It’s difficult to get an exact picture of what’s happening in the local cannabis economy – even nearly four years after legalization, many people are still employed under the table by the quasi-legal ‘grey’ market.
“I have a friend who said they are worried about paying rent this month,” adds Ymir resident Velvet Kavanagh.
Both located in the Slocan Valley, the listings offered buildings with industrial-level electrical service, heat, water and ventilation systems and other growing necessities.
There are said to be at least 70 such grow facilities on the market across Canada.
“Some folks are just unable to make ends meet,” he says.
Maybe their product isn’t consistent in quality or potency – or they just haven’t been growing trending strains.
Would-be small-sized craft growers face stacks of complex and interconnected regulations and applications for licences to grow, for construction of their buildings, for quality control and marketing, and for the licences and stamps to sell their products legally.
“Even though there was a lot of good intention on the part of the provincial and federal government staff, we were still unable to remove a lot of the barriers for these growers to transition into the legal market,” says LeBlanc.
“There’s still a lot of stigma around cannabis, and assumption of criminality,” she says, and it frustrates her.
It’s also very hard to get insurance at a reasonable rate – despite growers working in one of the most strictly-controlled industries in the country, receiving multiple audits by the Canada Revenue Agency and Health Canada every year.
It requires additional licenses and learning curves and high operational costs outside of the cultivation licence.
Even if that wanna-be craft grower with deep pockets built their own facility, navigated the licencing, kept to health and quality standards, and found a processor to take their crop, there’s the final hurdle.
Observers say many grey market growers are now getting $350-$1,000 per pound if – and that’s a big ‘if’ – they can find a buyer in this flooded market.
Legal cannabis is doing no better.
These elements have all been burdening the transition to a legal economy, but are now coming to a head, say the industry officials.
The situation has already damaged the region’s historic cannabis industry.
But there’s an opportunity for support, and maybe we can light a path for folks through retraining, support for new business, or working online.
Antidote Processing specializes in cannabis licensing, regulation, and compliance.
The company can help drastically cut the cost of entering the legal field by careful study of what the grower wants to accomplish, says Krempl.
“More and more people are calling us, looking for information on licencing,” says Shannon Ross, the company CEO.
“There’s a lot of good folks working behind the scenes to open up policy to this vision, of small farmgate tourism, people coming here because of the Valley’s history and diversity in cannabis,” says LeBlanc.