HOME-GROWN MARIJUANA OPERATIONS TAKING OFF IN SUBURBS

A complaint long made by police is now on the lips of public-utility
managers, real-estate agents and landlords: Canada's bungalows and
subdivisions are increasingly serving as smokescreens for illegal marijuana
factories.

"Pretty well every utility is flooded with this type of thing. In every
community you're going to have one on every street almost," said Bob Myers,
director of energy services at Oakville Hydro. "It's a recent thing that's
happened."

Marijuana growers -- energy-sucking entrepreneurs who were unheard of in
the suburbs a few years ago -- are now buying or renting houses, stealing
electricity and driving up prices for legitimate rate-payers.

Oakville is a sleepy suburb between Toronto and Hamilton, but police
discovered nearly 50 grow houses there last year. In one well-known
example, a landlord publicly lamented that seemingly respectable renters
gutted his house to turn it into a pot plant; to add injury to insult, he
said they left an unpaid $15,000 electricity bill after police seized 500
plants.

Similar complaints are being made in all kinds of small towns and posh
suburbs. "Increasingly, marijuana operations are being discovered in larger
suburban houses located in upscale neighbourhoods," the Criminal
Intelligence Service of Canada wrote in its 2002 report.

The Hells Angels and Vietnamese-based groups in British Columbia started
the large-scale home-grown marijuana businesses, the report says. But the
expertise is spreading as criminals scour the want ads for cheap houses
with big basements and enclosed garages. The fastest growing area is
Southern Ontario.

Police who investigate grow operations in Canada's largest province were
dealt a blow this week when a judge declared that warrantless searches
involving a type of infrared heat-detector are illegal. Known as
forward-looking infrared, the equipment can be mounted on police aircraft
- -- and used for everything from finding missing people to hunting fugitives
to unveiling the telltale heat signature of private houses that double as
marijuana factories.

"We'll examine the ruling," said Constable Steve Morrell, a spokesman for
York Regional Police, which looks after a huge area north of Toronto. He
said that FLIR technology is used in the force's many marijuana
investigations, which uncovered 170 grow ops last year. Still, FLIR is
"just a tool, not the beginning, middle and end of any investigation."

But technological tools are important as criminals become more
sophisticated. While hefty electrical bills are signs of a grow op,
criminals are finding electricians who can steal electricity and rewire
houses -- a dangerous practice that is thought to have caused at least 15
electrocutions in B.C. since 1995.

As well, chemicals used in the operations are contaminating houses and
communities. Marijuana minders are often illegal immigrants indentured to
crime organizations. Several Canadian grow houses have been linked to death
conspiracies -- including a double homicide last year in Oro-Medonte, north
of Barrie, Ont.

But grow ops will continue as long as Canadian pot sells for a premium in
major U.S. cities, police say. And some growers are in a technological arms
race with police.

One of Canada's most elaborate pot operations was in an old barn in Warren,
Ont. Investigators say behind the facade lay three levels of marijuana
plants, a four-metre-long diesel generator installed to avoid big utility
bills, and an elaborate air-conditioning system to make the heat signature
less noticeable. For added camouflage, the growers even bought cows.

But they didn't count on the wary intuition of neighbours. The neighbours
could not understand why the new residents insisted on giving away
perfectly good hay -- and this generous, but suspicious, behaviour provided
the lead that police used eventually to make the bust.

"They bought a bit of a herd to make it look legit," said Detective
Constable John Valtonen of the Ontario Provincial Police detachment in
Sudbury. "They were trying to look like farmers, but it just didn't wash."