The Ontario government is dramatically loosening the rules for cannabis smoking in Ontario, allowing people to consume pot in parks and other public spaces once it's legal. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn

OTTAWA — Municipalities in Ontario say they are skeptical about the Ford government’s timeline for rolling out private cannabis stores.

Last week, Premier Doug Ford’s cabinet released its decision to ditch the previous Liberal government’s plan to sell cannabis in stores run by the Ontario Cannabis Store (OCS), an offshoot of the LCBO, and instead allow private companies to operate the storefronts. The move shifted the timeline for opening stores from Oct. 17 to April 1, 2018.

[READ MORE: Online store will be only option for Ontario when cannabis is legalized]

Between now and then the province will have to decide who is responsible for deciding where the stores can be located, how many there can be in each town and what rules will govern them. It’s promising to consult with municipalities, but in the meanwhile there are elections that bring work at the city and town level to a stand still.

“More time would be better,” Jeff Lehman, the mayor of Barrie, Ont. told iPolitics on the sidelines of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) conference in Ottawa on Monday.

Ottawa’s deputy mayor, Mark Taylor called it an “aggressive timeline” that will be “difficult to meet” but he also said municipalities don’t have a choice.

“Are we going to meet it effectively? I would argue that some municipalities will be better than others at being able to respond,” he said.

A big issue for the local governments is how little information is available so far, Taylor said.

The issue is expected to be a big focus for councillors and mayors who will get to grill Premier Doug Ford’s cabinet on Tuesday afternoon at the conference’s ministers’ forum, more commonly known as the “bear pit.”

All but one provincial minister — Peter Bethlenfalvy – were in Ottawa for the conference.

[READ MORE: Health Canada officials ‘confident’ there will be enough pot come October]

Ontario municipalities will be given the chance to opt-out of allowing physical cannabis stores within their boundaries, but so far no details have been given about when that opt-out period will start or for how long it will run.

Taylor said one area of particular concern is how many stores will be allowed to operate in each municipality because, he said, its important to make sure they don’t become “such a boom” that they take over main streets.

One area of concern for him is that the government’s move from public to private storefronts leaves the fate of the currently illegal dispensaries up in the air. Since the former government unveiled its plan for publicly run stores, he said it was clear that the dispensaries would be illegal even under a legal cannabis system, which empowered police forces, but now the province is “back into this world of uncertainty.

“We’ve back tracked a little bit, so I think its going to pose a problem for police forces,” Taylor said.

His worry, he said, is that the change to a private model will empower the illegal dispensaries. A spokesperson for Justice Minister Caroline Mulroney said the government hasn’t yet decided whether those stores will be eligible to become legal under the new model and she emphasized that there will be “stiff penalties” for companies that operate illegally after Oct. 17.

“All dispensaries presently operating in Ontario are doing so illegally, and they should demonstrate a willingness to comply with the law and shut down now,” spokesperson Jessica Trepanier said in an email to iPolitics.

Kitchener Mayor Berry Vrbanovic said the work that municipalities had already done on enforcement will help lay the groundwork for the new system of private sales. While the new timeline is “ambitious,” he said he also thought it was “doable.”

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