Mr. Speaker, the minister said earlier that the bill contained measures that would make our streets safer so that our children would be safer, but he has produced no analysis, nor has the Minister of Justice, to substantiate the claim.
I want to go back to the comments made by the former Progressive Conservative member of Parliament who chaired the justice committee and led the Conservative government's sentencing reform team at the Department of Justice when he said that the policy the government was proposing “is based on fear—fear of criminals and fear of people who are different. I do not think these harsh views are deeply held”.
Furthermore, in the U.S., there is a bipartisan measure in Congress to roll back mandatory minimums, which were created in the seventies, eighties, and nineties. The smarter sentencing act, put forward by Republican Senator Mike Lee from Utah, has already passed the senate judiciary committee and has the support of the U.S. Attorney General, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Families Against Mandatory Minimums, and the chairwoman of the United States Sentencing Commission, who highlighted how mandatory sentences backfire in the fight against crime.
Could the minister, or any minister, tell us why we are moving backward in Canada, when the 25 years of experience in the United States shows us that this is clearly the wrong way to go?