The Hon. the Speaker: Honourable senators, we welcome today the Honourable Marco E. L. Mendicino, P.C., M.P., Minister of Public Safety, to answer questions relating to his ministerial responsibilities. Pursuant to the order adopted by the Senate on December 7, 2021, senators do not need to stand. Questions are limited to one minute and responses to one and a half minutes. The reading clerk will stand 10 seconds before the expiry of these times. Question Period will last one hour.

Hon. Marco E. L. Mendicino, P.C., M.P., Minister of Public Safety: Thank you for the question, senator.

The short answer is yes. We will continue to invest in national security to ensure that the government has all the tools it needs.

At the same time, I must point out that new national security threats have emerged. You’re right to say that one such risk is that Putin and Russia could respond to the sanctions we’ve imposed in support of the Ukrainian people. It is a real threat. We must remain vigilant and use all of the resources and investments at our disposal to protect Canada’s interests.

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Hon. Marco E. L. Mendicino, P.C., M.P., Minister of Public Safety: Senator, thank you for that question and for highlighting advocacy that I am sensitive to.

I represent a community in Toronto where there’s a shooting more often than I’m comfortable even mentioning in this chamber. It can happen as often as every week at certain points of the year. In many of those cases, I know the people and the families who have been impacted by gun crime. I’m moved by their resilience to persevere, but we have to meet them at the moment that we find ourselves in, which means taking more action to reduce gun violence, including gun violence that is generated by handguns. For the benefit of this chamber, handguns are the number one type of killer in this country. It’s unacceptable.

That having been said, while we’re committed and while my mandate instructs me to work with provinces and territories to take more action on that front, it’s not the only thing that we need to be doing. We also need to be investing in law enforcement at our borders to stop illegal trafficking of guns into this country. Equally, we need to be investing in preventive strategies so that we can create safer spaces so that these tragedies don’t occur in the first place. My commitment to you is that we will do that work in cooperation with all of the communities across this country, so we can finally rid ourselves of this scourge.

Hon. Marco E. L. Mendicino, P.C., M.P., Minister of Public Safety: Senator, thank you very much for the question and for your advocacy.

As I have stated on a number of occasions during this Question Period, I believe we need to continue to move forward with an ambitious agenda to reform our criminal justice system. That also means looking at the overuse of mandatory minimum penalties, or MMPs, which the Supreme Court has repeatedly either struck down or noted as not being an effective tool for ensuring justice.

Where we are overly reliant on MMPs, all we’re doing is simply contributing to the revolving door of crime. It seems to me that we have to be smart about this. Part of taking a smart and effective approach is, first and foremost, recognizing that our courts and the judiciary are best situated to dispense justice according to the circumstances of the offence, the background of the offender and the best way to ensure that justice is delivered to victims but also, equally, to promote the rehabilitation of those individuals.

I assure you that the government, through the leadership of the Minister of Justice, is looking at and has identified a list of offences where we can repeal MMPs. We look forward to advancing that work in the chamber. We also look forward to your contributions here in the Senate as we move forward with that agenda.