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Mayor Kennedy Stewart, a former NDP MP, said cannabis legalization was one of the last items he voted on as a federal elected official.

“While I was in Ottawa, I never thought about how this would impact municipalities, but now I’m on the other side of it I see that municipalities are doing the vast majority of the work when it comes to the transition for legal cannabis,” Stewart said. “It has been an ongoing expense to the city, both in time and resources.”

Vancouver has 12 licensed private cannabis retail outlets, 10 that have development permits and are in the process of becoming legal retailers and five that are illegal.

Stewart said he expects the UBCM will eventually come to a deal with the province on excise tax revenue sharing, and he’s willing to be patient until that happens, however when he goes to Victoria in a few weeks it’ll be on his agenda.

“We need help because, again, it comes right out of property tax bases and it wasn’t our decision, it was a federal decision, and they made provisions in the act that municipalities would have some revenue, we just need to work out that agreement and see the money start flowing,” Stewart said.

On the other end of the spectrum, the District of Tofino, which has a population of about 2,000, has a three-year cost estimate of $35,627 or about one per cent of the municipality’s annual tax revenue. Most of that figure is one-time operating costs, and more than half of the total was spent in 2018. About $24,000 is administration costs, and the rest is planning and zoning. The district has approved applications for two private retail stores, though neither has opened yet.