It is good news.
That is how Town of Barrhead mayor Dave McKenzie characterized the county’s announcement that Royal Canadian Cannabis, a medical marijuana company, will be the first tenant at the Kiel Industrial Park.
County of Barrhead reeve Doug Drozd made the announcement at the June 21 Barrhead and District Chamber of Commerce meeting.
“I don’t know a lot of the details, but on the face of it, it is good news for both the county as well as the town,” he said. “We are looking at some employment opportunities and that is always a positive as are the subsequent economic benefits that spin off from that.”
As for the medical marijuana product itself, McKenzie said he doesn’t have any objections to it.
“It is fairly highly regulated and because it is medical it has to be obtained through prescriptions by doctors . . . and for the people I have spoken to that are using medical marijuana, when it comes to the betterment of their quality of life, it has been absolutely life changing.”
McKenzie said he also believes there is a difference between cannabis for personal use, often termed recreation marijuana, and product used as a prescribed treatment by a medical professional.
“I’m glad to see the trend by industry and the media is starting to move away from the word recreation to adult cannabis. It is like saying I’m going to have a recreational beer. It’s definitely the wrong terminology. If you are smoking marijuana for recreation there are other issues at play,” he said.
Moving on to the subject of what the municipality needs to do before marijuana is legalized, McKenzie said they are in a bit of a holding pattern.
With the passage of Bill C-45, the sale of cannabis will become legal in Canada, Oct. 17. The federal government has given each province the authority to choose what the retail cannabis industry will look like.
In Alberta, the NDP government decided on a largely private model with private marijuana retailers being allowed to open brick-and-mortar stores while the Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission handling will be handling on-line sales.
Store locations must be at least 100 metres from schools and provincial healthcare facilities and no business or individual will be allowed to own more than 15 per cent of the total outlets in a municipality. The government is expecting 250 retail locations to open within the first year.
“Although a lot of the groundwork has been done by the province, it won’t be finalized until they get more information from the federal government about what exactly they are going to look after then the province will be able to determine what their responsibilities are going to be and what the parameters are,” McKenzie said. “We will take our lead from what the province tells us what our responsibilities are. We’ve been relying on our legal people to give us an idea what that framework will look like but until it’s signed and delivered really we are just guessing at what our responsibilities will be.”
