Argument over mandatory minimum not hard to accept: judge

TORONTO – A mandatory minimum sentence enacted by the federal Conservatives that sees first offenders sent to prison for three years on a gun possession crime is a “bad law,” one of Ontario’s most senior judges suggested Wednesday.

Appeal Court Justice David Doherty is one of five judges hearing a joint set of six appeals, each of which involves mandatory minimum sentences for gun crimes.

The mandatory minimums were struck down in one case and upheld in the rest – though narrowly in one – and hearing all of them at the same time gives the court the opportunity to send a uniform message in a currently fragmented landscape.

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