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Merry Christmas & a safe and 4 • WATERLOO CHRONICLE • Thursday, December 7, 2017 Serving your community since 1856 By Joy Struthers Chronicle Staff A retail outlet for canna-bis will be coming to Waterloo in July 2018, according to an announce- ment made by the provincial government last week. But a location has not been picked. Shayne Turner, director of municipal enforcement ser- vices for the City of Waterloo, said they are planning to meet with the province as soon as possible to get more details, probably by this week. "We're talking about hav- ing the first store fronts in eight months, when the sites haven't even been select- ed yet. The cities have been selected, but the sites haven't. There's a lot of work to do in the next while," said Turner. He said at this point the province's position is that there's going to be collabora- tion between municipalities and the province. "The hope and goal is that both will come to an agree- ment over criteria to pick a site, and that will allow them to go forward," said Turner. He said it would need to be in a commercial area, but they will want to make sure there are no competing interests and the location isn't close to schools, hospitals and other areas that might be more sen- sitive to the issue. "It's really premature to talk in that level of detail because we haven't had that discussion yet," said Turner. He did share the city's con- cern is the pace and timing of the legalization rollout. "The federal government is imposing the July deadline but leaving it up to provinces and municipalities to make it happen," he said. He said because the prov- ince is willing to work with them, the city is going to take advantage of that and open their doors for a frank discus- sion about the challenges of getting a new store through the municipal approval pro- cess. As for Waterloo being selected, Art Sinclair, vice president of public policy and advocacy for the Greater Kitchener Waterloo Cham- ber of Commerce, said the announcement isn't a sur- prise to anyone as far as he's concerned. "About a month ago, they released a list of 14 commu- nities and Kitchener was on that list, but at the same time they said we'd have 40 by next year, so we knew more were coming. Of course, now Waterloo and probably Guelph will get one. I think the province will go with major urban centres first," said Sinclair. He said he hasn't heard a lot of feedback from his mem- bership but knew the province was consulting with munici- palities. "They know it's going to be a concern for the public … there's going to be some discussion and some issues that are going to be brought up during the process," said Sinclair. He thinks it could get pret- ty intense. "What we'll see, once those sites are identified, the people that will be directly impacted one way or another will be bringing forward their con- cerns, either to the municipal- ities or to their MPs or MPPs. This is one particular issue where there's going to be a lot of levels of government that are going to be impacted," Sinclair said. He said he thinks it will be interesting to see how the co- operation evolves between the three levels of government -- municipal, provincial and federal. "If they can't agree, they might have to slow down the schedule in a big hurry," he said. He found it interesting that the stores in Ontario will be government-run, when Alberta and Manitoba have a different idea, and plan to have private owners. He won- dered if the discussion would prompt Ontario to change their model. The main thing, he said, is everyone wants to make money off of this. "If it costs the government more than they see in returns, it's going to be a big problem. The key concern is how do we optimize the revenue poten- tial," Sinclair said. Although the chamber of commerce may get involved at some point, Sinclair hasn't heard anything about local consultation. "It hasn't been identified as a key issue in the business community at this time, but it's still very early in the pro- cess. I think the businesses that will be affected by this will be active in the discussion moving forward. I think peo- ple want to be a part of that final decision-making pro- cess," he said. Weed coming to Waterloo