As the Covid 19 quarantine measure continue, President Trump tweeted, “We will be, by mutual consent, temporarily closing our northern border with Canada.” He said trade would not be affected. However, many cannabis companies have operations in both countries.

The U.S. Postal Service is having a little trouble with the mail.

An audit of the federal agency, which specifically looked at how it handles cannabis-infused shipments, revealed that more than 200 packages believed to contain the drug went missing during internal shipments in 2019, Marijuana Moment reports.

According to the audit, 188 of the 15,941 confiscated packages went missing after discovery by an inspector; it attributes the problem, in part, to pot’s pungent smell and inspectors not using suggested mailing methods that would obscure the odour and prevent “the risk of theft by postal employees processing this mail.”

Thaomy Lam’s daily walks are incomplete without her ritual. Every time she steps outside to get some fresh air, the 27-year-old has been handing out grocery store gift cards of $25 value.

“We’ve seen the toilet paper fight, the empty shelves, and it was honestly scaring me, too,” says Lam, who is as an events manager at cannabis retail chain Superette. “I realized that I can control my reaction through my actions. I am lucky enough to be able to work from home and buy enough groceries to last a full week. Flashback to when I was five years old, my parents definitely could have not afforded to stockpile.”

More bad news could be on the horizon for the Canadian cannabis industry. 

On Monday night, Dan Sutton, the CEO and founder of BC-based cannabis cultivator Tantalus Labs, tweeted that a senior account manager at the Business Development Bank of Canada — a Crown corporation mandated to help develop small and medium-sized companies through financing and other means — had notified them that they would not be providing relief to the cannabis sector.

As cannabis companies are increasingly feeling the impact of the pandemic lockdown with temporary layoffs and store closures, cash flow interruptions could lead to permanent closures for some businesses, Sutton said.  

Amid the coronavirus outbreak, Canada Post is no longer delivering packages that require a signature or proof of age to customers’ doors. For the majority of Canada’s cannabis consumers, that means they will need to pick up their packages at a nearby post office.

Recreational consumers living in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and select regions of Ontario, can still get service to their door, even on the same day.

The stock market is struggling amid coronavirus mayhem, and many pot stocks, including those for some Canadian companies, are struggling right along with it.

The BI Global Cannabis Competitive Peers Index has sunk 43 percent, bringing its overall 12-month deterioration to roughly 81 percent. Some cash-strapped companies are unlikely to survive the crisis.

“We believe focus among cannabis investors has shifted to minimizing downside; in other words, evaluating cannabis stocks from a liquidation perspective, simply comparing market capitalization to net cash balances,” John Zamparo, an equity research analyst at CIBC Capital Markets, reported in a note last week.

Canopy Growth Corp. is temporarily shutting down its corporate-owned cannabis stores across the country Tuesday due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the company said in a statement. 

Canopy, which owns 23 legal cannabis stores in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador, will close its stores for an undetermined period of time at 5 p.m. local.  It is also closing its visitors centre located at its headquarters in Smiths Falls, Ont. 

“We have a responsibility to our employees, their families, and our communities to do our part to ‘flatten the curve’ by limiting social interactions. For us, that means shifting our focus from retail to e-commerce," said David Klein, chief executive officer of Canopy Growth, in a statement. 

As health experts urge people to maintain social distancing, it remains to be seen how effectively Canadians can best practice this in the workplace.

As far as federal legislation goes, there is no law in place that “requires employers to provide workers with paid sick leave and only two provinces — Quebec and Prince Edward Island — offer paid sick leave,” National Post reports.

In 2018 Canada took a huge step forward for cannabis reform when they legalized the possession, cultivation and commercial sale of the plant for adults, making them the largest nation in the world to do so. Since then, they have been under the watchful eye of many – like the states in the U.S. that have legalized cannabis – to see how it plays out. After a year and a half, Canada is still defending their decision to the United Nations (UN) Commission on Narcotic Drugs.