New York Post - Once democracy, Canada is now authoritarian

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Criminal law should not punish misguided drug dealers who just want to “put bread on the table,” Attorney General David Lametti said yesterday. Lametti made the comment in defending a cabinet bill to repeal mandatory minimum sentences for cocaine traffickers.

“You couldn’t have conditional sentence orders for an Indigenous mother who was caught in very low trafficking in order to put bread on the table,” Lametti testified at the Senate legal and constitutional affairs committee. “That’s the kind of social problem that needs to be attacked at its roots.”

“Did you talk to victims’ groups?” asked Senator Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu (Que.). “We did consult a wide spectrum of stakeholders,” replied Lametti.

The Attorney General later clarified his remark. “Problematic addiction, single mother, a person needs to put bread on the table, an Indigenous woman sells some of her prescription medicine on the side, gets caught,” said Lametti. “There are other permutations and combinations but that person ends up with a mandatory minimum.”

Bill C-5 An Act To Amend The Criminal Code would repeal a minimum one year sentence for cocaine trafficking. Typical sentences for drug trafficking range from 14 months to six years.

“I agree that Canadians struggling with addiction should have access to treatment and not just to prison but this bill does nothing to address that,” said Senator Denise Batters (Sask.). “The mandatory minimums this bill actually seeks to eradicate only target serious criminals who prey on those with addictions.”

Attorney General Lametti said the bill was a first step in reforming the Criminal Code. He did not elaborate. Cabinet effective January 1 is decriminalizing personal possession of 2.5 grams of cocaine, methamphetamine, opioids and ecstasy in British Columbia.

“There are other infractions that exist in the Criminal Code,” testified Lametti. “We need to work at some of the root causes.”

Bill C-5 follows a 2018 Ontario Superior Court ruling that struck a minimum two-year sentence for importing more than a kilogram of cocaine. The ruling came in the case of Cheyenne Sharma of Toronto, then 20, who was arrested at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport after stepping off a flight from Surinam with $128,148 worth of cocaine in her luggage.

“I was two months behind in rent,” testified Sharma, who confessed to taking $20,000 from drug dealers to transport cocaine. The Court ruled Sharma’s decision to act as a drug courier “was motivated by desperate financial circumstances.”