The District of Sechelt will seek direction from the public on a proposed medical marijuana bylaw that would prohibit cannabis production in all zones outside the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) and restrict it to properties with more than five hectares in the ALR.
Two town hall meetings on the draft bylaw have been set for Tuesday, April 21 at Seaside Centre — at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. — and will be “a dialogue” between council and the public, Mayor Bruce Milne said at Wednesday’s council meeting.
“It’s not going to be one of those sessions where council sits in the front, stony-faced and quiet,” Milne said. “We hope to have a dialogue in two parts.”
The zoning bylaw would be a major policy change for the District, which issued a development permit last year under the previous council to Medma Cannabis Pharms Inc. to operate in the Sechelt Inlet Crescent industrial park in East Porpoise Bay, based on horticulture and processing being permitted uses.
Given first reading at the April 1 council meeting, the draft bylaw places a temporary moratorium on new building or development permit applications for medical marijuana facilities in the District.
Up to 10 companies have indicated they want to establish production facilities in Sechelt, and interim CAO Bill Beamish said last week that some companies were seeking “letters of comfort” from the planning department.
“In other words, people are looking at purchasing land with the understanding that they can do this on their land,” Beamish said.
The Medma plant is still under construction, although the company has not obtained a Health Canada production licence. If council ultimately enacts a bylaw that bans facilities outside the ALR, Medma would be “grandfathered” as an existing, non-conforming use, but would lose that status if the property changes use in the future, municipal planner Angela Letman said at the March 25 planning and community development committee meeting.
On parcel size, staff had recommended a two-hectare minimum area within the ALR, and a motion by Coun. Alice Lutes to increase it to five hectares was defeated in committee in a 2-2 vote, with Coun. Mike Shanks in favour and councillors Darnelda Siegers and Noel Muller opposed.
At Wednesday’s council meeting, however, Milne supported Lutes’ and Shanks’ amendment and it passed with only Siegers opposed.
“What I’m trying to do here is to create a fairly blank slate for zoning of this particular use … so we can actually hear from the community where and what they may want,” Milne said. “I thought if we had too small of an area it may signal to people that we’d already made up our minds on it, and in fact that isn’t the case.”
Muller, who in committee had questioned the wisdom of setting any guidelines before going to the public, said he could support the five-hectare minimum area after hearing Milne’s rationale.
Siegers, though she voted with the rest of council to give the amended bylaw first reading, said she preferred a two-hectare minimum.
At the committee meeting, Siegers noted that in the Sunshine Coast Regional District, where a bylaw restricts the use to minimum eight-hectare lots in specified zones, Roberts Creek and Elphinstone are now considering separate bylaws to allow production facilities on agricultural parcels as small as one hectare.
In her report to the committee, Letman noted that production facilities licensed under Health Canada’s new Marijuana for Medical Purposes Regulations are located on industrial properties in Whistler, Nanaimo, Delta and Smith Falls, Ont., where a company called Tweed Inc. has converted a former Hershey chocolate factory.
She said at least five different third-party growers licensed under the previous Medical Marijuana Access Regulations had rented space in existing industrial buildings in the District. Those regulations were superseded last year, but a legal challenge led to a federal court injunction that allows patients and designated third-party growers to continue growing until the case is decided.
