Vancouver aims to reduce cannabis retail fees

Vancouver cannabis dealers may no longer have to pay the highest royalties in the country. People in the industry say that lowering the disproportionate, outdated payment will allow them to create more jobs - which will lead to a more resilient local industry. This week the city council is debating a motion that could cut the annual fee by $ 34,000. If the application is accepted on February 18, an updated fee would likely not go into effect until January 2022. Councilor Rebecca Bligh tabled the motion Tuesday asking city officials to review the fee. If employees are unable to justify the amount, the cost will likely go down. The city council heard a few speakers late Wednesday evening, all of whom strongly supported the motion. The meeting ended before all speakers could be heard and will resume at 3 p.m. on February 18. After hearing all speakers, the city council will vote on the motion. Retail license fees are levied annually by the city to recoup the cost of regulating and overseeing a business. But weed shops seem to be paying a disproportionate chunk of cash for their retail licenses. A single weed store pays an annual retail license fee of $ 33,958, while the entire Pacific National Exhibition pays $ 18,856. A single liquor store pays $ 492. Depending on hours of operation and the number of seats, a restaurant or venue can pay anywhere from $ 155 to $ 23,525. Jaclynn Pehota, executive director of the Association of Canadian Cannabis Retailers, spoke out in favor of a revision of the fee on Wednesday evening. "The business licensing fee needs to be reduced. It is not paid for anything sensible, for anything functional, for anything that actually serves the people of Vancouver," Pehota said in a telephone interview. The fee is a carryover from Vancouver's 2015 Medical Marijuana-Related Uses bylaw, which allows for weed regulation before legalization, Pehota says. That meant Vancouver had to shoulder all of the regulatory-related costs. After legalization, the province handled most of the regulation and licensing, but the fee remained the same. Because of this, Pehota says she is confident that a review of the fee will result in its reduction. In a June 2020 memorandum, city officials said compliance and enforcement account for 62 percent of Vancouver's weed-related spending, down to 54 percent in 2020. The city is responsible for enforcing zoning and licensing laws, the document says, while the province's Community Safety Unit oversees unregulated sales. "Since the province is not yet giving the municipalities a fair share of the cannabis excise tax revenue, city staff must rely on the cannabis retail license fee as the sole source of income to cover some of the cost of legalization." , wrote Jessie Adcock, general manager for development, buildings and licensing, in the memorandum. But that's not the way the cost-breaking royalties are supposed to work, says Pehota, adding that the companies on the Granville Street strip aren't paying for the cost of monitoring the illegal nightclubs that have popped up in penthouses.