Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to educate my friend on a couple of points that he has raised today.
First, I will deal with mandatory minimum sentences with respect to drug trafficking. My friend does not talk about that. The section is trafficking. It is the production of marijuana plants for the purpose of trafficking.
Police chiefs came and spoke at our committee. They were begging us to get this legislation passed because they need to get these people off the street, and off the streets longer, so that they are not poisoning our children with their drugs.
The other fallacy that we have heard today is that we are somehow following the U.S. model. My friend opposite knows that the incarceration rates, even as they are reducing sentencing in the U.S., are nowhere near what they are in Canada. They are far higher because the American sentences are still far longer, for every single offence, than they are here in Canada. There is no comparison.
People on that side of the House who continue to stand up here and say that know that they are not telling the truth, and they should be ashamed.