For Immediate Release
Tuesday August 6, 2024
Charter Denied: Compassion Club Ordered To Pay $3.2 Million
Victoria, B.C.: A Compliance Order from the Province of B.C. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xR1ffSvZNkRORyAvz6Tl0h3JpsT4lGOmN92tflWCK_0/edit, has been issued to the Victoria Cannabis Buyers Club demanding the non-profit society pay a $3.2 million fine by September 6, 2024, though a similar fine against founder, Ted Smith, has been dropped. The fines stem from raids conducted by the B.C. Solicitor General and Public Safety’s enforcement agency, the Community Safety Unit, on the VCBC in November 2019 and July 2020. Lawyers Kirk Tousaw and Jack Lloyd will be challenging the Compliance Order, but that will not stop the CSU from having another written hearing to determine if the directors of the society will be held personally accountable for $3.2 million.
While legalization has been beneficial for the general public, those who fought for their right to use this medicine have been left with an inadequate medical cannabis program that has never allowed storefront access. Patients continue to rely on the VCBC because limits on THC in edible products, restrictions on smoking lounges, high prices and the lack of information regarding the potential medical uses of cannabis products in recreational stores, are unacceptable. For these reasons, the 28 year old VCBC has defied the CSU and reopened after every raid, including a third raid in March 2023 for which a fine has not been issued yet. Soon after that raid, Tousaw and Lloyd filed lawsuits and injunctions against both the provincial and federal governments, though no date for that hearing has been set.
In her decision, Deputy Director of the CSU, Meghan Oberg, acknowledges that, “I have no authority in this forum to evaluate the adequacy of the medical cannabis regime.”(section 83) This is because the province amended the Cannabis Control and Licensing Act in November 2022 to add section 95.1, which removed the ability of defendants to argue constitutional matters. Even though the fines were issued in January 2022 and appeals immediately filed, Deputy Director Oberg concluded that section 95.1 can still be applied to the hearing, effectively snubbing the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. (section 34) B.C. is the only province where defendants cannot use the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in their defense if facing a cannabis-related administrative penalty.
There is little chance that the CSU administration will alter its decision after the VCBC files an Application for Reconsideration on September 6, 2024. However, all avenues of appeal within the Solicitor General and Public Safety Ministry’s jurisdiction need to be explored before taking the matter to a federal court for a judicial review. It is surprising that Deputy Director Oberg overturned her boss, Jamie Lipp, Executive Director and Director of the CSU, in his unprecedented attempt to essentially double-down on the fines by giving a second, equal fine to Ted Smith.
Legalization would never have occurred if not for the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, as the proliferation of illegal medical dispensaries across the country eventually convinced the Liberals that the public was ready to accept cannabis as a legal commodity. Patients have fought for improvements to the medical cannabis program for decades in court after forcing Health Canada to create it in 2001. Since their inception, federal medical cannabis programs have failed to meet bare minimum constitutional standards and Health Canada has repeatedly lost in court. For example, when the bakery of the VCBC was raided in 2009, Tousaw fought to the Supreme Court of Canada, where he won a unanimous decision that made edibles and concentrates available to patients, though Health Canada responded with an unacceptably low limit on THC.
Storefront access to medical cannabis should be a cornerstone feature of Health Canada’s programs. Instead, homeless, poor and elderly patients are being systematically excluded and forced to pay high prices for low dosage products at recreational stores that cannot give medical advice or provide a safe place to consume their medicine. Recently the Legislative Review of the Cannabis Act: Final Report of the Expert Panel confirmed that,”…an important change to improve patient access to cannabis for medical purposes would be to allow patients to obtain cannabis products in-person from pharmacies.”(pg 68)
Stripping constitutional rights from patients to streamline administrative proceedings is an affront to democracy. Eventually this situation will get beyond the kangaroo court of Mike Farnworth, the Solicitor General and Minister of Public Safety, where a qualified judicial authority can rule on the many significant problems inherent in the federal and provincial government’s cannabis laws.
For more information contact Ted Smith at 250-415-1063 or hellovcbc@gmail.com.