Madam Speaker, I would certainly welcome the questions once I have finished.
The statistics have been borne out. Again, I really think fundamentally that this is about judicial independence and discretion. The facts are quite stark. Five per cent of the adult population in Canada are indigenous. They represent 30% of our incarcerated population, and 42% if one considers women; 7.2% of our incarcerated population is Black, despite the fact that they represent only 3% in this country. This bill means a lot to my indigenous communities and my Black residents in Kings—Hants.
What I heard in the debate, and perhaps what some of the members opposite were trying to intervene with is “a crime is a crime”. I hear that. A crime is proportionate. It does not matter what a person's background is. At the end of the day, we need to look at the circumstances behind the behaviour. I agree that serious crime represents and should represent serious punishment, but at the same time, by imposing mandatory minimums and taking that discretion away from common law principles in terms of sentencing, we are not giving that discretion for the judges to be able to look at the best-case scenario. The same applies to prosecutors in terms of their ability to look at the circumstances and provide recommendations that will keep our communities safe.
Again, I would agree with the idea that this piece of legislation alone would not solve the issue. There has to be a focus on investment in social support systems, in housing and in recreation. All of that is important to reducing crime, writ large, in communities across the country. This is important to creating challenges for individuals for whom there may perhaps be better programs and supports than just imposing a mandatory minimum penalty.
I want to also mention the point around encouraging diversion for simple drug possession. I know we have a challenge in this country. I would be naive to stand here in the House and say that drugs are not a problem in Kings—Hants. They certainly are. The opioid crisis is something that is often mentioned in the House, particularly by our colleagues from British Columbia. It is just reasonable, sensible public policy to allow and give further discretion to police officers to be able to use their discretion to treat these instances as a health issue versus a criminal issue, and to try to make sure those supports are in place.
I know the members of the NDP would be asking for a step even further. There are circumstances where the Minister of Health and the Minister of Justice are able to work to allow municipalities to go further. I do not have the section at the moment, but I know those are going to be things our government will consider in the days ahead.
I do not know how much time I have, perhaps two or three minutes, but I would suggest this in terms of my conclusion.
All members of this House agree that serious crime and activity deserve a serious penalty and that we should not be light on crime in that sense. However, looking at the mandatory minimum penalties in place, in some cases they have been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada. We know they have a detrimental impact on visible minorities in this country. They take away the discretion for judges to be able to look at the circumstances of a case and move forward. Indeed, many members of this House have said that the mandatory minimum penalty almost provides a cap in terms of what the courts will award, as opposed to maybe looking at the circumstances, recognizing that there is an aggravating factor and saying that this individual in question actually deserves a higher sentence. Sometimes the courts will simply look at the mandatory minimum and put that in place, and that is really problematic as well.
We need to be able to move forward. I will certainly be in support of this legislation. It is reasonable, and I look forward to taking questions from members opposite in this House.