New county report offers control options for odour, light, noise

SimcoeReformer.ca
Jan. 8, 2018
Monte Sonnenberg

Norfolk County may soon have well-defined rules governing the production of recreational and medicinal marijuana.

Marijuana production facilities have proliferated unchecked in Norfolk over the past two years. These are medicinal in nature and loosely governed by Health Canada regulations.

These facilities are not subject to provincial planning policies. As such, increased production has occurred in a policy vacuum that has given rise to land-use conflicts related to smell, noise and light pollution.

With Ottawa about to legalize the use of marijuana for recreational purposes, the demand for legal growth capacity will increase.

A county task force has been exploring a response to this since the fall. Its findings will be tabled at Tuesday’s meeting of Norfolk council.

The Norfolk County Cannabis Task Force has brought together a menu of options.

This includes requiring a zoning amendment for greenhouse operations that wish to diversify into marijuana. With the requirement of a site-specific zoning amendment, the county could impose noise, smell and light mitigation measures as conditions of approval.

The county also has the choice of specifying the smell of marijuana under cultivation as a noxious odour.

As such, greenhouse operations could be sanctioned depending on how they respond to complaints from adjoining property owners.

In his report, planner Mat Vaughan says Ontario’s Environmental Protection Act (EPA) has concrete things to say about activities that “harm or (cause) material discomfort to any person,” cause “an adverse effect on the health of any person,” or “render any property or plant or animal life unfit for human use.”

“Right to farm” legislation in Ontario protects farmers from complaints regarding normal farming practices. However, Vaughan notes that the EPA provides “no exemption from adverse effect as it relates to agriculture and crop production.”

Ottawa lost control of marijuana production in 2016 when a court ruled that requiring medicinal marijuana users to obtain their medicine from licensed production facilities violated access rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

As a consequence, medicinal users have the right to grow their own plants or delegate production to a third party.

Health Canada does not concern itself with where these plants are grown. Rather, all the agency asks is the location of the planned production and that designated growers have no convictions for drug offences in the past 10 years.

Many greenhouse operations have been given over to third-party production since the 2016 court ruling. Some have hundreds of plants under cultivation. Their status is further obscured by the fact that Ontario’s Normal Farm Practices Protection Board has not ruled on whether marijuana is a standard agricultural crop.

In his report, Vaughan says the county has to be careful how it controls legal marijuana production. He said Norfolk bylaws could be struck down if the courts – relying on the legal decision of 2016 – deem them contrary to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms regarding access to and production of a legal product.

Departments and agencies providing input to Norfolk’s cannabis task force include Norfolk’s planning department, building department, fire department and the Haldimand-Norfolk Health Unit.

Also providing input were Norfolk’s agricultural advisory board, Norfolk’s police services board, the Norfolk OPP, the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food & Rural Affairs, and Health Canada.

The planning report and its options will be tabled at Tuesday’s meeting of Norfolk council. The meeting gets underway at 3 p.m. in the council chamber at Governor Simcoe Square. The public is welcome to attend.