Yesterday, at the Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, CFAA President John Dickie urged Senators to “to prohibit all cannabis growing in all dwellings.”

On March 29, Benedikt Fischer, senior scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, (CAMH), told the committee that “the current bill includes the provision for home growing and cultivation, as if this was a necessary endeavour to legalize cannabis and make legal consumption available. We categorically believe this is a misguided position.” CFAA supports the CAMH position. Being able to buy marijuana in retail stores or by postal orders will make it readily available.

CFAA also agrees with the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police that, whether or not home growing is allowed, the Bill needs to be amended to impose a limit on the amount of cannabis that can be stored in private dwellings, in addition to limiting possession in the public sphere, as the Bill does now.

CFAA began with this key point: in a single family home, what an owner-occupant does largely affects only themselves, whereas in multi-unit dwellings, an occupant’s actions in one unit can very often have significant effect on the occupants of other units.

Landlords should be able to ban the smoking of tobacco or the smoking of marijuana. Different segments of the population have different views of what is acceptable regarding tobacco smoking or marijuana smoking, and landlords should be able to provide their customers what they want, which should provide choice in the rental market.

Growing marijuana in dwellings is even more problematic than marijuana smoking. Concerns about home growing include: • Electrical safety and fire hazards • Potential damage to the building and adverse health effects through humidity and mold
• Interference with other tenants’ reasonable enjoyment
• Access to supplies for the black market and organized crime
• Easy access for, and exposure to, youth Quebec and Manitoba have both banned all home growing.

CFAA calls on the federal Parliament to make that ban apply nation-wide, as a bright-line test, so that there is no confusion for people who move within Canada.

David Hutniak, CFAA Chair and CEO of LandlordBC, says, “It is critical that the concerns of rental housing providers, and the millions of Canadians for whom we provide housing, are not ignored in the federal cannabis bill. Our work on the cannabis law reforms is continuing, both with the Senate and with the provinces and municipalities.”