The Liberal-dominated health committee has changed the government’s marijuana legalization bill so edible cannabis products will be legal for sale in Canada within a year after the legislation comes into force.

Bill C-45 was amended at committee stage Tuesday to include edibles containing cannabis and cannabis concentrates to be sold for recreational use — an issue which has become a political flash point between the NDP and the Liberals.

A number of witnesses who testified before the committee had warned that not including edibles would leave a popular product available to Canadians only on the black market.

Liberal MP John Oliver said that the 12-month period gives Health Canada enough time to work out the regulations for the different products which will become available, and that officials from Colorado and Washington warned MPs to go slowly on edibles.

“We decided it was the right balance,” Oliver told iPolitics.

“Industry knows edibles will be coming to market, Canadian consumers will know edibles are coming to market, but when they come they’ll be safely and properly regulated.”

The lone NDP MP on the committee, Don Davies, had complained that not including them right off the bat could encourage black market growth and create public health and product quality issues.

Davies said there is “zero compelling reason to wait.”

“We have the Colorado model, which is a mature, thoughtful and tested regulatory framework from which we can learn everything we need to know about regulating edibles: single serving, child-proof containers, stamped products, not marketed to children, available only where adults frequent,” he said.

“Or you can leave it to Canadians to cook on their stove and buy from God knows who.”

He insisted the bill should include edibles, creams, and tinctures on July 1, 2018 – the expected first day when recreational cannabis use becomes legal in Canada. His effort to bring them in immediately was summarily defeated.

Changes to plant height limits

The committee also brought in changes Tuesday so the bill no longer restricts the height a cannabis plant can reach when Canadians grow their own bud in their homes.

The way the bill was initially written, anything over 100 cm to 150 cm could be ticketed with a $200 fine, and anything taller than a meter and a half could result in criminal charges.

Oliver said the original rationale for the plant height restriction — politeness to neighbours — didn’t warrant tough sanctions.

“That didn’t seem to warrant criminal charges in the act as drafted, so we just removed the height restrictions,” he told iPolitics.

Members of the government’s consulting task force told the committee last month that it had proposed the government set a height restriction of 100 cm to keep pot plants out of public view.

Critics had argued that criminal penalties on plant height would be arbitrary and could have lead to violations of Charter rights.

Criminal lawyer Michael Spratt, who testified before the committee in September, told MPs that criminal law is a “very blunt tool to deal with social problems” and an “even blunter tool to deal with gardening problems.”

“When you look at the rationale that has been disclosed for the criminalization of that one extra centimetre — looking at fence height, not looking at yield or potency or problems with distribution — that could very well lead to some Charter problems with respect to the rationality of that somewhat arbitrary benchmark.”

The following day, Marc-Boris St-Maurice, from the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), said the height limit was “arbitrary.”

“I guess you have to start somewhere, but I find it a little humorous to put in that limit of one metre. I can imagine law enforcement going around with their tape measures, saying, ‘I’m sorry, you’re one centimetre over,'” he said at the time. “Are they going to cut that centimetre off and seize it, or are they going to take the whole plant as a result? It is a little Kafkaesque.”

The NDP tried a number of times this week to remove or soften other criminal sanctions in the bill, while the Conservatives have spent the last few days making their complete opposition to the bill a feature of every meeting; they didn’t submit their own amendments because their party opposes legalization in principle.

Conservative health critic Marilyn Gladu said the bill didn’t get any better as the Liberal-dominated committee amended it.

Gladu said the committee should have “totally gotten rid of home-grow” provisions to keep pot away from kids, while raising the federal age limit.

Oliver said the committee had another big amendment this week: The government must now review the law three years after it passes.

The pot bill cleared committee Tuesday and will head back to the House of Commons for its final legislative stages in the Green Chamber.

The Liberal government wants to have marijuana legalized for recreational use by July 1, 2018.