Matt Gurney Dead Wrong about the Marc Emery Case

Matt Gurney is a pretty good columnist, but he simply wrong about the Marc Emery case. http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/04/19/matt-gurney-on-marc-emery-if-you-break-the-law-you-go-to-jail-this-isnt-hard/

Matt Gurney says that if you openly flaunt a controversial law expect the law to come crashing down. Thankfully this is not always the case. The police will not be arresting the tens of thousands of people smoking up for 4:20 tomorrow. Allowing for people to flaunt particular laws, if only temporally, is part of what it means to live in free society.

That being said, the problem with Marc Emery was not that the law came down on him when it should not have. It was that for 7 long years the police refused to arrest Marc Emery for repeatedly flaunting Canadian law and then all of sudden arrested him on behest of the American government to face charges. Now, under the terms of the extradition treaty, one can not be extradited if one is facing the same charge in one’s country of residence and one was arrested there. So, a BC marijuana activist tried to save Emery from being sent to the States by asking the crown to at long last charge Emery under Canadian law. His efforts were unsuccessful. Despite a mountain of evidence against him, Canadian authorities were unwilling to charge Emery under Canadian law. So, Emery is serving 5 years for a crime he was fined $200 for in Canada and which for 7 years was not been applied.