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Current Affairs 2007 - Cultivation (119 items)
| Jul 6, 2007 | QU: Growing Season: Are Farmers Really Being Intimidated? In Brome-Missisquoi and in Coaticook, farmers can sign a "social contract" with the Surete du Quebec . The contract gives police permission to venture onto the land at any time in search of outlaw plantations. Otherwise police can't check a property without probable cause, or permission from the landowner. ...However, cases of intimidation may not be as common as news coverage would make it seem. Media reports of farmers being threatened by growers are common, but often lack people willing to come forward to back up the allegations. Just how often it actually happens is unclear.
"I've had no cases of intimidation reported," Potvin said.
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| Jul 5, 2007 | ON: Home-Grow Registry Wanted Real estate agents and local police are working together to ensure potential homeowners don't get duped into buying a home once used in an illegal drug operation.
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| Jul 2, 2007 | Landlord Jailed For Renting Grow-Op House To Family A Niagara Falls landlord will spend the next 60 days behind bars for knowingly renting a toxic home to an unsuspecting family of five.
[How many landlords across Canada would be in jail for renting moldy units (whether used for gardens or not) if they were all held accountable? This case appears to be a mix of racism and prejudice] |
| Jun 27, 2007 | Marijuana Grower Deported Authorities have deported a man convicted for his role in a network of more than a dozen Calgary-area marijuana grow ops.
Canada Border Services Agency officers handed over Lai Guan Tan, 34, to foreign officials last week.
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| Jun 15, 2007 | The Great and Costly Drug-War Fraud It is my privilege today to break major news: In less than a year, the trade in illicit drugs will be all but wiped out.Cocaine. Methamphetamine. Marijuana. All will vanish. And heroin, too. ...In 1998, the UN hosted a General Assembly special session under the official slogan: "A Drug-Free World: We Can Do It." ....
The U.S. was the main author of the first draft, and it was ambitious, saying the "eradication" of the illicit-drug trade would be complete by 2008.
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| Jun 13, 2007 | Children Who Call Grow Ops Home At Risk ...But there is another element about illegal drug growing operations which causes concern. These operations do not run by themselves. There are people behind at each of those plants. Some may be taking the risk entirely on their own; however, sometimes there are innocent victims - children living in these homes. Children living in grow-ops can be exposed to chemicals, electrical fires and mould. It is clearly not a healthy environment. The Alberta government has taken the lead and recently laid the first charges against parents whose children were allegedly found living in homes with marijuana grow operations. Called the Drug Endangered Children Act, it allows police to immediately remove children from homes where drugs are sold or produced. A current case involves charges against the parents of a four-year-old and an 18-month-old.
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| Jun 8, 2007 | BC: Judge Nixes Cops For Hydro Inspections "We only use police for safety issues," she said. "If they don't like the fact that it's the police that are working with our firefighters, then that's fine; we'll have somebody else.
"But at the end of the day we want to make sure our firefighters are protected and are safe and that whole team of B.C. Hydro personnel as well, their safety is first and foremost. That's the reason why we had the police there, and the only reason. The police aren't there to lay charges; the police aren't there to execute warrants. We're there because it's a fire safety issue."
[Talk about mixed messages..it is a legal issue when the police alone shut down cannabis cultivation, but it is a fire safety issue when other civil servants are enforcing prohibition] |
| Jun 7, 2007 | ON: Man Pleads Guilty to Pot-By-Post Plan A medical marijuana crusader accused of mailing pot to fellow users in the United States and Britain pleaded guilty yesterday to committing mischief by using Canada Post services "without proper authority."
Following Marco Renda's plea, federal prosecutor David Doney asked the court to withdraw three counts each of trafficking and exporting a controlled substance and a single count of possession of a controlled substance.
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| Jun 5, 2007 | AB: Parents Charged in Drug Den Cases PARENTS CHARGED IN DRUG DEN CASES - Police Use New Law for First Time..."Police officers wearing full protective suits with respirators are walking into rooms with kids playing, watching television, with no protection at all. The moulds, the smells, the risk of electrical explosions . . . you just shake your head."...The Southern Alberta Marijuana Investigative Team found 120 pot plants...
[Reefer Madness on steroids] |
| Jun 1, 2007 | YK: Crown To Appeal Grow-Op Judgment Crown lawyers will appeal a territorial court judgment that prevented some evidence collected on nine men allegedly involved in marijuana grow operations from being heard at trial.
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| May 26, 2007 | BC: Landlords Turn To Screening Company To Weed Out Grow-Ops British Columbia landlords and rental property owners are going to remarkable lengths to weed out potential marijuana grow-ops, crystal methamphetamine labs, deadbeats and rogue tenants more likely to trash their suites than pay the rent.
Credit checks and referrals are now just a starting point. Complete credit histories, Canadian Police Information Centre criminal record checks and a delinquent tenant list are being used and, if stung, landlords are even launching "electronic surveillance" of former tenants to monitor their financial status and then aggressively collect debts.
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| May 26, 2007 | An Invasion Of Privacy Pacing around his living room Wednesday, Richard Pitt can't believe the city's safety inspection team is late.
He points to an inspection notice delivered to his home on 119 B Avenue in Pitt Meadows.
The team was to arrive at 10:30 a.m. It is 45 minutes late.
When two police cars, a fire department pick-up and bylaws truck pulled up in front of the house to check for an illegal marijuana grow operation, Pitt was ready.
"It's an invasion of privacy," he said.
"It has taken two hours out of my day."
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| May 24, 2007 | Pot Challenge Gets High-Profile Help Philippe Lucas, founder of the Vancouver Island Compassion Society, is flying high.
As a supplier of medical marijuana and political activist bent on reforming Canada's pot laws, Lucas has a supportive MP in Vancouver East New Democrat Libby Davies.
He has what he called "an interested and engaged judge" in Justice Robert Edwards, now hearing the society's Charter of Rights challenge arising from a raid on the compassion society's grow-operation near Sooke. And he has a Tory Senator, Pierre Claude Nolin, to testify for the society when the trial resumes on June 11.
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| May 18, 2007 | Grow-Ops a Downer for Real Estate Agents
Canada's realtors are quietly waging war on former marijuana grow-ops.
While there's not much they can do to stop a grow-op from launching, realtors are banding together locally, provincially and nationally to offset the repercussions that can result when a former grow-op is resold to an unsuspecting buyer.
"The key part of it is that the house speaks for itself, so that these houses can be assessed - and need to be assessed," says Brian Walker, president of the Ontario Real Estate Association ( OREA ).
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| May 12, 2007 | Eyes In The Sky Spot Pot Satellite Imagery May Uncover Hidden Marijuana Plantations
Space will be the final frontier for busting marijuana grow operations in Canada now that police researchers are backing satellite technology that can uncover hidden cannabis plantations.
While RCMP weren't hot about the idea a few years ago, a study just completed by the Canadian Police Research Centre shows that police forces would be crazy not to use the technology, if they can afford it.
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| May 11, 2007 | Court Case Set To Argue Grow-op As A Civil Right Vancouver Island Compassion Society planning constitutional challenge in defence of pot bust
To the prosecution, it's a simple case of production for the purposes of trafficking, involving two local men caught red-handed growing a crop of 900 marijuana plants on an acreage in East Sooke.
To Vancouver Island Compassion Society founder Philippe Lucas, it's a constitutional challenge of Canada's medical marijuana laws.
Lawyers were in court in Victoria this week arguing that the two men arrested in the May, 2004 raid, Mat Beren and Michael Swallow, were operating a marijuana research and cultivation facility on behalf of the society.
"We don't deny what we were doing," Lucas said. "Our defence is a constitutional challenge."
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| May 9, 2007 | Duo Sentenced In Major Marijuana Grow Operations
Two men charged in connection to two of the biggest marijuana outdoor grow operations have been convicted and sentenced...
"The mere suggestion of profiling has undermined the important work of OPP officers," said Fantino in the release. "In this case effective communication linked the individuals, their vehicles and their criminal associations to other grow operations in Ontario long before the men were observed by OPP investigators taking their shopping lists into the stores."
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| May 9, 2007 | High- Powered Tool Against Grow-ops Introduced Langley BC - Marijuana growing operators will have to worry about more than police starting this month.
The Public Safety Inspection Team are ready to set out, going to homes that have been shown to consume an unusually large amount of electricity.
The team will be made up of Township electrical safety inspectors, a bylaw officer and RCMP members who will post notices on the doors of homes that B.C.Hydro has shown to consume abnormal levels of electricity.
The home owner then has 48 hours to allow an inspection. If the owner refuses, the power to the home will be shut off, said police spokesperson Cpl. Diane Blain.
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| May 4, 2007 | Firefighter's Grow-op Charge Goes To Court A Vancouver firefighter charged with running a marijuana grow-op in his North Delta home will appear in Surrey provincial court next month. "If somebody is found guilty there would be meetings between that party, administration and the union to discuss what would be done," Vancouver fire Capt. Rob Jones-Cook said Thursday.
"I don't want to get into a 'what if' discussion about this. He's innocent until proven guilty."
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| Apr 28, 2007 | Grow-Op Couple Lose Appeal, Home Seized A couple who appealed the seizure of their Abbotsford home after they used it for a marijuana grow operation have lost their case.
The B.C. Court of Appeal decision this week concluded the original sentencing judge didn't err in ordering the forfeiture of the couple's property, and their appeal was dismissed.
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