Marc-Boris St-Maurice

Marc-Boris St-Maurice (born 1969) is an activist, politician and Canadian musician, who has campaigned for many years for the legalization of cannabis, and to facilitate access to the drug for health reasons. He lives in Montreal, Quebec.

Music career St-Maurice first became known in the early 1990s as bassist of punk band Grimskunk. It was then that Marc Saint-Maurice received the nickname "Boris". He left the band in 1999 to focus on his activism in the marijuana legalization movement.

Political career In 1998, he founded the Bloc Pot, a Quebec provincial political party whose main objective was the decriminalization and eventual legalization of marijuana. The movement for marijuana had actually made some progress under Liberal rule in the early 2000s, with decriminalization bills introduced in 2003 and 2004 by the governments of Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin. When Stephen Harper's Conservatives won in the 2006 election, the new government did not continue with this legislation.

In 2009, St-Maurice contested the 2009 Montreal municipal election, seeking the position of city councillor in Jeanne-Mance. He was ultimately unsuccessfully, losing to Nimâ Machouf of Projet Montreal.

Compassion Club and activism St-Maurice has experienced trouble with the law when he was a full-time volunteer at the Compassion Club, an organization that provides marijuana to seriously ill individuals with a medical prescription. The first Montreal Compassion Club, based on those in Toronto and British Columbia, was opened on Rachel Street, near a police station.

Following a police raid, St-Maurice and his colleague Alexander Neron were accused of possession and trafficking of narcotics. Their lawyers pleaded that the Canadian legislation left a legal loophole, allowing certain individuals to possess cannabis for medicinal purposes, but not supplying the product in question. Judge Gilles Cadieux halted the proceedings against the two men in December 2002.

St-Maurice is the founder and director of the Montreal Compassion Centre, a medical marijuana facility in downtown Montreal. Prior to the legalization of cannabis in Canada, the centre was raided and shut down in 2011.

Electoral record 2009 Montreal Municipal Election: Jeanne-Mance Party City Council candidate Vote % Projet Montréal Nimâ Machouf 3,271 39.90 Vision Montréal Nathalie Rochefort 2,404 29.32 Union Montréal Michel Prescott 1,806 22.03 Independent Marc-Boris St-Maurice 548 6.68 Parti Montréal Ville-MarieMarc-André Bahl 170 2.07