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OTTAWA — The Trudeau government is moving to ensure the Senate doesn’t hold up its plans to legalize recreational marijuana in July.

The government’s representative in the upper house, Sen. Peter Harder, served notice Tuesday that he wants second reading debate on Bill C-45 wrapped up by March 1, after which it would go to committee for detailed examination before returning to the chamber for a final debate and vote.

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If the various Senate factions won’t agree to that timetable, Harder warned he’ll move a motion to impose time allocation to cut off debate — the first time he’s threatened to resort to that tactic since taking on the role of government representative two years ago.

“My fear, quite frankly, is that March 1 would come and we may see the sort of procedural obstruction we have seen from senators in this Parliament on multiple items of business,” he told his fellow senators.

Harder aimed his remarks primarily at Conservative senators, whom he said have been instructed by their party’s leader, Andrew Scheer, to use “all the democratic tools” available to “block” the bill.