The Supreme Court of Canada has upheld a lower court's ruling striking down the federal government's law mandating minimum sentences of three and five years for gun crimes.
The court ruled 6-3 to endorse a 2013 ruling by the Ontario Court of Appeal that labelled the law cruel and unusual, saying it violated Section 12 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The provincial and federal attorneys general had appealed that finding.
The top court upheld the appeal court's quashing of both the three-year mandatory minimum for a first offence of possessing a loaded prohibited gun, as well as the five-year minimum for a second offence.
The Ontario and federal governments argued that the minimums do not breach the charter protection against cruel and unusual punishment.
The new sentencing rules were enacted in 2008 as part of a sweeping omnibus bill introduced by the federal Conservatives.
The two governments say they enacted the mandatory minimums in response to the increasing number of handgun possession cases coming before the courts.
In one of the two cases that made up the Supreme Court appeal, a young Toronto man with no criminal record was sentenced to three years after pleading guilty to possession of a loaded firearm.
The judge in the case said that without the mandatory minimum, he would have sentenced Hussein Nur to 2½ years.
In the second case, Sidney Charles pleaded guilty to firearms offences after he was found in his rooming house bedroom with a loaded and unlicensed semi-automatic handgun.
He was sentenced to five years because he had two previous convictions.
In defending the mandatory sentence for repeat offenders, Ottawa and Ontario argued that it is within a reasonable range of legislative choice.
The Supreme Court has clashed with the Conservative government on several key policies, although it recently sided with Ottawa over the destruction of gun registry data, which Quebec sought to preserve.
That win for the Conservatives came after several losses at Canada's top ourt.
The justices rejected Prime Minister Stephen Harper's appointment of Quebec Judge Marc Nadon to their ranks, stymied an effort to stop judges from giving extra credit for time spent in custody before sentencing and ruled that Parliament could not reform the Senate on its own.
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