The county and its municipalities are not getting cannabis retailers regardless of opting in.
Although Haliburton County and its four lower-tier municipalities all opted-in to allow cannabis retailers to set up shop here, it looks as though they are ineligible for the license lottery happening Friday, with the winners being announced within 24 hours.
The Alcohol and Gaming Commision of Ontario has unveiled the rules for the licence lottery. In the rules, it is stated that applicants submitting their expression of interest to enter the lottery have to be in a municipality with a population of 50,000 people or more. Charlsey White, the Director of Planning for the county, tells My Haliburton Now.com the county and by proxy, the other municipalities do not meet the qualifications to enter the lottery.
White says the government detailed in the rules that only five of the 25 licenses were going to be given to municipalities in “Eastern Ontario” which includes Haliburton, Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry, Prescott and Russell, Ottawa, Leeds and Grenville, Lanark, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington, Hastings, Prince Edward, Northumberland, Peterborough, Kawartha Lakes, Simcoe, Muskoka, and Renfrew.
White explains that the county is hoping the AGCO will spread out the licences to smaller communities in the future. White goes on to say “unfortunately we are not above that 50,000 threshold.”
“Up until they changed the rules… we were under the proverbial gun lets say,” says White who continues, “the province said, you need to decide by January 22nd and then they changed the rules and then it didn’t really matter.”
This announcement comes less than a month after the four municipalities voted to allow cannabis sales in the area, a decision that was met with some contention in Minden Hills and Dysart et al. Councillors John Smith, Walt McKechnie, and Nesbitt all voiced concerns over allowing pot shops in their respective municipalities.
