The language says, “When imposing a sentence for an offence”. What we've arrived at here is that we have decided to focus on the individual offender, which is why, to begin with, we had this bad drafting that we sought to amend by clarifying the whole thing.
Mr. Taylor, I take exception to your suggestion. Yes, the court may avail itself of the off-ramp, but the court is not required to go that route. It would still be open to the court to say this mandatory minimum penalty should be struck down entirely without getting to the individual offender. You are not imposing a safety valve on a reasonable hypothetical; you are imposing a safety valve on the accused before you.
Mr. Taylor, I don't know if you're allowed to recommend or provide legal advice, but we now have an amendment before the committee. For greater certainty, if the intent of this bill was to prevent judges from looking at reasonable hypotheticals in consideration of whether an MMP was constitutional or not, would it not be prudent for us to instruct the court not to look at reasonable hypotheticals when considering the constitutionality of a specific MMP? That's an issue at the outset when there is a charter launch on the MMP regardless of the accused.
Would that not be prudent for us?