On December 13, 2010, the Canadian Senate quietly passed Bill S-10, a proposed amendment to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. The bill — currently under debate in the House of Commons — will introduce mandatory minimum sentences for minor drug-related offenses for the first time in Canada if it becomes law. Interestingly, no major mainstream news outlets reported the passing of the bill, with the exception of a small article that appeared in the Vancouver Metro. The silence of the Canadian press concerning a bill that holds serious consequences for this country’s judicial processes, prison systems, and drug policy is disturbing. Canadians should be aware of the reasons that Bill S-10 should not become law, especially in the context of the increasingly conservative political climate fostered by Stephen Harper’s “tough on crime” policies.
Most contentious are the amendments Bill S-10 would make to existing laws concerning marijuana, which currently include only maximum sentences. If passed, S-10 would introduce a mandatory minimum sentence of six to nine months for growing as few as six cannabis plants, a maximum of 18 months imprisonment for producing edibles made with cannabis oil or resin, and a doubling of the maximum possible term for imprisonment for such offences from seven to 14 years. The introduction of such policies signals a shift away from harm-reduction-oriented approaches to drug policy and a move towards the incarceration-based model currently in use in the United States as part of its extensive “war on drugs.” The Harper government’s attempt to introduce such approaches to non-violent drug offences is surprising, especially given Statistics Canada’s recent report of falling police-reported crime rates.
Policiies enforcing mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offences simply do not work, as evidenced by a 2002 study prepared for the Department of Justice Canada that found mandatory minimums do not appear to deter crime. It is interesting that the Conservative government’s push to introduce such laws comes at a time when officials in the United States, the world’s foremost proponent of mandatory minimums, are questioning the effectiveness of these sentencing measures. Recently Gil Kerlikowske, Obama’s drug czar, stated that lawmakers in “almost every single state” in the U.S. are looking to reduce mandatory minimum penalties because prison populations have exploded with non-violent drug offenders. According to Kerlikowske, “the focus of the sentencing […] should be as much treatment as any punishment,” and policies that emphasize incarceration are “dumb on drugs.” Though American courts give sentences that are double that of British courts and three times that of Canadian courts, the U.S. violent crime rate is higher than in those two countries. Furthermore, 25 years of punitive mandatory minimums have done little to impact the drug business, which has flourished despite tough sentencing measures. Introducing a bill that mirrors ineffective American approaches to drug offences and promotes incarceration instead of harm-reduction and treatment is a regressive measure for Canadian drug policy.
The mandatory minimum sentences proposed by S-10 will also exacerbate problems in Canada’s already overcrowded prisons, where the current practice of placing up to four prisoners in a single cell contravenes United Nations minimum standards. Placing minor drug offenders in prisons rather than working to fix the social structures underlying drug use serves to create a prison system that “simply warehouses people,” similar to that characterized by the U.S. prison-industrial complex. According to Joseph Di Luca, vice-president of Canada’s Criminal Lawyers’ Association, such warehousing is most detrimental to already vulnerable groups such as women, racialized peoples, and Aboriginal women in particular, whose population in prisons has increased by almost 90 per cent since 2000. Overcrowding in prisons ensures that these groups have even less access to already sparse resources. It also leads to higher rates of HIV and AIDS in prison populations, increases inmate violence, and makes it more difficult for correctional officers to do their jobs.
The growth in prison populations resulting from mandatory minimum sentences also increases costs to taxpayers for expenses such as building or expanding prisons and hiring more prison staff. The cost of housing a prisoner is about $88,000 per year in the federal system. The Harper government has already announced building plans for 634 new prison beds in several provinces, costing $158 million. Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page believes that if passed, new “tough on crime” policies will put 4,200 new prisoners in jail, costing taxpayers 4 billion dollars. He also fears that Correctional Services of Canada’s annual budget of $4.3 billion will jump to $9.3 billion by 2015. Such expenses channel taxpayers’ money into supporting an ineffective drug policy that targets non-violent offenders while simultaneously reducing the amount of funds available for necessary social programs such as education, healthcare, and successful harm-reduction-based drug treatment programs such as those in effect in the Netherlands. Incarceration stemming from mandatory minimum sentences is a misuse of both Canadian money and human resources.
Overall, mandatory minimum sentences contradict the guidelines created by the Vienna Declaration, which is a call from international experts prompting the United Nations to support drug reform measures such as decriminalization, harm-reduction, and treatment rather than incarceration and punishment. Like all legislation that supports drug prohibition, Bill S-10 promises to be costly, ineffective, create unsafe conditions for already vulnerable drug users, and encourage the continued presence of the very organized crime that it seeks to target. It is counterintuitive and regressive for Canadian policymakers to support this bill and attempt to pass it into law. Concerned citizens should contact their Member of Parliament to let them know that they oppose Bill S-10, or visit www.whyprohibition.ca to receive regular updates about the status of S-10 and similar drug policy-related legislation in Canada.
