Pubdate: Fri, 12 Aug 2016
Source: Peninsula News Review (CN BC)
Copyright: 2016 Black Press
Contact:  http://www.vicnews.com/eeditions/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1373

TIME IS NOT ON THEIR SIDE

Let's start by being as fair as possible.

The Town of Sidney is busy. There's no question about
it.

Start with the pace of development going on right now and throw in a
variety of high-profile, high-angst projects and one can imagine local
politicians and municipal staff pulled this way and that.

The latest kerfuffle? Why, the SHOAL Centre just isn't big enough to
accommodate a meeting on the proposed Gateway retail site. It
apparently doesn't matter that larger venues are already booked. And
that's not the real issue anyway - those opposed to Gateway would like
to see the meeting moved or rescheduled as a result, thereby delaying
the further advancement of the project. They are looking for an
advantage and, after all, all's fair in love and war.

That's not the issue being discussed here, however.

Sidney voted Monday to repeal the Dispensary by the Sea's business
license. It was interesting to see how quickly the councillors who had
fought against an outright pulling of the license, flipped, seemingly
based on the assertion that Sidney is just too busy this year.

They'll wait to address cannabis dispensaries until their strategic
planning session (which typically occurs once a year) - and perhaps by
then the federal government will have changed the country's medicinal
marijuana access laws.

That's a decision that could have been made close to a month ago.
Instead, the operators of the Dispensary were left in limbo, wondering
if the Town might consider changes that would allow them to keep
operating, such as has been done in Victoria.

Again, in fairness, the Dispensary was technically operating outside
of existing laws on distribution of medicinal marijuana. They'd argue,
of course, the Supreme Court of Canada says otherwise, putting them in
the right.

As these cannabis product dispensaries pop up all over the place,
municipalities will eventually have to deal with them. If laws change,
so will local bylaws. Sidney currently does not have dispensaries as
part of their existing building license bylaw.

If laws don't change, or take a direction that's unexpected at best,
municipalities will still have to deal with dispensaries - and in that
case, Sidney is right on target.

It doesn't seem like that will hold the course, however. And Sidney
could very well run out of time to manage the issue and will face it
all again should cannabis storefronts become the norm.
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MAP posted-by: Matt