ANALYSIS: How Impartial Will Canada’s Review of Marijuana Legalization Be?

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks as Minister of Health Jean-Yves Duclos and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland participate in a news conference in Ottawa on Jan. 5, 2022. The Canadian Press/Justin Tang

Canada legalized recreational marijuana five years ago, and a review process is currently underway to evaluate that decision. The review could lead to either tightening or further loosening regulations.

Some are skeptical the review led by government-selected panelists will look at the impacts of legalization through a truly critical lens. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his ministers have been strong advocates for legalization.

While the review has a broad mandate to look at “economic, social, and environmental impacts” of the Cannabis Act, some important impacts are not clearly included, says Michael DeVillaer, an assistant professor of psychiatry at McMaster University.

“I think it should take a close look at regulatory violations and corporate crime in the cannabis industry,” DeVillaer told The Epoch Times via email.

In his forthcoming book, “Buzz Kill: The Corporatization of Cannabis,” DeVillaer takes a deep dive into Canada’s cannabis industry and its bad actors.

“We haven’t so much replaced a criminal trade as we have moved it,” he said.

Two of the main stated goals of the Cannabis Act were to hurt the criminal drug trade and to keep cannabis out of the hands of children and youth.

While the legislative review, set to culminate in a report early next year, has as part of its focus the “health and cannabis consumption habits of young persons,” retired RCMP drug enforcement officer Larry Comeau says it will likely “gloss over” many problematic aspects of this particular issue, as the government has previously done.

“This review no doubt will gloss over such things as more young people facing mental issues because of pot use, very young children ending up in ERs due to ingesting cannabis edibles, more highway accidents and deaths since legalization, more workplace accidents because of workers smoking up on the job and the general denigration of society,” Comeau told The Epoch Times.

On the other hand, Kevin Sabet, president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, remains hopeful.

“Too often, advisory boards are packed with representatives of the marijuana industry who aim to weaken safeguards and dismiss valid concerns,” Sabet said via email. “Yet the five members of the Expert Panel have extensive backgrounds in academia and public service, demonstrating their ability to review objectively the wide-ranging consequences of the Cannabis Act.”

The five-member panel set to lead the review was appointed by Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos and Minister of Mental Health and Addictions Carolyn Bennett, who launched the review in September 2022.

Multiple Points of Connection

DeVillaer is a little less confident in expert panels appointed by the government. He questioned the impartiality of a similar panel of experts created ahead of legalization.

The Task Force on Cannabis Legalization and Regulation was mandated to seek expert testimony, engage with the public, and conduct a review of scientific studies. The task force was to produce a report to the government that would inform its decision on whether or not to legalize cannabis.

A variety of cannabis edibles are displayed at the Ontario Cannabis Store in Toronto on Jan. 3, 2020. The Canadian Press/Tijana Martin

For his 2017 report examining the government’s campaign to legalize cannabis for recreational use, DeVillaer looked into the history of then-task force chair Anne McLellan, who was deputy prime minister in the Liberal government of Paul Martin. In her summary of “interests and affiliations,” McLennan declared an “indirect financial interest” as a senior adviser with the law firm Bennett Jones.

Bennett Jones sought to be the “go-to advisers” for the growing cannabis industry, according to company literature DeVillaer reviewed. One of the firm’s stated business partners was a major up-and-coming Canadian cannabis company called Tweed.

As DeVillaer noted, and as many media also reported at the time, Tweed’s co-founder Chuck Rifici was also the Liberal Party of Canada’s chief financial officer. DeVillaer cites this as one of multiple points of connection he has found between the Liberal government and the cannabis industry.

The task force’s final report offered “some recommendations that are very friendly to the emerging industry, at the potential expense of public health,” he said in his report.

Expert Panel Members

The chair of the current review’s expert panel is former president and CEO of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Morris Rosenberg.

Rosenberg has been in the news of late over the controversial donation made to the foundation while he was at the helm. The donation was returned by the foundation this year after the Globe and Mail cited intelligence leaks that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was behind the donation, and that it was channeled via CCP-linked figures to influence Justin Trudeau.

Rosenberg is a lawyer who has served in many high-level government roles, including as the deputy minister of three different federal departments from 1998 to 2013.

His declared “summary of affiliations and interests” does not include any financial interests in the cannabis industry. It does say he received funding for travel and accommodation to attend a Canadian Drug Policy Coalition event in Vancouver. The coalition is strongly against “drug prohibition” and in favour of the “harm-reduction” approach to addiction, according to its website.

Other panel members include Oyedeji Ayonrinde, an associate psychiatry and psychology professor at Queen’s University; Patricia J. Conrod, a professor in the department of psychiatry and addiction at the University of Montreal; Lynda L. Levesque, a criminal lawyer with experience in indigenous justice issues; and Peter Selby, head of the mental health and addictions division in the department of family and community medicine at the University of Toronto.

The Epoch Times reached out to the panellists for interviews but did not receive replies as of publication.

Health Canada spokesperson Tammy Jarbeau says the panel will conduct a “credible and inclusive review.”

The panellists were selected “to represent and advocate for Canada’s diversity, with significant public sector experience, expertise in public health and justice, and experience engaging with Indigenous communities and organizations,” Jarbeau said via email.

The only published document to come from the review thus far is a summary of engagements with indigenous communities. It shows many communities want to set their own cannabis regulations, including maintaining the right to prohibit cannabis. Some have concerns that an increase in availability will exacerbate communities already struggling with substance use, while some want to control licensing of cannabis retail themselves.

Industry Push

As the legislative review continues, the government is concurrently looking at rolling back some regulations that the cannabis industry has called “burdensome.” The industry has struggled to remain competitive with the illicit trade. Some of the regulations they seek to roll back relate to packaging and labelling.

Yet it is such regulations—along with advertising bans and restrictions on availability—that are most important for minimizing harm, says Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) policy analyst Jean-François Crépault.

He is the CAMH contact for a November 2022 joint submission sent to Health Canada in response to its request for public and stakeholder views to inform the legislative review.

The submission, provided by two CAMH experts and four scientists from the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria, urges the government to create a standard measure of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) levels to make potency information clearer to consumers, and to take action to minimize high-potency product sales.

Youth psychiatrist Dafna Kahana is concerned that the proliferation of high-potency products has increased risk to youth, and that normalization of the drug has decreased the awareness of its harms.

“The review of the Cannabis Act that is taking place should continue to prioritize public health,” Kahana said via email. “This is important, as the cannabis industry might have different priorities.”