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With just weeks to go before recreational pot becomes legal across Canada, a new report commissioned by Health Canada predicts the demand for it will be substantially higher than widely anticipated.

The report used a 2017 federal survey on cannabis use to estimate how much adult Canadians will consume in the first year of legalization.

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It calculated the amount at 926,000 kilograms for both recreational and medical use. That’s a whopping 41 per cent higher than the estimate of 655,000 kilograms by the Parliamentary Budget Officer in 2016.

It’s also higher than estimates by many private investment companies. A recent report by CIBC World Markets Corp., for example, estimated demand would reach 850,000 kilograms by 2020.

If the new report is on the mark, Canadians could face shortages after recreational marijuana becomes legal across the country on Oct. 17.

Some industry experts have long predicted that Canadian cannabis growers would not be able to produce enough, at least initially. The new report suggests the problem might be worse than expected.