Mr. Speaker, this attack on minimum mandatory penalties, coming from a lawyer, is something that is hard to understand. The situations that he describes are not the situations that would be touched by minimum mandatory penalties.
Minimum mandatory penalties are being abandoned because they fail. It is a failed so-called tough-on-crime policy. The jurisdictions in the United States that inspired the Harper government to bring in these minimum mandatory penalties are abandoning minimum mandatory penalties, one by one.
Serious crime will always be punished seriously. There is no threat to—