ARE FOREIGN JAIL TERMS FAIR FOR CANADIANS?

An admitted Canadian drug dealer facing a lengthy Australian prison
sentence in spite of nine years behind bars in this country should
prick the national conscience, a B.C. Court of Appeal justice says.

In a fascinating commentary appended as a concurring judgment to the
decision allowing Chuck Sun Lau's extradition to Australia, Justice
Mary Southin said she found his plight troubling.

Lau, who emigrated from China to Canada a quarter-century ago, is
wanted in Australia for a massive 1994 smuggling scheme involving 48
kilos of heroin worth some $15 million wholesale.

The drug was shipped from China to Australia, and Lau picked it up
from the crew of a tramp steamer. Shortly afterwards, he delivered
some of the heroin to an undercover Aussie cop.

He managed to escape custody and flee back to Canada, but the law
caught up with him.

He was living with his wife, two children and elderly parents in
Vancouver when he was arrested June 17, 1997.

Since then, he has been fighting rendition -- the legal term under the
old Fugitive Offenders Act, which was replaced by the Extradition Act.

Chief Justice Lance Finch this week wrote the unanimous decision for
the court that said Lau should be sent to Australia despite his
argument that it is unfair.

Lau complained he would receive no credit for the time he has spent in
Canadian jails, that he was willing to plead guilty and serve his time
here, and that he would be punished far more severely in Oz.

Justice Finch rejected all his pleas and said he must face the
music.

Although she did not quibble with Finch's reasoning, Justice Southin
nevertheless wondered whether Canadians would approve of what was
going on here.

In one of her final judgments before mandatory retirement, her
comments are especially germane given the pending extradition hearing
of marijuana activist Marc Emery and his associates.

Like Lau, they are willing to plead guilty in Canada rather than face
staggering prison terms in the U.S.

Two of Lau's co-accused received stiff sentences -- 221/2 years with
no parole for 13 years for one man and 241/2 years and no parole for
16 years for the other.

In Canada, this kind of crime usually nets about 11 years
imprisonment. But judges also routinely give double credit for time
served in pre-trial custody.

That's why Lau offered to plead guilty here -- he's already served
more time than all but the most violent offenders.

If he's returned to Australia, his two sons who are Canadian citizens
would be without a parent here because his wife has since returned to
China.

Justice Finch said none of the factors raised in his appeal "are of
such a nature or extent as to make the surrender of Mr. Lau to
Australia to stand trial for very serious crimes shocking to the
Canadian conscience."

Southin agreed, but felt Canadians might be concerned about another
aspect of the case.

"It is not the possibility that the appellant may receive no credit
for time spent in custody which disturbs me," Southin said.

"If that is the result, he is legally the author of his own
misfortune. In so saying, I do not overlook the possibility that his
legal advisers held out to him a faint but now forlorn hope of
avoiding rendition, whereas had he been told his chances were next to
nil, he might by now have served half his sentence."

She was bothered by something else.

"What does disturb me is, in effect, a sentence of over 20 years for
this crime, or indeed any other crime short of murder and treason,"
the 75-year-old veteran of the province's highest bench wrote.

"A sentence of incarceration of such length shocks my conscience. It
is, of course, not my conscience which is the standard. It is the
Canadian conscience."

Southin noted that our drug laws may carry a maximum penalty of life
imprisonment, but she knows of no one who has received such a sentence.

"As to how many life sentences, or sentences of 20 years or more, have
been imposed for these offences in Canada in recent years and the
length of time that offenders have spent in prison before being
paroled from such sentences, I cannot say," she wrote.

"But I have never sat on a drug case in which a life sentence was
imposed."

Yet that is what Lau faces on top of the nine years he has been
incarcerated.

"Some day," Southin said, "perhaps Parliament will ask itself whether
it is acceptable to the Canadian conscience that a Canadian citizen
who commits a crime in another country should be returned to suffer a
sentence far more severe than would be suffered by a citizen of that
other country were he to come here and commit the same crime."