When travellers cut through British Columbia‘s Prince George Airport this summer, Owen Ritz and Reed Horton envision them browsing and buying more than duty-free treats and baubles.
The American roommates-turned-business partners hope passengers will stop by Copilot, a cannabis store they’re seeking approvals to open and believe will be the world’s first airport pot shop.
“Our goal from day one has been to create a differentiated retail experience that stands out from any store you might see downtown,” said Ritz.
Airport stores are nothing new for most retailers, but cannabis shops are seldom, if ever, seen at aviation hubs, so Copilot is a sign of the new territory pot stores are eager to break into.
In recent months, they’ve cropped up at malls, gas station plazas and beside breweries. Some like B.C. pot retailer Seed and Stone are even planning to open virtual dispensaries in the metaverse – an immersive and emerging digital world.
The push to get into these spaces comes more than three years after Canada legalized recreational cannabis. Since then, pot shops have speckled many cities – Ontario alone had 1,115 stores last September – and clustered so heavily in areas like Toronto‘s Queen Street that some are calling for legislation to dictate how close to each other stores can be.
The proximity is amping up competition among stores and has some observers predicting closures are on their way as entrepreneurs realize owning a pot shop isn’t a guaranteed money-maker, when you’re in a crowded market.
“The whole industry completely misunderstood what would happen because they thought the only barrier is legalization and once we’re legal, people will just buy,” said Joanne McNeish, a Ryerson University professor specializing in marketing.
But breaking into airports and malls could curtail some of the disappointment by helping companies stand out from other brands with a store on every street corner and by catering to time conscious customers.
“For a user, it could make it that much more convenient,” said McNeish.
She believes these locations also help destigmatize cannabis for people who still see the substance as a stoner pastime or are intimidated by marijuana culture and terminology.
“If they’re walking around Sherway Gardens and they stumbled upon it, maybe it’ll be slightly less overbearing to take a step in,” said Justin Farbstein, Tokyo Smoke’s vice-president of business development.
“It could give a safer, more approachable feel.”
That locale was part of why Canopy brought Tokyo Smoke cannabis shops to malls through a partnership with Edmonton Oilers owner, the Katz Group.
Now, there are Tokyo Smoke stores across eight shopping centres, including the Eaton Centre in Toronto, the Rideau Centre in Ottawa and Devonshire Mall in Windsor. At least another three are on their way.
In the few months they’ve been open, Farbstein noticed purchases have a “slight skew” toward edibles and drinks, but hasn’t seen any particular demographic flock to the store more than others.
The company also has stores in a Scarborough gas station plaza and beside Cool Beer Brewing Co. in Toronto.
In an effort to stand out, High Tide Inc. is also moving beyond busy streets.
“On Queen Street, you’ve got a cluster of stores and they’re all competing with each other heavily and there’s just no unique edge that any retailer has,” said chief executive Raj Grover.
He’s been targeting large shopping areas with anchor tenants like grocers, liquor stores or Costco because Hide Tide can typically score cannabis exclusivity there, but he’s also delving into malls by opening Canna Cabana shops at Winnipeg‘s St. Vital Centre and Alberta‘s Prairie Mall.
Those locations will resemble Hide Tide’s 113 stores, but leverage more digital kiosks and lockers to speed up browsing, ordering and pickup.
Their locations will also be chosen to avoid enticing children.
“Mall management is sometimes not too excited about locating a cannabis store where there’s a food court or where families get together, so it can be a little bit more challenging than locating on the streets,” Grover said.
The trickiest part of opening mall locations, said Farbstein, is ensuring security cameras trace every part of the journey cannabis deliveries make from the loading dock to the store shelf – a requirement for all pot shops.
At the airport, there are even more challenges because travellers cannot board flights departing Canada with cannabis. Copilot plans to ask customers where they are headed and remind people they can’t fly internationally with pot.
Several airlines don’t feel those measures are enough and are worried an airport store would encourage pre-flight and on-board cannabis consumption. Air Canada and WestJet have urged Prince George’s city council not to permit airport pot shops.
Horton called their concerns “really valid” and said Copilot had “productive” discussions with airlines to ensure they’re able to work together.
“We want to improve passenger experiences, not make it worse,” he said.
But even Grover has hesitations about airport pot shops.
CALGARY – MEG Energy says it earned $167 million in its third quarter, down from $249 million during the same quarter last year.
The company says revenues for the quarter were $1.27 billion, down from $1.44 billion during the third quarter of 2023.
Diluted earnings per share were 62 cents, down from 86 cents a year earlier.
MEG Energy says it successfully completed its debt reduction strategy, reducing its net debt to US$478 million by the end of September, down from US$634 million during the prior quarter.
President and CEO Darlene Gates said moving forward all the company’s free cash flow will be returned to shareholders through expanded share buybacks and a quarterly base dividend.
The company says its capital expenditures for the quarter increased to $141 million from $83 million a year earlier, mainly due to higher planned field development activity, as well as moderate capacity growth projects.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
Premier David Eby is proposing an all-party committee investigate mistakes made during the British Columbia election vote tally, including an uncounted ballot box and unreported votes in three-quarters of the province’s 93 ridings.
The proposal comes after B.C.’s chief electoral officer blamed extreme weather, long working hours and a new voting system for human errors behind the mistakes in last month’s count, though none were large enough to change the initial results.
Anton Boegman says the agency is already investigating the mistakes to “identify key lessons learned” to improve training, change processes or make recommendations for legislative change.
He says the uncounted ballot box containing about 861 votes in Prince George-Mackenzie was never lost, and was always securely in the custody of election officials.
Boegman says a failure in five districts to properly report a small number of out-of-district votes, meanwhile, rippled through to the counts in 69 ridings.
Eby says the NDP will propose that a committee examine the systems used and steps taken by Elections BC, then recommend improvements in future elections.
“I look forward to working with all MLAs to uphold our shared commitment to free and fair elections, the foundation of our democracy,” he said in a statement Tuesday, after a news conference by Boegman.
Boegman said if an independent review does occur, “Elections BC will, of course, fully participate in that process.”
He said the mistakes came to light when a “discrepancy” of 14 votes was noticed in the riding of Surrey-Guildford, spurring a review that increased the number of unreported votes there to 28.
Surrey-Guildford was the closest race in the election and the NDP victory there gave Eby a one-seat majority. The discovery reduced the NDP’s victory margin from 27 to 21, pending the outcome of a judicial review that was previously triggered because the race was so close.
The mistakes in Surrey-Guildford resulted in a provincewide audit that found the other errors, Boegman said.
“These mistakes were a result of human error. Our elections rely on the work of over 17,000 election officials from communities across the province,” he said.
“Election officials were working 14 hours or more on voting days and on final voting day in particular faced extremely challenging weather conditions in many parts of the province.
“These conditions likely contributed to these mistakes,” he said.
B.C.’s “vote anywhere” model also played a role in the errors, said Boegman, who said he had issued an order to correct the results in the affected ridings.
Boegman said the uncounted Prince George-Mackenzie ballot box was used on the first day of advance voting. Election officials later discovered a vote hadn’t been tabulated, so they retabulated the ballots but mistakenly omitted the box of first-day votes, only including ballots from the second day.
Boegman said the issues discovered in the provincewide audit will be “fully documented” in his report to the legislature on the provincial election, the first held using electronic tabulators.
He said he was confident election officials found all “anomalies.”
B.C. Conservative Party Leader John Rustad had said on Monday that the errors were “an unprecedented failure by the very institution responsible for ensuring the fairness and accuracy of our elections.”
Rustad said he was not disputing the outcomes as judicial recounts continue, but said “it’s clear that mistakes like these severely undermine public trust in our electoral process.”
Rustad called for an “independent review” to make sure the errors never happen again.
Boegman, who said the election required fewer than half the number of workers under the old paper-based system, said results for the election would be returned in 90 of the province’s 93 ridings on Tuesday.
Full judicial recounts will be held in Surrey-Guildford and Kelowna-Centre, while a partial recount of the uncounted box will take place in Prince George-Mackenzie.
Boegman said out-of-district voting had been a part of B.C.’s elections for many decades, and explained how thousands of voters utilized the province’s vote-by-phone system, calling it a “very secure model” for people with disabilities.
“I think this is a unique and very important part of our elections, providing accessibility to British Columbians,” he said. “They have unparalleled access to the ballot box that is not found in other jurisdictions in Canada.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
WINNIPEG – A public memorial honouring former judge, senator and chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission into residential schools, Murray Sinclair, is set to take place in Winnipeg on Sunday.
The event, which is being organized by the federal and Manitoba governments, will be at Canada Life Centre, home of the NHL’s Winnipeg Jets.
Sinclair died Monday in a Winnipeg hospital at the age of 73.
A teepee and a sacred fire were set up outside the Manitoba legislature for people to pay their respects hours after news of his death became public. The province has said it will remain open to the public until Sinclair’s funeral.
Sinclair’s family continues to invite people to visit the sacred fire and offer tobacco.
The family thanked the public for sharing words of love and support as tributes poured in this week.
“The significance of Mazina Giizhik’s (the One Who Speaks of Pictures in the Sky) impact and reach cannot be overstated,” the family said in a statement on Tuesday, noting Sinclair’s traditional Anishinaabe name.
“He touched many lives and impacted thousands of people.”
They encourage the public to celebrate his life and journey home.
A visitation for extended family, friends and community is also scheduled to take place Wednesday morning.
Leaders from across Canada shared their memories of Sinclair.
Premier Wab Kinew called Sinclair one of the key architects of the era of reconciliation.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Sinclair was a teacher, a guide and a friend who helped the country navigate tough realities.
Sinclair was the first Indigenous judge in Manitoba — the second in Canada.
He served as co-chair of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba to examine whether the justice system was failing Indigenous people after the murder of Helen Betty Osborne and the police shooting death of First Nations leader J.J. Harper.
In leading the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he participated in hundreds of hearings across Canada and heard testimony from thousands of residential school survivors.
The commissioners released their widely influential final report in 2015, which described what took place at the institutions as cultural genocide and included 94 calls to action.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
