Thank you to the witnesses. Most especially, thank you to Ms. Arsenault for her powerful testimony.
We've had an opportunity to meet a number of times. It is difficult to imagine a more horrific set of circumstances than those that resulted in the death of your son and two others in 2011. Three young men who had bright futures ahead of them were taken away in an instant by an impaired driver. I know, coming from Edmonton, that incident really has had a lasting impact on our entire community and northern Alberta. I want to commend you for your advocacy. It takes a lot of courage in the face of such a tragedy to be able to come here and speak publicly about this important issue that obviously has forever changed your life and the life of your family. Thank you for that.
I want to express my concurrence with your recommendation that this legislation be amended to include a mandatory minimum sentence of five years for impaired driving causing death. That is actually one year less than the six years provided for in Bill C-73.
I was going through the Criminal Code and I noticed that there are at least 50 mandatory minimums currently operative in the Criminal Code. They include, among other things, a five-year mandatory minimum for discharging a firearm recklessly, which is very serious, but at the end of the day, no one is dead necessarily in that incident. Here we have impaired driving causing death, which would obviously seem to be more serious. I note in your written report that you quote the Minister of Justice in answer to a question in question period wherein she says that her government is not opposed to mandatory minimum sentences for the most serious of crimes.
Would you not say the fact that there is a noticeable absence of a mandatory minimum is inconsistent with that statement? The government in a lot of ways copied and pasted what was in Bill C-73 but then removed one of the most important provisions to hold those responsible accountable.