Thank you, Mr. Chair. Like many of the Members, it was great to visit the communities and hear the communities' concerns on the bill. For many of the communities that we visited, the residents, this is the first time they heard that legalization was going to be pushed forward for July 1st, was the date we are given, possibly as early as June 21st, but the date we were given was July 1st.
Many residents were asking us, why are you forcing this upon us, like it was committee that was bringing this forward, and we had to make it quite clear that this is a direction that was given to the Department of Justice from the federal government, and the federal government should have taken some onus on this as well. Gone out to the communities, done some sort of public consultation. I know it was an election promise, but this is a huge step to undertake and then just to pass it on to the provinces and territories to see it through, and without adequate resources, as mentioned by my colleagues here.
There are a lot of unanswered questions that, most likely, we are going to be the ones who are going to have to pay for things. Some of the things that were asked for were public consultation, like public awareness. Going into the communities, speaking to the youth, even going into the schools and speaking. What we heard was, what people want to see is more education for youth, whether it is taught in the schools or having someone hired like a youth coordinator to go around and educate young people on the effects of marijuana to their health.
As mentioned, marijuana could affect the brain up to the age of 25, and many of our residents felt that that should be the age where it becomes legal, is 25. Then again, on the other side, we will have the black market targeting that age group because that's pretty much the only way they are going to be able to make money, and there are also concerns out there already that people can mail order, whether it's shard or other drugs like this in the mail. It is happening today. That's what people want to see in our communities, more awareness; but then again, there is also a cost added to that. The federal government needs to ensure that they work with our government to make sure that we have adequate resources to fund this.
Some of the other things that we've heard was, because it was so new to the communities at the time, the communities that we visited, they were sort of leery of having a place in the community where they could purchase marijuana, whether it was some thought possibly in the Northern or the Co-op, or somebody might start up in the community. A good example is one of the communities that we visited which was actually in my riding, the community leader brought this concern forward. Since then, they have changed their mind after speaking with their council. With other drugs that are finding their way into the community, they feel that it actually might be safer to have a place in the community now.
The more the communities learn about this, maybe a little more willingness to have those changes in the communities. That's one thing that I mentioned, was, these are the early stages. We have one more month here before this is going to be legal, and over time, I'm sure we are going to see a lot of changes to this. Like most legislation, which is very hard to make changes to them, I'm hoping that this is not one of those cases, that it's a little easier to make changes to the legislation, because it's so early here. Those are just some of the concerns that we heard.
Some people are very open to it. We had some people in our meetings who wanted to start up their own business, and seeing that opportunity. In our briefings, what our Minister wanted to see, from what I took away from it, anyway, was it is better to wait to see actually what kind of revenue is going to be generated out of this. I could see that we don't want to see our small businesses set up to fail. We want to make sure it is adequate to provide this service.
I have mixed feelings myself about this, but like I mentioned, it's forced upon us here, so we are just here to deal with it. We had a lot of good conversations in the communities. We actually went until about nine o'clock in some cases here, a good four to five hours. A lot of questions, we were forced to answer as best as we could without making any commitments. All we could commit to was bringing these recommendations forward, and I look forward to seeing how everything works out here. Thank you, Mr. Chair.