44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 16, 2023 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour to be able to stand in this place and debate the issues that are so important to my constituents and Canadians.
It is interesting. As we enter into debate on this subject, I have heard, today and over the course of the last number of months, an emphasis on a massive disconnect that exists. I have heard this in the previous members' speeches. I have been hearing it in questions and comments. I heard it at committee. I was a regular member of the public safety committee in the previous Parliament, but not in this Parliament. However, I had the chance to participate in some of those meetings.
We are seeing a massive disconnect between rural and urban Canada. There are many Liberals who would try to diminish that and use fanciful language to suggest that they are somehow listening to those voices and whatnot. However, I can say very clearly that when I have canvassed and spoken with many constituents, they feel entirely abandoned by the Liberal government and say that its political and ideological agenda is unfairly targeting them.
We are debating Bill C-21. Many Canadians have followed this debate very closely. It is interesting, because the debate has evolved quite substantially. I am going to go back to 2015; at that time, we had the then leader of the Liberal Party, who is now Prime Minister, making it very clear that he thought that the situation with firearms in Canada was in a good place. He promised not to bring back a gun registry. He was quoted saying that his protection detail used to let him play with their service revolvers and that he had a great deal of respect for those firearms owners.
However, it seems that as the years have gone by, scandals have erupted, and there has been a gradual diminishment of Liberal support from across the country. Thus, the Liberals seem to fall back on an old tactic. When they are failing, they go back to attacking those whom they think they can score political points against.
I would suggest that with the introduction and the amendments that were initially proposed, and now as the Liberals have rammed through this legislation that is supposed to be about firearms and is messaged in the guise of public safety, it is really just an attack. It is an attack from a government that is floundering and needing to change the channel from scandals, mismanagement and where the country is at, because so many Canadians are suffering.
Instead of dealing with the real issues that Canadians are suffering from, the Liberals are saying, “Look over here.” They are simply going to something that they think they can score political points on. That is cheap politics. It increasingly furthers that rural-urban divide that I mentioned. Moreover, when those sorts of games are played, it does not actually create good public policy. We have seen that here.
We have a very large bill with a significant level of complexity, with far more than I would be able to fit in a 10-minute speech. However, while the Liberals say that this is about Canadians' safety and taking guns off the streets, it is ironic that they absolutely fail to acknowledge that the problem is not law-abiding firearms owners. The problem is not those who go through training, who keep up their certification and licensing, and who are legally allowed to own firearms in this country.
There are more than two million firearms owners, many of whom I am proud to represent, coming from a rural area. Those individuals are hunters, sport shooters and farmers. In fact, for many farmers and ranchers, a firearm is a tool. I am not sure the Liberals quite understand this. It is a tool like any other. It is important to acknowledge that.
Yet, we have the Liberals attacking these individuals with this gun-confiscation regime, and they are saying that it is about public safety. The reality is that it does nothing. In fact, when I asked at committee whether some of the policies that had been brought in at a provincial level had resulted in any reductions in crime, the Liberals could not answer those questions.
I think it is ironic and unfortunate that we see the politicization of this issue. We see a Prime Minister who is bogged down by scandal, corruption and mismanagement targeting 2.1 million Canadians for cheap political points. When Canadians can hardly afford to put food on the table, what do the Liberals do? They go back to talking about guns.
However, I want to talk about the public safety issue specifically, because that is a huge issue. We have seen a massive increase in violent crime. We have seen a massive increase in the illegal use of firearms, yet we see how, instead of the Liberals addressing the real root of the problem, they just go after the easy target of law-abiding firearms owners. They target them instead of doing the hard work that is required to deal with smuggled guns, violent criminal behaviour or a broken bail system.
The unfortunate reality is that there are Canadians who are dying as a result of violent crime. There are victims, and it is because of a soft-on-crime agenda that the Liberals refuse to acknowledge as part of the problem. My constituents are sick and tired of it. They see how damaging the soft-on-crime agenda is to the public safety of our entire country, including rural and urban areas and everywhere in between. However, instead of doing anything about it, the Liberals say it is those who are trained and vetted, those who have a check run against them in the police system every single day to ensure that they continue to be allowed to own those firearms.
The fact is that law-abiding firearms owners are some of the least likely individuals in this country to commit a crime. Members from the Liberal Party talk about not wanting to import American-style politics into the debate. It is that party that is playing those sorts of divisive games and trying to throw 2.1 million Canadians under the bus so they can score a few points. Further to that, it was not Conservatives who had a former presidential candidate come and speak to their party convention, it was the Liberals. Since they are spouting off rhetoric about firearms, I would simply ask the question of whether they agree with Hillary Clinton's position on the second amendment, because she is pretty pro-gun compared with some of the things they are saying.
The hypocrisy is rich, and the consequence is that the Liberals' dividing for political gain is putting many of my constituents in an untenable position. I have many constituents who are proud of that rural heritage, that sporting heritage and that conservation heritage. I do not have time to get into the conservation aspect of hunting and how important it is for wildlife management across this country. We see how the Liberals are throwing that away.
I would just note a point I made in committee yesterday. We see a virtual ban on handguns. We see so many firearms, including hunting rifles, that will be confiscated. We see that the Liberals have devastated many small business owners across the country, those who would own gun shops and sporting goods stores. The Liberals are pretty quick to accuse regular, law-abiding Canadians of all the worst possible things, yet even in the bill there is a carve-out for federal police forces.
For example, there is the ability of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission to allow its peace officers to carry firearms. Moreover, all of us in this place very much appreciate the good work that our security personnel do around here. They carry guns, and that is okay. We have the RCMP, municipal police forces and provincial police forces; their officers all carry guns, and that is okay. The Liberals are saying that they want the protection but that they do not trust Canadians.
We have here a massive disconnect between how one would actually solve concerns related to public safety and how the Liberals are simply taking an easy path, playing cheap politics and targeting many of my constituents. I would suggest that there is a clear difference in the way Conservatives would approach issues of public safety in this country. There is a political party that will go after those who do not commit the crimes and let those who do commit them back out on the streets, with weak bail and parole systems that are literally seeing people killed. That is not an exaggeration.
What is the Conservative plan? We hear often from the Liberals that they want to hear the Conservative plan, so I will give a bit of what that looks like. We would stop going after those who are least likely to commit the crimes and put the violent repeat offenders behind bars, where they belong. We would ensure that a true balance was met so that Canadians could trust the fact that they are not being targeted simply because they go through the process and are trusted to own a firearm, unlike those who are not.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the member in my caucus if she could perhaps expand on how we got to the point where Bill C-21 is now being debated today. It started with the OIC, the initial version of Bill C-21, which provided complete misinformation by the minister and made wild accusations against firearms owners.
I would like to hear her talk about the journey it took to get to this point, in May 2023, where we are still debating this bill and it still has very deep flaws in it.
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- 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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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, it is an honour to be able to rise in this House once again to speak on behalf of the great people from southwest Saskatchewan, which is obviously one of the largest rural areas in the entire country.
It is really important to remember that we talk about the differences throughout the country. There are rural areas all across Canada. However, it seems that when we talk about this particular issue there are a lot of urban versus rural perspectives. It is important that we bring our own unique perspectives, because somebody from urban Canada would have a different perspective from somebody from rural Canada.
The job of the government is to build trust with people from both portions of society, not to pick one side or the other but to deal with both aspects of it. All my colleagues here on the opposition side represent both urban and rural ridings, and we do a fantastic job of making sure that we represent both perspectives as we talk about this topic tonight.
One thing I want to do right off the top is really delve into what it is like growing up in rural Saskatchewan. At times the government forgets just exactly what that is like. If one was to talk to many of the rural members here or go back home and talk to a lot of the people who live in a lot of the small towns and even in some of the cities in Saskatchewan, and ask them what was one of their favourite gifts they ever got for Christmas as a youngster, one of the top items would be a Daisy Red Ryder BB gun.
It was a beautiful thing, a lever-action BB gun. I remember getting one when I was six or seven years old. I spent countless hours out in the backyard of our farm shooting pop cans or some birds in the yard, things like that, and learning the proper mechanics of how to properly handle and properly store a firearm, obviously one that was safe for a young person to handle. Many people all across this country do that.
As I grew older, of course, I moved to a .22 and started to see some larger calibres. The most important part was when I was 12 years old, the age I was able to go and get my hunter safety course. It is a course of several meetings in the evenings. We took it at one of the schools in one of the small towns. That was where we went through the very important elements of, again, proper handling, proper usage, proper storage and transportation of firearms, the different classes of firearms, the different species that people were allowed to hunt in Canada, species that one has to be licensed to hunt, and species that could be hunted in open season. That was a very formative and important part of culture in rural Canada. It is almost like a rite of passage of sorts.
Later on in life, as regulations advanced and changed, we went from having things like a firearms licence to having a possession and acquisition licence. It is extremely important that we talk about that process as we go through this debate here tonight.
If all we heard was what the Liberals and the NDP wanted to talk about, they would have us believing that everybody has unfettered access to all kinds of firearms that could do all kinds of different things. The reality could not be any further from that.
The reality is that we do have a very stringent, legal and regulatory system that people have to abide by if they want to be able to acquire, possess and transport firearms. It is a very good system. It is a long process to go through, but I do think it is very fair. When we look at the way our system is, it is a privilege to be able to have a firearm in this country. It is important that we do have a strong but fair legal system around that.
Nobody here is objecting to the system that we have in place, because, for the most part, it is a good system. It is important for people who do not have firearms or people who are not necessarily interested in firearms but might be interested in the debate here tonight to know and understand that we do have a very robust and comprehensive legal system around firearms.
Let us get to the next part of the debate tonight. One of the fundamental things that we always have to talk about in the House of Commons is trust. Does the government trust the people? Do people trust the government? What has the government done to earn people's trust when we talk about firearms?
Well, we know the Liberals had the massive debacle with the long gun registry. In the 2019 election, one of the their next failed ideas was to have a big, expensive buyback program. They said the buyback program was going to cost between $400 million and $600 million. Given that the long gun registry program, which was only supposed to cost $1 million or $1.5 million, turned into an over $1-billion program, people have a right to be skeptical of them.
In 2019, the Liberals rolled out another plan for a buyback program for all the types of guns the Liberals do not like. However, lo and behold, nobody out there was interested in participating in this program and was willing to administer it, so the government had to back away from it. Fast-forward to 2021, and that is where we see the original proposal of Bill C-21.
It is important to note that the original part of it was about having a buyback program for barred firearms. The Liberals were maybe going to allow municipalities to ban handguns, and they were going to supposedly increase criminal penalties for gun smuggling and trafficking. There have been various legislative attempts by the government around sentencing. That is an issue for another time. I may be able to get to it tonight, but we shall see.
We are still waiting for details of the buyback program from that original announcement in 2021. The Liberals floated a few ideas out there. There were a few different things that happened, but ultimately nothing really came of it. We are currently going through the budget again, and there is still no allocation in the federal budget for a buyback program, yet that was part of the original intent of Bill C-21.
What we saw after the budget was announced is that the Liberals came up with a bit of a buyback program, but it is not for firearms that have already been lawfully acquired by citizens of Canada. Instead, they are looking at purchasing firearms back from dealers. Supposedly it will cost $700,000. We are still waiting to see how that program is going to be implemented and what it is going to look like. It will most likely have to do with the list of firearms that will come through Bill C-21.
Again, we have talked about trust. What has the government done to earn the trust of Canadians? As we look at the way Bill C-21 has unfolded not only before the House but also in committee, we have Liberals dropping big amendments with big comprehensive packages of firearms that are going to be banned, and all different kinds of styles.
That is another thing the Liberals have done. They have talked about this made-up term “assault-style firearm”. It is important to note one of the key terms in there, the word “style”. Based on what the Liberals described, it is about the way a firearm might look. That leads to the issue at hand: Do people trust the government with whether or not it is going to ban hunting rifles? We hear about that a lot, and it has been brought up a lot in this debate tonight.
Based on the way the Liberals have described the “assault” style, it could be a gun with a black stock on it or a camo pack on it, and it looks like it could be an assault-style gun. However, the Liberals are not concerned about the function of it. It could be a hunting rifle. It may fit perfectly within the parameters of what is acceptable as a hunting rifle. The Liberals have sowed a lot of fear and distrust in people who like to go out and hunt as part of their culture and way of life, and simply because of the colour of a gun, they may be looking at banning it.
The Liberals have created this committee program that is going to go ahead with a fixed date. It will decide whether a firearm should be banned or not. The bill we are debating tonight is going to set a date and it will be everything after that. That is where the problem lies.
When the Liberals use made-up terms like “assault-style firearm”, it leaves the door open to a vague description that does not have anything to do with the reality of how a firearm functions but is rather about how it looks. Then we will have a committee, which will obviously be hand-picked by the Liberals, with people who will not necessarily be acting in the best interests of these lawful Canadians, who are among the most vetted citizens in this country.
The Conservatives want to see a fact-based approach that takes into consideration people from rural Canada and urban Canada and that looks at what our professionals and experts are actually saying, not just what a bunch of activists are saying.
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- May/16/23 11:48:44 p.m.
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That is debate.
Order. The hon. member for New Westminster—Burnaby and the hon. member for Edmonton—Wetaskiwin know these are points of debate, and it is not proper to be debating while I have the floor.
I would ask the hon. member for New Westminster—Burnaby to finish up.
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