Who controls what’s left? One street, five cannabis stores
A stock exchange, a bankruptcy auction, and a lottery survivor — one street, five stores, and a regulator on record.
One street in Stittsville, Ontario has five cannabis stores. We read the ownership papers on all of them, out loud, on camera — and the answers are a map of what Canadian cannabis retail became.
The Stittsville Files found: a publicly traded giant (Canna Cabana is High Tide Inc., Calgary, the biggest cannabis retail chain in Canada); a folksy local name ("Pops") sitting on top of a $36-million bankruptcy auction and a Toronto multi-banner group; and a licence-lottery survivor — one of just 25 winners for the whole province in 2019 — still standing with his own name on the building. Every store on the street was contacted before air. The provincial regulator answered: the AGCO, on record — investigation continuing.
The film also airs the number the industry doesn't say out loud: budtender turnover at 56% in year one — more than double regular Canadian retail — in one of retail's easiest jobs, during a $517.8M record month for legal sales. Who owns the counter changes what's on your shelf, what it costs, and how much time the person behind it has for you. That's why we read the paperwork. So you don't have to.
News, not promotion. Nothing here is for sale, and nobody funds the verdict. 19+ (18+ AB, 21+ QC). Educational journalism under s.16 of the Cannabis Act.