August 29, 2018 Ottawa, ON Health Canada

A primary goal of the Cannabis Act is to displace the illegal cannabis market and keep profits out of the hands of criminals and organized crime. One means of achieving this goal is to track closely the movement of cannabis from where it is grown, to where it is processed, to where it is sold.

Today, Health Canada announced the new Cannabis Tracking System, an important milestone in preparation for the coming into force of the Cannabis Act. The system will enable the tracking of cannabis to prevent legal cannabis from being diverted to the illegal market and illegal cannabis from being introduced into the legal market.

The Cannabis Tracking System builds on a system that has been in place for nearly five years to track cannabis for medical purposes and that has proven to work. It will be used by provinces and territories, as well as those that hold a federal licence to cultivate and process cannabis, to track the movement of cannabis from cultivation to processing to sale.

Personal information on individual consumers will not be collected. The Cannabis Tracking System will only collect data that is necessary for Health Canada to track cannabis at a national level.