Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. We very much appreciate the opportunity to appear before the standing committee.
My name is Keith Jones. I am on the board of directors of the Canadian Hemp Trade Alliance. In my day job I'm a general manager of Rowland Farms, which is a large farm in southern Alberta. We've been growing hemp since 1998 when the industrial hemp regulations were first put in place and it first became legal to cultivate hemp here in Canada.
With me is Robert Rae, who is also on the board of directors of Canadian Hemp Trade Alliance. As well, Robert is with Canada Hemp Foods, which is one of the hemp products distributors operating here in Canada. Robert's business involves exporting hemp products to a number of countries around the world.
Canadian Hemp Trade Alliance is a member-based organization that has 250 farmers as members, as well as processors, distributors, plant breeders, and researchers. We're a not-for-profit industry association that is volunteer-driven. We had the opportunity to reach out in Ottawa earlier this spring and were invited to review the cannabis legislation, Bill C-45, when it came out and to consider making a presentation to the committee if we felt there were some unintended consequences that might arise out of the legislation for the hemp industry.
We're here today because we are concerned that, as drafted, Bill C-45 jeopardizes 1,200 jobs in the Canadian hemp industry today, for two specific reasons.
One is that the current legislation does not differentiate between hemp, cannabis, and marijuana.
Related to that, the current legislation assigns responsibility for regulating the production, transportation, and distribution of all cannabis products to the provinces and the municipalities. That is going to create a tremendous burden on the current hemp industry. We operate our own farm in five municipalities, and to try to bring the regulators up to speed will probably curtail our business for a couple of years, based on that requirement right now.
Our proposal for the committee's consideration is, in order to prevent the unintended consequence of derailing the Canadian hemp industry, to exempt hemp in the legislation as item 5 under schedule 2 exemptions by exempting whole hemp plants from the legislation and, because that exemption would then be in place, to carve hemp out of the cannabis regulation within CDSA.
That, then, is our request. I'd like, Mr. Chair, to provide a bit more background in support of our request.
Hemp is very different from marijuana and from cannabis, in that hemp varieties originate from plant breeding that has been done to reduce the total THC in the hemp plant down to below 0.3%. You can't get high from smoking hemp, unless you were to smoke a telephone pole of it, which would be very difficult to do. It is from the plant cannabis sativa. Through the experience of the industrial hemp regulations over the last 19 years, Health Canada has approved a list of cultivars that are known to be hemp. They're confirmed to consistently have no more than 0.3% THC in them.
Health Canada has done a lot of work since the industrial hemp regulations have come forward and has those definitions readily at hand.
Hemp has been proven to be safe. In 19 years of cultivation, there have been no reported public safety risks associated with hemp cultivation and transportation, and there have been no recorded incidents of criminal activity associated with the hemp industry. At the time the hemp regulations were first put in place, there was a lot of learning to be done, but 19 years have given us a pretty good track record for proven safety.
Our farm produces hemp specifically for the food market. We grow a hemp plant to harvest the grain at the top of the plant. We're currently prohibited from harvesting the leaves or the buds of the hemp plant as part of the industrial hemp regulations. We can harvest the straw for fibre, but as yet a fibre industry hasn't developed in Canada.
In Canada, the Canadian industry is known as the global leader in the food use of hemp. Canada is known for having the biggest hemp industry supporting safe food use of hemp. In 2016, Canadian industry exported $145 million of hemp food products to other countries around the world. Today you can walk into most grocery stores in Canada and get a bag of hemp hearts. Again, de-hulled hemp and hemp hearts have a fantastic nutritional profile, known both for the high omega-3s in the oil profile, as well as a very appealing plant protein profile. Hemp is becoming a very popular food product.
The potential of the hemp industry is strong as well. We've grown to 100,000 acres of production. The Canadian Hemp Trade Alliance forecasts that with some modernization of regulation associated with hemp, we can grow the industry to over a billion dollar industry within the next seven years. We've barely started working on the feed market, the fibre market, and the natural health products market. There is great opportunity for the hemp industry going forward. In December, the federal cannabis task force recommended a relaxed regulatory regime for hemp in their report. We're appreciative of that recommendation.
In terms of our specific proposal, we're looking to see hemp exempted from Bill C-45, by including it in schedule 2 under exemptions. I'll provide the specific definition, which again draws on the Health Canada definition of hemp. We'd ask that hemp and hemp plant parts, including the whole hemp plant, be exempted under item 5, under schedule 2 exemptions, with hemp to be defined as “cannabis plants grown from certified seed of Health Canada's list of approved cultivars”. Those are the cultivars that are confirmed to regularly produce an absolute maximum 0.3% THC.
There's tremendous interest in CBD as another health constituent or health component. The Europeans are working extremely aggressively on this, and the FDA has an open comment period seeking input on CBD. When you breed THC out of hemp, you naturally get more CBD, which is why hemp is looked at as a very good source for CBD. The medical industry is looking at a number of uses for CBD and potential medical benefits arising from CBD. Whole plant use of hemp would enable the access of a number of people—Canadian patients and others around the world—to a very low-cost source for CBD itself. We think that's a real benefit that can come from the hemp industry as well.
Thank you very much for your attention. Robert and I will be very pleased to answer any questions that we can going forward.