Mid-week podcast: pot and growing deficit
On the mid-week podcast, we talk about pot.
There was a lot of marijuana talk in the air on Wednesday. Senate Liberals held a public meeting in Ottawa to talk about how to move forward on legalization. At the same time, in BC, a Federal Court judge struck down laws restricting the rights of medical marijuana patients to grow their own cannabis.
We talk about what comes next with Eugene Oscapella, an Ottawa lawyer and long-time drug policy reform advocate, and Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, a Liberal MP from Ontario who's studied the issue of decriminalization in the past.
Changing fiscal picture
Just a couple of days removed Finance Minister Bill Morneau's announcement that the deficit in his first budget would be much deeper than first anticipated -- $18.4 billion in 2016-17 and $15.5 billion in 2017-18, not including new spending the Liberals have planned -- we ask Liberal MP Wayne Easter, the Chair of the Commons Standing Committee on Finance, how things got to this point.