Tuesday, October 2, 2018

Council's cannabis planning introduced through Facebook post

Legalization of cannabis may be
coming October 17th, but the
City of Prince Rupert is still
working out the details on
the impact in the community
The road forward towards a cannabis policy for the Prince Rupert seemingly will start with a pair of Facebook posts on Mayor Lee Brain's political Social media stream.

Yesterday's Facebook updates, following his original notes on the process ahead found through the Mayor's Northern View'podcast presentation of last week, at that time, we explored some of Council's past work on the theme here.

On Monday evening, just a few hours prior to the City Council Forum at the Lester Centre, the Mayor offered up a tentative outline of how the City has decided to approach the upcoming legalization of cannabis, charting a course that most likely won't see any final commitments until the new year.

From the two postings to his Facebook page, the Mayor observed that when legalization arrives on October 17th, not much will change in Prince Rupert in the short term, would be retail proponents will have to make their applications for a business through the Liquor and Cannabis Regulation Branch, which then hands the process over to the City of Prince Rupert for further consideration.

With no formal policy in place as of yet, those applications will apparently be on hold pending further work of Council.

More details will come at the October 9th council session, however a few notes were outlined on Monday evening.

The city plans to release a video and Frequently Asked Questions information sheet to explain the process ahead and what the municipal regulations may look like.

First reading of a draft legislation  related to the retail sale of cannabis in the city will be made on October 9th, something that will be available as part of the Council Agenda for that night when it is posted to the City's website.

Following the October 9th Council meeting, a public engagement session will be held to take opinions from the community before Council settles on a final decision on the issue, four readings and a public hearing are part of the process ahead to establish the cannabis rules in Prince Rupert, something the Mayor advises could take a few months.

The Mayor also observes that the legislation  that Council is proposing will be progressive compared to other municipalities, with Mr. Brain calling on the public to be part of the public process ahead.

His commentary has already generated a fair amount of feedback through the comments to his Facebook entry, you can review those contributions here.

Mr. Brain also offers up two links to further information from the Province of British Columbia.

British Columbia Public Safety

BC LDB Cannabis update


The full scope of the themes of his presentation can be examined below:



To this point, the sharing of the city's plans is exclusive to the Mayor's social media stream, the city website, mobile app and other communication options available for such updates unused for the early roll out of the Council strategy.

For more items of note related to Prince Rupert City Council see our archive page here.


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