The Liberals community affairs critic is demanding the Horgan government reach a revenue sharing deal to split legal cannabis tax dollars with local governments.

While Finance minister Carole James hints strongly no deal can be reached until the overall revenue picture become clearer Kamloops South MLA Todd Stone has a different take.

“Whether the revenue pie is a million dollars net a year or ends up being 100 million dollars a year fulfill your commitments and negotiate a deal with local governments. Agree on a percentage allocation of that revenue from a principle perspective. Once the revenue actually starts flowing in you can worry about the disbursement of the cash at that point. We all knew that it was going to take some time to really see what those revenue streams were going to be.”

Stone says while the province complains of underwhelming cannabis revenues they have only themselves to blame.

“The application and approval process with respect to cannabis retail stores is a complete mess. We are far behind other provinces. I don’t know part of the approvals process is in the Solicitor General’s ministry and the criminal record check part of the process is with the Attorney General folks. You would think the right hand and the left hand would coordinate on this.”

Stone says in all of this prospective cannabis entrepreneurs are stuck in the middle and hemorrhaging money.

“There are entrepreneurs in Kamloops and other communities who have filled out all the paperwork and did so six, seven, eight months ago, sent it all in, and they are still waiting for their approvals. Meanwhile they have secured space and they are paying rent on space that is empty and losing a heck of a lot of money in the process. It is not fair.”

The federal government reached a deal with the province to give them 75% of cannabis tax revenues last year.

The provincial government has been negotiating a revenue splitting formula with local governments since February.