You want me to comment on the disadvantages of mandatory minimum sentences.
Yes, I think that mandatory minimum sentences strip away what the sentencing judge is supposed to do. They undermine the Criminal Code. The Criminal Code asks our sentencing judges to set a fit and proportionate sentence, and we're supposed to be looking at the Gladue factors when we do that. When you set a mandatory minimum, you take away the judge's ability to do his or her job. Unless someone is able to mount a successful constitutional challenge to that mandatory minimum sentence under our charter, the judge has to apply it in that way.
You have people who maybe would be better managed under a conditional sentence. There are ways in which you could have them serve some time during the week, but be able to spend time with their families on the weekend. Creative alternatives to sentencing do not exist in a scheme where mandatory minimums are the norm. I think when we take that discretion away from judges, we're really undermining what our Criminal Code was intending to do with those sentencing principles.