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OTTAWA—Senators are being encouraged to postpone a vote on a bill to legalize recreational cannabis by a now-former employee of the Conservative’s chief critic of the legislation.


Sen. Claude Carignan said Friday he did not authorize Malcolm Armstrong, whom he’d hired on contract to advise him on the marijuana issue, to propose delaying the vote. The Conservative senator called the idea “crazy” and unrealistic.



While he welcomed the Conservatives’ repudiation of the paper, Sen. Yuen Pau Woo, leader of the Independent Senators Group, said the incident raises questions about why Armstrong was hired in the first place, who was supervising him and what instructions he received from his employer.


Woo noted that Armstrong’s paper was laid out and designed to look like an official Senate report, complete with the upper chamber’s logo. It identified the author only as “Dr. Malcolm Armstrong,” with no mention that he worked for a senator. Armstrong is not a medical doctor; he has a PhD in philosophy.
The fact that the paper was distributed to independent senators left Woo wondering if it was designed to trick them into delaying the vote, rather than have Conservative senators take the heat for breaking the agreement to vote by June 7.


“Clearly, all of those thoughts crossed my mind,” Woo said in an interview.
“This initiative is a rogue initiative — there is no other way of putting it — that is intended to mislead individuals, senators into thinking that (postponing the vote) is somehow sanctioned or part of an official Senate review process which subverts, I guess, the official, rigorous process that is already taking place.”

remainder snipped.

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