44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 16, 2023 10:00AM
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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Madam Speaker, this gives me a chance to start by correcting my colleague from Kingston's observations about speeches written weeks ago. The heartfelt commentary from my colleague about hunting on Manitoulin Island were not written for him by a speech writer who has never been to Manitoulin Island.
With regard to the fundraising issue, I am not sure that it is actually true that it raises all this money. However, if it does, and given the fact that in Canada there are very strict limits on how much money can be raised per individual, does that not make the point that thousands of Canadians care very deeply about this issue? Does it not show that they are alarmed at seeing their way of life destroyed and their property taken away from them by a government that is unconcerned about their well-being? Does that not explain why the money is being raised? Does it not also explain why the NDP has such difficulty raising money on any issue that it represents?
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- May/16/23 4:51:24 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as we have heard in the public—
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- May/16/23 4:51:30 p.m.
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Seeing that there are other individuals who seem to want to ask questions or make comments, I would ask them to please hold off because it is not their turn. I did not recognize them.
The hon. member for Cowichan—Malahat—Langford.
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Madam Speaker, the Conservatives have learned their lessons from Facebook. Facebook knows how to raise a lot of money because it keeps on pressing people's emotional buttons. This is a party that has become expert in rage farming. That is what they do. They churn it out. They take videos out of context. It is all to get people hopping up and down, mad about blatant mistruths. Yes, they have taken great lessons from Twitter, from Facebook, from everyone who has become an expert on this. They have become masters at keeping people angry so that they can rake in the cash. I will take no lessons from them on that.
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Madam Speaker, the NDP usually agrees with nearly everything the government does here in the House. The NDP is almost like the Liberal farm team. The New Democrats agree with the Liberals on everything except one thing, which the member explained quite well in his speech. His colleague brought forward an amendment in committee to expand the exemption for sport shooters. He was trying to include groups in that exemption, including the International Practical Shooting Confederation, or IPSC.
Exempting these groups would have created a huge loophole. In fact, it would have made the handgun freeze completely obsolete and useless. The NDP, which claims to be in favour of better gun control and a handgun freeze, introduced this type of amendment in committee. I find it hard to understand why they would want to exempt as many sports shooters as possible. That attempt was nearly successful.
I would like to understand the NDP's position. Are they for or against better gun control?
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Madam Speaker, I have spoken to sport shooters, and they just simply want to be able to continue their sport. I would redirect my hon. colleague to the testimony that we had from none other than the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. They said that a handgun freeze is absolutely one method of reducing access to these types of firearms, but they also qualified that by saying they support allowing law-abiding handgun owners to practise their sport.
The NDP is on the same side as the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police.
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Madam Speaker, to nobody’s surprise, the Liberals are missing the mark once again. As my Conservative colleagues have reinforced time and time again, legal firearms owners are not criminals. However, Bill C-21 treats them this way. This leads me to believe that the bill is not about firearms or assault-style weapons; rather, it is about philosophy and how the government sees the Canadian people.
It seems that the Liberals may be forgetting or perhaps ignoring what it means to have a firearms licence in Canada. Any hunter or sport shooter will proudly tell us about how they underwent a series of background, mental health, common-sense and legislative regulation tests to receive and maintain their licences. They are proud because they have received the trust of society and want to show themselves worthy of that trust.
If the members opposite actually listened to their rural constituents about these issues, they could also explain that, to legally own and register firearms in Canada, they must subject themselves to random check-ins by law enforcement. Moreover, they must report data, such as residency, more often than do most citizens to ensure the safekeeping of their weapons. Before travelling with a firearm, every firearm has specific safety protocols that must be followed.
With this in mind, how would banning the firearms belonging to law-abiding citizens limit the occurrences of violent gun-related crime? How would a crazy repeat offender get a locked-up pistol or hunting rifle from a law-abiding owner? It does not make sense. We cannot deny that violent crime with firearms does happen in Canada. However, they are not mass produced for the Canadian market. People with the technological know-how in the underground market are the real criminals contributing to crime here. People 3-D printing parts of a rifle and mailing them across the international border into Canada are contributing to the illegal underground market; law-abiding firearms owners are not.
The Liberals do not trust Canadians. They see every gun owner as a potential criminal. As far as they are concerned, one gun in private hands is one gun too many. That there is no scientific evidence showing that Canadian farmers, hunters and sport shooters are turning to a life of gun crime is something they choose to ignore. They say that Canada has a gun crime problem and that this will solve it. However, the Liberals are missing the mark and ignoring the evidence. Gun crimes are not being committed by people who purchase their guns legally and then suddenly become lawless. Canada’s gun crime problem has been created by a government that is unwilling to clamp down on the illegal smuggling of weapons into Canada. Shutting down the gun pipeline is hard, but targeting hunters and sports shooters is easy.
This is not to mention the negative impacts that vastly outweigh the positive; I can only imagine how much this ban will negatively impact many Canadians, ranging from those who inherit rifles to citizens whose everyday lives revolve around a culture of hunting and gathering. I cannot help but wonder what rural Canadians will do if this rifle ban passes. Canada is known to be a well-forested country, meaning that we have a fair amount of rural area. The main source of food for many of these Canadians is hunting, and this has been the case for as long as we can remember. With that in mind, how will these hunters eat if the ban goes through?
As seen through the newly proposed passport design, the Liberals’ disregard for the rich Canadian history that preceded us is nothing new. I am not surprised that the Liberal government is living up to its expectation of continued disappointment that Canadians feel toward the government. The more I look at this bill, the more I agree with the member for Kildonan—St. Paul, who said, “This is the largest assault on hunters in Canadian history.”
Rifle owners by inheritance will have to face the sad reality that a part of their family history will be stripped from them at the hands of the government, and hunters will have to face an ever-higher rate of food insecurity in this G7 country. Hunters will have their entire way of life uprooted and have to defer to alternative lifestyles, which they may not have the means to adapt to. This is especially the case considering the cost of inflation and the impact that the carbon tax has had on the cost of living. We cannot tell them to go to a grocery store instead. These rural areas have limited access to the essential services they need, and there is no need to take away a major component of how they can be self-sufficient. It is unjustified.
What happened to the Canadian dream, where hard work gets rewarded and where we are the land of freedom with responsibility? The Liberals have led not just me but many other Canadians to feel that everything is off. Life in Canada is not as free as it used to be eight years ago, and this unjust firearms ban is a symbol of this broken feeling.
Rifles do not harm people; the people behind them do. Instead of attacking the real criminals, the members opposite chose to slap some half-baked idea together and call it a day. This is why I say that the Liberals have missed the mark once again, and it raises the following question: How does this help society?
Does it reduce crime in Canada to take rifles away from hunters with no criminal records? It does not. Does it stop gun crime in our nation to make it impossible for an aspiring biathlete or a target shooter to acquire a rifle? It does not. What it really does is make the Liberals feel good. It allows them to pretend that they are doing something without actually having to take real action.
When will they finally admit that the legal firearms owners are not the criminals? When will they humble themselves and admit that their catch-and-release policies are not just ineffective but outright dangerous to society at large? Violent repeat offenders, not our licensed gun owners, are the real criminals. When will the Prime Minister stand up, scrap this nonsense once and for all and propose solutions that actually protect Canadian citizens?
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Madam Speaker, as I have said several times in this House, I came from municipal politics before coming here. After being elected as mayor in 2013 in my home town, at our first public meeting, the fire chief entered and said, “Everybody stay in the building. There is a shooting next door.” A jilted boyfriend showed up at a medical clinic and shot the boyfriend of his former girlfriend in his vehicle. He then went into the medical clinic and shot his ex-girlfriend. He was found dead the next morning in his vehicle in a cemetery not too far away.
This bill will help to keep those situations from happening. Why is the member against stopping those types of situations?
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Madam Speaker, we are not against stopping crime. We are for stopping criminals from making those crimes happen.
As I clearly said in my speech, we are for finding all the ways to defend Canadians. However, we are against going after law-abiding Canadians who own guns while leaving the criminals on the streets to trade and bring in guns from everywhere in the world and then sell them to kill Canadians. That is what the bill has not addressed.
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Madam Speaker, I want to say how much I value my colleague. I work with him on various committees. I want to congratulate him on his speech.
What I particularly like about my colleague is that when he and I debate, our positions are always based on facts. I am open minded, but now, the Conservatives are telling us that hunters will be penalized if we pass this bill.
My question for my colleague is quite simple, and I am sure he will not dodge it because his statement that hunters would be penalized is surely based on facts.
My question is this, and I look forward to his answer: Can he name a single model of hunting rifle that will be banned if we pass Bill C-21?
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Madam Speaker, this is the million-dollar question coming from my friend from the Bloc Québécois, and it came from the NDP before. The million-dollar question is what this bill would do to protect Canadians. This bill does not do the job. That is the million-dollar question.
We can look at how many times the NDP, the Bloc Québécois and the government have confused Canadians over this bill. The bill has been going back and forth for a few years here. Now the question to me is about how many times and what rifles are mentioned in this bill. I think that is a bit rich.
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Madam Speaker, I like the member, but we have now had a dozen Conservatives stand up in the House who have not read the bill. They have no idea of its contents and are just reading packaged statements. I think that is showing some disrespect to Canadians for Conservatives to have not even read the legislation.
If they had read it, they would see that this legislation is cracking down on criminals, which is what the Conservatives are asking for. There are the ghost gun provisions on these untraceable weapons, which are increasing exponentially across the country. Conservatives have tried to block the bill that would contribute to law enforcement being able to crack down on criminals. The hypocrisy is astounding.
The other point I need to make is that we had two amendments tabled by the Liberals that were withdrawn, thanks to the NDP fighting to get them withdrawn. Will he admit the two amendments he referred to in his speech have been withdrawn? They do not exist, and they are not pertinent to this debate.
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Madam Speaker, I think the hon. member meant to discredit Conservatives by saying we have not read the bill. We have been fighting for a good bill for as long as he and everybody else remembers.
I would ask the NDP a question: How many times have they changed their minds on this bill? How many times have they danced back and forth on this bill?
Before the NDP members ask us those questions, they should ask themselves how many times they have changed their minds and why, at the end of the day, there was a revelation from somewhere that made the NDP agree to this bill.
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