44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 21, 2022 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise in this place to speak to Bill C-21. I am going to try to deal with a number of complex issues in a short amount of time and hope it works.
It relates to Bill C-21, and that is the use of firearms. I want to comment on some of the discussion during question period about the Portapique shootings. I think it is important to reflect on what I take away from the news media at this time, when I have a moment to say it. There is no chance of interrupting question period to put it into perspective.
As a Nova Scotian originally, I was devastated, as we all were, by the shootings at Portapique. The RCMP officer who was killed, Heidi Stevenson, was a friend of mine and I know her mother well.
It was awful to watch what happened. We will see what the Mass Casualty Commission produces as a result, but it is pretty clear to me, and I want to speak clearly to this, that the RCMP in Nova Scotia failed the public badly. I know a commission is looking at this, but the RCMP had information that was not shared. It failed to put out a warning and 22 people were killed. I know this inquiry is very important to all the families who lost loved ones.
There appears to me to have been an uncalled-for assumption by some members in question period, who put into question the integrity of the Minister of Public Safety and the Prime Minister's Office. I am not an apologist for the Liberals, but I thought that was not what the evidence revealed. When I look at the CBC reports of what they found out, it appears to me that in the aftermath of the shooting, the Nova Scotia RCMP was all too quick to try to obscure facts from the public, rather than reveal them.
It appears to me that the RCMP commissioner, Brenda Lucki, provided more transparency and provided real information. If anyone in PMO instructed her anything, it seems to me that it would have been to tell everybody what has happened and just be transparent. I am very concerned that we let any false rumours or assumptions to besmirch the reputations of others, including Brenda Lucki, be spread in this place.
It appears to me, as in a number of other shooting incidents, that sometimes the police get it wrong. They did not move in Uvalde, Texas, when they should have, to save those children. There is a common denominator that I discern, which is that when the RCMP is slow to move or the police are slow to move, it is because the people they would have to deal with are heavily armed. I do not find the police slow to move against unarmed protesters. I do not find the police slow to move against indigenous people. However, they delay when they are at risk for their own safety, all too often. It is not always, but all too often.
In the case of the Nova Scotia shooter, we know his name. I do not want to repeat it, because of the crimes he committed. However, he was well known to the RCMP and in the early hours after the shooting, the Nova Scotia RCMP, not the commissioner, put out false statements that he was not known to them. He was known personally to them. They had warnings about him.
This goes to make the bridge and the connection to Bill C-21. This goes to a number of the provisions of Bill C-21 that, if Bill C-21 had been law at that time, could have saved lives. The neighbours of the multiple shooter in Nova Scotia, and we can just call him the evil dentist for the time being, reported him to the RCMP on numerous occasions, but no action was taken. Neighbours were so frightened of him that they literally sold their dream home and moved away, yet nothing was done to even conduct a search of the property or even to inquire why he is buying a car that looks just like an RCMP vehicle. Why does he dress up like an RCMP officer? These details were known in the community, and a number of them were reported to law enforcement authorities.
Could this bill have made a difference? I think it could have, but only if the RCMP or local police are prepared to use the information that comes to them. That is why one of the provisions in this bill that I particularly like is the ability to seek an ex parte motion on the strength of concerns from people who are concerned that some person may be threatening others, not just with firearms, by the way, but with crossbows or with explosive substances. This is really important. This is found under “Application for emergency prohibition order” in clause 4 of this bill, which would amend section 110 of the Firearms Act.
It is really important that we recognize what an ex parte order is. That means that people can go to the court without notifying the person they are scared of that they are going to court, and there can be an emergency search and seizure without a warrant. This violates every instinct of my being, searches without warrants, because I am a civil liberties lawyer, but there is a history of violence by people in the community, people we know.
There is a lot about this law that I hope we will have time to study thoroughly, and I want to speak to that. There are the red flag and yellow flag provisions, the ability to go to a judge without fear of retribution from someone who is well armed or who has crossbows. It may be in cases, as we know all too frequently, of intimate partner violence. It may be in cases of the random and reckless killing of others, as in the case of Portapique or the desperately sad case of Lionel Desmond, who killed his wife and mother and kids. He was, of course, suffering from PTSD from his service in our armed forces and did not get the help he needed, even though he had gone to a hospital the day before. There are many and varied circumstances when the presence of firearms in a home makes the difference between life and death, and where the provisions in Bill C-21 would indeed, I hope, save lives.
I want to turn to a process question at this point: Why rush this bill? I am very concerned that we just invoked time allocation on a bill that we had only had before us for debate for three hours. This bill is complex. It has many moving parts. The government itself has changed its views on key aspects of this bill between its version last year, which was also Bill C-21, and its version this year, which is the current Bill C-21. The Liberals changed their minds, and wisely, on the question of voluntary versus mandatory buyback. They changed their minds, wisely, on the question of any jurisdiction other than the federal government regulating guns. Those were wise choices, and this bill has changed in that way.
Bills get better when they are studied. Any attempt to achieve consensus will improve a bill. A decision on the government side that the Conservatives are only going to obstruct and delay and filibuster is entirely a justified conclusion, given conduct so far in this Parliament, but that does not excuse shortening the time for debate, shortening the time for study and shortening the time to try to find consensus in this place, which is possible.
I want to put forward some of the things that would help achieve consensus. One is to observe the rules, which are our rules. It does not take changing the Standing Orders to ban the practice of reading a speech. How does that connect? When a whip or a House leader in a party knows that they can rally however many MPs they have, like cannon fodder, and give them a speech to deliver in 10 minutes, they can clog up the works of this place with people giving speeches.
If the rules prohibited members from reading a speech and required them to express their thoughts in their own words, there would be fewer members rising to speak during a debate on a bill.
We need to get control of this so that we can have real debate among fewer MPs, because fewer MPs would be able to stand up and speak without a written speech.
The next thing we need to do is consider how many days we sit in this place. We have this panic this time of year, every year, as though a disaster will strike if we do not adjourn on a day that is set. We could sit for more days. We sit for far fewer days than the U.S. Congress, and even fewer days than the British Parliament.
I voted against time allocation, because this is a complicated bill and we should take the time it needs, to respect each other and come up with the best bill.
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Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise on behalf of the citizens of Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo.
I will look directly at the member and say that on this side of the House, we care about gun crime. I spent three years of my life invested in doing everything I could with respect to my job when it came to gun crime, and I believe that my colleagues share that same sentiment. We do not want to see another shooting.
My question is twofold. First off, I am sorry, as I noted the hon. member spoke about the people in his life who have been impacted by gun crime. That is horrible and we do not want to see it. However, the member cited a number of cases, and I am wondering if he knows whether the guns used were legally or illegally obtained, and why we are not going after illegal guns in Bill C-21. Second, how does he reconcile this speech with the fact that we have lowered sentences with conditional sentence orders in Bill C-5?
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Mr. Speaker, normally I would say it is a pleasure to rise to speak in the House, but I find it a little challenging when it is concerning Bill C-21.
In my former life, I was the mayor of a small city in Saskatchewan. One of my many roles as mayor was being the chair of the police commission. I have witnessed first-hand the full spectrum between responsible firearms owners and gang members. I am no stranger to competitive shooting or understanding the importance of the safe use of firearms. As a young boy, I won top shot numerous times in Air Cadets, and I was second in my platoon in basic officer training in Saint-Jean, Quebec. I credit this to my grandfather, who was a sniper in the offensive during World War II.
I personally know several people, and those from organizations, who are all responsible firearms owners who promote firearms safety. Today we are in the House to debate an example of the government doing something just to say it is doing something. This is something it has tremendous experience in. It is as though it legislates to generate good talking points instead of good policy. There is an old saying: “Walk around. Carry a clipboard, and look busy.” This is exactly what the government is doing: looking busy and accomplishing nothing.
As everyone watching likely knows, Bill C-21 is the Liberal government's latest attack on responsible Canadian firearms owners, another band-aid solution, another policy that would punish people instead of helping them. The government has had a habit of punishing people or industries for ideological reasons. I can name any number of examples: its carbon tax, warning labels on ground beef and, today, this attack on lawful firearms owners.
The NDP-Liberal government does not think people should hunt. It does not think farmers need firearms as tools. It does not think target shooting is a legitimate sport. The government simply does not believe anyone should own a gun. In short, it does not understand rural Canada. It is attacking us and our way of life.
Today I would like to spend some time talking about one of the aspects of this bill that has received the most attention and the most press: the handgun. Licensed handgun owners in Canada are responsible owners. For my Liberal colleagues across the aisle, who likely do not know the process but think they are experts, I would like to share with the House the lengthy process to obtain a handgun in Canada.
First, people need to go through the process to get their PAL. Again for my Liberal colleagues, that stands for a possession and acquisition licence. That involves taking the firearm safety course, passing the test and, finally, filling out the application forms and going through the needed background checks. To obtain a licence for a handgun, people also need to pass an additional safety course, which is the Canadian restricted firearm safety course. They must register the handgun and follow special storage, display, transportation and handling requirements. They may not carry the firearms on their person, they may only use them for target shooting or collecting. They may only be used at approved ranges, and one would likely need to be members in good standing at said ranges, which would come with its own background check.
After going through all these steps, it is not hard to see why handgun owners are so responsible. The cost and time to go through this process alone would deter anyone from breaking any of these rules. The question I have for my NDP-Liberal colleagues is this: What would a handgun ban accomplish that these strict rules do not already accomplish?
We all know that Canada's largest cities are experiencing a surge in gun violence. That is something that needs to be fixed, and fixed quickly, but it is not something this bill would do anything to address.
The government has never even tried to address the reasons people join gangs. Youth do it out of a sense of hopelessness and a lack of belonging. Hopelessness is created by not having a sense of responsibility. Who would when a government tries to bubble-wrap people and make decisions for them in almost every aspect of their lives?
What we want are responsible citizens who make decisions for themselves, who understand that for every decision a person makes, there is a consequence and sometimes an unintended consequence. For every decision someone makes, they have a choice between doing something good or something bad. They can either contribute to society and help their fellow man or take away from society and tear down their fellow man. What needs to be instilled in this country and future generations is a sense of responsibility, a sense of belonging and clear examples of the differences between right and wrong.
The gangs our youth are joining that commit these shootings are not using legal, registered firearms. They are using handguns smuggled over the border. Our border agency, the CBSA, needs more resources to tackle this problem. That is something that this bill, Bill C-21, falls well short of.
Recently, the public safety committee tabled its guns and gangs report, which included several recommendations to tackle gun violence in Canada, recommendations that seem to have been totally ignored in drafting this bill. It included recommendations such as creating a program to tour young offenders through penitentiaries; maintaining mandatory minimum sentences for drug and firearm-related crimes; removing the expensive firearm buyback program and allocating the money to gang prevention programs; adequately funding indigenous police forces to combat gangs and gun smuggling; and that the government actually recognize that the majority of illegal firearms in Canada are the result of smuggling.
If the NDP-Liberals were more interested in developing good policy instead of good talking points, they would have paid attention to the committee's important work. Sadly, this has not been the case.
Bill C-21 is not only short on resources for the the CBSA, but also for the RCMP. I have a constituent who has been trying, as a responsible gun owner, to contact the RCMP to register a handgun so that they are aware before the deadline. There are absolutely no resources in the RCMP to handle this influx of requests caused by the government's announcement. I have spoken to this man personally and he is very concerned. He is very concerned because he is a responsible gun owner and he wants to do the right thing, but he cannot accomplish that because of the limited resources the government has allocated to allow him to follow the rules.
As I mentioned before, I can say with near certainty that the gang members in downtown Toronto are not graduates of a restricted firearms safety course. I talked earlier about carrying a clipboard and looking busy. The government is very good at introducing legislation that does very little and simply virtue signals to their base. That is exactly what Bill C-21 is doing, virtue signalling to their base at the expense of Saskatchewan and all of rural Canada.
Finally, this being my last chance to speak before we will rise for the summer, I would like to take this chance to thank the pages, interpreters, security, IT staff and everyone else who keeps this place running. I wish them a well-deserved summer.
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Mr. Speaker, there are two important groups that support this bill.
The first is PolyRemembers, which was founded after the shooting at École polytechnique in Montreal in 1989, where 14 young women were killed. The other represents survivors of the Quebec City mosque, who also applauded the bill. That should count for a lot when we are making a decision.
There have been other shootings in Canada, and I am not sure if other groups support this bill. In Quebec, it is clear that the bill has the support of these groups. Does the fact that these people applaud the bill and want it passed count for anything for my colleague?
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