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Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 133

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 23, 2022 02:00PM
Context: House Hansard - 133 - Nov/23/22
Mr. Alex Ruff (Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, CPC)
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for a great speech. He talked about the backlog in the justice system, especially when considering the massive rise, a 32% increase, in violent crime in Canada since the Liberals formed the government. First, how important is this legislation to addressing that backlog? Second, can he comment on the hypocrisy of the government waiting so long to bring this bill forward compared to its bringing Bill C-5 forward to eliminate the mandatory minimums for violent crime in Canada?
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Context: House Hansard - 133 - Nov/23/22
Mr. Frank Caputo
Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound raises a point that really should be prominent and is salient in this discussion. The efficiency of the justice system should be sacrosanct, because, in my view, we should have been making the mandatory minimums that have been struck down constitutionally compliant. On the one hand, we may have people who say that we need a lot more mandatory minimums. On the other hand, we will have people, generally across the aisle, who would say that we do not need any mandatory minimums. My view is that we should have a middle ground where we have mandatory minimums that have room for exceptional circumstances so that they do not apply, because it is the outlier cases that result in mandatory minimums getting struck down. Why do we not address that in legislation? I do not think anybody in the House would say we do not want to go after gangsters, so why are we having Bill C-5 at the beginning of this Parliament, as my colleague pointed out, and Bill S-4 at this point? In fact, we should be changing it and flipping the script to bring back legislation that focuses on these mandatory minimums when gun crimes have consistently gone up. Community-based sentences for discharging a firearm with intent, I believe, was a constitutionally upheld mandatory minimum in a case called Oud from the B.C. Court of Appeal. I believe in that case it was five years. That mandatory minimum was upheld by the B.C. Court of Appeal, and now a person can get a conditional sentence order for it. I do not understand how that is possible.
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