How cannabis can help Canada win the trade war

The cannabis industry is urging the Carney government to use surging marijuana exports as a means of diversifying Canadian trade with non-U.S. markets, warning Canada could soon lose its competitive advantage to rivals.

Cannabis sales to foreign markets are already on track to surpass $1-billion this year, according to Statistics Canada, and the industry expects that to double in 2027. Not only is that happening without government support, but industry insiders have come to believe Ottawa is intentionally avoiding their calls for help.

Cannabis executives say they have never been included on trade missions to foreign countries and their sector faces onerous bureaucratic restrictions on any shipments sent abroad. Meanwhile, other countries are growing more cannabis and are aggressively courting the increasing number of countries establishing their own medical cannabis regimes in order to supplant Canada as the premier global supplier.

“If nothing is done, we are going down,” Miguel Martin, chief executive officer of Edmonton-based Aurora Cannabis Inc. ACB-T, said in an interview. “We won’t stay flat while the rest of the world grows.”

“All of these big markets are coming online. Spain and France and Italy. Eastern Europe. They are all looking for the same sort of general standard and Canada is playing no role.”

Rick Savone, Aurora’s senior vice-president of government relations and a veteran diplomat who served as Canada’s ambassador to Brazil from 2015 to 2019, believes the reason Ottawa appears to be ignoring the industry’s pleas for support is owing to the enduring stigma attached to anything related to cannabis.

“If we were Bombardier and we had these issues, there would be a list of ministers coming out and defending us,” he said in an interview.

“We employ more people than Bombardier and we generate way more tax revenue and we don’t cost the government anything. We are the fifth-largest cash crop in Canada now and we can’t get anybody on the phone.”

The sector is not asking for financial support from the government. What they are after is recognition of the opportunity available to Canada, some assistance with export logistics and maybe an invitation to a trade mission or two.

Right now, no legal international trade exists for recreational cannabis, but the medical market is expanding rapidly as the drug has become widely accepted as a treatment for various ailments.

In early 2024, a delegation from Ukraine led by then-health minister Viktor Liashko toured an Aurora production facility in Germany. Ukraine legalized medical cannabis the following year.

Olga Stefanishyna, a Ukrainian politician who has held a number of senior positions in recent years including deputy prime minister, justice minister and ambassador to the U.S., was in that delegation. She has since become a champion for allowing cannabis as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, which afflicts millions of Ukrainian war veterans.

“We are working to learn from Canada’s experience, where medical cannabis has been used extensively in the care of veterans,” Ms. Stefanishyna said in an interview from Kyiv. “But there is still much work to be done. We hope to continue to strengthen this valuable collaboration with our Canadian partners.”

Various estimates place the size of the Ukrainian medical cannabis market at between six and 10 million patients by the end of the decade. With no domestic production of its own, Ukraine is just one example of an export market opportunity for Canadian cannabis companies that is difficult to address without government support.

The risk is that other governments around the world – such as Thailand, Colombia and South Africa – are actively supporting their own cannabis industries efforts to expand exports.

“Canada, as good as the product is, there is a window of another two or three years where it will be difficult for others to catch up,” Organigram Global CEO James Yamanaka said in an interview, “but they will catch up.”

Currently, every individual shipment of Canadian medical cannabis destined for foreign markets needs its own permit, Mr. Yamanaka said, with the process for each one taking between four and six weeks.

“It is a somewhat perishable product and that is a lot of cash you lock up while waiting for individual permits,” he said.

“What would be really good on that would be to change it from this one-off permit to get something like a known exporter fast track where you can get things through in 10 days, especially when it is the same companies and repeat shipments that have already been checked.”

Cannabis shipments abroad are also subject to a 2.3-per-cent export fee, which Mr. Yamanaka would like to see waived. Other exports such as alcohol and certain agricultural food products are already exempt from such fees.

The government “doesn’t necessarily recognize the size of the industry or the amount of employment and tax contributions,” Mr. Yamanaka said. “They don’t really understand the size of the export opportunity or even the fact that Canada is so far ahead at the moment.”

According to a September, 2025, report from consulting giant Deloitte, the Canadian cannabis industry generated nearly $30-billion in government revenue between 2018 and 2024, and provides nearly 100,000 average annual full time jobs.

That is not too far off oil and gas extraction, which directly employs roughly 145,000 Canadians.

The Deloitte report also noted that as more countries move toward legalization, “Canada has a unique opportunity to set the standard for emerging markets in terms of cannabis policies, research and other areas as a key player in the global industry.”

It all sounds like the sort of thing Ottawa would be eager to support, especially amid the current push to diversify Canada’s trade relationships. But in the six years that Aurora’s Mr. Martin has been CEO, he has never seen any senior government officials take an active interest in the cannabis export file.

“Not a single minister or a single department would champion this,” he said. “It really is a shame. It is one thing if you are going to lose to a big global power – we can’t compete head to head with China or the U.S. – but jeez, we should be able to compete with Thailand and Colombia.”

The vast majority of the Australian cannabis market is already supplied by Thailand, which Mr. Martin said has a much more sophisticated industry than many might assume.

“The narrative might be, well, it’s trash and it isn’t as well-developed a country and they are doing it on the cheap, but that is not what this is,” he said. “This is indoor-grown flower that is of a high quality.”

Several Thai-based producers, including MQ Cultivation, GreenHouse, CannEx Pharma and HollyMood have built extensive facilities with backing from wealthy family offices and institutional investors. All of them expect to receive good manufacturing practices (GMP) certification within the next 12 months, which would allow them to sell into European Union markets.

Aurora’s River facility in Bradford, Ont., for comparison, has been EU-GMP certified since 2020.

“It isn’t like we are asking for a huge tax break or big, massive infrastructure investments,” Mr. Martin said. “Just a little bit of help with export, where all those supports exist for every other industry and all you have to do is plug cannabis in as well.”

Maninder Sidhu, Canada’s international trade minister, launched a strategic exports office in July that established an advisory council consisting of 14 CEOs, none of whom were from a cannabis company.

His office referred questions about the federal government’s work with the cannabis sector to Global Affairs Canada. In an e-mailed statement, Global Affairs spokesperson John Babcock said the department supports Canadian cannabis companies through the trade commissioner service and co-ordinates and consults with Health Canada on cannabis-related matters.

He also said the department “regularly engages with licensed Canadian producers, and companies have noted the administrative and logistical requirements associated with international shipments.”

Health Canada spokesperson Marie-Pier Burelle said in an e-mailed response to questions that all cannabis exports must be authorized by her department and permission is only granted in “very limited circumstances” and “on a case-by-case basis.”

More than 4,700 export permit applications were received by Health Canada during its 2025-26 fiscal year, which Ms. Burelle said was double that of the previous year.

She acknowledged cannabis producers have complained about the time it takes to receive a permit, noting Health Canada has implemented process changes to reduce processing times. Most export permits are issued within eight business days of receiving payment, Ms. Burelle said, and 99 per cent were processed within 30 business days.

Speeding up permit processing times only addresses a small part of the problem, according to Organigram’s Mr. Yamanaka.

“The entire mindset of the Canadian government needs to stop looking at it as something to regulate and control, but as a normal business that is very large in scale,” he said.

If that does not happen within the next five years, Aurora’s Mr. Martin said “Canada will lose its leadership position unequivocally.”

“If the next four or five years are done right, this could be a two-, three- or even four-billion-dollar industry for Canada easily,” he said. “But you have to want it. Someone just needs to say they care.”