CLAIM MADE FOR HOMES

Gov't Targets Alleged Grow Op Properties

After seven years of trying, Manitoba authorities are finally sending
a message that crime doesn't pay.

The provincial government is making a claim in court for three
properties in south Winnipeg -- homes police suspect had been used as
marijuana grow operations by their Vancouver-area owners.

And if Manitoba's first effort under the seven-year-old Criminal
Property Forfeiture Act is successful, money recovered from a sale of
the homes and possibly items on the premises -- perhaps about $1.2
million -- will be handed to victims of the crimes or used to help
cops curb illegal activity.

"This is our first foray into it," Gord Schumacher, provincial
director of criminal property forfeiture, said yesterday of the use of
Manitoba's proceeds-of-crime legislation.

"There's a longstanding principle in the Canadian legal system that
says people shouldn't benefit from unlawful activity."

Delay rapped

The government has filed statements of claim to try to acquire homes
at 4 Beaudry Bay, 94 Beaudry Bay and 31 Northport Bay.

The owners have 40 days to file statements of defence, after which a
trial would be held.

But Conservative justice critic Kelvin Goertzen said it shouldn't have
taken the province seven years, since the law was implemented by the
governing NDP, to begin working.

"We know it's working in other provinces," Goertzen said of the
Manitoba law, which is similar to legislation in Ontario, British
Columbia and Alberta. "There's no reason that we shouldn't have had
our legislation working a long time ago."

Schumacher said the delay has been due to a problem with the law
initially "front-loaded on the police," forcing cops to shoulder the
burden of initiating the court process.

The law has been reworked to give the province the lead role, he
said.

"The money that we realize from those properties goes ... back to
victims or to the police or to remedy the effects of the unlawful
activity," Schumacher said. "So it's a really good thing."