In response to the increasingly popular business ventures of federally licensed medical marijuana operations, Ponoka County council is in the process of amending its land-use bylaw to only allow marijuana production under land zoned as direct control.
Planning consultant Bob Riddett walked councillors through their five available options — direct control being the second — in dealing with land rezoning applications related to medical marijuana production, and direct control seemed the most suitable to councillors.
“Basically what happens is, if you zone a piece of land direct control, any development permit application comes to council for decision. You make a decision using whatever criteria you feel is reasonable. There’s no appeal or anything,” said Riddett.
Coun. Mark Matejka looked to make sure that neighbours would get to respond to proposed, incoming operations. “Oh yes. It’ll be advertised like any other land-use bylaw change,” answered Riddett.
“If we specify direct control, then an applicant comes in, he’s informed by us immediately that look, ‘you have to have this land zoned appropriately’ . . . that triggers, automatically, a proposed bylaw to council and a public hearing to pass said bylaw,” county CAO Charlie Cutforth added.
Changes and additions made to the land use bylaw
• Agriculture definitions remain the same with the exclusion of marijuana production.
• Extensive agriculture definitions remain the same with the exclusion of marijuana production.
• Home business definitions remain the same with the exclusion of marijuana production.
• Intensive agricultural operations definitions remain the same with the exclusion of marijuana production.
• Market gardening definitions remain the same with the exclusion of marijuana production.
• A new section was added to the bylaw, stating: “Marijuana may be produced, processed and packaged only on land classified as direct control, and where the operator has the required permit from the Government of Canada.”
Other options
Cutforth had Riddett first research Rocky View County and Mountain View County’s systems to get an idea of what can be done. He found those counties restrict the operations to industrial areas.
“Ponoka (County) doesn’t have that,” said Riddett. With no industrial subdivisions — unlike the Rocky View and Mountain View — in the county, this course of action would have restricted the operations to six small areas.
“I’m not sure this is a good solution for Ponoka, not having the industrial subdivisions,” said Riddett.
The third solution presented was to make the operations discretionary under agricultural districts. This would make more than 90 per cent of the county potentially open to medical marijuana operations.
However, because the land-use bylaw would label it discretionary, the operation would have been able to be appealed by neighboring landowners and set before an appeal board for the final decision.
“With discretionary use, when an application comes forward . . . Automatically the neighbours are notified before a decision gets made,” said Cutforth.
Riddett told council their fourth option is to allow marijuana operations to fall under intensive operations. “Once again, that would open up about 95 per cent of the county to this.”
“There is a fifth option, which I don’t recommend you even consider,” Riddett told councillors. It is to completely ban the operations from setting up shop within the county.
“There is some legal problems with that,” he added.
“You could have a charter (rights) challenge if you say you can’t do this in Ponoka County,” said Reeve Paul McLauchlin.
McLauchlin also wanted to know if there was any charter jurisdiction on the non-appealable processes that would come with direct control.
“You can appeal the process that council used. You can say ‘did the fellow get a fair hearing, was there any bias on council?’ . . . Even then the courts won’t say ‘no, you must allow this land-use bylaw change’ or ‘you must issue a development permit.’ What they’ll do is they’ll say the whole hearing process was flawed, go back and do it again,” Riddett explained.
“Out of the four things I’ve suggested my preference is to go to direct control. You would change the land-use bylaw to make it very clear marijuana production is not (going) to be an agricultural operation or an intensive agricultural operation . . . And that it can only be allowed in a direct control setting,” said Riddett.
The option to go with direct control only reached the first reading to allow for the next step council feels it needs to take: a public hearing, the date is yet to be set.