44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 16, 2023 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, I read the bill this morning and was shocked at its lack of understanding of the total issue. If we look at what is actually being proposed in the legislation, it barely begins to scratch the surface of the issues affecting Canadians with the violence in our communities.
If we look at the restrictions placed on the types of offences that are going to be covered, it is a start. With Bill C-75, the Liberals were warned to begin with about what exactly it was going to cause and were told to stop it. They did not, and now they have to backtrack and try to fix it.
It does not go far enough. It is a beginning, and it certainly is not something that I can support in its entirety. It needs a lot more work.
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Madam Speaker, I really appreciate my colleague. He knows how the study of Bill C‑21 went in committee. He was there. He understands the concept of a consequential amendment. There were several of them for the government's ghost guns amendments. There were some on my amendment for the magazines. A valid possession and acquisition licence is now required for buying a magazine and ammunition. I was very pleased to see that there was unanimity on this. The Conservative Party was in favour of this measure. It is a good measure.
That is how it was, except for a consequential amendment. At some point, my colleague from Red Deer—Lacombe got carried away and said that it made no sense to stop a hunter who is getting ready to hunt a rare bird, if his licence is not valid because he is missing a magazine. The official who was there gently reminded him that if the licence is not valid, he could not go hunting, he could not use his gun. Despite that, the Conservatives voted against this amendment.
I would like my colleague to explain why.
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Madam Speaker, I too have enjoyed working with my colleague from the Bloc on the public safety committee off and on for a couple years. I have always generally appreciated her approach to and understanding of some of the legislation we deal with.
The Conservatives did support legislation that attempted to curtail what we call ghost guns. It is something that law enforcement has called for across the country. We knew the government was going to fast-track this bill, and the NDP were going to support it no matter what. However, at least we could try to work with other opposition parties to provide some amendments that were going to be helpful for public safety. Addressing some of the issues of ghost guns would do exactly that.
My understanding of that is that Canadians are able to acquire magazines or gun parts for use in ghost guns. We needed to start somewhere, so the Conservatives did support some of these amendments simply because we wanted to ensure that the bill before us was better than what the Liberals were presenting.
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Madam Speaker, I was listening to the member's speech and he was talking about a confiscation program. I do not know how much that is going to cost. Maybe it is $1 billion or $2 billion. I do not know if there is a figure out there.
Does the member think that money could be spent somewhere where it would have an actual effect on rising crime, especially gang and organized crime?
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Madam Speaker, the order in council from May 2020 listed 1,500 firearms, now nearly 2,000, that the government was saying would be prohibited. Handguns and other firearms ended up being of no value, and the Liberals said they will basically confiscate them. They call it a buyback but I call it confiscation, because we cannot buy back something that we do not own to begin with.
The billions of dollars that this will cost, which will do nothing for public safety, could be used in such a greater capacity to deal with our borders, to deal with law enforcement initiatives and to take illegal guns smuggled from the United States off our streets. Then the court systems can deal with criminals the way they need to be dealt with.
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Madam Speaker, I rise today on an issue that is, quite frankly, very near and dear to my heart. It is near and dear because before Grandpa Jack passed away, I got to hunt with him for many years for deer on, ironically, Manitoulin Island. I am very blessed to still have the opportunity to meet my father at 4:30 in the morning at his house to go chase wild turkeys with my uncle Tom. I guess it is really near and dear to my heart because I am hoping that my grandson Levi, who just turned two years old a couple days ago, will have the same opportunity to enjoy the outdoors with his “Pip”, which is me.
Today, I stand in solidarity with law-abiding gun owners across Canada. For generations, my family has been hunters. My dad got his first gun at the age of five. He, as I did, grew up on a farm. Most farmers owned guns and most family members of the household learned how to use them. Besides supplementing their food supply, farmers used guns to keep predators from their livestock. From one generation to another, each was taught how to handle a gun safely and responsibly.
My dad passed his knowledge and love of hunting to me and my two brothers. Traditions are important. We need look no further than to first nations that support these very same traditions. Hunters today still eat what they hunt and share with their wild-game-loving neighbours, just as I did Saturday night at the Gosfield North Sportsmen club's wild game dinner back in my riding.
Hunters respect nature. We are the original conservationists. We hunt according to seasons, designed to cull the herds, to curtail the behaviours of predators such as coyotes and to preserve wildlife.
Prior to my election as the member of Parliament for Essex, I was an outfitter operating in the Far North. I had the honour and pleasure of working with many first nations guides. Camps like mine, scattered across Canada's vast terrain, help preserve a traditional way of life. We bring resources and jobs to the local communities.
Interestingly enough, my riding of Essex is home to the Jack Miner Migratory Bird Foundation. Jack Miner was an avid outdoorsman and hunter who founded a sanctuary for the conservation of migrating geese and wild ducks. I suppose I could dedicate this entire speech to his list of achievements, but suffice to say, he became world-renowned. As the Right Hon. Pierre Trudeau said of him, “Jack Miner, with his vision and determination is largely responsible for those conservation measures in existence today.”
As I said previously, hunters are the original conservationists. They are also law-abiding citizens. Every gun owner in Canada has to go through rigorous certification and training. Our guns are stored under lock and key. We hone our skills at licensed shooting ranges, and we transport our guns in the prescribed way.
Our government knows that the smuggling of illegal guns across the U.S. border is the true source of gun violence in Canada, yet no matter the facts, law-abiding gun owners are the ones negatively impacted by this new proposed legislation. Why is that? Is it ignorance? Is it government overreach? Is it virtue signalling to their voter base? Is it all of the above?
Sadly, the proposed new gun law restrictions are based on emotion, not on facts. Bill C-21 is divisive. It pits rural Canadians against urban Canadians. It serves no practical purpose because it ignores the real source of gun violence. It trifles over types of guns, which only serves to show how profoundly uninformed the government truly is.
Bill C-21 inexplicably also captured, or had the potential to capture, the airsoft and paintball industries in its net, thus jeopardizing these recreational activities and the businesses that go along with them. It is often hard to relate to something that one is indifferent to. However, beyond curtailing our own passions and pursuits is something more fundamental: the erosion of our charter rights and freedoms under the guise of public safety.
Law-abiding gun owners are the low-hanging fruit for the government's obsession with exercising more and more control over the lives of Canadians. Bill C-21 exploits the fears and emotions of Canadians without any bearing on the facts. It is yet another in a long line of such laws that represent a slow and steady erosion of a gun owner's charter rights and freedoms enshrined in our Constitution. My hope is to cast Bill C-21 in a light that even Canadians who are not recreational gun owners could find a point of agreement on regarding what the government should do and, equally importantly, should not do to address gun crime.
Canada is a democracy. The people elect their government, and the government serves the people. The Constitution of Canada is based on the rule of law. As long as citizens are obeying the laws of the land, they are to be free to go about their daily lives. For the government's part, those we elect to govern us are to only pass laws that are necessary and beneficial.
Furthermore, the onus is on the government to prove that any restrictions on a citizen's liberty are necessary and beneficial. Every law that is restrictive in its nature must be thoroughly scrutinized, and we must make a compelling case for its justification. There should be no benefit of the doubt, no ignorance masquerading as facts, no cynical appeal to emotion.
Our Constitution contains the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. What happens when our laws become unjust, as Bill C-21 is? Even more alarming, what happens next? Will this open the floodgates? Is the real goal to end gun ownership entirely? The fact is that those who commit violent crimes using a gun do not obey the law, any law, no matter how restrictive. They always find an illegal way to acquire firearms, chiefly by smuggling. The government knows that.
To my point about the need for balance to ensure that laws are just, when regulations become too restrictive for the law-abiding and enforcement too lax for the criminals, the law becomes unjust. That is exactly what has happened with firearms owners in Canada.
However, this will not end with firearms owners. A government's appetite for control is only whetted by each new measure of control it seizes from its citizens. The only ones who can curb this appetite are the citizens themselves. Maybe hunting is not someone's thing, but they should be concerned nevertheless.
We have seen what the government does with emergency powers under the Quarantine Act. Three weeks into the pandemic, while Parliament's sole focus was providing families and businesses the income support they needed, the Liberal government sought powers that would have given it unfettered control of the public purse until the end of December 2021. The Conservatives fought back then, forced their hand and have remained vigilant since.
Since then, the Liberals have resisted accountability, rushed programs through Parliament and issued an order in council on gun control, which is the basis for Bill C-21. When Parliament finally returned to its full function after months of being shuttered, the Liberals gave us the WE scandal, ethics committee filibusters and then prorogation to avoid scrutiny. The government has proven itself incompetent, unaccountable, unethical and power hungry time and time again to advance an ideological agenda propped up by its informal coalition partners, the NDP.
Recreational gun owners are being scapegoated. I can assure members that it will not end with law-abiding gun owners. The government's sole focus should be an economic recovery plan and another to reopen our society, all rights restored.
To summarize my key points in closing, first, law-abiding gun owners are not the source of gun violence and should not be the government's scapegoats. Second, the government needs to focus on stopping the trafficking of illegal guns across the border. Last, let us uphold the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and cast this bill and every bill in this House in its bright light.
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Madam Speaker, that was another great speech written by Adam. I thank him very much for that.
I find it very interesting that the member talks about this side of the House virtue signalling, when we are continually seeing virtue signalling in regard to a ban on assault rifles coming from the other side of the House. The reality is that this House is united, with the exception of the Conservatives, in regard to doing something meaningful about banning handguns and making meaningful legislation as it relates to gun reform.
I wonder if the member could comment perhaps—
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- May/16/23 4:34:38 p.m.
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The hon. member for Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup is rising on a point of order.
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Madam Speaker, I would just like to say to my colleague that we are not in government, and, unlike them, we do not use speech writers.
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- May/16/23 4:34:48 p.m.
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I believe that is a point of debate.
The hon. parliamentary secretary.
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Madam Speaker, I think I made my point; it is more of a comment than a question. I think Canadians can take great comfort in knowing that every party in this House supports reform. Despite the differences Liberals might have with the Bloc and the NDP, there is only one party that is so adamantly opposed to having gun reform legislation, and that is the Conservative Party.
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Madam Speaker, if there is no question, I will make a comment with no answer. My comment is that I worked hard on this speech. I have been working on this speech for over a year and a half, so I find it incredibly shameful for that member to suggest that this speech was written for me. There are very few folks in this House who will know more about firearms than me, especially about hunting. I would ask him to retract the statement. Unfortunately, I do not think he is going to.
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Madam Speaker, I will ask my Conservative colleague a simple question.
If the Conservatives were to form government, would they scrap Bill C-21 on firearms?
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Madam Speaker, what we would never have done is introduce Bill C-21 to begin with, because we know it is going to do absolutely nothing to curb violence. What Conservatives would have done is invest in protecting our borders and invest in our police forces to ensure that we never got to this point to begin with.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Essex for bringing his point of view to this speech.
I do hear Conservatives talk a lot about hunters, farmers and indigenous communities. What I would like the member for Essex to do, for the benefit of members in this House, is name a specific rifle or shotgun that would be prohibited as a result of Bill C-21, because when I read the bill that has been reported back to the House, it specifically makes mention of something that has been “designed and manufactured on or after the day on which this [bill] comes into force”.
Does the member have a specific make or model that would actually be banned by the bill? I would like him to stay away from anything the government currently has in its power under the Criminal Code, because it is a completely separate issue, the order in council. What under Bill C-21 would be banned by it?
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Madam Speaker, I think that was the second or third time the member has asked that question in the House. Here is the problem: The answer is that we do not know. I will tell why we do not know. It is because of the Canadian firearms advisory committee. Here we go again, one more time. “It is not as bad as people think it is. It is going to be okay. People should not worry about their firearms that take clips in the bottom, which are the same as top-loading. It is okay. We have a firearms advisory committee.” How could we possibly trust anything else that comes from the government that will not take away legal firearms?
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- May/16/23 4:38:29 p.m.
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Order. It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona, Canada Revenue Agency; the hon. member for Port Moody—Coquitlam, Housing.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to be able to take part in this report stage debate on Bill C-21 to give my voice, and to speak to my residents in Cowichan—Malahat—Langford.
I have had an intimate amount of experience with this bill, having been the former public safety critic, and I have seen just how much time it has taken up at the public safety committee. A lot of people forget that the public safety committee is also called the public safety and national security committee, and there have been important pieces of legislation held up at it because of the inordinate amount of time Bill C-21 has occupied.
Of course, things were going quite well for Bill C-21 until those very ill-advised 11th hour amendments landed on the committee's desk with no warning. That is when the whole process got completely derailed. I am thankful that, due to a lot of pressure from the opposition parties, the government finally saw sense in February and withdrew the problematic amendments that would have really impacted so many hunters, farmers and indigenous communities, because it was quite obvious they had landed with no consultation, had completely taken committee members by surprise, and were not, frankly speaking, backed up by any kind of witness testimony we had heard at committee.
Up until that point, Bill C-21 had primarily been about a handgun freeze. There were some provisions in the bill dealing with red flag laws and yellow flag laws, there was a section covering airsoft guns, and so on, but those amendments just completely expanded the scope of the bill so they were withdrawn. That is an important point to underline here, because I have been listening to the speeches on Bill C-21 for most of the day today, particularly the ones from my Conservative colleagues. A lot of their speeches had to do with standing up for hunters, farmers and indigenous communities, which are all very admirable things to stand in this House to say and do, but the problem is that their speeches are muddying the waters, because they are alluding to amendments that are no longer part of the bill.
In several questions today during debate, I have challenged my Conservative colleagues to name one rifle or one kind of shotgun that is going to be prohibited by Bill C-21. They have all deflected and changed the channel to go on to safer ground that is buoyed by their own talking points because they cannot name a rifle or shotgun that is going to be banned by Bill C-21 as they are not in there.
Instead of reading Conservative talking points, I am going to actually read the bill. The important thing here for everyone who is listening to this debate is the new definition of a “prohibited firearm”. The key clause is as follows. I will read it into the record. It states, “is designed and manufactured on or after the day on which this paragraph comes into force”.
In other words, current makes and models that are legally owned by licensed firearms owners are not touched by this bill. I underline that with an exclamation mark. They would not be touched and would still be legal. It is only for makes and models that are designed, manufactured and come on to the market after Bill C-21 comes into force.
I have heard Conservatives talk about the firearms advisory committee and how it will be stocked with Liberal appointees who will give advice and suggest that certain makes and models be banned. That is a complete red herring. I will tell members why. The government already has the power under the Criminal Code to reclassify firearms by cabinet decree. That is something that has been abused by both Conservative and Liberal governments. How do members think we got the May 2020 order in council that listed those 1,500 firearms? That certainly was not done with the aid of a firearms advisory committee, but by the Liberal government, by cabinet decree through the Canada Gazette, suddenly making a list of firearms, which was done under the existing authority of the Criminal Code.
I am actually glad there will be a firearms advisory committee, because finally we will have someone at the cabinet table advising the minister. They may come from an indigenous background, a hunting background or a sport shooting background. Why is it a bad thing to have these people provide a sober second thought on any kind of decision the government already has the power to do?
These are complete red herrings with respect to everything the Conservatives have said so far about popular hunting rifles or shotguns, which are in fact going to stay legal. In fact, I look forward to going to my local Canadian Tire and outfitting store on the day after Bill C-21 receives royal assent to show all the different makes and models that are still on sale.
There was a disappointment that I had with this bill. I put forward an amendment at committee that was going to amend the section of the bill that would provide to people an exemption from the handgun freeze. I felt that the current definition that would allow only people who were at Olympic level and Paralympic level to have an exemption from the handgun freeze was too narrow. I put forward amendments to that effect, so that it would have been expanded to the International Practical Shooting Confederation or the Single Action Shooting Society. That amendment almost passed because the Liberal member for Kings—Hants actually made a great intervention at committee where he supported my amendment, but when it came to crunch time he abstained. Therefore, on this critical amendment when he had a chance to show his constituents that he was going to sway this important part of the bill, he abstained. As a result it ended up in a five-five tie at committee and of course it was broken by the chair, so we came very close to amending that specific section of the bill.
The reason I backed this up is that during witness testimony we heard from the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. Their public statement on this was:
We believe that a handgun freeze is one method of reducing access to these types of firearms, while allowing existing law-abiding handgun owners to practice their sport.
I took great heart from that statement from the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. We had Chief Evan Bray as a witness and he backed that up. The association does believe in a handgun freeze, but it thought there should be exemptions to allow people to continue their sport shooting.
We are at the report stage and I want to address a very confusing Conservative report stage amendment to Bill C-21. I was reviewing that and I looked at Motion No. 12, which has been put forward by the Conservative member for Kildonan—St. Paul. It is shocking because the Conservatives are actually seeking to entirely delete clause 43 from the bill. Why is that important? Clause 43 is the only part of Bill C-21 that would provide an exception to the handgun freeze. It would provide an exception to anyone who has an authorization to carry and to people who are training, competing or coaching in a handgun-shooting discipline under the International Olympic Committee. For some reason the Conservatives want to delete the exemptions to the handgun freeze from the bill. Many of their other report stage amendments that they are seeking to delete are ones that in fact they played a very constructive role at committee in helping amend. The Conservatives are all over the map here on report stage. It is quite clear that Conservatives are flailing around and it is quite evident from their speeches today.
I want to briefly address ghost guns. This was a big ask from the law enforcement departments. We had Inspector Michael Rowe, staff sergeant, from the Vancouver Police Department, who did mention that the barrels, slides and trigger assemblies are a big issue for law enforcement. The advent of 3-D printing has allowed a lot of firearms to come onto the market that are completely untraceable. As the member for New Westminster—Burnaby has stated in this House, their growth has gone exponential. Therefore, law enforcement people have very clearly asked for this amendment to Bill C-21 and I am glad to see that the committee responded in kind.
I also want to salute our NDP efforts to save airsoft. It was my amendment that passed that deleted the offending section of Bill C-21 so that the airsoft community could continue to play its sport and would not be impacted by Bill C-21. I want to thank committee members for allowing that part of the bill to pass.
I will end by also saying that there was a really important amendment to the bill, which would recognize section 35 of the Constitution Act, which of course upholds the rights of indigenous peoples. Bill C-21 would not impact that and it was important to have that clarification to the bill.
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Madam Speaker, the member questioned why Conservatives are talking to deleted parts of the bill. That is because these speeches were written for them months ago, and when they write those speeches, they write them with the intention of maximizing their fundraising capabilities at the time. I hope that clarifies it for the member.
Time after time, we see Conservatives getting up and spreading misinformation about this bill. It is with the objective of nothing other than to raise money from it. I am really glad to see that there are adults in the room, including the NDP, the Bloc, the Liberals and the Greens, who are actually standing up for the best interests of Canadians.
Would the member like to comment on that?
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Madam Speaker, I spoke to this last week when we were debating Motion No. 25. I made reference to the fact that, for the Conservatives, Bill C-21 is the goose that lays the golden eggs. That is why they have wanted to see it stuck in the House; that hoovering sound we can hear is the sound of the Conservative Party's fundraising machine raking in millions of dollars off this bill. I for one am glad to see that the committee has sent it back to the House, because there are two other important bills waiting to be heard. These are Bill C-20, which deals with important RCMP oversight, and Bill C-26, which looks at cybersecurity; these are both very pressing issues. It is high time the public safety committee got to work in addressing those other key issues.
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