Madam Speaker, some of these so-called minor offences to which the minister refers are: robbery with a firearm; extortion with a firearm; weapons trafficking; importing or exporting, knowing it is an unauthorized firearm; and using a firearm in the commission of an offence. What these offences all have in common is that each and every one of them had a mandatory prison sentence, as it should, assigned to them before the Conservatives took government.
I appreciate that the hon. minister and I will not agree on a soft-on-crime approach, but I wish he would be upfront with the fact that these mandatory minimums are Liberal mandatory minimums. Would the minister at least admit that?