44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 9, 2022 10:00AM
- Jun/9/22 11:08:39 a.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Madam Speaker, what I am suggesting is that science and evidence have borne out that giving judicial discretion improves community safety. What does that mean? It means that a judge can look at an individual situation and consider—
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
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- Jun/9/22 11:09:19 a.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Madam Speaker, I did listen very respectfully to my hon. colleague's comment and the discussion. I believe that he and I want to make sure that community safety is improved in this country, that our neighbours are living in communities that are as safe as they can possibly be, and that we adopt policies for that. If we both agree that is our premise, then obviously what we need to do is look at the evidence. The evidence says that judges are allowed to look at an individual situation, which, by the way, means that they can actually give a sentence that is greater than the mandatory minimum, but it means they might give one less than that if they determine it is not in the best interests of public safety and rehabilitation to have that higher sentence.
What we have seen, particularly for vulnerable people, is that if they are incarcerated for a long period of time, the likelihood of them reoffending is much higher.
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- Jun/9/22 11:10:53 a.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Madam Speaker, it is clear to me that this bill is extremely important to national security and public safety, in general, and I do not think it contains anything that is inappropriate. One of its objectives is to reduce the incarceration rates of indigenous people and vulnerable people. I think this bill has clear objectives and will work well for the country.
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- Jun/9/22 2:32:48 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would think my colleague, the hon. member of this chamber, would have the humility to recognize the words I just said were not from the government but from the RCMP Commissioner in front of the committee, which he was privy to.
He heard those words that the commissioner said, that the government consulted, which is exactly what we have said all along. We sought the advice of law enforcement on the powers that they needed to restore public safety. What we did in invoking the Emergencies Act was the responsible thing to do to protect Canadians' safety.
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- Jun/9/22 5:27:45 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Madam Speaker, I thank our colleague for his speech. He made a lot of references to safety. I do not think anyone in the House doubts the importance of safety. Montreal is going through some tough times these days.
Does my colleague really believe that a person with mental health issues or a substance abuse problem is a safety threat?
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- Jun/9/22 7:57:30 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Madam Speaker, my colleague and I work together on the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, notably on the gun control file.
Every time I hear my Conservative colleagues ask questions about Bill C-5 in question period, I hear the Minister of Public Safety respond with something about Bill C-21. I find that somewhat unfortunate because they are not the same thing.
Although I quite like my colleague, we both know that our opinions differ on this subject. For example, the Bloc members are big believers in rehabilitation and social reintegration. I think that Bill C-5 will help with that.
However, I think my colleague will agree with me that this is not the time to be introducing this bill, given the rise in gun crime across the country. We are trying to find ways to combat that situation.
What message does my colleague think is being sent to the public by introducing this bill at this time?
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- Jun/9/22 9:18:07 p.m.
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The amendment is in order.
Questions and comments, the hon. Minister of Public Safety.
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Madam Speaker, I enjoy working with my colleague on the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. She is quite right that we have a good working relationship.
I have two questions. The first one is that through a technical reading of the bill—because she did talk about lawful gun owners—my understanding of Bill C-21 is that if it becomes law, current owners of handguns could still legally use them. People could still go to a range to fire handguns under the supervision of an RPAL holder, especially if the range owns a collection of handguns. I am just wondering if she can clarify whether that is her understanding of the bill as well.
My second question is about this being a very complex problem. She quoted a lot of police officers. Let me also quote from Staff Sergeant Michael Rowe of the Vancouver Police Department, who also appeared before the public safety committee. He identified straw purchases and the diversion of legally owned handguns as also being big problems.
Therefore, two things can be true here: We can have a problem from gun smuggling, but there is also a problem from the illegal diversion of legally owned handguns. If we ignore that and focus only on the smuggling problem, we are doing a disservice to public safety. Would she not admit that domestic diversion is also a problem, as was clearly identified by Staff Sergeant Michael Rowe of the Vancouver Police Department?
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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, earlier tonight the Minister of Public Safety spoke to that very issue. I welcome any ideas that can be put in place to counter the challenge and problem that my colleague has pointed out. There has been an increase, as we have seen in news media reports, in the purchase of handguns, so any suggestions to lead to a countering of that are worth exploring.
Again, I go back to the fundamental purpose of the bill. When organizations across the country, many of which have members whose lives have been destroyed because of gun violence, look at measures like a freeze on the selling of handguns, for example, among the other freezes that I mentioned, it is a good thing for the country. I point to the Association of Chiefs of Police. It agrees that public safety would be drastically improved with this bill.
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