Letters - Is Cannabis Canada going to pot?

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Published on Wednesday, July 11, 2018

Submitted

Neepawa Banner & Press

Health Canada has jurisdiction over licensing cannabis producers. So far about 100 entities have been licensed and the number is increasing.

The dark side is that Health Canada is ill-equipped to scrutinize applicant financials. Thanks, and a tip of the hat, to Senator Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu for doing some digging on our behalf, and Senator Nancy Raine (retired) for bringing it to my attention.

It turns out that some twenty of the licensed producers have investments from unnamed sources in foreign tax havens. The total foreign investment in the twenty-odd producers is about $165 million and of that about $150.7 million is out of the Cayman Islands. The amounts and sources may be far higher than those Senator Boisvenu was able to identify.

Although there is no proof that investments may be from laundered drug money or investments are being made to launder drug money, we need a financial audit of licensed producer investments to protect us from being duped by unscrupulous criminals, and changes to our legalization legislation to limit or prohibit investments from known tax havens.

Cannabis legalization is complex, not because simple legalization is all that difficult, but because our government has chosen to control the cannabis trade. That puts an onus on the government to properly screen license applicants including the sources of their funding. It appears our government has dropped the ball and failed to investigate funding of license applicants. They have opened the doors to criminal elements that include tax cheats hiding income from their governments.

This has all the earmarks of another scandal in the starting stages.

John Feldsted

Winnipeg, Manitoba