When Her Excellency The Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean prorogued parliament today she tacitly killed Bill C-15 which would have amended Canada’s drug laws to add mandatory minimum prison sentences for crimes which currently receive community service judgments in BC, like selling small amounts of marijuana to your friends.

Mandatory minimums for non-violent soft drug crimes are part of the reason behind ridiculous incarceration rates in the States (5% of the world’s population, 25% of its prisoners).

We can be happy the government, despite its best efforts and the support of the thrashing-for-platform Liberals, failed to enact a law which typically saddles people under 30 with hard time for something most of us believe should be legal.