Accused Iqaluit dope dealer may use seized cash to pay lawyer: court

David (Ed) deVries, Nunavut’s Marijuana Party candidate in the 2006 federal election, may use cash seized from him by police to pay for his defence, Justice Earl Johnson of the Nunavut Court of Justice said in a written decision issued Jan. 25.

Following RCMP searches conducted in August 2009, January 2010, and September 2011, deVries faces multiple charges of trafficking in marijuana.

He also faces unrelated charges of sexual assault and possession of child pornography.

In their various searches, police grabbed large amounts of cash they found in deVries’s backpack and at his residence.

The largest of those was $7,250 they found in his backpack Jan. 29, 2009 and $32,465 they found at his residence on Sept. 11, 2011.

The money is related to the activities of the Qikiqtaaluk Compassion Society, a non-profit group deVries founded to promote “alternate healing methods” and the “safe provision” of medical marijuana, Johnson said in his judgment.

Iqaluit banks refused to let deVries open accounts in the name of the organization, so deVries kept the cash at home or on his person, Johnson said.

According to deVries, the $7,250 seized in 2009 was intended to pay employees of the compassion society.

This past Jan. 17, deVries applied to the Nunavut court to have the seized cash released so he can pay his lawyer, who until now, has been representing him without a fee.

In previous Canadian court cases, judges have ruled that accused persons may use seized assets to pay for their legal defence if they have no other way of obtaining money.

Johnson ruled that deVries may draw upon the seized cash to pay his lawyer at a rate of $200 an hour.

An ardent proponent of marijuana legalization, deVries told Nunatsiaq News in May 2005 that he he estimated about 80 per cent of Nunavut’s population smoke dope.

“I’ve smoked pot with the leaders of our community… I’ve been in communities where I’ve seen elders smoking joints and doing hot knives, people I’ve seen written up in Above and Beyond as being saints, smoking dope with me,” deVries said in May 2005.

During his campaign for the Jan. 23 federal election, deVries called for the creation of community greenhouses in Nunavut to grow and distribute marijuana as an economic development project.

“They’re looking for $5 million to build a community greenhouse in Iqaluit? They could make that much in the first year. I can see government-built greenhouses training and hiring Inuit workers to grow and distribute marijuana,” deVries said at the time.

He won seven per cent of ballots cast in that election, ahead of the Green Party.

He also ran unsuccessfuly for Iqaluit City Council in December 2010.

After becoming ordained as a minister in the Church of the Universe, deVries sometimes signed his correspondence as “Reverend Brother D. Ed. deVries.”

In the summer of 2006, deVries angered Igloolik mayor Paul Quassa, when he told Nunatsiaq News that many pot-heads reside in Igloolik, where he then lived.