If you think pot is expensive, wait ’til you find out what a store is worth

By COLLIN GALLANT on May 25, 2019.

cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant

Folks gave a good long look into the lava lamp last year trying to determine what a gram of legal weed would cost.

Now, we’re getting an idea of how much a franchise to sell it is worth.

On Friday, a cannabis retailer and licence in Swift Current sold for $1.55 million and stock options worth about as much, according to the buyer, Hide Tide Inc., a growing national chain with several brand-name store locations.

That’s $3 million for a store that’s been operating for four months in Saskatchewan’s fifth largest city. Ba-boom!

Of course, the retail landscape in that province, where the number of outlets was capped, lends to territorial advantage, and were awarded in a lottery (no pun intended) last year.

In Alberta more than 800 applications for licences across the province – including 19 in Medicine Hat and Redcliff – are under consideration one year after the application period opened.

About 100 are in operation, including six in Medicine Hat.

It’s impossible to say for sure, but it’s likely that a good number of those were put forward by folks hoping to do the paper work and the legwork then sell at a premium when major chains enter the market.

On a similar note, Hatters are always pointing out that there are too many liquor stores in Medicine Hat. (There are 27, according to the planning department.) However, it’s not like these are subsidized, and Albertans love to say the free market dictates demand.

Maybe, as a city, we’re heavier drinkers than we’d like to admit.

Keeping score

If you’re wondering about the City of Medicine Hat’s carbon footprint – and with gas profits down and power profits up, fewer and fewer seem to be – it’s coming to light as the implications of the carbon levy are examined.

According to federal registry, the output of the city’s power plant was 380,000 tonnes of CO2 in 2017, a year before it boosted its output by about one-third when Unit 16 generator came on line.

That facility however, was given a one-year window to set down a baseline of emissions before rules and fees for heavy emitters kick in.

The whole country is once again in the throes of confusion about how carbon pricing works, and in Alberta you’d have to be plumber to pull apart the various scenarios that await its fate.

The current plan is for the new UCP government to nix the general tax but keep a lower price for heavy industry.

Local administrators say that overall, the city is close to meeting a “best in class” standard under which facilities begin receiving credits under the NDP changes, but the city remains a net payer into the system.

Even then however, the city was able to manage and lower its payments by transferring credits it earns from the WindRiver wind turbine farm in the city’s northwest and composting efforts at the city landfill. Farmers who use no-till practices and some green energy facilities also get credits.

A look ahead

Expect fireworks at Monday’s meeting of the public services committee – or at least puns to that effect – when a proposed fireworks ban inside city limits is proposed. A national fire-code provision that previously did that job has been removed and local municipalities now must decide whether to continue it.

100 years ago

Ottawa would mobilize troops in response to a general strike in Winnipeg that involved more than 30,000 workers, the News reported on May 23, 1919.

“There has been no rioting or disturbance,” Sen. James Lougheed stated. “But the government is impressed by the gravity of the situation.”

Roundhouse railway workers in the Manitoba capital have joined the action, but company officials felt a wider strike on the line would be avoided. Sympathy strike votes were to be held in Lethbridge and Calgary.

A U.S. senate committee on agriculture would study gluten-starch content in bread baked from imported Canadian flour.

In world news, German government officials refused to sign the Treaty of Versailles. Nearly 700 troops arrived in Victoria after the Siberian campaign of the Russian civil war was abandoned by the Canadian government.

Collin Gallant covers city politics and a variety of topics for the News. Reach him at 403-528-5664 or via email at cgallant@medicinehatnews.com