Bilateral Meeting Process with Health Canada

At our most recent bilateral meeting in October 2020, C3 made it clear that we need new regulations to address pressing challenges related to beverage equivalency as well as addressing the huge emerging risks to Cannabis research in Canada.

From a policy change perspective, C3 continues to aggressively engage HC with requests to re-think the export permit process in the interest of making it work more quickly, as competitor nations are introducing export permit processes that are faster and producing a competitive advantage for those countries.

C3 Board Members also produced relevant data to inform HC about threats that many current member companies are facing. We highlighted the degradation of dry flower costs and the impact on consumer pricing from the current model that applies HST + retail markups on top of excise taxes. Lastly, we used data to inform HC about the unintended consequences of restriction on communication with clients coming in the form of a cannabis market largely differentiated on strength and price alone.

C3 Members participating in the organization's policy process gain the unique ability to push for immediate policy changes through the HC Bilateral process even as we consider priorities for the statutory review of the Cannabis Act set to kick off in October of 2021 and run for about 18 months (under Section 151.1 of the Cannabis Act).