Mr. Speaker, recently a court ruled on a sentence for someone who pleaded guilty in the ad scam scandal, in which there was theft of something like a million and a half dollars. The court said, “This man has been a good man. He has never committed crimes before. We will just send him home and we will let him give lectures on ethics to students at universities. That is what we are going to do”. That was his sentence for stealing a million and a half dollars.
I would like the member to comment again on minimum sentences. The minister says he is not going to go that way because it has not worked in other countries. Let us look at the section of Bill C-49 that was read out by the member for Winnipeg Centre. It talks about very serious offences. It says what the penalties are. It has been quoted several times. People can be sentenced to life imprisonment, but there is no minimum sentence. There is no guidance to the court, so someone could commit a very serious offence and some hotshot lawyer could come into the courtroom and say, “This is a good man. He has never done this before. Let us send him home”. And the man will spend his sentence at home.
I would ask the member to elaborate further on what he thinks about these minimum sentences that members on our side of the House have been talking about.