Cannabis CTLS Monthly Reporting: A 2026 Canadian LP Guide

The reporting obligation attaches to the licence, not to activity. Holders of micro-cultivation, nursery and standard cultivation licences report every month. So do micro-processing, standard processing, and sale for medical purposes licence holders. A new site with no harvest and no sales still files, using the attestation boxes in the CTLS to confirm zero inventory and zero sales.

The deadline is fixed: no later than the 15th day of each month, covering the month before. Health Canada names the Responsible Person as accountable for both the timeliness of the submission and the accuracy of the data, under section 37 of the Cannabis Regulations. You can add up to ten reporters to the file, but each of them needs a security clearance, which takes longer to arrange than most producers plan for.

What happens when the filing slips is not subtle. Health Canada names three triggers for a referral to its Compliance and Enforcement Directorate: failing to comply with reporting obligations, being habitually late, and concerns about the validity or accuracy of submitted data. That third trigger carries more weight than the first two. A late report is a scheduling failure, a wrong report is a control failure, and only one of those is easy to explain to a buyer's auditor.

Reporting parties also have to keep a copy of every record, report and electronic file for at least two years from the day the information was provided. Being able to open an old report inside the CTLS does not satisfy that. Keep your own copies.

Under subsection 213(1) of the Cannabis Regulations, a licence holder may export cannabis for medical or scientific purposes only if they also hold an export permit for each shipment. That permit governs the movement, and it sits inside a wider two-permit chain with the destination country. The monthly report governs the arithmetic, and the two work in different units of thought.

For monthly reporting, every export is treated as unpackaged cannabis, no matter how the product physically leaves the site. A pallet of finished, labelled units bound for a German importer is reported in kilograms in the unpackaged section, not in units in the packaged section. Two fields carry it:

• Quantity shipped - exported: the amount of cannabis, in kilograms, sent outside Canada
• Quantity shipped - exported value: the book value in Canadian dollars, net of sales tax

The .csv error Health Canada calls out most often is recording exports under Quantity shipped - domestic instead. The file uploads cleanly. The inventory still balances. Your export volume simply vanishes from the national picture and from your own audit trail, which stays invisible right up until someone reconciles the two.

A worked export example

Health Canada's own scenario shows the sequence plainly. A producer holds an export permit for 20 kg of unpackaged dried cannabis. The shipment that actually leaves on 17 March is 15 kg, valued at $125.60. On 30 March, within 15 days of the shipment, they file the shipment details. Then, on the monthly report due 15 April, the same movement appears as a reduction to unpackaged dried cannabis inventory: 15 kg under Quantity shipped - exported, and $125.60 under Quantity shipped - exported value.

Report what shipped, not what the permit allowed. Permits are ceilings and reports are facts, and a producer who files the permitted figure breaks the inventory chain on the very next line.

Exporters run two clocks at once, and they do not tick together. Section 218 of the Cannabis Regulations requires the holder of an export permit to give the Minister shipment information within 15 days after the date of exportation. That filing carries the licence and permit numbers, plus the THC and CBD percentages by weight of what actually shipped. The monthly cannabis tracking report is separate, aggregate, and always due on the 15th.

Work an example through both clocks. A shipment leaving on 28 March triggers a notification due by 12 April and lands in the monthly report due 15 April. A shipment leaving on 2 March triggers a notification due by 17 March and lands in that same monthly report. The notification clock restarts with every shipment. The monthly clock never moves.

Producers sometimes fold a third stream into this and create confusion. Duty treatment follows its own rules and its own reporting to the Canada Revenue Agency, and how excise works on exported cannabis changes neither of the two filings above.

Section 223 closes the loop: if you send a notice under the Regulations and are not otherwise required to keep a copy, you must retain one for at least two years after the day it was sent. File the shipment notification and the monthly extract in the same folder as the export permit. Auditors ask for all three together.

The CTLS checks your arithmetic before it accepts anything. Opening inventory for a product category cannot differ from the previous month's closing inventory in that same category by more than 5 percent in either direction. Exceed that and the report will not submit. Closing inventory has to equal opening inventory plus additions minus reductions, and it has to equal the next month's opening figure.

That chain is why rounding causes so much grief. Weight values carry up to four decimal places, and a producer who rounds kilograms to two decimals across a dozen categories will eventually generate a variance the system rejects. Fix the precision at source, in the batch records, not at the point of data entry.

Corrections and deactivations

A submitted report cannot be reopened for editing. You request deactivation in the CTLS, Health Canada actions it, and a replacement report is then due within two business days. A second consequence catches producers off guard: the system will not accept the current month until the previous month's report is active again. One deactivation in April can block your May filing.

For a discrepancy spanning more than two months, Health Canada's guidance is to make a single retroactive correction in the current period. Enter it as an addition or reduction in the Other field for the affected product category. Email the department before you submit, not after. Minor corrections can sometimes be made by an officer directly in the system.

Two details that catch Quebec producers

The French CTLS accepts commas only as decimal separators in .csv uploads, so 0,084 will upload and 0.084 will be rejected. The English CTLS takes either. If your finance team works in Excel configured in French, the delimiter behaviour will cost you an afternoon at least once. Since spring 2025, unpackaged seeds are also reported in whole seed counts rather than kilograms, harmonised with what the Canada Revenue Agency already collects.

What importers read into your filings

Buyers never see your CTLS submissions. They see the effects. A supplier whose closing inventory reconciles to batch records can produce a traceability pack in a day. A supplier whose ledger drifts sends a spreadsheet that does not tie out, then spends a week explaining it. The Quantity lost/stolen line is the field that ends conversations fastest, because it is the one entry that speaks directly to site control.

If your CTLS closing inventory does not reconcile to your batch records, don't send a buyer your traceability pack. Fix the ledger first. A qualification file that contradicts itself costs more credibility than a two-week delay ever will.

AlphaLeaf is a Health Canada Licensed Producer of indoor-grown, hand-trimmed cannabis flower based in Montreal, working from refined genetics and ISO/IEC 17025 batch testing. We hold export authorisation under the Cannabis Act, and the inventory records behind our monthly filings are the same records that support the batch documentation our German, Australian and Israeli partners ask for before a first order.

Qualifying a Canadian supplier and want to see how the documentation lines up? Talk to our team. Bring your questions. We will bring the records.

When is the CTLS monthly report due?

Federal cannabis licence holders must submit their cannabis tracking report in the Cannabis Tracking and Licensing System no later than the 15th day of each month, covering the previous month. The deadline does not shift for months with no activity.

Do you have to file a CTLS report if you had no sales or inventory?

Yes. The obligation attaches to holding an active licence, not to activity. The CTLS provides attestation boxes to confirm no sales or no inventory, and a new licence holder files for the first month in which they were licensed.

How is exported cannabis reported in the CTLS?

All exports are reported as unpackaged cannabis, regardless of how the product physically ships. The quantity in kilograms goes in Quantity shipped - exported, and the book value in Canadian dollars net of sales tax goes in Quantity shipped - exported value. Recording an export under Quantity shipped - domestic is the most common filing error.

What is the 5 percent variance rule in CTLS reporting?

The CTLS blocks submission when the opening inventory for a product category differs from the previous month's closing inventory in that category by more than 5 percent in either direction. Weight values accept up to four decimal places, so rounding is the usual cause of a rejected report.

Is the 15-day export notification the same as the monthly report?

No. Section 218 of the Cannabis Regulations requires shipment information to be provided within 15 days after the date of exportation, for each shipment. The monthly cannabis tracking report is a separate aggregate filing due on the 15th of the following month, and it is required whether or not you exported anything.

How long do CTLS records have to be kept?

Reporting parties must retain records, reports, electronic data and related documents for at least two years from the day the information was provided. Being able to view a submitted report inside the CTLS does not replace that requirement.