{"id":89509,"date":"2023-11-28T15:25:19","date_gmt":"2023-11-28T20:25:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=89509"},"modified":"2024-09-01T09:54:27","modified_gmt":"2024-09-01T13:54:27","slug":"opinion-michael-armstrong-discusses-decisions-around-cannabis-profits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2023\/11\/opinion-michael-armstrong-discusses-decisions-around-cannabis-profits\/","title":{"rendered":"OPINION: Michael Armstrong discusses decisions around cannabis profits"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Brock University Associate Professor of Operations Research Michael Armstrong wrote a piece recently published in <em><a href=\"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/magazines\/november-2023\/ontario-cannabis-revenues\/\">Policy Options<\/a><\/em>\u00a0about the need for the Ontario government to either put profits from legalized cannabis sales to work or stop taking them from struggling cannabis firms.<\/p>\n<p>He writes:<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cThe Ontario Cannabis Store (OCS) is now the most lucrative provincial cannabis agency in Canada, thanks to four consecutive profitable years selling recreational cannabis. Yet throughout that time, it puzzlingly paid no dividends to Ontario\u2019s government.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>OCS\u00a0ended the last fiscal year\u00a0with $459 million of accumulated profit in the bank. That makes no sense. The province should either spend the money on public services or stop extracting it from the industry\u2019s pockets.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The strangeness of this situation has become increasingly apparent as finance ministers and government agencies across the country have\u00a0slowly released\u00a0their 2022-23 financial results. Quebec\u2019s cannabis agency\u00a0published its annual report\u00a0on June 5, for example, but\u00a0Prince Edward Island didn\u2019t post\u00a0its statements until Nov. 6.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Taxes<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Let\u2019s start by talking about taxes. With cannabis, governments collect excise taxes from producers and sales taxes from retailers.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>For example, the federal government\u2019s share of\u00a0excise taxes\u00a0and estimated sales tax from\u00a0cannabis sales\u00a0across the country totaled $455 million during 2022-23. That equates to about $11.50 per capita or eight per cent of every dollar that Canadians spent on recreational cannabis.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>But the top tax collector in total dollar terms was Ontario. It hauled in\u00a0$310 million\u00a0in excise tax and an estimated $148 million of sales tax that fiscal year, for a total of $458 million. That\u2019s roughly $29.80 per Ontario resident or 22 per cent of consumers\u2019 spending.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Continue reading the full article on the <em><a href=\"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/magazines\/november-2023\/ontario-cannabis-revenues\/\">Policy Options website<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Brock University Associate Professor of Operations Research Michael Armstrong wrote a piece recently published in Policy Options\u00a0about the need for the Ontario government to either put profits from legalized cannabis sales to work or stop taking them from struggling cannabis firms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":64949,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[39,7,6],"tags":[594,4395,8817],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89509"}],"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=89509"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89514,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89509\/revisions\/89514"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}