Honourable colleagues, let me start by thanking our colleague Senator Dean who, as the sponsor of Bill C-45, first sought to promote and encourage an informed review of the bill by all senators.

The basis for the introduction of this bill is the recognition that cannabis products are very widely used across the country and that it is a matter of public interest that such use be regulated for health and public safety reasons. That position is very rational and, for all the reasons given by Senator Pratt and Senator Gold in their speeches, I support Bill C-45. I would like to take this opportunity, at second reading stage, to draw the attention of the Senate and the government to the issues of prevention and public education, particularly with respect to the fiscal measures being proposed.

One of the key issues the government wants to address with the bill is the control by criminal groups of the sale of cannabis products. In its proposed excise duty framework for cannabis products, published last November, the Minister of Finance gives the following explanation, and I quote:

The proposed level of taxation is intended to keep prices low to eliminate the black market, as discussed at the Finance Ministers Meeting last June.

In that same document, the federal government made the following statement, and I quote:

. . . the combined rate of tax for cannabis flowering material contained in a final packaged product should not exceed $1.00 per gram, or 10 per cent of the producer’s sale price of that product, whichever is higher . . . .

In Colorado, the tax is about 30 per cent, and in Washington State, it is 37 per cent.

Keeping tax rates on these products low is a double-edged sword, however. It is a good way to suppress black market involvement, but on the flip side, it eliminates the deterrent effect of high excise taxes on harmful products. Alcohol and tobacco taxation regimes offer some useful and thought-provoking lessons in this regard.

In his report on the state of public health in Canada in 2015, the chief public health officer found, and I quote:

Pricing and taxation are tools that can discourage people from buying alcohol. As a consequence, this can reduce alcohol-related health and social impacts, including for impaired driving and alcohol-related crime. Increasing the minimum price of alcohol is one of the more effective approaches that successfully decreases consumption, alcohol-related death and hospital admissions.

The same principle applies to tobacco use. According to a recent report produced for Health Canada by Professor David Levy of Georgetown University, taxes are the most effective tool in reducing tobacco use. Studies and surveys conducted in Canada have also shown that cigarette use is lower in provinces where cigarette prices and taxes are higher.

In his report, Professor Levy recommended raising taxes on tobacco products because tobacco use is no longer declining as rapidly as we would like. In March 2017, the federal government committed to reducing tobacco use to less than 5 per cent by 2035, whereas the current rate is over 14 per cent. Yet the tax on tobacco products is currently around 68 per cent of the retail price, and Mr. Levy’s report recommended raising it to 80 per cent. That is a far cry from the 10 per cent proposed by the federal government for cannabis products.

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We know that consuming cannabis products has significant effects on youth aged 14 to 25. To quote the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction:

Adolescents are particularly at risk for marijuana-related harms since their brains are undergoing rapid, extensive development.

Chronic cannabis use is associated with impairments in attention, memory and reasoning, especially among those who started in early adolescence. For public health purposes, we can therefore consider cannabis products to be harmful products as well, especially for youth.

It is not legalization per se that is the problem. I believe that by cracking down on the black market, the government will be striking a hard blow against the drug trafficking going on right now our high schools and even in our elementary schools. It will take lower-quality products containing dangerous or unknown substances off the market. However, the government must be prepared to also set targets for reducing cannabis consumption, especially among youth, and to make major investments in education and awareness raising, without ever using the low excise tax revenue as an excuse to justify the lack of such investments.

On that note, the proposed tax system raises several questions that are worth considering, because the projected revenues do not seem sufficient to respond to the various issues we can expect to face, particularly with regard to prevention and awareness raising.

At the committee stage, it will be important to address the following questions: since the government decided not to use the most effective tool known to discourage marijuana use, how does it plan to make up for that? If awareness and education are still the only tools the government plans to use to discourage cannabis use among young Canadians, how is the government going to pay for those campaigns, especially considering the minimal revenue it will be able to collect from excise taxes on cannabis products? Will it invest more funding on top of what it collects in excise taxes in awareness campaigns in the long term? Will it invest in studies to evaluate the effectiveness of these public health campaigns and their impact on the knowledge, attitudes, practices, and beliefs of teenagers, parents, young adults, including both users and non-users? Will the government set targets for reducing the recreational use of marijuana products, as it does for tobacco, and how does it plan to achieve that?

These are just some of the questions the senate committee responsible for examining this bill could explore during its deliberations on the implementation of Bill C-45, a very important bill with laudable goals with respect to health and public safety. Thank you.