CALGARY — While other provinces keep a tight rein on the number of cannabis stores that will be allowed, Alberta is promising to let the market decide.

But retailers are still running up against limits.

Kasey Sterling, principal designer with Korr Design, said her firm is working with a cannabis company that is preparing for legalization later this year.

“It’s a group that’s got franchise owners,” she said. “It’s been really well thought out. They’ve got supply, packaging and retail background.”

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Part of her job has been filing the applications with the The Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission, which will be the regulator for cannabis in Alberta.

She said when she went to apply for licences, she was told the most applications she could make was 37, despite the province also saying it won’t limit the number of stores.

“We haven’t officially heard from the province how many they’re going to accept, and how they’re going to cap the applications,” said Sterling.

So why 37 stores? It has to do with another regulation the province put in place to prevent one company from getting too large a share of the market.

The province says no one person, group or organization can hold more than 15 per cent of the licences in the province, and for the first year at least, they’re giving our 250 licences.

“After a scan of the U.S. states that are similar to Alberta in size and population and knowing how many licences they granted in their first year of cannabis legalization, we estimated that we would most likely approve 250 licences during the first year of legalization,” AGLC spokeswoman Chara Goodings said.

She stressed that number is just an estimate for now, and the number of licences granted in the first year could be lower or higher.

The City of Calgary has received more than 270 applications at the municipal level, but that number includes many duplicate applications. There’s still over 200 unique applications in the city alone.

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The city has said that number does not reflect the number of stores that will be approved.

Ontario, with a population more than three times that of Alberta, plans to open 150 provincially run stores by 2020.

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