By Emily Keller

cannabis retailers

City to stop requesting sales information from local cannabis retailers

May 29, 2020 | 5:30 AM

The City of Grande Prairie is looking to change the rules on cannabis reporting for retailers.

At the Infrastructure Economic Development meeting on May 26, it was decided that Administration stop requesting sales information from cannabis retailers and change the Business License Bylaw to remove the requirement for cannabis sales reporting.

City Councillor Dylan Bressey says that previously, the requirements were made by the City due to the federal government sharing 75 per cent of the excise taxes from the sales of cannabis with the province, and the province’s decision to not share that revenue with municipalities.

“Even though, the federal government said it’s expectation was that that tax gets shared with municipalities. So, Council asked for this information, back when we were creating our regulations around cannabis retailers, we could get a sense of how much tax revenue was being generated within Grande Prairie, so we could advocate for it to get to spending within our local community.”

The reporting requirement asked for retailers to calculate volumes of what was sold, something the City says they have heard complaints about from some local cannabis retailers.

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“The information that we were asking for is something that isn’t listed in their products, isn’t listed in their SKU’s, (it’s) something they have to collect manually, and they have to calculate manually, and it was quite a bit of red tape we were asking them to go through,” Said Councillor Bressey. “And there wasn’t a clear connection between what that red tape was generating, and how the City was going to use that information to make our community better.”

He added that he sees two major reasons for the decision to stop the requirements, including a change to Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis (AGLC) reporting requirements, meaning that the City then required a separate report that the retailers were no longer creating for the province.

Bressey says he believes there may have been a shift in advocacy priorities for funding from the province to the City.