B.C.’s Opposition Leader says it’s bizarre to see how poorly sales of cannabis have been in the province, since legalization last year.

New data from Stats Canada says B.C. had the lowest sales of cannabis at just $10 per capita, well below the Yukon, which led the way at $103 in sales per capita.

Andrew Wilkinson says it’s likely due to a fundamentally broken system in the province.

“It works elsewhere, so surely somebody from Victoria has made the ferry trip down to Olympia, Washington and had a talk with the people down there about how to make it work properly,” he said.

“Apparently, they skipped that stage because the NDP master-plan means the NDP government knows best and the rest of us just have to have it forced down out throat.”

Wilkinson says legalized cannabis has been very profitable, making the state ‘a ton’ of money.

“They have a 25 per cent tax on wholesale and a 25 per cent tax on retail,” Wilkinson said. “You come north of the border and somehow by some magic scheme, the NDP are losing money selling marijuana.”

In the first year since legalization, Stats Canada says Canadians spent $908 million on non-medicinal cannabis, while they report there were 407 retail cannabis stores in the country as of July, most of them in Alberta.

The province is projecting an $18 million decline in cannabis tax revenues this fiscal year, but with more stores opening up, it expects tax revenues to increase.

Earlier this month, Premier John Horgan blamed unexpected costs that the provincial government had to absorb as partly to blame for lower than expected cannabis revenue.

And Horgan says he was told by Washington Governor Jay Inslee to not expect to huge profits to begin with, as the illegal cannabis market wasn’t about to disappear overnight, but he’s confident that B.C. will see an increase in cannabis revenue once the system is fully implemented.