You can forgive people for being skeptical about the lottery process used for cannabis retail permits in Saskatchewan.
The provincial government has announced the lucky applicants who received the retail permits. Of the 51 permits, 17, or one-third, were owned by five companies.
We’re not saying that anything untoward or shady happened during the application process. We’re pretty confident that things were done properly. We’re just saying that conspiracy theorists and critics of the process might be vocal, since there were more than 1,500 applications.
Estevan’s lone cannabis retail permit went to one of those lucky companies. Prairie Sky Cannabis also received the green light to sell marijuana in Battleford, Martensville and Moosomin.
They’ll have a year to open their business once cannabis becomes legal, but company owner David Thomas hopes to be open once legalization occurs.
Estevan isn’t alone, either, when it comes to a permit going to an out-of-town company. A look through the list of companies to obtain permits shows a lot of businesses from outside of the community, and quite a few from out of the province.
The number of out-of-province permits might be of concern to some. But the provincial government can’t limit the bidding on cannabis outlets to businesses within the province, nor can it give preferential treatment to those in the province in the lottery process.
It could also be argued that this is an example of why Estevan city council and the local police board should have sought the two permits allocated to the city, instead of just one. After all, there were qualified local companies bidding on the one permit. If a second permit would have been available, then it would have increased the odds of a local business being able to sell cannabis in the city.
But at the same time, there’s no guarantee that a local company would have received the permit if a second one was available.
It would have been nice to see a local company awarded the right to sell marijuana in Estevan, but if Prairie Sky Cannabis proves to be a solid company with good service, people will quickly forgive for being based outside of the city.
The legalization of marijuana has not been an easy process for the federal, provincial or local governments. It’s not going to happen by the original target date of July 1. There have been a lot of unanswered questions for municipalities, and they have been forced to play the waiting game for their bylaws.
For the initial permits, the lottery system made sense, but hopefully it can eventually be abandoned. If a local company wants to sell cannabis, and if they can pass the regulations set forth by the Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority, then they should get that opportunity. The sale of marijuana should mirror, in a lot of ways, the sale of tobacco and alcohol.
We don’t have a lottery to determine off-sale liquor stores in a community. Obviously the sale of liquor is at a more advanced stage than that of cannabis, but eventually cannabis sales will be established enough to avoid a lottery.
It just would have been nice to see the permits more spread out, with a few more retailers (particularly local retailers) getting in on the action.
