Justin Trudeau: father's influence made my brother's marijuana charge 'go away'

Days after his government confirmed that its plans to legalise marijuana will not include a blanket pardon for those with past pot convictions, Justin Trudeau has admitted that his late brother was once charged with marijuana possession – and that their father’s resources and connections helped make the charge “go away”.

The Canadian prime minister’s comments, made at a town hall meeting hosted by Vice Media, came in response to a young Canadian who said he had been charged with pot possession.

Trudeau’s Liberal government tabled legislation earlier this month to fully legalise marijuana by mid-2018, putting Canada on course to become the first country in the G7 to do so.

But the legislation has since been criticised by some over its failure to include an amnesty for those with pot-related convictions – despite the government’s acknowledgment that those with criminal records often have trouble finding work, housing or travelling outside the country.

Speaking on Monday, Trudeau detailed how his brother Michel – six months before he died in an avalanche in British Columbia – had in 1998 been involved in a car accident.

Police found a few joints in the wreckage and charged Michel with possession of marijuana. But their father – the former Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau – assured him it would be OK. “He reached out to his friends in the legal community, got the best possible lawyer and was very confident that he was going to be able to make those charges go away,” Trudeau told the audience.

He continued: “We were able to do that because we had resources, my dad had a couple of connections, and we were confident that my little brother wasn’t going to be saddled with a criminal record for life.”

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His comments come as his government is facing growing pressure to couple legalisation with a blanket pardon for those with criminal records for marijuana possession. Earlier this month, the CD Howe Institute, a Toronto-based thinktank, urged the government to consider pardons as a means of sparking economic activity – as doing so would allow some Canadians to better access job opportunities – while also freeing up government resources.

Others, such as the progressive New Democratic party, are calling on the government to immediately decriminalise the personal use of marijuana, describing the charges as a waste of resources that saddles people with criminal records for something the government no longer believes is a crime.

In 2015 – the last year for which figures are available – 49,577 Canadians were charged with possession of cannabis, according to Statistics Canada.

Bill Blair, the former Toronto police chief tapped to lead the government’s efforts towards legalisation, has suggested that the charges tend to disproportionately affect minority groups.

“One of the great injustices in this country is the disparity and the disproportionality of the enforcement of these laws and the impact it has had on minority communities, Aboriginal communities and those in our most vulnerable neighbourhoods,” Blair said last year.

As he shared his brother’s experience of being charged, Trudeau said the story highlighted how the current approach fails to treat all Canadians equally. “People from minority communities, marginalised communities, without economic resources, are not going to have that kind of option to go through and clear their name in the justice system,” he said. “That’s one of the fundamental unfairnesses of this current system is that it affects different communities in a different way.”

In 2013, Trudeau said in an interview that he had smoked marijuana five or six times in his life. The last time he had done so, he told the Huffington Post, was about two years after he was elected as an MP.

Still, his government has continually stressed that the current laws remain in effect until the laws around legalisation are changed. Police forces across the country have underscored the point several times in recent months, carrying out high-profile raids on marijuana dispensaries and arresting dozens of people.

On Monday, Trudeau suggested his government would address the issue of criminal charges once legalisation is approved. “Our focus is on making sure we’re changing the legislation to fix what’s broken about a system that is hurting Canadians,” he said. “And then we’ll take steps to look at what we can do for those people who have criminal records for something that would no longer be criminal.”