Churchill, Narcotics Strategy Big Themes In Manitoba Visit

Manitoba will get lots of prime ministerial attention when Stephen Harper arrives today for a two-day visit that will include a national anti-drug strategy and an upgrade of the Port of Churchill.

Harper will also attend a Tory party fundraising barbecue and participate in the annual general meeting of the Bilingual Municipalities Association of Manitoba today.

This afternoon, Harper, Health Minister Tony Clement, Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day and Manitoba's senior minister, Treasury Board President Vic Toews, will use the backdrop of the Salvation Army in inner-city Winnipeg to launch a multi-tiered approach to deal with both the justice and health side of illicit drugs.

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Residents Rally In Point Douglas

When Milt Stegall asked if there were any drug dealers present in Joe Zuken Park Wednesday night, no one stepped forward.

Not surprising, given the presence of police, politicians and cameras among about 150 residents of the neighbourhood of single-family homes on the west bank of the Red River.

The crack houses are not all gone - yet - in north Point Douglas, but residents rallied Wednesday to declare that they're taking back their neighbourhood.

"We're stepping it up. We're using this to put pressure on. They're not in control - the community's in control of its own neighbourhood," said Sel Burrows, co-chairman of the Point Douglas residents' committee.

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper is planning a trip to Manitoba, with stops in Winnipeg today and Churchill tomorrow, says a spokeswoman for the Prime Minister's Office.

Harper is expected to make an announcement with federal Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day, Treasury Board President Vic Toews and Minister of Health Tony Clement at 2 p.m. today at the Salvation Army at 180 Henry St.

A source said Justice Minister Rob Nicholson and Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl may also make the trip.

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IT was a drug raid that surprised everyone on the St. Vital street except police -- they'd already done 50 just like it this year across the city.

In this case the raid at 25 Ashton Ave. was one of the year's biggest hauls -- more than 650 marijuana plants in various stages of growth. And if harvested and packaged, the pot had a potential street value of $735,000, police said Friday.

"I didn't realize they were police at first," a neighbour said. "They were all in plainclothes. They were there in trucks and half-tons.

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AN attempt to collect on an outstanding drug debt was the motivation for a gunpoint kidnapping in which the victim and his innocent brother were stuffed in a car trunk.

Joshua Hourie, 22, pleaded guilty to his role in the January 2006 attack and was sentenced Tuesday to six years in prison under a joint recommendation from Crown and defence lawyers.

A co-accused remains before the courts.

Hourie felt he was owed about $1,000 from the victim -- a local drug dealer -- and set up a meeting that quickly turned violent, court was told.

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"When in Rome do as the Romans do," and "don't do the crime if you can't do the time." Now there's a couple of old adages with a strong message.

And that message is to think twice before embarking on a path of criminal activity in a foreign country where jail is the reality of getting caught. Because our federal government, that at one time boasted about its cradle-to-grave caretaking role, has changed.

According to federal numbers it seems we are no longer as anxious as we once were to welcome home Canadians who have gone abroad or even just south of the border to break into homes, traffic in drugs, rob stores or abuse children.

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WINNIPEG -- An immigrant recruited by a stranger in Toronto's Chinatown to work at a Manitoba farm testified yesterday he thought he was harvesting Chinese medicinal herbs and had no idea it was marijuana.

Hui Jin Li is one of 28 people charged with marijuana production for allegedly working on one of Manitoba's biggest grow operations.

The labourers, mostly poor immigrants from Toronto, were promised anywhere from $100 to $500 a day to work on the farm, which is about 100 kilometres southeast of Winnipeg. They worked from dawn until dusk in a greenhouse on the property and spent the night in sleeping bags on the floor of the tiny, unfurnished house.

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A husband and wife caught up in allegations they helped smuggle the raw ingredient for methamphetamine from Canada to drug labs in the United States will likely plead guilty rather than go to trial, the prosecutor handling the case said.

Hugh Stevens and Sandra Jacobi will agree to a deal that will see him get a 13-year prison sentence and her a three-year sentence, Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Duszkiewicz said.

Both are expected to enter pleas in Buffalo, N.Y. before Christmas for their part in the drug ring that had Manitoba connections.

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FIVE Chinese immigrants should be given the benefit of the doubt and cleared of charges they knowingly participated in a massive marijuana grow operation, their lawyer argued Thursday.

Mike Cook said it's obvious the accused had no idea what they were in for after being recruited in Toronto's Chinatown district to work on the rural Manitoba pot farm in the fall of 2005.

"It's easy for them to have made an honest mistake," Cook said during closing arguments of the trial.

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(SUN MEDIA) - The case of five Asian immigrants arrested after they were found working on a massive rural dope farm is now in the hands of a judge.

Justice Deborah McCawley heard closing arguments in their trial yesterday.

The five accused were among 28 Asian immigrants arrested in October 2005 after RCMP seized nearly $20 million worth of weed from a farm near Sundown, a small southeastern Manitoba community near the Canada-U.S. border.

Police raided the property Oct. 7 and found the 28 workers sleeping in a small farmhouse. They also found four massive greenhouses containing $10.5 million worth of marijuana plants and 2,700 pounds of harvested buds.

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A street in East Kildonan was closed Thursday afternoon while police investigated what they believed was a clandestine drug lab.

However, a few hours later Dunrobin Avenue reopened, suggesting the home didn't contain an illegal drug lab after all -- leaving neighbours baffled. Usually, when police have discovered drug labs, officers and emergency crews remain on the scene for days to clean up.

But the neighborhood drama, which included specially outfitted members of the Winnipeg Fire Department's haz-mat unit entering the home on the 200 block of Dunrobin, ended by 3:30 p.m.

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In response to the letter of Sept. 11 entitled Keep marijuana illegal, I find Craig Hobson's final statement deplorable. Hobson states that "if we are going to base public safety policies on the input of teenagers, I shudder to think what kind of society we are heading for."

I find this statement incredibly offensive and completely unnecessary. Hobson fails to realize that many teenagers in Canada have valuable opinions regarding public safety policies and many other political issues. As future or current voters, their input is just as valid as Hobson's. Hobson's disrespect towards teenagers robs him of any credibility he might have had.

Martha Holmen,

Sackville, N.B.

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FIVE migrant Chinese farm workers from Ontario are claiming they were duped into an illegal criminal enterprise as they are put on trial for their role in Manitoba's largest-ever marijuana grow operation.

The group was among 28 people arrested in October 2005 following an extensive undercover RCMP investigation that yielded $19 million worth of pot in Sundown, which is about 137 kilometres east of Winnipeg.

Police found the 25 men and three women sleeping side-by-side, head-to-toe in every room of a tiny, 700-square-foot house during an early-morning raid last October.

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When Not On Busts, Members Might Issue Traffic Tickets

CITY police commanders are studying a proposal to create a full-time tactical unit that would be the first through the door in most drug raids and takedowns of armed gangsters, according to a report obtained by the Free Press.

But rather than saddle taxpayers with the high price of training and outfitting the proposed 32-officer emergency response unit, the report's authors recommend those officers help pay for the unit themselves by issuing speeding tickets when they're not busting down doors.

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Chinese Immigrants Testify They Thought Manitoba Harvest Was Fruits Or Medicinal Herbs

THREE Chinese immigrants on trial for working on a rural Manitoba pot farm believed they were harvesting fruits, vegetables or even "medicinal herbs", a Winnipeg court heard Tuesday.

The men all testified in their own defence and claimed to have no knowledge they were part of what police say was a multimillion-dollar grow operation. They have pleaded not guilty, along with two female co-accused, for their alleged crimes.

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Immigrant Pot Harvesters Knew Score, Crown Tells Court

Asian immigrants recruited to harvest marijuana at a remote Manitoba farm didn't call police for fear of losing out on a big payday, a Crown attorney charged yesterday.

"You were told you could make a lot of money so you didn't want to ask too many questions," Crown Attorney Anne Turner said during her cross-examination of accused witness Hui Jin Li.

"I'm going to suggest you had some suspicions something wrong was going on because the money was too good to be true."

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Re: Everyone's doing it, Sept. 10.

I must take issue with this editorial -- no one gets a criminal record for a first-time conviction for possessing marijuana. They get an absolute or conditional discharge -- which ultimately results in no criminal record. It is, in fact, a warning. If they continue to break the law and get subsequent convictions for possession of marijuana -- they may end up with a criminal record. And they should -- for wantonly disregarding the law of the land.

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A new study that found Canadian teens smoke more pot than cigarettes didn't seem to surprise anyone -- not addiction experts, not parents, not police and not educators. The only people with their heads in the sand on the issue are political leaders, who seem to fear that modernizing the laws on cannabis might lead to reefer madness and ultimately the collapse of western civilization. More likely, they fear it will cost them votes, but that concern should wane as today's young people evolve into voters.

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NOT every sex trade worker ends up on the streets, addicted and desperate.

A year ago, using the street name "Caroline," this blond college student from south Winnipeg saw about 15 to 20 clients per day -- seven days a week -- on Aikins Street to make the $600 to $700 a day she needed to feed her addiction to crack cocaine.

Her youth -- early 20s -- and good looks made her popular among professionals who cruised Aikins, and she'd work to cultivate relationships in hopes they'd turn into lucrative return trips.

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Smoking Pot Is More Popular Than Puffing On Tobacco: Study

A new study that concludes Canadian teens smoke more marijuana than cigarettes doesn't surprise Manitoba addiction officials.

An increasing rate of marijuana smoking among young people is just one finding in a report about substance report released Wednesday. Researchers say the report should serve as a "call to action" to parents.

After alcohol, cannabis is the most commonly used illegal substance among youth. Cannabis use is reported by 17 per cent of students in grades 7 to 9, about 29 per cent of 15- to 17-year-olds, and almost half of 18- to 19-year-olds, says the report by the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse (CCSA).

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