The federal Task Farce report states: “There are several advantages to using production controls in the early period of implementation.” Namely, it would prevent “an over saturation of the market” and control cannabis prices.
They are basically recommending supply management and price-fixing, where large licensed producers are rewarded at the expense of literally everyone else, particularly Canada’s “illicit” – yet peaceful – farmers, vendors, extractors and other connoisseurs.
The only “advantage to using productions controls in the early period of implementation” is that it helps maintain the status quo.
And when the goal is “public health and safety,” with jobs and wealth-creation taking a backseat, the report is basically recommending the federal government hurt consumers and perpetuate the licensed producer system. It also recommends licenses, federal to boot, and a “seed-to-sale tracking system” so police can “prevent diversion.”
If the Liberals take these recommendations to heart, there will be no “diverse marketplace” for all consumers. It will be a repeat of the MMPR, where the grassroots industry will be encouraged to abandon their current practices and implement a top-down scheme, each action monitored and regulated by salaried bureaucrats.
The Farce recommends provincial control over retail, splitting the farmer-vendor front, putting pressure on dispensaries to supply from “diverse” federal producers.
Once Big Government legalization magically starts paying for itself, tax revenue from legal cannabis sources are encouraged to fund cannabis bureaucracy, propaganda, state-directed research and, of course, enforcement for those don’t play by the rules.
It’s like a game of Monopoly where the banker is also Player 2 and only one pile of money sits in front of him.
Using “licensing and production controls to encourage a diverse, competitive market” is a performative contradiction. These very acts disable a free, competitive market.
Free markets are a given. Attempts to dissuade people from engaging in consensual capitalist acts has seldom worked. Successful attempts have allowed a statist parasite to piggyback off the markets it feeds from. More utopian attempts have been disastrous, with the death toll in the millions.
Markets exist in the cannabis industry in spite of prohibition. When the federal government announced legalization, all it had to do was remove cannabis from the criminal code and allow people to come out of the shadows.
Many of them did, but police raided them anyway, and Justin supported it.
What’s at stake isn’t the freedom to get stoned.
Canada’s health-care system needs a rejuvenating dose of entrepreneurial innovation, and medical cannabis clubs offer a holistic approach to health.
Most Canadians want prosperity and meaningful employment. How tightly the government decides to regulate “CBD and other compounds derived from hemp” will remain to be seen.
If the federal government takes the report to heart, then we’re looking at a top-down, detail-by-detail legalization of an agricultural product.
It will be akin to central planning, not the liberalizing of an underground market.