[420 Girl]

After two weeks of unemployment, a German shepherd named Tim is back on the job this week, ready for work inside the largest high school in the Laurentians to sniff for drugs. Tim began his work at the comprehensive high school in St. Jerome on April 11. On April 25, his duties were suspended after a Supreme Court of Canada judgment imposed new restrictions on the use of sniffer dogs by police.

After a close reading of the high-court judgment, the school board in charge of l'Ecole Polyvalente St. Jerome has decided to reintroduce Tim and some of his fellow German shepherds. Remy Tremblay, secretary-general of the Commission scolaire de la Riviere du Nord, said the Supreme Court ruling applied specifically to police dogs, not dogs like Tim who work at arm's length from law-enforcement agencies.

As a result, the board contends that use of non-police sniffer dogs is legal in schools under a 1998 Supreme Court judgment that broadened the authority of school boards to take measures to curtail drug use in their schools. That judgment condoned a principal's search of a student in Nova Scotia. "A key element here is that we aren't using use sniffer dogs to arrest students or put students behind bars," Tremblay explained. "We are using them simply to identify kids at risk and to notify parents."

Tim is one of dogs that the board wants to keep on retainer, Tremblay said. They are owned by trainers who started their own consulting company after retiring from the Surete du Quebec, he said. The dogs have been trained to sit down beside students who carry the scent of drugs, or sit down beside school bags or lockers that smell of illegal substances like marijuana or cocaine. On his first tour of duty in the St. Jerome high school on April 11, Tim sniffed out one student who was carrying drugs, while locker smell tests resulted in another two students being called out of a Grade 8 math test. There were other findings that Tremblay said he didn't want to discuss.

Self-reporting drug-use questionnaires administered by the government of Quebec have found one-third of Quebec students have tried marijuana by Grade 9, compared with the Canadian average of 18 per cent. High schools in suburbs north of Montreal accounted for a high proportion of police drug raids in 2005, according to an analysis of police records last year by the Journal de Montreal. Schools in Terrebonne and Mascouche had the most police action, said the Journal study, which involved 83 access-to-information requests from 163 high schools in 41 Montreal-area municipalities, including the city of Montreal. No English schools were in the top 25 list.

Tremblay said the sniffer-dog initiative in St. Jerome was approved by teachers, parents, the school administration and students before it was introduced last month. Tim and his canine colleagues will be called on for an unspecified number of visits to the St. Jerome high school before the end of the school year, Tremblay said.


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