The Yukon government is hopeful it will be able to partially exit the cannabis selling game by shutting down its Marwell store around the fall, once it sees private retailers up and running.

John Streicker, the minister responsible for the Yukon Liquor Corp. (YLC), told reporters Monday afternoon that the fall date is still applicable. However, there have not been any specific criteria set at this stage to determine when exactly would be the best time to bow out.

“What I’ve always said is once there is the establishment of private retailers, once it’s established, then we will get out of the business,” Streicker said.

“So it’s not like OK, one store is opened up one day, and we’re closing down.”

The government reiterated its intention to get out of the business of doing business as soon as possible once private retailers are up and running.

A quasi-judicial cannabis licensing board made up of five members has now been set up to issue, refuse, cancel or suspend licenses for up to three years.

It’s at arm’s-length from the minister and has the power to hold hearings and such. So, the decision of when exactly private retailers could be granted a licence and open their doors to customers does not lie in the minister’s hands.

(As detailed in the Star in January, at least one retailer is hoping to set up shop in downtown Whitehorse by 420, an international day celebrating cannabis, marked on April 20).

While that decision lays with the board and depends on the timeline as the City of Whitehorse works its way through a bylaw process around cannabis, the minister felt good about the long-term goal.

“I’m feeling pretty confident, especially now that there are more applicants in, that we’ll get there,” Streicker said, referencing the at-least three applications to the board that he knows about.

At least one of those three is from outside Whitehorse, he said.

That’s a hopeful sign, given that the intention to keep the YLC’s online store (cannabisyukon.org) active until further notice was in anticipation that there may not be immediate interest for private retailers to set up shop in communities.

“We don’t want to be in the business and we set it up so that we could get out of it, that’s the whole point,” Streicker added.

Earlier this year, when YLC and Justice department officials briefed reporters on models for cannabis sellers, they said there would be no job losses once the physical site would close.

That’s because YG was aware the 120B Industrial Rd. site “would be a transitional offering, so we used temporary assignments” with hires being limited to a year, said Matt King, then the president of the YLC.

Streicker added then that furnishings in the store, for example, were also made modular to allow for flexibility.

The physical site itself, currently being repurposed from an existing lease to another department, will see its lease expire in December as well.

If all goes well, the store will no longer be selling cannabis before that date, Streicker said Monday.

“It’s not about dollars figures, it’s about whether there is access to cannabis in the territory.

“So once there is legal access through a private retail market, and it’s established, that’s enough – we don’t need to be running a store as well.”

The minister was prompted by questions in the House earlier on Monday by Yukon NDP Leader Liz Hanson. She reminded the government one of its goals was to displace the black market.

Streicker responded on the floor that quantifying the exact size of that market can be difficult because of the very nature of the activity, but estimates do paint a picture.

“The challenge of the illicit market, of course, is that it is illicit and it has always been very difficult — the numbers that we had leading up to the legalization of cannabis were estimates; the numbers that we have now are estimates,” he said.

Speaking later to reporters, the minister said the long-term goal of stepping aside and closing the store depends more on how things flow with private retailers than measures of the black market.

“What I’m saying for our threshold about when we wish to get out of the business of doing business is based on there being availability, legal availability, for cannabis here in the Yukon,” he said.

“So that’s what we’re using, not some criteria about how much of the black market have we displaced – it’s about whether Yukoners have access to cannabis.”

According to a YLC webpage, there are eight suppliers from which it gets its products: Tilray/High Park, Canopy Growth/Tweed, Broken Coast, Whistler Cannabis Company, Aphria, Aurora, Canna Farms and Zenabis.

As for the black market, Streicker is hopeful that legal sales meant a displacement of at least some illicit activity.

“We’ve sold $2 million worth of product so far in the territory, and that had to come at the cost of the black market,” he said.

“It’s clear that the black market has dropped its prices but that also hurts their profit margin, so they’re not in a good place.”

A number of other measures allowed by the feds, including allowing up to four plants per household to be grown for personal use, can go a long way in these efforts, but also make it difficult to measure just how much illicit activity there still is.

Streicker added that the Yukon is now stocking around three-quarters (75 per cent) of the products it had hoped for, via its eight suppliers – another hopeful sign as other jurisdictions may be a bit behind the eight ball.

Ontario, for example, is gearing up to welcome its first batch of licensed cannabis stores this month – before that, the only way people could legally get their hands on recreational cannabis was via the government-run website (whereas here in the Yukon, options were the Marwell store and online).

“We’re doing really well as a jurisdiction, we’re further ahead than many,” the minister said, before cautioning for patience to see results around the illicit market.

“Do I think that it’s going to happen overnight, that we’re going to displace the black market? No, it’s going to take a long time and we’re working hard to do it.

“After five months, do we have a brand new study that tells us how much has been displaced? No, what we have is sales that show us that that much has not gone into the black market so far,” he added.

The territory brought in more than $216,000 within the first week of sales and just shy of $1 million during the first two months of legalization, which officially hit Canada last Oct. 17.