When we look at how our laws compare with those of others, I would suggest that the comparison needs to look at not just what the mandatory minimum is, but at the nature of the offence and what the maximum penalty is that's imposed in the other law as well, because the approach presented in Bill C-54 seeks to bring a consistency across the board for the offences that we have here in Canada.
As you asked, if you look at, for example, the United States, criminal law is a state power. If you look at the state law on child pornography or other forms of child sexual exploitation, you will find a range of penalties, both minimum and maximum, and a difference of approach. I'm not in a position to go through all of that at this time.
But as I mentioned before, at the federal level they have federal criminal laws that address child pornography offences. For example, there is a five-year minimum penalty and a maximum of twenty years for a first offence of distributing child pornography through the mails. It has to be through the mails to apply at the federal level, to catch the interstate commerce threshold. Then, there's a minimum penalty of 15 years and a maximum penalty of 40 years for a repeat offence of possessing or knowingly accessing child pornography that has been mailed, as an example.
But as I mentioned as well, if you look at other countries and their approaches, there is a range. Canada's, with the mandatory minimums proposed in Bill C-54, are as I say consistent with the mandatory minimum penalties that exist right now in the Criminal Code. One of the proposals, to add a five-year minimum penalty for the offences that carry a fourteen-year maximum penalty—for example, incest in section 155—would be comparable to the offence we have now in the Criminal Code in subsection 212(2.1), the aggravated prostitution of a young person using violence.
The approach Bill C-54 takes is to bring all of that together so that you have coherence.