44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 21, 2022 10:00AM
- Jun/21/22 12:58:44 p.m.
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Questions and comments, the hon. member for Longueuil—Saint-Hubert.
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Madam Speaker, I want to speak to the democrat and parliamentarian in my colleague and ask him whether he is not a bit embarrassed about the sad spectacle Canadians have been seeing in the House over the past several months. I am talking about the constant stream of closure motions on essential bills that will change Canadians' lives.
Since he has served in the House in previous Parliaments and has even served in provincial legislatures, is my colleague not a little upset about the absolutely degrading spectacle we have been seeing here in recent months?
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Madam Speaker, when Stephen Harper was the Prime Minister, I sat almost exactly where the member opposite is sitting in the third party, and even in the third party, I made it very clear that at times there is a need to bring in time allocation. When we do not have any sense of co-operation coming from opposition parties, we have to bring in time allocation as a tool. It is unfortunate.
It would be wonderful if there was more of a consensus on the programming that takes place so that it allows for legislation or opposition days. We see that today on private members' bills, we see that today on opposition day motions and we see that through emergency debates. There are limitations. It means that for the bills that are really controversial, we can maybe have more debate time, and for the bills that are not as controversial that everyone supports, maybe we do not need as much debate time. We need to recognize that there is only so much time in a day, in a week and in a year, and that is something the Conservatives fail to recognize.
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Uqaqtittiji, during the 2019 election, the member's party promised to make sure that the CBSA had the resources it needed to detect and stop the flow of weapons at our borders.
Why has the Liberal government not restored the more than 1,000 positions cut by previous Conservative governments, which are required to stop the flow of weapons at the Canada-U.S. border?
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Madam Speaker, we realized that the Stephen Harper government did in fact make serious cuts, and as a result, it weakened our borders. We have invested heavily in borders virtually from the very beginning, recognizing that illegal weapons are a very serious issue. We will continue to look at ways to minimize illegal weapons coming into Canada.
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Madam Speaker, I am very proud to rise in this House today, especially following my illustrious colleague, who never seems to run out of words and manages to fill the time slot all the time.
I represent a riding that, like many others in a large urban centre like Toronto, has a tendency to have a lot of violence, and the majority of that violence is gun violence, so I am very pleased that Bill C-21 is on the table.
The part that bothers me about Bill C-21 is the fact that we will not get it to committee and back before the House rises. I, and some of my colleagues, would have been more than happy to remain until the middle of July or the end of July to pass this bill, but it takes consent to do that, which was not available. We will get the bill as far as we can in this session, and as soon as we come back in the fall, I hope this will be the first item the committee deals with, understanding its importance. I wonder how many more lives could have been saved had we been able to get the bill through, but there are a lot of things that governments do, and there is a lot of legislation that is important. I am glad that we finally got as far as we have. Let us hit the ball home and get this through committee and back to the House.
We have a very close relationship with our neighbours to the south. Clearly, whenever we see what is going on there, we know it is going to happen here. It is just the way it is. We are a smaller country, and these things tend to be exposed later, but we follow the U.S. in so many ways.
I think I speak for all of us as parliamentarians when I say that we are sick and tired of turning on the news and feeling heartbroken at yet another act of gun violence. The common response from all of us as elected officials is to send our thoughts and prayers. However, as time goes on and these instances of violence continue to occur, the overwhelming response is that thoughts and prayers accomplish nothing and that we need action. I have been hearing this in my community for the 30 years that I have been elected to office, and several members of my own family have been victims of gun violence. We have been waiting and pushing and asking when we are going to get tougher on illegal handguns.
This is certainly not about hunters, God bless them, who can go right ahead and do their hunting. I have family who hunt deer, moose and all of that, as well. That is not what we are talking about with this bill. We are talking about gun violence, handguns. That is what is doing the killing in my riding and throughout the city of Toronto.
Last Sunday afternoon, there were four separate incidents of gun violence. Thank God, none of it was in my riding, which is always my first thought, selfish as it is. It was in other parts of our city, but there is a lot of it. This bill is just one more tool that we have in the tool box. It will not do everything we want it to do, but at least it tries to address the number of guns that are flowing. There was a shooting yesterday from a car window, which missed the person evidently, but again, this is becoming just like in the U.S. Whatever we can do as parliamentarians here, and whatever our government has the courage to move forward on to try to tackle this issue, is what we are elected to do. We are elected to deal with the tough issues, and this is one of them.
I am very proud of the government, and while some may have wanted this legislation later, I would have liked to see it sooner. I am tired of responding with thoughts and prayers, of saying “I feel sorry for you.” I am sorry for the families who have gone through this and yes, I will do what I can, but we do not do enough. Frankly, I do not know what is enough, but this is at least another step forward, which is why I wanted to make sure I had an opportunity to say some words today.
Since 2015, when our Liberal government came in, we have banned AR-15s and 1,500 models of assault-style firearms. These kinds of weapons do not belong in the homes or on the streets of this country, or any country, unless they are in a war, as in Russia or in Ukraine, but there is no reason for them to be needed on the streets of this country of ours.
Cracking down on illegal trafficking by investing in law enforcement and enhanced border security is another key part of it, because it seems that no matter how much more security we get at the borders, somehow the guns are getting smuggled in. They are coming from somewhere. We are not manufacturing all of these handguns here, so they are coming across borders and we are not doing enough to prevent that from happening. I know we have put millions more into CBSA, and here and there, but it never seems to be enough. This is, again, one more step to try to decrease the number of guns on our streets.
The other issue is, why do we have so much gang violence? In my riding, as in others, I deal with a lot of families that have had tremendous trouble, and we need to look at the root cause of why they would pick up a gun and decide to take somebody else's life. In a round-table session I had a few years ago with young men and women, I questioned them and said, “You know who these people are on the street. Why would you not discourage them from using a gun?” They said, “Why? You don't value my life, so I don't value your life.” I never forgot that statement, because I do value their life, but they do not seem to think that we as a society value their lives. That is important because people need to understand that every life is valuable. Every life matters to all of us, but to think “I don't care about you because you don't care about me” leaves a real challenge.
Since I had that conversation, I have gone out of my way, to the extent possible, as an elected official to make sure that the people in my riding and everywhere else know that we do care and we are trying to help them, but they have to help themselves. This is not a one-way street, where we are out doing everything for them and they are waiting to see what we are going to give them. It takes all of us working together. If people are having issues, they should talk to somebody, reach out and get the help they need, just not think that their life does not matter.
The ability to trace guns is another issue we have talked about for some time, looking at how to better identify where those guns have come from. The red flag laws are another important thing that should have been on the books a long time ago. It is really important.
I have to thank my staff for putting a speech together that somehow I never got to.
I am proud that the government is doing this. We all need to work harder at decreasing gun violence in a variety of ways. This is one more tool in the tool box, and we owe it to the people who have sent us here to reflect their views and thoughts and do what is necessary to decrease gun violence. I hope we get this to committee soon, make some changes and improvements to it and move forward together on this legislation.
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Madam Speaker, the member talked about military-style assault rifles. Could she provide me with the definition of what a military-style assault rifle is? She mentioned the AR-15s, which were banned by the order in council of May 1, 2020. Could the member please let the House know how many crimes have been committed in the history of Canada with AR-15s?
The member talked about reducing gun violence. We have 100% agreement in the House that we all want to reduce gun violence. Could she tell me about the metrics within Bill C-21, specifically around handguns, that are going to do that, considering that all restricted firearms and handguns are registered so that the police are able to track exactly how many crimes have been committed? How many crimes have been committed with legal handguns?
Finally, the member talked about red flag laws. Would she admit that we currently have red flag laws in our legislation that help prevent this?
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Madam Speaker, unfortunately, whatever happens to the south of us ends up being duplicated here in Canada, whether it is a month later, six months later or two years later. When we look at the killings and those mass shootings in the schools, when there are 19 babies killed, those were not done with a handgun. We have already banned some of those, but the handguns we are talking about are the illegal handguns.
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Madam Speaker, the member spoke about people needing to take responsibility when referring to gang violence, about people helping themselves and about people caring.
I want to point to something very specific, indigenous women. Thousands have gone missing and been murdered. They are 12 times more likely to experience violence. We know all the stats. They are 4.5 times more likely to go missing or be murdered. This is not a feeling. This is an actual genocide that is occurring in this country. I found it a little out of touch and was a little put off by this kind of history, which the member acknowledged, of incremental justice, particularly when we are talking about femicide, which is most often experienced by indigenous women.
Why does the hon. member continue to have those views, knowing that her government has performed incremental justice that has cost the lives of indigenous women? I found it a bit callous and insensitive, and certainly not consistent with research and facts, and actually with positions that her own government—
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- Jun/21/22 1:14:09 p.m.
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I have to give the hon. member the opportunity to answer.
The hon. member for Humber River—Black Creek.
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Madam Speaker, I want to acknowledge the continued great work that the member is doing as a member of Parliament.
I was very focused on so many people in my particular riding who have been asking for such a long period of time for more to be done to eliminate handguns in our communities. If we did an analysis, we would probably find that one in four is carrying a gun in my riding of Humber River—Black Creek. That is very frightening. People are asking for action.
In the same way, we are moving forward and taking more action to protect more indigenous women, as well as all women in Canada. Indigenous women have certainly experienced a lot of sorrow and violence, and we are looking at trying to eliminate that as well.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech and her testimony, knowing that members of her family have been affected by gun violence. The fact is that there are one million handguns circulating in Canada. That number increases by 55,000 every year.
What are my colleague's thoughts on the Bloc Québécois's proposal to create an optional handgun buyback program?
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Madam Speaker, when it gets referred to committee in the immediate future, there will be an opportunity at the committee level to discuss all the options on the table, including the issue of buyback.
Whatever we can do to get guns off the street is something I am very supportive of.
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Madam Speaker, I am always grateful to stand up and represent my constituents of Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound. However, in this case, I am representing all legal firearms owners, our law enforcement, our military, our security forces around the country and even our Parliamentary Protective Service. I challenge every MP to talk to them and ask their opinions about this bill, as well as to get the opinions of sport shooters, hunters and the vast majority of my constituents in Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound.
I am disappointed that we are already curtailing debate on this important bill, especially considering that we have only had seven Conservative MPs speak to it, and that was only because we split our time.
On that note, I will be splitting my time with the member for Brandon—Souris.
I am going to focus on three key aspects in my speech. Number one is data and facts, number two is openness, transparency and honesty, and finally, number three is respect. The key to all of this, and the key to reducing gun violence in Canada, is education.
Let me speak first to the data and the facts. I asked the previous member speaking to define military-style assault rifles, which is a question I have been asking the government for almost three years now. The definition does not exist. I asked that question in a written submission to the government, and its response was to please check a commissioned report by Hill+Knowlton Strategies. If we read that report, do we know what it says? The government really needs to define what it means by assault rifles or military-style assault rifles. A definition still does not exist, and that adds to the confusion so many Canadians face when we are trying to deal with the important issue of reducing gun violence across Canada.
I am going to go back to the original, key piece of legislation in the past couple of years. It was from the last Parliament around the order in council that banned 1,500 so-called military-style assault rifles. In that document, there was actually no definition or criteria for what determines or establishes what is a military-style assault rifle. When I asked what criteria were used, I was told there were none.
The government used three principles. Number one is that the guns are semi-automatic in nature, with a high sustained rate of fire. That statement is a contradiction. If it is semi-automatic, the rate of fire is controlled by the shooter and not by the firearm, so whether someone has a slow finger or a fast finger determines whether a firearm should be prohibited or not. It does not even make logical sense.
The second principle the government used is that the firearms are of modern design. I asked what was meant by modern design. That means post-World War II. If the firearm was designed post the Second World War, we should be banning it.
Number three is that they exist in large quantities in Canada. Again, this does not pass the common sense test. Let us take firearm x as an example. There are 100,000 of them in Canada that have been used in zero gun crimes. Let us ban it. With firearm z, let us say there are only 10 of them in Canada and all 10 have been used in firearms crimes. It is good to go and will not be banned. Again, there is no logic behind the principles, and there are no criteria to determine that list.
I have been asking for evidence and data that support any of the firearms legislation the current Liberal government has brought forward. I submitted a written question to the government asking for any evidence or metrics behind how the government thinks any of this legislation is actually going to reduce gun violence. I received a response on January 29, 2020, that would only take me 30 seconds to read out. There is no evidence or metrics on how this is going to reduce gun violence in Canada.
The member for Winnipeg North stood and said that this has been broadly consulted on. It has not been consulted on in my riding. In the previous Parliament, the minister of public safety at the time came to my community and talked about Bill C-71 from the 42nd Parliament. I can guarantee he walked out of there and there was not a single person who talked to the minister during that consultation session who supported Bill C-71.
I will go back to my point around data. Where is the data that shows legal firearms owners are responsible for gun crime in Canada? I talked about education. I spent 25 years in uniform carrying all sorts of restricted and prohibited firearms, because I could as a member of the Canadian Armed Forces. I was an infantry officer. I walked around with a fully automatic firearm. That is what assault weapons are: fully automatic. They have been banned in Canada since 1977. During my last two deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq, I walked around everywhere with a handgun. Handguns do not kill people; people kill people.
To get to the point about education, despite all that, when I got out of uniform and became a civilian, I had to get a possession and acquisition licence and a restricted possession and acquisition licence, a PAL and an RPAL, in order to potentially buy a firearm or a restricted firearm. Those courses are extensive. Did I learn a lot about safety on those specific firearms? No. I was safe and had no problem passing the practical portions of both of those courses, but I did learn a lot about our laws. As I suggested in the last Parliament, it would benefit every member who wants to sit here and debate firearms legislation to do the PAL or the RPAL course because it would teach them a lot about our very restrictive firearms laws that currently exist in Canada.
To continue on education, when I was door knocking in 2019, I heard similar concerns that have been addressed by other members during the debate about why anybody would need that firearm. I was shown a picture from a Cabela's magazine or some other magazine that someone had received in the mail, and they asked me why anybody would need that. I looked at it and compared it with another firearm in the brochure. I pointed to the firearm that they thought was so scary and said I would walk 200 metres down the street and stand there. They could shoot at me all they wanted and I would not even move.
I asked if another firearm was okay, and they said yes. It was just a hunting rifle. I said that if I stood another few hundred metres away, as soon as someone started shooting at me with that firearm, I would take cover. Again, it is the lack of education in understanding firearms. Just because they look scary does not mean they are more dangerous. It is based on their capabilities and criteria.
I asked the minister, when he first introduced Bill C-21 in the House last week, about handguns in particular. As I mentioned earlier in my speech, handguns are restricted and they are registered. I asked a simple question about how easy it is for law enforcement to track how many gun crimes in Canada have been committed by legal firearms owners with legal handguns. He refused to answer that question. It was the same question I had asked his officials the week prior during the technical briefing. Again, I ask that they please get us the data. It would help so much.
I would point out that restricted firearms owners are the most law-abiding demographic in Canada. In fact, they are three times less likely to commit a crime than the average Canadian. I would argue, it is even less likely than that for the majority of the Liberal caucus.
Openness and transparency are key around all of this. Let us debate this. Everybody wants to reduce gun violence in Canada, but we need to do that based on data, based on evidence and based on statistics. Law enforcement demands this. One of the things that a lot of Canadians do not understand is that our law enforcement and security forces depend on these restricted firearms for their own safety and training. They do not get the time on the range to do this, so a lot of legal firearms owners are in law enforcement who own these firearms on their own. I get that Bill C-21, specifically on handguns, says that they would still be able to own them, but let us remove the politicization around this and talk about what is important to solve this.
My final point is on respect and trust. Let us respect parliamentarians in the House, let us respect legal firearms owners and, most of all, let us respect Canadians by talking about the real key facts.
In conclusion, there are data and facts, openness and transparency, and respect and trust. Let us educate Canadians on the root causes of gun violence in Canada, i.e., crime, drugs, the illegal trafficking of firearms and, most importantly, poverty instead of going after law-abiding Canadians.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to pick up on some of the closing comments from the member. He said that we should respect parliamentarians, respect the process and respect Parliament. We would not know that, coming from the way the member and his colleagues have been acting in the House over the past several months. They are refusing to let the bills they supported in their election platform go through the House.
The member talked about the limited amount of time people have had to speak to the bill. Has he had the opportunity to reflect on how much more time he would have had if the Conservatives had not been playing procedural games and delaying bills such as the fall economic statement to provide more supports to Canadians? Had they actually let that stuff go through as it should have, fairly easily, he would have had so much more time to speak to this and other bills that the Conservatives are genuinely passionate about.
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Madam Speaker, I am not going to even provide a dignified response to that. The fact of the matter is that every member of Parliament should be able to speak to every bill at every stage, if it means something to their constituents. That is why we are here: to represent our constituents, whether we are Conservative members of Parliament or Liberal backbenchers. It would be nice if that member or the member for Winnipeg North would let somebody else in the Liberal caucus speak.
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Madam Speaker, I rise on a question of privilege. What is the member implying when he says that I am not allowing other people to speak? Is he suggesting that I am suspending other people's democratic opportunities? He is implying that I am suppressing other people's ability to speak—
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- Jun/21/22 1:28:08 p.m.
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Indeed, we should not, in any way, make those kinds of accusations. I would invite the hon. member to perhaps reflect on his comments. We should not be assigning intentions to other members. I would really appreciate it if the hon. member would withdraw the comment.
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Madam Speaker, I withdraw that comment.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. He knows I love him. We were on a 12-day mission together not long ago and I had a great time. We had some great discussions, but we could not get away from debating guns. We disagree, and that is just the way it is.
I would like to know what he thinks about the Bloc Québécois's proposal to create a list of groups in our cities that stir up trouble with shootings all over the place. We would like to have a list of these groups, like the one we already have for terrorist organizations.
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