Delta council has given conditional approval to an industrial-scale medical marijuana grow operation, the first of its kind to be approved under Delta's new stringent zoning regulations.
The approval of the application by International Herbs Medical Marijuana Ltd. was granted following a public hearing at municipal hall Tuesday.
The operation will be housed in a 25,000-squarefoot building on Foster's Way on Annacis Island, surrounded by electronic fencing, video cameras, lights and other security measures. Delta police have been invited to inspect the facility, which won't have much, or anything, in the way of signage.
At full production, the facility is to produce 35 to 40 kilograms of marijuana per week. According to the applicant, it expects approximately 3,300 customers would be served.
Offering assurances the plant will meet all Health Canada production and security requirements, president and CEO Rick Brar described his business as "an open book, full disclosure company" that has received "pre-clearance" from Health Canada.
"We fully understand the concerns that the community will have with regards to security, it's only natural. It's for this reason the federal government has created these strict security conditions and pre-conditions for licence approval," Brar said.
New federal rules that took effect last month change how medical marijuana is grown and distributed in the country. The regulations are aimed at allowing larger-scale operations over small homebased ones.
In a pre-emptive move, Delta council this year passed zoning regulations prohibiting medical marijuana facilities in all zones, including agricultural, although they would be considered on a case-bycase basis. The idea was to keep any potential operation within industrial zones.
Anyone granted permission to set up shop must also sign a covenant to guarantee they'll pay the industrial property tax rate in the event the province deems their use as agricultural, which would result in a lower tax rate.
Brar said there are over 800 applications to build large-scale medical marijuana facilities in Canada but, so far, only 15 have been approved, showing the new standards are extremely stringent.
Nobody else spoke in favour of the application at Tuesday's public hearing. The only person to speak against it was Joe Shayler, representing UA Local 170, which has a pipe fitters training centre next door.
He said the grow operation would have a negative impact on his property, adding he wouldn't have opened a training school there had they known such an operation would be located next door.
