The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that the Harper government's law requiring mandatory minimum sentences for gun crimes is unconstitutional.
By a 6-3 margin, the high court has upheld the 2013 Ontario Court of Appeal ruling that labelled the law cruel and unusual, in contravention of Section 12 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Tuesday's ruling is a setback for the government's tough-on-crime agenda.
The ruling said the mandatory minimum sentence could ensnare people with "little or no moral fault" and who pose "little or no danger to the public." It cited as, an example, a person who inherits a firearm and does not immediately get a license for the weapon.
"As the Court of Appeal concluded, there exists a 'cavernous disconnect' between the severity of the licensing-type offence and the mandatory minimum three-year term of imprisonment," Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin wrote for the majority.
The court was deciding two appeals involving mandatory minimum sentences for gun crimes brought by the Ontario and federal attorneys general.
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 appeals heard by the Supreme Court, 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 court.
Other recent setbacks for the federal government at the Supreme Court include:
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