Woodlands County councillors believe medical marijuana might cure many of the issues the Hamlet of Fort Assiniboine faces.
On Sept. 5, Darrel Renkema, owner and operations manager of Quadel Growers Incorporated, made a presentation about their plan to operate an industrial greenhouse that would grow and sell medical marijuana through mail order. Later in the meeting, councillors unanimously accepted the presentation as information. Whitecourt West Coun. Chad Merrifield declared a potential conflict of interest and excused himself from the presentation because of his position on the county’s municipal planning commission’s (MPC) appeal board.
The company has made an application to Health Canada, and if accepted, it would be the first step in allowing the operation, which when completed, would employ between 35 and 40 people in the initial stages.
Renkema said the idea to open a medical marijuana facility hatched from an informal discussion he and his partner had.
“We were just hanging out in my garage one night and we started talking about what we could do to make the world a better place and one of the ideas was a medical marijuana grow op, ” he said, adding the next day the pair did some preliminary research and decided to proceed. At the time, Renkema and his partner were working in the oil patch, something they are still doing in addition to their work with Quadel.
After taking about a year to get their business plan together, they submitted an application to Health Canada.
“We really don’t foresee any issues,” Renkema said, adding they did their upmost to make sure all the requirements in their application were met.
One of the biggest hurdles, he said, in becoming a licensed medical marijuana producer is security.
“The facility will be equipped with state-of-the-art security,” he said, adding the only locations in the proposed 20,000 square foot without security cameras will be the washrooms. Video footage from the cameras would be stored on large computer hard drives for a minimum of two years.
Goose Lake Coun. Dale McQueen, who says he is in favour of such a facility, asked where the facility would be drawing its water.
“I don’t know anything about growing marijuana, but if it is like other forms of agriculture it can be water intensive,” he said.
Renkema agreed, saying a lot of water would be needed and they planned to connect to the Fort Assiniboine water system initially.
“In other stages, we would investigate other green technologies, such as collecting rain water and collecting condensation,” he said.
Fort Assiniboine Coun. Dale Kluin said he is excited about what the facility could mean to the hamlet.
“We need something like this in Fort Assiniboine right now,” he said, adding the hamlet doesn’t have a lot of businesses and those that do have, are feeling the crunch of the economic slowdown.
“Last election we had someone running around saying we should build a prison, but unlike a prison I can’t see any downside of an operation like this.”
Mayor Jim Rennie said what excites him about the proposal is the 35 to 40 jobs that could grow to 100 when the facility moves past its initial startup phase.
“If that takes place it would be a game changer for a place like Fort Assiniboine,” he said.
Kluin agreed, saying residents have been concerned that they could lose their post office as well as the school, but the economic activity generated and the workers and families the facility would attract to the area would go a long way in securing their future.
The only concerns that councillors expressed were with taxation.
Rennie noted he recently had an opportunity to tour a $100 million medical marijuana grow-op facility in Edmonton, with representatives from the Town of Whitecourt.
“But since the city [Edmonton] deemed it an agricultural operation it only paid $10,000 in property taxes. I think both the town [Whitecourt] and I agreed they should be paying much more.”
However, Kluin understands there could be some resistance to the facility from residents in the area and suggested Quadel host an open house to dispel some of the misconceptions surrounding medical marijuana.
Renkema agreed. “If people could see how the cannabinoids can help people with epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease. It is life changing.”
Woodlands County MPC committee will discuss Quadel’s application to the county on Sept. 20 and its recommendation will be forwarded for councillors consideration in the fall.
Assuming Health Canada approves the licence, Renkema said it would not take long to get the facility operational.
However, it could be a long wait. As of March, of the 1,630 applications to Health Canada, 841 have been returned for being incomplete, and 265 were refused outright. Sixty-nine applications were withdrawn by the applicants and 414 are still in progress.
