Medicinal Cannabis Growers Have Privacy Rights: Federal Court – Cannabis | weed | marijuana

A Canadian federal court has ruled that medical cannabis growers have privacy rights. This ruling comes after a protracted battle in which a few journalists tried to get Health Canada to disclose the locations of medicinal cannabis growers.

Once upon a time, the government regulated medicinal cannabis through the Marijuana Medical Access Regulations (MMAR). Under the MMAR, patients could grow their own cannabis plants or hire someone to do it for them.

In 2013, the government replaced the MMAR with the MMPR (Marijuana for Medical Purposes Regulations), which banned home cultivation and created large producers that still accompany us today as Canada’s cannabis cartel.

The government said growing cannabis is dangerous. Patients said that wasn’t the case, so she sued and won. (See Allard.)

With legalization, all Canadians can grow cannabis, but only four plants per household. A medicinal cannabis patient could theoretically be licensed to grow hundreds of plants.

A freelancer and reporter from the Globe and Mail was obviously uncomfortable with MMAR breeders still growing.

They took the case to court. They said the public has a “right to know” about private medicinal cannabis gardens.

Some reporters have no problem engaging in investigative journalism when it comes to exposing your privacy. But heaven forbid they investigate corrupt Western governments and the revolving door of corporate and state actors.

how it started

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

The court battle began in August 2017 when Globe Health Canada asked for a list of addresses of medical cannabis patients who were licensed to cultivate and possess “industrial quantities” of cannabis.

In other words, the Globe started with the false premise that legal medicinal cultivation with many plants poses some sort of public safety hazard. (I suggest they reread the Allard ruling and focus on something important like Roxam Road, but I digress).

Health Canada – to their credit – denied the Globe the addresses of these legal, privately-owned medicinal grows. The Globe said (again ignoring Allard) that there was evidence that these farms and gardens were a public health problem and supplied to the black market.

They also said these gardens and farms could become prime targets for robberies. (I don’t see how posting their addresses would help in this regard, but I digress again.)

Health Canada wouldn’t even post zip codes. They said there are privacy laws that protect patients using medicinal cannabis.

Enter the information officer

The Federal Information Commissioner sided with Globe and ruled that Health Canada should provide three of the six-digit zip codes for these private gardens.

Health Canada still said no, so in a rare move, the Information Commissioner took Health Canada to court.

In a federal court decision, Judge William Pentney ruled with Health Canada.

I believe that Health Canada was entitled to refuse to release further information because of the serious possibility that doing so could lead to an invasion of privacy by identifying an individual in the records. I also find that Health Canada was not required to undertake a more detailed analysis of the risks involved in releasing more information, in line with its commitment to declassify and disclose as much information as possible.

Judge William Pentney

Medicinal cannabis growers have privacy rights

Since the Globe lost their case, they didn’t bother to link the ruling in their article. A copy can be found here or linked below in the footnotes. Judge Pentney denied the motion based on Section 25 of the Charter.

Section 25 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a provision that allows certain rights and freedoms in the charter to be restricted in order to protect the “rights and freedoms of others”. The purpose of this section is to strike a balance between the rights of the individual and the rights of society as a whole.

It states that the rights and freedoms protected by the Charter are “subject only to reasonable limits prescribed by law which can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society”.

The government may restrict an individual’s rights in certain circumstances. However, it must show that the restriction is necessary to protect the rights and freedoms of others or to achieve a compelling state objective.

In this regard, Judge William Pentney ruled that

Ultimately, the case law combined with the evidence presented by Health Canada leads me to the conclusion that the application cannot succeed. The Supreme Court of Canada has made it clear that where there is a conflict between access to information and an individual’s privacy rights, privacy must prevail… Based on the evidence here, I am convinced that the risks to privacy that could result from further disclosure of records are just too big.