REVISED CRIME BILL TO GO EASIER ON POT GROWERS

For the second time this fall, a committee of the Liberal-dominated
Senate has amended a Conservative law-and-order bill, eliminating an
element that would automatically send marijuana growers to jail for at
least six months if they're caught with as few as five plants.

The committee altered the controversial bill yesterday to retain a
judge's discretion when sentencing offenders convicted of growing
fewer than 200 plants, putting the upper chamber on a collision course
with Justice Minister Rob Nicholson.

Automatic terms for a variety of other drug-related crimes -- for the
first time in Canada -- were kept intact.

Nicholson, however, seized on the committee's move to highlight
divisions between the Liberals in the Senate and the House of Commons.

The bill sailed through the Commons earlier this year after the
Liberals teamed up with the Conservatives, despite grumbling in Grit
ranks that they were being told to support a bad bill so they wouldn't
be accused of being soft on crime.

Nicholson called on Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff yesterday to
"lean on these people" in the Senate and urge them to pass the bill in
its original form.

The legal and constitutional affairs committee amendments will go to
the Senate as a whole, which will begin debating the bill next week.