Ottawa, Ontario: Scheduled hearings before Canada’s Supreme Court regarding the constitutionality of the country’s pot laws were postponed in response to recently announced plans by Parliament to decriminalize possession of the drug, Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin ruled last week.
The Court had been scheduled to hear arguments on December 13th regarding whether national laws prohibiting the non-medical use of marijuana violate Canadians’ guaranteed rights to life, liberty and personal security.
In light of Parliaments intentions to debate the marijuana decriminalization issue, the court will adjourn these appeals until the spring term, McLachlin determined. Parliament’s “examination and discussion [of the issue] may well prove to be of relevance to the case and of interest to the parties, and may provide guidance to the court in deciding the present appeals,” McLachlin said. Lawyers for both the defendants and the Crown had pushed to move ahead with the hearing as planned.
The high court had been scheduled to hear arguments from defendants David Malmo-Levine and Victor Eugene Cain, both of whom are appealing a 2-1 decision by the British Columbia Court of Appeals that upheld the constitutionality of Canada’s pot laws. In that decision, the majority admitted, “The risk posed by marijuana is not large,” but ruled that marijuana law reform must come from Parliament, not the courts.
Dissenting judge Jo-Anne Prowse disagreed, opining that the provisions of the Narcotic Control Act infringed upon the appellants fundamental rights under Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
“In my view, the evidence does not establish that simple possession of marijuana presents a reasoned risk of serious, substantial or significant harm to either the individual or society or others,” she determined.
The Supreme Court had agreed to consolidate the Malmo-Levine/Cain case with that of marijuana activist Christopher Clay, who lost a separate trial in 1997. Legal briefs in that case are available online in NORML’s Brief Bank.
For more information, please contact Keith Stroup, NORML Executive Director, at (202) 483-5500 or John Conroy, Esq., Director of Canada NORML, at (604) 852-5110 or at http://www.johnconroy.com.