Recognizing that it seems to be the will of this committee, I don't want to be presumptuous, but based on the last vote it would appear that the mandatory minimums that are in place are at risk of being struck down, which, in my view, puts our communities at risk, particularly when there is a recidivist element and repeat offenders who are committing the same crimes and the same types of crimes over and over.
What our CPC-1 would do, in an effort to compromise, is reduce the mandatory minimum penalty from one year to six months. For virtually all of the minimums we deal with in Bill C-5 and Bill C-22, which came before it, I think the lowest minimum is one year. I don't think there were any that were below one year. Some of them were more than a year, but the majority of them were a year.
What this would do is acknowledge what appears to certainly be the will of this committee to deal with mandatory minimums but also acknowledge the cry from the public right now that there be real consequences for serious crime. This amendment would be an effort to extend the olive branch and say, if one year is too much, then six months would take someone off the streets, hopefully get them some of the help they need and also show that there is a level of confidence in our justice system that if you commit some of the serious firearms offences and other offences contained in Bill C-5, we as a Parliament say that if you commit an offence like that, there needs to be some period of incarceration.
This amendment would lower the mandatory minimum penalty from one year to six months for using a firearm in the commission of an offence.