SENATE GOES EASIER ON POT GROWERS

OTTAWA - The Liberal-dominated Senate has watered down a Conservative
law-and-order bill by eliminating a requirement for marijuana growers
who cultivate as few as five plants to to serve mandatory sixmonth
jail terms.

By a 49-43 margin, the upper chamber accepted a proposal from a Senate
committee on Wednesday to raise the bar to more than 201 plants,
rather than stick with the original number adopted by the House of
Commons earlier this year.

A final Senate vote on the proposed legislation - which would impose
automatic prison and jail time for a variety of drug crimes for the
first time in Canada - is scheduled for today.

The controversial bill would remove discretion for judges to impose
sentences as they see fit, adding to more than two dozen mandatory
minimum sentences that already exist in the Criminal Code for such
things as murder and gunrelated crimes.

The Senate also amended the bill to stipulate that the special
circumstances of aboriginal offenders, who are over-represented in the
prison population, must be taken into account by judges when imposing
a drug sentence.

Senator Joan Fraser, the head of the legal and constitutional affairs
committee, told the Senate during a debate on the proposed amendments
that many of the 62 witnesses who appeared at public hearings on the
bill said the penalty for five pot plants was "excessively severe" and
that it could lead to over-incarceration of small-time street dealers
and growers.

"It is quite likely to be the amount one had for individual
consumption, not for trafficking," she said.

Police and the majority of provinces, however, support the bill that
passed in the Commons in June, noted Conservative Senator John
Wallace, who said that raising the bar to more than 201 plants is too
lenient.

"Two hundred plants is a huge number," said Wallace. "This is a major
issue."