Toronto city councillor Jim Karygiannis will bring a motion to city council on Thursday, pushing for councillors to have the ability to approve of marijuana dispensaries in their wards.
Karygiannis, who represents Scarborough-Agincourt, argues since municipalities have the authority under Bill 36 to approve of dispensaries, that ability should be extended to individual city wards, considering some of their sizes.
"If you've got cities like Aurora or other smaller cities north of the City of Toronto that are opting out and they've got populations of 70, 80,000 people, I've got a population of 110,000, I should also be allowed to opt out," Karygiannis said. "What's good for small cities should be good for wards in our area."
Municipal law expert John Mascarin said it's a sound legal argument.
"Karygiannis is correct that a ward councillor could possibly decide, if delegated by city council, to make a decision for his or her ward," he said.
But he cautions his attempt could easily face multiple challenges from colleagues.
"There's probably hundreds of ways they could possibly stymie it," he said. "Zoning, there could be site plan controls, there could be all sorts of things."
"The proposal is though, and this is true for most development in Toronto, that a ward councillor has a very, very big say into how development occurs in his or her ward and I think councillor Karygiannis is just extending that to, let's leave it up to the ward councillors."
Karygiannis said he's spoken to several neighbouring councillors that agree with his idea and he has a backup plan.
Should his motion be defeated, he wants to at least have dispensaries be no closer than 500 wards to schools, community centres and religious institutions.
Last year, former councillor Mary Fragedakis made a similar attempt on ward-by-ward approvals when it come to debate over AirBNB.
When asked about individuals in his ward who may want dispensaries, he pointed what's going on near his boundaries.
"Markham is opting out so my ward is just south of Markham," he said. "I'm going to have a rush of people wanting to open dispensaries, so you know what, my community doesn't want them and I'm not going to be supporting dispensaries."