After a stressful few months, on Monday July 20, the VCBC got an injunction from being evicted from 1625 Quadra Street for 6 months from the BC Supreme Court. This comes after the club was raided in April and the province issued a notice of civil forfeiture against the owners of the building the following month. A 6 months window has been granted to allow for the judicial review that the VCBC has filed to proceed without the club being shut down while waiting for that decision.
Since legalization in 2018, the VCBC has been raided 4 times, with the last raid a few months ago on April 21. After the first two raids, the club was fined $3.2 million. As a result, VCBC Vice-President, Clea Maclean, has recently had a lien placed against her property in Cowichan Bay by the province in an effort to collect some of the money. After the recent raid, the province also filed a Notice of Civil Forfeiture to take the building from the landlord, accusing them of accepting proceeds of crime for taking rent money from us.
Once again, the VCBC approached Victoria City Council for assistance. While the city is not able to intervene directly, they have written to the B.C. Solicitor General, Nina Krieger and B.C. Attorney General, Niki Sharma, to request that no further enforcement actions are taken until a judicial review can take place. In the letter, Mayor Alto is blunt.
“The latest efforts by the Province to attack and defeat the Victoria Cannabis Buyers Club threatens the existence of a long-standing community service that has a history of supporting the health care needs of patients who have neither the financial nor systemic capacity to find that care elsewhere. I urge you to halt your persecution of VCBC at least until their judicial review has been resolved.”
Filed late in 2025, the judicial review was submitted after the VCBC finally exhausted all appeals within the B.C. Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General against the administrative fines. Negotiations have been taking place between VCBC lawyers, Jack Lloyd and Kirk Tousaw, and crown lawyers. Though no firm date has been established for the end of the hearing, some submissions are anticipated to be entered into court in October. In this situation, the judicial review is on paper, so no courtroom hearings will be held.
The judicial review will focus on the failures of the federal medical cannabis program. Though there has been a federal medical cannabis program since 2001, it has been completely inadequate from the beginning, with many courts striking down various areas of the regulations. While some improvements have been made over time as a result of these court decisions, the program remains a dismal failure for most Canadians using cannabis as a medicine.
When the owners of the building were issued a Notice of Civil Forfeiture in May, they had no choice but to evict the club. Aside from this situation, the landlord’s lawyer, Tim Summer, from Crease Harman LLP, acknowledged that the VCBC has been an excellent tenant. However, a few weeks after giving the VCBC an eviction notice, the landlords were compelled to call a locksmith or risk appearing negligent to the province.
For a few days we thought it would be possible for us to continue using the storefront at 1625 Quadra Street, as long as we were doing sales on the sidewalk out front and did not have any cannabis in the building at any point. It was a scary situation, but with nowhere else to go we did not know what else to do to keep the medicine flowing. Though the landlord was fine with this plan, when Tim Summers found out about what we were intending to do, he immediately called to inform us that the locks would still be put on the doors the next day.
It was hard not to panic. Kirk wrote a threatening email, telling Tim that if we were evicted, we were prepared to sue the landlord for damages for the pain and suffering caused to our patients. After an emergency meeting on Thursday June 11, we took all of the cannabis out of the building in case a sheriff showed up in the morning.
Then, on Friday morning, the idea of an injunction against the eviction changed everything. It was good for the landlord. It was good for us.
As the situation was explained to the Justice in the B.C. Supreme Court, she expressed concern that the province was not included in the proceedings. Instead of applying a case manager to this injunction, she gave us a temporary reprieve to ensure we move the judicial review forward. There is no guarantee that an extension to the injunction will be granted after 6 months, but hopefully, as long as some substantial progress has been made, the courts will continue to protect the VCBC until the end of this judicial review.
