Mr. Chair, I would like to thank Madame Boivin for her comments, for putting forward this amendment, and generally her support for Bill C-10.
Regrettably, we're unable to support this amendment. The reasons, Mr. Chair, are essentially because the intention of the motion is to make the mandatory minimum penalty of very little effect.
The government has striven to present a bill which will really gets at the root cause of this issue, which is the involvement of organized crime in the trafficking in very large quantities of contraband tobacco. You'll note that the mandatory minimum penalties in the offence itself really only apply to amounts that are very large, and that is 10,000 cigarettes or more than 10 kilograms of raw tobacco, which is a very large amount.
We heard from the first nations witnesses, police witnesses, and others about the impact of organized crime in this business, and the regrettable problems it brings to first nations communities when entities like Hells Angels and other well-known organized crime groups move in to really take advantage of first nation peoples in this business.
It's our view that we need to have a penalty which is significant so that organized crime will look very carefully at this and realize that if they're going to continue doing this business, they're going to face stiff penalties.
I also note that the mandatory minimum, unlike the case in many offences in the Criminal Code, comes into play only on a second conviction under this Criminal Code offence, not an excise tax offence, for example, and only when the conviction is proceeded with by way of indictment as opposed to summary conviction. These mandatory minimums are directed at very serious offences with very large amounts of contraband tobacco.
In our view, to introduce the possibility of something other than the mandatory minimum by giving the judge this additional discretion really would drive defence counsel representing organized crime accused to seek another sentence other than the mandatory minimum. That would defeat what we think is a very significant purpose of this legislation and this penalty.
I think for all of those reasons the government will be required to vote against this amendment, but we do thank Madame Boivin for presenting it.
Thank you.