Thank you, Chair.
To all the participants, thank you for your attendance. I will not be asking questions specific to anybody. Anybody can respond.
The first point I want to address is the latter point from my colleague Mr. Garrison, who left the committee with the impression that there is some benefit to passing Bill C-5 because there's going to be an ultimate savings to the criminal justice system, first, in terms of cost, and second, in terms of expediency.
I can explain—hopefully, the panellists will also agree with me—that that is a complete fallacy. Eliminating mandatory minimum penalties will not decrease substantially the amount of charter litigation. As a member of the Ontario bar who has prosecuted in the Ontario courts for the better part of 30 years, I can inform you that there are charter challenges for just about every offence in the Criminal Code. It's not necessarily confined to gun offences.
Is the department prepared to acknowledge that there will not be a direct correlation, a substantial correlation, in the reduction of charter litigation if we eliminate these 14 mandatory minimums? Yes or no.