The Financial Post reports in its Wednesday edition that a surge in the number of pot producers coupled with a large number of site-amendment requests in preparation for Cannabis 2.0 have left Health Canada "overwhelmed" over the past year, and increasingly dependent upon information supplied "in good faith" by producers, says an unnamed former Health Canada inspector. The Post's Vanmala Subramaniam writes that the former inspector, who now works in the private sector, says: "The department has been overwhelmed for quite some time, but it is not necessarily their fault. They are getting so many applications for amendments daily, that they are not able to conduct spot inspections on LPS as much as often as they used to, or the inspections are done very quickly." Questions over the federal regulator's role in monitoring cannabis producers come as licensed producer Hexo disclosed last week that pot had been cultivated in an unlicensed area of its Niagara, Ont., site, operated at the time by Newstrike Brands. According to Hexo, Health Canada had conducted an inspection of the Niagara facility including the unlicensed area in February, 2019, and had made "no observations" about unlicensed cultivation in that space.