RUNCIMAN RAPS SOFT SENTENCES ON GROW-HOUSES

Double nothing and it's still nothing.

Ontario Public Safety and Security Minister Bob Runciman on Monday assailed
both lenient sentences for marijuana grow house operators and federal plans
to hike maximum penalties.

"That's fine and dandy - when's the last time anyone saw a judge give the
maximum sentence?" Runciman said. "We think it's primarily smoke and mirrors.

"The federal government considers it a crime and is talking about
increasing maximum penalties. But the courts are not even giving out time
in a lock up. Judges simply don't dole out maximum sentences."

Instead, Runciman is calling for minimum sentences to remove the latitude
judges have in sentencing grow-house operators.

The federal government is proposing to create new offences providing
tougher penalties for illegal growers tied to the size of the operation.
Anyone found with more than 50 marijuana plants would be subject to a
maximum of 14 years in prison - double the current penalty. Judges would
have to explain why they didn't impose jail time in cases involving booby
traps, explosives, a danger to others in the neighbourhood or children in
the grow house.

In Ontario, the average grow house - typical suburban houses using grow
lights and stolen power to produce high-grade pot - nets $1 million in
profit a year, Runciman said. The average sentence when a grower gets
caught is nine months, often conditional, meaning served at home rather
than in jail.

"It means they can sit at home for a profit of $110,000 a month and make
plants for their next grow house," Runciman said. "It's become such a
high-profit, low-risk operation, primarily because the penalties are so
modest."

Grow houses cost everyone, including an estimated $500 million a year in
stolen power provincewide, Runciman said. Police estimate there are 10,000
growhouses in the Greater Toronto area alone.

Police are frustrated that their work in finding, surveilling and
dismantling grow houses doesn't result in a meaningful penalty, he said.

"It's not a victimless crime," Runciman said. "Most of these growers are
linked to organized crime and biker gangs."

Being the number one source of high-grade marijuana to the United States
will also disrupt traffic at the border, hurting legitimate trade, Runciman
said. He's heard American officials refer to Canada as the Colombia of the
north.

Ottawa has said it will boost funding to the RCMP by $62 million to battle
grow houses but has said nothing about funding the Ontario Provincial
Police, Runciman said.

Runciman said that as justice minister he could not comment on specific cases.

Last week, Ontario Court Justice Charles Anderson gave a grow-house
operator, Dung A. Nguyen, a sentence of two years less a day to be served
at home.

Nguyen's lawyer, Peter Adams, argued Anderson should give his client the
same sentence that he'd given in January to Hoang Xuan Dang, another
Vietnamese man convicted of running a grow house.

In both cases the Crown sought jail time.