Mr. Speaker, I am surprised that the minister did not announce the position of the Bloc Québécois in his speech. He would have quickly realized that we have studies showing that minimum penalties have not solved anything.
Since the hon. Minister of Justice used to be the Attorney General of Manitoba, he must surely be aware of a process we criminal lawyers know and regularly use: plea bargaining. Therefore, since he has probably been through it, he knows that we counsel for the defence use plea bargaining when we are dealing with a charge of attempted murder. We say that we will never plead guilty to attempted murder resulting in a minimum sentence of imprisonment, but we would plead guilty if the charge were reduced to an accusation of aggravated assault, and, presto, there it is. The minister knows that is how it will go.
He knows that he is also going to clog up the court calendars and the courts, and above all that he is going to add to the prison population. Maybe he wants that, but it is not what we in the Bloc want.
But what is incredible is that Bill C-10 only applies to handguns. Why does the Minister not want to include rifles and shotguns in this bill? When we read it, we actually see that such weapons are excluded. We know, though, that in recent years the crimes he wants to punish were committed with shotguns, in the regions.