Senator Plett: I asked the minister about this when he was here in the Senate to answer questions. I asked how the government’s repeal of eight mandatory minimum penalties for gun crime in Bill C-5 would help combat the rise in violent crime. The minister did what his government always does: He hid behind court decisions and claimed, by implication, that he had no choice.

Colleagues, that is a pathetic response from a minister and is cold comfort for the victims of rising violent crime.

Effectively, what the minister is saying is:

We are sorry, but as a government we are completely helpless. We have no choice but to go after legal gun owners because the courts won’t let us go after the violent criminals.

First of all, the minister’s response is factually wrong. The courts have not struck down all mandatory minimum penalties. In fact, the Supreme Court has upheld the principle that Parliament may impose mandatory penalties and, in specific cases, has often given the government options to respond to its judgments.

The Supreme Court gave such an option to the government in R v. Nur, a decision of the Supreme Court in 2015 which struck down one aspect of a minimum penalty related to firearms possession.

The court struck the provision down, but it nevertheless provided room for the government to modify the existing law. The Harper government did just that in response to that particular ruling when it introduced Bill C-69. Unfortunately, that bill died on the Order Paper prior to the 2015 election and the current government chose not to proceed with it.

If the current government is too afraid to respond to Supreme Court rulings in order to work within those rulings to protect Canadians in the face of gun crime, it should say so. But it should stop hiding behind the courts and claiming that it has no choice but to do nothing. That is an abdication of responsibility and it ensures that many Canadian communities will continue to be plagued by gun crime.

Second, even where the court provides the government with few options in a particular case, we still have a principle of parliamentary supremacy in this country.

When Canadian streets are plagued by rising violent crime, there are other constitutional and legislative tools available for a government and Parliament to protect Canadians. If the current government doesn’t have the courage to use those tools, then that government deserves to be replaced; it is as simple as that.

Parliament and the Government of Canada have an obligation to protect Canadians. When Parliament fundamentally disagrees with a Supreme Court ruling, it should be prepared to act. What we require is an elected Parliament that is willing to do just that. Hopefully, colleagues — and I am, indeed, positively hopeful — that we will have such a Parliament after the next election.

What we have now is a government that is doing exactly the opposite of what is required to protect Canadians. There is ample evidence to suggest that various government measures, including badly thought out criminal justice legislation, as well as Liberal policy on drug distribution, have contributed significantly to the major increase in violent crime in Canada.

The sad fact is that, since 2015, violent crime in Canada has increased by 32% while gang-related murders, many of them committed with firearms, have doubled. None of these trends are impacted at all by Bill C-21.

The government may argue that Bill C-21 is part of a larger effort but I see no evidence of a larger effort. The truth is that Bill C-21, like Bill C-68 before it, diverts and wastes the efforts and resources to go after legal firearm owners when the attention of police, instead, should be on real criminals.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer has estimated that the government’s decision in 2020 to ban certain classes of previously legal firearms and to pay the necessary compensation will cost as much as $750 million. Others say the costs may be even higher.

This money, colleagues, should be used to support front-line officers. Instead, these funds are being completely and totally wasted. This, again, leads one to ask with whom the government actually consulted in order to produce this bill.

In his remarks on the bill a year ago, the minister claimed:

Bill C-21 represents the culmination of the advice we have received from so many constituencies, including from survivors and many others . . . .

If Bill C-21 represents the culmination of advice that the government has received from so many constituencies, then there remains a remarkable degree of public opposition to this bill.

If we consider even what earlier supporters of the bill are saying, it does not seem that the government listened to any advice they provided. Their expectations were unrealistically raised by the government when the minister unrealistically claimed that he could somehow eradicate gun violence. Now these groups feel betrayed.

The group PolySeSouvient supports Bill C-21 but has declared that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will no longer be welcome at future Polytechnique memorials.

Nathalie Provost, a survivor of the terrible shooting at the École Polytechnique, in speaking about the Prime Minister’s attendance at future commemoration events, reportedly said, “We won’t invite him and if he wants to come, we will not agree for him to be there.”

I understand why they are angry. The government promised a bill that would do the impossible. Then, when expectations were dashed, people became angry. You can’t promise the unachievable and then backtrack and not expect severe disappointment.

What about the total lack of government consultation with Indigenous peoples? Chief Jessica Lazare of the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake told members of Parliament that the absence of comprehensive consultation with Indigenous peoples is clearly evident given what she says is the “incoherence and inconsistency” of the bill itself.

She further said:

We ask that you address the real underlying problems that cause gun violence, not further restrict Indigenous peoples from carrying out their lives in a sustainable ceremonial and generational way.

This, again, is the essence of the problem with Bill C-21. The government claims that this is a bill that is designed to address gun violence. The real target is law-abiding firearms owners, including Indigenous hunters.

Vice Chief Heather Bear of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations said that Bill C-21 and its proposed amendments infringe on Indigenous rights to hunt both on reserve lands and on traditional territories. This includes the provisions in the bill that target legal handgun owners.

Bill C-21 proposes to freeze the sale, purchase or transfer of legal handguns. This provision impacts more than 1 million legal firearms that have been used by law-abiding competitive shooters and collectors for a century and more.

Naturally, this measure will have no impact on criminal gangs who are largely interested in illegal firearms, which they can easily acquire from across the border. Instead, this so-called handgun freeze goes after those who hold restricted firearms licences for a variety of legal purposes.

As Vice Chief Bear stated, “Handguns are used in the far north. . . .” Why are they used? They are sometimes employed for safety reasons, where an animal such a bear may come upon a hunter very quickly, making a handgun easier to use at close quarters than a rifle. Having an available tool like a handgun might actually mean the difference between life and death; not only did the government not consider that when it drafted Bill C-21, it also did not, of course, consult with the people most affected.

It is scarcely surprising that, in December, First Nations leaders at the AFN General Assembly voted to oppose Bill C-21.

Cat Lake First Nation Chief Russell Wesley, who brought forward the resolution at the AFN Special Chiefs Assembly, referred to the bill as “just another demonstration of our First Nations constantly being attacked with respect to our rights.”

When it comes to Indigenous consultation, the Department of Justice states:

The Government of Canada has a constitutional duty to consult Indigenous peoples when it considers measures that might adversely impact their potential or established Aboriginal or treaty rights. This has been consistently confirmed by the Courts. The Government of Canada has consistently worked to uphold this duty and has shown its commitment to taking additional steps to do so.

What happened to that commitment? I believe that it is absolutely imperative that when our Senate committee reviews this bill, it must take the time to hear from all Indigenous witnesses who want to be heard.

If the government is not going to consult Indigenous peoples in the manner that it promised, then the Senate must do that job for them. We will do our utmost to ensure that this bill receives full hearing at the Senate committee, and that Canadians can and will be heard.

In that regard, I want to come back to the matter of the handgun freeze that is proposed in this bill. The minister said that this provision:

. . . would introduce a national freeze on handguns for the first time. In very clear language, this means that on a go‑forward basis no one would be able to buy, sell, transfer or import a handgun.

That is the purpose, according to the minister. But what will that provision actually accomplish when it comes to public safety? We know it will do nothing when it comes to illegal handguns, which are the weapon of choice for criminal gangs. The Deputy Chief of Police of the Toronto Police Service, as he then was, Myron Demkiw, recently testified in the House of Commons that approximately 86% of crime guns seized were ones that had been smuggled into Canada. A recent CBC story noted that 90% of gun crimes in Ontario were committed with smuggled guns.

Deputy Chief Demkiw was very clear about handguns on Toronto’s streets, saying:

They’re not domestically sourced. They are internationally sourced. Our problem in Toronto is handguns from the United States.

When asked about the proposed handgun freeze and the government’s other firearms buy-back program, he said:

Investing in what you described is certainly not going to deal with the crime problem we’re facing in Toronto as it relates to criminal handguns and the use of criminal handguns.

We must ask again: Who did the government listen to or consult with? There is no public safety benefit in legislating that legal handgun owners can keep their 1 million firearms, but they can’t legally buy or sell them. Neither does restricting competitive pistol shooters make our streets safer.

The government claims that in many areas of Canada, the theft of legal firearms must be combatted, but freezing purchases and sales of legal firearms that are already tightly controlled does not address that problem. The major problem for a city like Toronto is organized firearms smuggling. On that, Bill C-21 does nothing at all.

In his remarks on the bill, the minister claimed that:

Bill C-21 will take on, in a very intentional and direct way, organized crime. It does this by first and foremost raising maximum sentences for illegal gun smugglers and traffickers at the border, from 10 years to 15 years. What is the effect of that statement of intent? It is to send a very powerful and clear message to anyone who is in the business of illegal gun smuggling that they are at greater risk of facing stiffer sentences.

It’s hardly surprising that the minister actually got the proposed new maximum wrong. The new maximum proposed in the bill is 14 years, not 15 years as the minister said. He doesn’t know his own bill. He’s a lawyer and a former prosecutor, but somehow he missed the fact that 14 years is a normal maximum sentence in the Criminal Code, not 15 years.

Be that as it may, what does this increase in the maximum possible sentence actually accomplish?

First of all, in relation to the current 10-year maximum for firearms smuggling, we need to be honest that even this sentence is rarely imposed in Canadian courts. I asked Library of Parliament researchers how often the 10-year maximum sentence had been imposed in the past 20 years. Library researchers failed to find a single example.