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Possession of marijuana will remain a criminal offence if Stephen Harper and the Conservative party form the government after the country goes to the polls next month.

The Conservatives have made crime fighting one of their major policy objectives and Mr. Harper rolled a good chunk of his party's plan to curtail the trade in banned substances at a press conference here Saturday morning.

"The values of a peaceful, orderly, safe society are a problem none of the other parties seem to care about," he told reporters at a recreational complex in this Vancouver suburb.

"We have to do something about the drug crisis in this country."

The Conservative leader said he would impose mandatory minimum sentences of at least two years for people who are convicted of trafficking, selling or importing hard drugs, like heroin, cocaine and crystal methamphetamine. He would ban conditional sentences — something he likened to house arrest- for serious drug crimes, and increase fines to reflect the true value of the profit that can be made for dealing the banned substances.

And unlike the Liberals, the Conservatives would not decriminalize marijuana. Instead, they say they would introduce a national drug strategy that would target keeping substances away from young people.

"I don't think it's a coincidence that we have seen a rapid expansion of the drug trade," since the Liberals started talking about taking marijuana possession out of the criminal code.

Asked why he would saddle a student who is caught with a small amount of the substance with a criminal record, Mr. Harper said "we believe we have to send a message" that these types of activities are unacceptable. In his talks with people who have become addicted to harder drugs, he said, they almost always say they started with marijuana.

The disastrous social consequences of the use of crystal meth have been a focus for many members of the Conservative caucus this year and have become a common issue raise in the daily Question Period of Parliament.

Former Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell, who is now a Liberal senator but has spent much of his life tackling drug issues, has said that the crystal meth issue, while serious, has been overblown.

"This idea that there's this huge crystal meth thing raging across Canada ... there is no basis for it," Mr. Campbell has said. "There's absolutely no statistical information that can back it up. The reason we're so horrified is that the results are so visual, and so awful."

Mr. Harper dismissed that notion as cavalier. The drug problem is reaching into our parks, our streets and even our churches, he said.

The Conservatives will likely spend much time in this part of the country as the campaign progresses. British Columbia, perhaps more than anywhere else in Canada, is a three-way race where all three national parties hope to make gains.

Early in the morning, the Liberals sent out a media advisory to remind reporters that Darrel Reid, the Conservative candidate in Richmond, is a past president of Focus on the Family, an American-based group that has fought hard against same-sex marriage.

Mr. Reid, who was at the policy event in Burnaby, said he would vote against same-sex unions if he is elected and the issue comes back before Parliament. And he believed that many people in his constituency shared those views.

But he also said he thought that there were many other issues that were of more importance to voters like reducing taxes and fighting crime.