Thank you.
Even though some mandatory minimum penalties were imposed under the regimes of prime ministers Trudeau senior, Chrétien and Martin, the vast majority of those penalties were introduced by Mr. Harper's government, which also did away with the conditional sentence option. That clearly led to an at times excessive over-representation of certain groups, particularly indigenous persons, in Canadian prisons and to over-incarceration, a problem we want to correct.
However, these penalties must be repealed because they don't work. Consequently, we have selected some 20 mandatory minimum penalties whose removal would not endanger public safety. For some of the offences that Mr. Moore mentioned, such as those involving a prohibited firearm, a restricted firearm or the use of a firearm by organized crime, mandatory minimum penalties will remain. We're really targeting offences involving the use of a gun.