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On an $8 gram of pot sold in Ontario, for instance, the final purchase price would be $10.17, with a $1 excise tax and $1.17 HST. In New Brunswick, it would be $10.35.

Alberta, which has no provincial sales tax, could see the cheapest pot in the country at just $9.45 for an $8 gram of weed.

“I’m very comfortable that the level of taxation that has been determined as appropriate in this case achieves our goals of keeping the price sufficiently low to be competitive with an illicit market, while at the same time not creating an incentive for the consumption and purchase of this drug,” said Blair.

Blair gave $1 billion a year as a very rough estimate of how much governments stand to raise from the plan, although that number is at the high end of the scale, he warned, since so much depends on just how many people will end up buying marijuana once it becomes legal.

“The market is currently controlled almost 100 per cent by criminals,” Blair said. “It’s an illicit market. Quite frankly, they don’t share a lot of data on the size of their market, so right now we’re operating on estimates.”

All of this assumes every province signs the federal marijuana framework. People who live in provinces that don’t sign the framework will still be able to buy legal pot, with a federal excise tax of 50 cents a gram or 5 per cent of the purchase price and GST, plus whatever tax their provincial government chooses to apply. That could be nothing, or it could be higher than the 50 cents or five per cent share provinces will get under the federal plan.