SoVote

Feb/2/23 10:24:24 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I do not know if the member from Winnipeg spent any time speaking with police, but my remarks are fuelled by facts and police officers I have spoken to in Winnipeg and across the country. If he does not believe me, we can talk about Stats Canada. I do believe he believes in the institutions and the researchers in government, so I am going to assume he is going to take me at face value, but I am happy to share this with him afterwards. In the 10 years Stephen Harper was Prime Minister, there was a decrease of 25.86% in crime per capita. A 26% decrease is a statistical fact. In those same stats, one can see a 32% increase in violent crimes since the member's leader has been Prime Minister. Those are the facts. The women who are concerned about riding public transit in Toronto, I do not think it is all in their head. Perhaps he does, but the stats show they are more at risk today than eight years ago, before the Liberal Prime Minister brought in all of his soft-on-crime policies and ensured that violent repeat offenders were let out on bail in our communities. We will stand up for them, unlike the Liberals.

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Context: House Hansard - 152 - Feb/2/23

Hon. David Lametti

Feb/2/23 10:55:30 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the hon. member's question comes from a very sincere place. First of all, with respect to what is happening in Toronto, certainly his assessment of it is similar to the assessments I have heard, which is that there is a real problem with homelessness and mental health and mental health supports. This is exacerbated by cold snaps in the winter, which make the subway system an ideal place to get warm, and other things happen. We are working on that with the provinces. I can assure him we do have that goal in mind, to work with the provinces to improve that situation. With respect to his question on bail, we will work with members of the House. I am looking at the hon. member from Sooke as well. We will work to look at good-faith attempts to reform the bail system. We know there have been issues. We have been well aware of these issues. We are working with other governments and will certainly work with parliamentarians in this place.

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Context: House Hansard - 152 - Feb/2/23

Hon. Pierre Poilievre (Leader of the Opposition, CPC)

Feb/2/23 12:07:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, after eight years of the Prime Minister, everything feels broken. After eight years, we have half of Canadians cutting back on groceries and 20% of them skipping meals because the Prime Minister's carbon tax, with the help of the NDP, has made food prices unaffordable. After eight years, Bloomberg says we have the fifth-worst housing bubble on planet earth as a nation, and Toronto, according to UBS, is the most overpriced housing market in the world. After eight years of the Prime Minister, rent for the average apartment has gone from $1,000 to $2,000, and the average mortgage payment, from $1,500 to well over $3,000. People's finances feel broken after eight years. What else is broken? It is our laws, literally broken. Our violent crime laws have been broken 32% more than when the Prime Minister took office eight years ago. There are major parts of our cities that have turned into crime zones after eight years of the Prime Minister. We see this not just in the staggering anecdotes of people being hit in the face with ice picks on transit stations or doused in flammable liquids and lit aflame. We see it in the random attacks on strangers on the streets of Vancouver and Toronto. We see it in the half-dozen police officers murdered, in some cases by multiple offenders who were out on early bail, because after eight years of the Prime Minister bail has become easier and more automatic to get for the violent offenders who do the most crime. When we speak up against this broken bail system that the Liberals have created, they respond with their typical divide-and-distract. They attempt to convince people to be afraid of the solution rather than solving the problem. They claim that Conservatives want to bring in some kind of Dickensian system of criminal justice, which is actually false. Our approach has not only been tough on the repeat violent offenders, but it has been smart, and now we can all say, having looked at the data, it has been proven right. Let us look at the data. Actually, before we look at the data, I want to talk about the general principle that guides our approach to criminal justice. Contrary to the false rhetoric of the Liberals and the NDP, and the dishonest reporting from the CBC and other Liberal outlets, our approach narrowly targets the most violent, dangerous offenders. We agree that long criminal sentences are not helpful for a young person who makes a small mistake and wants to start over and rebuild their life. We believe that a young person making such a mistake should get rehabilitation and support. Also contrary to the false and dishonest reporting of the Liberal media, we do not believe that someone who is suffering from a drug addiction should go to prison; we believe they should go to treatment, something that is not happening today. We believe those who prey upon drug addicts should pay the real penalties and not the addicts themselves. Finally, we believe that the government, instead of flooding our communities with dangerous and lethal drugs, should put our resources into recovery and treatment, as the Alberta government has done with great success in bringing down the overdose deaths that have afflicted people right across this country. We see the alternative in British Columbia, where there has been a 300% increase in drug overdose deaths since the Prime Minister took office eight years ago. His and the NDP's approach in that province has been a disaster. It has created a living hell in certain communities throughout Vancouver, where addicts lie face down on the pavement, live permanently in encampments, and six people die every single day from overdoses. That is the empirical evidence about the approach the Liberal government has taken. It is time to rescue our brothers and sisters, our friends and neighbours, to help them: yes, with the medications that reduce the symptoms of withdrawal, and yes, with the medications that reverse overdoses, but also with recovery and treatment and not by flooding our communities with drugs. That has not worked and that is not the way to go. Now, on to violent offences, there were two different approaches. Conservatives believe that the most violent repeat offenders should serve longer sentences. This is the approach we took when we were in government, which led to both a reduction in crime and, interestingly, a reduction in incarceration numbers. Let us look at the data on the first point. When the Conservative government left office, there were 382,000 violent crimes, obviously too many, and that was in the year 2015, but that has risen now, after eight years of the Prime Minister, to over 500,000 violent crimes, an increase of 32%. Now, one might assume, listening to the rhetoric from the far-left media, that this is because everyone went to jail. Well, that is false, actually. During the previous Conservative government, the number of people behind bars actually dropped from 238,000 to 201,000, a reduction of roughly 37,000. That is 37,000 fewer people who were behind bars. How is it possible, then, that we call it “tough on crime”? The answer is that we targeted the worst offenders, the repeat offenders, the frequent flyers, those who come back to commit one crime after another, and we see this phenomenon now reversed as this government has allowed those frequent-flyer criminals to go back out on the street again and again. Let me turn members' attention to a letter from the B.C. union of mayors, where they highlight the problem we are trying to address today by fixing the broken Liberal bail system. In the letter, they say that the same 40 offenders had 6,000 negative interactions with police in one year. That is 150 interactions per year per offender: on average, about one every two days. Across British Columbia, the same 204 offenders had 11,648 interactions with the police. Most of these, by the way, are arrests. So, again, these same 204 offenders in all of British Columbia had about 50 interactions with police per year per person. This is what is happening. The same repeat offenders are committing, in many cases, dozens and dozens of offences, and then when police arrest them, they are released on bail the same day, because of the Prime Minister's catch-and-release policies. They then go out and reoffend the same day and police officers have to arrest them again. Ironically, this does not reduce the incarceration rate. What it means is that the same people are incarcerated, but their incarceration is punctuated by a short-term release during which time they can go out and smash someone's face in, if I can be blunt about it, because that is what is happening with these random attacks. What we, as Conservatives, propose is that those offenders who have a track record of multiple reoffences, but then are charged again, should be kept behind bars to await trial until such time as they are either acquitted or they complete their sentences. Why? It is because the evidence has shown that they are a danger to public safety, and that is why we want them behind bars. It is not because we hate the offender, but because we love the victims, and we want to protect them from future harm. As my deputy leader, the member for Thornhill, will say, as I am splitting my time with her, our purpose in this is to protect public safety, to follow the evidence and the data, and to listen to the true experts, which is to say, the police officers, the prison guards and those who work in rehabilitating and helping those who have been in crime, the real experts who do the real work. Let us listen to them. Let us protect our people. Let us fix what is broken and let us bring safety and security home to our people.

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Context: House Hansard - 152 - Feb/2/23

Ms. Melissa Lantsman (Thornhill, CPC)

Feb/2/23 12:23:42 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it has been eight years of the Prime Minister and thousands of new victims of crime across Canada in those eight years. I stand here not only as the voice of my constituents in Thornhill, but also as the voice of thousands of people in every corner of the country who want us to start taking the safety of our communities more seriously. I grew up in the place that I represent in the House of Commons today and I have spent almost my whole life living in the Toronto area. Even though the city is home to millions, we have always been blessed to have a feeling of big-city safety. That is not often found elsewhere. For years, we rode transit without fearing the random attacks. Now all we have to do is open the newspaper, go to Twitter or turn on the news to see violent attack after violent attack throughout the last number of months. We gathered in public places with our loved ones and we were free to do the things we wanted to do whenever we wanted to do them without fear. We went about our daily lives, safe from criminals and the people who wanted to harm others, for the most part. We used to feel safe in the city. That feeling is fading away. All one has to do is open the newspaper to see it. With every day that passes comes another story about the out-of-control violence in our streets and the innocent people who are being terrorized by it: stories of people being stabbed in the head and face with ice picks; stories about people being swarmed and beaten, in some cases by teenagers, or pushed in front of moving trains or shoved to the ground; stories about people being set on fire in the biggest city in our country. All the recent attacks, the ones have outlined a number of times, were random. All of these attacks were in Canada. The GTA is used to making international news, it is a big place, but not international news like this. Last week, it was on the BBC. A few weeks ago, it was in the New York Times. Even my hometown of Vaughan made it onto CNN last December after a horrific shooting. We are obviously seeing more of this. The rate is rising. The stats are clear. Rising crime is not just something that is tearing into my community and it is not isolated. It is something that is happening in every neighbourhood across the country. It is happening in Vancouver where entire sections of the city are being taken over by out-of-control drug and gang activity. It is happening in rural communities, where only 18% of all Canadians live but 25% of violent crimes take place. Those numbers are shocking. There were more homicides in our nation in 2019 than in 2018. There were more in 2020 than in 2019. There were more in 2021 than in 2020. That is a pattern and somebody has to say it. Things are not okay because each day we see more suffering in our communities and more inaction or, frankly, not the right action in our Parliament. While our neighbourhoods are affected by crime, the Liberals are busy telling us, once again, that it is somebody else’s fault or it is somebody else’s job, deflecting blame and denying guilt again. However, the stats are clear; we only need to turn on the news. While families are grieving the loss of loved ones to violence, the Liberals are busy reducing the penalties for heinous acts like robbery with a firearm, fentanyl trafficking that is ravaging the streets in places like Vancouver, or in smaller places like Peterborough and London or places like right outside the House. Kidnapping is also on the list. While victims of crime are struggling to get justice, the Liberals are standing by their policies and making it easier for the very people who are responsible for those crimes to go back out in the world and do it all over again. The Liberals are standing by Bill C-75, which is what we are talking about today. It makes it easier to get bail, easier to be let out of custody, easier for criminals to go back to their illegal activities and harm even more people. It is broken. What we are doing is not working and everybody else knows it. Last year in Toronto, there were 44 shooting-related murders. Seven of those arrested were out on bail already for charges of gun crime and 17 of those were out on bail for other crimes. If people are keeping score that is more than half. Of the 44 murders in the city in which I have spent most of my life, more than half, or 24, of those accused were out on bail; 24 additional families that lost loved ones because of the Liberal broken bail system. Every premier says that the system is broken along with every police union and police chief. If we listen to everyone else who is talking about it, they say that bail reform could save lives. There are a lot of other things that we can talk about, but not talking about this when we know it can save lives would be irresponsible. In 2021, 165 people in Toronto, who were out on bail for gun charges, were arrested, including 98 people who were arrested on gun charges. It is broken and what we are doing is not working, and everybody agrees. Since the Liberals have been in power, violent crime has increased by 32%. Gang-related homicides have increased by a staggering 92%. Car jacking has doubled in Toronto. Property theft has gone up. It has all gone up; it is broken. What we are doing simply is not working. Our laws are broken. It is shocking that the Liberal member for Scarborough Southwest is a cabinet minister and former Toronto police chief, and he said more about crime in Memphis last week than he has said about crime in his own city. That is disgraceful. Today, Liberal members continue to insist that everything is fine, that nothing is wrong and that they are working on it. There was a meeting last November where all premiers and the federal government agreed to do something, and there is still nothing. All 13 premiers have written a demand letter to the Prime Minister to fix our broken bail system. The voices are united. It is police officers, it is frontline officers, it is police unions and it is people on our front lines who are all begging the government to do something about it. We will always stand on the side of law enforcement in our country. We are also going to stand on the side of victims of crime, and not on the side of criminals. We are going to stand for ending soft-on-crime laws like Bill C-75 that put the rights of criminals above those of the victims. That is wrong. All we have to do is open a newspaper to read about it. We are here today to demand action because if the Liberals will not anything, we will. If they are not prepared to make a change, to do their job and protect Canadians, they should step aside and let somebody else do it. It is not about some archaic regulation. It is not about political posturing. Everybody agrees. All premiers from different stripes agree. The mayor of my hometown, who just ran for the provincial Liberal leadership, wrote a demand letter to the Prime Minister asking for bail reform. This is not a Conservative issue. It is an issue that speaks to public safety and to the protection of the rights of victims over the rights of criminals. Our proposal is simple: prioritize the rights of victims and law-abiding citizens, not the criminals, and fix the broken bail system that lets murderers and repeat offenders out, free to recommit crimes in the community. We need to bring back penalties and punishments that actually fit the crime, particularly for violent repeat offenders. We need to fight crime where it exists, at our borders and in gangs, not in the home of law-abiding firearm owners or hunters. It is time to go back to the time when people felt safe in their communities, where people can walk on the streets without being randomly attacked, where criminals are punished for the crimes they commit, where Canadians have the right to travel wherever they want whenever they want and be free of fear on public transit, to go out in public with their families and feel safe. I hope all members, on behalf of their communities, their constituents and their loved ones, stand up for those rights. We can do that by passing this motion today. I hope hon. colleagues in the House see that too.

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Context: House Hansard - 152 - Feb/2/23

Ms. Melissa Lantsman

Feb/2/23 12:36:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be happy to table the crime statistics in the House from Statistics Canada. One of the statistics I stated was that of the 44 murders in Toronto, 24 were committed by those on bail. That is from the police chief of Toronto.

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Ms. Michelle Ferreri (Peterborough—Kawartha, CPC)

Feb/2/23 2:35:12 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we see this over and over again. The Liberals love to listen to themselves instead of real Canadians. They love to tell Canadians they have never had it so good, yet students are living in homeless shelters because rent in Toronto is $2,500 for a month. Why? It is because of the Liberal Prime Minister. There has been a 100% increase under his office. People are asking for medical assistance in dying because they cannot afford to live. When will the Prime Minister fix what he has broken? If he cannot fix it, get out of the way and let the Conservatives do the job.

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Context: House Hansard - 152 - Feb/2/23

Hon. David Lametti (Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, Lib.)

Feb/2/23 2:54:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as I said earlier today in the House of Commons, statistics from the Toronto police over the past few years show that offenses committed while individuals are out on bail have gone down over the past two years. We appreciate that Canadians need to feel safe and Canadians have a right to feel safe— Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

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