The Aurora Sun facility in Medicine Hat - Photo by Colton McKee

By Hayley Ferguson

AURORA SUN

Mayor feels “much better” about the future of Aurora Cannabis facility after meeting

Nov 18, 2019 | 9:18 PM

Medicine Hat, AB – Before their regular meeting on Monday night, Medicine Hat City Council met with Aurora Cannabis executives in a closed-door session.

A meeting that Mayor Ted Clugston said had been scheduled months before major announcements were made last week, affecting Aurora’s facility in Medicine Hat.

“I think we had a very, very productive meeting with them today. I want to reiterate and tell you that this was planned at least two to three months ago. Now it’s become very topical,” said Clugston.

Last Thursday, Aurora released its financial report for the first quarter of 2020.

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With lower than expected revenues, the Edmonton based company announced that construction on Aurora Sun, their Medicine Hat facility, would be deferred “for the foreseeable future.”

“I think they were going at a very, very high speed and working lots of overtime. And I think they are basically scaling back,” said Clugston. “It maybe came across that they were shutting right down, no construction, and you wouldn’t see anybody on site. That’s kind of how I visualized it. But that’s not the truth.”

Clugston says that after the meeting with the Aurora team, he feels “much better” about the future of the facility and the jobs that were promised to come along with it.

“Everybody was going ‘wow they choose us over everybody else.’ The 400 jobs, then the 500 jobs, then I think I’m allowed to say they still intend to hire about 750 people when they fully commission the building. That’s still a massive number of people,” he said.

He also added that the two groups also spoke about using Bill 7, which would allow the city to give Aurora property tax breaks.

Last Wednesday, it was announced that cannabis would no longer be part of agricultural tax exemptions.

While Clugston says that the announcement and Aurora slowing construction is a coincidence, the city may be willing to help

“We could use the Bill 7 option, for new industry to help and get them off the ground perhaps. But that’s in the very, very early stages. I’m not even saying we’re doing that,” he continued. “They haven’t officially requested one yet. But they are very, very well aware of it.”