{"id":60532,"date":"2019-09-19T10:33:45","date_gmt":"2019-09-19T14:33:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=60532"},"modified":"2024-09-01T09:55:43","modified_gmt":"2024-09-01T13:55:43","slug":"armstrong-why-better-transparency-at-the-ocs-will-help-beat-the-illegal-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2019\/09\/armstrong-why-better-transparency-at-the-ocs-will-help-beat-the-illegal-market\/","title":{"rendered":"ARMSTRONG: Why better transparency at the OCS will help beat the illegal market"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Michael Armstrong, Associate Professor of Operations Research in Brock\u2019s Goodman School of Business, wrote a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/robcannabispro\/article-why-better-transparency-at-the-ocs-will-help-beat-the-illegal-market\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">piece recently published in the Globe and Mail<\/a> about the\u00a0impact more stores would have on Canada\u2019s legal marijuana market.<\/p>\n<p>Armstrong writes:<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text\"><em>&#8220;Last Friday, almost 11 months after legalization, the Ontario Cannabis Store (OCS) released a financial report. A loss of $42-million was partly for reasons beyond its control, but compared with other provincial cannabis agencies, its performance looks underwhelming. And its large inventories imply it could support many more stores.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text\"><em>Almost one-third of the loss was owing to the provincial government\u2019s decision to let private businesses handle storefront retailing. The OCS consequently had to cancel four store leases, write-off renovations and equipment, and terminate employees. That cost the OCS some $12.6-million, not counting $1.1-million of lease payments it already had made.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text\"><em>Another problem was the agency\u2019s high cost structure. It paid $55.5-million in operating, administrative and financial expenses during 2018-19. Only $36.8-million went to buy products for resale.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text\"><em>In other words, just running the place consumed 60 per cent of its regular spending. That\u2019s a lot for a warehouse and a website.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Continue reading the full article <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/robcannabispro\/article-why-better-transparency-at-the-ocs-will-help-beat-the-illegal-market\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Michael Armstrong, Associate Professor of Operations Research in Brock\u2019s Goodman School of Business, wrote a piece recently published in the Globe and Mail about why better transparency at the OCS will help beat the illegal market.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45633,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[39,7,6],"tags":[739,2852,594,4395],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60532"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60532"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60560,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60532\/revisions\/60560"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}