Get ready for the stoner next door
“Stoners are nice,” said Samantha, a happy participant in Thursday’s 4-20 celebrations on Parliament Hill. “Honestly, we’re like a great big family.”
So went the blissful murmurings among cannabis users at the annual homage. With 6,000 people toking on the lawn in front of Centre Block — the prime minister was not in town to bask in the glow of their happiness — you’d think recreational marijuana use was already legal.
It isn’t yet, and may not be even by July 1, 2018, the target date the Trudeau government has set. Barely a week after four ministers and a parliamentary secretary were trotted out to introduce the pertinent legislation, it’s becoming clear what a complicated business this is going to be.
“It’s massive,” says Trina Fraser, a partner at Brazeau Seller Law who specializes in the subject.
“It doesn’t really matter what area of law you practise, you’d better have some basic understanding of what’s going on with cannabis law in Canada.”
Police have already voiced sensible concern about driving under the influence, and medical experts are weighing in about weed’s effects on young brains. But Fraser, who has a broadly positive view of the legalization bill so far, anticipates much wider questions from her clients: restaurateurs will wonder whether they can serve food with cannabis, for example, or even hold special cannabis nights. And what about the implications in the workplace? Employers and HR types will need a whole new level of training as rules around extracts and edibles are slowly clarified.
Then there are residential landlords.
Here, things could really get convoluted. As Fraser noted in a recent briefing note, Bill C-45, the Cannabis Act, will allow the personal cultivation of up to four plants per residence with, so far, no limit on the amount of dried cannabis that can be stored.
It may be one thing to indulge in a little modest bud-tending in your own home or backyard, but if you own a rental property, or you are a renter, this could quickly become knotty.
Unless amended, the legislation won’t require a tenant to let the landlord know he or she is running a mini-growop on the property. So what? You don’t have to tell your landlord how much booze you have in your apartment either. But cannabis cultivation requires artificial light, which means more than normal electricity needs. Marijuana plants also like high humidity, so mould is a problem. Flowering plants are pungent, so ventilation is an issue.
Meanwhile, experts are warning landlords about how both banks and insurance companies may treat properties where cannabis is grown.
The insurance industry is “notoriously risk averse,” Fraser observes. And chartered banks have been reluctant to deal even with licensed, legitimate medical cannabis manufacturers. To landlords, she writes: “Don’t be surprised if you are asked questions about home growing activities at mortgage renewal time.”
She’s urging landlords to ensure leases with new clients spell out the rules, including prohibiting growing weed if the landlord doesn’t want it there. She even suggests those with existing leases think about incentives to get their renters to write in new rules, before the legislation passes.
Perhaps this is much ado over little; most of us don’t plan to do indoor ganja gardening. But some folks will. There are more rental houses on your nice suburban street than you might think, and if you are a renter in a multiunit building, you might prefer not to put up with the sharp smell from the apartment next door.
John Dickie of the Canadian Federation of Apartment Associations, wants the law to reflect a right of owners to know whether a renter is growing pot.
Our society’s strict respect of privacy boundaries should bend once recreational marijuana is legal, he says. “At least have the tenant tell the landlord.”
Other renters might appreciate that information too. Stoners may be nice, but their soon-to-be-legal habit could bring unexpected hangovers for the rest of us.
Barely a week after four ministers and a parliamentary secretary were trotted out to introduce the pertinent legislation, it’s becoming clear what a complicated business (marijuana legalization) is going to be.
Christina Spencer