EDMONTON—The Edmonton area is on track to be Alberta’s cannabis capital — at least on legalization day.

Edmonton and surrounding municipalities such as Devon, Fort Saskatchewan and Stony Plain are home to 12 of the 17 retailers issued interim licences by Alberta Gaming, Liquor & Cannabis, while Calgary has two approved locations and Medicine Hat has three.

It’s expected that a flurry of more stores will be approved shortly after Oct. 17. But what made the Edmonton area a Garden of Eden for pot shops ahead of legalization day?

Store operators such as Matt Schmitt, who manages one of Cannabis House’s four planned locations for the Edmonton area, believes there are a number of factors.

He said Edmonton’s public consumption rules are some of the most relaxed in Canada, mirroring the current regulations for tobacco. It also helps that we’re right next door to Canada’s traditional pot paradise: British Columbia.

“Being next door to B.C. gives us a strong upper hand,” he said. “They’re very pro-cannabis obviously, lots of grows there, and lots of black market shops you can just walk into. So having them so pro-cannabis kind of seeps over into Alberta.”

Read more: Here are the 17 cannabis retailers in Alberta that will have licences on legalization day

But the same can be said for Calgary. There are the usual arguments about what makes Edmonton a good place to do business — lots of jobs, a growing population, lots of newcomers, and it’s the capital of Alberta.

But Schmitt said Aurora Cannabis’s large-scale operations at Edmonton International Airport may have played a role in presenting the Edmonton area as the place to be for cannabis in Alberta.

“Aurora has started the conversation in Alberta about cannabis … people really started thinking about it and looking into it more,” he said.

Devon is home to Small Town Buds, the first store to receive an interim licence from AGLC. Devon’s economic development officer Patricia Nicol said she’s seen a “huge shift” in how people perceive cannabis, and believes Edmonton’s reputation as being more progressive and blue-collar than Calgary helped encourage stores to open up shop here.

“Calgary has always been that corporate head office, white-collar (city), while Edmonton has been more blue-collar,” she said. “And I think that has been conducive to our mindset.”

She also believes a concerted effort for all cities and towns in the Edmonton area to work together is starting to show tangible benefits.

“I think that we’ve become one big cohesive group … we all now have a good understanding of how that solidarity can really benefit us,” she said.

An AGLC spokesperson said it wasn’t necessarily who was quickest to the draw when it came to applying that determined who got approvals, but rather the “complexity of the file.” Owners of cannabis retail stores have to go through an extensive due diligence process, even more rigorous than the process employees have to undergo to become a qualified cannabis worker.

So the larger the operation, the longer the process.

One of two approved locations in Calgary is 420 Premium Market, which is planning more than 25 stores across the province in Red Deer, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, Brooks, Canmore, as well as the Edmonton area.

Ryan Kaye, 420 Premium Market’s vice-president of operations, acknowledged the size of the company led to a longer due diligence process for its owners.

“But in no way did it slow us down in terms of locations and openings,” he said.

So is Edmonton just lucky? At the very least, we can conclude Calgary hasn’t had quite the same stroke of good fortune.

“The AGLC numbers we saw (Thursday) weren’t where we wanted to see them either,” said Matt Zabloski, the City of Calgary’s project lead for cannabis legalization.

But it’s not due to lack of preparation.

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“From our perspective, we’ve certainly been preparing on the city administration end to have the potential for as many of these stores open as possible … This is something we’ve been preparing for since last spring,” Zabloski said.

He added there are about 16 applications that have met all city requirements that he expects will be approved for licences shortly after legalization day.

The AGLC could not confirm by press time whether it will be issuing any more interim licences by Oct. 17.

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