More than half of Ottawa’s city wards saw a decrease in cannabis-related charges between 2011 and 2012, according to information obtained from the city’s open data portal. The largest decreases were seen in Stittsville-Kanata West and in Rideau-Goulbourn, with cannabis charges falling by 40 and 46 per cent, respectively. Half of the wards that saw decreases had numbers fall by over 25 per cent, including Orleans, Kanata North, Cumberland, and College. Six other wards, including Osgoode, Knoxdale-Merivale, Kanata South, Innes, Gloucester-Southgate, Barrhaven, and Capital ward also saw decreases. The highest number of cannabis charges over the two years was laid in Rideau-Vanier ward. Police laid 200 charges in 2011 and 240 the following year, accounting for a 20 per cent jump. The lowest numbers were found in West Carleton-March and Gloucester-Southgate.

There are three types of charges police can lay in relation to marijuana, according to Ottawa police constable Marc Soucy. These include simple possession, possession for the purpose of trafficking, and cannabis production.    

Soucy said he couldn’t speculate as to the cause of the changes, since police have yet to analyze any trends in the data. Simply put, he said, “drugs are out there, and we try to stop it.” In 2010, Vern White, the city’s police chief at the time, said he supported marijuana decriminalization. “If this is about, ‘we don’t want people to have a criminal record for possession of marijuana,’ that message is a good message,” White told the Ottawa Citizen. Earlier this year, delegates at the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police agreed that officers needed more options in dealing with people caught with less than 30 grams of marijuana. Ottawa police chief Charles Bordeleau told the Citizen that handing out tickets would give police an important third option for those caught with small amounts of marijuana, as opposed to laying criminal charges or not. Soucy said that in the current system, simple possession charges are rarely laid.   Below is a heat map showing the change in the number of cannabis charges in Ottawa between 2011 and 2012, expressed as a percentage