The Joint Canada Day/Weed Party Is Probably Cancelled

Remember how we’ve all been operating under the assumption that weed would be legal by July 1st? Well, it now appears like it’s going to take a little bit longer than everyone expected. And ironically, Justin Trudeau himself might be the architect of any major delay - thanks to his attempt at Senate reform back in 2014.

Yesterday, federal Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor announced that there will be an adjustment period after Bill C-45, the Cannabis Act, becomes law. The Liberals’ new timeline will give provinces, retailers, producers, and police an eight- to 12-week grace period to ease into the new marijuana regime. In practice, this means that even if the bill is passed in time to meet the original July 1 deadline, most of us will be lucky to buy any government-approved grass before September 2018.

Of course, this may not be the only delay. The other wildcard at play here is the Canadian Senate. The House of Commons passed C-45 near the end of November 2017, which means the new drug policy is now before the Red Chamber receiving some sober second thought. There are a number of reasons to expect that this might take awhile.

Canada’s Upper House is less than a third the size of the Commons. It has 105 seats, and only 33 of those have a formal partisan affiliation (ie. Conservative). Otherwise there are 39 Senators in the “Independent Senators Group,” a rump caucus of 14 “Senate Liberals” (who are unrecognized by the party), and seven who are altogether non-affiliated with anyone. (You will recall that then-third party leader Justin Trudeau’s solution to 2014’s question of Senate reform was to just fire all senators from his party.)

Conservatives in the Senate have promised that they will not act in a deliberately obstructionist manner, but given the Tories’ resistance to the government’s legalization agenda in the House, you can expect them to give the bill a rough ride.

Meanwhile, the ISG seems beholden to nobody; it’s impossible to guess at what the bulk of them will do with any given piece of legislation, which makes the Senate perversely fascinating to watch. But even if a majority of them ultimately sign off on C-45, they are unlikely to do so until after a very thorough study in committee that may delay the bill even further. And if in the course of all this they find fault with the Liberals’ bill and want to propose amendments, C-45 will have to go back to the House for another tussle before becoming law.

It’s a slog, but this process is a reasonably good method of crafting reasonably good laws in a reasonably complicated political system. It’s not just not necessarily great for meeting a tight, self-imposed deadline.

If a delay in the Upper Chamber happens, expect the subject of Senate reform in Canada to flare up again. Senators are well within their constitutional right to slap down anything they deem to be slapdash legislation from the Commons, but it does involve the awkward acknowledgement that this is explicitly an anti-democratic function. This is unlikely to trigger a constitutional crisis about the democratic legitimacy of Parliament, but it will give the NDP a good arrow in their rhetorical hilt if Trudeau’s legalization goes sideways. As to whether or not the prime minister will come to regret unilaterally overhauling the political ecosystem in the Senate, that will likely depend largely on how much the Independents embarrass him.

Anyway, the whole process will need to be finished by late May or June to hit the old July 1 timeline—that is, the earliest day the Liberals’ two-to-three-month transition clock starts ticking. But if C-45 spends a while in the Senate under a magnifying glass and/or has to make another hike through the Commons again in the spring, it could very well take longer. You’ll likely be able to stock up on legal skunk by the time the leaves start to change, but there are unlikely odds that the bill won’t get Royal Assent until after Parliament’s summer break, in which case you’ll be waiting to unwrap some blunts beneath your Christmas tree.

Of course, odds are good that everything will be more-or-less settled away by the end of September. But it’s probably not a bad idea to adjust your expectations about the legal marijuana timetable. Regardless of the Senate’s shenanigans, prohibition is not going anywhere yet. Adjust your Canada Day plans to do bong rips in the police station parking lot accordingly.

Follow Drew Brown on Twitter.