MASSIVE POT FIND PROVES A POINT: COPS

BARRIE, Ont. - A marijuana "factory" concealed within a sprawling old
brewery just steps from one of Ontario's busiest highways is proof
Canada's pot problem has reached "epidemic proportions," police said
yesterday.

The former Molson brewery in Barrie, Ont., plainly visible from
Highway 400, one of the province's busiest commuter routes, was raided
on the weekend by some 100 city and provincial police officers acting
on a tip.

Inside, they found marijuana with an estimated street value of $30
million, along with a grow operation of staggering proportions - the
largest and most sophisticated in modern Canadian history.

"This is not a ma-and-pa operation," Barrie police Chief Wayne
Frechette wryly told a news conference in this central Ontario city an
hour's drive north of Toronto.

Across a 5,400-square-metre complex, the size of a football field,
police found more than 25,000 pot plants growing everywhere - even
inside the cavernous indoor vats once used to brew beer.

Molson closed the brewery in 2000 and sold it to a company that leases
space to about half a dozen businesses.

A police video shot shortly after the raid showed the vats teeming
with marijuana plants and an elaborate electrical room where hydro was
used to power the lights that facilitate the growing process.

Huge drawers, used to spread harvested marijuana out to allow it to
dry, were seen in the video, each one brimming with buds.

"This particular marijuana factory is the largest and most
sophisticated I'm aware of in Canada," said provincial police deputy
commissioner Vaughn Collins.

The facility was set up to operate 24 hours a day and included living
quarters capable of housing as many as 50 people at once, said OPP
Det. Staff Sgt. Rick Barnum.

Nine people were charged, eight of them with one count each of
production of a controlled substance and possession for the purpose of
trafficking.