Communities that didn't put cannabis question to voters are open for business, sort of

Manitoba municipalities that haven't held a plebiscite will effectively be open to cannabis business on Oct. 17. 

That includes at least two municipalities — Hanover and Minto-Odanah — where councils voted against permitting retail sales but must, perhaps begrudgingly, allow pot shops because they are not holding referendums like eight other communities in Manitoba.

But leaders in the two communities don't think a retailer would even bother.

"If we take the provincial guidelines, your setbacks from schools and parks, all that kind of stuff, there's one community large enough that in one corner you can shoehorn in a store," rural municipality of Hanover Reeve Stan Toews said, referring to the northwest corner of Grunthal, southeast of Winnipeg, as the only location that's just right.

After they realized their vote prohibiting pot was meaningless, Hanover council simply didn't have the appetite for a referendum, Toews said.

The only way to prohibit the sale of recreational pot in Manitoba, as they discovered, is with a plebiscite. Eight communities will ask residents to have a say on Oct. 24, when voters were already scheduled to go to the polls for municipal elections: Winkler, Steinbach, Lac du Bonnet, Snow Lake and the municipalities of Stanley, Stuartburn, Riding Mountain West and Wallace-Woodworth.

Limits on store locations

For the rest, it won't exactly be a free-for-all once recreational cannabis is legalized, said Kristianne Dechant, manager of communications and research at the Liquor, Gaming and Cannabis Authority of Manitoba.

"Without a plebiscite, you're effectively saying that retail cannabis stores could open within the municipality, but not necessarily everywhere and anywhere," she said. "The municipality still has bylaw and zoning processes, and so they are still able to limit them in certain areas and certain zones."

Dechant said the LGCA will respect the results of any referendum. 

James Andersen, reeve of the RM of Minto-Odanah, said councillors didn't think there was any point in changing their position or holding a plebiscite, especially because Minnedosa, a town of 2,500 people that has its own bylaws, is in the middle of the RM. 

"No one's going to be coming way out to a rural area to buy cannabis," he said, "so we just left it alone."

The need for a referendum is part of the province's retail cannabis bill, which passed last summer.

Eight municipalities chose to hold pot plebiscites at the same time as voters elect councillors, for many a matter of convenience and cost savings, given that people are voting anyway. Municipalities can still pose a pot plebiscite any time before 2022, the law says, but after that, the referendum question can only be raised during municipal elections.

So far, there are no referendums scheduled after election day. 

Winkler Mayor Martin Harder is predicting a tight vote, separated by no more than 10 percentage points, in his southern Manitoba city of 14,000 people.

"The choice of the people is what we're willing to live with."

Harder said Winkler council decided to hold a referendum before he got an expected petition from a ratepayer.

"Why would we force somebody to spend a month getting signatures? And, for that matter, we were thinking we had better things to do than just simply debating the plebiscite or debating the retail cannabis location."

Winkler isn't the same place it once was, Harder said. Thousands of new arrivals, many immigrants, have effectively doubled the population in two decades and transformed the makeup of the traditionally conservative community.

Prohibition history

The city also banned liquor sales for decades, but no longer.

"There wasn't a licensed restaurant around, and now there's almost every other [restaurant], including the bowling alley, that's licensed, including some city facilities like the concert hall," Harder said. "With cannabis, who knows?"

Harder has spoken with two retailers who want to set up shop first if the community approves pot shops. 

Any bans would not apply to people's ability to buy recreational cannabis from other communities or online, nor consuming it in their homes or backyards.

Outside the city, the RM of Stanley is also planning a referendum.

More opinions sought

"The only reason we did it is we're sitting there, we're seven guys, and it was felt around the council table that maybe we should get a bigger audience for this," said Reeve Morris Olafson, who acknowledged it was unlikely a pot shop would establish roots in his municipality.

That sentiment is felt in other communities holding referendums, including Riding Mountain West.

"Council really felt that because we really have no big urban centres in our municipality, that the sale of it was really not going to matter," said Reeve Barry Chescu of the western Manitoba municipality, which has only one store of any kind, in Inglis.

"If cannabis sales were going to happen, it's going to happen in Russell," he said, referring to the biggest community around.

Kim Stephen, mayor of Snow Lake, is expecting a "yes" vote in her northern Manitoba town of 950 people.

She's not sure if it even matters.

"Our Main Street is 400 feet long and our school's at one end of it, and our businesses run up along it," she said. "If they say it has to be sold in a business area, do we qualify?"

Municipalities have the authority to determine where retail cannabis stores are established, and their distance from facilities such as schools and community centres. 

Other communities that either rejected the idea of retail cannabis or refrained from answering when the Association of Manitoba Municipalities polled its membership last year have since decided to allow pot shops, including Beausejour, Virden and the municipality of Rhineland, the latter bordering the municipality of Stanley where a referendum will be held.

The provincial government previously said they want 90 per cent of Manitobans to have access to legal cannabis within a 30-minute drive or less. The province hopes to achieve that goal within two years of legalization.