Rielle Capler is a PhD candidate at UBC, and she says that rushing the legislation for cannabis legalization would be a mistake. “They first need to have a piece of legislation that’s drafted that then has to go through Parliament to get passed. It’s not that they came into power and had that legislation drafted already,” Capler said.
Her view is that one year is actually a short amount of time for the objective that is trying to be accomplished. According to Capler, “I think what should be kept in mind is that to have a good piece of legislation — a year isn’t a long time for that. It is quite ambitious and impressive that they’re going for that.”
Last week on 4/20, the federal government made the announcement that legislation concerning cannabis legalization would be drafted and ready by Spring of 2017. NDP Leader Tom Mulcair was highly critical of the Liberals after this announcement was made. “For more than three years they promised to legalize marijuana. They won’t even decriminalize something that could have been done overnight,” Mulcair said.
Activists in the cannabis community are growing impatient with legalization, and some such as Freddie Pritchard, are warning that once the legislation is finished, Canada still won’t have legalization in the truest sense of the term.