Will HIP investment hurt ISH in Ontario? https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-cannabis-store-retailers-hearings-1.4860298
Aurora Cannabis has three pot production facilities in Ontario and will provide recreational supply to the Ontario Cannabis Store. The company also owns 25 per cent of Alcanna, one of North America's largest alcohol retailers, now about to become a cannabis retailer: Alcanna owns five pot shops granted interim licences in Alberta as legalization begins.
They fear that Alcanna will be shut out of Ontario by the proposal to limit licensed marijuana producers and their affiliates to just one pot shop at the producer's facility.
"Creating a retail system designed exclusively for small independent operators risks being a recipe for failure in the face of what we expect to be fierce competition from organized crime in the black market," Alcanna's senior vice president David Crapper told the committee hearing this week.
"We are concerned that an overly narrow definition of 'affiliate' will eliminate several innovative and forward-looking retail partnerships from the Ontario market, including the one that exists between Aurora and Alcanna," said Andrea Paine, Aurora's national director of government relations.