Liberal Bill to Fight Racism by Repealing Minimum Sentences for Firearms Offences Is ‘Affront to Victims’, Says Tory MP

Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada David Lametti speaks about repealing mandatory minimum sentences during a news conference, Dec. 7, 2021, in Ottawa. Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press

Opposition MPs accused the government of being inconsistent in its pledge to fight gun violence during a House committee on Friday attended by the minister of justice, who defended a bill that seeks to eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for a number of firearms and all drugs-related offences.

“I can tell you from the testimony that we’ve heard from our deep consultations with witnesses, with communities, both rural and urban, and including with various victims groups, this bill could not be more breathtakingly out of touch,” said Conservative MP Rob Moore during a meeting of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights on April 8 to discuss Bill C-5.

“This bill, quite frankly, flies in the face of those who are calling for safer streets and communities and is an affront to victims.”

Minister of Justice David Lametti said that the core aim of the bill is to address what his government considers systemic racism in the justice system.

“This bill fits within efforts made by our government to fight systemic racism and discrimination,” Lametti said.

“Between 2007 and 2017, indigenous and black adults were more likely than other Canadians to be admitted to federal custody for an offence punishable by an MMP [mandatory minimum penalty],” Lametti said.

Bloc Québécois MP Rhéal Fortin raised doubts about the issue of systemic racism.

“I’m not sure that systemic racism, in the sense that the government understands it, really exists,” he said.

“I think that reducing sentences for some crimes in order to avoid that racialized people are sent to jail is a strange way of dealing with systemic racism.”

Fortin pressed Lametti about the offences to be repealed.

“Mr. Minister, armed robbery, is that serious?” Fortin asked, adding to his question whether Lametti considers firing a weapon with intent a “serious crime.”

Lametti said that there have been legal cases where firing a weapon was not serious, and cited a case where an individual had too many drinks and fired a shotgun into an empty barn and was sentenced to four years in jail.

Bill C-5

A Department of Justice backgrounder on Bill C-5, which if passed would amend the Criminal Code and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, says that in 2020, 30 percent of federally incarcerated inmates were indigenous despite accounting for 5 percent of the Canadian adult population. And in 2018–2019, blacks represented 7 percent of the federal offender population while accounting for 3 percent of the Canadian population.

Lametti said that the bill includes three categories of reform: the repealing of mandatory minimum penalties for all drug offences, some firearms offences, and one type of tobacco-related offence; allowing for greater use of conditional sentence orders (CSOs); and requiring police and prosecutors to consider other measures for simple possession of drugs such as diversion to addiction treatment programs.

Among the offences for which the mandatory minimum penalties will be repealed are robbery with a firearm, extortion with a firearm, discharging a firearm with intent, and using a firearm in the commission of an offence.

Lametti defended the bill, saying that the “so-called tough-on-crime policy has so clearly failed in Canada” and elsewhere, but that “serious offences will always be punished seriously.”

“Sentencing judges will always take the context and circumstances into account, and they will go towards the other end of the sentencing spectrum where it is merited. What we’re doing here is giving the flexibility back where there’s some other contextual reason. That means that the best place for the victim, the best place for the person, the best place for the community, is not to incarcerate the person.”

US Model

Lametti also mentioned travelling to Washington last month, where he met with what he called “bipartisan” groups working on criminal law reform.

Those groups are the Brennan Centre for Justice, the Sentencing Project, and the Council on Criminal Justice.

“The message from all of them was that incarceration has failed,” he said, mentioning how many states, both Democrat and Republican, have repealed mandatory minimum penalties “because they simply do not work.”

Among the groups cited, the Council on Criminal Justice appears centrist in its positions, with the other two being left-of-centre and more aligned with Democratic Party policies, and are funded in part by left-wing billionaire George Soros’s Foundation to Promote Open Society.

Soros is known to have backed financially a number of soft-on-crime district attorneys (DA) in the United States in cities that broke homicide records in 2021, notably Philadelphia.

Philadelphia’s DA’s website says that reducing incarcerations can make the city safer. DA Larry Krasner’s official approach has included not prosecuting certain drug or sex-related crimes, or to giver lower sentences for theft offences.

At least three other cities that broke homicide records have DAs that reportedly received support from a Soros-backed entity: Raúl Torres in Albuquerque (Bernalillo Country); Mike Schmidt in Portland (Multnomah County); and José Garza in Austin (Travis County).