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In Episode 68 of the Legacies Podcast, host Tom Ritchie sits down with Tanner Stewart, Co-Founder and CEO of Stewart Farms. Tanner provides a raw, transparent analysis of the financial and regulatory challenges facing Canadian cannabis producers. He explains the company’s recent Notice of Intent (NOI) filing under the CCAA, which was triggered by aggressive CRA collection actions that redirected 35-40% of their monthly revenue to resolve tax arrears, threatening their cultivation and processing licenses. Tanner shares the success of their wellness line—which generates $6 million in annual revenue and recently hit a milestone of one million bath bombs sold—and the life-changing relief it provides to medical patients, particularly military veterans. He also highlights the double standards in capital markets and pharmaceutical advertising (pointing to Ozempic’s placement at sports venues), and outlines the company’s path to global expansion after completing restructuring.
Tom Ritchie Says: Welcome to Legacies, everyone! Legacies is powered by AVEO Vapor Devices, leaders in sustainable vape hardware. I’m joined this week by Tanner Stewart of Stewart Farms. Tanner, my friend, it is great to see you again. Perhaps under different circumstances than we originally anticipated, but I really appreciate you joining me on the pod.
Tanner Stewart Says: Thrilled to be back, Tom. Thanks so much for having me on, man.
Tom Ritchie Says: First off, huge kudos to you for having the courage and transparency to openly discuss your Notice of Intention and restructuring process under CCAA. When you gave me the call, my initial reaction was frustration with the structural realities of this industry. It’s a sobering signal that no matter how good your products are, capital constraints, crippling excise taxes, and regulatory overhead affect everyone. Where did this begin for Stewart Farms?
Tanner Stewart Says: I’ll actually work backward in reverse order because where Stewart Farms sits today operationally is remarkably strong. This fiscal year, we are tracking toward $6 million in gross revenue. Roughly 85% of that entire revenue base is driven by our cannabis wellness and topical portfolio. The remaining 15% comes from our craft flower export.
Tanner Stewart Says: We export our organic craft cultivar, Daily Grape, exclusively to medical patients in Australia, alongside a small allocation sold through our on-site farmgate retail store here in St. Stephen, New Brunswick. Doing $5 million in wellness alone means we are providing tangible therapeutic relief to thousands of Canadians every single month.
Tanner Stewart Says: A substantial portion of our core wellness consumers and medical patients are Canadian military veterans. Veterans are the number one consumers of the Stewart Farms therapeutic bath bomb experience. We receive regular feedback from patients utilizing our bath bombs for severe arthritis, chronic pain, skin conditions, and post-traumatic stress.
Tanner Stewart Says: The PTSD feedback caught me completely off guard initially. When we launched our bath bombs in late 2020 and early 2021, we discovered in real time how diverse these applications were. That led to our Arctic Heat and Arctic Muscle sticks and creams.
Tom Ritchie Says: I can vouch for that firsthand. I was out on the lake with my son last weekend, forgot my sunscreen, and got severely sunburned. I put on your lavender arnica balm, and it delivered immediate relief. It’s a multi-purpose skin remedy.
Tanner Stewart Says: Absolutely. Sunburns, razor burn, eczema, bug bites—it acts as an all-around topical skin hammer. With our Arctic Heat cream, multiple women have reported applying it to their lower abdomen for endometriosis relief, allowing them to completely replace prescription T3s and synthetic opioids. We have built a catalog of safe, effective cannabinoid therapies that actively displace opioids, benzodiazepines, and steroidal creams.
Tom Ritchie Says: You have high-performing products, national Canadian distribution, and international export to Australia. What created the financial squeeze that led to restructuring?
Tanner Stewart Says: Getting to this point has felt like walking barefoot across broken glass. The majority of operators who entered this sector did so because they believed deeply in the medical potential of the plant. The government claims they laid out the rules from day one, but nobody fully anticipated the sheer weight of administrative overregulation.
Tanner Stewart Says: We face four extensive CRA audits and four Health Canada inspections every single year, accompanied by relentless monthly reporting across multiple provincial jurisdictions. Executive leadership is forced to spend endless hours generating compliance paperwork rather than optimizing manufacturing, reducing unit costs, or expanding retail distribution. That unnecessary overhead bleeds working capital.
Tanner Stewart Says: When the Cannabis Act was introduced, legal operators were told our mandate was to displace the illicit market. We invested millions to build compliant infrastructure, and in return, the government slapped us with a 40% effective tax rate on top-line revenue—higher than any other industry in Canadian history.
Tanner Stewart Says: Meanwhile, illicit online dispensaries operate freely, advertise on social media and Reddit, pay zero excise tax, and face virtually no enforcement. As CEO, I cannot afford to sit around feeling sorry for myself. We have to execute and survive despite these structural handicaps. But the financial math eventually forces your hand.
Tom Ritchie Says: Explain what filing a Notice of Intention under the CCAA actually means for viewers unfamiliar with insolvency law.
Tanner Stewart Says: The Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) is Canada’s equivalent of Chapter 11 bankruptcy restructuring in the United States. It is a legal mechanism specifically designed to protect viable, operating businesses that become overleveraged. What Stewart Farms filed on June 27th is a Notice of Intention (NOI) to file under CCAA.
Tanner Stewart Says: An NOI grants an immediate legal stay of proceedings, freezing all collections, lawsuits, and regulatory penalties. It gives management the breathing room needed to negotiate with secured and unsecured creditors while continuing day-to-day operations. We received an initial 30-day protection window, followed by a 45-day extension running through September 10th.
Tanner Stewart Says: Stewart Farms started behind the eight-ball back in October 2019. We had a fully committed lead equity investor ready to fund our buildout, but when the public cannabis capital markets crashed that month, the investor panicked and backed out, leaving us with a significant capital hole.
Tanner Stewart Says: In consumer packaged goods, young brands routinely lose money for the first four to five years while commercializing formulas. Furthermore, after spending millions to construct our state-of-the-art facility, the building sat completely idle for six months waiting for Health Canada to issue our sales license. You absorb all the carrying costs while the regulator takes their time. We were building manufacturing, logistics, brand identity, and clinical formulation all at once without traditional banking access.
Tanner Stewart Says: If Stewart Farms were a standard CPG business generating $6 million in annual revenue, delivering 85% gross margins on proprietary wellness topicals, and holding hundreds of verified consumer reviews, commercial banks would be lining up to offer low-interest growth debt. Because cannabis is our active ingredient, affordable commercial financing simply does not exist.
Tom Ritchie Says: Beyond capital, you are legally prohibited under Section 17 of the Cannabis Act from quoting your own customers or explaining the proven physiological efficacy of your topical balms.
Tanner Stewart Says: Exactly. We are completely handcuffed from sharing authentic consumer feedback about arthritis or muscle recovery.
Tanner Stewart Says: The double standard in Canadian advertising is infuriating. I took my kids to see The Fantastic Four at the movie theater, and the pre-show advertisements featured prominent commercials for Ozempic! I went to Game 5 of the Edmonton Oilers playoff series, and Ozempic was plastered all over the arena boards.
Tanner Stewart Says: Big Pharma is aggressively marketing GLP-1 weight-loss injections directly to children and sports fans despite severe documented side effects like stomach paralysis and muscle degradation. Yet, Stewart Farms cannot even display a factual sign at an arena saying that a Canadian grandmother found relief from her arthritis using our topicals.
Tom Ritchie Says: It’s the difference between a synthetic drug with a Drug Identification Number pushed on monthly recurring subscriptions versus natural plant wellness with 6,000 years of documented human history.
Tanner Stewart Says: Exactly. Cannabis has documented pharmacopeia roots dating back thousands of years. Cannabinoids possess an extraordinary safety profile, yet our stores are forced to black out their windows while Big Pharma sponsors children’s cinema screens.
Tanner Stewart Says: Canada needs sustainable domestic manufacturing jobs. The cannabis sector is 100% Canadian from genetics to retail shelves. In St. Stephen, New Brunswick—a rural border town of only 5,000 people—Stewart Farms employs 33 full-time staff and up to 10 part-time workers. Our team manufactures and exports innovative medical pain therapies worldwide.
Tanner Stewart Says: Almost none of our team came from pharmaceutical backgrounds. Our VP of Operations, Ashley, previously managed the local Boys & Girls Club; our packaging and extraction leaders were former bartenders. They learned precision manufacturing from scratch and built a world-class operation right here in Atlantic Canada.
Tanner Stewart Says: Over our first five years, Stewart Farms generated over $18 million in cumulative top-line revenue, paid out over $8 million in local wages, invested $5 million in local capital expenditures, and officially crossed the milestone of selling over 1,000,000 bath bombs across Canada. We pioneered the medical bathing category for therapeutic pain relief.
Tom Ritchie Says: You aren’t corporate executives extracting bloated bonuses while running an enterprise into the ground. You live in Birkenstocks, work on the floor, and pour everything right back into the community.
Tom Ritchie Says: What was the specific catalyst that forced the immediate NOI filing in late June?
Tanner Stewart Says: The breaking point arrived when the Canada Revenue Agency initiated aggressive collections on our excise arrears, redirecting roughly 35% to 40% of our monthly gross revenue directly to themselves. Operating with that level of cash garnishment was nearly impossible, but we were working through payment schedules.
Tanner Stewart Says: Then, an excise deadline loomed where our cannabis license was scheduled for immediate cancellation if we didn’t produce hundreds of thousands of dollars on the spot. Losing our license would have instantly destroyed 38 local livelihoods and pulled essential therapies from thousands of patients. I called our general counsel, who advised that an NOI filing was the only legal mechanism to halt license revocation. I pulled the trigger to save our company.
Tanner Stewart Says: The day we filed, I gathered our entire team together. I didn’t pretend to have all the answers. I told them: ‘We are entering creditor protection. My sole focus is navigating us out the other side. I don’t know the exact path today, but I am fighting for every single one of you.’ I told them to protect their families if they needed to seek other work.
Tanner Stewart Says: Not a single person quit. Instead, our team rallied harder than ever. They even created a custom farmgate coloring book on their own initiative to brighten up our retail store! Two weeks later, I was able to present a clear, viable restructuring pathway. Our staff’s belief in our mission is the greatest motivation in the world.
Tom Ritchie Says: Restructuring inevitably creates anxiety for suppliers and vendors. How are you managing those relationships?
Tanner Stewart Says: I took the exact same transparent approach with our vendors as I did with our internal team. I personally called our suppliers, apologized for the unpaid invoices, and asked for their partnership on the other side of this process. Over 90% of our vendors responded with incredible empathy and support. One major supplier laughed and told me, ‘Congratulations Tanner, you’re our 40th cannabis client to enter CCAA this year!’
Tom Ritchie Says: That personal touch makes all the difference. In 2019 and 2020, corporate LPs hid behind downtown law firms and served creditors with cold legal notices. When an owner calls directly and commits to making it right, business partners stand by you.
Tanner Stewart Says: During CCAA, you cannot retreat into a defensive crouch. We reached out immediately to our provincial distributors and medical platforms to assure them that our supply chain is secure. We are actively leaning in, launching new SKUs, and asking retail partners to order more inventory so we can accelerate sales.
Tanner Stewart Says: The outpouring of encouragement from peers across the sector—like Angelina Blessed, Joe, Jonathan Wilson, and the team at LunaRise—has been overwhelming. When times are tough, the genuine community in Canadian cannabis shows up for each other.
Tom Ritchie Says: In dried flower or pre-rolls, if a brand disappears, consumers simply substitute another brand. But in wellness, your topicals provide indispensable relief. That creates enduring brand defensibility.
Tanner Stewart Says: That’s why wellness is such a vital, defensible category. It improves quality of life. The federal government could unlock immense economic growth tomorrow without spending a single taxpayer dollar simply by lifting Section 17 marketing restrictions for non-intoxicating topicals and harmonizing cannabis advertising with alcohol regulations.
Tom Ritchie Says: For everyone listening across the industry, what is the best way to support Stewart Farms through this restructuring?
Tanner Stewart Says: The simplest and most direct way to support us is to go out and buy an Arctic Heat stick or run a therapeutic bath with a Stewart Farms bath bomb! If you have family members, parents, or friends dealing with joint pain, introduce them to topicals. It is the perfect, non-intoxicating gateway for canna-curious consumers to experience the therapeutic power of the plant.
Tom Ritchie Says: Topicals change minds and open doors. Tanner, your honesty, tenacity, and dedication to your community are second to none. We are standing right beside you, and we know Stewart Farms will emerge stronger than ever!
Tanner Stewart Says: Thanks so much, Tom. I truly appreciate your support and friendship.
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Co-founder & CEO
Tanner Stewart is the co-founder and CEO of Stewart Farms, a sustainable aquaponic cannabis and wellness company based in New Brunswick.
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Learn More About Partner ↗CEO Tanner Stewart explains that the company filed a Notice of Intent (NOI) to restructure under CCAA to protect its operations and license after the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) took aggressive collection actions, redirecting 35-40% of their monthly revenues to cover excise tax debt.
Tanner Stewart notes that Canadian military veterans are a major consumer base for their therapeutic bath bombs and topical Arctic muscle creams, using them for PTSD relief, skin issues, arthritis, and as alternatives to opioids.
Tanner explains that despite strong revenues ($6 million this fiscal year) and customer demand, banks and traditional investors refuse to fund cannabis companies due to strict regulatory rules, while pharmaceutical alternatives face far fewer advertising restrictions.
