The Premier says unexpected costs that the provincial government has had to absorb are partly to blame for lower than expected cannabis revenue.

New data from the Ministry of Finance estimates an $18-million decline in revenue due to the delayed rollout of public and private cannabis stores.

“We didn’t want to have people having an advantage because they had staked some territory illegally, so that involved a whole bunch of law enforcement dollars that we hadn’t anticipated,” said John Horgan.

“For the public side, building bricks and mortar to separate from alcohol, again more money on the input side than we had anticipated.”

Horgan says he was also told by the Washington Governor Jay Inslee to not expect to huge profits to begin with, as the illegal cannabis market wasn’t about to disappear overnight.

“They don’t have the same overhead. They don’t have operating costs in the traditional sense of a business, and therefore they can keep their costs low,” Horgan added. “So the price point for cannabis has to be at a place where it can compete with a grey market, and then the underground market as well.”

“So all of those factors have conspired against the windfall profits.”

At this point, it remains to be seen if the province will break even on cannabis sales in the current year, but Horgan remains confident that B.C. will see an increase in cannabis revenue once the system is fully implemented.