There is no municipal business licence for a shop that opened in downtown Chatham recently selling magic mushrooms.
Fun Guyz, an operation with stores in other Ontario locations, such as Toronto, London and Windsor, did not file for a business licence with the Municipality of Chatham-Kent.
In fact, municipal officials said the store didn’t need to.
“The municipality only licenses certain types of businesses (restaurants, tobacco shops, etc.),” officials told The Chatham Voice. “They (Fun Guyz) may have a provincial license, but we’re not privy to that information.”
Municipal-level licences are required for such sectors as food and beverage, overnight accommodation, adult entertainment, payday loans, retirement homes, and salvage yards. Generally, the only retail outlets that have to register a business licence with C-K are places that sell tobacco or vaping products.
According to information gleaned from the municipal website, “The main goal of a municipal business licence is to protect the health and safety of the public who use the service.”
The grey area, however, is that magic mushrooms are illegal in Canada. Municipalities don’t issue business licences or have departments, other than the police service, available to regulate such activity.
As such, Chatham-Kent police raided Fun Guyz twice earlier this month, confiscating an estimated $32,000 in product.
While police were raiding the shop, the Fun Guyz were advertising for a retail sales person on the municipal website.
For several days, the position appeared on a Google search related to “Fun Guyz” and “Chatham-Kent.”
Municipal officials worked to pull down the posting as of May 7, according to Jodi Guilmette, general manager for health and human resources.
While a Google search no longer produced the job posting, a refreshing of the initial web address The Voice had obtained lingered into last week.
This prompted municipal IT officials to scour their systems and make changes.
As for why it went up on the municipal site in the first place, Guilmette said individuals and employers can post jobs automatically, and at the time of the initial posting, the shop had yet to put any of its product on display for sale.
