44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 9, 2022 10:00AM
- Jun/9/22 7:46:08 p.m.
- Watch
- Re: Bill C-5
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today in the House of Commons to join the debate on Bill C-5, which is a seriously flawed bill, in my opinion.
It presents itself as wanting to keep Canadians safe against gun crime and illicit drugs, but if the bill is passed by Parliament, it will eliminate mandatory minimum penalties for many of the serious crimes listed under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and many of the serious firearms-related crimes listed under the Criminal Code as well.
This hits very close to home, as it does, I am sure, for many Canadians. Last year we witnessed a series of gangland-style murders in Metro Vancouver, including two in my home riding of Langley—Aldergrove. It was shocking to see familiar places in Langley on the news and in the newspaper. One of the murders happened in front of the sportsplex where I drop my grandsons off to play hockey, right in broad daylight. There was another one in the parking lot of the Willowbrook mall in downtown Langley, and there were a series of other gangland-style murders throughout the Lower Mainland, including at the Vancouver International Airport, do none of this is theoretical; it hits all of us, and it is a real problem that real Canadians across this country feel personally. We want to feel safe when we are out and about in town, on our streets, in shopping malls and schools and hockey rinks, but, sadly, that is not always the case.
It is our job as parliamentarians to do whatever we can to develop laws, regulations and policies that are designed to be and will be effective in keeping Canadians safe. However, the soft-on-crime bill before us that would eliminate mandatory minimum penalties for many of these serious crimes does not do that. I believe that the Liberals are introducing the bill in the faint hope that our prisons might become fairer and safer for criminals, and I believe it fails there as well.
The public safety committee, on which I sit, recently completed a study on gun control, illicit arms trafficking and the increasing numbers of gun crimes committed by members of street gangs. It is a very important study, and we learned that there is a very close tie between the drug trade and gun violence. In that study, we were seeking to find and introduce tools and policies to give guidance to Parliament to combat both of them, but again Bill C-5 misses the mark.
We heard from experts, and in the process we learned that guns and drug trafficking are inherently related to each other. This is what Mitch Bourbonniere, an outreach worker active in the city of Winnipeg, had to say about the tie-in between gang violence, guns and drug trafficking: “Anyone in Winnipeg can purchase a firearm illegally, much the same way as you would be purchasing illegal drugs. My understanding is that guns are manufactured mostly in the United States and smuggled through our two provincial borders and the American border.”
Evan Bray, chief of police with the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, said that “we can't overstate the importance of seeing the correlation between drugs and drug-related activity and firearms. They are intertwined.”
Mike Rowe, staff sergeant at the Vancouver Police Department, said that “Yes, certainly, sir, there's a correlation there that I don't think can be disputed, especially as the manufacturing or sale of fentanyl produces an extremely lucrative drug market.”
Grand Chief Abram Benedict of the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne said that “It is no secret to anyone that our community is exploited by organized crime, but what we do know is that many individuals involved in cross-border trafficking do it because of the money.”
We discovered at the public safety committee that to tackle gun crime, we need to tackle illicit drug trafficking, as they are so closely tied together.
Another fact of life that shocks Canadians is the number of deaths from toxic drugs that are readily available on our streets.
I am going to focus on my home province of British Columbia, where last year and so far this year, five people die every day of illicit drug toxicity. This is completely unacceptable. Seventy-four per cent of these victims are age 30 to 59 and 77% are male. More than half of these deaths occurred at home when the person was alone.
I grieve for a family whose son died of an apparent overdose about a year go. He had a family. He had people who loved him. He had children who relied on him. He had a good job. He had a boss and co-workers who relied on him. One evening, at home, alone, he consumed fentanyl-laced drugs and became part of our nation's terrifying statistics. The question remains open as to how he got his hands on fentanyl-laced drugs. His family wants to know.
Today, we are talking about Bill C-5, which would eliminate mandatory minimum penalties for drug-related crimes. Canadians must be made aware that the government has also introduced, in the province of British Columbia, an agreement by which possession of small amounts of illicit drugs for personal use would be decriminalized.
The problem is twofold. First, even a small amount of fentanyl can and regularly does kill people. Second, it would be indisputable evidence before Parliament that gun trafficking and illicit drug trafficking are the opposite sides of the same coin. It should be evident even to the casual observer that easing up on penalties for drug traffickers and gun traffickers is the wrong way to go, and certainly will not make our streets any safer.
The criminal justice system talks a lot about the principles behind sentencing. The two principles are denunciation and deterrence. Society denounces certain behaviour and, of course, we want to deter future behaviour like that. Parliament, over the years, has recognized these principles and has created mandatory minimum sentences in response thereto. We want to denounce and we want society to develop safer environments for everybody.
There is a quote from an important Supreme Court of Canada decision, R. v. Proulx, from 2000, which is, “the need for denunciation or deterrence is so pressing that incarceration will be the only suitable way in which to express society's condemnation of the offender's conduct or to deter similar conduct in the future.”
This is the principle that has guided Parliament over many years to introduce mandatory minimum penalties and, as previous speakers have said, it is a mystery to us why they would now want to reduce that.
We recognize that prison is not right for all people and for all situations. The Conservatives believe that those struggling with addictions should get the help they need, treatment for their addictions rather than prison. In the 2021 federal election, Conservatives put forward in their platform a plan to create 1,000 drug treatment beds, to create 50 recovery community centres and to support local and culturally appropriate addiction treatment.
We recognize that prison is not always the best way forward. We think that people should always be given the hope of recovery, not just reduced harm, not just safe supply and not just safe injection sites, but real long-lasting solutions full of hope for a better life.
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- Jun/9/22 7:56:36 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Madam Speaker, the member's comments are well thought out and sensitive to the needs of many people. Bill C-5 eliminates mandatory minimum penalties for very, very serious crimes. That is the objection I have to this legislation.
I believe that addiction should be, in certain circumstances, treated as a health issue, rather than a criminal issue, but that is not what we are talking about today. We are talking about drug traffickers. We are talking about people who are trafficking in guns. We are talking about people who are in gangs. We are talking about people in my home community of metro Vancouver who are using guns out on the streets, out in the public, in places where my grandchildren go. That is unacceptable.
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- Jun/9/22 7:58:30 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Madam Speaker, I do enjoy working with the member at the public safety committee. We, the whole committee, have done some very good and important work together. We have put out some pretty good studies, including the one on guns and gangs. I hope that leads to further legislation and policies to be considered by this Parliament. Bill C-5 is not one of them. I do not think that Bill C-5 accomplishes what the government says is the stated purpose of reducing or responding to the overpopulation of indigenous people and people of colour in our prison system.
In one of our earlier studies, we also talked a lot about indigenous policing. That, to me, is a much better government response to the problem of overpopulation of indigenous people in our prisons.
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- Jun/9/22 8:00:15 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Madam Speaker, I have an indigenous community in my riding and I have developed a very good relationship with them. I have been advocating for a government response to the recommendations from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the ones that are important to them, particularly relating to residential schools. I think that the Gladue principles are very important. Judges need to be educated on them and to apply those principles to make sure there is justice for indigenous people.
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Madam Speaker, I enjoyed the speech from the member, and I enjoy working with her on public safety. Reference has been made several times in tonight's speech to the study coming out of the public safety committee on guns, gangs and drug smuggling.
One piece of evidence that we heard from quite a few witnesses, including Statistics Canada, is that we do not really know the source of guns used in crime. Anecdotally, we think that most of them come from the United States of America, but we do not know for sure. I wonder if the member could comment on the gap in evidence or in data.
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Madam Speaker, it is honour for me to be here this evening to join the debate on Bill C-21, a bill recently introduced by the government in an attempt to keep our citizens safe.
I will be sharing my time with the member for Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame.
In his opening comments, the Minister for Public Safety stated his wish that we would find common cause on this very important topic, and I was happy to hear the member for Davenport, the previous speaker, say the same. We are all in agreement that our streets need to be safer and our citizens need to be safe, and it is our job as parliamentarians to find ways for that to become a reality, because gun crime is a problem in Canada, despite fairly strict gun control laws over many decades.
Unfortunately, gun crime is up quite substantially since about 2014, and then there was another uptick with the start of the pandemic. Illicit drug crime and smuggling are also up. Toxic drug overdose deaths are also up. These are all real threats. Fortunately, the public safety committee has conducted a study into guns, gangs and illicit drug smuggling. I think that there is some very interesting information coming out of the study that is going to be useful for us as we develop laws and policies.
Illicit drugs are a real problem in Canada. Certainly they are a real problem in my hometown of Langley and in metro Vancouver. I grieve with a family friend, who is grieving the passing away of their adult son about a year ago in a toxic drug overdose death. They did not know he was addicted. They do not know where he got the drugs. He was a responsible citizen. He had a good job. He had a family. He had people who loved him. These seem to be the types of people who are caught up in this.
Guns are a real problem too. Just about a year ago, there were a series of gangland-style shootings in metro Vancouver, including in my riding of Langley, as I mentioned in an earlier speech. There was a shooting in broad daylight in which somebody was murdered right in front of the sportsplex where my grandsons play hockey. It all hits very close to home.
In response to that shooting incident, and there were a series of them in metro Vancouver about a year ago, I asked a question in question period of the former minister of public safety, which he then was. This was in the previous Parliament. I asked him what the government was doing about keeping our streets safe from gun crime. His response was that he was looking into the source of guns used in crimes.
The previous speaker mentioned exactly the same formula: Guns used in crimes are either stolen from lawful gun owners or are straw purchased, which means they are bought legally by a person who has a licence to purchase a gun, but it was bought for somebody else, probably for gang-related activities. Number three is that they are smuggled in from the United States of America.
I did not have a follow-up question with the minister at the time, but there is only so much information that can be exchanged in the 60-second question-and-answer period.
I thought I would do the research myself. I thought that would be a relatively easy answer to find. I wanted to know how many guns used in crime were stolen from lawful gun owners, how many were straw purchased, by percentage, and how many were smuggled into the country illegally?
I went to Statistics Canada and I found out that the answer does not exist. The data is missing. I went to the Library of Parliament and asked those folks if they could conduct some research for me. They did their best, but they came back and said that they do not really know, because there are a lot of a gaps in the data.
I went to my local police force, and the police confirmed exactly that. They said that police services across the country are not required to trace guns used in crime, and that is if they can actually find the gun that was used in the crime.
There is another thing that I discovered: There is no standard definition for what a crime gun is. Is it the gun that was actually used in a crime in which somebody pulled the trigger, intending to harm somebody, or is the definition much broader than that? Does it even include guns in the possession of people who accidentally or inadvertently allowed their gun licence to lapse?
At the public safety committee, we studied this and the answers were all over the place. One person said that 80% of guns used in crimes were smuggled in from the United States. Someone else, also a very credible witness, said that 80% were sourced from home. When we dug into it deeper, we realized they were working from completely different definitions.
Statistics Canada came to our committee and we put the question to them. This is what they said, “At this point in time, we do not have national data” and “I cannot provide you with specific information”. Statistics Canada is acknowledging that there is a big gap.
It is such an important question, because if as parliamentarians we are going to develop laws that are designed to be effective in keeping people safe and accomplishing what we set out to do, we need to have good data. I asked myself if we have passed any other laws where we did not have the data. We have passed laws to try to manage inflation, housing affordability and the cost-of-living crisis, but we have a lot of data. Statistics Canada keeps data on those things. When managing a pandemic, of course we have data on that. We want to know how the virus spreads from one person to another. We base all of that on data.
Here we have Bill C-21 purporting to stop gun violence and we do not have the data. We do not know where the guns are coming from. I am very puzzled by that. This to me is the biggest problem. The government is presenting this legislation to people as being a means of keeping us safer and we know that is not the case.
In our study, we discovered that probably 80% of guns used in crimes have actually been smuggled in from the United States. We had a number of witnesses explain to us, to state the obvious, that Canada has the longest undefended border between two countries anywhere in the world. The United States is the largest manufacturer of guns. There are more guns in the United States of America than there are citizens. We know this is the primary source of guns that are used in crimes. They are smuggled across the river. They are smuggled across the Great Lakes. They are smuggled across border crossings in my riding at the Aldergrove and the Peace Arch border crossings.
This is what we need to do. We need to get better data. We need to work with the United States of America. This is not a problem we can solve by ourselves. We need to work with Homeland Security, get it to co-operate with us to try to stop the flow of illegal guns getting into the hands of criminals and gangsters. Very importantly, we need to tackle the root causes of crimes. We need to understand why young people are getting involved in gangs. We need to divert them away from that. We need to understand how toxic drugs are getting onto our streets. We need to be able to stop that. We need to be able to encourage people to get the mental health and addiction help they need.
Guns and drugs are so tied together that we cannot solve one problem without solving the other.
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Madam Speaker, having guns come into Canada is a very complicated social problem and there is no easy solution. I do not believe that the CBSA can stop all guns coming in. As the member pointed out, they are being smuggled across the border by rail. Trains are not being inspected for guns. They are being smuggled in by boat across rivers and lakes. They are being smuggled in across unofficial, non-border crossings. We are not going to be able to stop it on our own. It is very important that we work together with American counterparts and Homeland Security and have them come to our assistance. This needs to be a team approach.
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Madam Speaker, I am not a hunter or a gun person myself, but I have a lot of constituents who are and I speak with many of them. They are all law-abiding citizens and they are okay with gun control laws that make sense. They are okay with background checks. The RCMP does criminal checks. All of that is completely acceptable. That is all good policy, so laws around that I would completely support.
Also, we need to fully resource police services and community groups across the country that are focused on keeping kids out of gangs, as well as health supports for people with addictions.
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Madam Speaker, I am assuming that is a rhetorical question, as I cannot answer why the government is not doing something, but I would completely support the underlying premise. We have discovered that illegal drugs and illegal guns are tied together. We cannot solve one problem without solving the other, and I am mystified as to why the government has not yet introduced a study into the source of fentanyl and carfentanil that are killing people. It is completely unacceptable that 26,000 people have died. This is an advanced society and we need to find an answer.
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