Pubdate: Sun, 29 Nov 2015
Source: Toronto Star (CN ON)
Copyright: 2015 The Toronto Star
Contact:  http://www.thestar.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/456
Author: Rob Ferguson
Page: A4

MEDICAL POT LAW NEEDS WORK, WYNNE SAYS

Entertainment Industry, Restaurants Not Consulted on Changes to Policy

Premier Kathleen Wynne says she wants to sit in the "no toking" 
section at the movies.

Two days after her government pulled back a controversial plan to 
allow medical marijuana to be vaped or smoked in public places where 
tobacco smoking is banned, Wynne told reporters she understands the 
public backlash.

"I have a lot of sympathy for the concerns that were raised" about 
second-hand smoke, the premier told reporters Saturday at a Liberal 
convention where party activists lined up to have her predecessor, 
Dalton McGuinty, autograph his new memoir.

"I would have a problem with it," Wynne replied when asked if she'd 
like to be watching a movie and have a patron sitting beside her 
using medicinal marijuana. "We need to think this through." Dipika 
Damerla, the associate health minister, said Thursday that the 
policy, which would have exempted medical marijuana from new 
e-cigarette restrictions taking effect Jan. 1, will go back to the 
drawing board with broader consultations to be held.

Previously, only medical groups had been consulted, not the 
restaurant and entertainment industries and other stakeholders.

Medical marijuana users, who include cancer patients dealing with 
severe pain and people with epilepsy who need the drug to control 
seizures, have pressed for the right to take their medication anywhere.

The Liberal convention, bringing party officials from around the 
province for a weekend of strategy sessions, included a moderated 
question-and-answer period with McGuinty, who resigned three years 
ago at the height of a political crisis over cancelled gas-fired 
power plants in Oakville and Mississauga.

Deleted documents pertaining to the plant cancellations are now the 
subject of an OPP investigation, although McGuinty is not a subject 
of that probe or another into questionable business practices at 
Ornge, the provincial air ambulance service, during his era.

Despite the cloud of those investigations hanging over the 
government, McGuinty appeared firmly back in the fold.

"The reality of a political career and of a leader is that there are 
challenging issues, there are mistakes, there are missteps that are 
made but that's not the sole focus of a reflection on a career," said 
Wynne, who has previously distanced herself from McGuinty amid 
fallout from the controversial gas plants scandal.

"The accomplishments have to be part of that," she added, noting 
McGuinty, now a businessman, implemented full-day kindergarten, 
protected greenbelt lands from development and closed coal-fired 
power plants that were contributing to global warming - something 
Wynne will tout at the global climate change summit in Paris when she 
arrives Sunday. She credited McGuinty, who brought dozens of copies 
of his book Making a Difference, to hand out free, for paving a path 
in her rise to premier.

"There's no way I would be in this role if it weren't for him. And 
I'll tell you, when he shuffled me out of education, I wept," Wynne 
recalled of leaving that ministry for other cabinet posts to round 
out her experience.

"It was a hard day, and all the media were saying 'You've been 
demoted and what's the problem,' " she added.

"It was the single most important thing he could have done for me to 
get me ready for this job."

Wynne called the climate change conference "humanity's last real 
chance" to achieve a co-ordinated worldwide effort to keep the global 
rise in temperatures below 2 C.

"We have to get it right . . . there's no Planet B."

Wynne will return from Paris after two days and head back across the 
Atlantic next weekend to spend more time at the conference.

"We can go to Paris with a strong voice," she said of the Canadian 
contingent. "This is going to be a hard-fought agreement."

The government will buy carbon offsets to account for the jet travel 
of the Ontario delegation.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom