Brent Rathgeber
Political Affiliation:Independent
Province / Territory:Alberta
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House of Commons
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Canada
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Safe Streets and Communities Act
Government Orders
March 9th, 2012 / 12:50 p.m.
Conservative
Brent Rathgeber
Edmonton—St. Albert, AB
Mr. Speaker, I thank the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health for his good work on the health files and for his interest with respect to addictions.
As I indicated, with
respect to the production of scheduled drugs, such as cannabis and
marijuana, which is what I think the member for Western Arctic was most concerned about, aggravating factors have to be present.
Those aggravating
factors, as I indicated, would be that the person used real property
that belonged to a third party to commit the offence; the production
constituted a potential security, health or safety hazard to children
who were in the location where the offence was committed or in the
immediate area; the production constituted a potential public safety
hazard in a residential area where the person placed or set a trap.
With respect to
trafficking, often rental properties are converted into grow operations.
When those grow operations are dismantled by law enforcement, or simply
because of the amount of electricity and humidity that are required to
grow cannabis--I have read about this; I do not have any direct
experience--often there is serious damage to the drywall and often to
the structural foundation. When there is damage to real property, that
is an aggravating factor that causes the aggravating sentence provisions
to kick in.
Just to clarify, possession is not punishable by a mandatory minimum sentence; it is possession for the purposes of trafficking.
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