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Editorial - Saturday, July 14, 2007 @ 10:00

It's hard to believe, but nearly half of all Canadians have committed a criminal offence.

Fortunately, however, only about 600,000 of the 15-million plus have criminal records. We say 'fortunately' because the criminal offence they have committed is largely harmless - so harmless, in fact, that some police officers can't be bothered making an arrest and laying charges when they happen upon the crime in progress.

That crime is possession of cannabis, or marijuana. Section 4 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act sets out a maximum six-month prison sentence and a $1,000 fine for anyone caught with 30 grams of marijuana or less.

Imagine how full our jails would be and how much those fines would total if police cracked down on the estimated nearly half of all Canadians who have ever possessed and/or smoked the weed. Imagine, too, how difficult it would be for half the population of the country to find work with a criminal record, or to travel abroad.


That's why we argue it's 'fortunate' that only about 600,000 Canadians have criminal records as a result of their consumption, experimentation, or even flirtation with pot.

But this is not to argue in support of the legalization of marijuana. The country isn't ready for that step and all the complications it would entail - from impaired driving to supporting criminal groups who grow and sell it, to its abuse by youth.

Rather, what the federal government should do is decriminalize small amounts of marijuana, in favour of fines similar to a traffic offence rather than facing a criminal trial, as the Liberal government of Jean Chretien proposed in 2003. At that time, every party in the House of Commons except the Conservatives supported a bill to do just that, but the Liberals never brought the bill to a vote - Chretien's government was a tad busy at the time with the forces of Paul Martin who were anxious to put their man in the PM's chair and with a little controversy involving federal sponsorships in Quebec that had yet to blow wide open.

While the Liberal government's bill was never resurrected and passed into law, it stood no chance of becoming law with the election of the Harper government on Jan. 23, 2006. And that, apparently, is why the number of people arrested for smoking or possessing pot rose dramatically across the country last year.

While official numbers have yet to be released, preliminary figures obtained by The Canadian Press from interviews with municipal police forces and through Access to Information Act requests suggest the number of arrests jumped by more than 33 per cent in several Canadian cities. As a result, thousands of people have been branded as criminals for an offence that was almost abolished, an offence that, as noted earlier, almost half of all Canadians have committed. Several police officials said the increase in charges is linked directly to the earlier Liberal legislation.

Terry McLaren, president of the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police, said many forces simply stopped laying charges after the Liberals first introduced the decriminalization bill in 2003. "Everybody was waiting for what was going to happen," he said. "There'd be no use clogging up the court system with that decriminalization bill there.

"When that was defeated, I'd say it was business as usual."

Business as usual, however, continues to clog our court systems and to distract police from more-important pursuits.

Decriminalization for possession of small amounts of pot won't eliminate the ongoing problems associated with its use that we noted earlier. But it would stop making criminals out of average Canadians and free up the resources to address those problems.

The Intelligencer is a member of The Canadian Press and the Canadian Newspaper Association. Our circulation is audited by CCAB Inc.

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