Canada's legal cannabis industry is still in its early stages, and the country’s Indigenous communities are looking at the nascent market both skeptically and as an opportunity to prosper.
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As the floodgates on Canada’s legal cannabis market are set to open this fall, Mohawks on the Kahnawake territory say they don’t plan on submitting to outside regulation.
The Trudeau government has averted a potential confrontation with Indigenous senators that could have delayed the legalization of recreational marijuana.
The Senate on Tuesday passed the Cannabis Act, meaning it only needs royal assent to become law, but Indigenous communities will have to wait a little longer for the answers they want.
Like his Conservative colleague, Sen. Carolyn Stewart Olsen, Dagenais questioned the speed with which independent Indigenous senators abandoned plans Wednesday to propose an amendment that would have indefinitely delayed implementation of the bill
Conservative Sen. Dennis Patterson, who represents Nunavut, said “easy availability of this mind-numbing drug” will be devastating in remote areas where vulnerable Indigenous populations are already ravaged by addiction, mental health problems, violence and suicides.
The legal cannabis market is already presenting both challenges and opportunities for many Indigenous communities across the country. Former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations Phil Fontaine spent 2017 travelling to meet with First Nations and cannabis companies about the potential for future jobs and economic growth.
PHOTO: The Globe and Mail Newspaper Building, Toronto, courtesy Wikimedia Commons cc-by-sa-2.0. Reprinted from The Globe and Mail online. First published May 6, 2018 at 17:00. Conservative senators have been threatening to slow or even kill the Liberal government’s cannabis legalization bill for months. But with a third reading in the…
Senate, Indigenous leaders flagging import points on pot: The Senate seems determined to slow the Liberal government's timeline for marijuana legalization, and Justin Trudeau seems just as determined to deliver his legalization on time
“This delay being suggested right now is based on concerns that cannabis will harm First Nations communities and hurt Indigenous youth — but it won’t.”