Similarly, this is consistent with our approach. This is our third attempt to amend the penalty provisions of this bill, and it's our least favourite, but it would propose that we reduce the 14 years to nine years.
At this point I would like to take the opportunity to apologize to Mr. Blair for my saying he was false. He was absolutely correct about this.
The point still holds that when you have a criminal provision with a penalty of more than 10 years and, now that we know, the prosecution decides to proceed by way of indictment, it eliminates the possibility of a conditional sentence. For that reason alone, we think the 14 years should be reduced to nine.
I would point out that I don't think anybody is getting 14 years in this country for trafficking marijuana; at least, that's the evidence we heard.
We're picking an arbitrary number. Whether it's 14 or nine or seven or 11, this is just a number that we're picking. It would seem to me that we as parliamentarians should take an evidence-based approach to this and at least choose a number that gives our judges the discretion to give a conditional sentence when they wish to do so.