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OTTAWA — The Senate has rejected an attempt to prohibit Canadians from growing a small number of marijuana plants at home once recreational cannabis is legalized. 

Conservative Sen. Vern White proposed Thursday an amendment to Bill C-45 that would have banned home cultivation entirely across the country. 

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The amendment was defeated by a vote of 40-33. 

Another Conservative senator, Claude Carignan, then proposed an amendment that would have restricted home cultivation to inside a dwelling, banning Canadians from growing pot plants in their yards. 

That too was defeated, by a vote of 40-31. 

The Conservatives voted as a block in favour of both amendments but persuaded only a handful of independent senators, who now form the biggest faction in the Senate, to back them. 

Senators had already accepted 40 amendments proposed earlier this week by the Senate’s social affairs committee.  One of those amendments would authorize provinces and territories to ban home cultivation if they choose — as Quebec and Manitoba intend to do — or restrict the number of plants even further than the proposed four per dwelling allowed under the bill as originally drafted.