Mr. Speaker, although I did not hear the full debate and just caught the last comments of the member, I share a number of his concerns about an over-reliance on the Criminal Code to fix problems around crime instead of having a balanced approach around crime prevention and building healthy communities.
From the point of view of minimum mandatory sentences, I would remind the member that it was the former Liberal government that, I believe, had brought in about 60 such new offences in terms of minimum mandatories.
Our justice critic has made it very clear that where we can use it in a very specific way, and the issue of drunk driving would be one of those instances, it can be very effective. However, in actual fact we already have a history, as a result of the previous government, of using minimum mandatory sentences.
I believe that in the last election the then Liberal leader made a commitment that he would double the minimum mandatory sentences for this particular offence that would go actually beyond where the current bill is. It would have been a doubling of the sentence and would have taken us beyond where we are now. I just wanted to remind the member of that in terms of the history.