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Trustee Charged With Growing Pot For Trafficking
By Hempology | November 2, 2007
Winnipeg Free Press
Oct.25 2007
Rick Martin
A Manitoba school trustee has been charged with growing marijuana and possession of marijuana for the purposes of trafficking. Turtle River School Division trustee Gilbert Soucy and his wife Colleen Soucy were allegedly running a grow operation busted by police late last month. They appeared in Dauphin court earlier this week, RCMP Sgt. Line Karpish said Wednesday. He said both have both been charged with possession for the purposes of trafficking, and with production of cannabis.
Their case has been remanded to Oct. 30, a court official said from Dauphin.”We don’t have any comment right now. Thank you,” Colleen Soucy said Wednesday before hanging up the phone. Officials with Turtle River, the province’s smallest school division, refused to comment Wednesday.
RCMP raided a property in Laurier, 70 kilometers east of Dauphin Sept. 28, but did not lay charges nor make names public until this week.
The Ste. Rose RCMP Detachment, and Spruce Plains RCMP Detachment, with Major Crime Units from Dauphin and Brandon conducted the operation. Police say they found 63 mature marijuana plants, several grams of marijuana and materials used for the production of marijuana.
Turtle River school board chair Gwen McLean said from McCreary Wednesday that she has not been officially told that the charges have been laid.
“I’m not going to comment right now,” said McLean.
Minutes posted on the Turtle River S.D. website show that Soucy did not attend a Oct. 9 board meeting. The minutes do not indicate if the board excused Soucy’s absence.
A trustee can be removed by the school board for missing three consecutive board meetings without permission.
Minutes for a meeting earlier this week have not been posted. Superintendent Bev Szymesko could not be reached Wednesday.
A provincial official said that the Public Schools Act was amended in 2004 to apply the same standards to school trustees that municipal councillors face.
A trustee will be removed from office if convicted of an offence punishable by a sentence of five years or more. And anyone removed from office would be barred from seeking office again for four years, thus preventing that person from contesting the next municipal election in 2010.
However, school boards do not have the power to remove a trustee whose legal difficulties do not meet those criteria.
Turtle River School Division is by far Manitoba’s smallest, with 851 students in seven schools in Alonsa, Laurier, Glenella, McCreary, Ste. Rose du Lac, and the Parkview Hutterite colony. Turtle River has only five school trustees.
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