TORONTO - The crime is the same — possession of an illegal gun. But one Toronto man gets hit with the mandatory minimum three year sentence while another gets lucky and has a rogue judge who strikes down the new higher penalty as unconstitutional.
So which is it?
The constitutionality of the Harper government’s tough mandatory minimums for gun crimes will go under the legal microscope this month when a special panel of the Ontario Court of Appeal convenes to issue a uniform ruling on six recent cases.
The four-day hearing is scheduled to begin Feb. 19 — five years after the Tackling Violent Crime Act was passed in Parliament — and will seek to clarify the confusing landscape since Superior Court Justice Anne Molloy, among others, declared the law’s tougher penalties violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
