Ottawa is selling a “tough on crime” comeback — but the Inside Politics panel says Bill C-16 may be little more than a glossy brochure wrapped around a loophole.

Host Kevin Klein sat down with Winnipeg Sun columnists Lawrence Pinsky, KC, and political science professor Royce Koop to unpack the Liberal government’s latest promise: bring back mandatory minimum sentences and finally clamp down on repeat offenders.

Koop didn’t mince words. Mandatory minimums were created because Canadians were fed up with “slap on the wrist” sentencing and judges using wide discretion. But after years of court rulings striking down minimums as “cruel and unusual,” the Liberals’ answer isn’t real backbone — it’s what Koop called mandatory minimums without the mandatory part.

In other words: a “minimum” sentence that a judge can simply decline to apply.

Pinsky went further, warning that the legal test has drifted into a subjective mess. Courts have used “cruel and unusual” reasoning to erase minimum penalties — including, he noted, a mandatory one-year sentence for child pornography offences. Bill C-16, he argued, lowers the bar even more: judges wouldn’t even need to find a sentence “cruel.” They can just declare it “not appropriate.”

Klein, who has long pushed for real accountability in public safety policy, linked the debate back to what Manitobans see on the ground: repeat offenders released, re-arrested, then released again — including the terrifying case of a sex offender entering a Winnipeg school and targeting a child. “What are you doing to fix it?” Klein demanded, blasting political “tough talk” that never becomes real consequences.

To be fair, the panel acknowledged Bill C-16 does contain provisions dealing with coercive control and domestic violence, and measures that could increase penalties when violence is driven by hatred or intimate-partner abuse. But the core Liberal sales pitch — “we’re getting tough” — doesn’t survive close reading, they argued.

Koop summed it up: public safety requires peace and order first, and repeat violent offenders must face real consequences. Pinsky’s verdict was blunt: the Liberals may claim law-and-order credibility — but Bill C-16, as written, won’t deliver it.

And Canadians are tired of being sold slogans while crime keeps climbing.