PARTIES GATHER TO TRY TO STEM POT-GROWING OPERATIONS

TORONTO - Police, government officials and private-sector emissaries
pledged to put their heads together and press ahead Friday in a bid to
turn the tide of what has been a decidedly one-sided battle against
Ontario's burgeoning marijuana cultivation industry.

The so-called "Green Tide" summit brought senior law enforcement and
government officials together with members of the real estate,
electricity, insurance and other industries with a vested interest in
cracking down on the province's so-called "grow-ops."

The two-day summit, the first of its kind in Canada, brought more than
160 delegates from 60 stakeholder groups together to begin the process
of developing a concerted and co-ordinated strategy, said Ean Algar,
president of the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police.

"We've got a commitment, a recognition that we're not alone," Algar
told a news conference Friday wrapping up the meeting.

"There's just been a tremendous number of recommendations brought
forward, and they have to be synthesized and put forward, then brought
forward in an action plan. You can't do that in a day and a half."

Monte Kwinter, Ontario's minister of community safety, described the
summit as a "good first step" and promised help would be forthcoming
from the province once specific needs are identified.

"That will come once we collate all the recommendations, once we come
up with a strategy," Kwinter said.

"This is something we can in fact build on."

The number of grow operations in Canada's most populous province grew
by 250 per cent between 2000 and 2002, says a report by the Criminal
Intelligence Service Ontario that was the genesis of the summit.

The report, titled Green Tide: Indoor Marijuana Cultivation and its Impact
on Ontario, estimated that the province's growers have produced anywhere
from $2 billion to $12.5 billion worth of plants since 2000.

To make them hard to spot, grow houses are increasingly found in
quiet, well-heeled suburban areas, where at first glance they're
impossible to distinguish from their law-abiding neighbours.

Inside, they're hotbeds of peril: exposed wiring to bypass hydro
equipment, booby traps to ward off intruders and noxious chemical
compounds used in the cultivation process are ever-present dangers.

They're often structurally unsound and resold with only cosmetic
improvements, a fact that's of great concern to the real estate,
insurance and banking industries, Kwinter said.

"They want to see a change in both the insurance forms and the real
estate offers that have an exclusion in them, where the vendor
warrants and guarantees the house has never been used as a grow
house," he said.

"What that means is that if you, as a an unsuspecting purchaser, buy a
house and then subsequently find out it was a grow house, you have
some recourse to the vendor."

Realtor Ian Smith said the real estate industry is working on
educating its agents to better recognize properties that may have been
used as grow houses and buyers who might be planning to one.

Warning signs include vendors who offer cash deposits or are reluctant
to offer personal identification, as well as buyers who don't present
as typical homeowners, he said.

"Normally when I show a house, when I take a spouse through it, the
first thing she wants to see is the kitchen," Smith said.

"If they're heading for the basement, maybe there's a sign there."

Algar said grow houses in Canada are fuelling a "sinister cross-border
exchange" between organized crime in Canada and in the United States.

"That's fuelling the importing of cocaine, heroin, ecstasy and other
dangerous drugs into Ontario."

The pot trade in Canada is also to blame in part for the growing
problem of guns in Toronto and other parts of the province, he added.

"They also bring in guns that are at the root of escalating violence
that we are seeing on the streets of Toronto and other cities
throughout this province."