CITY PLANS TO COMPLEMENT SCAN LEGISLATION

City council is set to discuss a bylaw which takes aim at the
pocketbooks of landlords of drug houses in Whitehorse.

In an interview Thursday, city manager Dennis Shewfelt said members
of his administration have been working on a property bylaw to
support the Yukon government's Safer Communities and Neighbourhoods
Act (SCAN).

"We've been working on a controlled substance properties bylaw," he
told the Star.

"It really is a bylaw brought in to support legislation brought in by
the territorial government for properties used for drug purposes,
things such as grow operations.

"It deals with things such as electrical issues and mould," he
said.

The Yukon government's SCAN law is aimed at targeting properties
being used for producing, growing, selling or using illegal drugs,
prostitution, solvent abuse and the unlawful sale or consumption of
alcohol. The act came into force last fall.

Shewfelt said the proposed bylaw is set to be introduced to council
next week. It's based on similar laws in places such as Coquitlam,
B.C., and is aimed to protect the health and safety of people who
would live in a drug house after it's been shut down.

"What this bylaw is attempting to address is what has to be done to
the building before it can be reoccupied," Shewfelt said.

Bylaw services manager John Taylor said Thursday the city started
looking at its options after the RCMP discovered six suspected
marijuana grow operations in Whitehorse.

Four of the homes were located in Copper Ridge at 23 Black Bear Lane,
22 Tigereye Cres., 86 Falcon Dr. and 208 Falcon Dr.

The two remaining homes were located at 41 Grouse Cres. in Arkell and
16 Sitka Cres. in the Spruce Hill subdivision.

The cases of those allegedly involved in the operations are still
before territorial court.

Taylor said the city bylaw will come into force after SCAN
investigators and/or the RCMP have finished with the suspected properties.

"Let's just say they go into a drug house and they find a grow
operation. They exercise their search warrant, they protect the
property. Once they're ready to vacate the search warrant, that's
when they contact us.

"We have 'Do not occupy' signs that all pertain to this bylaw. We
smack them up on the door and say that you cannot occupy this house,"
Taylor said.

"This is punitive, this is a punitive thing. This is saying that if
you are a landlord, we expect you to be responsible for your house.
If not, then we'll step in and say 'you cannot occupy that house.'"

Taylor said city authorities would be looking for electrical,
structural and plumbing problems as well as mould issues.

The problems, he said, would have to be fixed, inspected and
certified before the properties could be rented out again.

"It's the landlord's expense and they have to do it. They would have
to pay for it.

"With crystal meth houses, you can't do anything with those. The best
thing to do is to pick them up, bring them down to Swan Hills
(Alberta) and burn them.

"You have to ship it across territorial borders ... that's
expensive."

Taylor said the city is also looking into attaching a legal notice to
land titles informing prospective buyers of remediated drug house
properties about the problems that had occurred.

Fire Chief Clive Sparks said this morning drug houses such as
marijuana grow operations and crystal meth labs present a danger to
the public and to fire fighters.

"There's a couple of concerns," he said.

"The grow-ops tend to have bad electrical hook-ups inside of the
buildings; they often try to bypass the meters, and the wiring is not
protected by breakers," he said.

"There's a lot of fire concerns from a fire perspective and from a
shock perspective," Sparks said.

Mould often found in grow operations also makes the air dangerous to
breathe without proper equipment, he said. Clandestine chemical drug
labs also pose a danger, he added.

"With the labs, more of a concern is the chemicals they're using.
They're dangerous and flammable, and it's very easy for a fire to
start.

"If we go into places where we see there could be a grow-op or a lab,
we'll back out and attack the fire from the outside," he said.

Trevor Wingrove, the general manager of corporate services for the
City of Coquitlam, said grow-ops have been recognized as a
significant problem on the Lower Mainland for quite some time.

Wingrove said in line with a law passed by the B.C. government on
power consumption, his city government passed a controlled substances
properties bylaw on March 19.

He said Coquitlam's bylaw will be triggered when municipal
authorities receive a call from B.C. Hydro about power use
irregularities.

"We've put together a team including people from my office, the RCMP
and the fire department," he told the Star.

"Notice will be sent to property owners that we're going in to
complete an inspection with regards to electrical standards."

He said the bylaw was drafted due to community concerns over
grow-operations in city neighbourhoods.

Wingrove said the Coquitlam team is set to start enforcing the new
bylaw within the next few weeks.