44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 9, 2022 10:00AM
- Jun/9/22 2:15:55 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Liberal and Conservative members from Quebec showed their true colours yesterday. They voted against protecting Quebec's political weight in the House of Commons. They voted against maintaining the proportion of seats in Ottawa for the Quebec nation at 25%.
Because of them, Quebec is doomed to slowly disappear. Maintaining Quebec's political weight at 25% is not a new concept. It was proposed as part of the Charlottetown accord in 1992. It was Brian Mulroney's compromise in order to accommodate Quebec within the Canadian system. It was known as the “beau risque”. That is what the Liberals and Conservatives said no to.
It is even worse coming from the Conservatives, because they are abandoning the only real legacy they ever had in Quebec. In 1992, the Conservatives were in favour of protecting Quebec's political weight, while the Reform Party opposed it. This is basically proof that that party over there today is the Reform Party. It also shows how important the Quebec nation is to the rest of Canada. Let us face the facts.
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- Jun/9/22 2:18:08 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am so pleased to rise today to welcome back, after two long years of waiting, the in-person Italian Week Ottawa celebrations in my community of Ottawa Centre. Italian Week is focused on creating exciting experiences that share Italian culture with all of us.
The events scheduled this year include a film screening, master classes, children's bedtime stories and much more. The grand finale will take place from June 17 to 19 along beautiful Preston Street in Little Italy in my community.
I encourage everyone to join us next weekend to see live entertainment, a soccer tournament, kids' rides, opera performances, street animations and the Ottawa bike race as we close out the week.
I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the Department of Canadian Heritage for the ongoing support it has provided to Italian Week Ottawa, and to applaud the festival organizers and board directors, Lydia Di Francesco and Gina Maddalena, along with all the volunteers for their tireless efforts in planning this fantastic celebration.
Happy Settimana Italiana di Ottawa.
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- Jun/9/22 2:54:22 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Quebec did not wait for Ottawa and just offered the Akwesasne Mohawk Police Service $6.2 million to patrol the St. Lawrence river for arms traffickers 24 hours a day.
It is a good thing that Quebec did not wait because Quebec's public safety minister informed us today that she still has not received a single cent of the money promised by Ottawa months ago.
She said that she is still waiting to sign the agreement with the federal government for the money it put on the table to have Quebec police forces address armed violence. She repeated her appeal to the minister. Where is the money?
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Mr. Speaker, yesterday there were another three shootings in less than six hours in Montreal, and the Government of Quebec has said that it has not yet received the money it was promised to combat gun violence.
Quebec is putting in the work. For example, it has announced a special patrol to combat gun trafficking in Akwesasne. Ottawa, however, has not even sent Quebec the money it was promised. How shameful.
When will the government finally transfer the money it promised Quebec? Montreal has a gun problem right now, not “one day”, “maybe”, “if we have the time”, “if it is not too hot” or “if it is not raining”. The problem is now. I also want to inform the minister that this has nothing to do with Bill C‑21.
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Madam Speaker, I am very honoured to put words on the record concerning Bill C-21.
We have a very serious gun violence problem in the country, one that Conservatives across the country are deeply concerned about. I have to say that when there were rumours that this announcement from the Liberals was coming forward and it was going to be a big splashy event at the Château Laurier here in downtown Ottawa, I was looking forward to hearing something that could really make a meaningful impact on this devastating issue that has ripped families apart and taken innocent lives. However, I was left feeling deeply, deeply disappointed. It was a missed opportunity to provide real hope for Canadians that gun violence would go down.
What is interesting is that since the Prime Minister formed government seven years ago, gun violence and violent crime in Canada has consistently gone up. It has never been so bad since I have been alive when it comes to the gun statistics in this country and those killing each other with guns in Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Edmonton and Vancouver. It is a serious, serious issue. That is why I felt so let down by the government's announcement, because it will not make any meaningful impact on gun violence and we so desperately needed a meaningful announcement.
I am going to mention a couple of crime statistics, because they are very alarming. Homicide rates went up 7% from last year. That is a consistent increase, year over year over year, 7% more from last year, so now two out of 100,000 Canadians are victims of a homicide. Violent crime, again, is up 5% in the last six years. Firearm-related offences increased for the sixth year in a row. These are stats from last year, so we will see what they are this year, but from the police reports, it sounds like it is going to be one of the worst years on record. Homicides are at a 30-year high and at least a third of them are committed with firearms.
I represent a riding in Winnipeg. It is ranked the violent crime capital of Canada, frankly, year over year, so I know first-hand the devastation that gun crime and violent crime cause in communities, especially our vulnerable communities.
In fact, in Toronto, in 2014, before the Prime Minister came to office, there were 177 instances where firearms were shot illegally. Now that number is up to 462. Is has gone from 177 to 462 in Toronto. Clearly, the Liberal approach is a resounding failure when it comes to keeping our communities safe. It is a fact that our communities are less safe. Canadians are less safe since the Prime Minister took office. Again, the Liberals had the opportunity to address that at their announcement, but they failed to do so.
In Winnipeg we have serious concerns. Winnipeg's North End is a predominantly indigenous community that suffers significantly with addictions, homicides, violent crimes, domestic abuse, spousal abuse, child abuse. In fact, in Manitoba, child and family services remove the most children per capita than anywhere else in the world, and at least 90% to 97% of them are indigenous. Our prisons at all levels are filled with indigenous youth. It is a serious problem that we are facing in this country.
We have also the missing and murdered indigenous women. Indigenous women in Manitoba are most impacted by those horrendous statistics, and yet we have Bill C-5 from the government. On one hand, the minister said in his speech that he is increasing maximum penalties for firearm offences, some of them, to send a message to criminals, while on the other hand, his colleague is eliminating mandatory prison time for serious firearm offences.
We are talking about robbery with a firearm. If a person robs someone at gunpoint, there is no guarantee that person is going to prison now. The individual may actually get to serve house arrest in the community where the person caused the violent crime. Extortion with a firearm and firing a firearm with the intent to injure someone, that is, shooting at someone and planning to hit them with the bullet, no longer results in mandatory prison time under the Liberal government. There is using a firearm in committing a crime, and I could go on. In fact, someone who is a drug trafficker will no longer face mandatory prison time under Bill C-5.
On one hand, the Liberals say they are getting tough on criminals. On the other hand, they are letting them completely off the hook, allowing them to serve, perhaps, house arrest in the communities they have terrorized.
There is the removal of the mandatory prison time for drug trafficking, which is deeply related, as my NDP colleague referred to in his question, to gun violence in the country. Just last year, over 7,000 Canadians died from drug overdoses, mostly opioids, that is, fentanyl, carfentanil. It was more deadly for young people to die from a drug overdose than COVID. That is how serious the drug epidemic in this country is.
We all have different approaches on how to solve that, but I would say that removing mandatory prison time for the individuals who push drugs on vulnerable Canadians, who traffic drugs into this country, is the wrong approach.
They are responsible for murdering thousands of Canadians, especially in B.C. It is especially an issue with young people, so the government's approach to firearms and violent crime, despite the rise in statistics, does not make sense.
Then we have the government bringing forward this handgun freeze. The minister has consistently said that we are stopping this trend with the handgun freeze, but we know that the handguns used in Toronto gang crimes are not from legal gun owners. They are smuggled in from the United States, and I will get to that.
What I think is particularly interesting is all the individuals, particularly police, who have come out to say that handgun bans and buybacks will not work. They will not work to address the rising gun violence in this country.
In fact, I will start with an interesting quote here by an individual who said, “The long-gun registry, as it was, was a failure.... There are better ways of keeping us safe than that registry which...has been removed.” We are not talking about the registry today, but it was a gun control mechanism that was brought in formerly by a Liberal government, so I think it is relevant.
This individual said, “I grew up with long guns, rifles and shotguns.... The RCMP guarding me had handguns and I got to play with them every now and then”, although the RCMP was “very responsible” around him. He said, “I was raised with an appreciation and an understanding of how important in rural areas and right across the country gun ownership is as a part of the culture of Canada.” It was a very important person who said this. He continued, “I do not feel that there's any huge contradiction between keeping our cities safe from gun violence and gangs, and allowing this important facet of Canadian identity which is having a gun.”
That was the Prime Minister of Canada, back in 2012 or 2013. Wow, how times have changed.
In reference to a handgun ban, another important individual of the Liberal government said, “I believe that would be potentially a very expensive proposition but just as importantly, it would not in my opinion be perhaps the most effective measure in restricting the access that criminals would have to such weapons, because we’d still have a problem with them being smuggled across the border”. That was the Minister of Emergency Preparedness, the former minister of public safety. Those were his words.
There is also the deputy chief of the Toronto Police Service, Myron Demkiw, who deals with this on the front line and puts his life on the line dealing with criminals shooting guns in downtown Toronto. He and his officers put their lives on the line to keep communities safe from gun violence. In reference to guns, he said, “They're not domestically sourced. They are internationally sourced. Our problem in Toronto is handguns from the United States.” I asked him about the handgun ban and the buyback proposed by the government, which is going forward, and he said, “Investing in what you described is certainly not going to deal with the crime problem we're facing in Toronto as it relates to criminal handguns and the use of criminal handguns. We believe an investment upstream is a very valuable focus of resources.” When I asked him if we should invest more in police or if we should ban guns, that was his response. Clearly, he does not believe it will be effective, and he is someone at the epicentre of gun violence in this country.
In fact, I have pages and pages of quotes from frontline officers, who deal with this more than anybody else, who have said that bans will not work because they do not tackle the problem.
We recently studied this issue, guns and gangs, at the national security and public safety committee, for which I am the vice-chair. We had a very robust debate. We had police experts. We had crime experts. We had community advocates. Not one recommendation in that report was to ban handguns, because none of the experts, none of the police experts and none of the community anti-gang experts said that that would be a solution. All of them said that that would not work, because we know from the Toronto police that over 85% of the handguns used in violent crimes in Toronto are smuggled in from the United States. This is a serious and growing problem that the government has failed to address.
I am an MP from Winnipeg. Recently, I took a tour of the Winnipeg police headquarters, where they showed me a half-a-million-dollar drug bust: all these deadly opioids, piles of cash and a very long table with all the firearms they had seized from the gangsters who were responsible. They are making these busts monthly. I took a look at all the guns. They said that, number one, every single gun on that table was already prohibited, not just restricted but prohibited. No one would have been able to legally get those guns in the country, no matter what kind of licence a person had. The second thing they said was that all of them were smuggled in from the United States. Then they showed me a map of the train tracks across North America, major rail lines that went all the way from Mexico, all the way through the central United States, all the way to Winnipeg.
They suspect that a significant number of the drugs and the guns from the United States that are killing Canadians are coming in on rail, so at committee I asked the border agents why they cannot stop it. They said they do not have the capacity, beyond checking one one-millionth, which is effectively none, of the railcars coming into Canada. We also have very little capacity to check marine ports of entry. We are struggling on retention issues at the border. We need many more border officers and much increased and improved technology to stop gun smuggling. All experts agree that this is where the problem is coming from.
The current government has spent more money than any government in history, actually all combined, if we look at deficits. If it really wanted to solve gun violence, it would be dumping billions of dollars into the border to shore up our security, because of course we share the longest undefended border in the world with a country that has more guns than people. Therefore, we have to get real about the Herculean effort it is going to take to stop this problem, which I think every single person in this House agrees we must do.
I am going to talk about police. I mentioned the police. We know that, particularly in rural Canada but in cities as well, the police are struggling to respond to calls. If there is a break and enter in Winnipeg, it may take them a month to come and investigate it because they are so overwhelmed with gun violence and violent crimes. That is how bad it is getting. Do not even get me started on the calls for service in rural Canada. It is unbearable for people in rural Canada.
The answer is that we need far more police and far more investments in guns and gangs units in this country. If we talk to police officers on the front lines, they will say that they are strapped and cannot keep up with demand. Drug and gun deaths are going up and they need more help. Therefore, it is about border security investments and police guns and gangs unit investments. That is what would make a real difference in reducing gun violence, significant investment.
As well, at committee we had a number of remarkable people from the grassroots community in Toronto. One of them, Marcell Wilson, was a hardened criminal who was rehabilitated. He turned his life around and started the One by One Movement. The One by One Movement saves at-risk youth in vulnerable communities from joining a life of gangs and following a life of crime. This man and his organization are saving young people from this life of crime. There is a similar organization in my community, called the Bear Clan Patrol. It really focuses on Winnipeg's north end, which is dealing with a lot of trauma. There are community organizations like this all across the country. They need significant investment and support from all levels of government. That is a long-term solution for the gun violence we are seeing.
I think there is a lot we can agree on with respect to this. The minister talked about red flag laws, increasing the penalties for those who try to smuggle guns into this country, and a few other minor things that I think all members of this House can agree on, so today, in very good faith, we talked to the other parties and we brought forward the following motion. I was not allowed to read it because I was cut off, but I will read it now into the record. This motion was to be brought forward so we can depoliticize this issue. Conservatives firmly believe, as do nearly all firearms owners in this country, that the current government does not have an interest in solving gun violence but wants to stigmatize and divide Canadians on this issue. Therefore, we wanted to take the politics out of it and say that there are parts of this bill we are really keen on, so we can work together, get them to committee, study them and get them passed. Let us quicken the process and save lives, hopefully, if they are effective, which we will find out at committee. Let us put the really difficult political issues through the debate in the House. This is not something that is foreign. We split bills. That is a possibility. It is a democratic tool that we have.
I wanted to say, before I was cut off by Liberal members, that given that the debate on combatting gun violence needs to be depoliticized and centred on the rights of victims and the safety of communities, the House should call on the government to divide Bill C-21 into two parts to allow for those measures where there is broad support across all parties to proceed separately, namely curbing domestic violence and tackling the flow of guns over the Canada-U.S. border, from those aspects of the bill that divide the House. That is fairly collaborative, I would say.
I have to say that Liberal, Conservative, Bloc and NDP members on the public safety committee have worked very well together. We really tried to put our politics aside and we came up with a really great guns and gangs study that we all signed on to. Can members imagine all parties signing on to a guns and gangs study? It is unheard of.
That is how we can work together and how I have shown that I can work together with others on this issue to create real solutions. When I attempted to do that in the House today, the Liberals shot it down, so I will take no lessons from them about playing politics with this. We made a good-faith effort today and they shot it down.
I also want to talk about some of the people who are impacted by this ban. The minister said something very odd recently on the news. He said that this bill does not impact law-abiding citizens and it does not impact law-abiding gun owners. I am not sure if he has read his own bill, because this bill, the handgun freeze, impacts only legal owners. It impacts only people who follow the law.
I will remind the House that those who possess RPAL, the restricted licence, need to be trained, vetted and background-checked. They are some of the most background-checked individuals in the country, and with good reason. Conservatives support very strict gun laws in this country. Only the most responsible, law-abiding citizens should ever come near a gun.
We have a situation where those individuals are the only ones being targeted by this. It is not the criminals in Toronto. They do not care. They are laughing about this handgun freeze. They already own them illegally. They are carrying them around and shooting up their communities illegally now. Do members think they care about a handgun freeze? They are laughing; it is ridiculous.
I would like to talk about some of the individuals who are impacted by this, because I think it is pretty important. Some of them are in the sport shooting community. There is a large sport shooting community. For folks who are watching at home, if they do not own a firearm or have never been around one, I understand this is very foreign to them. I understand. I am not a sport shooter myself, so it is not something that necessarily impacts me.
However, it certainly impacts our Olympic sport shooting community, which has thousands and thousands of sport shooters below it: associations, provincial competitions, national competitions, international competitions. This bill would end that sport in Canada, a sport in which we have competed at the Olympic level for well over a hundred years. The Liberals say they have consulted, but I am hearing from the very large, law-abiding sport shooting community that it has not had a call from the minister. The Liberals are not giving any dignity to these individuals, while ripping apart a major part of their cultural heritage in this country without even a conversation.
The Liberals are trying to push this through at committee with no debate, with a sneaky UC motion at committee. They do not even want to debate it. They want to do it today and completely eliminate any dignity from a large part of this country that values sport shooting and is proud of it. These people pass down their firearms to their daughters and sons. That is all eliminated. I just do not understand how the Liberals can bring forward something like this with no consultation with the community it impacts the most, because it is not impacting the illegal community. It is not impacting the individuals who are killing people in our cities.
If one looks at the crime stats and the trends since the Prime Minister took office, one would think the Liberals would bring forward a bill that would go after the problem, but no, they have chosen politics. They have chosen to go after the individuals who are least likely to commit crimes. Lawful gun owners are actually three times less likely to commit crimes, because they are so vetted and so background-checked, as it should be.
It is infuriating. I cannot tell members how many calls I have received from across the country, from women, educated people, professionals, doctors, pilots and academics who engage in sport shooting. They are asking why they are being attacked again by the government and why the government is not going after the problem. It is spending billions of dollars. The sky is the limit. Why is it not spending it in the cities so we can save people?
It is unbelievable. I can go on and on about this. I am very passionate about it, as I am sure we all are from our own perspectives, but I am willing to work and collaborate on the elements of this bill that we do agree on. That was shot down today, but maybe the Liberals will agree another day.
I would like to move an amendment. I move:
That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following: “Bill C-21, An Act to amend certain Acts and to make certain consequential amendments (firearms), be not now read a second time but that the Order be discharged, the Bill withdrawn and the subject matter thereof referred to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security.”
The purpose of my motion is to say we have to go back to the drawing board. This is not going to work. It is not going to solve gun violence. Conservatives will work together on the committee to solve gun violence in this country. We will collaborate and bring forward real solutions to tackle the problem, which is criminals and gangs smuggling guns in from the United States and hurting our communities.
Rest assured.
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