44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 16, 2023 10:00AM
- 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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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to rise to speak to Bill C-21, an act to amend certain acts and to make certain consequential amendments, firearms, at report stage. The bill has gone through quite the journey in this place, filled with huge backtracks, misleading statements from the government, and the repackaging and introduction of previously repealed amendments.
As a reminder, let us look at that journey. The introduction of Bill C-21 was first announced at the end of May last year, with all the fanfare that the government could muster when trotting out yet another misguided and ineffective policy. The Liberals claimed the bill would, among other things, ban the future legal sale of handguns in Canada, increase the allowable penalties for gun smuggling and trafficking, and introduce new red-flag provisions that may allow law enforcement to remove firearms from a dangerous domestic situation more quickly.
Shortly after seeing the bill, Conservatives attempted to introduce the following motion:
...that given that the debate on combatting gun violence needs to be depoliticized and centred on the rights of victims and the safety of communities, the House should call on the government to divide Bill C-21 into two parts to allow for those measures where there is broad support across all parties to proceed separately, namely curbing domestic violence and tackling the flow of guns over the Canada-U.S. border, from those aspects of the bill that divide the House.
Conservatives were clear. We supported the elements of Bill C-21 that were focused on protecting potential victims of gun crime and tightening up laws that address gun smuggling. Unfortunately, the Liberals were not willing to back down on their political agenda and separate the ineffective and divisive parts of their bill that would do nothing to stop gun violence and provide no benefit to vulnerable Canadians. They blocked this common-sense motion, proving they were more interested in playing division politics than addressing gun violence in Canada.
I will fast-forward to November, 2022, when the Liberal government introduced amendments to Bill C-21 that would have banned millions of hunting rifles with a new prohibition of any “rifle or shotgun, that is capable of discharging centre-fire ammunition in a semi-automatic manner and that is designed to accept a detachable cartridge magazine with a capacity greater than five cartridges”.
For weeks, the Liberals denied that their amendments would outlaw any hunting rifles, then the Prime Minister finally came clean, this past December, and admitted that the government’s amendments would outlaw hunting rifles. While speaking to CTV News he said, “there are some guns, yes, that we’re going to have to take away from people who were using them to hunt.”
The Prime Minister finally admitted what the Liberals had been denying the whole time, which was that the Liberal government, with the support of their NDP allies, were going after law-abiding Canadians. Thanks to the leadership and hard work of the member for Kildonan—St. Paul and my Conservative colleagues on the committee, Canadians were made aware of these attempts by the government to attack the rights of law-abiding citizens. The backlash to the attempts of the government was rightly fierce, and the Liberals retracted their amendments, supposedly learning a lesson.
However, we soon learned that they were just biding their time, waiting to try to catch Canadians off guard. Earlier this month, the public safety minister announced new amendments to Bill C-21 to create a definition by which new firearms would be banned. The minister also announced that he would appoint a firearms advisory committee that would determine future bans of firearms that are presently owned by law-abiding Canadian gun owners.
To be clear, the new Liberal definition is the same as the old one, and the new amendments that were brought to the committee were simply original amendments in a new package. It is expected that, between these measures, most of the firearms previously targeted by Liberal amendments late last year, including hunting rifles, would once again be targeted for future bans. It would seem the only lesson the Liberals learned was to give Canadians less time to object to their amendments, so they could force them through and try to cover it up.
That is why the government used some of the most heavy-handed tactics the House has seen, by moving to limit debate on Bill C-21 at committee in an attempt to pass the bill before the break week at the end of May. The Liberals forced multiple midnight sittings of the public safety committee, two of which I did sit in on. They passed Bill C-21 through committee in the wee hours of Friday morning last week by heavily limiting debate on over 140 clauses and amendments.
Even more surprising, both the NDP and the Bloc supported this heavy-handed attempt to pass the bill. They supported the government in enforcing strict time limits at the public safety committee and shutting down debate in the House. It would appear the governing party has suddenly grown by 57 members, which brings us to today and midnight sittings again being scheduled for this week to ram this bill through report stage.
I represent a rural riding. I represent thousands of hunters, farmers, sport shooters and indigenous Canadians. I know they are not supportive of this bill. They have told me. The sentiment from my constituents has been clear. They do not support Bill C-21, and they think it will do more harm than good.
Betty from Delisle raised concerns with the bill that many of my constituents have raised with me. She noted that this bill would target and severely handicap hunters who are trying to feed their families, noting it would cause another skill, which was a staple of our ancestors, to disappear. She also noted this bill would go after target shooting, stating that this bill would have negative consequences for gun clubs that offer training to young people as an activity that keeps them off the streets and away from bad influences. These sentiments are the same as those of rural Canadians across the country.
In fact, the backlash from rural Canadians forced the NDP to backtrack on its support for the government’s initial amendments last time. There are several NDP MPs who represent rural ridings, and my hope, although it is waning, is that they will stand up to the Liberals, stand up for their constituents on this issue, and fight for them here in Ottawa.
The truth of the matter is that this bill is an attack on law-abiding citizens who are legal gun owners. Hunters, farmers and indigenous Canadians will not be fooled. They know this is part of the Liberal plan to distract and divide Canadians. No one believes going after hunters and legitimate hunting rifles will reduce violent crime across this country.
This bill is also a distraction, another attempt for the government to distract and divide. It is targeting law-abiding gun owners to distract from its failures on public safety. The Liberal government has given easier access to bail for violent, repeat offenders through Bill C-75. In doing so, it ensured that violent offenders are able to get back onto the streets more quickly. It has removed mandatory minimum sentences for gun crimes with Bill C-5, and it has failed to stop the flow of illegal firearms coming across the U.S. border.
Instead of going after the illegal guns used by criminals and street gangs, the Prime Minister is focused on taking hunting rifles and shotguns away from law-abiding farmers, hunters and indigenous peoples. We know going after hunters and hunting rifles will not reduce crime across the country. The government needs to come clean with Canadians. The only thing worse than doing nothing is pretending to be doing something when one is not.
Conservatives believe we must ensure at-risk and vulnerable Canadians are protected. We must target the criminals and gangs responsible for rising gun violence in Canada. That is why, under the leadership of the member for Carleton, we will continue to support common-sense firearms policies that keep guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals and ensure there are strong consequences for those who commit gun crimes to make our communities safer.
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Madam Speaker, the member, for whom I have a lot of respect, talked about targeting criminals. That is what the bill would actually do. I wish Conservatives would actually read the bill, with the amendments that were put into it, so they could actually comment on all of the measures that would be taken to target and fight criminals who use ghost guns. We have seen these untraceable ghost guns proliferating on the streets right across this country. In the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, they have increased 10 times over the course of the past year. That is a 100% increase every month.
It is critical that those provisions that target criminals actually be passed by the House and moved through. Instead, the Conservatives wanted to fundraise, and have been blocking those provisions week after week. My question is very simple: Why did Conservatives try to block provisions that would actually target criminals and eliminate ghost guns and untraceable weapons from our streets?
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Madam Speaker, I want to start by thanking all my colleagues who serve on the committee that dealt with this bill, for the many hours they put in, providing great questions to the departmental officials. I was greatly impressed by their questions, and was grateful for the opportunity to participate, even if I was not asking the questions, by hearing what the answers were.
I find it really rich for that member, who has actually bargained away his responsibility, as a member of an opposition party, to hold the government to account on deeply flawed legislation, which is what Bill C-21 is. It is not about enhancing public safety. This bill would basically create a confiscation program.
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Madam Speaker, if Bill C‑21 is as terrible as my colleague claims, I would like her to tell me why the Conservative party voted in favour of every one of the government's amendments on ghost guns.
Why did the Conservative party vote for the Bloc Québécois's amendments on magazines? Why did the Conservative party amend Bill C‑21 to enhance it by adding a definition of family violence, for example?
The Conservatives also moved a very helpful amendment on firearm advertising. Could it be that Bill C‑21 is not so bad after all?
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Madam Speaker, I believe that, in the comments I made during my speech, I noted that we recognized there were issues that did need to be addressed, and that we asked for those parts of the bill to be separated so we could have a meaningful conversation.
What the member points out, and what another one of my colleagues made very clear, is that there could not be more of a stark contrast between Conservatives and all the other parties on this issue. We are the only ones defending the rights of law-abiding firearm owners, and that is why we do not agree on whether or not this is a good bill.
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Madam Speaker, I have a rebuttal. The member has made a bunch of allegations. Can she name one firearm that would be taken away from somebody as a result of this bill? We have asked this question before. No Conservative has been able to answer it, because it would not happen. It simply would not happen. The Conservatives really should read the bill.
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Madam Speaker, it is my understanding that Bill C-21 aims to ban various reproductions of antique firearms, such as the flintlock pistol. These firearms are single-shot, muzzleloading, black powder firearms that require time and effort to reload for each shot. These firearms are curated by collectors, used in re-enactments, and do not pose any significant threat to public safety.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill C-21. It is an act to make certain consequential amendments in relation to firearms, which is really the government's way of saying that this is a bill to confiscate hunting rifles from law-abiding farmers, hunters and indigenous people, and distract from the real issue of the crime wave that is going on in Canada right now. That is really what this bill is. It is purely a distraction to distract from what is going on in our streets, on our subways and in some of our schoolyards right now. It is another virtue-signalling bill from the current government, to pretend it is going to do something about smuggled handguns, illegally attained guns and gang violence, but not actually do anything.
It is a distraction bill to take the focus away from the disastrous result of the Liberals' soft-on-crime bills, Bill C-5 and Bill C-75. It is a distraction from the multiple police officers who have fallen on the job very recently and the random stabbings in Toronto, the Lower Mainland and my hometown of Edmonton. All these random attacks hurt, but the one in Edmonton strikes very close to home. A mother and her 11-year-old child were stabbed to death in a schoolyard park. EPS police chief, Dale McFee, commented on the attack. He said it was “completely random. In no way could the victims have anticipated what would happen to them. There is no making sense of this.” This was a mother and her daughter who were in the playground of a schoolyard. A person drove up, got out of his car, stabbed them to death and just left. It was completely random. The police chief said, “There is no making sense of this.” I agree with Chief McFee that it makes zero sense that this would happen. He also said that the victims could not have anticipated the attack, and I agree with that as well.
However, here is the kicker: The court system could have anticipated this attack, and should have, and we should have had laws to protect this family. The killer had been released just 18 days earlier, on bail from a previous assault. He had a record. The killer was only 33 years old, and he had a record going back 14 years, having been in and out of jail, released on bail, and having had constant charges of assault with a weapon. He was in and out of prison repeatedly. There were robberies. He had stabbed someone who was just sitting on a bus bench. His parole documents stated to him, “You were armed with a knife and stabbed your victim once in the upper back. You then fled on foot. Your victim's injuries include a punctured aorta and a laceration to his spinal cord.” These are not simple injuries. This is attempted murder, yet he was back out on the streets. Between committing that crime and committing the murders in Edmonton, the attacker assaulted a corrections officer and two inmates, and was released, despite the warnings from parole officers. We have to ask where we have heard this before. He was sent back to prison after testing positive for meth, but was released again and assaulted four more people; three of them were assaulted with weapons. He attacked a 12-year-old on the bus just last year, and on the same day was charged with assaulting someone else. Then, he assaulted someone else with a weapon. He was sent to prison on April 14 for another assault and then released on bail. He then went on to murder someone and her young child.
That is what the Liberals are trying to distract from with this bill. It is to distract from their disastrous catch-and-release laws that they have inflicted upon Canadians. The Liberal government will sit and say that it fixed catch-and-release today. However, for five or six years now, the Liberals have denied it was a problem. I want to quote the present public safety minister, in debate. He said that this would simplify the release process “so that police and judges are required to consider the least restrictive and alternative means of responding to a breach, rather than automatically detaining an accused” and that “police would...be required to impose the least onerous conditions necessary if an accused is released.”
A mother and her child are dead in Edmonton because of this law. The Liberals can claim that they are fixing it, but they had half a decade to do something, with warnings from the police chief, warnings from the opposition bench and warnings from the premiers. It is not good enough that they are saying,“Well, we're going to play around with it today. Everything is fine.” It is not fine.
I want to go back to Edmonton police chief Dale McFee. We are talking about the catch-and-release program. For a three-year period, Edmonton saw a 30% increase in shooting victims. Chief McFee stated that the biggest problem is building to attack gang violence, and that most of the problem is gangs and organized crime. It is not a law-abiding hunter going out for a catch. It is not a farmer with his shotgun plinking away at varmints or pests. The police chief says it is organized crime and gangs. Subsequent to Bill C-75 being introduced, 3,600 individuals were arrested for violent crimes in Edmonton in a one-year period. Two years after that, 2,400 of those 3,600 reoffended, a total of 19,000 times, including 26 homicides. That is the result of Bill C-75, the catch-and-release program of the government. That is what this government is trying to distract from. Instead of going after criminals, repeat offenders, they want to confiscate shotguns and hunting rifles from hunters, farmers and indigenous people. The government should be going after the criminals and trying to make life miserable for them, not trying to make life miserable for law-abiding hunters and farmers.
Canadians should not be fooled by this new bill, Bill C-21. The Liberals brought in some amendments and said, “Oh, we fixed all your concerns.” Canadians should not be fooled by this. The Liberals' so-called new definitions are basically the same as the old ones that are targeting hunting rifles. The same ones that they went after before, they will go after again. I do not think anyone should believe that this new Liberal firearms advisory panel would be any different than what they had proposed previously.
This is the same government, members will remember, that politicized the Nova Scotia shooting tragedy. It is the same government that said that it was the police forces that recommended the Emergency Act, but we asked the Ottawa Police Service and the RCMP, and they both said no.
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- May/16/23 5:30:05 p.m.
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The hon. member will have two minutes left the next time this matter is before the House.
It being 5:30 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of Private Members' Business as listed on today's Order Paper.
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