44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 16, 2023 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, Conservatives are trying to paint this bill as something else, but in their defence, they have spent so much time doing that, that it would be literally impossible for them to try to backtrack on it. The member for Battle River—Crowfoot has shared so much misinformation about this bill, as have so many other Conservatives, that to try to reverse that position now would be blatant hypocrisy. They have no choice but to continue to push the same agenda. I feel for the situation they are in.
This bill would primarily do three things: put a freeze on handguns; introduce the red and yellow flags, which I will speak about in a couple of minutes; and combat smuggling. In particular, for crimes related to smuggling, there would be an increase in the penalty from 10 years' imprisonment to 14 years' imprisonment.
Let us start with some of the statistics from Statistics Canada, which are quite contradictory to what the member for Battle River—Crowfoot said a few moments ago. According to Statistics Canada, gun crime in Canada is down 5% between 2020 and 2021. In 2022, as the other parliamentary secretary said before me, 1,200 guns and 73,000 weapons were seized at the border. Those are 100% and 50% respective increases from 2021. In Toronto, one of the major cities in Canada, gun violence dropped by 22% between 2020 and 2021.
Eighty-four per cent of Canadians believe that the government is on the right track in its reforms to gun control. The 16% of Canadians that remains, whom the Conservatives are apparently working hard to make so much money off of through fundraising, must be incredibly important to them for them to be laser-focused on this particular issue and that 16% of Canadians.
The red flag provisions, as I alluded to in my opening, would allow for the petition of an individual to the court for emergency prohibition purposes. That is extremely important because another statistic is that a woman who lives in a household that has a gun in that household is statistically five times more likely to become a victim of violence that involves that weapon. That is a statistical fact. What we are trying to do with this red flag provision is give potential victims the opportunity to flag to the court that perhaps this gun should not be in the household. How do Conservatives respond to that? The member for Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, in committee, said that this would increase “malicious false claims”.
The default reaction of the Conservatives is not how do we help protect women who we know are the victims more often than not? How we protect them is not the member's concern. His default concern is about the malicious people who are out to get their former spouse or farmer partner and that people are going to make a fake report so they can get that weapon taken away. That is the Conservatives' concern. Their concern is not the potential victims of the violence, and I find that extremely troubling. The 16% of the population in Canada who do not agree with the gun control reform we are bringing in must have a lot of money because that is whom the Conservatives are laser-focused on.
I am reminded of the 2021 election. I really wish I could use a prop in the House because, if I could, I would hold it up and show it to everybody, but I will not. I will describe it to members. It came into my riding.
By the way, I am in a semi-rural riding. I hope it is rural enough for the Conservative members who were making fun of the member for Milton during his last question for claiming that he has a semi-rural riding. The islands in my riding, in addition to pretty much all of the areas north of the 401 and east of the Cataraqui River in Kingston and the Islands, are rural areas.
I come from a strong family of hunters. All three of my mother's brothers hunt and own hunting properties in Ontario. My late father-in-law grew up in a hunting lodge where visitors from Canada and the United States would come to be taught how to hunt, fish and explore the outdoors responsibly, so I take great offence to the members who come into the House to try to lecture other members because they believe their ridings are not rural enough.
Nonetheless, the National Firearms Association showed up in my riding, as it did in many other ridings in the 2021 election, dropping off pamphlets at doors that looked an awful lot like the pamphlets we were already delivering. It had literally copied the Prime Minister's stock photo, put the Liberal red on it, and had “Meet Your Liberal Team” written on it, with a QR code to get to the website. By the way, that website is still up right now, as I just went to it.
I heard the back-and-forth earlier with the member for Battle River—Crowfoot, who challenged the assertion made by the parliamentary secretary and member for Milton that the gun lobby in Canada and the Conservative Party are one in the same. If we go to that website, we can literally see every single question from Conservatives in period question on it. That website does not only talk about gun laws. Literally every Conservative grievance is there, so, yes, there is a lot of money to be made in this, as the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader said earlier.
Conservatives are laser-focused on that. They had no problem encouraging their partners to go to ridings to drop off these pamphlets to try to trick Canadians into thinking it was a genuine “Meet Your Liberal Team” flyer to go to the website to see the candidates who were running. However, this was a flyer that was printed, manufactured and links to a website that is all under the control of the Canadian Coalition for Firearms Rights, a branch of the Conservative Party of Canada.
I think it is extremely unfortunate, as members have said before me, that time and again Conservative members get up in the House to misrepresent the law we are creating, the facts and the statistics, all in the name of raising more money. They are trying to capitalize off this as much as possible. Who knows, maybe later today we will have the Leader of the Opposition filming a video as he is running out of the House of Commons, with the mace in the background, as he did with a previous bill we had, just to raise a last bit of money before the issue is dead. It is shameful that His Majesty's opposition operates in this way, yet we see it time and again.
Canadians should take great comfort in knowing that, despite the differences that exist between the Liberals, the Bloc Québécois, the NDP and the Green Party, we are all united around this legislation because we know it is what Canadians want. We know it is the right step forward, and there are adults in this room who are making sure that we do everything we can for the safety of Canadians throughout our country. Unfortunately, the Conservatives are not acting that way.
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Mr. Speaker, I am very sorry to interrupt my colleague from the Bloc.
In one of the previous questions, the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands referenced that the worst shooter in Canadian history was legally allowed to own guns. That is false. He was under a prohibition order. They were not legal guns. There should be an apology.
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Mr. Speaker, I really want to follow up with the member for Niagara West, from an earlier moment when you were presiding over a point of order that was not really a point of order.
I am waiting to use the opportunity where I do have the right to speak to the member for Niagara West to confirm that what I was trying to point out to the hon. parliamentary secretary, in an earlier exchange, is that we do not want to see Canadians divided, rural versus urban. There are legitimate issues to discuss in this bill.
My point was that in order to really understand the threat to rural Canadians, one should read the mass casualty report on the horrific events in Nova Scotia on April 18-19, 2020. To correct the record, as far as I am aware, the person who committed those offences, killing those people, was under no prohibition order that he could not own weapons at the time. He owned many weapons, all of them illegally but some of them were legal weapons. Just to clarify the record, that is more of a comment than a question.
Maybe the hon. member has some thoughts on the importance of not allowing us to be polarized along rural-urban lines.
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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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Madam Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for sharing his stories. I have good news for him: He can get some practice in on June 6 at the parliamentary outdoor caucus. If he knows any kayakers who want to come out, he should bring them with him.
Why does he think the Liberal government continues to target law-abiding firearms owners? The government had its May 1 prohibition in 2020, its initial amendments around Bill C-21 and even the handgun ban. Restricted firearms owners are three times less likely to commit any crime than an average Canadian. Why are the Liberals focused on law-abiding firearms owners and not criminals?
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