AWAY FROM PRYING EYES

Behind The Bushes: The Long Arm Of The Law Rarely Reaches Into The Wilds Of
Vancouver Island, Where Poachers Prey And Pot Grows Like, Well, A Weed

I once went to a seminar put on by some fishing guides, the pros offering
tips on how to catch the big one off Vancouver Island.

A hand in the crowd shot up in the air: "How do you land a big halibut
without having it thrash your boat to bits?"

"Shoot it in the water," replied a guide.

The hand shot up again: "Isn't that illegal?"

"Yes, it is," replied the guide. "I use a .410 shotgun. Some people prefer a
sawed-off .22."

In other words, the law doesn't mean a thing if people don't believe in it
and no one's there to enforce it.

That becomes more apparent the farther you get from the pavement and the
glare of the streetlights. The long arm of the law may be a deterrent in the
cities, but its grasp doesn't extend that far into the wilderness, where
resources thin out. As the comedian said: Canada, 500 murders a year and
10,000 "hunting accidents."

In the less-populated parts of Vancouver Island, the rule of law depends
more on voluntary compliance than compulsion. Big deal, you say. It's not
like there are a lot of banks to rob or safes to crack. No, but there are
trees to steal, dope plants to grow, critters to poach, the taxman to cheat
- -- and little anyone can do about it.

Like a lot of people in the sputtering north Island economy, Bud pieces
together a living, working in forestry when he can, construction when he can
- -- and growing marijuana.

"The reason I have a grow show is it gives me enough money to feed my
family," he shrugs. "I've had to do whatever I can to survive."

It's not a big operation. He has what is known as a seven-bucket system --
six plants in their own containers, fed with chemicals flowing through hoses
from a seventh. Everything is stashed away in a compartment in a friend's
garage, vented to the roof past an odour-killing ozone generator.

Every eight weeks he harvests a pound or two. Bud (not his real name, if you
hadn't already guessed) could sell a pound for $2,500 on the Island, but
chooses to ship it to Ontario, where he can get $2,800 or $2,900. Sending it
back East also limits the number of local people who know what he's up to.
"That's why I never get caught."

He says a lot of his dope-growing pals sell straight to Ontario,
particularly now that post-Sept. 11 security has made crossing the U.S.
border so risky.

After paying for power and other expenses, and splitting the take with his
friend, he clears maybe $8,400 a year - about what his family spends on
groceries. He could rake in more, but fears the consequences of greed. "If I
wanted to make money, I'd probably get caught."

As it is, he's been growing for five or six years without being busted.
Since he has no criminal record, it's unlikely a conviction would send him
to jail.

To a degree, Bud's activities are limited only by his own beliefs. He
wouldn't deal in, say, heroin because he thinks that would be wrong, but has
no problem with pot. "I think cigarettes are worse than marijuana. I think
booze is worse."

What's to stop him?

The police have bigger fish to fry than Bud.

A study done for the RCMP found that between 1997 and 2000, B.C. grow
operations increased by more than 200 per cent as organized crime shifted
its efforts here from other parts of Canada and the U.S. During that time,
B.C. police investigated 12,000 cases of marijuana cultivation, tore up 1.2
million plants -- and could barely keep up.

Swimming against the THC tide are the 30 members of the RCMP's Vancouver
Island District Drug Section. Not a lot of people, considering all the
coke-smuggling, heroin-dealing, marijuana-growing meth-makers they face.

Much of the growing is done indoors now. Still, the vast reaches of
Vancouver Island allow plenty of opportunities for fresh-air marijuana
farming, just like grandpa did in the olden days in the 1970s. South-facing
hillsides, free of trees and prying eyes, are favoured. "There's a lot of
outdoor activity out there," says Cpl. Bill Thomas.

The Mounties often go pot hunting by helicopter prior to the fall harvest,
but there's a whack of territory to cover. Growers have learned to plant
smaller, harder-to-spot plots. "You don't have the whole hillside covered in
marijuana," says Thomas.

And it's easier to find plants than people. Police don't have the budget to
hang around waiting for the grower to appear, so often have to be happy with
just ripping out the crop.

Still, they make a dent. A helicopter operation over central Vancouver
Island and some of the Gulf Islands resulted in 8,000 plants being pulled
last summer.

A truckload of cedar bolts can fetch a fast $1,000 if you know the right
shake-mill owner, one who's more concerned with price than paperwork. Tree
thieves have been known to sneak in to a provincial park or somewhere else
where they're not supposed to be, knock down old-growth cedar, cut off the
bottom fifth -- where all the lovely clear wood is -- and spirit it away.

Cedar rustling has been going on for years near such places as Port Hardy,
Port McNeill and on the west coast. There's now a market for music wood --
Douglas fir and spruce of a high enough quality to make musical instruments.

The provincial government figures forest frauds and thefts cost it $10
million to $20 million a year. It's not easy to detect. There was one case
in which bandits logged a provincial park for a year, even spending $40,000
to helicopter the wood away.

All manner of crime goes on behind the bushes on Vancouver Island.
Dope-growing. People-smuggling. Salal-picking.

Salal-picking? Well, not the picking, but the fraud that sometimes goes with
it.

Salal is that broad-leafed plant found on the forest floor all over these
parts. Valued by florists, it's in such demand that semi-trailer loads go
roaring off the Island to Washington state, and from there to Asia, pretty
much every day.

A couple of hard-working guys can go into the bush and emerge at the end of
the day with a pick-up load of salal worth $400 to $550. Nothing wrong with
that.

But it's a secretive, cash-driven business. There are no regulations, few
records, little to force the buyers -- particularly the American ones -- to
tell either the police or taxman who is getting paid how much. No one's sure
how much the harvesting of so-called botanical forest products is worth, but
the RCMP thinks the trade in salal and edible mushrooms together could gross
$100 million a year, maybe more.

A report written in 1999 estimated that of the thousands of seasonal
pickers, a third were collecting welfare, and another third pulling
Employment Insurance benefits. None of the pickers studied declared their
picking income to either welfare or EI, and only one was found to have
declared it for income tax purposes.

The pocketing of a few extra bucks by welfare cases doesn't rank with the
crimes of the century, which is one of the reasons the 1999 report is
gathering dust. But this isn't just about poor people scraping together a
little undeclared grocery cash, say the Mounties. Many of those involved are
in Asian crime gangs, their fingerprints on everything from insurance fraud
to heroin dealing.

Police say prominent figures in the drug scene also seem to be at the top of
the food chain in both the salal- and mushroom-picking businesses.

If you live in the boonies, there's not so much a thin blue line keeping the
forces of evil at bay as there is a thin blue dot.

In the outer reaches of Vancouver Island, policing is provided by about 50
Mounties in detachments scattered across an area the size of Belgium.

Not only do they face different problems than their urban colleagues, but
must deal with them in different ways.

For example, you can't call in back-up like Starsky and Hutch. "You don't
want to be getting into a situation where you go 'what do I do now?'" says
Const. Rob Pikola, who until this month made up half of the RCMP detachment
in Port Alice. He and one other Mountie watched over about 1,400 people and
2,500 square kilometres of northwest Vancouver Island.

There are other limitations in a town like Alice. There's no cellphone
coverage, no laptop computers in the cars. But there's also little big city
crime. "You don't see armed robberies." More likely is a call from a tourist
freaking out about a bear or cougar.

There are lots of marijuana grow ops around, but the RCMP helicopter, the
military, and the coastal watch program add extra eyes -- as do the
neighbours. "Being a small place, people do talk."

There's more interaction with the public in small communities, which Pikola
likes. You get to know everyone, good guys and bad guys both. When you do a
bar walk, you know who you can rely on.

Pikola now has another job that takes him off the beaten track. He's just
joined the marine detachment patrolling the B.C. coast.

It's not easy hunting the hunters, particularly with the provincial
government hacking its wildlife-protection budget. Poaching continues to be
a problem on Vancouver Island, and we're not just talking about the odd
homeowner who fills his freezer with antlered lamb after finding Bambi
grazing on his tulips.

Since December, at least 18 elk have been shot in the Lake Cowichan area by
people who sneak through the night, using spotlights to mesmerize the
gregarious animals.

The poachers left behind much of the meat, as well as the fetal calves of
pregnant cows -- frustrating to conservation officers trying to nurse elk
herds back to healthy levels.

Sometimes hunters aren't just in it for the meat. A Victoria guide was fined
$5,000 last year for selling the gall bladders of two black bears.

The bile extracted from bear gall bladders is used in Asian medicine, and
can sell for up to $250 a gram. It's illegal to remove the gall bladder from
the carcass of a bear, even if it has been hunted legally.

The frontier isn't always that far from Victoria. Recently, a Fisheries boat
snuck up on a commercial trawler working the waters near James Island, off
Sidney. The trawler was supposed to be going after shrimp, as the prawn
fishery was closed. But with pink shrimp fetching $3.50 a pound and prawns
bringing in $10 to $15, well ...

They almost caught the guy. Almost. Whatever it was he had on deck, it got
chucked back in the water as soon as the prawn police hove into view. "He
dumped it as soon as he saw us," says fishery officer Larry Paike. "He just
kind of went 'Yikes!' and over it went."

Same old story for the Wile E. Coyotes of the Department of Fisheries and
Oceans, tasked with catching the Roadrunners of the sea. "The problem we
have on the ocean is that very often people will see us coming," says Paike.
The bad guys have good radar.