In a global context, it’s important to commend the federal government for ushering in progressive cannabis legislation that allows Canadians to possess and consume cannabis without the risk of going to jail. But as we move into the second year of legalization, Pasha believes it is imperative that Canadians still affected by cannabis-related convictions are given not only a less labour-intensive opportunity to clear their names, but one that actually removes all trace of being charged under unjust laws.

While the government has introduced a program in which Canadians carrying a record for possession can apply for a pardon, we are firm believers that expungement, rather than pardons, would provide a more suitable solution to the problem.

Admission of fault

While it has not been widely publicized as the primary reason for cannabis legalization in Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has admitted that, “one of the fundamental unfairnesses of [prohibition] is that it affect[ed] different communities in different ways.” In 2017, he spoke to this issue in a televised interview, detailing a story of his brother, Michael, who was able to avoid criminal charges for possession despite being found to be in possession of cannabis by police in 1998.

“We were able to do that because we had resources, my dad had a couple connections and we were confident that my little brother wasn’t going to be saddled with a criminal record for life,” he told VICE’s Manisha Krishnan.

MP Bill Blair, Canada’s current minister of border security and organized crime reduction, told the Senate Liberal caucus in 2016 that as many as 1.1 million Canadians had marijuana-related criminal records dating back to 1965.

“One of the great injustices in this country,” is the disparate and disproportional police enforcement of marijuana laws and, “the impact that it has on minority communities, aboriginal communities and those in our most vulnerable neighbourhoods,” Blair was quoted as saying in the National Post.

In Canada, as in the United States, arrests for cannabis possession have occurred at disproportionate rates among people of colour, often causing irreparable harm to low-income families and communities--at the very worst removing the family’s primary breadwinner, and at the very least, limiting their ability to find meaningful employment and travel freely.

A VICE investigation into cannabis arrests in Canada found that between 2015 and 2017, black and Indigenous people were vastly overrepresented when it came to arrests for cannabis possession: In the city of Regina, Indigenous people were nine times more likely to be arrested than a white person for possession, and in Halifax, black people were five times more likely to be arrested than their white counterparts for the same crime.

We believe that in acknowledging the harms done by prohibition, the federal government has indirectly admitted that it was wrong in continuing to saddle Canadians with criminal records, and should therefore provide an easier route to clean criminal records for those who continue to suffer the consequences. Even in 2016, the year after Trudeau announced his plan to end cannabis prohibition, more than 55,000 cannabis-related charges were laid, with 76 per cent resulting from simple possession.

Why pardons are not enough

Trudeau announced prior to legalization that his government would create a process in which people with simple possession records could request a pardon. Even so, these measures will prove to fall short.

Only recently has the application process been revealed to the public, and it involves a significant amount of work for those possessing records. Fingerprints must be taken, criminal records must be collected, and up-to-date record checks must be obtained from local police. Extra steps are involved for former members of the military. While the federal government has waived the $631 fee and eliminated the lengthy waiting period that normally accompanies pardon applications, these process still requires an unnecessary amount of labour by those who have already had to face with the consequences of charges for simple possession for far too long.

While the Canadian government pats itself on the back for offering Canada’s most marginalized communities a make-work “solution”, Chicago’s Illinois County is using an algorithm to automatically expunge more than 10,000 old cannabis-related convictions. In New York State, low-level marijuana convictions are being wiped clean from records without those affected having to lift a finger. It stands to reason that Canada could take similar steps, eliminating the burden for individuals and taking responsibility for the harms of prohibition. In addition, there is a very real difference between an expungement and a pardon. An expungement erases the event, while a pardon does not. A pardon is in effect saying ‘yes you broke the law, but we forgive you’. Records of the offence remain however, and can still negatively impact a person’s ability to put it behind them.

Ongoing crime under legalization

With so much focus on the public companies producing Canada’s legal cannabis, one might assume that the same tough approach to crimes committed by an individual should apply to a corporation that has stepped outside of the regulatory framework--especially considering the ‘benefit’ of having a regulated supply so often touted by legal producers--but that would be incorrect. Even before cannabis was legal at a recreational level in Canada, law enforcement has tacitly approved crimes committed by licensed producers, which, by the standards set in the Cannabis Act, should be subject to significant jail time and massive fines.

Consider the way Canopy Growth Corporation was given a pass by Kelowna RCMP for shipping several hockey bags worth of harvested cannabis without the permission of Health Canada, just days before its Tweed brand went public on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Or the way CannTrust has yet to face consequences for sending 12,000 kilograms of cannabis grown in unlicensed grow rooms to retailers across Canada and medical patients in Denmark.

Meanwhile, one month after cannabis was legalized, an Indigenous man in Winnipeg possessing just 85 grams of cannabis was sentenced to 10 months in prison for possession with the intent to distribute.

Time for review

Without a proper review of post-prohibition enforcement, people of colour and marginalized individuals in Canada will continue to be disproportionately subjected to the enforcement of new cannabis laws, while police will continue to turn a blind eye to corporate cannabis rule-breakers. We’ve seen already that the government is not afraid to punish the individual, but what of the faceless corporation that continues to pull the wool over the eyes of the Canadian consumer?

It’s time for the appropriate penalties to be levied against those breaking the law within the ranks of the big industrial licenced cannabis producers within the industry. If our federal government wants our progressive system to be seen as legitimate, it’s preposterous to enforce the rules against individuals while the serious and intentional infractions of licensed corporations are brushed aside.