What Can Possibly Go Wrong?

Systemic racism or fundamentally flawed and dangerous plan?

YOU decide:

In an attempt to address systemic racism in the criminal justice system, the Liberal government has tabled legislation to reduce prosecutions for low-level drug offences, allow for more use of conditional sentences served in the community, and scrap mandatory minimum sentences for some drug and firearms offences.

The bill does not go as far as outright decriminalizing personal drug possession, as many advocacy organizations — and, increasingly, law enforcement groups such as the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police — have called for. Still, the proposed changes are bound to stir up political divisions that could play out in the next election.

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If you want to know Trudeau’s real thoughts of dealing with gun crime, look at what his government is doing in Bill C-22.

Mandatory minimum sentences are being removed for a long list of offences including:

– Use of firearm in commission of offence

– Possession of restricted or prohibited weapon knowing possession is unauthorized

– Possession of loaded handgun

– Possession of weapon obtained through crime

– Weapons trafficking

– Unauthorized import/export of firearm

– Illegal discharge of a firearm with intent

– Robbery with firearm

– Extortion with firearm

The government put these changes into a bill they described as dealing with systemic racism in Canada’s justice system and making sure that people who make simple mistakes don’t pay for them for the rest of their lives.

“These are people with health problems. These are single mothers. These are young people who perhaps have made a couple of mistakes,” Justice Minister David Lametti said while introducing his bill.

It sounds nice and it pulls on the heartstrings, but it’s also a load of BS.

Take the removal of mandatory minimums for knowingly possessing an illegal firearm. Right now there is no mandatory minimum on someone’s first offence, a minimum of one year on a second offence and a minimum of three years on a third offence.

Being caught with illegal guns three times isn’t making a “couple of mistakes,” it is repeatedly engaging in dangerous criminal behavior, the kind the government claims it wants to stop.

The legislation also removes one-year mandatory minimum sentences for charges related to smuggling and trafficking in illegal guns. Isn’t that exactly what the government claims they want to stop?

Pandering has never looked so self-defeating.