Mr. Speaker, I am going to need some time to fact check all the erroneous things that the member said.

First of all, the leader of the NDP, the member for Burnaby South, like health officials in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, wants to decriminalize drugs, recognizing that these are dangerous substances, but also recognizing, as we would have hoped the government would, but it does not, that these are now public health issues.

I want to walk the member through the NDP's position, since he seems to have had some trouble understanding it. The NDP advocated for decriminalization in the lead-up to legalization. Why? We understood that it would be a complicated process. We were right, because the government threw provinces under the bus while trying to get this process going.

That being said, the NDP supported Bill C-45, supported legalization, and through that whole process asked government members why they would not decriminalize simple possession of cannabis, as Canadians continue to be taxed with criminal records. These are young Canadians, vulnerable Canadians, racialized Canadians.

What do we have now? We have an eleventh-hour, half-baked, no pun intended, solution. Despite what the member thinks he is telling us to look forward to at committee, we are already at committee studying this bill before it is even out of the House. It is getting eviscerated by officials who cannot tell us where the numbers are that the member is quoting from, with the Minister of Border Security who said that this is a great injustice, and if we consider it a great injustice, maybe we should go toward expungement.

The member would also know that lawyers have come before the committee to speak about expungement. Please stop saying “pardon”, because the government did not respect its promise to change a record suspension back into a pardon. A pardon means something else in the United States, so a pardon and expungement are equally worthless at the border.

Does anyone know what one can do in Canada with a pardon or record suspension? Potential employers can ask if people have a criminal record for which they have obtained a record suspension. People have to say “yes”. With an expungement, they do not have to, so if they are racialized or vulnerable Canadians who want to get a job, expungement is the way to go. That is why witnesses at committee are telling us that it is the solution. That is why the member should get on board and stop believing his own hot air about this issue which the government has dropped since day one.

Matthew Dubé

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