{"id":33776,"date":"2023-11-03T11:26:16","date_gmt":"2023-11-03T15:26:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=33776"},"modified":"2023-11-09T22:12:02","modified_gmt":"2023-11-10T03:12:02","slug":"number-of-cannabis-retail-stores-in-aurora-should-be-capped-councillor-contends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/number-of-cannabis-retail-stores-in-aurora-should-be-capped-councillor-contends\/","title":{"rendered":"Number of cannabis retail stores in Aurora should be capped, Councillor contends"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Retailers looking to open up new cannabis stores in Aurora could see their dreams go up in smoke if Council gets its way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week, Council greenlit a motion from Ward 6 Councillor Harold Kim calling on the Provincial Government and its Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO) to \u201cno longer accept any further cannabis retail applications for the Town of Aurora\u201d and put a cap on how many such stores are allowed in a municipality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Councillor Kim, who opposed Aurora \u201copting in\u201d to retail cannabis sales in January of 2019 said with a geographic area of 7 km by 7 km and a population of 64,000, the 13 existing cannabis stores in Aurora are more than enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI voted against this because I did not feel the need to be the first municipality in the area to approve. Why? My concern was if we were one of the first to allow retail cannabis stores, we would get more than our fair share of cannabis stores and, sure enough, that\u2019s what has transpired,\u201d he said. \u201cOn this current day, Newmarket, Richmond Hill, Vaughan and others have still not approved. Therefore, it is no surprise that cannabis entrepreneurs have flocked to Aurora.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Town of Whitchurch-Stouffville is the only other York Region municipality to similarly opt-in to retail cannabis sales, but this was not mentioned during the debate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSome have suggested to me, \u2018Why don\u2019t you let the free-market system work? If we have too many stores, some will go bankrupt and attrition will happen.\u2019 Yes, I agree. However, in the meantime, we\u2019re not playing in an equitable playing field. Supply and demand is skewed because we are one of the few islands of free enterprise for cannabis. Limited geography is delaying the natural evolution of the free-market system, which will bring attrition, eventually. In the meantime, Aurora residents suffer the consequence of streetscapes being littered with cannabis stores.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Aurora does not grant permits for such stores \u2013 that falls under the purview of the AGCO \u2013 he said the Province, despite us \u201cliving in a free-market country\u201d, should set a cap because the precedent is already there in limiting the number of grocery stores that can sell beer, wine and cider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis motion is not just for the potential benefit of Aurora, but hopefully other municipalities,\u201d said Councillor Kim. \u201cHaving policies in place so they don\u2019t get the deluge and intensification that Aurora has experienced in two-and-a-half short years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Councillors were largely in favour of the motion, with Ward 2 Councillor Rachel Gilliland stating that \u201ca lot of us really didn\u2019t understand that we were going to blow up the way that we did.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have had lots of reports coming back asking how many we\u2019ve got,\u201d she said. \u201cIt has proven a little bit of a nuisance.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One concern expressed by Councillor Gilliland was funding related to opting in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Funding was to be provided by the Province to municipalities opting in to address some of the challenges that would come with retail cannabis, including bylaw enforcement and education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aurora\u2019s Director of Finance Rachel Wainwright-van Kessell said the Town received funding \u201cearly on\u201d in the program but that money has since been spent and they\u2019re not expecting any additional funding at this time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI would like to see the Province step up and give us a little extra funding to address some of the extra servicing we need to be doing, such as bylaw and York Regional Police because there are certain things in their jurisdiction that they can respond to,\u201d said Councillor Gilliland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also supportive was Mayor Tom Mrakas who said Council has \u201ctalked about this long and hard about the fact the Province\u2026might have made a mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMany municipalities have been talking about this,\u201d he said. \u201cI know many of my mayoral colleagues have been having conversations around the table; I know it was a big discussion at the Small Urban Mayors meetings and in regards to this we brought this up not only to the Premier but also the Prime Minister that the impacts this is having on our communities \u2013 yes, it might be a legal product, but stores are just popping up like crazy. There should be a cap on it and hopefully the Province will [make] the necessary changes that will see some type of cap come in.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The motion passed unanimously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HAVE YOUR SAY \u2013 Does Aurora have too many retail cannabis stores? Should the Province place a cap on retail stores or should the \u201cfree-market\u201d decide? Send your thoughts to brock@lpcmedia.ca.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Retailers looking to open up new cannabis stores in Aurora could see their dreams go up in smoke if Council gets its way. Last week, Council greenlit a motion from Ward 6 Councillor Harold Kim calling on the Provincial Government and its Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO) to \u201cno longer accept any further […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-8MM","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-03 08:42:49","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33776\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}