Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will actually be brief, unlike the other 10 Members who said they would be brief and then went on. I have talked a lot about cannabis and this legislation. I am profoundly disappointed in what has been put forward. I know that we can't do everything perfectly. The Minister has stated that.
Perhaps I am just out of step with this government, because my priorities don't always line up with this government's priorities. As I was quoted by the Member for Yellowknife Centre, it is less than once in a generation that a prohibition is lifted. This is something we are going into for the first time. There will be mistakes, but we have to do everything we can to mitigate those mistakes.
I don't fault those people in the department working on it. I would have liked to see perhaps more resources put to it. The people who developed this policy and drafted this bill, maybe if they weren't up so many late hours because they actually had a few more people in their shop, it might be nice. Next time that something like this happens, maybe the departments can come to us and say, "We need a few more resources." As the Regular Members, perhaps we can give that to them.
With this bill, I see it is not guided by the future. It is guided by a fear, fear of the unknown. Instead of listening to the youth, because that is what I was really driven by was the youth, we had a lot of conversations with a lot of people on the road. There were two distinct thoughts. There was, "Let's do this right so that we don't go down the same path we did with alcohol, where there are bootleggers and people making a living off selling this product and there are not drug dealers selling fentanyl-laced cannabis. Let's do it properly." There was that school of thought.
Then there was the school of thought where, "We shouldn't do this at all. We should stick with the status quo, be as conservative as possible." That is what I see this legislation doing, being as conservative as possible, not moving forward, digging its heels in, and saying, "How can we keep things the same?"
I don't know. I am quite disappointed. I'll shut up now. As we go through, I will talk about each of these clauses. Like some of the other Members have said, too, if you had told me when I was younger that I would be sitting here working on legislation to legalize cannabis, I wouldn't have believed you. It is pretty mind-blowing. I just wish we could have done more. We didn't have enough time, but I think we could have done better if we tried and if we collaborated a little more. I will end my comments there. Thank you, Mr. Chair.