44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 9, 2023 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, I have worked very closely with my friend and colleague, the member for Surrey—Newton, when it comes to keeping our communities safe.
As he knows, we recently made an announcement in his riding that will provide additional grassroots support to the organizations providing mental health services, educational supports and career supports, especially to those young people who are at the greatest risk of being exposed to gun violence.
I want to emphasize that this is a government that is squarely focused on three priorities when it comes to reducing gun violence: strong borders, strong laws and enforcement, and strong prevention. Together, with the support of a number of other opposition parties, it is my sincere hope that we will pass Bill C-21 so we can put in place strong gun control laws to save lives.
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- May/9/23 4:16:36 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we heard the Conservatives name off a bunch of rural NDP ridings members who have brought to the attention of the government the need to ensure that indigenous peoples and rural hunters can keep their weapons.
This motion will get us back to the discussion of the amendments that are needed to improve and strengthen the bill. However, Conservatives do not want to do that. They would drag the bill out until 2027, so it would never happen.
We want to bring forward solutions so we can strengthen the bill to protect farmers and indigenous people, and ensure that we have a strong gun law. We could tackle ghost guns and support law enforcement so they are not on the frontline facing dangerous weapons.
The law-and-order party abandons our first responders, the police, who are asking us to take action and move forward with the bill. Maybe the public safety minister could speak about those frontline officers who are asking us to make those amendments.
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- May/9/23 4:17:58 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to respond to the question from my NDP colleague.
In fact, just yesterday, I joined members from our caucus in Peel region to announce $390 million of support for the work of law enforcement, which they do each and every single day to keep our communities safe, including from gun violence.
My colleague from the NDP also mentioned his concerns with ghost guns, and I share those concerns. As a result of the ongoing and constructive dialogue we are having with the Bloc and the NDP on this side of the House, we will be able to take additional action against ghost guns. In fact, we just had the Americans in town a little less than two weeks ago, and we were able to reach four memorandums of agreement. One of those will be the use of new technology to crack down on ghost guns.
This is what Canadians want. They want parties to work together across partisan lines, and we are able to do that with the Bloc and the NDP. However, the Conservatives have only put forward simply stale and failed policies.
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Mr. Speaker, it is a real privilege to talk about Bill C-21 and to really stand up against it.
Getting an honest answer from the minister is difficult. We have tried. I remember being the one in SECU who actually got the witnesses to admit that law-abiding hunters' firearms were on the banned list. The Liberals have tipped their hand, and most firearms owners across the country know that. I have spoken with Liberal members of Parliament who do not necessarily like the way their own government is going on firearms.
This is really a call-out to the NDP. I just heard members from the island. I have been to the Campbell River Gun Club, where people brought huge concerns forward around Bill C-21 and the freedom to access their legally obtained firearms. Again, these are citizens who are vetted on a daily basis. The stats support that people who have a firearms licence are far less likely to commit a crime than an average citizen is. These are impeccable citizens being shown complete disrespect by the Liberal minister.
Again, my question for the New Democrat members is whether they will finally stand with their constituents and oppose this legislation.
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- May/9/23 4:22:34 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, everybody will be appreciative of that clarification.
The Conservative colleague across the aisle talks about his experience. I have met with gun owners in the Eskasoni First Nation community in Nova Scotia. I have met with gun owners in the Yukon, in the Northwest Territories, in British Columbia, in Ontario and, in fact, right across the country, for the express purpose of making sure that we get this bill right.
If the member opposite wants to talk about being honest and straight-up, then what he should do is be straight-up with the work that we are doing on this side of the House to make sure that we get this legislation—
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- May/9/23 4:24:56 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I have respect for gun owners. I know they place a premium on safety. I know that, when they apply for a PAL certificate, they follow all of the regulations—
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
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- May/9/23 4:25:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I realize there was a lot of enthusiasm for the answer I was just giving, naturally, because I was showing that we have respect for gun owners who do follow the law. This legislation is not about targeting them, and the more Conservatives try to spread that disinformation, the more they are just resorting to their same old—
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- May/9/23 4:27:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we were in the House until midnight last night with the same sort of childish antics going back and forth. While these are going on, while people are asking to be apologized to and talking about their feelings being hurt, children in my community are being killed by guns, ghost guns, illegal guns. This is what we are talking about. We are talking about the balance between those law-abiding gun owners who deserve and want the right to be able to use their firearms in a responsible way and families who are losing children, along with women who are intimidated and hurt by guns that are not legally allowed in this country.
If the minister does not mind, could he just explain again why we cannot go through 145 amendments at this pace and still save lives in this country?
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- May/9/23 4:28:25 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I know my NDP colleague's concerns are genuinely felt in her community, as they are felt in mine and indeed right across the country.
With regard to her specific question on ghost guns, we recently had a cross-border crime forum summit here in Ottawa with our American counterparts. What we are seeing coming out of that are concrete results, such as more capacity to trace illegal guns and more opportunities to leverage new technology to go after ghost guns. Ghost guns are a concern that has been expressed to me by chiefs from law enforcement right across the country. It is by doing this tangible work in collaboration with the United States that we are going to be able to build on the record number of illegal firearms that were seized at the border last year and leverage new technology to go after ghost guns to keep her community safe, and keep all our communities safe, from gun violence.
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- May/9/23 4:30:01 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, in fact, as I mentioned earlier during this debate, yesterday the government announced an additional $390 million that will go directly to support law enforcement to dismantle and take down organized criminals who use guns. I would also point out that the original bill, in its proper form, includes raising maximum sentences against hardened gun traffickers as a means of deterring them. It also would provide law enforcement with additional tools around wiretapping and surveillance so that they can share information and use that to disturb, dismantle and stop organized criminal networks that use guns to support and supply their trade.
I have assured the member that we will work closely with the province and his community to see that their work in Thunder Bay is supported as well.
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Mr. Speaker, we have a real problem with gangs and violence. Violent crime is skyrocketing. We are talking about Bill C-21, which talks about taking legal guns from legal gun owners.
I want to ask the minister, since the government uses evidence-based policies, what percentage of crimes are committed by people with illegal guns, and what percentage are committed by people who have actual legal guns? The answer to the second is going to be zero. After 35 years in policing, I know that answer. Why not put that money into education programs and forget Bill C-21? Scrap Bill C-21. It would not be effective.
I agree that we need to have gun laws, but the government is targeting people who have legal guns. Why not go after the ones who have illegal guns, the criminals?
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Madam Speaker, it is hard to find the words to start given how long I have personally been involved with this piece of legislation. I know there are a few select members of this House who would agree with me. I think for each one of us, this has been our own personal odyssey, and to get to this point is really remarkable. All of the different twists and turns that this one bill, Bill C-21, has taken are going to be studied in parliamentary procedure for years to come.
I have had the privilege of representing my riding of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford for three terms, now being in my eighth year, and I have discovered that in my time here, Parliament has demonstrated that it is indeed the last place to go for an open, honest and logical debate on firearms. A lot of the debate we have seen on this bill and on firearms regulations, policy and legislation in general has done a very real disservice to Canadians. Both sides of the issue have torqued up their arguments. There has been blatant misinformation and labelling, and this has really descended the level of debate into something that I think a lot of Canadians would quite rightly be disgusted by. It is very difficult in this place, when we have all of these torqued up emotions and political agendas, to have a reasoned debate on firearms. That certainly has been the story.
I know a lot of people on Twitter are following this debate very closely. I would say that the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security is probably the most watched committee of them all, and I know that my words right now are being analyzed and tweeted about, even in real time. I just want the people who are listening to brace themselves, because I have equal amounts of criticism for both the Liberals and the Conservatives as to why we now find ourselves in this place.
I first want to start by talking about the committee, because ultimately today's motion is one of instruction to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. One could be forgiven for thinking that all this committee does is study policy and legislation surrounding firearms, because that is indeed all it has really been consumed with since the bill was referred to the committee late last year. In fact, we started Bill C-21 at committee in October 2022, and here we are now, well into May 2023, and we are still only at the clause-by-clause part of the bill.
I think it is useful for people to understand what the mandate of this committee is. It is responsible for reviewing legislation, policies, programs and expenditure plans of a whole host of different government departments and agencies that are responsible for not only public safety, but national security, policing, law enforcement, corrections, the conditional release of federal offenders, emergency management, crime prevention and of course the protection of our borders. When we are doing things like the estimates for the spending plans of Public Safety Canada, quite often we have representatives included from the Canada Border Services Agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the Parole Board of Canada and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
What I am trying to underline here is that this committee is an extremely important committee of the House of Commons, and all the work it does in all of these different areas in looking after our intelligence gathering, law enforcement and border protection has been sidelined by the incredible amount of time that has been consumed. Time is our most valuable resource in Parliament, and once we spend it we do not get it back.
Because of the shenanigans that have occurred with respect to Bill C-21, the public safety committee has quite correctly been prevented from examining all of these other different areas, keeping tabs on those different departments, examining different pieces of legislation and keeping tabs on what the government's policies and practices are going to be with respect to other key areas. That is an important element that we first need to establish when we are talking about where we are today.
As many members will know, including members in my own community, I used to be our party's public safety critic. I found my time on that committee to be personally quite valuable. I found that the subject matter we were dealing with was quite intellectually challenging and stimulating, and it is important work.
I know from my interactions with other members of the committee, whether on the Liberal, Conservative or Bloc Québécois side, that they all conducted themselves very well, and I enjoyed my working relationships with them. That even goes for our work on Bill C-21.
Believe it or not, there was actually a time when Bill C-21 was progressing through committee in relatively good order. We concluded roughly eight meetings with witnesses. The committee then had time to come forward with its amendments, and there seemed to be an acknowledgement that aside from a few differences with a few clauses here and there, the bill was probably on schedule to be reported back to the House for report stage and eventually third reading sometime in December.
We then got to November, and all hell broke loose. This was when the eleventh-hour amendments were dropped by the Liberals. I should correctly say “the Liberal government”, because I do not think they were, by design, from the Liberal members of the committee. They did come from the government.
I do not want to go into the details of the bill too much, because I think that is a well-trodden path and a well-known story, bu allow me to take this moment in my speech to levy what I think are some well-earned criticisms on both the Liberals and the Conservatives. I know some of my colleagues will probably laugh at this, particularly the member for Hamilton Centre, because he has heard me joke about this before.
I often feel like the character Mercutio in Shakespeare's play, Romeo and Juliet, when he is expressing his frustration with the Capulets and the Montagues, because I feel that same frustration with the Liberals and the Conservatives. It is difficult sometimes to watch the shenanigans between those parties and the way our level of debate around this issue descends into the depths and scrapes the bottom of the barrel.
Let me start with the Liberals. One day, someone is going to write a book about this sorry episode, and it is probably going to be titled something like “How Not to Amend One's Own Legislation”. It is going to be a warning guide for governments in the future on what not to do and how not to spring a surprise on an unsuspecting committee when they have not done their homework, when they have not done consultation and, most importantly, when they have not consulted with the members of the committee who are actually responsible for shepherding those amendments through.
I want to caution members: My comments are not, in any way, directed to the colleagues I work with, but more to the Liberal Party brain trust. I understand the reasoning behind where they are coming from. Gun violence in our major urban centres is a very concerning thing. It needs to be dealt with appropriately. I want to take a moment to acknowledge the extreme grief that is out there within so many families who are dealing with a loss due to firearms violence.
Sometimes the road forward for the Liberals has been paved with good intentions, but it has led to some pretty awful results. I would ask them to step back and try and heal some of the wounds that exist in that divide between urban and rural Canada. We need to understand that yes, firearms violence is a big issue, but there also has to be a level of respect afforded to Canadians who are lawful firearms owners, who play by the rules and who have done everything right. I would encourage the Liberals to consult more with their rural MPs.
When the Liberals introduced those amendments, one of the groups that were leading the way was indigenous communities—not only hunters and farmers, but indigenous communities, not the least of which was the Assembly of First Nations. In an extremely rare move, the AFN came out with a unanimous emergency resolution on the last day. That is almost unheard of. They were going after the government for those ill-thought-of eleventh-hour amendments.
No consultation had taken place. One could make a legitimate argument that the Liberals, in bringing in these amendments, were not respecting the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples or even the legislation we have passed that enshrines that within our own laws to make sure that all federal laws are in harmony with the declaration itself. It went against the spirit of that.
Now I will turn to my Conservative friends.
What do we say about the reams of ridiculous hyperbole we have seen from that party on Bill C-21? The bill has been a fundraising boon for the Conservative Party. That giant sucking sound we hear is Conservatives hoovering money from the harvest of their rage-farming operation around the bill, and I think a part of me wonders whether the Conservatives do not want to see the bill go forward because it has been so financially viable for them. The evidence is all out there. I do not think there is any interest at all in trying to move the legislation forward, because doing so would essentially stop the goose from laying golden eggs for them. It has been an incredible money-maker for them.
When I look at some of the misinformation that has been put out by the Conservative Party around the bill, I see they are fanning flames of rage over amendments that no longer exist and incorrectly saying that the government wants to take away all their guns. It is just completely off-the-wall bonkers stuff that can be easily disproven, and it is completely not helping the standard of debate we expect of our parliamentarians. It just makes the rest of our jobs harder when we have to fight that completely untrue disinformation that is being actively fanned on social media.
Yes, it is a sorry state due to the actions of both parties in so expertly playing politics with the bill, and that is a large part of the reason we are here today.
We know that the problematic amendments were withdrawn by the Liberals. That is fact number one. All current owners of long guns in Canada are not going to have those firearms impacted, because the problematic amendments were withdrawn. What we now have being proposed as an amendment to the bill would go after firearms that will be manufactured in the future, after the bill receives royal assent. There is also an important amendment, I understand, that would make sure that nothing in the bill takes away from the rights of indigenous peoples. That is recognized and affirmed under section 35 of our Constitution.
Of course, there are incredibly important amendments dealing with the exponentially growing problem of ghost guns. This is a problem that has been brought to the committee's attention repeatedly by law enforcement agencies. I would hope that more attention is paid to those particular amendments, and of course we, the remaining members of the House of Commons, have to reserve our judgment on the bill until we see the final version that the committee ultimately reports back to us.
Now let us turn to the motion of instruction and what it would do.
First of all, we have to understand that as of this morning, the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security had already spent approximately five hours on clause-by-clause consideration. If they had been able to complete their meeting this afternoon, and I know it was interrupted by a series of votes, that would have brought the total to eight hours, which is roughly equivalent to four full meetings. The motion being debated today would add a further 17 hours to that, bringing it to roughly 25 hours, which is the equivalent of 12-and-a-half meetings.
I understand from the member for New Westminster—Burnaby, our member on the public safety committee, that he has tried multiple times to extend the sitting hours of the public safety committee so that Conservatives, the Bloc and New Democrats could have additional time to look at the amendments that are being proposed by various members. I understand that in each of those instances, these attempts were either rejected or filibustered so that the committee ultimately could never get to a vote. To hear Conservatives complain that they are being silenced in the House when they have, in fact, had multiple opportunities at committee to extend the sitting hours of that committee does come across as a bit rich.
I would say that because I have had my staff look at bills similar in size and complexity to Bill C-21, Bill C-18 comes to mind. That particular bill, when it went through clause-by-clause study at its committee, had seven meetings, the equivalent of 14 hours, for clause-by-clause study, so that is more than enough time to get through it.
I know from my own experience, because I used to be a member of the public safety committee and have seen a lot of these amendments, that are a lot of them are very technical, small changes to the bill, especially the parts that deal with ghost guns. Not a lot of debate is going to be required on them. In fact, the committee can probably get through them in short order because they are repetitive and many different areas of the Criminal Code and the Firearms Act have to be updated to make sure that those existing statutes are in harmony with each another.
The other thing I want to turn to in my final three minutes goes back to the earlier part that I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, the overall mandate of the public safety committee. We have two really important pieces of legislation waiting in the wings, waiting for their turn to be examined at the public safety committee. They are Bill C-20 and Bill C-26.
Bill C-20 is going to create our first-ever public accountability and transparency network that is independent of the RCMP and the CBSA. In fact, the CBSA has never had an independent oversight mechanism. Looking at the public safety committee's report from the previous Parliament looking at systemic racism in policing and looking at all of the instances of injuries and sometimes death that have happened to people who had been in the custody of the CBSA, we see that these are important measures. We have had so many racialized Canadians, so many indigenous Canadians who have been calling out for these types of oversight measures for years. Why should those pieces of legislation continue to be pushed back while we draw out this process on Bill C-21?
Bill C-26 is an important piece of legislation, which I will be the first to admit needs a lot of work at committee, but it is going to really bring in line a lot of the cybersecurity requirements that are needed for some of our critical sectors, be they in banking, transportation, energy and so on. It is going to be a requirement for many of those private actors to bring their systems in line with a standard that is acceptable to the federal government. Again, a lot of work is needed, but no one in this House can deny or absolve themselves from the fact that these are important issues that deserve to have their turn at the public safety committee.
My ultimate motivation for this motion today is to get Bill C-21 on its way. We have had enough time at the committee. It has occupied so much time at the public safety committee, and it is time for the public safety committee to move on to other bills that are equally important to many other Canadians.
In conclusion, I ultimately am going to reserve my judgment on Bill C-21 until I see what the committee reports back to the House, but I will not agree to let that committee continue to be bogged down, especially when there is so much other important work to be done.
With that I conclude. I welcome any comments and questions from my colleagues.
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- May/9/23 7:53:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we have heard today, in the many interventions, of the technical aspects of this bill, the rights of hunters and farmers, the use of the tools and the specifics about the guns, but I do not think we have heard enough about the victims of gun violence. I am somebody who has had the heartbreak and tragedy of having attended funerals for gun violence. I think about Marley Rowe in 2014, and I think about the mass shooting that happened more recently in Vaughan, where my dear friend Doreen Di Nino was one of the lone survivors.
I wonder if the hon. member could reflect and re-centre the impact of gun violence on victims and on the work that he would wish to share for the benefit of this debate on the consultations that he has had with victims of gun violence. This intervention seeks to reduce the circulation of guns, introduce some kind of manufacturing accountability to tackle this new phenomenon of ghost guns and the idea that anybody at home with a 3-D printer can manufacture their own type of weapons. Could the hon. member just re-centre on the victims and talk about the ways this would hopefully help offset future tragedies?
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- May/9/23 7:56:44 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, let me start by talking quickly about why I suggest every member should get behind this legislation. We hear about ghost guns. This problem is growing across Canada. These 3-D printers are capable of printing what we call ghost guns. No matter which municipalities one looks at, one will find stakeholders, including police and first responders, who say that the number of ghost guns is growing at a very concerning rate. These are untraceable because they do not have serial numbers. This is something very tangible that this legislation attempts to deal with, in good part.
Only the Conservative Party does not want to recognize those sorts of facts and allow the legislation to pass. The NDP speaker addressed it, at least in part, when he talked about the issue of money and fundraising. For those who are following the debate today, I would suggest that they not underestimate how much money the Conservatives have raised as a direct result of guns and rifles, and the type of misinformation they are prepared to share with Canadians to generate the money they have raised over the years. We are talking likely into the millions of dollars.
I became an MLA back in 1988, and the Polytechnique shooting occurred about a year and a half after I was elected. That is when the whole issue, from my perspective, came to the fore. Many people might not necessarily realize this, but after it came to the fore, it was a Progressive Conservative government, and I underline the word “progressive”, under Kim Campbell, that received the recommendation from a Conservative senator for a gun registry. They were moving toward it. That is probably not very well known in the reform Conservative circles today.
Today's Conservative Party is very different from the Progressive Conservative Party. Its members are far to the right. They have recognized this is an issue they can manipulate to get people angry, but to do that, they need to give out misinformation. A tangible example is that they will give the impression it is affecting hunting rifles. This is not in any form or way an attack on law-abiding gun owners, but we would not know it by the propaganda of the Conservatives.
They know this would not affect hunting firearms. They know that, but if we check social media, we will see what it is they are actually saying—
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