where they get their cannabis, and so on. From this survey, we learned that homegrown is by far the least popular source of cannabis. In fact, of the Canadians who do use cannabis, only 9 per cent either grow it or get someone else to grow it for them. They usually get it from friends, 31 per cent; share it amongst a group, 22 per cent; get it from an acquaintance, 20-something per cent. What makes you believe that after legalization there will be a sudden and significant increase in home growth?
Mr. Dickie: To speak a little bit to the survey first, I haven’t read it; I was running around yesterday with something else. But in the list of sources you listed, I didn’t hear “dealers,” because I would think—
Senator Pratte: There is. I’m sorry; I’ll give you a number for dealers. It is 19 per cent.
Senator Carignan: They are not there.
Senator Pratte: I’ll give you the results: dispensary, 19 per cent; dealer, 19 per cent; online licensed producer, 14 per cent; authorized retailer is something like 11 per cent; and grown, 9 per cent.
Mr. Dickie: Is this in terms of where they want to get it or where they get it now?
Senator Pratte: This is where they get it now.
Mr. Dickie: The dispensaries are essentially just organized dealers who have a medical kind of thing on the wall. So that’s 38 per cent. Authorized, I’m guessing that’s through medical usage.
But I think there would be a growth in home growing if it is allowed to be legal. The extent perhaps is unclear, uncertain. The rationale I could see for a growth is that — I have children who are young adults. They have friends. I’m not saying who amongst them uses cannabis, but some of them do.
Senator Pratte: We don’t want to know either.
Mr. Dickie: Thank you.
The one or two I’m thinking of clearly buy from dealers. They wouldn’t grow in their apartments because they don’t want to implicate their spouse, because they don’t want to cause an issue with their landlord, because it’s illegal.
This legality/illegality for many people is again a bright-line test. Some people just skate over that line back and forth. But for many people, if it’s legal, okay. That’s almost like a licence to do it. If it’s illegal, no matter how moderately illegal: Well, I don’t do that.
Again, this is a social experiment; we don’t know. But I think home growing will increase. Frankly, I think it will increase substantially, but can I predict a percentage? No, not at all.
Senator Pratte: The fact is that growing your own cannabis, as you explained earlier, is not something easily done, and legal cannabis will be easily available at stores and so on. We can speculate all we want, but it will be easily available and home growth will be a bit more complicated. So I think it’s an open question as to whether home growth will increase as significantly as you foresee.
Mr. Dickie: In principle, I agree with you. But with respect to the Ontario distribution system that I’m more familiar with than the other provinces, it doesn’t sound like it will be easy. They are talking about 40 stores in a province of 13 million people in the first year. I do not think there will be easy access to legal cannabis.
And apparently people don’t want to order it by mail. They want to walk into a dispensary and they want to buy it. Again, that is not a federal problem in a sense, but it’s unhelpful that the Province of Ontario and some of the other provinces are being so restrictive about access to it.
Frankly, to take that one step further, it annoys me that the Province of Ontario appears to be banning consumption in public places, like in parks and on streets, but in your apartment when you are bothering other people, that’s okay. They are also banning pot lounges, or not allowing them, so where the heck are people going to consume it? In their apartments. I shake my head. Again, with this Constitution we have, the provinces have these rights and powers.
[Translation]
Senator Carignan: My question is about the value of buildings. In Quebec, the Organisme d’autoréglementation du courtage immobilier du Québec, the OACIQ, makes recommendations to real estate brokers as to whether or not to declare if the property had a grow-up. Clearly, the organization suggests declaring it to avoid hidden problems, mold, and so on. However, some people choose not to declare it because it reduces the value of the building.
As an association of building owners, do you think that the damage to the value of the property is part of the fear being expressed by your members when there is a cannabis grow-up inside the building?
[English]
Mr. Dickie: Yes, it is a concern. The whole point of the municipal marijuana grow-op remediation bylaws was to have the police report to the public authority so that then someone couldn’t hide the fact, someone could not fail to disclose the fact that their property had been used. And then they went beyond that to require remediation and the municipal verification of the adequacy of the remediation. Certainly, that took hundreds of thousands of dollars off the value of even a single-family home that had been used as an MGO, say, in the city of Ottawa.
On the question of reporting, I almost think this is a third-level consequence of what is done today and what is done by the provinces. So I find it difficult to predict how that will play out, whether everyone will be satisfied that marijuana was grown in this house, but the limit was four plants, so it must be fine and no one pays any attention, or whether people are still concerned. I don’t know how that will play out in the marketplace.
Certainly with respect to larger owners — I don’t know if you find this shocking, but I found it a bit shocking— most commercial, illegal MGOs take place in single-family homes. But some of them take place in apartments in apartment buildings. Some people have trucked in the fertilizer and the plants, the whole thing, through the hallway. I don’t know how they managed to keep it a secret from their neighbours. The landlord often finds out when all of a sudden the power bill goes up like a bandit, and they go hunting around and they find this one apartment which is an MGO. That will still be illegal, obviously, but certainly all kinds of things happen. We don’t know where and when. We’re trying to struggle how to minimize the negative effects.
The Chair: Are there any other questions, honourable senators, before I thank our witness this morning?
Thank you very much, Mr. Dickie, for your contribution to our work. It adds another dimension to, as you say, an important decision in legislation, because there are so many sides to it. You have been helpful in unveiling one that we also have to take into consideration.
Mr. Dickie: You’re welcome. Thank you for having me and giving me this opportunity.
The Chair: Honourable senators, traditionally, when we move to discussion of the drafting of a report, we are normally sitting in camera. I need a motion from a senator around the table if we are to remain in public or move in camera.
Senator Batters: I will move that we stay in public. For this particular subject matter, I think it’s important for openness and transparency. Given that we’ve had all our hearings in public, and I think we will have an important discussion around the table about the recommendations that may be required in this particular report, I think it’s important for public transparency to be able to see the discussion that we’re having.
The Chair: Are there other views in relation to the proposal of Senator Batters?
Senator Sinclair: Normally when we have a discussion about drafting a report, we have that discussion in camera. I don’t know why we wouldn’t continue that practice. It gives us an opportunity to have a full and frank discussion. Having a discussion in public, I see the merit of that, but we would normally have a clause-by-clause discussion in public. At this point and time, we haven’t yet discussed the process by which we would discuss potential amendments to the bill, and I think that portion of our discussion should be in public. But when it comes to discussing how we draft a report, I think that discussion should be in camera so that we can have a full and frank discussion about how we want our report to look.
I would oppose the motion and would suggest that we go in camera to at least discuss how we’re going to draft this report, because it will involve giving instructions to the staff and what we expect the staff to do. There may be differences of opinion around that. We have to resolve those differences at this point.
The Chair: So I understand that you’re opposed to the motion of Senator Batters.
Are there any other views on that?
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: I support Senator Batters. These are major issues for Canadians. The public session demonstrates our intention to provide them with accurate information.
[English]
Senator Gold: I think that we should continue with our tradition, which is to have these discussions in camera. There has been and will continue to be all kinds of opportunities to share our views as a committee with the public and certainly through our debates in the Senate and beyond. But at this stage, I see no reason, notwithstanding the public interest in this subject, to deviate from our long-standing traditions.
[Translation]
Senator Dupuis: I think that the practice of all the committees I have participated in since I was appointed on November 15, 2016, has been to always allow an in camera discussion, to ensure debates to unfold in an orderly fashion, but also to allow for a discussion of issues directly related to the committee’s mandate.
In this case, we have not received the general mandate to discuss Bill C-45 and, personally, I think it’s very dangerous to give the impression to Canadians that we are in the process of settling Bill C-45. We have a very specific and extremely technical mandate. I think, in this case, we have to do our job, as we always do. I therefore do not agree with this proposal.
[English]
The Chair: Any other views?
Senator Eaton: I don’t disagree with what any of you are saying, but I think as we’ve seen this morning, there is so much complexity and nothing is straightforward. Just listening to Mr. Dickie about what tenants are allowed and why in some provinces, I think for people at home who have been following our debates with the witnesses, it would be helpful to see what the concerns are, such as the growing of four plants, and how we debate and bring up issues.
Senator Boniface brought up the fact that a lot of Canada is rural. A lot of people would like to grow it in their gardens, but if they live in condo buildings it may not be practical. I think if they could listen to our arguments around each and every amendment, they could hear us discussing amendments in the report. If we go in camera, the public may say, “Well, what are they doing — making deals?”
I don’t think there is the interest in other legislation that we pass. I don’t think people are tuned in the way they have been to this particular debate. I don’t know if you’ve been receiving tweets, but I certainly receive tweets from people who have been watching us. I would just like to think with this bill particularly, especially with all the millennials watching us, that we would be overly transparent as opposed to traditional.
Senator Gold: I appreciate the comments and the interest of colleagues to have this continue to be televised, but we haven’t even discussed whether or not our report will include recommendations for amendments. We haven’t discussed the process. We haven’t even looked at or had occasions to discuss rather drafting instructions or discuss the format. I really do think that work is best done in camera as we always have.
When the report is completed and submitted, I would welcome the public’s attention to the conclusions of our work, but we’re at the beginning stages of deciding the methodology for us in a rather unprecedented process. So I strongly support the idea of doing it as we have done in the past.
The Chair: Are there any other views? Senator Batters to conclude.
Senator Batters: I point out that it is fairly rare that our Legal Committee is assigned only to a pre-study. Normally, if we’re going to do a pre-study, we also do the main study of the bill. Our Legal Committee is only going to be doing a pre-study of this bill, and as a result, I think it is important for the public to see much of the discussion.
Unfortunately, we’re also dealing with a situation where, until our move hopefully soon, Canadians do not have the ability to see us debate. Some excellent speeches have been given in the Senate Chamber, but they’re relegated to audio. Here we have an opportunity for people to see exactly what we do. I think it’s important for the public to see us debating these very important issues. Given that we have not had the ability for them to see by video our debates in the Senate Chamber, I think it’s important to provide as much transparency as we can on this critical issue that so many Canadians are very interested in right now.
The Chair: We will proceed to a vote.
All those in favour of the proposal put forward by Senator Batters that we remain in public, would you raise your hands? All those opposed? Abstentions?
The result is five yeas, five nays. The motion is defeated because it is a tie.
We will then proceed in camera.
(The committee continued in camera.)