DRUG DEALER HEADED TO JAIL

Just a day after the federal government unveiled legislation to
impose mandatory prison terms for drug trafficking, the province's
highest court quashed a trafficker's conditional sentence and sent
him to prison.

In the decision released Wednesday, the Alberta Court of Appeal said
Nathan Randy Sawatsky, 26, was "an unqualified recipient of a
conditional sentence."

Justices Peter Martin, Ged Hawco and Sandy Park, in accepting Crown
prosecutor Bob Sigurdson's argument, substituted a 31/2-year prison
term for the sentence of two years less a day that was to be served
primarily under house arrest.

"We think the sentencing judge erred in allowing herself to be guided
by dubious decisions where accused persons were given a conditional
sentence in response to a serious crime, notwithstanding their
lengthy criminal records, which include breaches of court orders and
occasionally a prior conditional sentence," Martin wrote on behalf of
the panel.

Sawatsky, who pleaded guilty to trafficking cocaine after selling the
illicit drug to an undercover officer five times, has a lengthy
criminal record. He had 37 convictions for disobeying court orders
and drug offences.

"We agree with the Crown that those who organize and manage
'dial-a-dope' schemes to traffic in drugs, such as cocaine,
methamphetamine and ecstasy, should usually be sentenced to terms of
actual incarceration," the decision said.

"Non-custodial sentences in response to such offences offer little to
nothing by way of general deterrence to like-minded individuals,
which is a vital sentencing objective in such cases."

The proposal to impose automatic prison penalties on serious drug
offenders is part of the Harper government's sweeping crackdown on crime.

Federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said Tuesday the proposed
changes in sentencing provisions are designed to target the root of
the drug supply problem.

It includes bills before Parliament to toughen rules for repeat
violent offenders and to keep accused young offenders in jail before
their trials.

There are now no mandatory prison sentences for anyone convicted
under Canada's Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

The appellate court noted that Sawatsky's sentence was affected by
the fact the Crown prosecutor was misled to believe Sawatsky was
registered in a two-year environmental technology program at SAIT, to
which he was supposedly applying himself diligently.

"We are now told that information was false," Martin wrote.

"That significantly changes the complexion of the case, and casts
(Sawatsky) more as a con man than a rehabilitated criminal. It also
removes the very tenuous unpinning of this conditional sentence order."

The judges gave Sawatsky 10 months credit for the portion of his
sentence he had already served, leaving two years and eight months to serve.