Hot potato, pot potato at city council

By Medicine Hat News Opinon on October 4, 2018.

On the issue of setting local cannabis-use rules, city council appears to be playing its get-out-of-jail-free card.

This week city council halted a proposed set of rules to restrict public cannabis use, and began the process of developing new, more stringent ones just 16 days before marijuana is legalized.

Council members say they are responding to community concerns that have become increasingly loud.

They also want the Alberta government, which in April announced minimum rules that cities could increase, to step in and mandate stiffer, blanket restrictions across the province.

It’s hard not to believe, however, that all this includes some notion of kicking this can a little further down the street.

Some sympathy here: Pot legalization is a complex, vexing problem. It’s something most provincial and local governments would probably rather not have to deal with. They didn’t ask for it, and nobody knows what Oct. 18 looks like.

And it’s difficult to figure out public sentiment.

A city survey on cannabis use last winter garnered the highest amount of feedback ever in local public engagements.

Yet, not a single person raised an official concern at hearings when the rules were laid down for where cannabis retailers could locate.

The official record is similarly blank after the basics of a proposed public-use bylaw was discussed in August. It was widely reported then, but only now being panned in direct calls and emails to council members by increasingly concerned citizens.

That bylaw would have treated smoking cannabis similar to cigarettes, but increased distances from doorways and added some strictly prohibited areas.

The new verve is to deal with it more like alcohol, which generally can’t be drank in public.

But, in the absence of a local bylaw, the provincial standards, based on tobacco legislation, will be the default.

To review, Hatters wanted stronger regulations than were being proposed, yet, because the bylaw was killed, will have weaker ones until some unspecified future date.

Similarly, the previous consensus was that stronger rules are better at first because it’s easier to relax standards than increase them. The new road map here is to have minimal rules on Oct. 17, then very stringent rules later.

Councillors also say the city needs stronger regulations than the provincial ones, but those standards are strong enough to protect the public.

Some local legislators go as far as to say the province has provided no rules or guidance, yet reassure citizens the provincial rules that don’t exist, in fact, do exist and are sufficient.

What exactly is to be made of all this?

One translation would suggest local councillors want the province to lay down stronger provincial rules because they don’t want to deal with this.

Who would blame them?

They didn’t legalize pot, or ask for citizens to take out their frustrations with Ottawa on them.

And why would they want to take ownership of an issue that will make a lot of people unhappy no matter what?

But is the answer here to have the province sweep in and take the issue off their plate?

If so, it’s a strange request in an age when greater local decision-making power for local government is a standard request.

As well, we don’t hear similar problems from other centres in Alberta which have all had the same option to boost local laws based on community standards.

Certainly they’ve grappled with the issue, and Alberta cities are united in lobbying the province to enact liquor-type rules for pot.

But Medicine Hat alone seems to be unable to legislate the issue in the meantime.

Local-level politicians have long had a valid gripe that higher levels of government download responsibility to municipalities and very little of the revenue.

It shouldn’t be habit, however to blame the provincial government whenever Medicine Hat city council can’t find a local solution to a local problem.