OTTAWA — If a Canadian province doesn’t set up a framework to sell marijuana legally, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the federal government will ensure pot is available to all Canadians online. Trudeau said he recognizes that different provinces will have different approaches but they will have more than one year to establish the systems they want to use to sell cannabis. “If they decide they don’t want to bring legislation forward, we will make [marijuana] available through a federal system, probably on the Internet,” Trudeau told VICE Canada Monday evening during a town hall event focused on pot. “Our system will be accessible for all who do not have a system in their province,” Trudeau continued, in French. “So there will be a way for all across the country, who have the age of maturity, to buy cannabis.”

Nearly two weeks ago, the federal government unveiled its long-awaited marijuana legislation, which will give adults the right to legally buy and smoke cannabis, to hold up to 30 grams in public and to grow four plants per household. Ottawa also unveiled tough laws for anyone found to be selling cannabis to children and developed a system for testing drug-use on roadways. Decisions about where and how marijuana should be sold, as well as how old adults have to be the purchase the drug, were punted to the provinces. Feds set a minimum age of 18 to buy marijuana, but said provinces could raise the age limit.

An employee manually trims a medical marijuana plant at a facility in Ontario. (Photo: James MacDonald/Bloomberg via Getty) The Liberals noted at the time of the announcement that if jurisdictions did not put in place a regulated retail framework, individuals would be able to purchase cannabis online from a federally licensed producer with secure home delivery through the mail or by courier. Trudeau’s spokeswoman Kate Purchase noted this would be modelled on the existing medical cannabis system that allows users to order online from federally licensed producers whose couriers verify identification and age at the door. The proposed federal legislation is expected to come into force by July 2018.

Several provinces expressed concerns about various parts of the legislation, but many are already forming working groups to study the bill. The prime minister also suggested Monday that once a legal system for cannabis is in place, his government would study what it could do to help ensure Canadians saddled with criminal records for previous pot possession are not treated unfairly. “[O]ur focus is on changing the legislation to fix what's broken, about a system that is hurting Canadians like you, and then we'll take steps to look at what we can do for those people who have criminal records for something that is no longer criminal,” Trudeau told a young Torontonian named Malik, who worried his pot possession charge would prevent him from leaving the country.