Apr 02, 2024
Some unauthorized store owners are asserting they have a treaty right to sell cannabis
It’s no mistake that Thomas Durfee calls his cannabis and cultural arts store in north-end Dartmouth, N.S., a “truckhouse,” a reference to trading posts outlined in a 1752 treaty signed between a Mi’kmaw chief and the British governor of Nova Scotia.
It’s that treaty that Durfee says will be central to his defence to charges laid following a January police raid on his Amu Leaf store, joining other cases where Mi’kmaw operators are claiming the right to sell marijuana outside Nova Scotia regulations that restrict its retail to a Crown corporation.
“I believe as long as we’re fighting, as long as we’re using wisdom and education to move forward, then they don’t really have a choice but to allow us to live in prosperity, peace and friendship, and to the best of our advantages,” Durfee, who is Mi’kmaq, said in an interview. “They have to uphold that treaty.”
While Mi’kmaw treaty rights have long been asserted in the fisheries, most prominently in the Nova Scotia lobster industry and increasingly with lucrative baby eels, cannabis is emerging as a contentious new legal and social battleground since its legalization in 2018.
But those claiming the right to sell marijuana face significant hurdles to prove it under Supreme Court of Canada precedents that date back more than two decades, one of which has become the standard “test” in such cases.