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It should also ease the licensing bottleneck, he added.

“We have a supply shortage and people are dumping on the federal government, rightly or wrongly, for not licensing fast enough… If they think they can expedite that by changing the process, I think that will help,” he said.

However, for new applicants, the “playing field has just shifted,” he added.

“Now the onus is on you to raise that money earlier in the process… and getting it right so that when you build it, its going to get licensed,” he said.

The process of receiving an approval before building a facility made sense in past years, when the regime was relatively new, said Sara Zborovski, a cannabis lawyer with Norton Rose Fulbright.

But now, with a track record of applicants who have gotten the green light over the years, the expectations are clearer, she added.

Although applicants will need to raise capital and build their facilities first, the risk of not getting approved at that stage is lower, Zborovski said.

“We have a much better sense of what you need to put in your application to get it approved,” she said.

Health Canada says the change announced Wednesday builds on adjustments it made in 2017 and 2018. It adds that since May 2017, the regulator has licensed more than 129 new sites, which is nearly triple the number of sites licensed in the four years prior.

It says there are now more than 600,000 square metres of space under active cultivation, which it estimates based on industry averages, is enough to produce approximately 1 million kilograms of cannabis per year.

As for existing applicants in the queue, Health Canada says it will complete a “high-level” review of their applications and provide a status update, but a detailed review will commence once a site that meets the regulatory requirements has been built.