Canadian Lawyer

w w w . c a n a d i a n l a w y e r m a g . c o m M A Y 2 0 1 9 61 by summer? And what does it look like when the government has to process all these pardons?" Even now it can take up to a year before a client hears back, she says. "Think about any example where somebody might be asked if they have a criminal record," Greenwood says, including applying for a job, crossing the border or applying to volunteer at their child's school. A criminal record can impede all those pursuits, and the severity of a criminal record is often not considered, she says. The fact that simple possession of cannabis is no longer an offence "creates an unfair- ness in the law" to those convicted of the offence. Expungement is a more permanent solution because the record suspension or pardon is a piece of legislation that can be changed, and a future government could repeal the legisla- tion, Greenwood says. And, "a pardon could still leave problems for people who want to travel," as a convicted person's record might still be in an immigration database. Time is also a factor in the pursuit of justice. It can take six to eight months to gather the reports an applicant may need for a pardon, includ- ing from the RCMP and the Canadian Police Information Centre, says S'ad. When criminal records are expunged, though, prosecutors or the government take the initiative to expunge records. The government is saying that simple cannabis possession was crimi- nal at the time, and it should have been, says Sarah Leamon of the Sarah Leamon Law Group in Vancouver. However, she says, Rankin did a good job and made arguments compellingly in presenting his bill to expunge certain cannabis-related activity. "People who use cannabis for medical purposes — should they be held to the same moral culpability standard as recreational users?" asks Leamon. "There's an argument to be made for expungement." There should also be a conversation about expanding who is eligible for the pardon, she says, to people charged with trafficking, for example. "I would say the bill should have gone further in terms of contemplating expungement for some people, maybe on a case-by-case basis. . . . And it should have gone further, and contemplated pardons, maybe expunge- ments for [a] wider variety of cannabis offences." Still, Leamon says, "I'm all in favour of the pardons, it will open up new avenues for people." Aside from easing everyday life concerns, a criminal conviction would be wiped from the CPIC database. "This can colour the way a police officer deals with someone on the roadside," adds Leamon, whose criminal practice includes driving infractions. Although a bill might normally take a year to pass into legislation, for political reasons — this being an election year and the government recently beset by the SNC-Lavalin scandal — it may be pushed through earlier, she says. "And it should be; every day we're waiting for it to be passed, people are having their rights compromised, because they're not able to fully access the opportunities that they otherwise may be able to but for that conviction." Greenwood says she would have liked the government to have tabled its bill back in October, when it announced it was contemplating pardons for cannabis possession. The process may be expedited, but all stakeholders will want to be consulted, she says, including the campaign for cannabis amnesty, which expresses its goal as "righting history's wrongs," including being a voice for racialized and Indigenous Canadians who, it says, have been adversely affected by applications of the criminal law. Yet, "at the end of the day," Greenwood agrees, "having some system in place to relieve [the burden] of convictions is better than nothing." "A pardon says you did something wrong, you've paid your debt, we'll now clear your record. [On the other hand,] expungement says that the underlying action never should have been criminalized." Caryma Sa'd, [s]advocacy, Toronto

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