GROW HOUSE OPERATORS DESERVE SERIOUS JAIL TIME: RUNCIMAN

Unless Canada wants to stay in the ranks of Colombia and Mexico, people who
grow pot to sell should get prison time - not a slap on the wrist, Minister
of Public Safety and Security Bob Runciman will tell the feds next week.

"The profits are so high and the penalties are so low there's no risk," he
said Friday during a visit to the Leeds County OPP detachment. "The police
use fishing terminology - catch and release.

"Police dedicate all those resources to shutting these people down, then
they're right back in business. We're looking for penalties that will deter
this activity - stiff, minimum penalties."

Runciman will press the federal government, after consulting with his
counterparts from across Canada, at a meeting of federal and provincial
justice ministers in Calgary next week.

At minimum people who grow marijuana for the purpose of trafficking should
get prison time - which means at least a two-year sentence - and a
significant fine, he argues.

This country has become the third largest supplier of marijuana to the
United States.

If the federal government doesn't take action Canada will face increasing
pressure from the Americans to stop the flow of marijuana, potentially
disrupting the movement of legitimate travellers and commerce across the
border, Runciman said.

Police estimate that there are 700 grow houses - indoor hydroponic pot labs
- - operating in Ontario, most linked to organized crime, and that marijuana
is now the province's third biggest cash crop at $1 billion a year.

In this area, grow houses have been busted in Mallorytown, near Maynard,
and in Hillcrest Park west of Brockville in the past year. The value of
drugs seized at the three houses was more than $1 million.

The Ministry of Public Safety and Security reports a small indoor grow of
50 plants can yield a grower $55,000 a year, but no jail time. A
conditional sentence - house arrest - is typical or a short, 60- to 90-day
jail term.

An average grow of 300 plants yields $350,000 a year and sentences ranging
from house arrest to nine months in jail. Large-scale growers, up to 20,000
plants and profits of $30 million a year, typically face 18-month sentences.

Brockville Police Chief Barry King heads the Canadian Centre for Substance
Abuse. Police in British Columbia tell him they have so many grow houses
they shut them down without charging anyone. The problem is growing here, too.

"The reason is in court people were getting conditional sentences and
probation," King said.

"These are traffickers and they're getting probation. If judges don't get
the message - we're not talking about sending someone with three joints to
jail but give these people some deterrents - we as police can't talk to
judges."

But the federal government can, in the form of minimum sentences, King said.

The Kingston-based OPP drug enforcement unit destroyed more than 4,100
plants - worth as much as $4 million - in two days flying above Leeds and
Grenville with a helicopter this summer. And that's just the pot police
don't have enough evidence to tie to a suspect and simply want to get off
the street. There were also several major busts and arrests, including at a
Prescott-area farm and near Junetown,

"Overall we're down and the reason for that is that the growers are
catching on," said Detective-Constable Glenn Holland of the drug
enforcement unit. "The larger their plots the more obvious they are for us
to find. They're still out there."

Police didn't find booby traps at pot grows across the province this year.
But they did encounter spiked boards hidden between plants, picked up a
crossbow dropped by a suspect and found razor blades embedded in plant stems.

In one case, a man was hurt in a shoot-out in Killaloe between pot growers
and people trying to steal their plants.

"We have a guy shot through the throat protecting a pot stand," Holland
said. "This certainly isn't the peace-loving hippie. This is violence and
drugs - organized crime.

"Drugs are a big part of their financial empire. They'll protect $100,000
worth of pot as quickly as they'll protect $100,000 worth of coke."

Holland didn't want to tell the courts how to do their jobs. But he
acknowledged that police officers feel tougher sentences would be more of a
deterrent.

"(The courts) don't see it as a violent crime," he said. "Drugs do invite a
great deal of violence."