SENATORS GO 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 six-month
jail terms.

By a 49-43 margin, the upper chamber accepted a proposal from a Senate
committee yesterday 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 gun-related crimes.

The Senate also amended the bill to stipulate that the special
circumstances of aboriginal offenders, who are overrepresented in the
prison population, must be taken into account by judges when imposing
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 that 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 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. "On an annual
basis, the wholesale value of that would be in the $350,000 range."