Who is behind cannabis growers in Canada?

Faced with a booming market, old politicians see this as an opportunity for a new career.

The lucrative cannabis market in Canada is creating new vocations. In a country where, in 2017,4.9 million people were thought to have spent about C$5.7 billion (€3.8 billion) on cannabis, old policies saw it as an opportunity for a new career.

Chuck Rifici, former Treasurer of the Canadian Liberal Party (CLP) in the election of Justin Trudeau, is President of Cannabis Wheaton Income Corp. He was one of the founders of Canopy Growth, the largest Canadian and global producer. It is chaired by Mark Zekulin, a former adviser to Ontario’s Liberal finance minister, Mark Zekulin. Also worth mentioning is Herb Dhaliwal, former minister of Jean Chrétien’s government, now president of National Green BioMed, a producer in British Columbia, and former national director of the LPC, Adam Miron, director of Hydropothecary.

Former police officers

Former senior officials from Health Canada, the federal government’s licensing agency, also work for the cannabis industry. Former researcher Thomas Shipley, for example, is director of quality control at Canopy. At Hydropothecary, customer service is managed by Max Cyr, who supervised the cannabis case at Health Canada. Others, such as Brian Wagner and Ivan Vrana, are consultants for this industry, after having been involved in marijuana coaching….

To ensure the safety of their facilities, several producers hired former police officers. Such as the former head of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Norman Inkster, director of Mettrum, and Timothy Humberstone, an ex-drug fighter who became the director of ABcann.

 

Some investments don’t look good. According to Le Journal de Montréal, at least C$165 million from tax havens has been invested in cannabis production companies. Over the past two years, 35 of the 86 producers licensed by Health Canada have received offshore funding.

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