Pot products often out of stock in Ontario because of inaccurate forecasting: report

TORONTO — Ontario’s auditor general says some cannabis products are often out of stock because the province’s pot retailer is inaccurately forecasting inventory levels.

In her annual report released today, Bonnie Lysyk says her office compared six months of the Ontario Cannabis Retail Corporation’s inventory forecasts against actual demand and found the corporation’s predictions were off by wide margins.

In some instances where the forecast fell short of orders this year, there was a 145 per cent difference.

In instances where the forecast was higher than orders, the difference was about 40 per cent.

The corporation blamed the inaccurate forecasting on restrictions the province placed on in-store shopping during the COVID-19 pandemic, but Lysyk found the corporation never completed a formal analysis to confirm this claim or quantify the difference between forecasts and orders.

She also found the corporation has not provided clarity to pot producers around how products in the Ontario Cannabis Store are chosen for sale or how their prices are set.