Hamilton discussing medical marijuana

(Updated) Last April 1st the federal government fired up new regulations for the production of medical marijuana. Now, ten months later — the smoke from those regulations is beginning to drift down to municipalities across the country — and it’s creating a bit of a regulatory haze.

That’s the case in Hamilton, as city council wrestled today with how it should deal with new production facilities that want to set up shop in the city.

The city’s planning committee tried to create a joint strategy that would keep staff, councillors and city residents in the loop on the establishment of medical marijuana facilities.

There is no way of banning or stopping the establishment of new medical marijuana facilities in the city — but councillors do need a strategy to designate zoning, issue permits, and keep the public informed of proposed developments.

Flamborough councillor Judi Partridge brought the issue to light, after discovering that a large new facility in her ward was constructed legally under an agricultural use zoning designation. The owners of that facility have now applied to the federal government to licence the building as a medical marijuana production operation.

They weren’t trying to fool anyone: federal regulations require applicants to build a facility, and have that facility inspected by Health Canada before a licence can be issued.

Partridge says the process creates a problem for the city at the moment, because there is no legal process, or structure in place to issue building permits, or determine zoning. And that’s just the start of a list of questions facing city officials.

“Right now the federal government has said it can be zoned agricultural, it can be zoned industrial, but we don’t know which one would we do in a city. Do we even want to have these production facilities in our city?”

“Is it zoned agriculture, which means there’s going to be massive storage buildings out in the rural areas of Hamilton? Is it going to be more industrial which means it would be located more in the urban area and it would generate higher taxes. As an agricultural facility, it’s not going to generate the taxes.”

“I think it’s incumbent on the municipality and certainly on behalf of our residents and taxpayers that we be able to have a process in place to deal with that, and right now we don’t.”

One of the surprising outcomes of today’s meeting was that even though councilor Terry Whitehead established a protocol that would see building department officials, councilors and the city clerk given notice of these facilities, to bring them into the public domain at city council — no one at the meeting today — would identify where this new Flambourough facility is located.

We still can’t tell the residents of Waterdown and Flamborough whether that large new building at the end of their road is going to be a medical marijuana operation, or just a grain storage facility.