Pubdate: Sat, 05 Mar 2005
Source: Victoria Times-Colonist (CN BC)
Copyright: 2005 Times Colonist
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/victoria/timescolonist/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/481
Author: Don Martin, CanWest News Service
Note: Don Martin is a Calgary Herald columnist.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Rochfort+Bridge (Rochfort Bridge)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/opinion.htm (Opinion)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?199 (Mandatory Minimum Sentencing)

IT'S TOO EARLY FOR A POLITICAL SOLUTION

IN THIS CASE, BLAME A LONE-WOLF KILLER, NOT GROW-OPS OR MARIJUANA

OTTAWA - So we're trying to link murdered cops with marijuana
grow-ops. It's a very loose connection.

The Mayerthorpe madman who murdered four RCMP officers Thursday was a
chronic wingnut, a career criminal who might've shot to kill anyone
messing with his dogs just as easily as his dope.

James Roszko had a date with fate coming sooner or later and his four
victims, average age 27, were unfortunate enough to have stumbled, and
perhaps bumbled, into his line of fire.

Yet the Liberal convention here this week is all aswirl over two
resolutions on marijuana, policy the party is clearly trying to bury
by putting them dead last in the convention handbook.

One would legalize marijuana. This push, ironically, from Alberta
delegates. The other from B.C. would impose a mandatory minimum
sentence of two years against grow operators.

By the end of the day, there was talk of combining these at-odds
proposals into one convention-stealing debate scheduled for today.

Still, it matters not on multiple fronts. Neither resolution will
pass. Even if one or both did, they'd never find a resting place in
government legislation. But it hasn't stopped the issue from hijacking
convention attention.

The most popular scrum victim was Liberal MP Dan McTeague, who has
long advocated mandatory minimums for commercial marijuana growers.
"I've done 26 scrums so far," McTeague sighed incredulously by day's
end. He wants sentencing to start at a four-year minimum, overlooking
the fact many of these growers are pawns in the organized racket,
given rent-free accommodation to keep the hydroponic trays flowing.

Marijuana Party founder Marc-Boris St-Maurice, a new convert to the
federal Liberal party, was an overnight media darling whose views were
eagerly sought on the cannabis connection to mass murder. There isn't
one, he huffed, without any sign of having puffed.

Treasury Board President Reg Alcock got into the act by declaring
himself in favour of legalizing dope and, while we're at it,
prostitution too, because organized crime would then be cut off from
the source of its illicit gains.

Leadership bid backers for former justice minister Martin Cauchon were
trying to drum up media interest in their has-been hopeful by flagging
him as the author of the last marijuana decriminalization bill.

And Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan surfaced as the news event du
jour, to announce that federal flags would be lowered to half mast
until the funerals, before blasting grow-ops as a haven for organized
crime, which surely would've been a news bulletin to the lone-wolf
Mayerthorpe murderer.

It was a dopey circus in search of a reality show.

The mandatory minimum sentence wouldn't have saved them. Legalizing
dope or decriminalized pot wouldn't have done it either because, the
way I read it, this was as much or more about stolen car parts as
anything to do with the marijuana crop, which appears to have been an
inadvertent stumbled-upon discovery.

Hell, even bringing back the death penalty for cop killing wouldn't
have been a deterrent in this case. That sentence was self-inflicted
by Roszko following his no-way-out murder spree.

The government reaction may have been frustrating to those of us
demanding a real-time response. But it was correctly measured against
so much confusion about what went on and what went wrong.

McLellan only says she's open to consideration of darn near anything
to ensure this never happens again, be it tightening up marijuana laws
or lengthening grow-op sentences.

Justice Minister Irwin Cotler chimed in with the weasel-worded promise
that he "may have to seek enhanced resources" to deal with this sort
of crime.

The prime minister said squat on the multiple murders all day and the
text of his convention address made no mention of the tragedy, but I'd
bet the bank he said plenty in a "spontaneous" show of scripted
sympathy to the Gritty masses during the actual delivery, which starts
too late for my hospitality suite search, er, column-filing purposes.

Even official Opposition Leader Stephen Harper wisely opted to
withhold his reactive bluster until the period of mourning has passed.

They're all right. It's too early to inject a political cure into a
confused reality.

That left the Liberal convention preoccupied with dope-smoking freedom
and pot-growing crackdowns, neither the sort of action or reaction to
prevent a Mayerthorpe repeat in the future. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake