Madam Speaker, I would like to start by welcoming the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice to his role. I did a lot of positive work with his predecessor, and I think Bill C-5 shows there is a lot of work we could do to improve legislation.
When this bill was introduced as Bill C-22 in the last Parliament, lots of stakeholders in the community criticized it for its narrowness and for being a half measure. Certainly the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, more than six years ago in its call to action number 32, called for the restoration of judicial discretion to ignore mandatory minimums when there were good reasons to do so.
Why has the government chosen to pick just 14 offences instead of following the truth and reconciliation call to action to give judges back their discretion when there are mandatory minimum sentences?