The criminal justice system in legislation like this is a very blunt tool to deliver a message to the public.
More concerning to me has been the politicization of criminal justice over the last number of years, the ignoring of evidence. A message is sent to the public by virtue of the fact that things are criminalized and, in most cases, even when there is no minimum sentence, or even when there is a minimum sentence, if there is a very serious crime, the sentence is usually in excess of that.
Quite frankly, dealing with firearms, the die has been cast. The Supreme Court has found the law to be unconstitutional, and it's unconstitutional for good reasons. While you look on the one hand at potential, speculative, possible harms about the public getting the wrong message, on the other hand there is the injustice that existed through the imposition of the mandatory minimum sentences.
The Canadian public is capable of understanding nuance if you speak to them like adults. We can take crime seriously without taking discretion away from judges, and we can make sure that, when appropriate, very lengthy sentences are imposed. At the end of the day, I hope you would be guided by the research, that whether it's a communications tool or not, increasing sentences through the use of minimum sentences doesn't actually make the public safer. That's what you should be telling the public.
I would hope that if you accept that evidence, and I submit you should, given the decades of testimony that committees like this have heard on the topic—that the public not be lied to by saying they'll be safer with longer sentences—that you will engage in the harder work of ensuring the public is made safe through appropriate measures that are grounded in evidence and that actually work.