Justin Trudeau’s Liberals have finally made another inch toward cannabis legalization. Including room for “craft producers” by allowing “low-risk offenders” to participate in the industry.
Of course, this all depends on what they mean by “low-risk offenders.”
When I spoke to Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, he said “No one should be excluded from the legal market because of past cannabis use. There should be an expedited record suspension process for anyone with a record due to use/possession.”
He was silent on trafficking charges.
Meanwhile, Justin’s Liberals have given the provinces a bunch of responsibilities, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it means going back on their promise of helping out dispensaries by ensuring they won’t be prosecuted for victimless crimes.
And while Alberta’s NDP thinks legalization means more funding for law enforcement, Ontario and Quebec have established their intent to protect the LP-conglomerate and public sector unions by the continued criminalization of all dispensaries and activists who have openly disobeyed unjust laws.
That is, the civil disobedience that has led us to this point.
But pardon me, I’m supposed to neglect and ignore the hard work of all these activists and praise Trudeau for his forward, progressive thinking on cannabis.
As if it were anything but a campaign ploy to get elected.
And was it worth it?
While it’s nice not to have Harper the Drug Warrior in the PMO, you gotta take the bad with the good.
As I’ve written about before, Harper was such a staunch critic of cannabis that he made the civil disobedience of the cannabis culture look like a crusade on par with the civil rights movement.
And he had a masters degree in economics. One of his first acts as Prime Minister was to cut the GST.
Trudeau, on the other hand, believes you (not him or his cronies) should pay your “fair share” and that the economy grows “from the heart outwards.”
With Justin at the helm and promising legalization, anyone “jumping the gun” by growing or opening a dispensary is cast off as a profiteer and opportunist, a mere petty criminal that should wait and be patient for the federal government to give its okay.
And never-mind that a true liberal would have decriminalized right away. Only fascists believe that “might makes right” and that the state dictates morality.
As Mussolini said, “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”
So was it worth it? Was Justin’s big government legalization worth:
- a $10 million taxpayer-funded pay-out to Omar Khadr
- higher taxes on the middle and lower classes, while closing the “loopholes” that wouldn’t affect multimillionaires like Liberal Finance Minister Morneau.
- So-called “modest deficits” that have impoverished future generations (the same one Justin wants to protect from the “scourge” of cannabis) with no plans to balance the federal budget
- Approving pipelines when he said he wouldn’t
- Straight-up lying about electoral reform, which many people based their vote on
- Reducing his weekly parliamentary sittings from five days to four (wish I could take every Friday off) and only appearing one day a week to answer questions.
- Private use of jets for family vacations which has emitted as much C02 as ONE average Canadian per year
- Spending his vacation on Aga Khan’s private island. The federal government provides tens of millions of dollars in funding to the Aga Khan Foundation of Canada every year.
- Defending mass-murderer Fidel Castro, calling him a “remarkable leader.”
- Cash-for-access with Chinese billionaires
- Or the icing on the cake — welcoming back Canadian members of ISIS and offering them a taxpayer-funded “reintegration program.”
Or as one MP put it, “Two Canadians leave for Iraq, one with the Canadian Armed Forces, the other to join ISIS. The Liberals cut support for the soldier and create a new program to welcome the terrorist.”
So was it worth it?
Has a crony-capitalist cannabis legalization been worth having a Trudeau government in power?