Mr. Speaker, I have been supportive of mandatory minimums as a way to penalize those individuals who have been proven to be a threat to society and who have continued to behave in a way that puts the lives of civilians at risk. When it comes to such situations where a small group of individuals are responsible for the bulk of serious crimes in our country, it is our job and the job of the justice department to ensure the penalties are there. We hope that the courts implement those penalties against those people.
In looking at the facts and the data, I found that when we were in government we introduced 42 mandatory minimum penalties. I will list a few of them. Ten listed offences, mandatory minimums: if a firearm is used in the commission of an offence, of criminal negligence causing death, manslaughter, attempted murder, assault causing bodily harm with intent to harm, sexual assault with a weapon, sexual assault, kidnapping, robbery and so on. We already have mandatory minimum sentences that we implemented over the last few years.
If we already have an array of mandatory minimums that apply to these offences, why is the government introducing the bill and putting more mandatory minimums when they are not necessary?