The influential Ontario Chamber of Commerce is urging Premier Kathleen Wynne to allow recreational marijuana to be sold by government-licensed private retailers as long as local municipalities approve.

In a letter being released Wednesday, the chamber’s president urges Wynne “to immediately begin a robust consultative process aimed at developing a regulatory framework for the distribution of recreational marijuana.”

“We believe that a private-sector, licensing-based, and locally-oriented approach is one worth seriously considering,” writes Allan O’Dette, the 60,000-member chamber’s president and CEO.

“The Ontario government has a long and proud history of working with the private sector to implement programming, continues O’Dette.

“A distribution system as complex and sensitive as the one required for recreational marijuana may demand a similar level of partnership,” he writes, emphasizing the chamber is “not endorsing an entirely free-market model.”

“(But) we caution government against creating a system that is so onerous that it...