Thank you, Chair.
I wanted to intervene for a few minutes to respond to a couple of the comments made opposite. I listened to Mr. Rathgeber's discussion about the Alberta Court of Appeal, and I agree with the judge who he was talking about.
But I find that lawyers—and this is no reflection on Mr. Rathgeber, who quoted from a case—don't quote all of the case. It sounds as though the comments of the judge.... It seems to me that that was an appeal from a sentence that was regarded as particularly low, and the judge wanted a standardized sentence and was speaking about the problems, and I suspect he probably raised that sentence—I'm seeing a nod from Mr. Rathgeber—because the court said there should be standards and starting points.
A starting point is something with a range of sentencing or expected sentencing. Some crimes would demand a certain response as a starting point, but that's not the same as a minimum sentence. A starting point could go up and it could, with significant mitigation, go down.
The point that we've been making here is that the sentences we're talking about in clause 39.... The sentence for trafficking, for example, is life imprisonment. That's the sentence.
The minimum sentences being put in are various versions of one year, two years, three years, 16 months, 18 months in some cases, and others. The maximum is life imprisonment, which is indicative of the seriousness with which it's taken.
I've listened to the comments about marijuana, and the strength of marijuana today versus yesterday, and I appreciate Mr. Wilks' comments on that and his opinion about what he believes the effect of mandatory minimums would be. I would make one small comment: I don't think Mr. Wilks heard Mr. Seeback's suggestion as to how many cigarettes come from a marijuana plant. I think it was up to 500 or 600, where your plants are more modest.