BILL REVIVED FOR MINIMUM SENTENCES ON DRUG CRIMES

Tenants caught growing as few as six marijuana plants in their
dwellings could face automatic jail terms of at least nine months,
under a federal drug-sentencing bill revived Wednesday that imposes
harsher penalties on home renters than on owners.

The bill, introduced for the third time after dying twice before,
proposes mandatory minimum jail terms for a variety of drug-related
crimes, removing discretion for judges to sentence as they see fit.

The Harper government's proposed legislation imposes stiffer
punishment on renters than it does on homeowners, because involving a
third party is one of several aggravating factors.

"It is going to have a really detrimental effect on young people,"
predicted Tara Lyons, a fourth-year sociology student at Carleton
University in Ottawa.

"More young people rent dwellings because they can't afford to buy
their own, so this bill sets up a situation where the policies are
crafted in the name of protecting children, but they are just
presenting more harm to young people."

The bill proposes to impose mandatory minimum terms for other
drug-trafficking crimes, ranging from one to three years.

Lyons, executive director of Canadian Students for Sensible Drug
Policy, was one of more than a dozen witnesses who urged the federal
government, during House of Commons committee hearings last spring, to
scrap its drug-sentencing bill.

The bar for being caught growing marijuana for the purposes of
trafficking is generally five plants, which would garner a minimum
six-month jail term.

However, for anyone captured under any of the broad aggravating
factors, the minimum jail term is increased to nine months. It goes up
to a one-year minimum for growing up to 200 plants for the purpose of
selling, and two years for up to 500 plants.

Other aggravating factors include such things as whether a weapon was
found on the premises, whether the location was considered unsafe, and
whether the pot production posed a danger to the public in a
residential area.

The Senate, which considered the bill last fall, increased the bar to
200 plants for garnering automatic incarceration, but left it at five
in cases involving aggravating factors.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson on Wednesday ignored the Senate
amendments and resurrected his bill as it passed in the Commons last
June, with Liberal support.

His last bill was in its final stages in the Senate when Prime
Minister Stephen Harper prorogued Parliament in December. An earlier
incarnation of the same bill died when Harper called the 2008 general
election.

New Democratic Party MP Libby Davies, a vocal opponent of mandatory
minimum sentences for drug-related crimes, warned Wednesday that
mandatory terms for drug crimes will cost billions because they will
"clog up" the prison system.

Moreover, Nicholson has refused to supply any evidence that mandatory
minimums deter crime, she said.

"He could not offer anything," said Davies. "This approach that
they're running with is based on this U.S. experience that has been a
colossal failure both politically, economically, and from a justice
point of view. Why would we be crazy enough to repeat that in Canada?"

Two studies prepared for the Justice Department, one in 2002 and the
other in 2005, say that mandatory minimums do not work.

Nicholson said his bill is designed to "send a message" that "if you
sell or produce drugs, you'll pay with jail time."