Peace River-Westlock MP Arnold Viersen is making his rounds in the constituency.
On Tuesday, he was in the Town of Peace River, where he addressed members of Peace River’s Town Council at their latest regular meeting.
Peace River-Westlock Tory MP Arnold Viersen addresses Peace River Town Council on November 14, 2017. (Photo/Peace River Broadcasting)
One of the big issues he addressed was the Liberal Government’s plan to legalize recreational marijuana.
Viersen says that the changes will have a trickledown effect, all the way to the municipal levels of government.
“When it comes down to enforcing the law, it’ll be downloaded onto the municipalities,” Viersen said. “As well, there’s also a whole lot of things in this legislation, such as how many plants can be owned, how much marijuana can be processed, where it can be grown, that’s going to be dumped onto the municipality. Plus, the policing costs are typically borne on the municipality.”
He told the Trending 55 Newsroom after the meeting that each municipality will have to come up with new bylaws to deal with enforcing marijuana limits once it’s legalized.
“Each bylaw would stipulate what kind of facility you’d need to have in order to grow it in your own home,” Viersen said. “If you ask me, this is nothing more than a tax grab by this Liberal government. They’ve got some people excited about (legalization), but then put so many restrictions on it that it makes it virtually impossible to own it, or grow it. So in the end, you’d have to by your marijuana from a government-owned operation, in order for them to make their tax dollars on it.”
On top of that, Viersen says it’ll have a huge social impact on the public as well.
“Jurisdictions that have legalized marijuana have seen up to a 40 percent increase in impaired driving deaths,” he said. “Right now in Canada, there are about a-thousand people a year who are killed from drunk driving. Add about 40 percent more, that will be about 14-hundred total potentially per year.”
Besides marijuana legalization, he also brought up the tax changes the Liberal government have been making.
“They’re changing the tax code to target passive incomes that companies are holding,” said Viersen. “The Liberals are putting a 78 percent tax-rate on passive incomes of a corporation, which is hypocritical of them, given that their finance minister has private corporations in France, just to avoid paying taxes on his villa.”
During his time in Peace River, he also met with officials from PurpleRung to discuss homelessness in the Peace Country. As well, he attended the opening of a new exhibit at the Peace River Museum, which will launch a new Metis celebration.
– Posted by BET
