It only took six years and two justice ministers, but the Liberals have finally started making good on their promises for sentencing reform, and eliminating a broad swath of mandatory minimum sentences – many of which had already been struck down by the courts – particularly those related to drug offences. The goal of these reforms is to reduce the over-incarceration of Black and Indigenous people, as opposed to dealing with the opioid epidemic. With that in mind, there is an emphasis in the bill on conditional sentences, as well as not prosecuting a number of drug-related crimes, but rather making them ticketed offences, but again, this leads to a great deal of discretion on the part of police and prosecutors. Prosecutors have been given direction to avoid prosecuting a lot of simple possession drug cases, but again, we’ll see how effective that is in practice.

Here’s criminal defence lawyer Michael Spratt – a frequent critic of the government – giving his read of the bill:

These MMS are relatively low hanging fruit, and may not change too much, and it took years, and there are LOTS of minimum sentences still in the Code – but @DavidLametti should be give credit for this modest start. It is politically hard to removed firearm MMS. GOOD!

— Michael Spratt (@mspratt) February 18, 2021

So on balance, this better than we have had in a long time. But be careful, this is not a fix for opioid crisis – it is a small improvement to bad drug policy. And it will do little to address the impacts of systemic racism (and could make it worse in the diversion context).

— Michael Spratt (@mspratt) February 18, 2021

I will also add here that the modifications to 741.2 (expanding the availability of conditional sentences) is very very very good. @DavidLametti should be given lots of credit of this. LOTS and LOTS.

— Michael Spratt (@mspratt) February 18, 2021

Certainly, one of the aspects around the conversation about decriminalisation is that there is certainly some suspicion that this is as far as the Liberals think they can go at this point in time, because there isn’t a broad national consensus on the issue like there was around legalising marijuana, but that may be accelerating given the kinds of conversations we’re having around the opioid deaths that are happening in this country, and how much they’re affecting people of all walks of life. I’m somewhat sympathetic to this notion – this government has been moving the needle on a lot of social issues, and there is a fine line to be walked, lest it give ammunition to the Conservatives who can prey on cultural unease about these kinds of things. Not that their position hasn’t moderated slightly, but it’s still fairly contradictory in that they think people with addictions need treatment – but they oppose harm reduction that helps people survive until they are ready to seek treatment, and still support mandatory minimum sentences, which don’t do anything about addictions or treatment, and can exacerbate them. Change – particularly societal change – doesn’t happen overnight, and these are good first steps that will hopefully pave the road for greater change as time moves along.

Not as far as I want us to go, but this legislation would make it virtually impossible for a prosecution of drug possession for personal use to proceed.

It is unquestionably an important step forward. https://t.co/fn2t2PQjfU

— Nate Erskine-Smith (@beynate) February 18, 2021

Good reads:

• The Public Health Agency says that vaccine deliveries are back on track, and accelerating, so that we can have more people vaccinated by June than planned.
• Here is a look at the updated vaccine priority guidance, and how some provinces have been responding to it.
• Two travellers were fined a combined $17,000 after testing positive in Mexico and then faking their test results to get on the airplane back to Canada.
• Steven Guilbeault has condemned Facebook’s move to ban sharing news content in Australia after their government decided to make Facebook pay for it.
• The government says they will let temporary foreign workers in seafood processing skip the mandatory hotel quarantine on arrival for a “tailored solution” in-province.
• Canada and the UK are both slapping sanctions on officials in Myanmar who took part in the military coup on February 1^st.
• The Commons won’t debate the Senate amendments to the assisted dying bill until Tuesday, giving them just three days to meet the court-imposed deadline.
• Members of the vaccine task force appeared at the health committee to defend their work, and the fact that much of it has been done with non-disclosure clauses.
• A staffer for Liberal MP Chandra Arya accidentally sent personal information of a constituent to some 900 Conservative staffers – but won’t face penalties.
• The Conservatives used their Supply Day motion to call on the government to declare a genocide against the Uyghurs happening in China.
• Conservatives on the health committee are keeping up their attempt to get the vaccine contracts released – even if it upsets the suppliers for violating the terms.
• Heather Scoffield listens to everyone who still thinks it’s 1995 about their concerns of more government support if we (likely) wind up with a third wave.

Odds and ends:

This longread on the development of mRNA vaccines is worth your time.

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