How to Start a Cannabis Retail Store in Canada

The short answer

Cannabis retail in Canada is a provincial business wearing a federal frame. The federal Cannabis Act legalized it and Health Canada licenses the producers, but nobody in Ottawa issues a retail licence. Each province decides whether private stores exist at all, who regulates them, what the licence costs, what training staff need, and where the product comes from. A guide that tells you how to open a dispensary without naming the province is useless — the Ontario process and the Alberta process share almost nothing except the plant.

The provinces fall into three models. Private retail — Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Newfoundland and Labrador, Yukon, Nunavut — licenses private stores. Government-only — Quebec (SQDC), Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island — sells through the Crown and issues no private retail licence. Hybrid — British Columbia, New Brunswick, Northwest Territories — runs government and private stores side by side. If your target province is in the second group, the private-store plan ends there; the realistic paths are employment with the Crown retailer or supplying it, not opening a store.

Step 1: Pick the province and learn its model

Do this before spending money on a lease, a brand, or a business plan. The model decides the regulator, the licence, the fees, the training, and the wholesaler — every number in this guide is provincial.

The rest of this guide goes deep on the three biggest private and hybrid markets — Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia — because that is where most private-store applications land. The other private provinces follow the same shape (provincial licence, municipal approval, certified staff, provincial wholesaler) with their own fees and forms; check the regulator named in the table, not a national summary.

Step 2: Get the municipal answer before you sign a lease

Every province layers a municipal check on top of the provincial licence, and it comes first in practice even when it comes second on paper.

• Ontario: the municipality must have opted in to cannabis retail. Toronto, Hamilton, Ottawa, and London are in; not every municipality is. Check the AGCO's municipal list for your town before you look at storefronts.
• Separation rules: Ontario bars a store within 150 metres of a school property line, measured in a straight line, including vertical distance if the store is on an upper floor. Other provinces and cities set their own buffers and zoning rules — Calgary, for example, runs cannabis retail through its land-use bylaw and development permit process.
• Municipal approval is a precondition, not a formality. Alberta requires municipal approval before the AGLC issues a retail licence. A lease signed in a municipality that has opted out, or on a site that fails the separation rule, is a lease you cannot use for the business you signed it for.

Get the municipal answer in writing, then sign. The regulator will check the premises anyway; the municipality is the check that kills deals early and cheaply.

Step 3: Apply for the provincial retail licence

Ontario: three licences, one operator

Ontario splits the permission into three pieces, all through the AGCO's iAGCO portal:

1. Retail Operator Licence (ROL) — who you are. The application tests the operator and every key individual: ownership structure with a schematic diagram for multi-level companies, shareholder details, financial statements, tax returns and assessments, and a tax compliance verification code showing the business is in good standing with the Ontario Ministry of Finance. Background checks run on directors, officers, shareholders, and key employees. A licensed producer that owns more than 25 percent of the operator's corporation creates an eligibility problem — the rules keep producers and retailers at arm's length.
2. Retail Store Authorization (RSA) — where you sell. One per store. It needs the business name registration, proof of ownership or tenancy, and the operator licence number or application number. After the 15-day public notice (see Step 4) and a pre-authorization inspection, the RSA issues for the specific premises.
3. Retail Manager Licence (RML) — who runs the store. At least one person per store must hold it, with personal history, tax return and assessment, and the operator's name and store address on file.

Published AGCO fees, two-year terms unless noted: ROL $6,000 to apply and $2,000 to renew; RSA $4,000 to apply and $3,500 to renew; RML $750 to apply, $500 to renew for two years or $1,000 for four. All fees are non-refundable — a refused or withdrawn application does not get its money back. Confirm the schedule on agco.ca at application time; published figures in guides and law-firm summaries lag behind the regulator's page.

Alberta: one licence, deep due diligence

Alberta issues a single retail cannabis licence through the AGLC, and the work is in the due diligence. The corporate applicant files an Applicant Disclosure Form; any investor with 10 percent or more files an Associated Applicant Disclosure Form; and the AGLC's Due Diligence Unit investigates the people who control day-to-day operations, make decisions, or hire and fire — interviews, financial and non-financial analysis, credit, litigation, and bankruptcy searches, and liaison with law enforcement where warranted. Published costs are a $400 application fee, a $1,200 annual licence fee — the AGLC fee schedule raised it from $700 effective June 1, 2026 — and a separate $3,000 due diligence deposit. Processing generally runs two to four months, first come first served, and municipal approval must be in hand before the licence issues. Product comes exclusively from the AGLC.

British Columbia: one licence, inspection before opening

BC's private retail licence comes from the Liquor and Cannabis Regulation Branch (LCRB). The application fee is $7,500, covering security screening and financial-integrity checks, plus a $1,500 first-year licence fee; the annual renewal is $1,500. The process runs in stages: application and screening, approval in principle, then build-out to the approved floor plan and security layout — audible intruder and fire alarms, locked display cases and storage room, secure perimeter locks, and cameras covering the sales area, storage, and every entrance inside and out. The LCRB inspects before the licence issues, with no cannabis product in the store during the inspection. All product comes through the Liquor Distribution Branch, either from the BC Cannabis Wholesale warehouse or the Direct Delivery Program. BC also offers a Producer Retail Store licence for licensed producers selling on their own production site. The LCRB caps a licensee at eight cannabis retail store licences, so a chain plan has a hard ceiling.

Step 4: Clear the public-notice and inspection steps

Ontario's 15-day public notice is the step most applicants underestimate. Once you have possession of the store, the AGCO sends a placard that must be posted on the storefront for the full 15 days, giving the community a window to raise concerns about the location. Plan the lease and build-out around it: the notice runs on the real storefront, not a rendering, and the inspection follows. Stores on a First Nations reserve skip the public notice, and reserve applications are exempt from AGCO fees, supported by a band council resolution approving the location.

BC's equivalent gate is the pre-opening inspection described above — floor plan against application, address confirmed, signage checked, terms and conditions reviewed. Alberta's gate is municipal approval plus due diligence clearance. In all three provinces, the inspection checks the same underlying standards: secure storage, age-gated entry, and a layout where product is never accessible to the public except through a sale.

Step 5: Certify every person who will sell

Staff certification is a licence condition, not a hiring preference, and it is provincial:

• Ontario: an AGCO Board-approved training program — CannSell Standard or CTC 1 — for everyone who sells, completed before the first day of work, plus a licensed retail manager per store.
• Alberta: SellSafe for every employee, including security staff and managers, completed within 30 days of the employment start date — the pre-shift rule and the separate Qualified Cannabis Worker requirement both ended July 2, 2025.
• British Columbia: Selling It Right for the licensee and for every worker who sells or supervises the sale of non-medical cannabis.

A certificate from one province does not transfer to another. Budget the training time into the hiring plan — a store cannot open short-staffed on certified sellers, and an uncertified person working a shift is a compliance violation on day one.

Step 6: Set up supply, sales, and records before opening day

Three systems must be live before the first customer:

1. Wholesale account. Register with the provincial wholesaler — OCS in Ontario, AGLC in Alberta, LDB in British Columbia — and confirm ordering, delivery, and payment terms. Inventory arrives only through this channel.
2. Point of sale and inventory records. The regulator expects sales, returns, destruction, loss, and recall records on demand. Alberta licensees report these to the AGLC as a matter of course. The point-of-sale system must enforce age verification and the store's trading hours — 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. in Ontario — and must not sell to a minor or an intoxicated person.
3. Online sales, if any, through your own channel only. Ontario private retailers may sell online for delivery within Ontario under AGCO rules. Alberta allows online sales with an endorsement, with licence numbers, premises names and addresses, and AGLC social responsibility material on the website homepage. No province lets a retailer process orders placed through a third-party website or app it does not operate, and no retailer's online sales cross a provincial border.

The money picture, without invented numbers

The licence fees in this guide are the smallest line in the budget and the only line with published figures. The real costs are the lease and build-out to the regulator's security and layout standards, the opening inventory bought through the wholesaler, certified staffing, insurance, and the point-of-sale and inventory systems. Guides that quote a single startup total for a cannabis store are quoting someone's city, someone's lease, and someone's build-out — none of which is yours. Price your own: get the lease quote for a compliant site, the security contractor's quote for the regulator's layout, and the wholesaler's opening-order terms, and add the licence fees from the regulator's current schedule. If a landlord will not put cannabis retail use in the lease in writing, that site is not a site.

What not to do

• Do not open, advertise, or take deposits before the licence issues. Pre-licence promotion that names a location or an opening date creates a record the regulator and the municipality can both read.
• Do not buy product from anyone but the provincial wholesaler, and do not accept product from a licensed producer directly — the single exception is Saskatchewan, the one province with private wholesale.
• Do not let an uncertified person work a sales shift, and do not let the manager licence lapse — both are compliance violations, not paperwork delays.
• Do not assume a licence in one province works in another, and do not assume a US dispensary model transfers. The US has no federal legalization and no provincial wholesaler; Canada's system is the opposite shape.
• Do not promise a customer, a landlord, or an investor an opening date until the licence, the inspection, and the wholesale account are all in hand. The application timelines in this guide are typical, not guaranteed, and a public-notice objection or a due diligence question moves the date.

Related guides

• How to Start a Retail Store Business in Canada — the general retail setup this guide builds on: structure, registration, leases, and hiring without the cannabis licence layer.
• How to Start a Brewery Business in Canada — another provincially regulated retail-adjacent business, where the licence, not the product, is the hard part.

Sources

• AGCO, Apply for a retail operator licence — Retail Operator Licence $6,000 new, $2,000 renewal for two years, $4,000 for four; fees non-refundable if the application is withdrawn or refused; stores on a First Nations reserve are exempt from application fees; every employee must complete an AGCO Board-approved training program before the first day of work.
• AGCO, Retail Store Authorization — written submissions on a proposed store must arrive within 15 calendar days of the notice being posted; a store less than 150 metres from a school is not in the public interest.
• AGCO, Cannabis Licensing and Application Process — every store undergoes a 15-day public notice process (not required for stores on First Nations reserves); the 150-metre school distance is measured in a straight line from the closest point of the school property; the store must be in a municipality that permits cannabis retail.
• AGCO, Operating a Store — stores may open only between 7:00 a.m. and 11:00 p.m.; staff must request identification from anyone who looks under 25 and be satisfied the person is at least 19; sell only cannabis from a federally licensed producer sold through the OCS.
• AGCO, Educational requirements — the AGCO Board has approved two cannabis retail employee training programs: CannSell ($69.99 plus HST) and CTC 1: Cannabis Retail Certification Program ($64.99 plus HST); both take about four hours online and require at least 80% on the final exam.
• AGLC, Fee Schedule — application for a cannabis store licence $400; cannabis store licence $1,200; schedule effective June 1, 2026, amended May 25, 2026. (The $700 annual figure in older summaries is the pre-June-2026 fee.)
• AGLC, Retail Cannabis Store Licence application package — $3,000 due diligence deposit; Applicant Disclosure Form plus Associated Applicant Disclosure Form for investors with 10 percent or more; due diligence includes interviews, financial analysis, and background checks.
• AGLC, SellSafe Cannabis Staff Training — as of July 2, 2025, applicants are no longer required to be certified as a Qualified Cannabis Worker; new employees must be SellSafe-certified within 30 days of their employment start date; certification expires five years from completion; $25 plus GST; 80% to pass.
• AGLC, Requirements for retail staff — SellSafe is required for premises owners, managers, supervisors, retailers, cashiers, and security staff; a person in a supervisory capacity must pass a criminal records check.
• AGLC, Retail Cannabis Store Handbook — online sales need an endorsement from AGLC (s. 4.14); an endorsed licensee's homepage must prominently display all licence numbers, licensed premises names and physical addresses, and mandatory AGLC social responsibility material.
• Government of British Columbia, Apply for a Cannabis Retail Store licence — application fee $7,500, first-year licensing fee $1,500, annual renewal $1,500; a licensee can hold or have an interest in at most eight cannabis retail store licences; the local government or Indigenous Nation must recommend the licence; the LCRB inspects before opening with no cannabis product in the store; all cannabis must be purchased from the Liquor Distribution Branch; Selling It Right certification is mandatory for the licensee and selling workers; monthly sales reports go to the LCRB.
• Ontario Cannabis Store, Legal Cannabis in Ontario: Who Does What? — the OCS is the sole wholesaler to more than 1,600 privately owned retail cannabis stores in Ontario and the province's online retailer; Health Canada licenses producers; the AGCO licenses and regulates the retailers.
• LegalClarity, Where Is Weed Legal in Canada? Laws by Province — minimum age 18 in Alberta, 19 in most provinces and territories, 21 in Quebec; Quebec (SQDC), Nova Scotia (NSLC), and Prince Edward Island run government-only retail; Ontario's OCS is both the sole online retailer and the wholesaler for private stores.
• Certicraft, A Coast-to-Coast Tour of Cannabis Distribution Differences — Saskatchewan has no provincial distributor and fully private wholesale; Manitoba's provincial distributor is Manitoba Liquor & Lotteries; Ontario's distributor is the OCS.