Justin Trudeau: The Promises For Canada

Justin Trudeau, newly elected prime minister of Canada, and the Liberal Party made many promises during their election campaign to better the lives of the Canadian people, economy and make a positive change. With that being said he and his liberal party promised to legalize cannabis. In this paper, I will outline the promises made by Trudeau, discuss why Trudeau and the liberals are making this promise, explain how the promise will be kept and provide information to shed light on how legalization is a good idea for Canada.

Justin Trudeau stated that if he and his party were elected they would be “taking action to legalize marijuana “right away”” (Elliot, 2015). He claims they will legalize, regulate and restrict access to marijuana (Liberal.ca,

Justin Trudeau has stated that Stephen Harper and his Conservative government were “trapped in policies based on ideology rather than policies based on evidence and that is harmful to Canadians and to Canada. (Bryden, 2014). Justin Trudeau believes it is more harmful to have it illegal like it presently is, and more beneficial to society to have it controlled and regulated by the government. This is not based on ideology, as he states but rather evidence and what’s good for the Canadian people. With that being said, the ideology behind liberalism is that it “seeks to liberate the individual and maximize each individual’s freedom and potential” (Dyck, 2011, p. 218), and that it is “based on a belief in the rationality of the individual”, “liberty, and self-fulfillment” (Dyck, 2011, p. 229). One can see how the parties goal to legalize cannabis also ties into liberal ideology, as it would give much more individual freedom, and liberate the individual from the constrained system that is currently

Although the bill was to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana, its intent was to “increase enforcement against cannabis users”, by making it ticketable by police (Hyshka, 2009, p. 77). Police would try to catch people more since it’s an easier procedure thus causing a deterrence for people to not use it. (Hyshka, 2009, p.77) This can be seen as a bad approach and a different response that Trudeau government who wants to legalize and regulate as they believe prohibiting it and not regulating it gives the youth greater access and still puts money in the hands of organized criminals who distribute. (Liberal.ca, n.d.) They are more liberal to the drug, and we as a society know more about it and it’s minimal harm. It is not harming society, thus we should allow the government make money off of it and allow people to use it personally. That being said, it actually harms society to have it illegal as the profit from illegal sales goes into the hands of “criminal organizations, street gangs and gun-runners” as Trudeau states (As cited in Elliot, 2015) and it is easy to obtain by the youth when it is not regulated, thus, legalizing and regulating it under government control can prevent this (Liberal.ca,