Looking for a cannabis store near you? These cities could become the GTA’s ‘dry’ zones

Thestar.com
Joseph Hill
Nov. 30, 2018

Aside from cannabis stores being at least 150 metres away from any school, it’s hard to to predict where they will pop up when they begin to open across Ontario come April.

But it’s a good bet they might be chock-a-block along the south side of Steeles Ave. at the top of Toronto if some prominent politicians in Richmond Hill and Markham to the immediate north get their way.

Markham Mayor Frank Scarpitti, just elected to his fourth term, says the previous council opposed physical pot stores, and many of those members were re-elected, so they are likely to vote the same way. He is also opposed.

Those are two of at least five municipalities in the province that may vote to ban the brick-and-mortar pot shops before the Jan. 22 opt-out deadline set by Queen’s Park.

The refusal, which is also being explored in Oakville, King Township and East Gwillimbury, makes little sense to many cannabis industry experts.

“The shops will just open along the borders of those municipalities, I’m 100-per-cent certain,” says Rod Elliot, a senior vice-president with Toronto’s Global Public Affairs consulting group. “And those shops will end up being twice as busy.”

Elliot says “dry communities” in U.S. states that have legalized recreational cannabis have seen stores load up along their boundaries.

“Those stores are some of the most profitable in the United States,” he says.

Lawyer Matt Maurer, a cannabis industry expert with Toronto’s Torkin Manes LLP, also says border stores abutting opt-out municipalities will almost certainly pop up.

“If Oakville opts out … does that mean everyone is going to order online?” Maurer says. “Probably not. They’re going to go to Mississauga or Burlington.

“And to drive from the border of Mississauga to the border of Burlington it takes about six minutes to blast through Oakville on the QEW, so why not set up a shop on Winston Churchill Blvd. (in the east) and Burloak Dr.” to the west, he says.

A municipality wishing to opt out of hosting stores must get a majority of their municipal councillors to sign off on the move, which is a one-time-only offer from the province.

Opted-out towns and cities can opt back in with a similar council vote in the future, but those welcoming the stores initially can’t kick them out later.

Elliot says communities considering the ban are doing so out of misguided fears -- especially about proximity to schools.

“This is more of a moral panic than an evidence-based approach,” Elliot says. “Optically they don’t like the idea that stores could be near schools.”

But provincial rules set in place for shop owners -- and the legal and financial penalties they face -- make sales to people under 19 highly unlikely, Elliot says.

“The evidence would show that a customer ... is going to be required to show government-issued ID when they enter the store and government-issued ID at the point of sale,” he says.

Elliot says provincial regulations would strip licences, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, from any retailer selling to minors while federal laws could impose prison terms of up to 14 years on offending retailers.

Markham Mayor Frank Scarpitti, just elected to his fourth term, says the opting out has received broad support in his community.

His previous council voted for a resolution saying Markham didn’t want the stores when the then-Liberal government at Queen’s Park approached the city. He says enough of that council survived the recent municipal election to vote them down again.

“I’m going to be voting the same way, that we opt out, and I think the majority of council will as well,” Scarpitti says, admitting that some in the city are angry with the decisions.

He says the old council -- which also held a mid-election vote banning tobacco and cannabis smoking in public -- will likely deal with the issue in late December or early January.

And Scarpitti says his constituents were not as concerned with border stores and much as they were with how the pot shops might mar the face of Markham itself.

“We certainly heard a lot of concerns ... are they going to be next to my grocery store, what kind of signage are they going to have, what kind of marketing are they going to be permitted,” he says.

“If they are on the other side of Steeles I guess they’re on the other side of Steeles.”

In Richmond Hill, where city council said last December that it would not be a willing store host, the issue will be revisited by the new council Dec. 11. The mayor and councillors were all re-elected in October. City spokesperson Meeta Gandhi would not predict the outcome of a vote.

King Township Mayor Steve Pellegrini said his council voted unanimously in October to opt out of hosting a store. And with five of the seven previous councillors returning, a no vote would seem assured if the issue is revisited.

Both Elliot and Maurer say municipalities are properly concerned about the lack of discretion the province has handed them over store placement.

“In the same way they don’t like to see a cluster of bars opening up in the same area or a cluster of payday lenders, I think that’s where the local licensing officials would like to have a little bit more control over the process,” Elliot says.

Maurer says provincial laws forbid municipalities from treating cannabis stores differently from regular retail properties, including in their choice of location.

“Municipalities are a little bit handcuffed on where they can put these stores.”

This lack of autonomy has certainly bothered Oakville Mayor Rob Burton, who is stridently objecting to stores in his city.

“What you’re seeing in the province’s approach to cannabis is a highly centralized, identical approach for everybody,” he says.

Burton would not try to predict how council would vote when it addresses the issue in mid-January after public consultations. He said any tax revenues the stores would generate would prove a “piffle, pennies, nothing” for his city.

In Mississauga, Councillor Pat Saito told the CBC this week that her city should not allow the stores. But Mayor Bonnie Crombie says council will only decide after extensive consultation with residents, through surveys and public meetings. In one such meeting held this week, however, Crombie said most of the about 100 people attending expressed approval for letting the stores in.

A staff report will come before council Dec. 12 with a vote likely before the Jan. 22 deadline.