I certainly could. There are a number of practical difficulties with a government monopoly coupled with a federal jurisdiction over production.
Let's take a simple example. Presumably the Government of Ontario is seeking to exert its purchasing power to try to negotiate lower per gram costs of purchasing cannabis from the federally licensed producers. If those federally licensed producers, all of whom currently have direct-to-retail distribution systems in place, are not satisfied with Ontario's offer to purchase the cannabis, they may well just decline to sell to them, in which case consumers in Ontario essentially would have no access to cannabis through Ontario's government monopoly model.
Certainly, if I were running as a licensed producer and Ontario tried to come in and suggest to me that I should sell to them for $3 or $4 a gram while I'm selling direct to consumer in other provinces for $8 to $12 a gram, why would I sell to Ontario? Then you would have a situation in which residents of Ontario either don't have access or have to go through the artificial step of obtaining a doctor's prescription so that they can then access the medical cannabis model, which would give them direct access to the licensed producers. That's one small problem among many.
Another problem is that there's already a very vibrant distribution system operating in the grey market in Ontario. There are probably somewhere in the neighbourhood of 100 to 200 private dispensaries selling cannabis to consumers in Ontario right now. These entities are not just going to disappear, and if you don't transition the black market into the lawful market, then you're setting up a system of competition. The only way to shut down the competition is through the use of, likely, draconian police state tactics. Prohibition hasn't stopped any of these people from doing what they're doing. In fact, prohibition has led directly to the situation we find ourselves in here now, so there's just no practical way.
Here's what I think the fundamental misconception is. I think a lot of people think that legalizing cannabis is the creation of an industry. It's not the creation of an industry. The industry exists. It's vibrant. It's massive. There are literally thousands and thousands of people engaged in working in this industry in every province in this country. There are millions of different products out there. There are very sophisticated businesses working in this sector right now, so we're not creating an industry.
The best we can hope for is to compete with the existing industry. The best way to do that, as I say, is to transition into the legal marketplace those people who already have the expertise and who are already doing the job and doing it quite well and quite successfully. Anything else is likely doomed to failure.