With the upcoming legalization of cannabis, WorkSafeBC is helping prepare employers and workers by educating them about impairment on the job with new online resources.

The focus of the new resource is not so much about enforcement or testing, but rather on the issue of assessing functional impairment, according to Tom Brocklehurst, director of prevention, practices and quality at WorkSafeBC.

"We would expect employers to think about the tasks that their workers hold and the positions they have and if impairment will cause them to make some judgment errors or some physical errors that would cause risk to themselves or others… That's the aspect we want managed," Brocklehurst said.

With the growing demand for medical marijuana, and as the October 17 date for legalization in Canada approaches, it would appear that everyone is getting into the business, including a former federal politician from Kelowna and a First Nations chief from West Kelowna.

Former Conservative Kelowna-Lake Country MP Ron Cannan has jumped right into the retail marijuana business. He’s a director on a company called Indigenous Bloom, which owns a dispensary on the Kwaw-Kwaw Apilt First Nations reserve in the Chilliwack area.

Last Thursday, the law came down on two dispensaries on the reserve, including the one that Cannan is involved with.

RCMP said the dispensaries were operating illegally.

Cannan said he’s not directly involved in the dispensary.

It's a blistering July afternoon at the Edmundston Truck Stop. The air vibrates with the low rumbling of a dozen idling 18-wheelers burning fuel.

For Chief Patricia Bernard of the Madawaska Maliseet First Nation, that's the sound of money. The big rigs have 600-plus litre tanks — and the band-owned gas bar is a popular spot to fill up before truckers hit the Quebec border. 

The Edmundston Truck Stop is a small part of the retail Grey Rock Power Centre. 

"See all those?" Bernard said. "Every time one of those big trucks fills up, that's a thousand dollars."

Trade 

This year’s gathering of agriculture ministers comes in the midst of an escalating trade war. Several countries, including Canada, have imposed retaliatory tariffs on a laundry list of U.S. products after the Trump administration levied a 25 per cent tariff on steel imports and a 10 per cent tariff on aluminum imports.

Canada’s retaliatory tariff package, which took effect July 1, is valued at $16.6 billion. Many food items made the list, including gherkin pickles, pizza and quiches, soup, salad dressings, ketchup and mayonnaise. But no primary agriculture products are on the list at this time due to fears of unintended consequences on producers here at home.

If Doug Ford wants the free market to play a role in selling cannabis to the people of Canada’s largest province, Ontario’s premier could take a cue from the country’s smallest territory.

“As an interim measure, the Yukon Liquor Corporation (YLC) is opening a temporary physical retail store that will be phased out once private retailers are established post cannabis legalization,” the Whitehorse-based YLC’s Scott Westerlaken explained to BNN Bloomberg via email.

Canadians working in the cannabis industry are starting to run into big problems at the border, according to an immigration lawyer.

Len Saunders is an immigration lawyer based in Blaine, Washington, a busy port of entry for British Columbians headed to the U.S. He says some of his clients are being denied entry — some have even received lifetime bans — for their business associations with marijuana. 

"I'm getting calls almost daily from individuals in the marijuana industry in Canada who are concerned about either themselves or their employees entering the United States for business," Saunders said.

It’s December 2018 and you’re responsible for organizing your office Christmas party. You’ve got the food, you’ve got the booze. Should you also buy a few joints or edibles now that marijuana is legal in Canada?

Or you’re the boss of a sales team. You’re accustomed to your staff taking clients out for drinks to woo business, but what if you’re handed an expense claim for marijuana? Isn’t that as legit a way to seal the deal?

As a labour and employment lawyer at Roper Greyell LLP, Drew Demerse has been fielding all sorts of questions about how life will change for Canadian businesses on October 17. That’s the day it becomes legal for anyone — including your staff — to buy and partake in the use of marijuana.

VANCOUVER - Local and Indigenous governments in British Columbia will be permitted to prevent marijuana production in their communities on land that is part of the Agricultural Land Reserve, but with conditions.

The Ministry of Agriculture said Friday the regulatory change is effective immediately and gives governments the right to prevent industrial-style, cement-based and cannabis-production bunkers in their communities.

However, the ministry said pot production can't be prohibited if it's grown lawfully in an open field, in a structure that is soil based, or in an existing licensed operation.

Marijuana firms are warning that Ottawa’s move to impose an additional $100-million in taxes ostensibly to recoup regulatory costs – on top of hundreds of millions in government revenue expected from excise taxes − will hurt their ability to undercut the cannabis black market.

Health Canada, which recently announced a proposed “annual regulatory fee” of 2.3 per cent on the gross revenues of big cannabis producers, is facing industry pushback on the levy in the runup to the Oct. 17 legalization of the recreational market in this country.

The fee would be in addition to the $1-a-gram excise tax on cannabis that has already been announced and will go mainly to the provinces. Health Canada is giving companies and other interested parties 30 days to comment on the plan.

Crossing the border may become much more difficult for a certain group of Canadians come October 17, 2018.

While marijuana users have been gearing up for potential issues at the border for some time, it now appears that people working in the cannabis industry may also be affected—regardless of whether they use the drug or not. 

Under U.S. law, anyone associated with the cannabis industry could be banned from entering the country for life, even after it is legalized in Canada nationwide. If it seems harsh, that’s because it is…but it’s all in the context of the war on drugs.