44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 16, 2023 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, much has been said about the rights of hunters and the rights of guns owners, but perhaps not enough about the victims. The hon. member for Vaughan—Woodbridge would know that all too well, given the mass shooting that occurred at the condo in his riding; five people were murdered, and my dear friend, Doreen DiNino, was the lone survivor.
Is the hon. member satisfied understanding that the shooter was a PAL owner and did have legally acquired firearms? Is he satisfied that the legislation, Bill C-21, would help prevent the future atrocities and tragedies of a mass shootings like the one that has occurred in his riding of Vaughan—Woodbridge?
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Madam Speaker, there was a mass shooting in the city of Vaughan. It happened just around the Christmas period, and it needlessly impacted so many families. Bill C-21 is, again, another step. We have multiple pillars to reduce senseless gun violence in Canada. That is an example that unfortunately has impacted a number of families and a number of people who were not going to be able to be with their families any longer. Bill C-21 would be a big significant step in combatting gun violence, in terms of the example of what happened in Vaughan where people are still grieving from that needless tragedy.
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Mr. Speaker, when a common-sense amendment was brought forward to expand the exemptions to various associations related to sport shooting, including those who went to the Olympics, the Liberals voted against it. In fact, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety said that they want to ban handguns. Therefore, it is a little bit rich to have the elitist-type attitude coming from members opposite, who would target law-abiding Canadians, while we see criminals walking free on our streets. Canadians can judge for themselves.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech and his passion in this particular area. One of the things he mentioned was the training aspect, which is interesting, along with the amendments to the bill. I would also like to commend my colleague from Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia for her leadership in getting hunting guns removed from the bill, for example.
Could this aspect be strengthened? What is the role of a shooting range in a given municipality or region? Is it too easy to get a permit? These are legitimate questions that are being raised under the circumstances. I myself obtained a firearms possession and acquisition licence without ever having fired a shot in my life, which is a bit ironic. Hunting has become a hobby for me, a way to spend some quality time with my family in the woods.
Can this aspect be strengthened? Who does this gun possession legislation apply to, other than the black market references? How can we make sure it targets the criminals?
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Mr. Speaker, one of the things that we are concerned about is the continual change of definitions.
At the end of the day we talked about how this would be a ban on assault rifles, but what we have now seen creep into this is hunting and sport shooting, etc.
The question would be, as we return in the fall and down the road, what guns would get added into those definitions that the Liberals have left wide open?
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Madam Speaker, my colleague says that Bill C‑21 is the biggest attack on Canadian hunters ever. Unfortunately, I do not know if he has read the bill as amended in committee last week, but no hunting weapons will be prohibited if this bill is passed. The new definition of prohibited weapons is prospective. It will apply to future weapons, ones that do not yet exist. I do not know why some people are still trying to scare hunters.
My colleague also said that mass murderers in Canada do not use hunting rifles, that they do not use them in shooting sprees. I would remind him that the SKS, which I am sure he is familiar with, is widely used in Canada for hunting. It is especially popular in indigenous communities because it is affordable. I would respectfully remind him that an SKS was recently used to kill two Ontario police officers.
Perhaps we should stop scaring hunters. Thanks to the Bloc Québécois, hunting rifles are not in Bill C‑21.
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Madam Speaker, as I have said several times in this House, I came from municipal politics before coming here. After being elected as mayor in 2013 in my home town, at our first public meeting, the fire chief entered and said, “Everybody stay in the building. There is a shooting next door.” A jilted boyfriend showed up at a medical clinic and shot the boyfriend of his former girlfriend in his vehicle. He then went into the medical clinic and shot his ex-girlfriend. He was found dead the next morning in his vehicle in a cemetery not too far away.
This bill will help to keep those situations from happening. Why is the member against stopping those types of situations?
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill C-21. It is an act to make certain consequential amendments in relation to firearms, which is really the government's way of saying that this is a bill to confiscate hunting rifles from law-abiding farmers, hunters and indigenous people, and distract from the real issue of the crime wave that is going on in Canada right now. That is really what this bill is. It is purely a distraction to distract from what is going on in our streets, on our subways and in some of our schoolyards right now. It is another virtue-signalling bill from the current government, to pretend it is going to do something about smuggled handguns, illegally attained guns and gang violence, but not actually do anything.
It is a distraction bill to take the focus away from the disastrous result of the Liberals' soft-on-crime bills, Bill C-5 and Bill C-75. It is a distraction from the multiple police officers who have fallen on the job very recently and the random stabbings in Toronto, the Lower Mainland and my hometown of Edmonton. All these random attacks hurt, but the one in Edmonton strikes very close to home. A mother and her 11-year-old child were stabbed to death in a schoolyard park. EPS police chief, Dale McFee, commented on the attack. He said it was “completely random. In no way could the victims have anticipated what would happen to them. There is no making sense of this.” This was a mother and her daughter who were in the playground of a schoolyard. A person drove up, got out of his car, stabbed them to death and just left. It was completely random. The police chief said, “There is no making sense of this.” I agree with Chief McFee that it makes zero sense that this would happen. He also said that the victims could not have anticipated the attack, and I agree with that as well.
However, here is the kicker: The court system could have anticipated this attack, and should have, and we should have had laws to protect this family. The killer had been released just 18 days earlier, on bail from a previous assault. He had a record. The killer was only 33 years old, and he had a record going back 14 years, having been in and out of jail, released on bail, and having had constant charges of assault with a weapon. He was in and out of prison repeatedly. There were robberies. He had stabbed someone who was just sitting on a bus bench. His parole documents stated to him, “You were armed with a knife and stabbed your victim once in the upper back. You then fled on foot. Your victim's injuries include a punctured aorta and a laceration to his spinal cord.” These are not simple injuries. This is attempted murder, yet he was back out on the streets. Between committing that crime and committing the murders in Edmonton, the attacker assaulted a corrections officer and two inmates, and was released, despite the warnings from parole officers. We have to ask where we have heard this before. He was sent back to prison after testing positive for meth, but was released again and assaulted four more people; three of them were assaulted with weapons. He attacked a 12-year-old on the bus just last year, and on the same day was charged with assaulting someone else. Then, he assaulted someone else with a weapon. He was sent to prison on April 14 for another assault and then released on bail. He then went on to murder someone and her young child.
That is what the Liberals are trying to distract from with this bill. It is to distract from their disastrous catch-and-release laws that they have inflicted upon Canadians. The Liberal government will sit and say that it fixed catch-and-release today. However, for five or six years now, the Liberals have denied it was a problem. I want to quote the present public safety minister, in debate. He said that this would simplify the release process “so that police and judges are required to consider the least restrictive and alternative means of responding to a breach, rather than automatically detaining an accused” and that “police would...be required to impose the least onerous conditions necessary if an accused is released.”
A mother and her child are dead in Edmonton because of this law. The Liberals can claim that they are fixing it, but they had half a decade to do something, with warnings from the police chief, warnings from the opposition bench and warnings from the premiers. It is not good enough that they are saying,“Well, we're going to play around with it today. Everything is fine.” It is not fine.
I want to go back to Edmonton police chief Dale McFee. We are talking about the catch-and-release program. For a three-year period, Edmonton saw a 30% increase in shooting victims. Chief McFee stated that the biggest problem is building to attack gang violence, and that most of the problem is gangs and organized crime. It is not a law-abiding hunter going out for a catch. It is not a farmer with his shotgun plinking away at varmints or pests. The police chief says it is organized crime and gangs. Subsequent to Bill C-75 being introduced, 3,600 individuals were arrested for violent crimes in Edmonton in a one-year period. Two years after that, 2,400 of those 3,600 reoffended, a total of 19,000 times, including 26 homicides. That is the result of Bill C-75, the catch-and-release program of the government. That is what this government is trying to distract from. Instead of going after criminals, repeat offenders, they want to confiscate shotguns and hunting rifles from hunters, farmers and indigenous people. The government should be going after the criminals and trying to make life miserable for them, not trying to make life miserable for law-abiding hunters and farmers.
Canadians should not be fooled by this new bill, Bill C-21. The Liberals brought in some amendments and said, “Oh, we fixed all your concerns.” Canadians should not be fooled by this. The Liberals' so-called new definitions are basically the same as the old ones that are targeting hunting rifles. The same ones that they went after before, they will go after again. I do not think anyone should believe that this new Liberal firearms advisory panel would be any different than what they had proposed previously.
This is the same government, members will remember, that politicized the Nova Scotia shooting tragedy. It is the same government that said that it was the police forces that recommended the Emergency Act, but we asked the Ottawa Police Service and the RCMP, and they both said no.
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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 thank my colleague for his speech, but I disagree with his ideology.
We see this bill as being more about the facts, about things that have happened. I think the Conservatives are spreading a lot of disinformation. I would like to point out that hunting weapons are for hunting, not for shooting sprees, so they are not included in this bill. I would like the Conservatives to actually read the bill so they can tell us more about it.
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Madam Speaker, I would totally agree with the member. I am totally disappointed with the government as well. We would totally agree on that. I think the government has flawed legislation; it really does. I think it is going to eliminate sport shooting. There is fact in that.
I had a student who went through school and became a world-class fencer. She started when she was in elementary school with a local high school coach. She was in the Olympics four times. She used a sword. That is a weapon. She could learn that when she was in elementary school. We have eliminated the possibility for youth in our country to do sport shooting at the Olympic level. That is a fact, not rhetoric.
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Madam Speaker, sure, I have another note from Don from Dover Centre, who said, “Legally owned firearms is not the problem in this country. It is the ghost guns and the illegal guns brought into Canada.”
I have another from Eric, who said, “This bill is nothing more than an attack on legal firearms owners in Canada. It does nothing to make Canadians safer. I am a legal firearms owner who enjoys hunting and sport shooting. I have shared my passion for these activities with my son. He now enjoys them as much as I do. On November 22, the Liberal government made an amendment to Bill 21 and added numerous hunting and sport shooting firearms to the list of now prohibited firearms. Property which was legally obtained and classed as a ‘non restricted firearm’ and is now ‘prohibited’ and has to be surrendered or confiscated?”
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Madam Speaker, I wonder if the hon. member could comment on the fact that firearms-related incidents in northern Saskatchewan went up by 75% from 2017 to 2021, or the fact that the shooting in The Danforth in Toronto was done with a gun that was stolen in Saskatchewan.
I guess it really comes down to a fundamental question: Who on earth, in this country, other than police or the military, needs a handgun?
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Madam Speaker, I thank the member for his speech. He does a very effective job as vice-chair at the Canadian heritage committee, and often chairs our meetings. I appreciate his work. However, there are some things that need to be corrected from his speech.
First is the fact that there are no guns being removed as a result of Bill C-21. He knows that. Both the G-4 and G-46 amendments, because of NDP pressure, were withdrawn. That is fact number one.
Fact number two is that the emphasis of Bill C-21 is on ghost guns. Ghost guns have been a scourge of many parts of this country, with a tenfold increase in the lower mainland of British Columbia. This is something that law enforcement needs additional powers to combat. These are criminal gangs and criminals who are using these untraceable firearms. That is the focus of the bill, and that is something that he should be in favour of.
Third, he did mention sport shooters. This morning, I was surprised to see the Conservatives table an amendment to remove an exemption for sport shooters who are in the Olympics or the Paralympics. That is an exemption that we believe in because the NDP did table the amendment.
On the International Practical Shooting Confederation, we believe—
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Madam Speaker, I would like to read from a news article: “The final report of the Mass Casualty Commission (MCC) investigating the April 2020 mass shooting in Nova Scotia that left 22 people dead makes several recommendations to meaningfully change Canada's gun laws.” The headline reads, “MCC report calls for stricter gun laws”.
Is there any situation in which the Conservative Party would support stricter gun laws?
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