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Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 49

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 30, 2022 02:00PM
Context: House Hansard - 49 - Mar/30/22
Hon. David Lametti
  • Mar/30/22 4:05:27 p.m.
  • Watch
  • Re: Bill C-5 
Mr. Speaker, this is an important bill. I agree with the hon. member that this is a substantive criminal justice reform bill that would effectively reverse a series of policies that frankly did not work, and that are being abandoned everywhere around the world, particularly in the United States, which served as an inspiration for the previous Conservative government to bring in these kinds of minimum mandatory penalties. I was in Washington last week and met with a number of bipartisan groups and think tanks working on criminal law reform. The basic message from all of them was that incarceration does not work. We need to shorten incarceration periods and minimum mandatory penalties, and the kind of flexibility that conditional sentence orders offer is precisely the kind of reform that they are suggesting, and that we are suggesting. Even states such as Louisiana have abandoned minimum mandatory penalties, because they simply do not work. The idea that this is in some way soft on crime or does not protect victims is completely false, for a number of reasons that I would be able to elaborate upon.
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Context: House Hansard - 49 - Mar/30/22
Hon. David Lametti
  • Mar/30/22 4:25:04 p.m.
  • Watch
  • Re: Bill C-5 
Mr. Speaker, I have had lovely and intellectual exchanges with the hon. member over the course of our time here since 2015, but I reject the premise of his question. Today, the error is in presuming that a judge would always give the minimum sentence. In the serious set of facts that he is describing or alluding to, a judge would have the power to go to the maximum sentence, according to the circumstances involved. What we are doing with this bill is not what he is referring to. Rather, we are referring to people who are innocently or naively caught up in something and not necessarily the major perpetrator, or who perhaps have a problematic addiction that needs to be dealt with. The bill allows a sentencing judge to take those circumstances into account and fashion a sentence that fits the crime. Serious crime, I will assure the hon. member, will always be punished seriously in this country.
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Context: House Hansard - 49 - Mar/30/22
Mr. Iqwinder Gaheer
  • Mar/30/22 5:34:30 p.m.
  • Watch
  • Re: Bill C-5 
Madam Speaker, I humbly reject the premise of my hon. colleague's question. We would not be decriminalizing drugs with this bill. We are looking at mandatory minimum penalties. I want to be clear that this is not a soft-on-crime approach. Those who commit serious offences would continue to receive serious sentences. Our bill is about getting rid of the failed policies that filled our prisons with low-risk, first-time offenders, who just needed help.
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