StatCan to get pot sales data in push to modernize the agency

OTTAWA — About two-thirds of casual cannabis users say they didn’t spend anything on the drug in the past three months, Statistics Canada reported Thursday in a finding chalked up to a sharing culture among marijuana users.

The latest round of data from the agency’s cannabis survey shows more than 650,000, or 14 per cent, of users spent between $251 and $500 in the last three months on cannabis while three per cent spent more than $1,000.

The numbers paint the most detailed picture to date about Canadians spending habits on a drug that will be legalized in less than a week on Oct. 17, as the agency and others try to get a handle on the market and what it means for policy-makers, companies and consumers.

Statistics Canada officials say they plan to pull point-of-sale information from legalized cannabis purchases to figure out how much people spend and its impact on the economy. That will involve extending the use of scanner information to better measure consumer spending.

As part of the agency’s modernization efforts, it is experimenting with a number of new ways to get information from Canadians without having to call them up at home, among other traditional collection methods.

Officials said Thursday that they are running a pilot project at borders to ping travellers’ mobile devices to get more details about tourism. The national statistics office can compel any private company in the country to hand over data and plans to test the reach of its legislative authority by turning first to online platforms like Airbnb and Uber.