Mr. Speaker, if I understand correctly, traffickers would have to be put in prison for life. That way we would be assured that they would not deal in drugs. Yet there is a lot of drug dealing in prison.
This last part is not really an argument, since it is the same thing for all crimes. South of the border they have experience in this regard. The Americans have had experience with minimum sentences. To be popular in the United States, where they are elected to congress every two years and to the Senate every six years, they had to be tough on crime. They were tough on crime. They added mandatory minimums and crime did not go down.
Let us profit from the experience of others. In addition, there are the reasons I mentioned earlier. These observations are of general application, but they are still significant. Furthermore they are confirmed by almost all the criminological studies I have read in my lifetime, which the department has available to it.