Thank you very much for having me.
My name is Timothy Deighton. I'm representing the micro cultivators of B.C. and Canada, and I want to give a little bit of scope on what I have been through and some of the process.
I'm the director of Sweetgrass. I live in Ymir, British Columbia. Our town has about 450 people.
My previous experience dealing with Industry Canada was running and operating a small aircraft charter with five airplanes from private charter to fire patrol for the government.
Sweetgrass Cannabis is a certified organic cultivation and processing company. We started in 2018. We started with one cultivation facility, and we have recently added a second. We have 15 employees. From the beginning, we've been hiring local contractors and local employees, trying to help benefit rural B.C. and our community.
We produce and sell dried flower. We are selling in British Columbia and Manitoba. It's packaged in-house through Sweetgrass Cannabis. We also sell business to business to a company in Nova Scotia, which provides cannabis to all of Atlantic Canada. Right now we're also exporting to Australia. As well, we've been working on a deal with Israel. Recently, we completed our medical sales platform. We've started working with the veterans of Canada as well as a variety of other medical patients.
I want to touch on a few of the issues and challenges we've had as a micro cultivator.
One of them is that even though Health Canada has been really helpful in trying to work with us in establishing this new industry, they just do not have the experience or the knowledge of working with plants. That's become an issue moving forward in an agricultural sector.
One of the major issues we had was that we became one of the first micro cultivators to get a federal sales licence. This process took 11 months for us. In that process, the 11 months, we were losing up to $50,000 to $75,000 a month waiting for Health Canada to go through our application. I think this was based on their lack of experience and knowledge in the agricultural sector.
Another issue we've had is the huge cost of becoming a micro cultivator. It's almost made it impossible for the legacy people to be transitioning to—what do we call it?—the white market. Part of it is that the security requirements for our buildings are so grossly overpriced. There's more money in a winery. There's more money in product at a winery than there is at a micro cultivation facility. The cost was $100,000 for us to do our two micro facilities. That's a huge roadblock for all future micro cultivators.
As well, what Health Canada has required is that the building has to be completed before we even apply. This is just a deterrent that makes it impossible for the small grower to move forward towards legalization.
Another major roadblock for us as a small company moving forward is our marketing and our packaging requirements. Right now, if we sell business to business, the business that we're selling to is not even able to put our logo on the packaging. For us to be developing our company and our brand moving forward as a small business, it's almost impossible to be recognized throughout Canada unless we have this federal sales licence. Since we are one of the first, it's been beneficial, but we're only in B.C. and Manitoba compared with Atlantic Canada, where we'd like to be growing as a company.
One other major issue that I'd like to bring up is the canopy size for a micro cultivator. In terms of the canopy size, we are restricted to a certain limit, but the production limits they give us are not even achievable with the size of the canopy that we've been given. We need to address this to allow us to grow at the proper canopy size for the proper amount of production. It's just not in alignment.
What I would like for Sweetgrass is to have a reasonable business environment that allows us to help our rural community grow and flourish in Ymir, British Columbia, and throughout Canada.
Thank you.