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“We’d at least like an indication of which route they intend to follow.”

The treaties are another example of how the government is moving too quickly with its pot plan, he said.

“Doctors are telling them to slow down, law enforcement, chiefs of police are telling them to slow down, premiers are telling them to slow down and the international community is probably wondering what we are going to do with these treaties,” O’Toole said.

NDP justice critic Alistair MacGregor also wondered why a government decision hadn’t come sooner.

“Here we are in the month of September,” he said in an interview. “This legislation was introduced as of April of this year and, of course, the work on the cannabis file started far before that.”

Both the NDP and the Conservatives raised the issue in the House of Commons last spring, he said.

“We were given a non-answer officially in question period and I’ve had discussions with a few Liberal MPs off in the corridors who themselves were puzzled as to why there was not a clear direction from the government at that time,” he said.

“It would have been nice for sake of clarity with this being such a revolutionary change to our drug laws that this is something they could have considered at an early occurrence, rather than now when we are well underway in examining this legislation at committee and going to be reporting it back to the House of Commons this fall.”

One of the options expected to be considered by cabinet is to withdraw from the treaties and rejoin later with reservation.