Matthew Burrows

The B.C. Compassion Club Society’s Jeet-Kei Leung is exasperated that Liberals are supporting the Harper Conservatives on Bill C-15.

About one-third of the 24 cultivators contracted to grow medicinal marijuana exclusively for the B.C. Compassion Club Society will be affected if the minority Conservative government’s Bill C-15 becomes law. The bill is seeking mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders.

Jacob Hunter, policy director of the Beyond Prohibition Foundation, told the Georgia Straight by phone that as a result of Senate amendments, growers who own homes can cultivate up to 200 plants and not face a mandatory minimum. “If they are renting, however, and even if they are a medicinal grower, one plant is a nine-month mandatory minimum,” he said.

Jeet-Kei Leung, communications coordinator at the society’s Commercial Drive cannabis dispensary, told the Straight “there are a dozen different ways in which this is bad news.”

Leung dismissed the Conservatives for being “stuck in the 1950s”. However, he didn’t spare the federal Liberals, who have almost unanimously followed the governing party through three readings of Bill C-15 in the House of Commons. If the House approves Senate amendments, only royal assent separates the bill from becoming law.

“The focus now is about impressing on the Liberals that it’s going to be a much, much bigger political disaster for them if they support this bill, this bill goes through, and then we start seeing all these decent and productive citizens of our country being put into prison because they are cannabis cultivators,” Leung said.

If he could, Leung would cut out anything in the bill that criminalizes marijuana cultivation. In a Straight interview earlier this year, Vancouver South Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh dismissed ending the prohibition of marijuana as a means of eliminating the criminal element.

“Look, there’s not a panacea in this case,” Dosanjh said at the time. “I know there are people who believe that just because we legalize this, somehow it’s going to go away. I don’t think there’s a panacea.”

Vancouver Quadra Liberal MP Joyce Murray, like Dosanjh, voted in favour of Bill C-15. Murray did not return a call by deadline. Neither did Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore, another yes vote.

Leung added that “Bill C-15 is not going to affect demand” for cannabis. “So who’s going to fill the void in the market when this huge cottage industry leaves?” he asked. “It’s going to be organized crime. It’s going to be exactly the people who have the infrastructure, the ruthlessness, and the resources to take over the market. And they’re actually going to be the ones who benefit from this bill. That’s the cruel irony of it.”

Kirk Tousaw, executive director of the Beyond Prohibition Foundation, told the Straight: “The bill is being returned to the House of Commons because the Senate amended the legislation that was sent to them.

Tousaw, 2005 civic campaign manager for “Prince of Pot” Marc Emery, added: “Presumably, there is a chance—there remains a chance—that the House of Commons could take action that would delay or frustrate implementation of this legislation. Obviously, anybody that has a rational view of what the outcomes of the drug policy in this country should be ought to be in favour of our Parliament doing anything it can to prevent this bill from becoming law.”

Tousaw said that in the event Prime Minister Stephen Harper opts to prorogue Parliament again, Bill C-15 will die on the order paper.