Finance Minister Bill Morneau says he plans to talk cannabis taxation with his provincial colleagues this summer.

Morneau said at the House of Commons finance committee Monday that his department has started working on a new tax regime for legal recreational marijuana, and he plans to talk about it with the provinces at a high-level meeting come June.

“Work has begun on the design of this taxation regime, and the issue will be on the agenda at the next meeting of provincial and territorial finance ministers in June,” Morneau said.

“The goal will be to agree on some basic principles, with the intent to move quickly on these historic legislative proposals.”

Morneau didn’t offer up any specifics on how Ottawa is seeking to set taxes. The Liberal government has so far avoided talking specifics on how it would tax recreational marijuana once it becomes legal, although the feds have been cautioned by a federal task force and the Parliamentary Budget Officer that it won’t have much room to work at the outset if it wants to hit the mark on its policy objectives.

The legalization task force led by former Liberal cabinet minister Anne McLellan cautioned that taxes should be set high enough to limit growth in consumption — but low enough to compete with the illicit market.

Monday, Morneau indicate that he’s fully aware of that bind – and said the new tax regime will aim for that narrow balance.

“We will constantly be looking at how we can ensure that we get criminals out of the market and protect youth,” he told reporters.

“Taxation will follow those principles.”

The PBO’s 2016 report on legal marijuana taxation said that governments won’t see a huge boost in tax revenues from pot in the early days of legalization — that they’re likely only to realize “hundreds of millions of dollars, rather than … billions of dollars” in cannabis tax revenue, with nearly two-thirds of sales taxes going to the provinces.

The report also cautioned that the government “may have little fiscal space to apply tax without pushing the price of legal cannabis significantly above the illegal market price.”

“Even with only a sales tax, legal cannabis prices in 2018 will likely be as high as illicit market prices in 2015-16,” it adds.

Prices for the illegal product in 2015-16 varied by province but were, on average, between $8 and $9.36 per gram.

With files from BJ Siekierski