A city businessperson who didn’t win the provincial lottery to apply to open a cannabis store in Thunder Bay is upset.
Darren Gravelle of Rainbow on May doesn’t believe the process was done in a “reasonable fashion.”
He thinks it was “ridiculous” and believes “the thousands of people that did file for an application properly would agree…110 per cent.”
Gravelle says the provincial government put “a lot of people through a lot of hoops” the first time around only the trash the whole process in favour of a $75 application fee.
The store manager admits he spent lots of money on legal fees for the first round preparing to apply for a store licence only to be told it was for nothing.
He notes the winners of the current lottery still have to come up with a $50,000 line of credit which he says the banks won’t provide because they don’t want to associate with the cannabis industry just yet, “on any level.”