Residents of Niverville will now get the chance to vote on whether to allow retail cannabis stores in the community.
Niverville Town Council voted Tuesday evening to hold a plebiscite. This decision comes after council denied Canna Cabana’s conditional use request to set up a retail cannabis store on July 23rd. Mayor Myron Dyck says council denied that request due to concerns with the plan presented by Canna Cabana and some councillor's belief that retail cannabis could be detrimental to the health and well-being of the community.
"The other options, if council doesn't want to wait a year, are two-fold. A member of council can put forward, in writing, a request saying a public hearing should be held sooner, basically giving the reason that they believe a decision different than the one given could be rendered. No councillor has submitted that. Their other option is to hold a plebiscite."
Niverville CAO Eric King indicated Canna Cabana has already stated their intention to reapply for a conditional use permit. Dyck says he believes that if council waited one year and gave Canna Cabana a chance to reapply, they would once again be split on the matter and the same decision would be made which would then open up the possibility for another application the year after that and so on so forth.
"This is something that council has had many conversations about in the last several days. Council is fairly entrenched on the two sides of this consideration. We have people that need an answer, Canna Cabana needs an answer, a potential leasor needs an answer, and to hold it out for a year and to still potentially come with the same entrenched positions that council may have, what is the point?”
Even the vote to hold a plebiscite was split down the middle with councillors John Funk and Kevin Stott and voting in favour and Nathan Dueck and Chris Wiebe voting against. Dyck says without the ability for council to come to a consensus on the matter and in the interest of giving all parties involved a solid answer, he decided to use his tie-breaking vote to call a plebiscite.
Dyck says council did not decide to hold a plebiscite during last fall's municipal election because they did not feel they had enough information from other levels of government.
"We went to the province and said, 'what question do we even have to ask of our residents to decide on?' and they said 'we are still waiting on answers from the federal government ourselves', and so only 8 of the 130-some municipalities in the province chose to have a plebiscite. When we were talking to our fellow municipal leaders 'what are you thinking? What are you doing?' They were like 'we all need more information'."
According to town administration, the plebiscite shouldn’t cost the town more than $5,000.
The vote will be held at the Niverville town office at 329 Bronstone Drive, only residents of Niverville will be eligible, and the result of the vote will be binding.
Dyck says if the residents of the town vote to approve recreational cannabis stores in Niverville, a cannabis retailer would still need to apply for a conditional use permit like any other business, but council could not choose to deny the request based on concerns that it could be detrimental to the health and well-being of the community.
Read more: Cannabis Store Denied Conditional Use In Niverville
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