When entering the offices of Aurora Vie in Pointe Claire, there is no Grateful Dead playing over the speakers and workers are not adorned in dye tie and flip flops.
As a matter of fact, all guests must be signed in and wear a magnetic guest pass and swipe every room visited as security personnel ensure only those allowed to visit come in.
The Suburban spoke to Andrea Paine, Aurora Vie, a division of Aurora Cannabis, who is the company’s National Director of Governmental Relations, about Aurora’s eventual recreational sales once marijuana is decriminalized across the country.
Aurora Vie can grow up to 4,000 cannabis plants and since media were invited for a tour of the plant last fall, “we have had three harvests for purely medical clients since then and currently our plants are at all levels of growth,” Paine told The Suburban.
Once recreational marijuana is allowed for personal sale which, according to Paine, “it should be legal by September”, Aurora Vie’s delivery system “will be similar to our medical sales as clients can book online and people can expect it within two to three days and same day delivery in some cases.”
The product will be the same as is used for medical marijuana users, the bulk of Aurora’s clients are in Europe.
And while Aurora Vie have a license to sell medical and will soon be in the recreational venue as well, the company has to adhere to the Quebec government’s rules for growers which includes no visible signage and “because we are unsure of what the final legislation from the federal and provincial governments, it is still up in the air for signage regulations as well as promotion and advertising,” Paine said.
Aurora Vie wanted to promote local non-profit agencies through sponsorship but are still awaiting the final decision from the two levels of government.
The company goes through vigorous steps to ensure a safe product as “we use no pesticides for the plants and a we use a third party test lab for every batch and all of the lab results on online,” Paine said.
“These controlled practices assure the quality of our products unlike the black market that is uncontrolled,” she said.
Paine believes that the federal government’s new cannabis policy will ”have serious repercussions for anyone trying to sell cannabis to minors as the fines are serious and go up exponentially for further offences and it will be much more difficult for kids to buy it.”
