Mr. Speaker, the position of the Liberals has been that mandatory minimums might somehow create a constitutional or charter challenge, and they have been bringing this up over and over again. Where this is the case, we know the rulings are clear. Where they constitute cruel and unusual punishment, they become unconstitutional. That ruling has been levied very few times on the vast majority of sanctions imposed by the Liberal government itself for mandatory minimums, as the minister indicated.
It is interesting that we are talking about that context between cruel and unusual punishment for an individual who is putting cruel and unusual treatment on a service dog. The member articulated clearly that they are well trained, that great Canadian and public expense goes into training these dogs, that there is a tremendous amount of safety and security provided to the Canadian public by these dogs and to the law enforcement officers they serve and that there is tremendous value to protecting service animals, not just police animals but service animals.
Does the member recognize the contradiction in that we are talking about effectively and reasonably sanctioning people for cruel and unusual treatment of animals that are providing our country with the greatest of service and we are letting that get hung up by an anticipatory cruel and unusual treatment of the people who are offending this law.