Manitoba and Quebec Announced Cannabis Retailers and Suppliers

Last week, the province of Manitoba announced four private consortiums and companies to retail marijuana in the province. The four consortiums and companies are:

• the consortium of Canopy Growth (WEED) and Delta 9 Cannabis
• an entity registered as 10552763 Canada Corporation
• Tokyo Smoke in partnership with BOBHQ
• National Access Cannabis

Tokyo Smoke is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hiku Brands, which had a 4.7% weight in the newly launched Emerging Marijuana Growers Index ETF (HMJR) as we discussed in the earlier part of this series.

Unlike the province of Ontario, Manitoba has chosen to let private players retail cannabis. In Ontario, the government has proposed to sell recreational cannabis in stores and online through the Ontario Cannabis Retail Corporation, a subsidiary of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, which is a government enterprise and currently retails and distributes alcoholic beverages in the province.

Quebec has also followed Ontario’s lead by making cannabis (HMLSF) available through the government-owned SAQ (Société des alcools du Québec). Last week, six companies announced that they have signed a letter of intent with the SAQ to provide cannabis for the province’s retail and online sales platforms. These six companies include Hydropothecary (HYYDF), Canopy Growth, Aurora Cannabis (ACB), MedReleaf (LEAF), TilRay, and Aphria (APHQF).

As we inch closer to the legalization of recreational marijuana in Canada, Sun Life Financial will add coverage for medical cannabis for the company’s group benefit plans, which would enable coverage for medical marijuana to qualifying patients who currently pay out of pocket for these drugs.

In the next article, we’ll look at last week’s developments in the US.