| Photo: Jodie Emery |
| Jodie and Marc Emery in a legal industrial hemp field outside Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. |
MPs from all three of Canada’s major national political parties — Conservative, Liberal, and New Democrat — are about to submit petitions calling for marijuana activist Marc Emery to not be extradited to the United States.
Scott Reid of the Conservative Party, Ujjal Dosanjh of the Liberal Party, and Libby Davies of the New Democratic Party will submit the petitions, reports Carlito Pablo at Vancouver’s Georgia Straight.
According to press reports, the petitions will likely be submitted by the three MPs on Monday, March 15.
Last Summer, Emery agreed to a plea bargain with American authorities that will probably see him thrown into a United States prison for at least five years for distributing marijuana seeds through the mail.
The petitions will ask Conservative justice minister and attorney general Rob Nicholson not to sign the extradition papers of the Vancouver-based marijuana activist.
Jodie Emery, Marc’s wife, related that she and her husband met Reid at a Liberty Summer Seminar organized by the Ontario-based Institute for Liberal Studies.
“Scott Reid was there one year, and we talked to him and he understands that prohibition is a bad idea,” Jodie said.
By Davies’s estimate, the offices of the three MPs have received petitions signed by about 12,000 people opposed to Emery’s extradition to the U.S.
“Members from three different parties are doing it — it’s really a nonpartisan issue,” Dosanjh said.
Marc Emery has said that American authorities are out to get him because of the work he has done to legalize marijuana.
Emery pointed to a statement issued by then-U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration head Karen Tandy following his arrest in 2005. That release called Emery’s arrest “a significant blow not only to the marijuana trafficking trade in the U.S. and Canada, but also to the marijuana legalization movement.”