GROWING SCARED

The Harper Government'S New Crime Bill, Especially Its Draconian Pot
Provisions, Is Baffling and Alarming More Than Just Marijuana Fans

Sometimes, you can evaluate the worth of a certain piece of
legislation by those who oppose it. Take the Safe Streets and
Communities Act, the new federal Conservative omnibus crime bill,
unveiled Tuesday, Sept. 20. Bill C-10, considered a priority for the
government, combines nine previous crime bills into one, with tough
new measures on sentencing for sex offenders, young offenders and
marijuana growers. Under the new law, anyone convicted of possessing
between six and 200 marijuana plants is looking at a six-month
mandatory minimum sentence. At 201 plants, the sentence is a year.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association doesn't like the law. In a
statement released the same day as the bill, they said, "This is a
flawed approach to drug offences. Mandatory minimum sentences for drug
crimes have not worked elsewhere, and there is no reason to believe
that they will work in Canada." The Canadian Bar Association doesn't
like it. In a statement also released Sept. 20, the CBA said it has
"concerns with several aspects" of the bill, including mandatory
minimum sentences. "The CBA believes that the bill will make already
serious criminal justice system problems much worse, with huge
resource implications," it reads. And of course, marijuana advocates
don't like it because they think they'll be doing time for a
victimless crime.

"Harper is pandering to his base," says veteran pro-pot activist
Marc-Boris St-Maurice. With half of Canadians supporting marijuana
legalization, according to an Angus Reid poll released last November,
he says, "In politics, it's easier to be against something than for
something."

The elephant in the room, according to Bill C-10's opponents, is the
cost, especially when it comes to marijuana possession/trafficking.
There is nothing in the bill that references who will pay for the
newly incarcerated--and any sentence of two years less a day is a
provincial responsibility. "It's very alarming, and it's going to cost
a fortune," St-Maurice says. "The provinces are going to pay for it,
but Harper never consulted the provinces."

And while an estimated $2.1-billion will be spent over the next five
years to build more prisons, none of them have been built yet. So
local Crown prosecutors, already facing a seriously clogged judicial
system and crowded jails, may in fact be even more tempted to drop or
reduce charges anyway, says St-Maurice. "The prosecutors are going to
downgrade the charges from trafficking to possession, or drop the
charges or decide not to investigate because they don't have the
resources," he says. "A lot of cases are going to get tossed."

St-Maurice, who is currently facing charges himself from the June 2010
raid on Quebec's Compassion Clubs, is also troubled by the law's vague
language. Six plants, he says, "can yield anywhere between zero and
5,000 grams [10 pounds], depending on the size of the plants," he
says. "The use of plants to calculate the potential yield is the wrong
way to do it.

"But someone said something interesting to me," he continues. "If six
plants will get you the same amount of time as 200, the incentive is
to grow more. If you're going to do six, you might as well do a couple
of hundred."

C-10's new provisions, federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said,
will cost an estimated additional $631-million--this on top of the cost
of the new prisons, even as Canada's crime stats continue to drop to
their lowest in 30 years. And the hefty price tag might be getting
bigger. At the press conference introducing the bill, he told
reporters that "This is not the end; this is just the beginning of our
efforts."