Hanover to ignore cannabis plebiscite rule

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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/10/2018 (1987 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Hanover reeve Stan Toews says council has no plans to hold a plebiscite to decide whether or not to allow retail sales of cannabis in the municipality, but he said the current council also has no plans to allow cannabis retailers to set up shop in Hanover anytime soon.

Toews said council has no interest in holding a plebiscite on cannabis sales in the community which is something the province has said is required before municipalities can ban retail pot sales.

Toews said council doesn’t want to go the route of a plebiscite because he said what plebiscites often do is “divide communities.”

“What often happens is half say yah and half so nah, so you still have half the people upset no matter what the outcome is,” Toews said.

Toews said the current council instead plans to use existing zoning regulations that would stop anyone wanting to set up a cannabis business from getting to the point where they can set up shop.

Toews said for a retailer to set up a cannabis business in Hanover they would have to get approval for both a rezoning and a conditional use, and he is sure the current council would say no to both requests should they come forward.

“So there are two ways to knock it out,” Toews said.

Toews admits that through the plan cannabis retailers could be allowed to set up in Hanover in the future should future councils allow for it.

“Down the road a future council could say ‘we want cannabis shops’ and then they could make it possible through the zoning, so the council of the day could do this differently,” he said.

“This council would say no, and future councils might say yes.”

Liquor, Gaming and Cannabis Authority of Manitoba (LGCA) CAO Elizabeth Stephenson said the LGCA will respect Hanover’s decision not to hold a plebiscite, but also warned they could open themselves up to legal action if they say no to retail cannabis without one.

“The beauty of the plebiscite is that it creates an obligation on the LGCA to not issue a licence if the folks in the municipality decide that they don’t want to have a cannabis store in their community,” Stephenson said.

“The plebiscite is binding.”

Stephenson added that without a plebiscite LGCA would still have to work through any “legal challenges” that may arise if Hanover rejects retail cannabis applications.

“If there were a legal challenge then that is something we would have to work through at that time,” Stephenson said.

Recreational cannabis use was legalized across Canada as of Wednesday.

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