Province on track to have eight cannabis stores open
With the approval of two more government cannabis stores in Kamloops this week, the city is on track to be home to five stores, meaning B.C. has at least eight stores in total now operating or in the final stages of licensing.
Kamloops city council gave the government stores unanimous approval Tuesday, after the city had already become the first in the province to have a B.C. Cannabis Store, which opened with legalized recreational cannabis on Oct. 17. Council has also approved two applications for private stores.
A private store in Kimberley — Tamarack Cannabis Boutique — received its provincial licence Nov. 1, after operating for several years as a medical dispensary with support from its local council.
According to an update to the B.C. government’s online application portal Monday, two more private-store applications have been conditionally approved, but the Ministry of Attorney General won’t reveal the locations of the applications until their licences have been issued.
Dave Jones, business licence inspector for the City of Kamloops, confirmed that neither of those applications are for the two private stores approved by the city. He expects at least one of the Kamloops private stores to be open before the year ends.
The B.C. Liquor Distribution Branch doesn’t share information about where it has applied to open stores, but in a statement late last month said it had submitted applications “to a number of municipalities” and was focusing on opening stores in the Lower Mainland and on Vancouver Island.
Deepak Anand, vice-president of business development and government relations at Cannabis Compliance Inc., which helps people through the application process, said Vancouver alone stands out as the municipality best positioned to open provincially-licensed stores next.
“The City of Vancouver seems to be on the ball and know what they’re doing, given that they’ve regulated it before and handled it, albeit, with a different process,” he said. “They’re familiar, somewhat, with it, compared to nearby municipalities that have never had cannabis stores before.”
Meantime, a lack of cannabis supply has prompted Alberta Gaming Liquor and Cannabis to deny new applications and withhold retail licences for pot shops in that province.
“AGLC ordered enough product to support up to 250 retail stores in the first six months of legalization; however, as of Nov. 17 we have only received approximately 20 per cent of what we had ordered,” Alain Maisonneuve, the agency’s president and CEO, said in a statement.
“While some licensed producers have fulfilled their commitments, not all have. We continue to work with them to fill stock. Unfortunately, regardless of our efforts, we are seeing the supply of most products run out.”
AGLC said it had taken steps to secure more product as looming shortages became apparent, contacting all producers with federal licences to sell cannabis, but were unsuccessful.