Mr. Speaker, I want to spend a bit more time pursuing the issue of mandatory minimum sentences. The member noted in her speech that there was a body of academic literature that said that these were completely ineffective.
In reviewing the literature at the time we were reviewing what was then the omnibus crime bill, Bill C-10, in the fall of 2011, I could not find a single peer reviewed, academic paper that suggested any benefit whatsoever to mandatory minimum sentences. It was not just some academic papers, as far as I could find, but all of them.
I wonder if my friend has seen any evidence whatsoever that mandatory minimum sentences are anything other than, as she suggested the right-wing centre in the U.S. has now concluded, good intentions going toward an ineffective policy.