If you've been keeping up with Bill C-45, you'll know that the Liberal government wants Canadians to wait up to a whole year after legalization is implemented to be able to legally purchase and use cannabis concentrates and edibles.

While the feds claim they need more time to create legislation (when we all know they could easily lift ideas from places like Colorado or Washington), one B.C.-based licensed producer has found a way around the delay, at least as far as medical patients are concerned.

Canna Farms Limited, a licensed producer based in Hope, announced yesterday that it had created Canada's first legal "whole-plant" cannabis concentrate. 

Three companies are seriously considering building plants to grow recreational cannabis in the Leduc region in a move that should create 200 local jobs, new research indicates.

With legalization of non-medicinal pot expected this summer, the area south of Edmonton will have an estimated 10,000 people consuming cannabis by 2023, according to a study released Thursday by the Leduc-Nisku Economic Development Association.

The report, based on Statistics Canada information and other data, predicts legal marijuana will capture more than 90 per cent of the Alberta market because the average price will be less than 25 cents a gram higher than its illegal competitors.

'What this ruling really is, is a missed opportunity to liberalize trade,' Calgary economist says

A Supreme Court of Canada ruling on interprovincial beer imports has sparked fears that provinces and territories will be free to impose restrictions on cannabis flowing over their borders at a time the industry is in its early stages of growth.

In its ruling on the so-called free-the-beer case, the top court said provinces and territories can restrict imports of goods, as long as their intent isn't to impede trade.

Despite that proviso, economists said there is enough wiggle room in the decision allowing provinces to impose restrictions on the legal trade of cannabis.

It has at least one local pot company worried.

Less fish, more 4/20 if one local entrepreneur has his way

Cannabis could be coming to the rescue of a Newfoundland fishing community that's been without an economic centre since Hurricane Igor laid waste to the area in 2010. 

Port Union's old Ocean Choice International fish plant could soon be used to plant marijuana. 

The disused building is in the final stages of a sale to local businessman Daniel Porter, who is planning to turn it into a cannabis growing facility for medicinal and recreational pot.

"This means the world to me," Porter said.

"I love that I can come home and create work and have an impact on the community … it affects people's lives and children's lives, and it creates a massive employment spinoff."

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.

U.S. dispensaries have strict advertising rules as they target 'canna-curious' people

Even before recreational marijuana is legal in Canada and the rules around advertising are fully developed, a licensed pot producer in Leamington, Ont. is targeting your senses with six 'cannabis experiences.'

In the days leading up to today's 4/20 pot celebrations, which will likely be the last before the planned cannabis legalization by the summer, Aphria introduced a new marijuana brand. It's called Solei Sungrown Cannabis and will be designed for the new adult-use market.

About 100,000 tiny pot plants that took root in Ontario are headed for a massive grow-op in Delta

The smell of marijuana wafting through the airplane on the YVR airport tarmac on Thursday wasn't overpowering, but it left no doubt as to what the huge white boxes filling the plane contained.

Cannabis giant Canopy Growth shipped more than 100,000 tiny pot plants, or clones, from a nursery facility in Ontario to its new greenhouse in Delta, B.C.

While all eyes are on the launch date for recreational cannabis in Canada —said to come in either late summer or early fall— the medical side of the equation should be getting the attention, as well, because it’s about to get much bigger, says Eric Paul, CEO of licensed producer CannTrust Holdings (TSX:TRST).

The ramp up in Canada’s cannabis sector is ongoing, with industry estimates of sales eventually adding up to between $5 and $8 billion a year. That’s substantial, since by comparison, Canada produces a little under $3 billion of beer a year and about $1 billion in tobacco products. But while the rec market is getting all the focus, the medical marijuana industry both at home and abroad should be getting its props, since it’s growing by leaps and bounds.

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.