Mr. Speaker, in fact, I disagree with his analysis of the law, at this point, and the sentencing practices in our courts. The maximum penalties in our code are very clearly seen quite rigidly by our judges as the maximum they will go to. They will not tailor it below, but they are very clearly saying, “Where does it fit in this range?”
For this kind of offence, if the legislature says that the minimum penalty at the low end should be six months, as a judge I think the low end should be a year. However, what has happened, and I say this, as well, from the perspective of legislation like this that has passed in the United States, the tendency has been that the judges there have tended to stick fairly rigidly to the mandatory minimums when it is at the low end.
I want to make this final point before we go on to other questions. We have excellent judges in our country. I am not saying many of them would do this, but I think some of them would fall into that trap.