Mr. Chair, Mr. Garrison raises a very important issue. Normally speaking—and I've been doing this for over 20 years—I have clients who come to me all the time and say, “Look, you know what, I did it. I want to accept responsibility for my actions and I want to receive my sentence.” I facilitate that. The problem with mandatory minimum sentences is it disincentivizes early pleadings.
For someone who can receive an appropriate disposition that both the Crown and the defence agree upon, oftentimes it is non-incarceratory, so there is a large incentive to plead early on in the process. If there is a mandatory minimum involved, the cases languish in the process, pretrial motions are brought and a lot of resources are spent defending that in the effort to try to escape a conviction, because it would end up with a mandatory minimum.
If you remove these mandatory minimums and make alternative sentences available, people will generally resolve their matters early on in the process, freeing up valuable resources with respect to much more serious offences. Right now those serious offences have to wait in the background while resources are spent on these mandatory minimums. The problem is if things languish too long, the Jordan decision gets involved and matters are thrown out for delays.