Mr. Speaker, with regard to the use of mandatory minimums, the history in Canada has been, for a long period of time, to look with great concern on the use of that technique in dealing with sentencing individuals who have been convicted of crimes.
It has been generally frowned upon, both by historical legislatures at this level and by our courts. I think back to a period of time, which was a long time ago, going through law school and having the mandatory minimum of seven years for importing drugs into Canada. Shortly after the charter came into effect in 1982, that was struck down by our courts.
In a riding like mine, which has a large number of people moving back and forth between Canada and the United States on a daily basis, one can imagine the number of individuals who were convicted and sentenced to jail for seven years for the simple possession of a small quantity of marijuana.
When the charter came into effect, the courts took the opportunity to strike that down. That is a good example of a mandatory minimum that was grossly inappropriate to the crime and the consequences of the crime.
When we look at mandatory minimums we must ask ourselves when it is appropriate to use them. I will use an example of when it was appropriate in a campaign that worked extremely well, which was with regard to impaired driving as a result of the consumption of alcohol.
What happened, historically, was that large groups of people, MADD in particular, but also our police forces, our judiciary and the legislature, recognized that we had a major problem with impaired driving due to alcohol consumption and that we needed to do something about it, which we did.
We introduced massive education programs to determine the seriousness of the problem and to deter people from using alcohol. We introduced legislation for mandatory minimums, fines, suspension of licences and, in certain cases, jail time. These things had a significant and effective impact. It has tabled off in the last few years but it significantly dropped the rate of impaired driving in this country.
When we hear the Liberals and the Bloc stand and say that it never worked, we need to think of the impaired driving program and that campaign which was effective in driving the rate of that crime down significantly.
What we are faced with today is the use of firearms by a small group of people, which is one of the reasons we were prepared to push the Conservative government strongly to back down from the extreme positions it has taken with some of the provisions of Bill C-10 and brought forth these amendments that are contained in the motions that are currently before us.
Where the principles lie when we use mandatory minimums is to focus on the specific crime and determine whether the use of mandatory minimums will have some impact. We know that it only has an impact if there is an overall campaign, and there is that campaign in this country. We are saying to criminals who are prepared to use guns to commit a crime, serious violent crimes in particular, that we as a legislature will penalize them for the crime. Our police officers are saying that on the street and our judges are saying that in the courtrooms. What we are doing here is being part of that overall campaign to drive the use of guns in violent crimes, in particular, completely out of the country.
We are focused on the specific crimes, which is what the bill does. It looks specifically at serious violent crimes and uses mandatory minimums to say that we condemn the use of guns in those circumstances. We are telling criminals that if they insist on pursuing that type of activity they will face a serious penalty if, at the end of the day, they are convicted of that crime. It fits within the scheme of when we would use it.
I am particularly critical of the Liberals and a little critical of the Bloc in this regard. The use we can make of this has been watered down because the Liberals used it so often when they were in power. In excess of 60 crimes now have mandatory minimums. This will add a number more. Quite frankly, a number of those 60 crimes do not need mandatory minimums, but that was done under the Liberal administration.
When I deal with the Conservatives on these issues, I tell them not to make the same mistakes. If they are going to use mandatory minimums they should use them sparingly, appropriately and in a focused fashion. If they were to do otherwise, they might as well not bother because mandatory minimums would not have any impact whatsoever. A mandatory minimum worked in the impaired driving situation, but had we done that on a whole series of other crimes of that nature, its effectiveness would have been extremely limited and reduced.
I told the Conservative Party, on behalf of the NDP, that as we promised in the last election, and as opposed to what the Liberals did, we kept our promise, that is what we did here, but we were not prepared to go to the extreme to which the Conservatives were prepared to go. That is why we have these amendments. It is quite clear in my mind and from all the opinions that we have heard, if we had included the mandatory minimum of 10 years on the third offence, it would have been struck down under our charter. Our courts have sent us clear messages that they are not prepared to allow mandatory minimums to go that far even on these serious crimes.
I proposed that amendment to the government. It accepted that. It was an acceptance of the reality of our jurisprudence at this period in time.
That is not to say at some point we may not move to a mandatory minimum of greater than the seven years which we have now, but at this point in time, with our jurisprudence in our courts in terms of proportionality of sentencing and under the charter, that is as far as we can go. I believe it is as far as our courts would allow us to go. Quite frankly, I agree with our courts in that regard.
If we pass these amendments, what clearly will go out is the message that we are serious when it comes to the use of guns in serious violent crimes. To some degree, the bill targets the street gangs and organized crime more extensively because most of the guns are smuggled into this country through more traditional organized crime groups and are sold to street gangs. We are telling those groups that we are not tolerating that any more. If they do not stop using guns in crimes, they will go to jail for an extended period of time. There is no discretion. They will go to jail for an extended period of time. That message has to be communicated.
I will finalize my comments with direction to the government. As with the mandatory minimum used in impaired driving, we have to have a very clear and focused educational program directed to those two groups that this is what is going to happen. We have to carry that out.