Yukon is getting federal money for drug-testing devices and for training for officers to test drivers for drug impairment, the federal government announced on Tuesday.

The funding, about $2.3 million, comes from a pot of $81 million previously announced for public and road safety.

"This is about giving the right tools to the RCMP so that individuals who choose to operate a motor vehicle after they've consumed some sort of drug or alcohol will be caught," Tracy-Anne McPhee, the territory's minister of justice, said at the announcement in Whitehorse.

The drug-testing devices include the Drager DrugTest 5000 and another called the SoToxa.

At the end of 2018, Canada, the United States, and Mexico agreed on new terms to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The new treaty, the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), establishes updated legal language surrounding trade tariffs, environmental and labour regulations, and intellectual property protections. Now that cannabis is considered a legitimate export for medicinal use, international trade faces the complex task of applying current laws to a product which was once prohibited.

With billionaire rap mogul Jay-Z signed on as its new chief brand strategist, California cannabis company Caliva has lofty goals.

“We obviously have aspirations to go beyond California into other states over the next couple of years, and we really believe that Mr. Carter’s creative genius and his ability to really have the pulse of what a cultural movement is will be able to help Caliva do that,” Dennis O’Malley told CNBC’s Squawk Alley last week. He noted the company is making “no small plans.”

Cannabis is legal for recreational purposes in 11 states around the nation. And along with that legal framework comes rules about how or when you can drive while under the influence of cannabis.

When each state legalized cannabis, many simply tacked cannabis on to their existing rules about driving under the influence of alcohol, with cannabis DUIs garnering the same penalties as alcohol DUIs. 

Like alcohol, cannabis impairs skills commonly associated with safe driving, like quick reflexes and divided attention. At the moment, though, research into how much cannabis impairs a driver and methods for accurately testing how much marijuana a driver is currently under the influence of are very limited.

Ontario has blamed a shortage of legal cannabis from the federal government for its slow rollout of retail outlets, a claim dismissed by the federal government and regulatory bodies from other provinces, raising prospects the black market for weed may thrive longer in Canada’s most populous province.

Canada became the first G7 country to legalize recreational marijuana in October 2018 but sales have been dampened by supply constraints and prices that are higher than those on the black market.

While the provinces can set their own cannabis guidelines, a provincially run distributor purchases the cannabis from federally licensed producers, and then allocates it to retail locations approved by the province.

The Ontario government has announced it will allow 50 more cannabis shops to open in October. Eight are allotted to First Nations reserves. The other 42 will be chosen by lottery. Unfortunately, the government has learned only some of the lessons from its previous cannabis lottery experience last January.

The announcement of more stores is good news for the fight against black markets. Ontario has trailed other provinces on that goal because it lacks enough legal retailers.

Statistics Canada's latest retailing report confirmed the value of physical stores. Ontario's legal recreational cannabis sales totalled just $7.7 million in March, when only online sales were available. That jumped to $19.7 million in April after the first dozen shops opened.

Ontario will issue 50 new cannabis retail licences this year, a move aimed at expanding legal pot sales in the country's largest marijuana market while helping to stamp out the illicit industry, the provincial government announced Wednesday. 

The province plans to issue 42 new licences for private-sector retailers who successfully pre-qualify to be part of a new lottery system later this month. The remaining eight licences will be allocated for outlets in First Nations communities. 

The symbols found on the packaging of legal recreational cannabis for sale in Saskatchewan are hard to miss: A red octagon with the letters THC and a stylized cannabis leaf; a white and yellow warning label advising users to keep the product out of the reach of children. 

But these symbols can also be found on illegal cannabis disguised to look like the legitimate product. 

Now, at least one member of Saskatoon's legal cannabis community is advising customers to use caution when ordering cannabis online, because while the product and website might look legitimate, they could be making an illegal purchase.

Chase Ruttig is an assistant manager with Prairie Records in Saskatoon.

The Canadian government passed a law late on Wednesday that would allow its citizens with a criminal record for marijuana possession to be pardoned without any cost and expedite a process that previously could take up a decade.

The new bill is aimed at shedding the “burden of stigma” and removing barriers for employment, education, housing, volunteering and travel for people with records for simple possession of cannabis, Senator Tony Dean said in a statement.

The bill titled C-93 follows Canada’s legalization of the sale and recreational use of marijuana and cannabis products last year, making Canada the first industrialized nation to legalize recreational cannabis.

In the first report, the Government of Canada says it earned C$186 million from taxes on legal marijuana products in the first five and a half months after the legalization of recreational use on October 17. In 2019 alone, the government has collected a total of C$107.1 million from general and excise taxes at both the federal and provincial levels.

The provinces have accumulated C$79 million in excise taxes, while the federal government has raked in excise tax revenue of C$19 million so far in 2019.

In its release, the government indicates that revenue from general taxes is expected to rise for the remainder of 2019 as more cannabis stores open their doors across the country.