OTTAWA — Justin Trudeau’s decision to unveil his party’s policy on pot before the economy shows “poor judgment,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Thursday.
However, at the same time the prime minister was chastising the Liberal leader for his recent comments on marijuana, he said the government would look at a proposal by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police to issue tickets for pot possession in small quantities, instead of pressing criminal charges — a suggestion previously shot down by Justice Minister Peter MacKay.
Harper said he didn’t believe the chiefs made their proposal because they don’t believe in the current marijuana laws.
“On the contrary, they believe this option is a better approach in terms of enforcement of the law,” the prime minister said.
“The government is certainly looking at their proposal very carefully.”
Harper’s swipe at the Liberal leader comes a day after Trudeau said he wouldn’t announce his plans for the economy until 2015 — the year Canadians return to the polls.
“Our priority as a government is not encouraging the spread of drugs, it is encouraging job creation in this country,” Harper said.
Trudeau has spent the summer promoting the idea of legalizing marijuana and last week admitted to smoking pot three years ago while he was already an MP — an admission that has prompted politicians of all stripes and jurisdictions to come clean on their own experience with the drug.
For his part, Harper again confirmed Thursday that he has never touched the stuff.
“Do I seem like I smoke marijuana?” he said, to much laughter during a news conference in Toronto. “From a very young age, I have been an asthmatic, so obviously smoking anything has been out of the question since the time I was very small.”
Asked about a new study by several hospitals that suggests marijuana may be worse for teens than initially thought, Trudeau said he has heard this argument before, agrees with it and maintains it in no way contradicts the policy he has put forward.
“I have said very clearly that the legalization is going to be a path that actually allows us to keep it out of the hands of teens who right now have easier access to buying marijuana than they do to alcohol or cigarettes,” he said during a caucus retreat in Prince Edward Island. “And that is where the current approach that Mr. Harper has on the war on drugs is not working, where we’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars every year on a plan that is not keeping marijuana out of the hands of our teens, and instead incarcerating and giving criminal records to hundreds of thousands of Canadians over the past few years.”
Last week the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police proposed a ticketing option for law enforcement. Due to the cost of prosecuting people for simple possession and the current harsh penalty which is a criminal record if convicted, the chiefs suggested a fine might make more sense for those caught with 30 grams of marijuana or less.
— With files from Jason Fekete
