New government, new hope among Cannabis retailers
Manitoba Cannabis Retailers Seek Legislative Changes in 2024, Including Window Covering Requirements and Home Growing Ban.
Manitoba's cannabis retailers hope the new year will bring meaningful conversations with provincial political leaders and “relatively quick changes” in legislation to support the fledgling industry.
A meeting between Cannabis Business Association of Manitoba members and government officials is to be scheduled soon — a signal the local industry will be heard on its quest to make things easier for retailers and support at-home pot growers, association founder Steven Stairs said.
“Unfortunately, the input was never really heard or understood under the PC government and that was probably wilfully,” he said of the previous Progressive Conservative government, which held power from 2016-23.
Kevin Campbell restocks the shelves at the Leila location of The Joint Cannabis. Cannabis Business Association of Manitoba members and government officials are scheduled to meet soon in a quest to make things easier for retailers.
The NDP secured a majority government in the Oct. 3 election.
The advocacy group wants the province to get rid of its requirement for cannabis stores to cover their shop windows, allow retailers to sell cannabis seeds, lift the provincial ban on growing cannabis plants at home, and reduce or restructure the PST on cannabis products.
Upon the request of the office of Sport, Culture, Heritage and Tourism Minister Glen Simard (who is also responsible for Manitoba Liquor & Lotteries Corp.), the association provided the new NDP government with a list of its top priorities earlier this month.
A spokesperson for Simard said the first planned meeting had to be rescheduled, but is expected to go ahead at a later date.
Asked why it’s important for the minister to meet with the cannabis industry at this time, Simard’s office provided a statement: “Our government is a listening government that feels it’s important to have conversations with every sector of industry in the province… While our priorities around (MLL) are reflected in the mandate letter released (Tuesday), we think it’s important to engage with and understand all aspects of the corporation’s activities.”
There is no mention of cannabis in Simard’s Dec. 12 mandate letter to new MLL board chairman Jeff Traeger.
The key advocacy issues from cannabis businesses illustrate an industry that is still struggling since national legalization and regulation in October 2018. “This industry can’t afford even a small decrease in sales,” Stairs said.
Retailers operate with low margins, largely because of high taxation and production costs amid an oversaturated market of cannabis outlets. Consumption, meanwhile, hasn’t gone up much — maybe two per cent, Stairs said — in the years since legalization.
“We’re not at a point where the industry has stabilized.”
The road to getting there could involve pruning low-hanging fruits in the form of provincial legislation tweaks, including the removal of the ban on home growing — something Stairs described as an “easy win” not expected to hurt cannabis retailers because “it’s not as easy as it looks.”
The province could also expand allowable public consumption of cannabis, such as allowing the use of medical marijuana in provincial parks and temporarily designating legal cannabis consumption areas (as it does with beer gardens), Stairs said.
Different retailers will have different priorities, but a concern for many is that Manitoba differs from other provinces in how it collects excise tax on cannabis products, said Ariel Glinter, head of business development and regulatory compliance for Joint Cannabis Shop, which has 10 locations in Winnipeg.
“There are some areas where we could work toward some relatively quick changes that would be beneficial to the industry as a whole. That being said, in our view, it’s very important for the government to understand that this is a new industry, it is still volatile, and it is still changing very rapidly,” Glinter said.
Meanwhile, there is still a black market for cannabis in Manitoba and that won’t change without increased enforcement and lower taxes for regulated retailers, Stairs said.
“It’s not thriving like it used to be, but the black market supply of cannabis is still very prevalent.”
