Mr. Speaker, I am happy to explain. It has not been happening all over. It has been happening at the Supreme Court when a case comes to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court decides that we cannot have a mandatory minimum sentence if it is too broad, if it encompasses a situation where Canadians would find it abhorrent for the mandatory minimum sentence to be applied.
It is a very high bar. A case the Supreme Court talked about, for example, was if a 17-year-old shared an intimate picture of his 16-year-old girlfriend with a friend. It is a terrible thing. It is illegal and he should not do that, but should he spend his entire life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years? Most Canadians would say no, and that is why the Supreme Court said that we need to have an off-ramp. We need to give judges discretion. They have to be able to hear all of the evidence.
In the worst cases, yes, we need a mandatory minimum. We need people to know that these crimes are intolerable in Canada. However, for those cases, if we want the Supreme Court not to throw out the mandatory minimum penalties, we need this off-ramp.