44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 16, 2023 10:00AM
- May/16/23 6:09:48 p.m.
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I recognize the hon. member for York—Simcoe for his right of reply.
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Mr. Speaker, York—Simcoe is the soup and salad bowl of Canada and Lake Simcoe. At this very moment, the planting season has begun for fresh fruits and vegetables, and I want to wish all farmers right across Canada the best of luck.
I know we are not allowed to use props, and I will set him down, but Gwilly flew in all the way from Bradford West Gwillimbury for this debate tonight.
Canadian farmers have been doing their part, working hard this spring to plant delicious produce to feed our nation. These farmers deserve our support, no matter if they are growing carrots in the Holland Marsh, potatoes in Brookfield, celery in Winnipeg, bell peppers in Abbotsford, tomatoes in Leamington or peaches in Vineland.
Through the establishment of a limited deemed trust for produce farmers, we can safeguard Canada's food security, promote Canadian produce exports and increase the affordability of domestic produce for Canadian consumers. Simply put, the trust is a tool that would be used by sellers of produce to recover the money made from the sale of their produce when a buyer goes bankrupt.
Unfortunately, the Liberal members have made it clear that they are completely out of touch with the boots-in-the-mud, real-world realities faced by our country's produce farmers. the Liberals claim that their one size-fits-all approach to Canadian agriculture works and that the bill is not needed, but they could not be more wrong. The government fails to acknowledge that fresh fruits and vegetables are highly perishable or that produce growers have unique challenges that differ from other products and industries.
There are already many supports available to other agricultural sectors, like dairy and grain, that are not available to the produce sector. It is common sense to provide support that is crafted specifically for the produce sector. More than anyone else, Bill C-280 would benefit the small and medium-sized family farms and farming operations, which are the backbone of the country's produce sector.
Seventy-five per cent of fruit and vegetable producers are small businesses. Their average sales are $85,000 or less a year. This is a sector with small margins, and it is these sorts of farms that will benefit most from limited financial protection. One missed payment from a bankrupt buyer could lead to many of these farms closing their doors for good.
Fortunately, this bill will promote financial stability across the entire supply chain and support payment for suppliers all the way back to the producers. A stalk of celery is not the same as a carton of eggs, and a tomato is not the same as a piece of beef. The government must recognize the unique challenges facing the produce sector and recognize there are currently glaring deficiencies in our bankruptcy laws for these growers.
Bill C-280 has been a long time coming. I would like to thank the Canadian Produce Marketing Association, the Fruit and Vegetable Growers of Canada, the Holland Marsh Growers' Association and the many other agriculture organizations that have supported this important bill.
I am also grateful for the real-life expertise of Fred Webber, former president of the Fruit and Vegetable Dispute Resolution Corporation. Fred was also an official in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where his responsibilities included the PACA deemed trust. His insights were invaluable as this bill was drafted.
Hard-working farmers do not want a handout. After all, this bill costs taxpayers nothing. They just want to be able to sleep at night without worrying about unpaid invoices and spoiled product as they work to grow the fresh fruits and vegetables we all enjoy.
Canadian fresh produce farmers deserve to be paid for the food they grow. They are the ones knee-deep in the mud working the field every day to grow our country's fruits and vegetables. It is time for members of this House to roll up their sleeves, put on their rubber boots and support this common-sense Conservative bill, Bill C-280.
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- May/16/23 6:14:49 p.m.
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The question is on the motion.
If a member of a recognized party present in the House wishes that the motion be carried or carried on division, or wishes to request a recorded division, I would invite them to rise and indicate it to the Chair.
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- May/16/23 6:15:21 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would request a recorded division.
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Pursuant to order made Thursday, June 23, 2022, the division stands deferred until Wednesday, May 17, at the expiry of time provided for Oral Questions.
The hon. parliamentary secretary to the government House leader.
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- May/16/23 6:15:43 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I suspect if you were to canvass the House, you might find unanimous consent to see the clock at 6:30 p.m. so we could continue the debate on Bill C-21.
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- May/16/23 6:15:55 p.m.
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Is it agreed?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
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Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to continue on Bill C-21 after being so rudely interrupted by private members' hour, as much as I enjoy staying around an extra hour.
Continuing on with Bill C-21, earlier I was quoting the Edmonton Police Service Chief McFee about the problems with the government and gun control. Now I want to quote Dr. Teri Bryant, chief firearms officer for Alberta. She commented:
Even after the withdrawal of G-4 and G-46, Bill C-21 continues to undermine confidence in our firearms control system while contributing nothing to reducing the violent misuse of firearms. Bill C-21 is built on a fundamentally flawed premise. Prohibiting specific types of firearms is not an effective way of improving public safety. It will waste billions of taxpayer dollars that could have been used on more effective approaches, such as the enforcement of firearms prohibition orders, reinforcing the border or combatting the drug trade and gang activity.
I could not agree with Dr. Bryant more. It is clear that we need a focus on the criminals, on ending the gun trade on the border and on keeping violent offenders in prison, instead of a catch-and-release program.
Dr. Bryant refers to the confiscation cost. The Liberal government is the same government responsible for the past long-gun registry, which ballooned from $2 million to several billion. It is the government that has bungled the Trans Mountain pipeline, which was supposed to be $7 billion and is now over $30 billion. The Liberal government is the only entity in the world that has found a way to lose money on oil. The same government left us waiting many hours in passport lines. Then there is the Phoenix pay system, military procurement and immigration backlogs.
No one believes the Liberal government could confiscate weapons from Canadians and do it in a fashion that does not punish Canadian taxpayers and law-abiding firearms owners who want the government to punish criminals, go after the crime gangs and stop going after law-abiding firearms owners.
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Mr. Speaker, I acknowledge the member is voting against this legislation, Bill C-21.
In Bill C-21, we see the issue of ghost guns being addressed. Police agencies, virtually across Canada, have expressed a growing issue with ghost guns. They look at the legislation from that perspective as an important tool. I said this earlier, but it is interesting that the Conservatives tend to want to use Bill C-21 as a fundraising issue as opposed to an issue to provide a higher sense of security for Canadians.
Why do the Conservatives not support the ghost gun aspect of the legislation? Why do they not support making our communities safer?
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Mr. Speaker, it is difficult to imagine I waited an extra hour for that question.
The problem with the Liberal government is that it hides one or two small good parts in a massively flawed bill. If it was so concerned with the so-called ghost guns, the government should introduce legislation to address that, not hide it in this overall package so it could fundraise in municipalities and urban areas, pretending Liberals are against gun crime, when in fact they are promoting it with Bill C-75 and other actions on their part.
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Mr. Speaker, it is passing strange that the ghost gun component is actually the biggest part of Bill C-21, and Conservatives, who have been saying all along that they want to crack down on criminals, have been filibustering and opposing the bill at every stage.
However, what is not in the bill are the G-4 and G-46 amendments, and I am prohibited from showing a prop, but on the amendments it says very clearly “withdrawn”. This means that those amendments do not exist, but Conservatives keep speaking to them, which shows a very strange hypocrisy when it comes to this particular bill. The other thing I find passing strange is that the Conservatives have tabled a report stage amendment to eliminate all exemptions for handguns, including for the Olympics and Paralympics.
The Conservatives have been all over the map on this. My simple question is this: Will the member agree that G-4 and G-46 were withdrawn at the beginning of February, and they should stop speaking to amendments that do not exist?
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Mr. Speaker, I think it is important that Canadians remember that the NDP supported the ban on hunting rifles and wanted to confiscate shotguns and other things.
I want to go back to Dr. Teri Bryant, the Alberta chief firearms officer, who knows far more about the issue than anyone in the House. She said that, even after the withdrawal of G-4 and G-46, the offending amendments, “Bill C-21 continues to undermine confidence in our firearms control system”, contributing nothing to reducing violent crime.
I will take the word of Dr. Bryant any time over the member opposite, who continually chooses to support the Liberal government in trying to confiscate innocent farmers', hunters' and other people's firearms.
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Mr. Speaker, it is already illegal to manufacture or possess a 3-D printed gun without the proper registration and certification. What would Bill C-21 change with respect to 3-D printed firearms?
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Mr. Speaker, it would change absolutely nothing.
The bill, this change, was done by the Liberal government to deflect from its horrible job at stopping the rampant crime wave we have seen across this country. It is for its members to go into their strongholds to fundraise and say, “Oh, we're taking away guns. Gun crime will stop.” However, it does nothing to stop the gangs and the smuggling of the guns across the border, and it is doing nothing to prevent the crime.
The government is soft on crime. The bill is going to do nothing to stop the criminals or the crime wave that is going on in this country right now.
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Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise on behalf of the democracy-respecting constituents of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke and lawful firearms owners nationwide.
The decision by these radical socialists who rammed this property confiscation legislation through Parliament is just the latest example of their utter contempt for democracy. When the Prime Minister said he admired the communists who controlled China because of their ability to ignore democracy, Canadians should have been alarmed. When the Prime Minister assaulted two members of Parliament on the floor of the House of Commons, he revealed his inner dictator, and they are laughing about that. However, now we have Bill C-21, which is the cherry on top of the illiberal, anti-democratic cake.
The bill was first decreed as an order in council after the Prime Minister had shut down Parliament and locked down citizens. He sought to capitalize on the Portapique crime spree while masking the complete, flagrant incompetence of the RCMP. They failed to activate the Amber Alert, even though every step had been laid out in the manual. The RCMP could not communicate by radio because a tower had been taken down to make way for a highway, and the decision-makers were too cheap to replace it. They had not bothered to collect the shooter's firearms, despite knowing he was not licensed to possess them.
Instead of targeting crime, this government is targeting the most law-abiding citizens in our country. Each day their names are run through CPIC, the Canadian Police Information Centre, and anyone who has committed a crime is flagged. Introducing useless, virtue-signalling legislation based on clichés and empty slogans is par for the course for these Liberals. This time, they played—
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- May/16/23 6:25:16 p.m.
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The hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona is rising on a point of order.
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Mr. Speaker, we just heard from House staff that the kitchen is made completely of tinfoil.
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- May/16/23 6:25:28 p.m.
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Order. That is not a point of order, and quite honestly, not that funny.
I will remind everyone that the hon. member for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke has the floor.
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Mr. Speaker, this time, the Liberals played bait and switch on their own MPs. Con artists bait a victim with something of lesser value, then switch it out for something more costly. These radical socialist parties voted for a handgun freeze. That was the bait. Once the bill reached committee, the Liberals switched it for a hunting rifle ban. Banning hunting rifles was never debated in Parliament.
The Liberals knew they had to trick Canadians to get it passed. They even pulled one over on their own MPs. Fortunately, Canadian democracy worked as intended, at least for a while. The public was alerted to this hunting rifle ban, and concerned constituents contacted their members of Parliament. First, the government tried to gaslight Canadians by claiming its amendment to ban hunting rifles was not a ban on hunting rifles. The Liberals accused everyone who did not support them of spreading misinformation. They continued to claim they were not banning hunting rifles, despite providing a list of which hunting rifles they were planning to ban.
Eventually, the radical socialists withdrew their amendments. They tried to pull a fast one and got caught, but the government wants Canadians to be dependent on it, so the Liberals tried again. Their last attempt to ban hunting rifles ran aground because of too much public debate. Their new plan is to avoid debate, so now the law is being made behind closed doors. They do not want Canadians to know what they are up to. Instead of banning firearms through Parliament, they plan to appoint a secret committee of anti-firearm activists to ban hunting rifles for them. Of course, the committee has to be secret. Transparency and democracy are like sunlight to vampires.
The Prime Minister no longer even bothers to hide his contempt for democracy. It is the misinformation he spreads that demonstrates his contempt for the intelligence of Canadians. The Prime Minister is the prime palterer. First, he states that no one uses AR-15s to hunt. That is a classic example of using truthful facts to deceive. It is true that scary AR-15s are not used to hunt deer. What the prime palterer neglects to mention is that the reason is that it is unethical to hunt large animals with underpowered rifles. These types of firearms are more often used on farms and ranches as pest control and for target shooting. Many bolt-action rifles are more powerful at longer ranges than these so-called assault-style firearms.
However, this has never been about power or lethality. This has always been about looks. For these radical socialists, it is the appearance of these black guns that scares them. This is the reason they have struggled to come up with a definition of “assault-style” that does not capture hunting rifles. The barrels of most guns are black, a colour radical socialists recoil at. There is no technical definition they can create that would exclude popular hunting rifles and include firearms that look scary to them.
Making judgments on the basis of appearance never ends well. That type of discrimination is rooted in fear and ignorance. These radical socialists prey on people's fears and exploit their ignorance of Canada's current firearms laws, and it is clear from their deliberate misinformation campaign that they think most Canadians are stupid.
The Prime Minister harbours contempt for Canadians. From admiring communists to assaulting MPs, it is clear the Prime Minister holds Parliament in contempt as well. None of this is a surprise. What is a surprise is that the Prime Minister would hold Pierre Trudeau's legacy in contempt. As fond as the Prime Minister is of clichés, he clearly does not embrace the fact that guns do not kill, but people do.
While he might reject it, his father did not. It was Pierre Trudeau who first introduced Canada's system of gun owner control. That model was later embraced by the Mulroney government. Canada's system of gun owner control has been a tremendous success. Sadly, the Liberals and their media allies have been captured by the radical anti-firearms lobby. They have one goal, and one goal only: They want to abolish private, legal gun ownership.
Make no mistake, criminals will still own firearms, and the government will guarantee it. The increasingly authoritarian state will own firearms. Only law-abiding citizens will be prevented from owning firearms. Now, these radical socialists will claim they have no plans to ban all firearms, but they have already shown their hand. As much as they like to prostrate to diversity, they are tone deaf to actual differences.
Most of these radical socialists have the same urban, condescending demeanor. How many of them understand the training and scrutiny people go through to obtain a possession and acquisition licence? How many of them ever had to hunt to put food on the table?
The carbon tax is already fuelling food inflation, and once the clean fuel regulations take effect in July, we can expect to see another surge in food prices. Not a single one of these radical socialist MPs will have to rely on the food bank. Not a single one of them will wonder where their next meal is coming from. For many Canadians in rural Canada, driving to a food bank is not an option, but the radical socialists do not care. They will impose their urban norms on everyone. They do not care if the closest police station is an hour's drive away. They do not believe Canadians have the right to protect their livestock from wolves and coyotes.
The minister for misinformation and emergencies likes to claim Canadians do not even have a right to own wood and metal if it is in the shape of a rifle. The minister for misinformation and public unsafety actually claims their legislation is reducing crime. They can only gaslight so long before people realize that the government is trying to convince them that what they know to be true is not.
These radical socialists need to ram this bill through before people realize what is happening to this country. Canadians sense the authoritarian assault on their property rights. They are seeing the Prime Minister's repeated assaults on democracy for what they really are. They know we are less safe today than before the totalitarian party took power. Firearm-related crime had been in decline for 40 years until the government declared war on mandatory sentences for the illegal possession of a firearm. These radical socialists eliminated all mandatory minimums, waived bail for gun criminals and lightened sentences for pedophiles. Canadians are seeing criminals getting away with murder as long as these radical socialists are in charge.
While the Prime Minister “took the knee” for Marxism to defund the police, violent crime has gone up and police officers have been targeted for murder. Instead of giving police resources, the Prime Minister marches against them. The radical socialists harass lawful citizens and strip away property rights. At first they came for the firearms they did not like the colour of, but people who did not own a gun said nothing. Then they came for the hunting rifles and handguns, but people who did not own a gun said nothing. When they decide, in the name of their climate crisis emergency, that owning a cottage or a second car is a climate crime, then these people may say something but it will be too late. Once the state decides it can strip away one's property on the pretense of public safety, there is no recourse. Just ask those who supported the freedom truckers and had their bank accounts frozen.
More and more Canadians understand the threat posed by planning regulations to strip people of their private property. A growing number are becoming aware of the threat the Prime Minister and his incompetent ministers pose to democracy. These radical socialists want to impose their post-national absence of values on Canadians. They are stripping us of our heritage, our property and our freedom of expression. Only by tearing down history can they build back their reimagined Canada into some socialist utopia.
It is time for Canadians to join the Conservatives to make Canada work for Canadians who work, and bring home our values for those who value our homes, their homes. Let us bring it home.
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Mr. Speaker, talk about conspiracy theories. Over the weekend, the leader of the Conservative Party was talking about passports. Colleagues would not believe how weird that discussion got. The more I listened to him, the more I wondered if this guy is real. Can the leader of the official opposition really be that much of a conspiracist?
Then I hear one of his inner circle members of Parliament deliver a speech that kind of blew me away. If one wants to motivate people to ensure that the Conservatives never get into government, one can have them listen to the tweet from the leader of the Conservative Party and this member's speech.
Can the member indicate how she can justify this when the Conservative Party of Canada is espousing all sorts of misinformation, almost on a daily basis, not only on this legislation? How does she justify saying that we are spreading misinformation when the degree to which the Conservatives are using this legislation to raise money is fairly well documented? It is not about concern over Canadians' safety.
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