Mr. Speaker, I will abandon my prepared remarks, and speak very specifically to the member's question. I want to assure him there are approximately 90 licences that have been approved. The overwhelming majority of licences that have been approved by Health Canada, for the licensed production of cannabis, are for small businesses that employ fewer than 100 employees, and are therefore defined as small businesses.
They are located in rural communities, and in communities where that is making a real difference for producing jobs and economic opportunity in different parts of the country. Therefore, there are no barriers to those small participants in entering into the system.
With the new regulations, and we will be coming forward with an update on the feedback we received in our consultations, we also propose to introduce a licence for smaller craft producers, what we refer to as a micro-producer or micro-processor. That would enable the even smaller participant to enter into this business and create that opportunity.