On Tuesday, July 23, Niverville’s town council turned down an application by Canna Cabana to open a cannabis retail outlet on Bronstone Drive. Council’s vote was split 3–2 against the proposal.

In the aftermath, the public response has been similarly split. Those who objected to the proposal attended the public hearing in large numbers, many of them vocalizing their varied reasons for concern.

However, many proponents of the cannabis retail store feel betrayed, believing that council’s notice of the public hearing gave the false impression that the meeting had been meant merely to address the store’s location and not to determine whether the company had a right to operate in the community.

Niverville’s CAO Eric King says council followed all the same protocols they would for any conditional use hearing and the notices looked just as they would in any other circumstance.

At any conditional use hearing, he says, council has the right to ask further questions of the applicant and then accept or reject the application if the answers don’t meet council’s standards. 

Preceding Events 

So this begs the question, why did so many residents believe that a cannabis store in the community was a done deal?

Councillor Nathan Dueck, one of the two councillors who voted in favour of the proposal, says it was a fair conclusion to arrive at based on the series of events that preceded the public hearing.

“Council had already made a decision to support it for economic reasons and that decision was submitted to the Association of Manitoba Municipalities (AMM),” says Dueck. “The province then made a decision to put Canna Cabana in here based on a lottery. They have a legal right to operate in our town… They will always have a legal right to operate in our town. It’s about location. Our job as councillors is to make sure that location prevails as the reason for the vote.”

Dueck explains that in the fall of 2017, council was faced with a tough decision with little information from higher levels of government. On the cusp of cannabis legalization, every council of every municipality received a questionnaire from the province asking one simple question: “Would your municipality be prepared to support the production and retail of cannabis?” It allowed for a simple yes or no answer.

“If you answered yes, it carried through, like 130 other municipalities did,” Dueck says. “If you voted no, like seven municipalities did, you had the opportunity later to potentially reverse that decision by presenting a referendum to your constituents.”

Dueck says that the town was given only weeks to deliberate and respond to the AMM. Because this council’s mandate hinged upon economic growth, and because there was a high likelihood that other nearly municipalities—such as Hanover, Steinbach, and Winkler—would turn it down, Niverville’s council believed that a cannabis production plant would naturally gravitate here.

“It was strategic,” says Dueck. “It was for the goal of creating jobs, economy, commerce, revenue, and growth in our town. It had nothing to do with the cannabis question. It was about promoting business in town.”

Due to the wording of the province’s question and only one response available to them, council couldn’t choose to have production without retail. But, Dueck adds, none of the councillors believed for a moment that the retail sector would ever see Niverville as large and viable enough to support a store. 

Not If, But When 

In order to accommodate this possibility, council updated the town’s zoning bylaws to make room for cannabis applications in the future. And like many other municipalities in Manitoba, they chose to forgo the right to hold a plebiscite during the 2018 municipal election.

Surprisingly, in the spring of 2019, it was the province that decided Niverville would be a viable location based on their mandate to provide retail cannabis to every Manitoban within a 30-minute drive of their home. The province also made selections by way of a lottery to determine which cannabis retailers could apply.

In Dueck’s mind, it’s not a matter of if but when. If Canna Cabana is turned away often enough, he says, Red River Co-op, the standby retailer, will likely take up the banner. If they also walk away, any number of other retailers are poised and ready to step up.

“I am not for or against cannabis,” Dueck says. “What I am for is making sure that we do our due diligence and follow through on what we started and were committed to already at this point. I don’t want to sit through ten more public hearings with the same applicant coming back every single month, but they do have a right to do that and I would encourage Canna Cabana to pull another permit and come back and do it the appropriate way because they do have a right to be here.”

The appropriate way, he suggests, would be to come to council with a proposal that is better prepared than the last one. It was the company representative’s inability to adequately answer important questions in terms of security, carding minors, and washroom access that left some councillors and the mayor with cold feet in the end.

“[Canna Cabana] didn’t have a lot of those answers,” King agrees. “It’s not about cannabis. It’s about how they came across and how they presented their business. There were lots of ‘I don’t knows’ and… every time [they responded that way] the probability [of acceptance] went down.” 

Council’s Options 

Speaking from an administrative point of view, King adds that council had options to table the discussion for another time, but once the public hearing is closed, it is closed for good. In those cases, council resumes the discussion at another meeting. This, King predicts, wouldn’t have bode well with the residents gathered since the next meeting wouldn’t require council to send out notices again.

Another option would have been to simply apply conditions to ensure all of council’s concerns were met. But in this case, King says the specific concerns posed by council would have been extremely difficult to implement through words. In such instances, council usually denies the request with the expectation that the applicant will come back with a more agreeable proposal in the future.

As for the location, Dueck says that 379 Bronstone Drive met all the zoning bylaws and remains the most suitable location for a cannabis retail store. Due diligence had been done in advance to ensure that the location more than met the requirement of being at least 1,000 feet from any school, park, or public facility, including the Cornerstone Youth Centre.

A Loophole? 

Some objectors at the public hearing had done their own homework, though. They suggested that council consider a condition provided in the Planning Act which says a proposal can be turned down if it is deemed “detrimental to the health or general welfare of people living or working in the surrounding area…”

“As municipal leaders, we cannot find loopholes in the Municipal Act to prevent making decisions that we don’t want to make,” Dueck says. “The decision was made. You can’t flip-flop on something that the province has already put in and the lottery has already decided.”

Dueck adds that it’s not his place to say whether people should choose to use cannabis products. His goal, though, is to make sure that people that choose to use it have access to a safe product as opposed to the many tainted products available right now on the streets of every community.

And while it’s true that people can drive to Winnipeg to access it if they wish, in the end Dueck says that people tend to choose the easiest route and that might mean choosing to buy on the street rather than make the drive.

“If you don’t provide a safe product, you’re going to end up having much bigger problems with dirty product on the street,” Dueck adds. “Providing a legal outlet is probably the best way you can prevent that.”

King concurs.

“At the end of the day… if you support [cannabis retail then] support it, if you don’t you don’t,” King says. “It’s going to be gone in six months if people don’t support it… That’s [true] with any business. If you don’t believe in [what they’re doing], you don’t go into [the business].”

In terms of keeping it out of the hands of underage youth, Dueck suggests that the community has a responsibility to educate its children on the effects of cannabis use, whether a retail centre is located in the community or not.

“Cannabis is not the underlying issue,” Dueck says. “It’s social problems that are creating the substance abuse. You can’t blame a cannabis company or the province of Manitoba or government of Canada or your own municipality for not dealing with problems that you’re too afraid to address yourself.”

Generally speaking, Dueck says, Niverville is a community of middle-income earners with supportive parents and great local programs for kids to get involved in. In this kind of setting, he sees less of a risk of drug and alcohol abuse as compared to places where poverty and family dysfunction are the norm. 

Allowing Public Feedback 

So why did council allow for any public feedback of social and moral concern when the meeting was intended to be about a business decision?

“For the most part, it was to allow people to share their stories,” Dueck says. “Because, in respect to the residents, if you silence them you would look like you were just pushing something through instead of giving them an opportunity to be heard.”

King adds that at any given council meeting, public representation can have the power to affect a decision.

“If at the next hearing there’s 500 people, that’s great,” King says. “If 300 of them are supportive of it and 200 are objecting, maybe that shows where it should have been the first time [around]… You need to show your elected people what’s actually going on. They will do their best to try and figure it out, but then you can’t be mad at them if you don’t agree with their opinion [when you didn’t show up to voice it].”

As well, King offers assurances that council does not discuss an application for a permit beforehand.

“When you see them discussing things like hours of operation, like they did at the meeting, that is literally the first time that these guys are talking about it,” King says. “Some people have the misconception that they sit down behind closed doors and make a decision before [the public hearing]. It’s certainly not the case. Going in, I had no idea which direction this would go.” 

Comments of a Cannabis User 

Tristan Friesen is a recreational cannabis user who has lived in the Niverville area his entire life. He’s a proponent of a cannabis store in the community and is confident that the economic spinoff from the region would benefit Niverville in a big way.

Still, he recognizes the difficulty of the decision council was faced with.

“I feel town council made a very hard decision and they would have received backlash either way,” Friesen says. “They had good points regarding the security [measures] of the business and there were issues with age restrictions on [Canna Cabana’s] website as well. Canna Cabana seemed very disorganized and could have probably presented a better and clearer case if they took more time preparing for the meeting.”

As for public concerns that cannabis might create an increase in crime and dangerous drivers in the community, Friesen isn’t worried.

“With the new laws in place, I know lots of people are taking them very seriously,” says Friesen. “The laws are strict and I know many people who refuse to drive less than five hours after smoking [pot] because… the new roadside tests leave concerns about false positives. [Since] legalization, lots of cannabis users feel more on edge about getting in trouble now compared to when it was hush-hush and no one really talked about it.” 

Comments of a Father 

Bryan Trottier is the owner of the building Canna Cabana was proposing to lease. He was discouraged by the end of Tuesday’s council meeting, believing that those who have strong views on the moral or social implications of legal cannabis should take it up with the province or federal government, who brought in the legislation in the first place.

“As a business owner, I think Canna Cabana could offer a quality retail outlet where the owners have a professional commitment to their business,” says Trottier. “They also have stressed that they want to contribute to the community. Their presence will attract visitors to Niverville and that will benefit other businesses.”

As a father of a young child, Trottier recognizes that young adults will experiment with alcohol and cannabis and his hope is to build a community where that can be done in a controlled and legal manner. Rather than using fear as a form of guidance, he and his partner are committed to providing positive reinforcement and education on the risks of substance use and addiction on the home front. 

The Mayor’s Vote 

Mayor Myron Dyck and Counsellor John Funk also voted no to the proposal, but they both agree that it was the poor presentation that made it an easy decision to make.

“My vote tipped due to the lack of professionalism on the part of the applicant,” Mayor Dyck says. “Sending new or junior staff seemed like a slap in the face. It seemed to me that an Alberta company thought Niverville was a rubber stamp. We are a proud community with top-shelf business owners, a community that warrants a top-shelf company and not something less than that.”

But Dyck would like to see more than just a better business proposal next time.

“If they reapply, hopefully they will bring their $3,000 per hour lawyer, their scientist who can speak to the medical and science aspects of the product, and the president of their company so that when residents have questions, they can get answers.”

Put in a position to try and make everyone happy, Dyck suggests that he’d rather be building community resource centres than breaking ties on contentious topics at council meetings.

And for those concerned about the loss of tax revenue and economic spinoff from this decision, Dyck says, “There is a business already there that is paying taxes. The owner is merely looking to lease out the space. Any tax increase would be minimal.”

Councillors Kevin Stott and Chris Wiebe were not available for comment.

Since the meeting, King has reported to the province on council’s decision. He says they had no concerns other than to ask if Canna Cabana would be able to reapply. King responded in the affirmative.