More information still needed to determine local impact of pot legalization, mayor says

StratfordBeaconHearal.com
Nov. 10, 2017
Jonathan Juha

Stratford Mayor Dan Mathieson said it was to be expected that the city wasn’t included in the first wave of municipalities chosen by the province to have government-run marijuana outlets by next year.

But more information will be needed from upper levels of governments, he added, to determine the real impacts the rollout of the proposed legislation will have in the city and whether not being included on the first wave was a positive or negative development.

The province announced last week the first cities where the province will open stand-alone LCBO stores that will be authorized to sell pot.

Out of the 14 cities chosen, only three are located in southwestern Ontario – London, Windsor and Kitchener.

The other cities are Barrie, Brampton, Hamilton, Kingston, Mississauga, Ottawa, Sault Ste. Marie, Sudbury, Thunder Bay, Toronto and Vaughan.

“It’s not surprising we weren’t included in the first round,” Mathieson said. “I knew based on census metropolitan areas, places like London to the south and Kitchener to the east probably had a better probability of occurring, and I think that is what we saw happening.”

While not included in the first round, Mathieson said Stratford, as many municipalities around the country, will eventually have to face the effects of legalizing recreational marijuana and having legal outlets selling pot in the city.

“I would say that it is inevitable. If that’s the province’s strategy, inevitably it will come to this community, and we need to get prepared for that,” he said of the province’s plan, which anticipates the number of legal dispensaries in the province will be 150 by 2020.

How the city prepares, however, will depend on how the province and the federal government decide to move forward.

And that won’t be possible until more details are made available, Mathieson said.

“I do know there will be social costs and there will be police costs. I don’t know what the projections are because we have not been given them by the province on what the sharing revenue is to municipalities,” he said.

“I know the federal government has clearly indicated what they are planning to do on revenue sharing with the province, but at some point, the services and effects will be felt at the local level, and we need to know where we are at.

“But it’s early days for us to make those determinations, and we are waiting for more information.”

From a policing standpoint, new acting police Chief Gerry Foster said the Stratford Police Service is ready to deal with the changes.

“As the legislation appears to be now it really is relatively straightforward and not dissimilar to the Liquor License Act . . . so I think we’ll parallel that, and we might need to address some training issues, but I think we are in a good shape,” he said.

For him, the most immediate impact could relate to the number of impaired driving cases in the city.

“There’s probably a good chance that impaired driving by this drug will increase,” he said.

Yet Foster said he’s confident about the police’s level of experience and the types of resources available.

“We have a good number of our officers trained as ‘standardized field sobriety test’ officers who are able to conduct testing in the field to assess impairment by drug,” he said. “We have also invested in three drug recognition experts for the officers on the road . . . and they are capable to evaluate people and determine what kind of drug, if any, the person might be impaired by.

“I think we are pretty well positioned.”