Return to <i>Smith</i>? Harper-Era Mandatory Minimum Sentences in Canadian Courts (2008–2023)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Following the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in R v Smith (1987), which struck down a mandatory minimum sentence (MMS) for drug trafficking, it took nearly three decades before the Court would nullify another MMS. This 28-year span saw the Court exhibit judicial restraint and deference to the government regarding the constitutionality of MMS. However, in 2015, the Court invalidated an MMS enacted by the Harper government in R v Nur. The MMS in Nur was one of over 40 MMS provisions introduced by the Harper government between 2006 and 2015. As sentencing policy engages Parliament’s exclusive jurisdiction to legislate criminal law, judicial discretion in sentencing, and section 12 of the Charter, these Harper-era sentencing provisions provide a unique opportunity to study the institutional roles in sentencing and the constitutionality of such provisions. This article offers a comprehensive overview of the MMS enacted by the Harper government and examines how these provisions have been treated by Canadian courts, particularly focusing on the constitutional test for section 12 of the Charter. By analyzing appellate-level and Supreme Court cases featuring Charter challenges to Harper-era MMS, the article found that these provisions are being struck down at a high rate (76%). The findings indicate a loosening of judicial restraint and deference to government in this area and highlight significant issues with the reasonable hypothetical aspect of the section 12 test. Ultimately, the article argues for a better understanding of the complementary roles of the legislature and judiciary in sentencing.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.012 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.014 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".