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It can be challenging to keep up with news in Canada’s cannabis industry.

In the province of Ontario, we are living through an era of rapid change, as the provincial government has (in short order) upended the planned public model of cannabis retail sale through government-operated outlets, replaced it with a legislative framework for private sale and released draft legislation that raises at least as many questions as it answers.

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Bill 36 was released last week, and it seeks to amend various pieces of provincial legislation and enact one new statute in relation to the use and sale of cannabis in Ontario. One of the biggest questions leading up to the bill’s release date was whether Ontario would place limits on the number of retail store licenses available and, if so, how.

The result was somewhat unexpected.

Private retail sale of cannabis is not unique to Ontario. In different forms, the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Newfoundland have all established regulatory regimes for private enterprise to operate retail stores. Ontario’s model was always speculated to follow the B.C. and Alberta models more closely than the others’, and those two provinces each provide for different types of restrictions on cannabis retail store licences. It would appear that all such restrictions are structured with a view to ensuring that smaller players have the same opportunity to participate in retail markets as do larger ones.