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This plan would add an excise tax of $1 per gram of marijuana or 10 per cent of the final retail price, whichever is higher. The revenues will be split equally between Ottawa and the provinces and territories.

Bill Blair, parliamentary secretary to the minister of justice and the Liberal lead on the legal pot program, also said the government’s task force report recommended the tax regime on medical and recreational marijuana be the same.

“Our government remains committed to maintaining a functional medical marijuana system and at the same time, we do not want the taxation levels to be an incentive for people to utilize that system inappropriately and so we propose that the taxation levels for both non-medical and medical will be aligned,” Blair said.

However, Cam Battley, executive vice-president of licensed producer Aurora Cannabis Inc. (TSX:ACB), said sick people do not need the additional cost burden and applying the tax to medical marijuana is “outrageous” and “wrong.”

He added that patient advocates have been calling on governments for the removal of existing sales tax on medical cannabis to put it in line with other pharmaceuticals, such as opioids.

“This needs to be nipped in the bud,” Battley said. “What the federal government is doing with respect to cannabis on a broad basis is very positive, very sound public sound public policy. This is not.”

Battley adds that the government’s proposal presupposes that people will fake an illness in order to access medical cannabis.