44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 16, 2023 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech. One thing we heard from the Conservatives is their refrain that we want to take hunting rifles away from hunters and Canadians living in rural areas. We know that is not true.
I believe that the member also represents a rural riding. Can she explain why she is comfortable with this definition of firearms so we can reassure Canadians from rural areas?
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Madam Speaker, I was not mispronouncing the ridings whatsoever. They are great areas. I have been to some of them and I would like to get to even more. I was in Nunavut last summer and it was very interesting.
What I was pointing out is that all of these rural ridings I am sure will be very interested to know that the members of the NDP were siding with the Liberals at all the committee meetings and on all of the votes with respect to the firearms concern.
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Mr. Speaker, the member just made my point. He is giving a false impression. He is trying to say to farmers, hunters and indigenous people that we are going to take away their guns. That is balderdash. That is not the case.
Does the member not realize that he is doing a great disservice to the whole debate, a debate that Canadians from coast to coast are concerned about? They want safer communities. This legislation would provide safer communities.
On the record, in terms of rural versus urban, the member might note that I periodically get the chance to stand up and address legislation. I always welcome that. I never look at it as an urban-rural split. I like to think that I am very sensitive to all rural issues. It is one of the reasons I spend a lot of time talking about agricultural issues.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-21. It has never been more clear how disconnected the current Liberal government is from rural Canadians. Firearms are tools for millions of Canadians, especially those who call rural Canada their home.
I am a law-abiding firearms owner myself, just like millions of other Canadians across this country. I represent a region in this House of Commons that comprises rural communities and rural Canadians. The largest community I represent is smaller than 10,000 people. I am also a farmer who, just like thousands of other farmers, uses a firearm, not as a weapon but as a tool to protect my farm. When I speak to Bill C-21, I speak from an understanding of what a firearm means to the rural way of life.
Rural Canadians share the understanding that the firearm is a tool. It is an understanding shared by first nations, hunters and law-abiding firearms owners all across this nation. Unfortunately, the current Liberal government has few members in rural regions and, therefore, little representation from rural Canada. When I see the government display such a blatant disregard for the rural way of life, I fear it has made a calculated political decision to write off the views of rural Canada for its own political gain. After all, rural Canadians did send the Liberals a strong message at the ballot box in the last election. The government has no regard for the concerns, the priorities or the way of life of rural Canadians.
The cost of the neglect displayed by the government toward rural Canadians is a direct reflection of an increasing urban-rural divide, and it is a divide that I fear will only grow larger the longer the Prime Minister remains in power.
This is a very important matter, and I draw to the Speaker's attention that quorum is not present in this chamber.
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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, 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, 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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Madam Speaker, there are a lot of issues that come with this type of debate. I appreciate my colleague talking about the reality in urban Saskatchewan versus rural Saskatchewan. Does he want to elaborate?
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