CALEB NICKERSON
PONTIAC Oct. 17, 2018
Officials are hoping for a united front when it comes to local bylaws for recreational cannabis consumption following legalization on Oct. 17. Several municipalities across Quebec have already passed bylaws placing additional restrictions on where cannabis can be smoked and sold within their territory.
The Equity contacted several mayors prior to their monthly MRC meeting, which coincidentally falls on the same date as legalization.
Allumettes Island Mayor Winston Sunstrum said that there hadn’t been much discussion about the subject at his council, and said they would likely stick to the provincial guidelines.
Shawville Mayor Sandra Murray said that her council had discussed it informally and added that any bylaws passed on the issue should be MRC-wide, to make things easier for local police.
“When I was at the FQM convention in Montreal a couple of weeks ago, there was a session on that,” Murray said. “Each municipality could create their own law but it would be hard for the police to enforce.”
Mansfield Mayor Gilles Dionne said that one of his councillors had also attended the FQM conference, and his council was in favour of a ban on smoking cannabis in public, similar to the rules with alcohol.
“You’re not allowed to walk with a beer in your hands in the street, so it would be pretty much the same laws,” he said. “Not in public, that’s what we’d like to see. But we’ll see what comes out regionally.”
Murray echoed Dionne’s views.
“My suggestion, is [to treat it] the same as alcohol. You can’t drink it in public places, can’t drink on streets and parks,” she said. “If you made it the same as smoking, you’d have people smoking on the sidewalk and some people wouldn’t like that. I don’t know what the MRC’s going to come up with, but that’s going to be my suggestion, same as the alcohol rules.”
Though the Société québécoise du cannabis (SQDC) has yet to announce any brick and mortar stores in the Outaouais, let alone the Pontiac, they plan to open around 150 locations over the next few years.
Local officials were hesitant to say whether they would be open to a retail outlet in their municipality.
“I’m not sure,” Murray said. “I’d have to weigh the pros and cons of it.”
“We wouldn’t be against it,” Dionne said. “The law is out and we have to work around that.”
This month’s public MRC meeting starts at 6:30 p.m. on Oct. 17 in the Elsie Gibbons room at the MRC offices in Campbell’s Bay.
