SENATE ALTERS POT SENTENCE PROVISIONS IN CRIME BILL

Justice Minister Blasts Amendments As 'opening The Door To Drug
Traffickers'

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 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 Thursday.

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 over-represented 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 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. On an annual basis, the wholesale value of that would be in the
$350,000 range. This is serious stuff."

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson blasted the Senate, saying their
amendments "open the door to drug traffickers and people in the
grow-op business to continue to evade prison time for their crimes."

Pamela Stephens, a spokeswoman for Nicholson, said permitting growers
to escape jail time for cultivating more than five plants could create
"loopholes" that would allow largescale operations to thrive, such as
enabling growers to have 50 plants in 10 places.

When Nicholson introduced his bill last February, he proposed
automatic jail terms for growing even one plant. The Commons justice
committee raised the number to five in the spring.

The amended bill, if it passes in the Senate as expected, goes back to
the House of Commons for a final vote, where MPs could reject the
amendments and restore their original proposals.

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

The proposed legislation would impose one-year mandatory jail time for
marijuana dealing, when it is linked to organized crime or a weapon is
involved.

The sentence would be increased to two years for dealing drugs such as
cocaine, heroin or methamphetamine to young people, or pushing drugs
near a school or other places frequented by youths.

Those provisions were untouched by the Senate. The bill has been
widely lambasted by witnesses who appeared at public hearings in the
Senate and Parliament.