How are Canadiens different from us?

They actually admit it when anti-drug hysteria turns out to be unfounded.

Anti-drug hysteria at work....but at least in Canada, they admit it when they are wrong.

The Chief of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Monday admitted he made a mistake when he blamed last week's killing of four RCMP officers on marijuana grows. The killings were committed by a deranged lone criminal - not an organized group of growers...

As TalkLeft notes, if this had happened in the U.S., legislation providing for mandatory sentencing for cultivation would already be winding its way through the Capitol.

But in Canada...

Zaccardelli and Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan, his political boss as the minister of public safety and emergency preparedness, spoke of the scourge of marijuana grow operations within hours of the killings and the need for tougher penalties for those who operate them.

"I gave what I believed was the best information I had knowing full well that at that time I didn't have all the information," a contrite Zaccardelli said. "Clearly, there's a lot of things in there that, in hindsight, we will have to look at in a different perspective."

Police in Mayerthorpe, Alta., first attended Roszko's home last Wednesday with a court order to seize stolen auto parts. While there, they discovered what a search warrant said were 20 marijuana plants. They returned the next day -- the day of the killings -- with a warrant to search for the drug outfit and seized 280 plants, $8,000 worth of growing equipment and a generator worth $30,000, the Edmonton Journal reported.

But in the days since the murders, it appears they were the work of a deranged man with a long criminal history, but hardly that of a gangster protecting his cash crop.

"None of these are simple issues. This requires some reflection and discussion," Zaccardelli said. "Let's honour the memory of these four fallen police officers and help their families get through it, and then we need to carry on the debate after this."

And we still await a correction from the so-called liberal U.S. media.