Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member opposite for sharing some interesting personal anecdotes.
I want to ask him to speak a little more about the mandatory minimum sentence included in the legislation. He did speak about it a bit.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has said; “...too many Americans go to too many prisons for far too long, and for no truly good law enforcement reason.” He was talking about mandatory minimums.
Then Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform, has said:
The biggest problem from the perspective of the taxpayer, however, is that mandatory minimum sentencing policies have proven prohibitively expensive.…The benefits, if any, of mandatory minimum sentences do not justify this burden to taxpayers.
The Americans, who have a longer history of mandatory minimum sentences, have found that this criminalizes, for a longer period of time, a whole section of the population. Ultimately the benefits are not obvious. In fact, it is probably not a deterrent, which is what our justice department also said. It is not fiscally prudent to deal with what in many cases are social issues, and I am not saying in this case, that are deal with by the criminal justice system.
My question to the member opposite is, given the experience of the U.S., which is now turning away from mandatory minimum sentences, how can he justify that in this bill?