As Canada gets set to legalize recreational cannabis use, the country’s public safety minister is preparing new measures that will help law enforcement officials address drug-impaired driving.

Ralph Goodale said in an interview with BNN Wednesday that the government is examining roadside devices that police can use to detect whether drivers are under the influence of marijuana, in addition to the creation of new criminal offences proposed in Bill C-46. 

“We’ve tested them under Canadian weather conditions. We tested them last winter and they performed very well. They’re being further examined by the forensics science council to make sure they can be certified by the justice minister as usable in Canadian conditions, but test results have so far been very encouraging,” Goodale said.

“The offence of driving with drugs has existed in the criminal code since 1925, but it has been difficult to enforce.”

Goodale’s comments come after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sent four cabinet members to a Senate session on Tuesday in an effort to expedite the passage of a bill allowing recreational marijuana to be legalized later this year.

The senators suggested there could be a delay to Trudeau’s initial July target to legalize the drug, though the Liberal government has since indicated it’s aiming for summer. In Tuesday’s hearing, Conservative lawmakers questioned the cabinet ministers on legalization issues such as roadside testing by police, a low minimum age of use and public campaigns to deter unhealthy consumption.

Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor also told senators Tuesday that provinces and territories have indicated once Bill C-45 – the legislation setting up a legal cannabis regime – is given royal assent, companies and local governments will need another eight to 12 weeks to prepare for retail sales.

The prospect of a delay to passing Bill C-45 may affect publicly-traded marijuana producers, whose shares have swung as investors recently reassessed the market.

Goodale told BNN that Ottawa is on track to legalize cannabis this summer, though “a lot of work needs to be done” in the next five to six months to implement it in an “orderly fashion.”

“Obviously this amounts to a big change – it’s transformational,” Goodale said. “It’s a complicated task to have everything changing in the right sequence and right time.”

With files from Bloomberg