44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 16, 2023 10:00AM
- May/16/23 6:51:13 p.m.
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I am also going to remind folks that the Speaker tends to be mindful of the need for some leniency. At times, the Speaker may allow references to other matters in debates if they are made in passing. I just need to hear the relevancy to the bill that we are debating this evening. Therefore, the member could maybe bring it together on the relevance of what tonight's debate actually is.
The hon. member for Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa.
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Mr. Speaker, in the event that Bill C-21 receives royal assent, I trust that these facts will serve opponents of Bill C-21 in their legal battles in court.
Bill C-21 was a disaster from the day it was introduced, but the defining moment for Bill C-21 was when the Liberals introduced amendments at the committee stage that would have effectively banned thousands of firearms used by hunters across Canada. I mention this because it proved once again that there is a stark difference between what the government is telling Canadians and what it is actually doing.
The Liberals claim they are taking guns away from criminals when, in reality, they are taking firearms away from law-abiding hunters. They claim they are tackling violent crime, but violent crime has increased by 32% since the Liberals took office. They claim that they carefully consulted with stakeholders on this legislation, but they failed to heed the advice of the Canadians who were most impacted.
Conservatives called their bluff and continued to fight for millions of law-abiding firearms owners across Canada. The Prime Minister spent weeks telling Canadians that firearms used for hunting would not be banned. The truth was finally exposed when he admitted, “there are some guns, yes, that we're going to have to take away from people who were using them to hunt”. After weeks of outrage from Canadians, provinces, territories, indigenous communities and even from members of the government's own party, the government paused its hunting rifle ban.
However, the government turned to Bill C-21 to push it through Parliament. The Liberals moved a closure motion that shut down debate in the House of Commons. They limited the number of committee meetings on this bill. They moved time allocation to shut down debate at committee, and they forced MPs to vote on amendments without studying their full impact.
Therefore, here we are. Hunters do not know which firearms will be banned. The future of Olympic sport shooting in Canada is in jeopardy. Canadians are wondering who will be appointed to the new firearms advisory committee. So much for the sunny ways that the Prime Minister once promised.
Conservatives support common-sense solutions that tackle the root cause of crime. This means going after criminals, getting tough on crime and fixing the broken bail system. That is why Conservatives support cracking down on border smuggling to stop the flow of illegal guns. It is why Conservatives support measures that bring back serious sentences for violent offenders. It is why Conservatives support implementing bail reform to ensure that repeat violent offenders remain behind bars as they await a trial. Instead of focusing on this, the Liberals are targeting law-abiding Canadians in the name of public safety. We have seen no evidence to suggest that taking firearms away from law-abiding firearms owners would reduce crime. As a matter of fact, licensed firearms owners are some of the most tested, vetted and lawfully responsible Canadians in this country.
When it comes to the impacts that Bill C-21 will have on public safety, the chief firearms officer in Alberta stated the following:
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.
One of the most pressing issues for the Canadians I represent is the rate of rural crime. We know that criminals specifically target rural Canadians because of the lack of law enforcement in rural areas. I hear the stories of seniors watching their sheds being robbed in broad daylight because criminals know that the police do not have time to respond. Rural Canadians are waking up to discover their vehicles stolen, only to find them burned in a field down the road. I was in Swan River last month, a rural town of 4,000 in Manitoba, where nearly every business has bars on the windows and buzzers on the doors to prevent robbery. I can assure members of this House that law-abiding firearms owners across Canada are not committing these crimes; unfortunately, the current government is more focused on targeting rural Canadians who legally own firearms than on targeting rural crime.
In conclusion, I am troubled to see another attack on law-abiding firearms owners being pushed through Parliament. I am even more surprised to see the NDP members who represent rural ridings failing to represent their constituents. The NDP pretends it is standing up for rural Canadians, when in reality, it only stands up for its Liberal coalition partners.
As I mentioned earlier, I represent a completely rural region where most people own a firearm or know someone who does. It is a region where firearms are seen as a tool and not as a weapon. I understand how rural Canadians feel because I am one of them. For those reasons, I will again be voting against Bill C-21 as yet another attack on law-abiding firearms owners.
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Madam Speaker, I note the member spoke about bail reform. This morning, the Minister of Justice introduced Bill C-48.
As Tom Stamatakis, president of the Canadian Police Association, said, “Front-line law enforcement personnel have been asking the government to take concrete steps to address the small number of repeat violent offenders who commit a disproportionate number of offences that put the safety of our communities at risk”. He went on to say that he is pleased the government has introduced “common-sense legislation that responds to the concerns that our members have raised.”
As the member has indicated, this issue is very important for him. Will he and his party support Bill C-48, so that it receives unanimous consent to go to committee and then off to the other place?
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Madam Speaker, we are debating Bill C-21, and I do not think the member really understands the impact this bill has on rural Canada and the way of life in Canada.
This afternoon, they just thought of a new bill, and he asks what I think of the idea. Judging by past representation of the government, I have absolute apprehension when it comes to commenting on anything that I have not even had a chance to read yet.
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Madam Speaker, today's Conservative Party line is that there is nothing good in Bill C‑21. They say it will not make our fellow citizens safer. If the Conservatives are to be believed, the bill has no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
However, I do not know if my colleagues are aware of this, but certain things happened in committee during the clause-by-clause study. The Conservative Party voted in favour of all the government's amendments on ghost guns. It voted in favour of the Bloc Québécois's amendments on cartridge magazines. The Conservative Party itself amended the bill to include the definition of domestic violence. It helped make the bill better.
That is why I have such a hard time understanding why the Conservatives are now saying that there is nothing good in the bill. I would like to better understand my colleagues' position.
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Madam Speaker, the problem with the bill is that it is fundamentally flawed. With all due respect to my colleague, I do not think anybody really appreciates the impact this is having on rural Canada and the way of life or the way we live in rural Canada. I cannot imagine trying to defend my livestock. When I farmed, I had cattle, and there are coyotes that come around. When the mother cow is having her calf, there are packs of wolves and coyotes that will come and kill everything. A farmer needs a gun to fix that. The problem is that this bill is attacking that very farmer.
An hon. member: That is false.
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Madam Speaker, that is the problem. It is not false. I wish the member would understand the impact this has.
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Madam Speaker, earlier in his speech, the member talked about sport shooting. I know there are provisions about sport shooting in the bill with respect to the handgun freeze. I know conservatives have proposed to delete clause 43, which talks a bit about that sport shooting issue. I wonder if he can confirm his support for that Conservative amendment and speak a little to the issue of sport shooting.
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Madam Speaker, I just noticed that there is a list of rural NDP ridings here, and this member is not on that list. He obviously has an urban riding. I just wonder how much he consulted with his colleagues and all the rural ridings the NDP members actually represent and how much they listened to them. By the sounds of it and by the support of the bill, I would think he did not listen to them at all.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-21. As members may have noticed, I have not spoken to this bill or any bill related to guns, and there is a specific reason. I find it exceptionally difficult to speak about this issue given the work I have done in the past. However, I feel a need to weigh in today given the enormous amount of misinformation that is coming forth.
At the outset, I want to acknowledge that the bill, as amended, at this stage does not impact hunters or indigenous people. Their section 35 charter rights are protected under the non-derogation clause. I want to centre this conversation on why this piece of legislation is deeply important to me, my riding and my community.
About 20 years ago in 1997, on December 27, a young man, a 19-year-old University of Waterloo student, was shot at a coffee shop in Scarborough. His name was Kabilan Balachandran. I have spoken about him before. At that time, he sparked a movement to counter the violence and gun violence we had seen in our community. He would have been 44 years old this year. His was a life of boundless opportunities and potential achievements that was cut short because of gun violence.
My involvement in community work really started off just after that. An organization called the Canadian Tamil Youth Development Centre was started because of Kabilan in 1999, and for the next four years or so, I was able to run the organization as its coordinator on a voluntary basis. I can tell members that we put hundreds of hours a month into supporting young people who were impacted by violence in a community that was struggling with violence.
A couple of years later, in 1999 I believe, two young men were shot point-blank at 720 Kennedy Road. They were students at SATEC. I was able to meet with the families, and in fact I am still in touch with them. The pain I saw among their friends, classmates and those who were impacted, particularly their mothers, is something I can never forget. One of the mothers essentially stood in front of a window waiting for her son to come back. Of course, we know that he never came home.
We have seen other attacks and gun-related incidents that have impacted many young people, and I have been profoundly impacted by this. In fact, in many ways, my view on guns is shaped by this history.
There is a neighbourhood in my riding called Danzig, and it is impoverished in many ways but is surrounded by an incredible community. Just before I ran for office, when I ran for the nomination, it was hosting a barbecue on July 16, 2012. Again there was an incident that involved the deaths of two young men, with 24 people injured. In many ways, I do not have to look at mass casualties or mass gun violence outside of my riding because it happened right there in the middle of the summer, impacting so many young people and families. It shook the community to the core. In fact, we marked the 10th anniversary of their passing just last year, and I can tell members that the pain really has not gone away.
Then, after I was elected in 2017, on July 23, Demal Graham, a resident in my riding, was shot in front of his daughter. We had a chance to visit the family and meet with his mother Shauna, his daughter, his other children and his siblings, and again the hurt continued.
The pain may be different, and it may be 10 years later. It may be people of different backgrounds, faiths and upbringing, and they may be from rural communities. However, ultimately, the pain inflicted on the families that are impacted is just unbelievable.
Louis March is from the Zero Gun Violence Movement, and we have spent quite a bit of time together. In fact, when the Minister of Justice came to my riding in 2019, we had a round table and he was able to give us his first-hand experience with many of the mothers of the young men who were killed by gun violence.
I think we have been arguing a fair bit here, and I do not for a second pretend to know what my friend opposite just spoke about regarding living in rural Canada. I am not going to pretend to know that. I also want him to know that he may not know about living in an inner city in a place like the city of Toronto or any other major centre, and I do not want to presuppose that. However, our conversation needs to be elevated. It cannot just be about saying, no, we are not going to touch or restrict guns of any form. I think that conversation really fails Canadians.
What the Minister of Public Safety has brought forward is, I believe, very balanced legislation that would protect hunters. I have never hunted, and I do not think I ever will, but that is not the point. The point is that there are many Canadians who do and they do it lawfully, and this is not about taking away their ability to hunt. This is not, as I said earlier, about the ability of indigenous people to exercise their section 35 rights.
Ultimately, this is about bringing forward legislation. It may not be perfect and may not fully address all the issues of gun violence. That alone is not enough. Bill C-21 alone is not enough. We know more needs to be done, and that is why the Minister of Public Safety has brought forward funding to support communities and why we brought forward Bill C-48 today to address serious violent offenders.
Ultimately, I think we would do Canadians an injustice if we do not move this bill along. I think there has been sufficient debate. Oftentimes the debate is elevated, and while I do not want to go into the process, obviously this could have been done better. However, I can assure members that this is something that my community needs. Scarborough needs this, the city of Toronto needs this, major cities need this and I know that Canada needs this.
I look forward to questions and comments from my colleagues, and I am thankful for the opportunity to share some of my experiences with gun violence.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate the member sharing some tragic stories that he personally experienced or of people he knew. I have a question, though. Could he point out anything in Bill C-21 that would have actually helped to prevent the specific tragedies he experienced?
Second, I would like his feedback on the red flag portions of Bill C-21, because we heard at committee, during the debate, review and study of Bill C-21, from women's groups, and pretty unanimously from all the stakeholders, that the proposed red flag laws that are now in Bill C-21 are costly, ineffective and redundant. In particular, Heidi Rathjen from PolySeSouvient said that:
First, there is not one women's group that asked for this measure.
Second, it's not relevant in the Canadian context, because...victims of abuse can call the police. It's up to the police to come and investigate, and they have all the legislative tools necessary to remove the weapons....
...[the red flag law] is dangerous in the sense that it could...allow police to offload their responsibility onto victims.
I would just like the member's comments—
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- May/16/23 7:13:06 p.m.
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I have to give the hon. parliamentary secretary the opportunity to answer.
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Madam Speaker, all I can say is that red flag rules are something we heard about extensively from many stakeholders we spoke to. They are important for addressing the issues of gender-based violence as well as intimate partner violence. I disagree with the member that they will not have any impact. They will have an impact. We have seen it in other jurisdictions, and I believe they are an important part of this bill that we need to maintain.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague mentioned that, despite Bill C‑21, more needs to be done about gun control in Canada. I agree with him.
When the government withdrew its amendments and came up with a new definition, I think everyone was relieved, except for a few groups that are calling for better gun control. The government took the list of 482 firearms that it wanted to include in the Criminal Code, removed them and proposed a prospective definition, meaning that it applies only to weapons that will be on the market in the future.
In so doing, hunting rifles will be left untouched, which is a good thing. However, hundreds of military-style assault weapons are also being left in circulation. I find it hard to understand how the government can hope to exercise better gun control by leaving a rather incredible number of military-style firearms in circulation.
What does the member think the minister should do? Should he enact an order in council to ban these weapons?
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Madam Speaker, I indicated that Bill C-21 is an important bill, and what I can offer is that there are other things the government is doing. For example, it is supporting communities. When we look at any of these incidents or scenarios, one of the major issues that existed is that the communities needed support. Young people needed support. Young people needed off-ramps, sometimes, from violence and from getting involved in the criminal justice system. Those are the types of supports our government is undertaking.
I know the Minister of Public Safety did make an announcement of $390 million just last week, and we will continue to invest in our communities.
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Madam Speaker, the member talked about some of the lives that have been lost in his riding. We have seen gun violence happening in many countries. What does the hon. parliamentary secretary think it means to the families to see legislation moving forward that actually takes action to address gun violence, as opposed to just offering prayers and nice words? We see a government actually taking action for families that have lost people in their lives due to gun-related violence.
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Madam Speaker, it is very simple. Bill C-21 is not going to bring back any of these children or young people who passed away. It is not going to heal the families. However, it will give solace to those families, those survivors and those who have been impacted by gun violence.
Our government takes it seriously. Collectively we as parliamentarians take gun violence seriously, and we are taking steps to address it—
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- May/16/23 7:17:18 p.m.
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Resuming debate, the hon. member for Shefford.
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Madam Speaker, it is with great sensitivity that I will be speaking this evening about Bill C‑21.
I will reiterate that we will be voting in favour of the bill. Thanks to the efforts of the Bloc Québécois, and especially thanks to the member for Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, who did exceptional work on this file, the bill, which was criticized by hunters, gun control groups and airsoft players, was improved and is now satisfactory for most of these groups.
Obviously, we recognize that the bill is not perfect. I will talk about that in my speech. The government refused some very reasonable proposals put forward by the Bloc Québécois, but it did accept many others.
In particular, Bill C‑21 freezes the sale of legal handguns, but we will have to wait several years for these guns to disappear. However, there are also some illegal firearms that will continue to circulate. I will talk about that as I present some figures. I will first address the issue from the perspective of victims' groups. I will also mention the contradictions of the different parties and the Bloc Québécois's exceptional efforts.
First, the federal government estimates that there are more than one million legal handguns in Canada and that more than 55,000 are acquired legally every year. As I said, the Bloc Québécois is proposing to add handguns to the buyback program in order to allow owners to sell them to the government if they so wish. In short, it would be an optional buyback program to reduce the number of guns people own more quickly.
Bill C‑21 should also help in the fight against the proliferation of ghost weapons in Montreal, but the government still needs to do a lot more to control the borders.
It is interesting to note that, according to Montreal's police force, the SPVM, 95% of the handguns used to commit violent crimes are purchased on the black market. However, this should not relieve us of our responsibility when it comes to Bill C‑21. There are other Bloc Québécois bills that aim to address this problem, including Bill C‑279, but we will come back to that later. Legal weapons are still used, as was the case in the Quebec City mosque shooting. They continue to be used, and it is precisely to avoid such mass shootings that the Bloc Québécois supports survivor groups in their demands to ban these guns altogether.
Second, I would like to digress for a moment to say that the government, which claims to be feminist, is adding maximum sentences for certain weapons offences but has removed minimum sentences with Bill C‑5. That sends mixed signals to victims. The Bloc Québécois wanted to make an amendment to a Conservative amendment to reinstate minimum sentences in order to add judicial discretion to override them. However, because of the super closure motion, that was no longer possible.
The Liberal Party and NDP also voted to keep clauses that allow victims of domestic violence to file a complaint with a judge to have guns taken away from the spouse. This is known as the red flag provision. However, women's rights groups testified that this measure could allow police to offload their responsibility and place the burden of proof on women. Women's rights groups wanted this red flag provision withdrawn because they were concerned that it would allow police to offload their responsibility and put the burden of proof on the victims. The Bloc Québécois listened to these groups and voted against the clause, while the NDP and the Liberal Party voted in favour.
Third, I would like to remind the House that, during the last election campaign, the Bloc Québécois was already proposing that a definition of what constitutes a prohibited assault weapon be added to the legislation before banning all of those weapons. In the end, the government tabled, without any explanation, 400 pages of amendments listing thousands of models of firearms, which caused a lot of anger and confusion among hunters. It is important to note that the Bloc Québécois is the one that convinced the government to scrap that useless list.
The government also added a relatively complicated definition that included words like “hunting rifle”. Pro-gun groups jumped on that and used it to convince people that the amendment would ban hunting rifles.
The result is that the pro-gun groups were easily able to strike fear into the hearts of hunters, who looked at the list and saw their own firearms there. However, the list included both legal and prohibited firearms, depending on calibre. That created all sorts of confusion.
Worse yet, the main hunting associations were never consulted by the government. Again, the Bloc Québécois proposed reopening the study to be able to hear from expert witnesses on assault weapons and experts on hunting rifles. The Bloc Québécois was against the list in the Criminal Code, believing it to be an unnecessary burden, since the Criminal Code does not reflect in real time the models of firearms and their classification, because it would need to be amended. There are 482 more models of firearms that need to be prohibited thanks to this list, but the government could very well proceed by order, as it did before. We hope to provoke that thought.
Many of these firearms have similar characteristics to the AR‑15 and are not at all used for hunting. It would have been utterly ridiculous for the government to keep these firearms legal when it banned more than 2,000 by regulation on May 1, 2020. Again, they sat on this.
Members will recall that the Bloc Québécois asked the government to immediately ban the 470,000 models that are not used for hunting and to ask a committee about 12 models that are potentially used for hunting, such as the popular SKS.
Throughout the process, the government did a poor job and created a tempest of its own making. It was rather unfortunate. For its part, the NDP also pushed to relax the ban on assault weapons and the freeze on handguns. The Bloc Québécois managed to block most of the NDP manoeuvres. Once again, I say hats off to my colleague.
The government's definition seeks to ban semi-automatic weapons that discharge centrefire ammunition and that were originally designed with a detachable magazine with a capacity of six cartridges or more. This definition is easy to circumvent by selling the gun with a five-round magazine. Then there is nothing preventing the manufacturer from marketing and selling the gun with a 30-round magazine in the United States, for example. These magazines are prohibited in Canada, but their proliferation in the United States makes it easy to import them. For the time being, this is still a flaw, but we hope that this will be resolved in the next few months. The government has said that it will look at that again. We will be monitoring that.
The definition presented in the fall of 2022 talked about firearms designed with a magazine with a capacity of six cartridges or more. In other words, it was the characteristics of the gun that were being considered and not the way it was being marketed. Nova Scotia's Mass Casualty Commission also proposed that the definition talk about firearms designed to accept this type of magazine. The Bloc Québécois proposed a subamendment to that effect, but senior officials implied that this wording was rejected by the government for political reasons. The NDP clearly wanted to narrow the scope of the definition. The three other parties voted against our subamendment in committee. However, PolyRemembers and gun control groups supported it.
The government imposed a gag order to quickly wrap up the study of Bill C-21, but the government itself is responsible for how slowly the bill is moving forward. It chose to quickly introduce a bill that was incomplete following the shootings in Uvalde, rather than take an extra few months and introduce a more complete bill.
Even in committee, the government complained that clause-by-clause was proceeding too slowly, but the fact is that members were never able to consider these amendments properly at committee. If the government had done its work properly prior to that, members could have heard from experts and asked questions on a bill that was much more complete. Things dragged on as a result.
The bill also restricted the acquisition of all replica firearms, including airsoft and paintball guns. The original wording of the bill was vague and implied that an airsoft or paintball gun that cannot be mistaken for a real gun could still be legally acquired. For example, if the gun were neon yellow, it could probably still be legally acquired. The problem is that the police did not want to ban these guns because they were concerned that they would be used to commit crimes such as robberies, but rather because many models allow criminals to assemble a complete weapon by purchasing only a barrel and slide, or the barrel and chamber, in the case of an assault weapon. In addition, police believe that many of these guns are designed to look exactly like the real thing, using the original blueprints, to the point where the parts could be interchanged. Criminals can buy a cheap airsoft gun legally. Then they simply have to get the gun's barrel and slide across the U.S. border, which substantially reduces the risk and cost for organized crime.
Here again, the Bloc Québécois scored a win. It succeeded in convincing the government not to ban toys simply for their appearance, but rather to proceed with a ban by regulation. The Bloc Québécois suggested that the government ban the import of replicas designed to be interchangeable with a real gun. That was another Bloc Québécois improvement to this bill.
In closing, what is happening south of the border is just plain crazy. Gun violence has become an epidemic. The tragedies of the last few weeks simply defy imagination. Society must force politicians to get to the root of the problem. There is still much to be done, but Bill C-21 is a step in the right direction this thanks to the improvements made by the Bloc Québécois, and thanks to the improvements made by my colleague from Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia.
I would simply like to end by saying that this is all very sad. It is May 2023. I remember that the Bloc Québécois had already reacted after the 2019 election. That was the 30th anniversary of the events at Polytechnique. At the time, groups were already pointing out that our proposals were well-thought-out and sensible. This issue is important to us and we work hard on it. Even my colleague from Chicoutimi—Le Fjord pointed out today how hard the Bloc Québécois has worked on this. Indeed, and that is because we have been listening to the groups involved. We have always worked in a sensible way.
We need to avoid the disinformation I have been hearing since this morning from my Conservative colleagues in the House. It is time to take action. As I said, it is a file that has been dragging on for far too long.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate a number of comments that the member expressed. I wanted to highlight that it is great to see that Bill C-21 is being supported by the Bloc and the New Democrats. We have seen amendments that have been brought forward. It is good, healthy and stronger legislation as a direct result. It is a little bit more than the legislation, which is good.
One of the interesting stats that I heard about had to do with border crossings as 1,200 illegal guns were acquired last year, in addition to 73,000 other weapons. Would the member not agree that it is good we bring forward legislation such as this through budgetary measures to support our law enforcement officers so that they are better equipped and supported in dealing with getting illegal guns off the street?
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