Municipalities weigh pros and cons of taking the high road

Thestar.com
August 14, 2018
Mitch Potter

From the tiniest town councils to the leafiest suburban chambers, Ontario’s 444 municipalities are feeling a regulatory hangover as they grapple with how to navigate Premier Doug Ford’s new plan to hand storefront cannabis sales to the private sector.

For at least one town -- Richmond Hill -- the answer to the culture shock is a simple thanks-but-no-thanks, regardless of who’s selling. Richmond Hill Mayor Dave Barrow renewed his opposition to a bricks-and-mortar cannabis shop in a statement Tuesday, saying, “I expect the option to opt out will be the choice we make when the province provides the ability to do so.”

That refrain is already echoing through local government chambers elsewhere in Canada. In Saskatchewan, for example, five of the province’s 36 municipalities have flat-out declined to host cannabis retail outlets, effectively self-designating as “dry towns,” to borrow a phrase from alcohol prohibition a century ago.

How many Ontario communities will opt-out is as yet unknown, though many of the emerging cannabis industry’s private retailers anticipate the prospect of employment ultimately will win the debate in job-starved parts of the province.

Yet apart from knowing Ontario’s new Conservative government is upending its Liberal predecessor’s plan for a gradual rollout of publicly-own stores -- and apart from knowing the switch to private retail comes with a new launch date of April 1 -- many municipal officials have a raft of questions about their role in permitting and regulating the retail weed landscape.

Most are hoping provincial officials will be ready with answers starting this weekend, when hundreds of local politicos converge on Ottawa for the Association of Municipalities of Ontario conference. Next Wednesday the conference will feature a session titled “Cannabis and Communities -- The Here And Now,” where the province is expected to add detail to its regulatory plans covering issues ranging from policing and retail distribution to court implications and bylaw enforcement.

At least one of those in attendance -- Owen Sound Councillor Richard Thomas -- is coming to the conference with a sense that as unlikely as it seems, the lurch to legal marijuana amounts to history repeating itself.

The former radio broadcaster and local historian is an authority on Owen Sound’s status as the country’s longest holdout against the sale of liquor, having traced the story of the town’s 66 years of alcohol prohibition in his book, Saints & Sinners: The Story Of Owen Sound, Canada’s Last Dry City.
“Prohibition lasted in Owen Sound until 1972 and it was the wettest dry town around,” Thomas told the Star. “Alcohol was driven underground and it made criminals of otherwise law-abiding citizens. Mark Twain said it best when he observed that prohibition just makes it more attractive. That’s what happened here -- except it was neighbour against neighbour and even some families were driven apart, half of them teetotallers and half of them wanting a drink.

“Cannabis is a bit different but not that much. At the end of the day any community that tries to extend the prohibition is really going to achieve nothing at all. It was an epic failure for Owen Sound and I’d hate to think we’d go down the same route again.”

The caveat to the Ford government’s push to privatize is that Ontario will maintain a government monopoly on online sales, with home delivery via Canada Post expected to penetrate even those communities that opt-out. Though Amazon-style home delivery seems entirely new -- and a likely deal-breaker to any local government intent upon closing itself off to cannabis sales -- even this is but a repeat of history, said Thomas.

“In the early days of 20th century alcohol prohibition there was a mail-order liquor market, with Ontario buyers turning to provinces where alcohol was still legal,” he said. “A doctor would write a prescription for a pint of alcohol a week because you were suffering from ‘the vapours’ or some such ailment and you’d place your order, very much like marijuana now.”

Some smaller Ontario municipalities are looking at the potential of not just retail outlets but also licensed cannabis production facilities simply for the jobs involved.

“But we are in an election year and any municipality that comes out as yea or nay stands to risk the wrath of a divided public,” said Algonquin Highlands Mayor Carol Moffatt.

Moffatt said her corner of cottage country southwest of Algonquin Park, like so many others, is looking to the province for a flurry of answers -- among them, when and how much will municipalities receive from a promised $40 million fund to help local governments adapt and offset the costs of legal cannabis.

“I’m going to the AMO conference with an open mind and a large number of questions. April sounds like a long way off compared to October, but when it comes to regulatory matters like zoning changes and policing, we need quite a bit of clarity on how it’s all going to happen.”

AMO Executive Director Pat Vanini told the Star that with so much focus on Ontario’s launch of bricks-and-mortar private stores in April, the more urgent issue involves getting local government the answers they need to cope with Oct. 17, when legal online sales begin.

“I hope the province will start to share what kind of checks and balances come with online sales,” said Vanini. “We can easily envision an immediate impact and the cost will fall on local government. There will inevitably be complaints about the pungent odour coming from the neighbour’s garden -- and if the call goes to the police instead of bylaw enforcement that’s an expensive call that the municipality has to pay for.

“At least now we know what the real plan is. We know what the rock garden looks like. But now there’s a lot of rocks that we have to put in place.”