Mr. Speaker, I am so grateful to have the opportunity to speak to Bill C-16, the protecting victims act, and the government's ongoing efforts to protect children and ensure that child sex exploitation is unequivocally denounced, deterred and prevented.
Colleagues may know that I also have a private member's bill coming up for second reading in a couple of days, the keeping children safe act. I feel that this bill works in the criminal context to do what my bill does in the family courts. It protects children, it gives them a voice and it protects them from coercive control after a relationship is done.
I served as a journalist for more than 20 years. I spent a lot of that time in criminal court, so I know a lot of victims of really heinous crimes. I know that they expect a justice system that does not tolerate things like sexual exploitation, that protects victims and that hands serious consequences to people who commit serious crimes. Bill C-16, the protecting victims act, reflects the government's commitment to ensure that our criminal law is strong, principled and capable of meeting that responsibility.
I will start by addressing the mandatory minimums that we have heard so much about here in this chamber today. I know it has been a controversial topic. I have covered criminal court, and it has been a controversial topic for decades.
Mandatory minimum penalties, for those who are not aware, mean that a judge cannot impose a sentence any lower than the prescribed minimum penalty, regardless of the circumstances. They can impose a longer sentence, but they can never impose a shorter sentence. It does not matter what the evidence was that they heard. Victims like mandatory minimum penalties because they clearly denounce serious crimes. They can be a deterrent for some offenders, but they can also be unfair in some circumstances. That is what we have heard from the Supreme Court. Judges currently do not have any discretion, even if they feel that a mandatory minimum is too harsh for the particular case that is in front of them.
Mandatory minimums risk violating the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. They can result in grossly disproportionate sentences. Unlike what we have heard from the Conservatives so far today, “grossly disproportionate” is a really high threshold. It means that it must outrage our society's sense of decency and that Canadians would find the sentence abhorrent or intolerable. That is the only time a judge would be allowed to use this mechanism, because there is no mechanism like this. Mandatory minimums have been declared unconstitutional by courts across Canada, including in child sex offence cases.
However, the government agrees that mandatory minimums can be a good thing. They can denounce and deter some of the most serious crimes. That is why we have these provisions in Bill C-16. That is why we see this decisive, immediate action and these reforms in Bill C-16, where we would amend the Criminal Code to restore mandatory minimum penalties that have been found unconstitutional by the courts. We would do this by including a provision that provides judges the ability to have some discretion. They could order a sentence of imprisonment lower than the statutory mandatory minimum, but in very narrow situations.
In most cases, the mandatory minimum would still apply, but if the court is sentencing an offender for something where the mandatory minimum will be found to be grossly disproportionate, should we just let it go to the Supreme Court to be thrown out and not have that law at all? With Bill C-16, the court does not need to do that. It does not need to throw it out. It does not need to find a mandatory minimum unconstitutional, and there would always still be a prison sentence. A conditional sentence would not apply in these circumstances.
We would strike a balance, as the Supreme Court suggested. This is an approach that is responsive to stakeholders and suggestions that have been made repeatedly by the courts. When Bill C-16 comes into force, all the mandatory minimums that were found unconstitutional but that remain on the federal statute book would be considered restored. They would all come back into force.
The courts would once again be required to impose mandatory minimum penalties for all the offences for which the penalty has not been repealed from the law, except in the rarest cases where the mandatory minimum penalty would result in cruel and unusual punishment for the offender before the court. It is a very high bar.
I know victims will appreciate these measures, and I applaud the government for finding this middle ground. I also want to say that, as a feminist, I am so proud of this legislation. I am so proud that Canada is bringing this legislation forward. We know that gender-based violence and sexual exploitation are growing in this country. Around the world, they are growing. Online and off-line, predators are increasingly using digital tools to target our children. Bill C-16 addresses that.
We heard about the victims who did not have their cases heard at all in court because of Jordan's principle. Bill C-16 would deal with those delays we have seen in court. That means that more cases would actually be heard in court. The bill addresses and calls out femicide. It addresses criminal harassment and the non-consensual sharing of images, particularly deepfake images produced by AI.
As we have heard, which makes my heart sing, Bill C-16 would criminalize coercive control. I was here in the last Parliament when former NDP member Laurel Collins brought the coercive control bill to Parliament. I remember the impassioned speech that she gave about why we need this law on our books. Bill C-16 takes that private member's bill, the amended version of it that was meant to pass in the House, and incorporates it.
Too many women and children are living in fear in this country. My private member's bill and Bill C-16 address a lot of their concerns, and I encourage all members of the House to support them.