The CEO of Canada’s largest licensed cannabis producer is pleased to hear that Ontario is delaying its rollout date for cannabis retail locations.

“I hope the camera picks up that I’m smiling,” Canopy Growth chief executive Bruce Linton told BNN Bloomberg in an interview minutes after the province’s announcement was made.

The Ontario government announced Monday that cannabis sales would start exclusively online on the planned Oct. 17 legalization date, with physical stores to open in the province beginning on Apr. 1, 2019. The announcement marked a reversal from plans announced by Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government last September to put cannabis sales under the umbrella of the province’s liquor control board.

Linton says his company’s experience with setting up retail locations puts it in good stead to be one of Ontario’s go-to providers.

“We’re in four places in Ontario. We have done, I think, a great job with the [Ontario Cannabis Store] to actually get them to understand our capabilities and [stock keeping units], so when you go online, I bet the store carries quite a good selection of [our products].”

Ontario’s decision to delay the opening of bricks and mortar stores until after the planned legalization date will allow the province to raise its readiness for the retail roll-out, he said.

“I bet if you’re a politician you say ‘by April 1, 2019,’ so you can show how quickly you transacted a new system. If we get given an order to put in a store today, about 45 days later we [would] have the store installed, because we’re not creating software to run it, we’re not creating security systems… We have all that.”

Linton also believes that by waiting to set up retail locations, Ontario will roll out stores just as the "exciting" phase of cannabis sales are set to begin.

“The most exciting products are in the second wave which is going to be mid-2019,” Linton said. “So I think by the time the beverages, the vape-ables, the concentrated products - I’ll call it the ingestibles -   by the time those are released in the back half of 2019, instead of having maybe 40 stores in Ontario, I bet we’ll have like 400 stores.”