Hon. Denise Batters: Senator Cotter, I may well have misunderstood you, so I wanted to ask you about something. At one point in your speech, you seemed to indicate that when these particular bills — the bills that bring forward these mandatory minimums that were in place and which this particular bill seeks to remove — first came into place, parliamentarians may not have taken enough time to study them. In the sentencing aspect — I can’t speak for the House of Commons, and I’ve only been here nine and a half years — I can tell you that during the time the Harper government was in place and during my time at the Senate Legal Committee, we brought forward many of those mandatory minimums and we absolutely, every single time, devoted diligent study to those particular mandatory minimums.

Is that what you were referring to? When you say “parliamentarians,” of course that refers not only to the House of Commons but also to the Senate, and our Senate Legal Committee always does diligent study.

Senator Cotter: I didn’t go back and study the record, Senator Batters, and I wasn’t referring to the quality of examination of mandatory minimums. I was referring to the vast body of law in the law of sentencing, and my guess is that it was not extensively studied and adequately enough respected in this exercise. In my judgment, the introduction of mandatory minimum sentences imposes constraints on judges implicitly because of lack of confidence in them and the system they administer.