CANNABIS CULTURE –
Vancouver City Councillor Rebecca Bligh introduced a motion to change the licensing fee to facilitate the opening of Cannabis retail stores.
“The extremely high size of the municipal business license fee for cannabis retailers acts as a significant barrier to entry for businesses seeking to join the legal market, which can incentivize them into operating illicitly, requiring additional enforcement and compliance costs, increasing the risk to public safety, and undermining the operations of the legal businesses who have paid the exorbitant licensing fee,” she says.
The City of Vancouver is currently voting to review the annual licensing fee for Cannabis retail businesses. Councillor Rebecca Bligh proposed lowering the annual $33,958 licensing fee to $5,000 a year, the same amount paid for licensing the business in Victoria.