Ontario’s cannabis crown corporation loses $42M last fiscal year

Ontario’s government lost $42 million selling cannabis in its last fiscal year, according to provincial public accounts released on Friday. The losses come despite the Ontario Cannabis Retail Corporation, a crown corporation that operates the Ontario Cannabis Store’s online retail business and sells wholesale cannabis to the province’s private retail stores, generating $64 million in the fiscal 2018-2019 year. An OCS spokesperson said the agency wasn’t able to book wholesale revenue from selling into the first wave of physical retail stores in the latest fiscal year, which hurt the crown corporation’s bottom line. Meanwhile, the Ontario government said Friday it generated $19 million in revenue from cannabis excise taxes in its last fiscal year, falling well short of the $35-million estimate presented in the most recent provincial budget.

Canopy Growth’s IP-focused deal for Ebbu highlights difficulty of filing patents for cannabis-related products

– Read the entire article at BNN Bloomberg.