Yes, Mr. Chairman.
The amendment is that Bill C-299, in clause 1, be amended by replacing lines 10 to 12 on page 1 with the following:
imprisonment for life; and
Mr. Chairman, if I may, let me just provide an explanatory context for this. This amendment effectively removes a mandatory minimum penalty from the proposed legislation. I don't want to use the occasion to repeat all that I've said before and will say prospectively on other occasions about my critiques of mandatory minimums—they're well known. Much of what I've been saying was also echoed in witness testimony before this committee, including succinctly by our witness in the last meeting.
I just want to address two points in relation to this amendment. The first is the following—which I want to state for the record as a result of exchanges that sometimes take place in the House. Like all members here, we are all concerned about the kidnapping of young persons. Indeed, when I was Minister of Justice, the first piece of legislation I introduced on behalf of the government at the time was Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (protection of children and other vulnerable persons) and the Canada Evidence Act, which became law in July 2005, and which, among other things, enhanced the Criminal Code with respect to sexual offences against children, failure to provide the necessities of life, and abandonment of children. It also made child abuse in the commission of an offence an aggravating factor for sentencing purposes.
I make reference to this because I accept and promote the overarching objective with respect to this legislation, the protection of young children from criminal offences. My objection is only on the issue of the mandatory minimum. If I may state for the record why the issue of children is so important to me, as I've stated before, when my daughter was 15 years of age, she came to me one day and said, “Daddy, if you want to know what the real test of human rights is, then always ask yourself, at any time, in any situation, in any part of the world, is it good for children? Is what is happening good for children?”
So the question of protecting children was a priority for me as a minister, and that legislation to which I just referred became known among us in the government as “Gila's Law”, because at the time it was very much inspired by my daughter Gila. This is an issue that I take very seriously, as do all members of this committee.
I want to draw the attention of colleagues to the language of my second amendment, LIB-2, because it should be read in concert with the first.