Supply woes plague Canada’s new marijuana marketplace
TORONTO — The name of the store is High North, but it might as well be named High and Dry because for all but about four hours of the first two weeks since marijuana was legalized in Canada, there was no pot to sell.
Trevor Tobin, one of the owners of the Labrador City shop in Newfoundland and Labrador, said they went 10 straight days without supply.
“The producers keep saying there will be some bumps in the road, but right now it’s not a bump in the road. It’s a big pothole,” he said.
His mother, Brenda Tobin, is a part owner and said that after she tells customers there’s nothing to buy, “a lot of them are saying, ‘Oh, well. I guess it’s back to the black market.’ ”
Legalization arrived Oct. 17, and Canada became the world’s largest national marketplace for recreational marijuana. But the first weeks have felt more like a soft opening with few retail outlets operating and rampant supply shortages.
It’s not because Canada can’t produce enough cannabis products — licensing those producers has been slow, and the federal government is taking steps to speed up the process.
The provinces are handling the sales and most of the regulations.
Quebec closed its government-run shops for three days this week because of a lack of pot and will continue to keep them shut Mondays through Wednesdays until availability is stabilized. Manitoba Liquor & Lotteries said it expects product shortages in both brick-and-mortar and online stores could last six months.
Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, won’t have any stores open until April at the earliest as the new conservative government writes regulations. Meantime, police have shut down at least 11 illegal dispensaries in the province.
Ontario residents who want to make legal purchases are flooding the online government store. At least 150,000 orders arrived in the first week, more than all other provinces combined, and the store can’t keep up.
Contributing to the delivery problem is a strike by workers at Canada Post, the nation’s postal service that handles online marijuana orders that are legal countrywide.
British Columbia, the third-largest province by population and a place that historically supplied much of the country’s illegal weed, has just one retail store.
Across Canada, people are returning to the black market.
Corey Stone, a 32-yearold bar-restaurant manager in Montreal, and his friend were first in line at Quebec’s government-run cannabis store Oct. 17, but he hasn’t been back because of the supply problems and has been getting his pot illegally.
In the capital of Ottawa, Ontario Capital Buds is one of the last holdouts after most of the illegal dispensaries in town closed Oct. 16 so they could file for legal operating licenses. Business is booming — at 11 a.m. on a recent chilly, gray day, the waiting room was packed.
Blake Murchison, 62, was among the customers. He didn’t try visiting the government’s online store.
“Why? There’s a postal strike!” he laughed. “I’m not patient. It’s a matter of convenience, really. Or inconvenience.”
Private and government retailers are dependent on licensed producers to send them products. But of 132 marijuana producers approved by Health Canada, only 78 have sales licenses.
FSD Pharma Inc., an Ontario-based producer, received a cultivation license a year ago but still is waiting for a sales license.
“There is a lot of red tape,” said Dr. Raza Bokhari, co-chairman and interim chief executive of FSD Pharma.
Many that did get sales licenses are smaller operations, said Cam Battley, a top executive at Aurora Cannabis Inc., one of Canada’s large-scale producers.
Health Canada has hired 300 additional staff to evaluate applications for producers. Thierry Belair, a spokesman for Canada’s health minister, said the government has streamlined the licensing process and production is increasing.