With cannabis now legal in Canada, Greater Sudbury's planning committee is looking at updating the zoning and other rules governing growing the now legal weed.
A report headed to the June 10 meeting says under planning rules, marijuana is now considered an agricultural use, something the Growth Plan for Northern Ontario aims to promote.
“While not referencing cannabis specifically, the Growth Plan for Northern Ontario speaks to the promotion of investment and development in the agricultural sector and encourages growth and diversification of the Northern Ontario economy,” says a staff report.
“In terms of the agricultural sector, the plan aims to focus efforts on identifying opportunities, including innovative uses of agriculture/food processing, exploring opportunities for complementary economic activities on agricultural land, and supporting development or production, processing and distribution systems.”
Processing cannabis -- picking, sorting, trimming, curing, testing, packaging and storage – would be considered a value-retaining agricultural use under the plan, the report says.
“Further processing, such as oil extraction, would also be considered a value added agricultural use,” the report says. “As a result, the city must view the growing of cannabis as it would any other legal agricultural crop, whether it is grown in a conventional building or a greenhouse type structure.”
In terms of industrial grow facilities, the report says rules put in place to govern medicinal cannabis production should largely remain, with a few adjustments.
In addition to removing references to “medicinal” and no longer treating it as a controlled substance, the report says the 150 metre separation from other buildings required for medicinal pot should be replaced by 70 metres for legal cannabis production.
There is legislation they can use to justify 70 metres, the report said, but maintaining the 150 metre requirement “would be hard to support without quantifiable data.”
@darrenmacd
