Bill C-15 has passed in Canada. You will get 6 Months prison for one plant. ORGANIZE.

[fatigues]

Fatigues...when exactly did the Canadian public vote 72% in favour of C-15? Nobody seemed to notice it get voted in...

They are opinion polls of course. In 2007 the support for mandatory minimums was just north of 71%.

In June 2009, support for six months minimum sentence for growing five to 200 plants was at 63%. By that time, the Commons had already passed Bill C-15.

There is significantly less support for "five to 200" plants resulting in mandatory sentences than there is for larger sentences for larger grows, where suport is at 72% and 73% as late as June 2009. As I mentioned, News Flash: Canadians Don't Like Drug Dealers.

I suspect that if there was more finely tuned polling and more public education, you might target polling to justify a push for increasing minimum numbers up to 15 or even 20 plants, say. That would have been extremely useful advocacy, once upon a time. But of course, it's the government paying for these polls, so they are not likely to conduct public opinion polling which tends to make their policies look bad.

Instead, that's the role of effective marijuana advocacy groups: something that does not exist within Canada. And so effective media communication combined with targeted polling to modify government policies -- and the policy of the official Opposition - the Liberal Party of Canada, was never attempted.

In any event, that's what politicians do; they conduct and listen to opinion polls to both establish and justify their polices. When their numbers go down, they frequently adjust their polling questions - or adjust their policies, or both.

Political opponents use polls to influence the public debate and shape media and public perceptions. They can be very direct and blunt instruments - or very subtle weapons. But in either case, they are expensive. That requires organization, credibility and financial success. Traits that are difficult to ascribe to the so-called "marijuana movement" in Canada.

 

[Brad]

As I mentioned, News Flash: Canadians Don't Like Drug Dealers.

.

no offence but where do you live???haha this is a ridiculous statement made by scared people, who are you trying to convince??? last time i checked canada loved mary jane.... , no matter what the goverment media says......and seriously,dont think for one minute that anyone is buying your "stats" haha laughable at best"%72 of canaidians dont like drug dealers hahahahahahahahaha your nuts my friend! cops dont have the resources to make this law useful, there are too many GROWERS 10,000 grows in vancouver ALONE! according to their statements, how many they bust a year??? 100-200 grows???hahaha this is all a joke, the people who get caught up in it will suffer, but to the rest???bizness as usual..jail time is not a deterant to a criminal or a farmer.....arguments?

 

[Brad]

i do think this bill will pass, but most dont know the law to begin with, from people i talk to,and this is funny to them,cuz they already thought this type of stuff could happen to them

 

[Black Ra1n]

Is there a way to get a copy of these polls? I would love to see how they worded the questions. Guaranteed the information is totally untrue in all cases. Joe public believes that every grow is a commercial grow op, funded by gangs. We need to better inform and crush the untruths. This bill is exactly what the gangs want, drive the prices up for more profit.

Is it against the law for me to grow tomatoes in my basement? or is it against the law to grow your own food too.

 

[headband 707]

no offence but where do you live???haha this is a ridiculous statement made by scared people, who are you trying to convince??? last time i checked canada loved mary jane.... , no matter what the goverment media says......and seriously,dont think for one minute that anyone is buying your "stats" haha laughable at best"%72 of canaidians dont like drug dealers hahahahahahahahaha your nuts my friend! cops dont have the resources to make this law useful, there are too many GROWERS 10,000 grows in vancouver ALONE! according to their statements, how many they bust a year??? 100-200 grows???hahaha this is all a joke, the people who get caught up in it will suffer, but to the rest???bizness as usual..jail time is not a deterant to a criminal or a farmer.....arguments?

IMHO there are good dealers and bad of course just like ppl lol DUH!! it's the media the throws that hype around with the cops etc. We should all see that shit a mile away lol.. As far as the prices of pot I personally get cheapers pot from my dealers then I do from the clubs and better bud so where is the compassion from my clubs and the break in price ffs???
To speak for all Canadains is a fools task as we are all so different but we all need to be treated fairly and we all want good bud at a resonable price with no Gov. intervention The truth is there are more of us then, them and this is our strength and we have to work with that. peace out Headband707

 

[fatigues]

Is there a way to get a copy of these polls? I would love to see how they worded the questions. Guaranteed the information is totally untrue in all cases. Joe public believes that every grow is a commercial grow op, funded by gangs. We need to better inform and crush the untruths. This bill is exactly what the gangs want, drive the prices up for more profit.

No. The polls are done for the clients, and the clients control what information is released along with the polls. I do not believe the information is falsified - you expose yourself as a polling firm to one unhappy employee who leaves or is fired. Then that employee is singing a tale to the media about how the government polls are false. That would be a disaster for the firm, expose them to lawsuits, bankruptcy and it wouldn't end there, either. That's a tale that goes down a road of Official Inquiries, Royal Commissions on how taxpayers dollars were spent, and the probable fall of the government.

So the numbers are real, but that does not mean they are not influenced in terms of the questions that are asked. You can conduct your polls in a way that tends to encourage the extraction of information you want, and discourage the highlighting of information you would prefer was kept buried.

For example, there is not as much public data on marijuana legalization and gender in Canada as opposed to the USA. That does not mean the polling firms don't have this data- they most assuredly do. But they tend not to release it other than to the client.

Joe public believes that every grow is a commercial grow op, funded by gangs. We need to better inform and crush the untruths.

If you are saying that the information disclosed in these polls is dramatically influenced by the beliefs of the person being polled - and that in turn is heavily influenced by their fundamental misunderstandings of who grows what number of plants, how and for what reason, etc., I am in complete and total agreement with you.

The way to combat that is with a media blitz which changes the media perception and the public perception which underlies these numbers. There is no other way to explain how 54% of the public supports legalization, but yet these numbers are generated in polling when it comes to so-called grow-op sentencing.

I would point out that if a media blitz highlighting how many plants were used by typical personal growers was made, and then you polled by asking: "Do you think an individual should be able to grow XX number of plants for personal use?" If those questions were asked, I'm confident you could get a majority of Canadians supporting those plant numbers up to 15 or 20 without too much trouble. But that's a VERY different question than asking if they support mandatory sentences for growers of 5-200 plants, isn't it? Like I said, the way you phrase your question will elicit a different response.

So how do you combat that? Public education in the media and your own polls, crafted to elicit the information you want to emerge to influence the political debate.

And that's my point: there has been no effort to do this in Canada by activists. There are some real structural problems that explain this, but the biggest one is that tax deductible contributions are allowed for political parties, not political action groups in Canada. That in the past has lead to the "Marijuana Party" as being a default conduit for solicitation of tax deductible donations. Problem is, the overwhelming majority of Canadian voters believe the Marijuana Party is a party of kooks -- and that opinion is not going to ever change.

The problems in the movement in failing to develop real and consistent sources of reliable private donation money to fund polling efforts and lobbying has been obscured in the past decade + by Marc Emery. And it's been a two-edged sword.

I don't mean to attack Marc Emery as suggesting he has done this on purpose. And I don't mean to suggest that Marc Emery has been anything other than a committed and true believer in the cause. He is all that and more. But... he's also a man who has some otherwise objectionable political beliefs and pursues a political style that many find abrasive. (Being against Medicare in Canada is essentially political heresy, for one). Many describe him as being egotistical. I don't think he's any more egotistical than any other political activist. But Marc Emery never needed to work with others and learn how to modify the delivery of his message in order to be able to raise money.

His confrontational "Overgrow the Government" stance is good protest politics, but it's a disastrous approach if the goal is to build mainstream popular support for a political issue in order to raise political contributions from those people on an evergreen basis. Marc Emery didn't care about that problem - because he didn't need to do it to raise money. Instead, he had seed sales to fund his political party, the provincial BC Marijuana Party.

So what's the problem? The problem is that Marc Emery raised a vast amount of cash to fund the movement through selling seeds. He then donated that money to the BC Marijuana Party, and from there it was the principal source of funds for nearly all marijuana activism in Canada. That allowed the movement to do a great deal it could not otherwise accomplish. All that was good.

But the source of those funds was vulnerable. And because it was "easy money", it did not prompt others within the movement to take those difficult steps to lay the groundwork over the years to create a more broad based moderate support from a multiplicity of individual donors across the land. MPP, NORML and DPA in the USA are so large and effective precisely because they have taken the time to develop professional, competent and relatively moderate staffs and policies, with deep ties to many within the Democratic Party.

In Canada, easy money intervened and so activists were not required to take the steps to broaden those grass-root networks and move to the centre to enable them to raise more money. Worse, the ties to political parties have always stayed at the far left and left a deeply embedded leftist protest ideology within the movement. That has caused marijuana activists to now fall behind the issue. The activists remain on the far left, while the overall popularity of the issue of marijuana legalization has moved to a more mainstream support. The result? Nobody is flying the plane and the movement has no media credibility.

If the political science explanation above bores you, let me sum it up as follows: selling seeds to fund the marijuana movement in Canada has resulted in a political clusterfuck now that the seed money is gone.

 

[headband 707]

so just a quick footnote don't overgrow ,throw, the Gov.? Cause I got it booked in at 3:00 Sat. Jan.2010 before Bill C15 The movements called the Marijuana movement lol lol peace out Headband707

 

[Black Ra1n]

So the numbers are real, but that does not mean they are not influenced in terms of the questions that are asked. You can conduct your polls in a way that tends to encourage the extraction of information you want, and discourage the highlighting of information you would prefer was kept buried.

Sorry that's what I meant. I've taken a poll a while back when the liberals were in. All the questions were bias, I told the lady afterward that none of the questions made any sense what so ever. I agree with everything you've written so far. Emery as the for front of the movement is not a good thing. We need a better venue or organization, and support from all if it's to work.

 

[SB7]

FWIW, it would seem that those responsible ( I hate to use that word in relation to any politician) for the 'sober second thought" ie the the senate are going to amend the bill in some way. Let's hope they actually do soemthing constructive with it.

QUOTE:

Senate trains sights on second Tory crime Bill (C-15)
Fri, 10/09/2009 - 15:50 — Benn Greer

By Janice Tibbets, Canwest News Service

OTTAWA — The Liberal-dominated Senate, a day after rewriting a Harper government crime bill, signalled that it will alter another piece of law-and-order legislation that would automatically jail drug dealers and marijuana growers for the first time in Canada.

A Senate committee grilled Justice Minister Rob Nicholson on his proposed legislation Thursday — particularly an element allowing drug pushers in six Canadian cities to escape jail time if they go through drug treatment courts — an option that is not available elsewhere because drug courts exist only in those cities.

"How can you bring in all of these minimum sentences and say, if there are drug treatment courts in your area, you won't have to go to jail for the minimum sentence?" Liberal Senator George Baker said after the hearing.

"I think definitely amendments will be put forth by Liberal members and by Conservative members."

Judges would have leeway to exempt certain offenders from jail, provided they enter treatment programs imposed through drug courts that exist in Vancouver, Edmonton, Regina, Winnipeg, Toronto and Ottawa.

Conservative Senator Pierre Claude Nolin, an expert in drug policy, warned Nicholson that the Senate legal and constitutional affairs committee intends to put his bill — a centrepiece of the government's law-and-order agenda — through "rigorous" scrutiny.

The committee's signal that it will not rubber-stamp the contentious legislation came only a day after Nicholson blasted the upper chamber for "gutting" another bill that would eliminate a judicial practice, when sentencing offenders, to credit them on a two-for-one basis for each day already spent in detention.

The bill has the support of the opposition parties in the Commons, including the Liberals.

The Senate actions have become a political football in the House of Commons, where Prime Minister Stephen Harper accused the Liberals on Thursday of pretending they support crime bills, only to stand by while they are stymied by their unelected counterparts.

"What the Liberal party should do . . . is go down to the Senate and, instead of playing this two-faced game where they pretend to support tough-on-crime legislation but block it in the Senate, they should tell their own senators to be honest with the Canadian people, to pass that legislation and stop letting criminals get away," said Harper.

Liberal MP David McGuinty countered that the Conservatives are revelling in the Senate scrutiny because they can use it as a springboard to reinforce their tough-on-crime message and take aim at their Liberal opponents.

The drug bill sailed through the House of Commons earlier this year after the Liberals teamed up with the Conservatives, despite grumbling within Grit ranks that they were being told to support a bad bill so they wouldn't be accused of being soft on crime.

"We're just exercising sober second thought," said an unapologetic Baker, who added that senators don't have the same political pressures as MPs.

The bill would also strip judges of their discretion on whether to incarcerate drug traffickers, including offenders who grow and then sell as few as five marijuana plants.

The proposed legislation was lambasted by 13 of 16 witnesses who appeared before the House of Commons justice committee during public hearings last spring.

Critics have warned the legislation would flood jails and imprison drug addicts and young people rather than drug kingpins, who will continue to thrive, while small-time dealers are knocked out of commission.

The bill would impose one-year mandatory jail terms for marijuana-dealing when it's linked to organized crime or a weapon is involved.

Minimum sentences would be increased to two years for dealing drugs, such as cocaine, heroin or methamphetamine, to young people, or pushing drugs near a school or other places frequented by youths.

The bill would enforce six-month minimum jail terms for growing five to 200 marijuana plants to sell, and two years for larger growers.


Who am I kidding ? This bill is a done deal and neither the Libtards nor the NeoCon would every repeal it.

Don't tell me no one saw this coming ?
It was truly a sad sad day when all the morons all across Canada voted in that Asshat Harper. How could anyone actually support the Conservative agenda ? I mean really did any of them read what the Con's were planning.... didnt they see a Bush clone in the making ??? How could we as a country have learned so little from history. It would appear that those voters ( I listen to the drivel they shovel every day at work) were too busy with important things like where to get a case of beer or what F-ing sports team was playing and so on, instead of actually thinking about their decisions... I'll bet they thought more about what colour underware they were going to put on than what they were voting for.

I've lived in 11 countries around the globe , so I have an excellent perspective on the many forms of Goverment and societies and right now I can't believe how F-cked up Canada has become in the last 4 years.

SB7

 

[fatigues]

Canada's Prime Minister Harper said:

"What the Liberal party should do . . . is go down to the Senate and, instead of playing this two-faced game where they pretend to support tough-on-crime legislation but block it in the Senate, they should tell their own senators to be honest with the Canadian people, to pass that legislation and stop letting criminals get away,"

It will be awfully hard for Harper to make that argument, if the charge is being lead in the Senate by Senator Nolin, a senior member of the Quebec Conservative caucus.

This is the problem with Senators appointed years ago by the PC party. They are not beholdened to you and you cannot fire them. If the media is doing its job, they'll pick up on the fact that the opposition is coming from within the Conservative party itself. Mind you, I don't count on the media to actually report that.

Still, amending the Bill assumes that the full Senate will actually pass any amendments proposed by the Senate Standing Committee. I'm not so sure that they will do so - but here's hoping.

It's a faint hope though. They didn't accept amendments proposed by the Committee last week in related "tough on crime" legislation regarding pre-trial custody 2 for 1 credits. I doubt this will be any different, tbh.

 

[headband 707]

SB7 Canada has become so fucked up in the last 4 years because they let the US's DEA in under the blanket of terrorisim and now we are all paying for it $ in all ways . Were going to go broke paying for these assholes and they just make us look like the US and who want to look like them? peace out Headband707

 

[deepforest]

how realistic is it for bc to secede from Canada in the next 6-12 months?

 

[!!!]

I guess I won't be using the "packing up and going up to Canada" line anymore.

But this is some seriously scary shit.

 

[Marco Renda]

This bill HASN'T been passed yet!

Take Care and Peace
Marco

 

[headband 707]

Well this is what I say is going to have to happen now.. IMHO all the asshole Dr.'s that have been give all the ppl that qualify a hard time about getting herb that is all going to have to stop now!!!! lol lol.. Now if you go to your Dr. whoever that Dr. might be and ask them to fill out the forms and they say no just write a letter immediately to the College of Physicians& Surgeons tell the college that you have this condition you asked for this help you are being threatened with jailtime and your Dr. is not helping and you have no strength or money to run after a system that is broken end of story. Write another letter to your MP because unfortunately this is how you have to do it here in Canada. They screw with you , you screw back. peace out Headband707

 

[headband 707]

I also believe that we need a form letter written on the net so the it's accessible to everyone who needs it stating for Dr.'s all the misconceptions they seems to have about marijuana and there seems to be a lot of them. I just came from a Dr. that told me that Bud would give me lung Cancer!!! I didn't want to agrue with this Dr. as I knew I would get nowhere. It's better to send them the facts . I letter saying somthing to the effect that I respect you as a Dr. and I hope that inlight of Bill C15 you read this new info on medical marijuana . Please look over the highlights as any good Dr. would thank you for your cooperation in this matter . If enough of us drop these letters off they are going to have to start looking at them and include the facts etc.. If they are indeed good Dr.s they should atleast look at the facts presented. I think there are enough intelegent ppl here to put this together or find the fact peace out Headband707

 

[deepforest]

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Ma...ard+workload+senators+hear/2242910/story.html

 

[dank_stanky]

Wow, the they sound like a bunch of sheep, they watch the U.S' failing "war on drugs " and thier policies, and high costs, yet they follow them right over the cliff.

 

[Black Ra1n]

Transcripts, and readings. This is a good read. Rob Nicholson is such an ass.

http://www.cannabisfacts.ca/SenateCtteeMtgs_BillC-15.html

 

[deepforest]

nicholson doesnt care how many people he puts in jail for harmless "crimes". private prisons are being built, they have gotta fill them. can you imagine them building a bunch of jails and having nobody to put in them? rediculous, those fuckers are being built for a reason.