Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question from the member for London West, especially the last part of it, as I had run out of time and wanted to point out what I see as a real failure in this legislation.
During the election, I was at the funeral of a young woman police officer outside of Montreal. She was killed by a long gun. This legislation does not impose mandatory minimums for the use of long guns in such crimes. It does so for restricted weapons only. The minister has tried to explain this to members of my party and to me, but it makes no sense.
Let us take just this one statistic. Of all the police officers who have been killed in this country in the last 20 years, more than half of them were killed by long guns, not handguns. There is no question about the fact that in the last few years the use of handguns has gone up, but there is absolutely no explanation for or logic as to why we would not have that kind of provision in the bill extending to both, to the long guns as well, as opposed to just restricted weapons.
In terms of the proportionality argument, again I did not have time to get to this in my main address, but I have serious doubts about whether the 10 year mandatory minimum would survive a test in our courts under the charter. The courts have made it quite clear in a number of decisions up to this point, including all the way up to the Supreme Court, that they would tolerate seven year mandatory minimums in very limited cases. That seems to be the top end. Ten years is over the top.