Canadian Hemp Law and Licensing Explained
Hemp in Canada sits under the Cannabis Act, and the rules that follow from it decide who may grow, what paperwork travels with a load, and which parts of the plant can be sold. These articles walk through Health Canada industrial hemp licensing, approved cultivar lists, THC testing thresholds, record-keeping obligations, and where provincial rules add their own layer. Written for growers, processors and buyers who need to know what compliance actually requires before signing anything.
4 articles
Canada Deregulated the Dead Hemp Seed. It Should Now Free the Living One.
The 2025 hemp reforms drew their line at viability: everything you can make from a dead hemp seed was freed from licensing, and everything requiring a living one was left behind. Sprouting is the only hemp food process that needs the seed alive — which makes it the one food use the reform deliberately stranded.
I Was in the Room in 1998: What Canada Got Right and Wrong About Hemp
A first-hand account of the Ottawa consultation on Canada's first Industrial Hemp Regulations, what I argued for, what the regulations excluded, and why the real damage came later — from consolidation, not from the rules.
Where Hemp Is Legal: A Jurisdictional Comparison
How Canada, the US, EU, UK, Australia, China and others regulate hemp food, hemp cultivation, and CBD differently. The 0.3 percent threshold, novel food regimes, and the pattern that recurs across jurisdictions.
Canadian Hemp Law in Plain English
The Industrial Hemp Regulations under the Cannabis Act, the CFIA's role in hemp food oversight, why CBD is regulated separately, and the 2026 regulatory simplification consultation.