I'd like to affirm that, as you know, the Supreme Court recently pronounced on the issue of mandatory minimum penalties, the most recent case being R. v. Lloyd before April of this year, and before that, R. v. Nur. In both of those instances, the Supreme Court pronounced in a more fulsome way on how an MMP may run afoul of the charter and slightly tweak the analysis that they had been using to that point.
That said, some mandatory minimum penalties have been upheld in the past, including by the Supreme Court. There's no question that moving forward, to the extent that mandatory minimum penalties are being proposed—and remember that this is a private member's bill and not a government bill—that will be in the new environment of the Supreme Court's pronouncement on mandatory minimums.
I believe the parliamentary secretary to theMinister of Justice has indicated, as part of the second reading debate, that the government would not be supporting higher mandatory minimum penalties as proposed by this bill with the exception of these mandatory fines.
The committee may also be aware that the Minister of Justice is currently reviewing the whole Criminal Code approach to the use of mandatory minimum penalties. That review has, of course, not only been informed by the round tables she's been engaging in with stakeholders across the country as part of the criminal justice system review but also been part of a specific review of the issues of mandatory minimum penalties, and has been conducted in light of Supreme Court jurisprudence.
There are indeed issues and how the Supreme Court will address the issue will indeed be a bit of a new territory for it moving forward.