NOT THE TIME TO PURSUE AGENDAS

Last week, RCMP Constables Anthony Gordon, Lionide Johnston, Brock Myrol
and Peter Schiemann were all gunned down at a marijuana grow operation near
the hamlet of Rochfort Bridge in Alberta. These men were all killed in the
line of duty. We should praise them for their bravery and their dedication.
We should mourn their loss. We should not however be using their deaths to
pursue a particular political agenda. Unfortunately, some of us seem to be
doing exactly that.

Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan held a press conference shortly after
the events and announced she would consider legislating tougher penalties
for marijuana grow operations. Fellow Liberal MP Dan McTeague went further
and called for a mandatory minimum sentence of four years imprisonment for
marijuana growers.

RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli publicly suggested we should now
reexamine the proposal to decriminalize small quantities of the drug. Other
police officials have also called for tougher penalties for grow
operations, which they describe as a multi-million dollar business being
run by organized crime. Hold on people, it's time to step back, take a deep
breath and look at this from a less emotion-driven perspective.

Marijuana grow operations are flourishing in Canada. Some are run by
members of organized crime groups. Some are not. Some generate huge
profits. Others do not. Some are in fact small gardens providing marijuana
for the grower's own use and maybe that of a few friends. Grow ops are not
all alike, nor are the people who run them.

This particular grow op was eventually reported to contain only 20 plants.
I have read nothing to suggest that Jim Roszko, the man who shot the four
Mounties, was a member of an organized crime organization. I have, however,
heard him described as a psychopath, as someone with a history of alleged
firearm offences, and as someone who hated the RCMP and blamed them for all
that was wrong in his life. This is not the description of someone who
would be deterred by a four-year minimum sentence for growing pot. Why
would he be? He certainly wasn't deterred by the mandatory life sentence he
would get for murdering four fellow human beings. On the contrary, he
appears to have been the type to open fire on police anywhere or anytime
that they might cross him.

We do need to have a serious debate about our drug laws. We need to
determine whether marijuana is as dangerous as some suggest or whether it
is no worse than alcohol and should be regulated in the same fashion as
that drug. We should examine whether young Canadians should be saddled with
criminal records for experimenting with small quantities of marijuana. We
must decide whether harsher penalties are called for in the case of those
who are growing the stuff.

Grow operations are a problem and they do pose a danger to the police
officers who are sent to investigate them. Perhaps at that time, the
Minister of Public Safety will see fit to make federal funds available to
our police services so that they are better able to do the jobs that we ask
them to do. At that time, we might also look at the tough penalties imposed
for drug offences in the U.S. and the fact that Americans still have far
greater problems with both drugs and violence than we in Canada do. That,
of course will also lead us to look for answers to the question "How was
someone like Jim Roszko able get his hands on an assault rifle and use it
on police or anyone else?"

At some time we need to discuss all of these things and to do so with
reason and logic. Now is not that time. Now is the time to honour four
brave men, and to remember them and those they left behind in our prayers.