Judges should be required to impose minimum sentences, unless it would be 'grossly disproportionate' in the specific circumstances

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The long-smouldering debate over the Supreme Court’s treatment of mandatory minimum sentences was reignited Friday by its 5-4 decision in Quebec (Attorney General) v Senneville, which struck down the one-year minimum sentences for possessing or accessing child pornography. The overarching principle for deciding whether a minimum sentence breaches the guarantee against “cruel and unusual treatment or punishment” in section 12 of the Charter attracts little controversy. It cannot be “grossly disproportionate” to the punishment that an offender would receive without the minimum.

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But the court’s methodology for applying this principle requires the minimum to be struck down if applying it would yield a grossly disproportionate sentence for either the offender before the court or a hypothetical offender in a reasonably foreseeable scenario. Unsurprisingly, it concluded that a one-year sentence was not grossly disproportionate for the two offenders in Senneville, who had hundreds of images and videos depicting horrifying acts with young children. It instead focused on a