Pallister unveils public-private plan for pot sales

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This article was published 07/11/2017 (2910 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Premier Brian Pallister will use the public sector to oversee legalized recreational cannabis and the private sector to sell it.

Pallister told a news conference Tuesday afternoon the Manitoba Liquor and Gaming Authority will regulate the purchase, storage, distribution and retail sale of cannabis.

Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries will secure and track the supply of cannabis.

The private sector will sell legal pot in stores that are not to be in proximity to places in which alcohol is sold.

“It allows the public and private sectors to both do what they do best,” Pallister said. 

The deadline to submit proposals is Dec. 22.

“We are committed to a highly-competitive retail market,” Growth, Enterprise and Trade Minister Blaine Pedersen told a news conference.

Retail sales will begin July 2, the day after cannabis is expected to become legal in Canada, Pedersen said.

Pallister said Manitobans’ main priorities are health and safety, and keeping gangs out of the pot business.

Available evidence suggests, however, that gangs actually play a relatively small role in black market cannabis production in Canada. In its submission to the federal task force on cannabis legalization, the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition wrote “the majority of those in the industry tend to be non-violent and have minimal, if any, involvement with other criminal activities.”

A publicly regulated private sales model “is more likely to avoid a black market, as long as the regulations aren’t too restrictive with respect to the offerings that the private sector will put forward,” said Neil Boyd, a professor of criminology at Simon Fraser University and one of the authors of the CDPC submission.

“One of the benefits of the private model is that you’re going to have greater access than you would, for example, in Ontario. And accessibility is a key issue, if you don’t have adequate access the black market is going to continue,” Boyd said Tuesday.

MLL will not be part of the competition for retail, either now or after cannabis is legal, Pallister said. The government wants people to put their offers forward without worrying about competing with the government or its Crowns, he said.

“That would be asking people to put capital at risk,” he said. “We want stores that are able to grow.”

Pharmacies will not have any kind of inside track, Pallister said — he prefers a variety of store owners rather than chains.

“The best model would have access to within a 30-minute drive for 90 per cent of the population,” he said.

Pallister said cabinet has not yet discussed taxes, but he expected cannabis would be subject to provincial sales tax. The government wants to ensure it undercuts black market prices, he noted.

Justice Minister Heather Stefanson and other provincial justice ministers are considering rules around advertising legal pot, the premier said. Manitoba has not yet set an age of majority for purchasing from retail stores.

In question period, NDP Leader Wab Kinew and justice critic Nahanni Fontaine pushed the Tories to specify how the government will recover from the private stores the costs of addiction and mental-health counselling for users. They demanded assurances pot stores would be nowhere near schools and would not be located in residential neighbourhoods, and asked whether consumption in public would be restricted.

Instead of answering, Stefanson repeatedly criticized Fontaine for not supporting the justice minister’s Cannabis Harm Prevention Act when she had the chance.

Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont told reporters medical marijuana should be sold only in pharmacies.

“It’s still a little vague. The basic structure seems OK,” he said. 

Lamont said anyone who makes a financial contribution to the provincial Conservatives should be precluded from owning a retail store, and suggested that whether parents could allow their children to consume pot in their own home should be examined.

Liberal MP Bill Blair, a former Toronto police chief who is helping shepherd along the federal cannabis legislation, said Tuesday Finance Canada is working with Manitoba’s finance ministry to set a price that won’t be undercut by the black market, but not cheap enough to entice young people.

Blair said the price must be designed “to ensure that there are revenues available so that taxpayers are not burdened unnecessarily with the infrastructure and the administration and the enforcement that will need to take place, in order to make the system work.”

Manitoba Government and General Employees Union president Michelle Gawronsky said Tuesday Manitobans want a public system.

“The MGEU has commissioned public polling that shows an overwhelming majority of Manitobans want this controlled substance to be sold in public stores rather than private,” she said.

Manitoba’s announcement was well-received by the private sector.

It’s a ‘great announcement’, said Chief Christian Sinclair of the Opaskwayak Cree Nation, which is an investor in National Access Cannabis, a chain of medical cannabis access clinics with aspirations to sell cannabis on a retail basis after legalization.

“We look forward to the RFP, to submit and become part of this industry as it goes forward, and recognizing the fact that the federal government said that First Nations will play a role in this industry, in whatever fashion that may be,” said Sinclair.

“We think it’s a pretty well thought-out approach, and it’s pretty clear the Manitoba government did their homework on this file,” said Derek Ogden, president of National Access Cannabis, which will apply to be a pot retailer here.

John Arbuthnot, CEO of Manitoba-based licensed marijuana producer Delta 9 Cannabis, said his company will be teaming up with larger player Canopy Growth Corporation to submit a retail sales proposal to the Manitoba government.

– with files from Dylan Robertson

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca

solomon.israel@freepress.mb.ca