Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has set this July as the deadline for passage of the long-anticipated cannabis legalization law in Canada. The new law will be phased in over a period of several weeks, but the first legal sales are expected by summer\u2019s end. However, it won\u2019t be a uniform policy across the country, as Canada\u2019s 10 provinces and three territories are each implementing their own regulations \u2014 with plenty of variation as well as controversy.<\/p>\n
While Ontario and Quebec are opting for provincial government monopolies on retail sales, Alberta and Saskatchewan have embraced a private model, sparking a flood of canna-capital into these western provinces.<\/p>\n
Mack Andrews, vice-president of the\u00a0Alberta Cannabis Collective<\/a>, thinks his province is positioned to be nothing short of a global leader in the retail cannabis market. He told<\/a> the Toronto\u00a0Globe & Mail\u00a0this week: \u201cWhat I really see is Alberta setting a worldwide standard that could be adopted in other jurisdictions as they legalize in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n This windswept province, where the Great Plains meet the Canadian Rockies, has traditionally looked to resource extraction as its economic mainstay.<\/p>\n But world energy prices are now depressed, and Andrews sees legal cannabis arriving just in time.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cWith the way the oil and gas industry has gone over the past couple of years, there\u2019s a lot of really talented, educated people in Alberta who are looking to transition or are already out of that industry and looking for new things,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n As of early May, two months after the Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis Commission (AGLC<\/a>) started accepting applications for retail licenses, it had received 533 bids. There is no cap on permits in Alberta, although no single individual or entity can hold more than 15 percent of retail licenses in the province.<\/p>\n Andrews isn\u2019t the only one anticipating an Alberta cannabis boom. Toronto retailer\u00a0Fire & Flower<\/a>\u00a0earlier this year relocated its headquarters to Edmonton, Alberta\u2019s capital. Fire & Flower has applied for 37 retail licenses in Alberta, the maximum now allowed. Enthused Fire & Flower vice president Nathan Mison said, \u201cAlberta has created a very clear and concise environment, which allows investors, organizations, and retailers to have a level of understanding that is sometimes in flux in other provinces across Canada,\u201d<\/p>\n Similar ambitions are expressed by Jeff Mooij, president of\u00a0420 Clinic<\/a>, the first licensed medical marijuana outlet in Calgary, Alberta\u2019s biggest city. He plans to vend herbal wares across the province under the name 420 Premium Market, and has applied for more than 20 licenses.<\/p>\n Mooij credits lobbying for Alberta\u2019s wide-open approach. \u201cWe really worked hard to try and educate not just city council members in the city of Calgary, but the province too, on making sure that we do this properly, that we\u2019re not punishing our industry for [people\u2019s] own stigma and beliefs. And everybody inherently has them, because this has been illegal for so long,\u201d he told the Globe & Mail.<\/p>\n Saskatchewan, the next province to the east to Alberta, has also opted for a private model, but has imposed a province-wide limit of 51 retail permits.<\/p>\n In Saskatchewan,\u00a0Tweed Grasslands<\/a>, a local subsidiary of Canadian giant\u00a0Canopy Growth Corporation<\/a>, has won five of the 51 available permits. The company also owns a 90,000-square-foot facility in the southeast Saskatchewan city of Yorkton that has a federal license to grow medical marijuana. So an easy transition to the recreational market is anticipated, the\u00a0Canadian Broadcasting Corporation\u00a0reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n Another\u00a0CBC\u00a0report<\/a> notes that one of the Saskatchewan retail permits has gone to Cierra Sieben-Chuback, a 23-year-old \u201cstudent entrepreneur\u201d in Saskatoon. She hopes to launch soon after her imminent graduation from the University of Saskatchewan\u2019s business school. \u201cIt\u2019s like my birthday on steroids,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is quite surreal, I\u2019m not going to lie.\u201d<\/p>\n In New Brunswick, Canopy Growth\u00a0is one of two companies<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 the other one is Organigram \u2014\u00a0who will work with the government to grow cannabis for the provincial market. New Brunswick\u2019s government will then license private retailers.<\/p>\n In Newfoundland and Labrador, the province\u2019s Liquor Corporation will be licensing private retailers to sell cannabis. However, \u201cretailers are going to be under close watch,\u201d\u00a0reports<\/a>\u00a0the province\u2019s daily newspaper, The Telegram.<\/p>\n Other provinces, including Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, have adopted a policy of only government-operated retail cannabis outlets. The Canadians already have government-run liquor stores, so the precedent has already been set for this kind of government-operated store.<\/p>\n With legal cannabis coming soon, Ontario is ironically witnessing a\u00a0vigorous crackdown<\/a>\u00a0on independent private dispensaries that have been up to now operating in a kind of legal \u201cgray zone.\u201d<\/p>\n Also worth noting: Quebec\u2019s proposed legislation would allow people to smoke cannabis in most places where cigarettes are allowed. In neighboring Ontario, the bill passed in December bans consumption in public.\u00a0So theoretically, Ottawa residents could head to Gatineau, the adjacent town in Quebec, buy cannabis and walk back home smoking it \u2014 as long as they stopped halfway across the interprovincial bridge and either finished off their joint or tossed it into the Ottawa River (which would certainly be a waste).<\/p>\n British Columbia is planning a mix of government-run and private outlets.\u00a0The government-run dispensaries\u00a0will be operated<\/a>\u00a0by Canada\u2019s Liquor Distribution Branch, which has announced they are working on creating an online service for purchasing cannabis.<\/p>\n In Manitoba, the government\u2019s liquor and gambling department\u00a0will supply and license<\/a>\u00a0private retailers, but those private dispensaries will control the sales.<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s the question of cultivation. On May 31, Canada\u2019s Senate voted down a provision that would have imposed a blanket federal ban on home cultivation. Another Conservative-sponsored measure was then introduced to restrict homegrown to the interior of a dwelling \u2014 meaning no backyard cannabis plants. This too was rejected, the\u00a0Canadian Press\u00a0reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n However, provinces and territories may choose to ban homegrown. The draft legislation now poised to pass in the far-north territory of Nunavut would do exactly that, according to the CBC<\/a>.<\/p>\n All these different provincial regulations make\u00a0for what the\u00a0Ottawa Citizen<\/a>\u00a0calls a \u201ccrazy quilt of marijuana laws\u201d emerging across Canada. The paper quotes Ottawa lawyer Trina Fraser saying that someone should invent an app called \u201cAm I Breaking the Law?\u201d to help Canadians navigate the confusion when cannabis goes legal.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>,\u00a0which model do you think is best for legal cannabis?<\/p>\n The post The Cannabis Regulations in Each Canadian Province<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has set this July as the deadline for passage of the long-anticipated cannabis legalization law in Canada. The new law will be phased in over a period of several weeks, but the first legal sales are expected by summer\u2019s end. However, it won\u2019t be a uniformContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4498,34,4499,50,2628,4500,81],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26724"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26724"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26725,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26724\/revisions\/26725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
Saskatchewan, New Brunswick & Newfoundland and Labrador: More Limited Private Models<\/h4>\n
Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia & Prince Edward Island: Government-Operated Cannabis<\/h4>\n
British Colombia, Manitoba & New Brunswick: \u201cHybrid\u201d Models<\/h4>\n
Home Cultivation, Still Up in the Air Nationwide<\/h4>\n
A Nationwide Patchwork of Laws<\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: The Cannabis Regulations in Each Canadian Province<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"