He says it will be minimal, but the Mayor of Kamloops says not having a cannabis revenue sharing agreement in place will impact next year’s municipal budget.

“We are the ones dealing with the licensing, the zoning issues, the policing issues the security checks, those kinds of things and we are the ones that are charging the general tax payer for that kind of service that’s really focused on that particular retail sector” says Ken Christian. “I’ve argued, along with council, at the [Union of BC Municipalities convention] when we met with Carole James that irrespective of the amount of money, it’s incumbent that you share that [revenue] with those municipalities that are shouldering most of the work on these files and to me it’s just logical that that would happen.”

There was discussion of a new cannabis license for a McGill Road business at this week’s Kamloops city council meeting. Christian says it was quite a stark contrast when looking back at how complicated and time consuming these discussions used to be. “There was three calls for public submissions, no one came forward and the matter was dealt with in about two minutes. Whereas the first one we dealt with a year ago it took two and a half hours. So what a difference a year makes in terms of the normalization of the retail cannabis landscape.”

Christian says the hope remains to have a revenue sharing agreement in place with the province by the spring.