The dissertation that follows is the result of extended collaboration with, and co-labouring among women working in an illicit, value-added cannabis production facility, 400115335 BC, in the southeastern interior of British Columbia, Canada, in the lower Slocan Valley. An extended case study of the political economy leveraged against these workers ensues, which exposes the mechanisms depriving them of state provisions and protections normally afforded to Canadian citizens. Illegal firms employing unprotected workers, with the full consent of local and provincial authorities, represent the significant findings of this research.
Further, the work engages in ethnographic content analysis to evaluate the intentional exclusion of illicit cannabis producers in the West Kootenay region, and in Canada more generally, from the approvals and licenses that would permit them to participate in legal markets. An examination of late capitalist financialisation is presented to illustrate that ex-politicians and law enforcement persons prioritised their personal access to cannabis production licenses and markets over that of a five decades-old, established industry, excluding hundreds of functioning production farms, opting instead to create cannabis production firms incapable of producing at scale, many of which either engaged, or continue to engage in malfeasant practices such as deployment of the deceptive IFRS accounting methodology, the over-compensation of corporate principals, and the “pump and dump” stock valuation scam, a form of insider trading. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / The dissertation that follows is both a result of co-labouring among workers in an illicit, value-added cannabis production facility in the south-eastern interior of British Columbia, Canada, and an ethnographic content analysis that takes as its subjects the intentional exclusion of Canadian small-scale, craft cannabis farmers, the ‘natural/rational’ cannabis market Canada created when it legalized the substance in late 2018, and the access granted to that market for powerful politicians and law enforcement officials. An investigation of the political economy leveraged against illicit workers ensues, depriving them of state provisions and protections normally afforded to Canadian citizens. Legal firms engaging in fraudulent financial activities, and illegal firms employing unprotected workers, within the purview and full consent of authorities, represent significant findings.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/29105 |
| Date | January 2023 |
| Creators | McCann, Clayton |
| Contributors | Yong, Kee Howe, Anthropology |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book |
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