OTTAWA — Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says he’s not worried about the Charter of Rights and Freedoms getting in the way of his promise to lock away drug dealers if he becomes prime minister, including by imposing mandatory life sentences on “fentanyl kingpins.”
He says the Charter itself calls for tough criminal laws targeting fentanyl pushers … if you look at it a certain way.
“What I am proposing today is not only allowed under the Charter, it is required by the Charter,” said Poilievre on Monday, when asked if he was prepared to use Section 33 of the Charter, the notwithstanding clause, to insulate mandatory minimum prison sentences for fentanyl-related crimes from the courts.
“Section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees life, liberty and security of the person,” said Poilievre.
“Fifty-thousand people had their Section 7 right to life violated by the open borders, soft-on-crime, legal-drugs policy of the Liberals,” he added, referring to the estimated number of Canadians who’ve succumbed to opioid-related deaths since 2016.
Poilievre said that judges “are going to be obliged” to uphold the law he’s promising, given its clear intent of preventing future spirals of addiction and drug-related deaths.
The Opposition Leader was speaking at a policy announcement at the Port of Vancouver.
Earlier in the day, Poilievre issued a press release promising mandatory life sentences for anyone convicted of trafficking, producing or exporting more than 40 milligrams of fentanyl, as well as mandatory 15-year sentences for traffickers caught with between 20 and 40 milligrams.
The illegal distribution of fentanyl, a Schedule 1 drug, carries a maximum life sentence under existing criminal law.
The Supreme Court of Canada recently upheld a provincial decision setting a nine-year sentence as a non-mandatory “starting point” for wholesale fentanyl trafficking.
Two milligrams of fentanyl is generally considered to be a fatal dose for the average person, although long-term users may develop a tolerance for much larger quantities.
Joanna Baron, executive director of the Canadian Constitution Foundation, says she doesn’t share Poilievre’s confidence about the promised mandatory minimums passing constitutional muster.
“The bottom line is if he wants to do this, he’ll need to invoke Section 33,” said Baron.
Baron said that the quantities of fentanyl tied to mandatory minimums would be hard to defend in court, opening the door to a challenge for cruel and unusual punishment.
“It’s easy to imagine a scenario where an addict has 20 to 40 milligrams (of fentanyl) on their person, and is dealing (drugs) under some kind of duress,” said Baron.
A recent analysis by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency found that nearly half of illicit fentanyl tablets contain at least 2 milligrams of the substance, meaning it could take just 10 tablets to put someone over Poilievre’s promised threshold for mandatory minimum sentences.
Poilievre hasn’t said definitively that he’ll use Section 33 to push through a more tough-on-crime agenda, but has said he’ll reverse the Liberals’ Bill C-5.
Bill C-5, passed in 2022, eliminated more than a dozen mandatory minimum penalties on the books, including all mandatory minimums for drug-related offenses, bringing the Criminal Code in line with major Supreme Court decisions striking down such penalties.
National Post
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