It's available, and that's where my comment goes at the beginning that you're transferring discretion from the court to the crown. It's not up to the sentencing judge to decide what count is being pled to; that's the crown's discretion. So you would have to convince the crown.
The problem with transferring discretion from the court to the crown is that the crown's discretion is not reviewable at all. We can review the court's use of discretion through appellate courts, and that's done all the time.
As I was going through the debates I did find it interesting that the impetus for this legislation was the anger that resulted from charges being withdrawn in the case of the Ottawa war memorial and charges being withdrawn in the riding of the private member who proposed this bill with respect to war memorials.
Imposing a mandatory minimum sentence does nothing to prevent a crown from using his or her discretion to withdraw the charge outright or ask for a plea to a lesser included offence. This is what I find problematic. Whereas, if you leave it in the hands of the judge, the judge can decide that we're going to take a plea to this particular offence—you'll be convicted, and it will be on your record not only that you did commit mischief, but that it was in relation to a war memorial. The judge has the discretion to impose a discharge.