Mandatory means mandatory.

• Author: Mitchell, Teresa
• Position: Canada

The Supreme Court of Canada has unanimously dismissed the appeal of Alberta RCMP Constable Michael Ferguson's mandatory minimum sentence of four years incarceration for manslaughter committed with a firearm. His conviction stemmed from an incident involving a detainee at an RCMP detachment, whom he shot and killed during a scuffle. The trial judge granted him a constitutional exemption to the mandatory minimum penalty, instead ordering a conditional sentence of two years less a day. The Alberta Court of Appeal reinstated the mandatory minimum sentence. The Supreme Court stated that Parliament's intent in passing mandatory minimum sentencing laws was to remove judges' discretion to impose a sentence below the stated minimum. To allow courts to grant constitutional exemptions would directly contradict this intent and would be an inappropriate intrusion by the courts into the law-making sphere. Chief Justice McLachlin wrote that the use of constitutional exemptions "... buys flexibility at the cost of undermining the rule of law and the values that underpin it: certainty, accessibility, intelligibility, clarity, and predictability."

R. v. Ferguson, 2008 SCC 6

The Alberta Court of Appeal also rejected the use of a constitutional exemption in a recent case. The sentencing judge imposed less than the mandatory minimum penalty for...