There’s a wider debate surrounding the legalization of cannabis, but Justice Minister and Solicitor General Jonathan Denis said the province can’t ignore the health and safety threat posed by illegal marijuana grow ops in the meantime.

The provincial government released a report Friday with 37 recommendations aimed at combating grow ops, including greater public education to help people spot them and the adoption of provincial standards for cleaning up properties contaminated by illegal grows.

“The recommendations provide the foundation for a provincial response to govern the inspection, and perhaps more importantly, the remediation, of residential grow operations, to ensure that former grow operations are properly reclaimed,” Denis said, adding the government has endorsed all 37 recommendations.

Alberta Law Enforcement Response Teams, an umbrella agency that combines investigators from municipal police departments, the RCMP and Alberta sheriffs, found 662 confirmed grow ops in Edmonton and Calgary between 2007 and 2011.

Because large-scale marijuana grow ops require a significant amount of electricity, criminals commonly steal power by bypassing the electrical meter in an effort to avoid detection.

A makeshift wiring job powering a grow op in the northwest Calgary community of Citadel started a fire that destroyed five homes and damaged three others.

Some of the recommendations are designed to ensure authorities have better ways of sharing information about marijuana grow ops; others are aimed at protecting owners or prospective buyers of properties that have housed grows.

“We will work with mortgage brokers and the insurance industry to determine a baseline for what they will consider for insurance and mortgages following remediation,” Denis said.

“It matters very little if you have a remediated property but there’s not a mortgage or insurance company that’s willing to touch it.”

What the report doesn’t touch on is the broader question of whether decriminalizing or legalizing cannabis would reduce the dangers associated with organized crime groups’ involvement in underground marijuana production.

The American states of Colorado and Washington recently legalized recreational cannabis use, but Denis said addressing that issue in this country is the federal government’s responsibility.

“While the federal government figures out what course of action it wants to do, we’re literally faced in Alberta with hundreds of former marijuana grow operations,” Denis aid.

“Doing nothing is not an option.”

But the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, a group of 30 non-governmental organization based at Simon Fraser University, said legalizing and regulating cannabis presents the greatest opportunity for reducing the health and safety risks associated with the illegal market.

“The current policies just perpetuate the cat-and-mouse game of people growing cannabis illegally,” said Donald MacPherson, the coalition’s executive director.

Legalizing cannabis opens the door to regulating it and better controlling its distribution like other potentially harmful consumer products such as alcohol and tobacco, MacPherson said.

“Our current policies have only contributed to the problems with young people. If cannabis is dangerous, all the more reason to regulate it,” MacPherson said.

“It would allow us to introduce a health and safety approach to cannabis use, much like we have with tobacco.”

jvanrassel@calgaryherald.com

Twitter.com/JasonvanRassel