44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 14, 2022 10:00AM
- Jun/14/22 11:16:40 a.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Madam Speaker, I am shocked that the member opposite would suggest that there is not a crisis in public safety, following years and years of soft-on-crime Liberal policies. I talked extensively about that. I guess we will have to see. We will have to see what happens to the crime statistics after Bill C-5 comes in. I hope I am wrong. I hope there are not rapists serving house arrests next to the individuals they raped. Based on the powers of this bill to give discretion to judges, I am deeply concerned that individuals who brandish firearms and shoot them at people in their communities now would not have to go to prison for it. I will not apologize for standing up for vulnerable communities and the risk to them, first and foremost, that this bill would present.
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- Jun/14/22 11:20:51 a.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Madam Speaker, I will ask the member opposite this: Does he believes the Supreme Court was correct in saying that intoxication for violent crime can be a defence for rape and homicide?
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- Jun/14/22 11:36:11 a.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Madam Speaker, personally, I know of very few criminals who are aware that mandatory minimums exist and I know of even fewer actual empirical studies that show any kind of connection between mandatory minimums and a decrease in crime.
Unfortunately, there are still some people in the House who are advocating a demagogic, cavalier and repressive “get tough” approach, when what we really need is prevention and rehabilitation. My question for my colleague is this: Does getting tough on crime really have to be this tough?
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- Jun/14/22 1:33:32 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Madam Speaker, as a number of Bloc Québécois members have indicated, we tend to agree on the substance of Bill C‑5 in relation to diversion and eliminating mandatary minimum penalties. We are just wondering about the timing. Violent gun crime is on the rise these days in Montreal, Toronto and across Canada. This has been stressed repeatedly. We have been asking the government about this during question period.
Is my colleague not a little concerned about the message that we are sending by passing Bill C‑5 at this particular time?
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- Jun/14/22 3:49:24 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Mr. Speaker, I absolutely agree. Those are the areas we are trying to work in.
When there is an imbalance and we look at the fact that 9% of people who are in prison are indigenous, we have to ask why and look at the root cause. I agree with my colleague completely.
That is why I said, in response to the previous speaker, that we could be sitting down, quite possibly around this beautiful table, figuring out how to solve some of these problems, doing it together. All of us in this House are looking for the same answers to find a solution to decrease the crime in our communities.
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- Jun/14/22 3:50:18 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Mr. Speaker, I want to commend my colleague, the chair of the Standing Committee on International Trade, and thank her for her speech.
We agree on a number of points, including the fact that minimum sentences are utterly ineffective. They do not work, and all of the studies have shown that. However, we are questioning the timing of abolishing such sentences for gun crime, given the problems on the streets of Montreal right now.
What do we say to our constituents and fellow citizens who are concerned about gun violence in Quebec's largest city?
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- Jun/14/22 3:53:37 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Mr. Speaker, we are all doing what we are doing with the best of intentions, and in 2007, when mandatory minimums were introduced, many people thought they would really help to reduce crime and improve public safety. What we have seen is that they have done far more damage than good.
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- Jun/14/22 4:26:32 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Mr. Speaker, I have to say that it has been entertaining to watch New Democrats, since March 22, contort themselves into a pretzel to support whatever the government introduces and to continue to import American politics into everything that is happening.
When someone commits a crime and is subsequently convicted of it, there is always a victim. I do not understand why the NDP claims to support victims, but then is so inconsistent when its support for the government is reliant on a bill that would do anything but.
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- Jun/14/22 4:28:14 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Mr. Speaker, Bill C-5 is a perfect example of the Liberals' backward approach to crime and justice. Liberals seem to believe that public safety means treating criminals like victims and treating law-abiding citizens like criminals. That is the reality of their soft-on-crime pattern. It is most obvious with gun crimes.
The Liberals implement a billion dollar confiscation of legally acquired firearms from lawful owners, hunters, farmers, collectors and sport shooters that the Toronto Police Service says is not an effective public safety measure, while Bill C-5 will get rid of mandatory jail times for gangsters and criminals who terrorize Canadian communities with drive-by shootings, robbery with guns and all kinds of existing gun crimes relating to illegal possession and trafficking, all crimes that, by the way, are skyrocketing in places like Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver under the Liberal government. Meanwhile, it would also allow for dangerous criminals to remain in communities among their victims instead of in prison where they belong.
Of course, the Liberals are limiting debate and pushing through this deeply flawed bill with time allocation. As our colleague, the MP for Barrie—Innisfil, said last week:
[O]nce again, we are privy to a front row seat to the decline in democracy. Bill C-5, the soft-on-crime bill, has gone through committee, and there have been thousands...of dissenting voices on this bill. There have been advocates and stakeholders, and there have been police chiefs and police forces across Canada that have spoken against this bill....
The minister claimed during committee hearings that Bill C-5“will have no negative impact on public safety and will not signal to the courts that the offences concerned are not serious.” The minister also often suggests that others have not read this legislation, but it appears he himself does not understand the consequences of the bill or he is being deliberately obtuse about it.
Here is the reality. Under Bill C-5, a victim of sexual assault or a victim of kidnapping will be more likely to have to be back at home or in the same neighbourhood with the very predator convicted of assaulting or traumatizing them in the first place. Drug manufacturers and traffickers do not have to worry about mandatory baseline jail sentences either. Between Bill C-5 and the Liberals' plans to decriminalize significant and dangerous amounts of fentanyl, the Liberals are keeping addicts as open prey for emboldened dealers who are already usually chronic repeat offenders. It just makes no sense.
How can the minister tell Canadians that public safety will be protected by Bill C-5? Law enforcement, victims advocates, policy experts have all spoken out against it precisely because it will undermine public safety.
At committee, the executive director of the London Abused Women's Centre said the conditional sentencing provisions of Bill C-5“put women at greater risk. It puts them in harm's way. It puts them in the communities where the offenders are going to be.”
The chief of the Brantford Police Service said, “With Bill C-5 we are now going to see sentencing become a joke. Victims will live in fear of gun violence and fearful of retaliation by armed criminals.” Importantly, Chief Davis is a Mohawk from the Six Nations of the Grand River territory where Brantford is and the only indigenous leader of a municipal police service in Ontario. Chief Davis has served more than half of his career in indigenous communities, with most of that time in Six Nations and also in Ontario's far north. He said, “Conditional sentences” as suggested by this Liberal government under Bill C-5 “clearly will not work.”
This serious warning is echoed by the president of the Association of the Chiefs of Police of Quebec. At committee he said, “For the public to maintain confidence in the justice system, criminals who commit serious crimes, particularly with firearms, must face serious consequences.”
The truth is in Canada right now, the entire system, from charges to release, is already set up to support and protect rights, rehabilitate and reintegrate offenders, however, usually not very effectively given the high rates of recidivism. I would note that the Liberals have taken no action on the private member's bill by the Conservative MP for Tobique—Mactaquac, which actually is about resources and new strategies to reduce recidivism. The truth is there is actually very little by way of institutionalized, systemic and ongoing support for victims who can never get past or pardoned or freed from what was done to them.
However, the Liberals seem to see nothing wrong with setting up even more conditions that would enable criminals to revictimize people who have already been harmed. The Liberals' mixed messages and contradictions on gun crime are particularly mind boggling. The Liberals talk a lot about cracking down, usually right after a tragic shooting that takes the lives of innocent victims and leaves loved ones and communities struggling with a lifetime of fear and grief. The truth is that over many years, the Liberals have failed to stem the tide of illegal weapons entering Canada to stop the rise in gun crimes which has actually escalated while they have been in government or to make communities safer.
There is a gun trafficking problem in Canada, but the Liberals, actually through Bill C-5, are going to lower penalties for it.
The Conservatives have always taken a more realistic approach to combatting gun crimes and to keeping communities safe. We would increase funding and coordination for border security to combat illegal smuggling, ensure a floor of jail time for violent gang members, and target gangs and criminals instead of making life more difficult for law-abiding firearms owners, retailers and the airsoft sector, by ending automatic bail, revoking parole for gang members and new and tougher sentences for ordering or involvement in violent gang crimes. These are the kinds of measures that can and do make streets and cities safer, not the Liberals' approach, which helps criminals get softer sentences while subjecting law-abiding Canadians to warrantless searches and confiscating legally acquired property.
I can understand the Liberals want to claim otherwise, but Bill C-5 will eliminate mandatory minimum jail time for many serious existing firearms offences, like robbery, extortion, trafficking, unauthorized importing or exporting and possession, discharging with intent, using guns for offences, possession of prohibited or restricted firearms with ammunition, possession of weapons through an offence, trafficking, and discharging a firearm with recklessness.
Stéphane Wall, the retired supervisor for Montreal's police service, stated:
[W]e see young people laughing at the justice system.... We are already in this situation.
The passage of Bill C-5 would lead to lower standards and trivialize the possession of firearms for a criminal purpose.
The chief of police of the Six Nations Police Service pleaded with MPs to, “consider the well-being not only of the people of Six Nations, but also of all indigenous communities on Turtle Island” with regard to Bill C-5. He also stated, “We deserve to feel safe and, more importantly, our children deserve to grow up in a community free from violence”, which is exactly what indigenous leaders and constituents in Lakeland have said to me, but the Liberals are ignoring him and all of them.
The Liberals also often claim Bill C-5 will assist people struggling with substance abuse to get the help they need. Conservatives believe addicts should receive treatment, and with the discretion of law enforcement to decide between charges and recommendations for treatment or options in sentencing, as already exists with, for example, the Edmonton drug court, but that is not what Bill C-5 is about. The bill will eliminate mandatory jail time for convictions of trafficking or possession for the purpose of trafficking several types of illegal drugs. It will let drug manufacturers and traffickers off the hook, while Liberals have the gall to suggest it will help people get the treatment they need. Actually, the Liberals are great for dealers, but bad for addicts.
One of the more perverse aspects of Bill C-5 is it enables the greater use of conditional sentences like house arrest for extremely serious offences, such as prison breach, criminal harassment, sexual assault, kidnapping, human trafficking, abduction of kids under 14, thefts, breaking and entering, being unlawfully in someone's house, arson, fraud, causing bodily harm by criminal negligence, assault causing bodily harm or with a weapon, and assaulting a peace officer causing bodily harm or with a weapon. These are not minor offences. They are major or permanently damaging and traumatizing crimes for which I know the vast majority of people in Lakeland believe convicted offenders should be in prison where they belong with an automatic mandatory minimum penalty, not out on the streets or back at home where they can revictimize their targets or harm others.
Law-abiding Canadians, victims of crime and their loved ones deserve to live freely and without fear. Government must ensure the laws and systems deliver justice for victims, real consequences for offenders and deter criminal activity. The only thing worse I think than a government that fails in this core duty is one that promotes conditions that will ultimately lead to and frankly guarantee that violent criminals will strike again.
Bill C-5 will not do anything to make Canadians safer. It will put victims of crime and innocent Canadians in harm's way. It ignores the rights of victims completely. All of this and more is why Conservatives, and certainly the vast majority of people in Lakeland who I represent, oppose it.
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- Jun/14/22 4:42:08 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Mr. Speaker, the member raises an interesting point on which to challenge the Liberals for another one of their chief premises of this bill. The Liberals could have taken the approach to have some sort of exceptional circumstances provision where judges, in certain factors or cases, would have the ability to choose something other than the mandatory minimum, while maintaining mandatory minimum penalties for serious crimes. They are not doing that in Bill C-5, either.
The brass tacks are that Conservatives believe there should be stronger, stiffer and tougher sentences for all crimes, including and especially gun crimes, which are terrorizing the streets of cities across the country, and real action against gangsters who do not follow the laws already, and who traffic and trade in illegal gun smuggling, which is a major source of gun crime in this country.
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- Jun/14/22 5:11:45 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Mr. Speaker, this bill and this government have consistently been painted by the Conservatives as being soft on crime. I would like to ask my hon. colleague whether all mandatory minimums are being repealed or only a subset. If it is a subset, why that subset?
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