The owner of an unlicensed cannabis dispensary in Stratford says “all he is trying to do is provide medicine for people.”
“And I can’t even do that,” Kirk Marquette told StratfordToday.
Marquette is the operator of Organic Solutions at 279 Monteith Ave.
The owner of the unlicensed cannabis dispensary said he was told to shut down by Stratford Police Services (SPS) this week.
Marquette operates the store with Waabskhiibiness Niini, who goes by the English name of Thomas Adam Jackson. He runs another Organic Solutions in Kettlepoint.
Marquette asserts that it is his right to trade traditional medicine as an Indigenous person, as protected by sections 25 and 35 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms – and those freedoms trump the need for a license or a permit.
Section 25 guarantees that “certain rights and freedoms shall not be construed as to abrogate or derogate from any aboriginal, treaty or other rights or freedoms that pertain to the aboriginal peoples of Canada.”
Section 35 recognizes and affirms the existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal people of Canada, defined as the “Indian, Inuit, and Métis people of Canada.”
Marquette said that because the City of Stratford acknowledges that the