Questions remain as July 1 deadline approaches
CALGARY Cities and towns across Alberta are looking for details — and possibly cash — from the provincial government in anticipation of legal recreational marijuana next year.
The newly elected president of the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association, Barry Morishita, said the NDP government has been good at keeping municipalities in the loop as it works through cannabis legalization.
But the Brooks mayor said municipalities are still looking for answers in some areas as the July 1 deadline for legalization moves ever closer.
Money, as usual, is a major issue. “Who’s going to fund the cost of services from the change in legislation?” said Morishita in a recent interview.
“Municipalities for the most part are responsible for policing, they’re responsible for permitting, they’re responsible for monitoring and enforcement. All of those things. And we don’t really understand ... who’s going to do what, who’s going to pay for what? Is there going to be revenue sharing? That’s a big concern for us going forward.”
The federal Liberal government is legalizing recreational cannabis but has left many of the details around implementation to the provinces.
Among the actions taken by the NDP government is new legislation to augment pending federal laws aimed at cracking down on cannabis-impaired drivers.
Premier Rachel Notley said the government expects court and policing costs to go up in response to legal weed, claiming the additional costs — which the government has not provided — will be greater than the additional revenue from marijuana.
She wants the federal government to give all the revenue from its proposed excise tax on cannabis to the provinces, rather than Ottawa’s proposed 50-50 split.
The Notley government’s plan calls for a legal cannabis consumption age of 18 and sales to be handled through private-sector standalone stores, except for online sales, which will be run through government distribution.
Morishita said that besides issues around policing, municipalities are grappling with uncertainty from the province in areas such as the licensing and zoning of marijuana stores.
“We are still waiting for these hard regulations that we can build our bylaws and our work plans and service plans off of them,” he said.
Matt Zabloski, the lead for Calgary’s cannabis legalization project, said among the biggest unknowns for the city are whether it or the province will be responsible for the separation distances between cannabis stores and sensitive areas, such as playgrounds.
He said city officials will meet soon with officials of the provincial cannabis secretariat and is also currently running a survey to get input from Calgary residents on various issues.
Veronica Jubinville, a spokeswoman for the minister of justice and solicitor general, said in an email the province is currently working on regulations and expects to share details when they ’re finalized in the new year.
“We’ve already established in our legislation that there will be setbacks from certain properties for retail stores. For example, the minimum distance they must be from schools, community centres, liquor stores and each other. However, the specific distances will be established through a regulation,” Jubinville said.
The city needs to determine zoning rules for cannabis stores, which will likely receive a specific zoning designation, similar to what exists now for liquor stores, said Zabloski.
It will also have to decide whether it wants to issue its own specific licence for the cannabis operations — as it does for liquor stores — on top of the permit that will be issued by the province.
“What we’ve found is that gives us the ability to regulate in a local context,” said Zabloski.
Fred Pels, chief executive of B.C.based Green Room, which runs dispensaries in Vancouver and Nelson and already has cannabis information centres in Edmonton and Calgary it hopes to soon convert into retail stores, said the city has been as proactive as possible when it comes to the looming changes.
“We don’t have lots of time, but I’m confident in council and their ability to move forward. They were forward-thinking well before any talk of legalization,” said Pels, who wants to open several stores in Calgary by July.