Thank you, Chair, for telegraphing your intent.
I take exception to what I anticipate your ruling will be, because of what we heard from the Minister of Justice on at least one occasion, and also when he attended the Standing Committee on the Status of Women. I had the opportunity of questioning him on both occasions with respect to why the government chose not to reinstate all the mandatory minimum penalties that were removed in Bill C-5.
I said that with a view to being cognizant of the minister's approach in Bill C-16 of providing the safety valve. He has essentially indicated, on numerous occasions inside and outside the House, that the intent was to allow all mandatory minimum penalty offences that had been ruled unconstitutional by various courts, including the Supreme Court of Canada, to be resurrected. The intent was to reinstate mandatory minimum penalties and to allow trial judges to determine whether or not they can deviate from a mandatory minimum penalty if there's a finding that the application of a mandatory minimum penalty would constitute cruel and unusual punishment.
If the government was prepared to bring back mandatory minimum penalties that had been ruled unconstitutional, my question was—and I did not receive a cogent, proper answer to this point from the minister on two occasions—why did he specifically exclude Bill C-5 offences?
I also brought to his attention—and I bring it to this committee's attention—that literally within 30 days after the passage of Bill C-5, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on two gun offences in the Hills and Hilbach decisions, going back to January 27, 2023. This was after Bill C-5 received royal assent.
In the Hills decision, the Supreme Court held that the mandatory minimum penalty of four years for intentionally discharging a firearm violated section 12 of the charter. In Hilbach, in a 7-2 judgment, the court ruled that the four- and five-year mandatory minimum penalties for robbery with a firearm and robbery with a restricted or prohibited firearm did not violate section 12 of the charter, but it was moot, given the passage of Bill C-5. I brought that issue and that particular case to the House and to the attention of the then justice minister, David Lametti, who completely disagreed with me and in sheer arrogance told me to reread the decision.
Well, I have the decision, and I've reread it numerous times. The Supreme Court of Canada upheld a mandatory minimum penalty that the government chose to include in Bill C-5. The language surrounding Bill C-5 during the debate was that these were all offences that were routinely ruled unconstitutional by various courts.
The bill was also designed to address the overincarceration of marginalized members of Canadian society, including Black Canadians, indigenous Canadians and indigenous youth, given the overincarceration rate of both of those classes of individuals. I have been tracking the incarceration rate of those classes of individuals since the royal assent of Bill C-5. Bill C-5 has been an abject failure, because the incarceration rate has not decreased. If anything, it has increased.
I don't view this as being completely out of scope, Mr. Chair, with all due respect. If the government is prepared to resurrect mandatory minimum penalties that were ruled unconstitutional, and if they telegraphed that type of language through the creation of Bill C-5, it is completely relevant to this discussion that those offences—all six Controlled Drugs and Substances Act offences and all 14 offences under the Criminal Code of Canada—be reintroduced for consideration by a particular sentencing judge, in terms of whether or not a safety valve is appropriate in those circumstances.
