Imagine you’re about to board a plane when you get a phone call saying your business application can’t be processed, even though you followed all the rules.
That’s what Weeds Glass and Gifts owner Don Briere said happened to him last week while he was about to fly to Toronto.
“It’s incompetence at its best and deliberate interference at its worst,” Briere told Cannabis in Canada.
Briere said he went to the Vancouver police station to file a Police Information Check (PIC), as required by the City of Vancouver‘s licence application process for medical marijuana-related businesses, but was told by a clerk he needed to file it in New Westminster.
“It said in the letter from the city that I was supposed to get it done in Vancouver, so I was surprised when I was told I had to go to New West,” Briere said.
But he did what he was told and thought everything was settled, until getting that phone call.
“I couldn’t cancel at that point as I had to keep my schedule,” said Briere. “But once I got to Ontario I had to make an unexpected flight back to Vancouver to make the deadline, and all of this costs me time and money.”
The process for permits and licences for medical marijuana-related businesses is listed on the City of Vancouver website.
“A PIC is required for the owner, and each employee of a medical marijuana-related business. The business applicant must apply for a PIC with Vancouver Police, while staff must apply to the police department in his or her city of residence,” the document explains.
When asked about this incident, the Vancouver Police Department said there may have been confusion if the applicant “did not make it clear he was an owner and not an employee.”