GOVERNMENT HAVING PROBLEMS GETTING MARIJUANA SEEDS

ALISON SMITH: There are problems tonight with Ottawa's plan to secure
reliable source of medical marijuana. It has a company lined up to do the
growing, but, so far, it hasn't been able to find anyone to supply the
seeds. As Jo Lynn Sheane reports, critics are calling it a fiasco.

JO LYNNE SHEANE (Reporter): Throughout winter, and out of the public eye,
workers scrambled deep inside this abandoned mine preparing it to become
Canada's first government-sanctioned marijuana growing operation. A legal
supply for sick people who need marijuana to dull their pain. All that
urgency and now Prairie Plant Systems, the company with the Health Canada
contract, can do nothing but wait. The seeds to grow the marijuana were
supposed to be delivered to the Saskatoon company two weeks ago. The
problem? The federal government has run into a series of diplomatic
roadblocks trying to import marijuana into Canada legally.

BRENT ZETTL (Prairie Plant Systems): Getting access to illicit plant
material has been far more challenging than what Health Canada or ourselves
have expected.

SHEANE: Zettl says the problem is in the United States. Washington is
reluctant to allow an American research lab to export the seeds, a problem,
considering Prairie Plants is supposed to provide 185 kilograms of dried
pot for clinical trials by December.

ZETTL: Our mission is to try to get it into the hands of the people who
need it sooner rather than later. All it does is it delays our ability to
deliver to them.

ALAN YOUNG (Osgoode Hall Law Professor): This whole fiasco really calls
into question the sincerity of Health Canada.

SHEANE: This Toronto lawyer says Health Canada is to blame because it
allowed sick people to use marijuana but then failed to provide a legal source.

YOUNG: They're simply saying we're very compassionate. We want to help sick
people, but they haven't set up a meaningful infrastructure to allow sick
people to take medicine in a safe and secure manner.

SHEANE: People like marijuana crusader Grant Krieger who continues to buy
his marijuana on the black market and sell to others who are sick too.

GRANT KRIEGER: It's a total mess they're in right now. And they're not
helping the people who really need it in this nation, the people who are
ill and dying.

DANN MICHOLS (Health Canada): We're not certain exactly what the problems were.

SHEANE: Health Canada says it thinks more paperwork will solve the problem,
but won't say how.

MICHOLS: Whether or not the process is legitimate or it's just extra
cautious or whatever is difficult to say, but I think we've solved the problem.

SHEANE: Meanwhile, Prairie Plants says if the seeds come within the next
few weeks, it will increase production and may still meet its targets. Any
later, and Canada's first legal crop of marijuana may be a bust. Jo Lynn
Sheane, CBC News, Saskatoon.