3 Ways That Commercial Cannabis Improves Canadian Communities
Cannabis has been formally legal here in Canada for about a year and a half now. Which means you probably already have a good idea of how commercial cannabis improves your own life thanks to how convenient, how accessible and often how experiential the retail experience can be.
But how does it improve Canadian communities at large, particularly from an economic standpoint? Let’s take a look.
1. It spurs job growth.
Pessimists will tell you the cannabis industry didn’t exactly take off the way everyone planned. The soaring expectations of a year ago have certainly been tempered by the odd scandal here, a few executive shakeups there and sluggish earnings. That being said, none of it seemed to get in the way of the hiring spree that the Canadian pot sector has been seeing over the past few years. Yes, Canada’s cannabis sector is in the midst of a job boom. Or, at least, it was before COVID-19 — but we’re obviously hoping coronavirus is just a big bump in the road in the grand scheme of things. Anyway, StatsCan had actually reported several months ago that there were 9,200 people currently working in the Canadian cannabis sector, up from 2,630 in the fiscal 2018 year and 1,438 in fiscal 2017. Of those jobs, about 60 per cent of those cannabis industry workers were tasked with cultivation, harvesting, processing, manufacturing and administration duties. Another 20 per cent were identified to work in packaging, marketing and sales.
2. It creates investment opportunities.
Canada’s regulatory certainty allows companies to plan ahead and scale-up operations with greater confidence. This clean regulatory environment also provides greater access to public markets, greater access to capital markets and generates greater outside investment. In other words, even with overly restrictive regulation in certain areas, Canada provides the legal cannabis industry with a clear playing field. Especially in comparison to the U.S. And, as a result, our country offers both cannabis companies and cannabis investors alike the very best opportunities today. And that’s just the present! What further emphasizes Canada’s position as the premier jurisdiction for cannabis investment is future potential. But that’s a whole other story for a different day.
3. It can help eradicate the black market.
Government data from around the time of cannabis legalization’s one-year anniversary in October 2019 is discouraging. The StatsCan numbers released around then indicated that the legal market had only supplanted 14 per cent of the black market since legalization. Moreover, that just 29 per cent of cannabis users were getting all of their product from a legal source. You can blame cost, location and supply for keeping the black market booming. But remember, we’re still new into this. A long game is being played. More and more licensed retail stores are slowly being rolled out. There’s a growing number of cannabis brands, like Thumbs Up by TREC Brands, which hunt for the best cannabis at the best prices all across the country. There are also unexplored regulatory options to eventually consider. For example, all levels of government one day realizing that by taking a serious look at what policy levers can be deployed, they might be able to reduce unnecessary regulatory burdens so that licensed retailers and producers can effectively compete against those who chose to operate outside of the law. Either way, Rome wasn’t built in a day. We’ll get there.
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This article was written by Chris Metler.
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This article was published April 28, 2020.