OTTAWA-
Justice Minister David Lametti urged senators to pass the Liberal government’s proposed mandatory minimum sentencing bill on Wednesday, saying the bill would target the overrepresentation of black and Indigenous people in the justice system. criminal.
Twenty mandatory minimum sentences would be removed from the Criminal Code if the legislation passes, Lametti told a Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee hearing. They were chosen because of their exaggerated impact, he said.
“We’ve chosen mandatory minimum sentences that impact right now on Indigenous communities, on Black communities, on racialized communities,” he said.
Bill C-5, which passed third reading in the House of Commons in June, would amend the Criminal Code to remove mandatory minimum prison sentences for all drug convictions and certain drug-related offences. firearms and tobacco.
If the Senate passes the bill and it becomes law, prosecutors would also be required to consider referring defendants to treatment programs or other support services instead of charging them with simple misdemeanors. possession of drugs.
Lametti argued that the changes, which reverse “tough on crime” measures enacted under former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, would reduce the workload in the courts.
But some senators, including Saskatchewan Conservative Denise Batters, argued that Lametti lacked the public support to pass the bill. “Canadians no longer agree with your approach to soft crime that is embodied in this bill,” she said.
Lametti told senators during a committee hearing that he was aware of criticism that the law is “soft on crime,” but he said serious crimes would continue to have serious consequences.
“There seems to be this presumption that everybody gets the mandatory minimum,” he said in an interview after the committee hearing.
In fact, he said, judges often hand down sentences that are harsher than the mandatory minimum sentences, and the Liberal government is moving to increase the maximum sentences for certain gun and gang offenses under Another gun-focused bill, Bill C-21. .
Other senators have asked why only certain mandatory minimum sentences are being repealed.
“It’s a very important first step,” Lametti said. “It’s a step that Canadians will be able to understand, and then we can collect more data, move forward and see what the next steps should be.”
If the bill passes the Senate and becomes law, it will be the Liberals’ first major reform on the issue after promising to review mandatory minimum sentences in 2015.
It would also lead to major changes in the way drug possession cases are handled in Canada.
Thanks to an NDP amendment to the bill, existing criminal records associated with simple possession charges would disappear within two years, and records created by new convictions would be erased two years after the end of the sentence.
A previous version of the same law, Bill C-22, was introduced in February 2021, but died on the order paper when the federal election was called last fall.
The Senate committee is expected to complete its study of the bill this fall.
This report from The Canadian Press was first published on September 21, 2022.