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“Solving the Housing Crisis”
Marc-Boris St-Maurice, Marijuana Party of Canada

MARIJUANA LAWS KEEPING THOUSANDS OF RESIDENTIAL UNITS FROM NEEDY CANADIANS.

As more and more marijuana growers resort to using residential units to produce marijuana, families, the elderly and other less fortunate members of our society struggle to find places to live, while at the same time, commercial spaces much better suited to these activities remain vacant.

To get a better idea of the scope of the problem, the Vancouver police estimate that over 5000 units are lost in that city alone. Even in a city the size of Toronto, 5000 units is a significant amount, and it is fair to assume there are more.

The Marijuana Party of Canada, along with other concerned individuals, invites you to learn more about this rapidly spreading problem and how it can be resolved. With the current crisis in housing, it becomes vital that we find ways to make these units available while protecting peoples’ right to grow marijuana.

The Marijuana Party will be running as many candidates as possible in the upcoming federal elections to offer an alternative to prohibition of marijuana. To do so we are seeking candidates to run across Canada this spring.

MARIJUANA PARTY CALLS FOR LEGALIZATION TO PUT AN END TO THE HOUSING CRISIS.

NOTABLE QUOTES:

Dec 2003, OACP (Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police): Between 2000 and 2002, it's estimated that so-called indoor "grow ops" increased by 250 per cent, with as many as 15,000 commercial grow ops (in Ontario) operating in 2002.

May 29, 2002,Vancouver courier: City statistics indicate that 20 per cent of the 1,016 grow-ops were owner-occupied, while the remainder involved renters. In most cases, landlords deny any knowledge of the grow-op, she said. "'They seemed like a nice family and we had no idea about the plants' is what we hear from landlords," said Robbins, adding city hall works closely with the police's Grow Busters program, which began in July 2000 to shut down the city's estimated 10,000 grow-ops.

Hansard, Monday, April 28, 2003: The RCMP recently announced that there are 4,500 marijuana grow ops in the city of Surrey. That represents about 6% of the city's households. It is said that there is not one block in Surrey where one cannot find a marijuana grow op. Marijuana grow ops are probably a $6 billion industry in British Columbia.

2001, CCPA (Canadian center for policy alternatives): In Ontario there is now a deficit of 74,000 rental housing units…All ten of Ontario's rental markets saw a drop in rental vacancy rates, a sure sign of a province-wide housing crisis

2003, CUPE (Canadian union of public employees): about 16,000 new rental units are needed annually (in Toronto) but almost no new affordable rental housing is being built.

Internationally, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights has recommended Canada treat inadequate housing and homelessness as a national emergency.