A trio of ministers defended the Liberal government’s cannabis legalization bill to the Senate Tuesday, although their appearance comes with fresh uncertainty over when exactly cannabis will be legal to buy in Canada, and whether the government will meet its own deadline.
Justice Minister Jody Wilson Raybould insisted Ottawa can still meet the July deadline for marijuana legalization. Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor also said she’s “still very confident that we’ll be able to meet our goal of July, 2018.”
But she said provincial governments have told Ottawa they’ll need months after the bill receives Royal Assent before they’ll be ready to bring the new regime about.
That comment comes after a government official raised the prospectthat bills require a coming into force date after receiving Royal Assent. That could delay implementation for eight to 12 weeks, meaning the deadline could be overshot by months, and that the Senate would need to pass the bill by end of May for Canadians to buy cannabis legally in July.
In an interview in December, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also seemed to walk-back the deadline Ottawa has been repeating in Parliament for months by saying July has been over-emphasized, and that pot will be legal some time this summer.
The government’s July deadline has become a main political sticking-point of Bill C-45. The Conservatives have called it an arbitrary political deadline and used it to charge that the government is rushing the legislation through at a fast clip.
Conservative Sen. Claude Carignan said that he thinks the government knows it will overshoot its own deadline and that’s why it appears to be publicly wavering.
“I think that it’s impossible to respect this deadline, and that’s why the government is starting to go back [on it],” he told iPolitics. “They realize it’s impossible to adopt this legislation before July 1st.”
https://ipolitics.ca/2018/02/06/july-marijuana-legalization-deadline-impossible-carignan/
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