Probably just front loaded expenses of setting up regulatory bodies but hur dur guvment is so inefficient.
they licensed 24 stores with a lottery to serve 14 million people, the black market is still cheaper, has better quality and on top of that, is more convenient if you want to buy weed in Ontario. For a comparison, Sweden has around 1000 licensed stores who sell alcohol to 10 million people, and even that is a lot less stores than ideal.
Colorado has over 2000 weed stores to serve around 5 million people. And predictably, they made around a billion USD in tax revenue.
Despite that Ontario STILL had the highest legal revenue of all the provinces, and they STILL lost money. It should really be an impossible mission, but they managed to find a way.
They fucked up the rollout in a big way, and their hur dur inefficiency is a big part of that. They plan to license 20 stores a month, but for some reason or another, not until april.