Dankr.ca – Your Toronto Connection
Article by The Canadian Press via CBC News
It’s not just coffee chains and restaurants under pressure from Ontario’s minimum wage hike — marijuana companies say the higher provincial pay rate is driving up the cost to produce and sell cannabis products as well.
Aphria Inc. said if the new $14 per hour minimum wage had been in place during its latest quarter, this would have raised its all-in costs to sell dried cannabis by 12 cents, or nearly six per cent, from $2.13.
The Leamington, Ont.-based cannabis producer adds in recent financial documents that the mandatory 21 per cent pay hike from $11.60, which took effect Jan. 1, will add another $600,000 to its overall wage costs each year.
When the provincial minimum wage goes up to $15 in 2019, Aphria said it expects overall company wages to go up by another $300,000 per year.
Newstrike Resources’ chief financial officer Kevin Epp said the southern Ontario-based pot producer anticipates its all-in costs to sell cannabis will rise by roughly 10 cents per gram due to the provincial wage hike.
