Yes, you have a certain number of effects. Let's take a first shot at least three.
Number one, it's very difficult to reconcile minimum sentences with the principle of proportionality, because the principle of proportionality basically is guided by several factors, harm and guilt. For instance, the determination of guilt is not automatic. In some cases you have crimes that are caused by certain circumstances. In some other cases, some of these crimes are, at first blush, motivated by pure evil and some things like that. So you have to look into these different circumstances. So that's one effect.
So if you have one formula fits all, it supplants the principle of proportionality, and of course, secondly, justice doesn't appear to be done either in the eyes of the public or in the eyes of the person who is subjected to this penalty.
The second thing is that it curbs the discretion of the judges, and here let me be even more precise than this. I think one has to alienate judges only if there's an overwhelming public interest in doing so. My example would be this. When we submitted our report, the Canadian Sentencing Commission report, we had some guidelines that we wanted to submit to judges, and these were presumptive advisory guidelines and there was no coercion whatsoever in the guidelines. The response of judges, I have to say, was fairly negative, meaning that they didn't want to have any kind of constriction on their discretion, excepting the one that exists right now. Basically, you have two lawyers, you can have an appeal, you have the charter, so sentencing is not done in a vacuum. Basically, they felt that guidelines were an imposition upon them.
If that is true with guidelines, multiply...sorry?