No, Mr. Lamoureux is not correct. It is not two years. There is a fundamental misunderstanding. I invite members to actually read the act, which defines in section 36(1):
A permanent resident or a foreign national is inadmissible on grounds of serious criminality for
(a) having been convicted in Canada of an offence under an Act of Parliament punishable by a maximum term of imprisonment of at least 10 years, or of an offence under an Act of Parliament for which a term of imprisonment of more than six months has been imposed;
This is the law that was adopted in 2002, defining a six-month sentence as constituting a serious crime. We are not changing that.
As for the crimes that are affected, they include indictable offences that carry a punishment of at least 10 years, including homicide, aggravated assault, drug trafficking, fraud, or theft over $5,000. All offences involving firearms or other weapons carry at least one year of imprisonment, and thus would be captured by the new six-month bar. Sexual offences against children that are prosecuted by indictment will receive six months or one year as a minimum sentence; therefore, these offenders would also be captured by the six-month bar.