SoVote

Randall Garrison

Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
NDP

Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke
British Columbia
Voting Attendance: 67%
Expenses Last Quarter: $148,586.11

Government Page

Context: House Hansard - 301 - Apr/17/24

Mr. Randall Garrison (Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, NDP)

Apr/17/24 6:32:41 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, once again we have Conservatives bringing forward a bill that calls for imposing mandatory minimum penalties. I am wondering what evidence they have, in describing this as a tool, that mandatory minimums actually works as a deterrent because, as a former criminal justice instructor, I can cite stacks of information that show that mandatory minimums have absolutely no deterrent effect.

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Context: House Hansard - 88 - Jun/14/22

Mr. Randall Garrison

Jun/14/22 12:21:03 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill C-5

Madam Speaker, while I might not use quite as broad a brush in condemning my Conservative colleagues as the hon. member did, I think he draws attention to an important ancillary benefit of these changes in Bill C-5. We certainly heard that one of the problems that comes from the existence of mandatory minimums is that they prevent the ability to plea bargain and keep cases out of court that take up valuable space in our courts that could be used for tackling, without delay, the more serious crimes. They increase court delays. They increase court costs. Of course, when we keep someone in custody, as I talked about in my speech, for only a short period time, it is very expensive to do so and, at the same time, guarantees that they will not get the rehabilitation and training they need to successfully rehabilitate into society. It is not a good economic deal, as well as being not a good justice deal, as well as being not a good public safety deal. Eliminating mandatory minimums will help us make progress on all of those fronts.

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Context: House Hansard - 79 - Jun/1/22

Mr. Randall Garrison

Jun/1/22 6:17:51 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-5

Mr. Speaker, I enjoy working with the member on the justice committee. Of course I support all those measures he is talking about. The law on mandatory minimums is not the solution to everything, but it is a solution to systemic racism and it is a partial solution to the opioid crisis. Do we need more measures to interdict the illegal importation of guns into our communities? Absolutely, I support those kinds of things, but the reason that this does not create public confidence is that some people are putting forward the myth that somehow eliminating mandatory minimum sentences makes our communities more dangerous. It does precisely the opposite.

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Context: House Hansard - 79 - Jun/1/22

Mr. Randall Garrison

Jun/1/22 6:16:11 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-5 Bill C-216

Mr. Speaker, that may sound like a tough question, but for me, as someone who has been a public advocate of decriminalizing all drugs for more than a decade, that is an easy question. I think all drugs should be decriminalized, and that is what we put forward in Bill C-216 today. If we actually look at the statistics on the mandatory minimums that are applied by judges, we see that most of them are for things like simple possession or trafficking to support people's own drug habit. I am sorry that I do not have the statistic in front of me, but something like 61% are for those offences. They are not for the offences that the Conservatives have combed through the code to find and fearmonger on by saying that eliminating those mandatory minimums means that those serious crimes would not be punished by jail time. They would be.

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Context: House Hansard - 79 - Jun/1/22

Mr. Randall Garrison (Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, NDP)

Jun/1/22 5:30:25 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill C-5

Madam Speaker, I know there is a lot of shared ground here in the House of Commons on wanting to make communities safer. That is a goal we all share, but we share a difference of opinion on how best to do that. I am always disappointed when I hear the Conservatives implying that somehow mandatory minimums create safer communities, when all the research and all the evidence show that this is simply not true. I guess I am hoping the member could acknowledge that we have a difference of opinion about how best to protect communities. It is not that some of us care about communities more than others.

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Randall Garrison