Ontario cannabis company laying off 800 workers and closing facilities

Another Canadian company has laid off multiple employees, and this time it's the cannabis industry that has seen the slashing.

Ontario-based Canopy Growth Corp. will immediately start reducing its staff headcount by 60 per cent, according to a news release from the company. Forty per cent of those layoffs will take place right away, resulting in the immediate dismissal of 800 staffers.

But the bad news doesn't stop there.

Canopy will also permanently close its iconic headquarters in Smith Falls, Ontario, where it took over the former Hershey's Chocolate plant.

When Canopy first opened up in Smith Falls, it was a gigantic boon to the small town outside of Ottawa.

The company will no longer grow cannabis in Smith Falls or Mirabel, Quebec, and will move to a third-party sourcing model for other weed products like beverages, edibles, vapes and extracts.

Here in Toronto, the Scarborough research facility is also planned to close in the near future.

Canopy owns multiple brands including Tweed, Ace Valley and Tokyo Smoke.

All of these moves are said to be part of Canopy's organizational restructuring and cost-reduction strategies.

"Canopy must reach profitability to achieve our ambition of long-term North American cannabis market leadership," said the company's Chief Executive Officer, David Klein.

"We are transforming our Canadian business to an asset-light model and significantly reducing the overall size of our organization. These changes are difficult but necessary to drive our business to profitability and growth."

Throughout the years, Canopy made some very high-profile moves, including announcing a cannabis wellness company with Drake and then dropping the partnership, as well as partnering with Martha Stewart to develop a line of CBD products.

These layoffs and closures are a definite blow to the Canadian recreational marijuana market. Back in 2019, Canopy was thought to be the largest cannabis company in the world.