MONTREAL—In the rush to marijuana legalization, cities across the country are harnessing their limited powers to delay the opening of retail pot stores, dictate where they can operate or ban them outright—at least temporarily.

There was uproar from Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne and the Toronto District School Board after finding out the city’s first retail cannabis store would open just 450 metres from a school, in a strip mall where students often eat lunch.

But it’s the scenario many local politicians are fighting to prevent.

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Some have passed motions and zoning changes suggesting appropriate locations for provincially run Ontario Cannabis Retail Corporation (OCRC) stores. Others, such as Markham, have asked that their territories be passed over as the agency sets up its inaugural pot shops.

Oakville city council passed a motion asking the Ontario government not to open a cannabis store this summer, as planned, so that they can figure out the most appropriate location for a store. This, after it was learned officials were scouting a spot less than one kilometre from a high school which was already a problem area, known for loitering and late-night drinking, said Councillor Tom Adams.

“We haven’t heard back,” he said of the requested delay.

“They are out looking for a location but we’re not informed exactly what they’re up to or which locations they prefer ... We’re on the receiving end of all this. We have no regulatory power.”

The OCRC announced this week that its first four Ontario stores will be located in Guelph, Kingston, Thunder Bay and Toronto. The agency, a subsidiary of the LCBO, plans to open an initial 40 stores this summer, eventually expanding to 150 stores.

Based on its population, that could mean up to five retail cannabis stores opening in the city of London. The calculation prompted city council to adopt recommendations for the province that shops be at least 500 metres from schools, libraries and arenas and not located on “main street environments” where loitering is more common and may hide drug-selling activities.

The province is not bound to respect the city’s wishes, but officials have shown a willingness to work within the constraints, said London chief planner John Fleming. He said specific zoning changes for retail marijuana shops are also coming that would apply if the Ontario government opens up cannabis to private retailers in the future.

“We’re all moving through this together for the first time and there’s a lot of uncertainty. If we can all take a fairly conservative approach to start things out and observe and understand how these operate, then maybe some of the policy concerns and regulations can be relaxed in the future,” Fleming said.

Quebec, which has the same provincially run retail model as Ontario, has yet to identify the locations for its cannabis outlets, but the Union des municipalités du Québec has recommended that pot shops be kept out of poor or troubled neighbourhoods.

“The example of lottery gaming machines run by a government agency that we find most frequently in disadvantaged neighbourhoods should absolutely not be reproduced in this case,” the association said.

The town of Granby, Que., introduced zoning regulations this week in a motion that would restrict retail cannabis sales to one commercial area next to a liquor store and grocery.

“It’s far from any school, from any problems of that sort,” Granby Mayor Pascal Bonin explained at a council meeting.

The Manitoba government, which will issue retail licences to private companies, have given its cities and towns the choice to prohibit sales in their territories. Most have permitted retail sales. Some, like the town council in Gimli, opted out, saying it didn’t have enough information from the province.

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But it’s British Columbia where municipalities are using the full power of their bylaws to slow down the rush to legalization. The province has decided to allow a mix of government-run and private cannabis retailers, but many cities banned the sale and distribution of legal pot on their territory through zoning changes.

“It was a bit of a safeguard to make sure that municipalities wouldn’t be in a situation of having a new form of legal retail store that wasn’t accounted for in a zoning bylaw and then could in theory open up in any place where a retail use was permitted,” said Sara Dubinsky, a Vancouver lawyer who specializes in bylaw enforcement and cannabis legalization.

In the mountain resort town of Revelstoke, council banned pot shops because there was too little information about the municipal obligations and impacts of the new retail regime.

At the same time, they were being bombarded by inquiries from entrepreneurs seeking an opening in a new market, said Nigel Whitehead, the town’s director of development services.

“We want to give our department and our community some breathing space to be able to see exactly what regulations are coming down from the province ... and then give ourselves a bit of time to develop those regulations to best fit our community,” he said.

The town council in Tofino, a popular Vancouver Island tourist destination, was also initially inclined to outlaw retail pot stores. There are fears about cannabis tourism and that their small retail sector being taken over by pot shops, said Mayor Josie Osborne.

They have since changed course and decided to do the intensive work necessary to pass appropriate zoning rules in time for the adoption of the federal law.

“We’re not here to say ‘you can’t drink alcohol’ or ‘you can’t take cannabis.’ It’s just that we need to ensure the community’s interests are met first and foremost,” she said.

“In a town like Tofino, which is so small, if you use a combination of buffers and zoning you effectively do limit the number of stores that you could have.”

But many others across Canada are bracing for trouble as the country races toward marijuana legalization feeling they have limited information or preparation, said Brantford Mayor Chris Friel, who chaired the Association of Municipalities of Ontario’s task force on legalized marijuana.

“The provinces don’t know what the regulations are going to be or how it’s ultimately going to play out. We’re going to have two or three years of confusion until we start to play this out.”