Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food

Comité permanent de l'agriculture et de l'agroalimentaire

For immediate release

Ottawa, July 27, 2022 -

Today, MP Kody Blois, Chair of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Agriculture (the Committee) and Agri-Food, sent two letters on behalf of the Committee to the Honourable Jean-Yves Duclos, Minister of Health, to inform him of the Committee’s concerns regarding the problems that cannabis and industrial hemp cultivators are encountering. The letters were also sent to the Honourable Marie-Claude Bibeau, Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food.

These two letters were sent following the June 20, 2022, meeting during which representatives from the cannabis and industrial hemp sectors had the opportunity to detail the problems they encounter and identify the distinct issues for each sector.

Witnesses representing the cannabis sector talked about dealing with lengthy processing times for obtaining micro-cultivation licences. These delays, as well as some of the packaging and labelling restrictions and the rules governing microbial limits, compromise the viability of businesses in their sector. The Committee recommends that the government take these irritants into account during this year’s statutory review of the Cannabis Act. It also recommends examining why the current legislative and regulatory framework does not provide enough incentives to eliminate the legacy market, in other words, the illicit market that predated the adoption of the Cannabis Act, and ensuring that the legislative and regulatory framework considers the limitation of nuisances from cannabis production facilities in the local communities in which they are located.

Witnesses from the industrial hemp sector explained the many uses of hemp products and the comparative advantages to Canada in terms of growing hemp. However, they reported that the coming into force of the Cannabis Act, which creates new provisions for hemp, has led to major nuisances in this sector. According to them, Health Canada interprets the new regulations without taking into account the industrial hemp exemptions. The Committee recommends that Health Canada undertake a comprehensive review of the way the Cannabis Act and the Industrial Hemp Regulations are currently being interpreted and ensure that this interpretation fully considers the exemptions set out for hemp products. The Committee also made other recommendations to support the growth of this sector, including by authorizing the use of hempseed for animal feed.

For both of these sectors, the Committee recommends that Health Canada document the hurdles that might prevent the adoption of these measures and consider transferring the responsibility of regulating industrial hemp and of the cannabis licence regime to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada or to a regulatory agency created for this purpose in order to create a regulatory environment that fosters the growth of these two sectors and the elimination of the legacy market.

The letters as well as the links to the meeting and documents related to this study are available on the Committee’s website.