Mr. Speaker, Bill C-9 targets the most serious offences, including offences under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, that carry a minimum penalty of 10 years. Less serious offences are not covered by this bill and conditional sentences are still available where they had been in the past.
To be perfectly clear, with respect to serious drug offences such as trafficking and production of cocaine, Canadians have said that they do not want these offences punished by conditional sentences any more. They do not want people who are causing a scourge upon their own communities to serve their sentences in those very same communities with the same networks that they had before they were sentenced.
Police officers have been telling us that when it comes to drugs, they do the hard work, the heavy lifting. They process an investigation, make an arrest and get someone to trial, only to see a serious offender, someone involved in the production or trafficking of drugs, serve his time with a conditional sentence. That is what this legislation is targeting: the most serious offences under our Criminal Code.
On the issue of indictable versus summary conviction and hybrid offences, we feel that prosecutors will use their discretion to prosecute serious hybrid offences by indictment. When there is a conviction under that process, these individuals will no longer serve their sentences in the community. They will serve them in jail. However, on some of these hybrid offences, if prosecutors do choose to proceed by way of summary conviction, that option is still available where it is felt, at the discretion of the prosecutor, that it is the most appropriate way to proceed.
To be clear, the overall strategy of Bill C-9 is to target serious crime. We read about serious crime every day in our newspapers from coast to coast to coast, and we hear on the radio and television about someone who has committed a serious offence against another member of society getting what Canadians call a slap on the wrist.
If we talk to Canadians in a Tim Hortons, for example, they will tell us that people are getting a slap on the wrist for serious crimes. There is no denunciation in that. There is no deterrent in that. It has been proven to be ineffective. We want to send a message that we take crime seriously. Canadians sent us that message and we are delivering on it.