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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDisplays are pictured at an provincially operated cannabis store in Quebec City, Friday, June 19, 2026. THE CANADIAN PRESS\/Jacques Boissinot<\/p>\n
The council\u2019s president, Paul McCarthy, said in an interview last week the organization has been calling on Ottawa to establish a national strategy for eradicating the unregulated cannabis market.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile this is a provincial and territorial responsibility, I would say accountability rests with the federal government \u2026 they legalized it, it wasn\u2019t the provinces and territories,\u201d he said Thursday, adding that Ottawa would be best equipped to deal with the complexities of cannabis enforcement.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The federal departments of health and justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
McCarthy said the businesses the council represents, which include cannabis producers and processors, generate billions of dollars in revenue, but the majority of them remain unprofitable.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the biggest reasons is because they\u2019re trying to compete against illicit product. They\u2019re eating up market share and they\u2019re driving down price, and the margins are already razor thin,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
A federal strategy to tackle the unregulated market should involve intelligence gathering to identify illicit operations, disrupt the shipment of product and illegal online sales, and conduct enforcement at brick-and-mortar stores, McCarthy said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIllegal product is being sold and shipped through Canada Post, Purolator or other delivery services. You need to find a way to cut that off, because if someone buys illegal product and it never shows up to their door, guess what they\u2019re not doing again? They\u2019re not going to keep buying through that channel,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Instead of each province and territory creating and enacting its own plan to tackle illicit cannabis, the federal government ought to establish a strategy that can be deployed Canada-wide, McCarthy said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s pool resources, pool strategies. We don\u2019t need to build this (enforcement plan) 13 times. Let\u2019s build it once and deploy that everywhere,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\n\t\tWinnipeg Free Press | Newsletter\n\t<\/p>\n
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McCarthy said there are many risks associated with the illicit market, including in the potential health and safety hazard of using an unregulated and potentially inaccurately-labelled product. Another serious concern is the risk of underage Canadians being able to purchase the drug, he said.<\/p>\n
The government\u2019s objectives when legalizing cannabis in 2018 were to displace the illicit market, keep the drug out of the hands of youth and ensure the product is safe, McCarthy said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe illicit market is the \u2026 common denominator that is actually the barrier to achieving all of the public policy objectives of legalization,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In Monday\u2019s statement, the council said it is proud of the role it played advocating for a responsible, competitive and sustainable legal cannabis industry, and its records will be preserved as the organization becomes dormant.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 22, 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HALIFAX \u2013 A national cannabis lobby group says it\u2019s suspending its operations, citing the financial challenges to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":754429,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":["post-754428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=754428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/754429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=754428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=754428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=754428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}