44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 16, 2023 10:00AM
- May/16/23 12:51:54 p.m.
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That is not a point of order; we are getting into debate.
The hon. parliamentary secretary.
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Mr. Speaker, on the same point of order, I certainly would brag about the member going to the Olympics. I wish I could accomplish such a feat.
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- May/16/23 12:52:05 p.m.
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Again, we are descending pretty deep into debate here.
The hon. member for Milton.
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Mr. Speaker, I am proud to stand up in this House to make sure that the rights of both responsible gun owners and those who aspire to compete in the Olympics are upheld, which the legislation does.
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- May/16/23 12:52:19 p.m.
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Again, we are into debate.
The hon. member for Battle River—Crowfoot.
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Mr. Speaker, when a common-sense amendment was brought forward to expand the exemptions to various associations related to sport shooting, including those who went to the Olympics, the Liberals voted against it. In fact, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety said that they want to ban handguns. Therefore, it is a little bit rich to have the elitist-type attitude coming from members opposite, who would target law-abiding Canadians, while we see criminals walking free on our streets. Canadians can judge for themselves.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech and his passion in this particular area. One of the things he mentioned was the training aspect, which is interesting, along with the amendments to the bill. I would also like to commend my colleague from Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia for her leadership in getting hunting guns removed from the bill, for example.
Could this aspect be strengthened? What is the role of a shooting range in a given municipality or region? Is it too easy to get a permit? These are legitimate questions that are being raised under the circumstances. I myself obtained a firearms possession and acquisition licence without ever having fired a shot in my life, which is a bit ironic. Hunting has become a hobby for me, a way to spend some quality time with my family in the woods.
Can this aspect be strengthened? Who does this gun possession legislation apply to, other than the black market references? How can we make sure it targets the criminals?
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Mr. Speaker, there are unique constitutional exemptions that place some of the roles of the chief firearms officers directly into the hands of provinces. I am sure the member from the Bloc Québécois, especially with his attitude toward Quebec, provincial autonomy and whatnot, would be very much onside with ensuring the Liberals would respect provincial jurisdiction. It is pretty evident that they do not.
I do applaud him because he, unlike so many in the House, has taken the time to get what I am assuming is a possession and acquisition licence, which would require going through a course to learn how to use a firearm and the respect required. Those of us in the House, who are making the rules, regulations and laws surrounding so many different issues, all make an effort to engage on the subject matter. We may not be able to become experts, but we should do our best to learn and engage with the subject matter.
I applaud any member of this place who would take the time to get their PAL to understand the rules and regulations as they are now. Those who go through that process would learn that maybe we have a pretty good system designed to keep Canadians safe. While they target those individuals who follow the law, they are letting criminals out on our streets and people are dying as a result.
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Mr. Speaker, I thought the logic of the last argument made by the member for Battle River—Crowfoot was quite fascinating. According to him, I should not be able to make any laws on CPP or OAS, for example, because I have never been the recipient of either of those programs. Nonetheless, I digress.
This bill—
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- May/16/23 12:56:09 p.m.
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There is a lot of noise going on in the anteroom. I want to make sure the lobbies know to keep their doors closed, and if there are people coming to visit us, they keep them closed.
There we go. I will be able to hear the member now. The hon. parliamentary secretary has the floor.
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Mr. Speaker, Conservatives are trying to paint this bill as something else, but in their defence, they have spent so much time doing that, that it would be literally impossible for them to try to backtrack on it. The member for Battle River—Crowfoot has shared so much misinformation about this bill, as have so many other Conservatives, that to try to reverse that position now would be blatant hypocrisy. They have no choice but to continue to push the same agenda. I feel for the situation they are in.
This bill would primarily do three things: put a freeze on handguns; introduce the red and yellow flags, which I will speak about in a couple of minutes; and combat smuggling. In particular, for crimes related to smuggling, there would be an increase in the penalty from 10 years' imprisonment to 14 years' imprisonment.
Let us start with some of the statistics from Statistics Canada, which are quite contradictory to what the member for Battle River—Crowfoot said a few moments ago. According to Statistics Canada, gun crime in Canada is down 5% between 2020 and 2021. In 2022, as the other parliamentary secretary said before me, 1,200 guns and 73,000 weapons were seized at the border. Those are 100% and 50% respective increases from 2021. In Toronto, one of the major cities in Canada, gun violence dropped by 22% between 2020 and 2021.
Eighty-four per cent of Canadians believe that the government is on the right track in its reforms to gun control. The 16% of Canadians that remains, whom the Conservatives are apparently working hard to make so much money off of through fundraising, must be incredibly important to them for them to be laser-focused on this particular issue and that 16% of Canadians.
The red flag provisions, as I alluded to in my opening, would allow for the petition of an individual to the court for emergency prohibition purposes. That is extremely important because another statistic is that a woman who lives in a household that has a gun in that household is statistically five times more likely to become a victim of violence that involves that weapon. That is a statistical fact. What we are trying to do with this red flag provision is give potential victims the opportunity to flag to the court that perhaps this gun should not be in the household. How do Conservatives respond to that? The member for Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, in committee, said that this would increase “malicious false claims”.
The default reaction of the Conservatives is not how do we help protect women who we know are the victims more often than not? How we protect them is not the member's concern. His default concern is about the malicious people who are out to get their former spouse or farmer partner and that people are going to make a fake report so they can get that weapon taken away. That is the Conservatives' concern. Their concern is not the potential victims of the violence, and I find that extremely troubling. The 16% of the population in Canada who do not agree with the gun control reform we are bringing in must have a lot of money because that is whom the Conservatives are laser-focused on.
I am reminded of the 2021 election. I really wish I could use a prop in the House because, if I could, I would hold it up and show it to everybody, but I will not. I will describe it to members. It came into my riding.
By the way, I am in a semi-rural riding. I hope it is rural enough for the Conservative members who were making fun of the member for Milton during his last question for claiming that he has a semi-rural riding. The islands in my riding, in addition to pretty much all of the areas north of the 401 and east of the Cataraqui River in Kingston and the Islands, are rural areas.
I come from a strong family of hunters. All three of my mother's brothers hunt and own hunting properties in Ontario. My late father-in-law grew up in a hunting lodge where visitors from Canada and the United States would come to be taught how to hunt, fish and explore the outdoors responsibly, so I take great offence to the members who come into the House to try to lecture other members because they believe their ridings are not rural enough.
Nonetheless, the National Firearms Association showed up in my riding, as it did in many other ridings in the 2021 election, dropping off pamphlets at doors that looked an awful lot like the pamphlets we were already delivering. It had literally copied the Prime Minister's stock photo, put the Liberal red on it, and had “Meet Your Liberal Team” written on it, with a QR code to get to the website. By the way, that website is still up right now, as I just went to it.
I heard the back-and-forth earlier with the member for Battle River—Crowfoot, who challenged the assertion made by the parliamentary secretary and member for Milton that the gun lobby in Canada and the Conservative Party are one in the same. If we go to that website, we can literally see every single question from Conservatives in period question on it. That website does not only talk about gun laws. Literally every Conservative grievance is there, so, yes, there is a lot of money to be made in this, as the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader said earlier.
Conservatives are laser-focused on that. They had no problem encouraging their partners to go to ridings to drop off these pamphlets to try to trick Canadians into thinking it was a genuine “Meet Your Liberal Team” flyer to go to the website to see the candidates who were running. However, this was a flyer that was printed, manufactured and links to a website that is all under the control of the Canadian Coalition for Firearms Rights, a branch of the Conservative Party of Canada.
I think it is extremely unfortunate, as members have said before me, that time and again Conservative members get up in the House to misrepresent the law we are creating, the facts and the statistics, all in the name of raising more money. They are trying to capitalize off this as much as possible. Who knows, maybe later today we will have the Leader of the Opposition filming a video as he is running out of the House of Commons, with the mace in the background, as he did with a previous bill we had, just to raise a last bit of money before the issue is dead. It is shameful that His Majesty's opposition operates in this way, yet we see it time and again.
Canadians should take great comfort in knowing that, despite the differences that exist between the Liberals, the Bloc Québécois, the NDP and the Green Party, we are all united around this legislation because we know it is what Canadians want. We know it is the right step forward, and there are adults in this room who are making sure that we do everything we can for the safety of Canadians throughout our country. Unfortunately, the Conservatives are not acting that way.
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Uqaqtittiji, I am very proud of the work the NDP has done to ensure that the rights of indigenous peoples are being protected. I wonder if the member could educate us on what the NDP amendment to add section 35 rights would mean for indigenous peoples.
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Mr. Speaker, the primary objective of the NDP was to ensure there were no unintended consequences of the bill that would affect indigenous communities throughout our country and their ability to continue to hunt and use firearms in a safe manner for their intended purpose of hunting.
I applaud the NDP, quite frankly, for working with the government and doing the right thing at committee by trying to put forward meaningful amendments to the benefit of the intent of the bill, as opposed to Conservatives, who were going to committee and criticizing amendments as tools that would result in people making false claims to the courts about weapons in their household.
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the change-up in the routine here. I wanted to ask my hon. colleague from Kingston and the Islands about this. I am good friends with the hon. member for Battle River—Crowfoot. On both sides of this House I want to identify this particular type of polarization and hope that we can arrest it.
My friend from Battle River—Crowfoot said that the Liberals did not care what rural Canadians think and so on and so forth. Rural Canadians are just as much at risk from gun violence as anyone else. I think in our language and the way we talk about things in this place we should be mindful of the mass casualty report of the killings in Nova Scotia from April 2020. It is very clear, about those horrific days, that the report revealed that for more than a decade before various reports went into the RCMP that this particular individual had guns, legal guns and illegal guns, and no one followed up. The whole thing was in the context of gender-based violence and domestic violence and the police took the view that that was a lesser offence than other things.
I just want us to find a way in this place to get over what I think is societal long COVID and start working together to protect Canadians.
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Mr. Speaker, the hon. member made a very good point. For some reason, people tend to think that gun violence is something that only happens in downtown Toronto. Gun violence happens right across our country in urban areas and in rural areas.
In particular, the example that she referenced would have been a situation where the red flag provision could have come in, such as with a petition to the court in an emergency circumstance where an individual has grave concern over weapons in a household that are being stored or could potentially be used in a violent manner.
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Mr. Speaker, as we come to report stage on this piece of legislation, one of the concerning things that the Minister of Public Safety has said is that there will be a creation of a firearms advisory committee. It is unknown at this point, in advance of this bill passing, what the makeup of that committee will be like, who is going to be on it and what decisions it will be making.
We do know that it is going to look at certain firearms and make recommendations to the government. Then it will be up to the government through an order in council to determine whether in fact it is going to ban these firearms. It is effectively a backdoor way of banning firearms that the committee would advise to be banned and that the government wants to ban.
I am wondering if the hon. member has any opinion as to whether in fact this should be the case in the absence of any information and whether this is a good idea or not.
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Mr. Speaker, other than the fact that the minister has indicated he is going to do something, the rest of the question is based on a hypothetical situation that the member suggested might be the case or may happen. I would be reluctant to comment on the hypothetical situation other than to say that I do not have any other information than he would at this point with respect to what the minister will be bringing forward exactly. When that does come forward, I look forward to reviewing it and discussing it at that time.
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- May/16/23 1:10:44 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it was December 6—
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- May/16/23 1:10:49 p.m.
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There is a point of order.
The hon. member for Battle River—Crowfoot.
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Mr. Speaker, I am very sorry to interrupt my colleague from the Bloc.
In one of the previous questions, the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands referenced that the worst shooter in Canadian history was legally allowed to own guns. That is false. He was under a prohibition order. They were not legal guns. There should be an apology.
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