Everything You Need to Know About the Updated Cannabis Act and Regulations

Health Canada now wants prospective cannabis licence holders to build their facilities first before going and applying for their particular licence. In the past, all you had to do was submit a series of paperwork to the government regulator and they would determine whether or not it would be appropriate for them to give you a licence. This change is largely because over the past three years 70% of the awarded licences remain dormant and those applicants did not produce facilities. This change also aims to help alleviate the shortage of legal cannabis.

Cannabis licence holders are no longer required to submit an amendment for review and approval by Health Canada for adding a new operations area within an approved building that already appears on your licence and also for changing an operations area within an approved building that already appears on your licence. The only exception to this is if these changes result in a change to your organizational security plan.

A processing licence holder must provide the minister with a written notice at least 60 days before making a new cannabis product that has not been sold in the past available for sale. In order to make this process faster, licence holders can now submit just one notice of new cannabis product (for dried and fresh cannabis only) to Health Canada to obtain information about the various immediate container sizes that will become available for sale. The notice of new cannabis product should include all the container sizes the producer intends to sell for the product. Also, when one licence holder sells a product-for which a notice of new cannabis product was already submitted, to another licence holder, the notice of new cannabis product that has already been submitted is considered sufficient notice for the purpose of complying with subsection 244(1) (60-day notice of new cannabis product) of the Cannabis Regulations.

After October 16, 2020, as per the Regulations, holders of a federal licence for cultivation or a licence for processing will no longer be permitted to sell dried cannabis, fresh cannabis, cannabis plants or cannabis plant seeds that are cannabis products – or that are contained in a cannabis accessory that is a cannabis product:

1.With an outer container that contains more than one immediate container.
2.That are labelled with health warning messages set out in the document “Cannabis Health Warning Messages” as it read immediately prior to October 17, 2019.
3.Unless they are labelled with a dried cannabis equivalency statement in accordance with the Cannabis Regulations.
4.Unless the concentrations of THC and CBD are reported milligrams/gram rather than as a w/w percentage.
5.If they display a brand element that is an image which is larger than what is permitted by subparagraph 130(9)(d)(ii) of the Cannabis Regulations.

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