City official predicts 'huge demand in Canada for that training'

Summerside, P.E.I., is hoping to get more officers trained as soon as possible to recognize drug-impaired drivers in advance of Canada's planned legalization of recreational marijuana.

Deputy chief administrative officer Gordon MacFarlane told CBC News only a handful of city officers are trained and the only available training is in Florida.

"Hopefully ... there will be something that will be able to be done through the Atlantic Police Academy because … no doubt there's going to be a huge demand in Canada for that training," he said.

Cannabis activists say although this year’s 4-20 celebrations across the country will likely be the last before recreational pot use becomes legal, there’s still a lot to fight for.

The federal government has committed to making marijuana legal by the summer, but the task of regulating the sale and consumption of the drug has been handed down to the provinces and territories.

Lisa Campbell with the Ontario Cannabis Consumer and Retail Alliance said she doesn’t think 4-20 events across the country will disappear with the new legalized system — but they will likely evolve.

A cloud of cannabis smoke will envelop Parliament Hill Friday during what will be, by all accounts, the last 420 celebration before recreational cannabis is legalized.

But there's also uncertainty hanging in the air — particularly when it comes to the question of where pot smokers will be able to light up in Ottawa. 

When the Ontario government passed its Cannabis Act, the province made it clear that smoking will not be allowed in any public places. It's even laid out the fines: $1,000 for a first offence and up to $5,000 when scofflaws are caught again. 

But in Ottawa, there's a wrinkle.

In the National Capital Region, where municipal, provincial and federal jurisdictions intersect, the regulations are more obscure.

When marijuana legalization is enacted across Canada, it will create arguably the biggest legal cannabis economy in the world.

That change is the genesis of a conference entitled Legalizing Marijuana in Canada: Policy Challenges being held April 26 and 27, by the McGill Institute for Health and Social Policy (IHSP), at the Moot Court in the McGill Faculty of Law. Tickets are $25 for students and $100 for members of the general public.

Daniel Weinstock, the head of the IHSP and the lead organizer of the conference, says legalization raises a wide range of thorny policy issues.

Most marijuana stocks are down to start 2018 — ironically, the year expected to make recreational pot legal across Canada. Contrary to the “euphoria” that had taken over cannabis investors towards the end of 2017, it seems that there have been a couple of hiccups along the way and still a few wrinkles that need to be ironed out. Legalization date has been pushed back Throughout the current journey towards the legalization of marijuana for recreational purposes in Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been guiding the public towards an effective date of July 1, which also happens to…

Most marijuana stocks are down to start 2018 — ironically, the year expected to make recreational pot legal across Canada.

"The reasons we set the minimum age of 18 are because we recognize that Canadian youth between the ages of 15 and 24 are among the highest users of cannabis in all developed countries. So we recognized that if we went with a higher age for a minimum age, we would not divert them from getting out of the black market. We wanted to make sure we did all we could because we want to prevent that from happening." — Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor, March 28, Senate social affairs committee

The Liberals campaigned on a promise to legalize — as well as regulate and restrict — marijuana for recreational use, arguing the existing regime was doing little to keep it out of the hands of young people.

Cost estimates were based on data from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.

Ontario consumers may be paying $10 a gram for marijuana when it becomes legal later this year, but Waterloo Regional Police say new legislation will cost them much more. 

Based on Federation of Canadian Municipality estimates, the service expects to pay anywhere between $2.63 million and $3.79 million when marijuana becomes legal.

"We were looking at resource hours to train all the new officers in the legislation, resource hours to train in the new roadside device when it's approved, the impact on investigations related to  illegal dispensaries," Larkin told CBC News.

An Ottawa-based cannabis company has decided to take over a major California producer.

CannaRoyalty announced that it's buying FloraCal Farms in a cash and share swap.

FloraCal has a 15,000-square-foot facility in Sonoma County that produces plants in small batches. It claims that it generates an average selling price of more than US$17 per gram.

According to a joint news release, FloraCal is a sustainable producer relying 100 percent on renewable energy to produce seven cannabis flowers, rosin, and packaged pre-rolls.

The company has declared that it can achieve 28 percent to 32 percent THC content in its plants.

It generated US$6.4 million in revenue in the last fiscal year.

Canopy Growth Corporation’s President, Mark Zekulin along with President of Niagara College Canada, Dan Patterson, announced Tuesday their new partnership to provide experiential learning opportunities to students and graduates interested in pursuing careers in Canada’s flourishing legal cannabis industry.

The announcement took place at Canopy Growth’s Tweed Farms facility, located in the heart of South Western Ontario’s Wine Country, Niagara-on-the-Lake (NOTL), a less than ten minute drive from the college campus.

As a bill that would legalize recreational marijuana works its way through the Canadian Parliament, the government is gearing up to track cannabis consumption more closely than it has before.

Statistics Canada has begun to do city-scale drug screening by monitoring what Canadians flush down the toilet.

Six cities have agreed to contribute samples from the place where all drains congregate — their wastewater treatment plants. Toronto, Montreal, Edmonton, Alberta; Vancouver and Surrey in British Columbia; and Halifax, Nova Scotia, will participate. All told, the network would capture data on drug use from about a quarter of Canada's total 36 million inhabitants.