44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 9, 2023 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, I have a lot of criticism reserved for the Liberals for when I give my remarks in a little bit, but I do want to turn to the remarks that were made by the member for Kildonan—St. Paul.
I will say, first of all, that I have great respect for her, and I enjoyed working with her at committee very much. However, I have to take issue with the remarks that she brought forward in the House when she said she is being silenced. I have spoken with the member for New Westminster—Burnaby, and on several occasions, he has tried to extend the sitting hours of the public safety committee to give the Conservatives and every party more time to look at these amendments. Every single time, the attempts were either rejected or filibustered. There were attempts made multiple times; that has to be made very clear.
I will wrap up with the second point I want to make. The member talks about rural communities; these communities also care about RCMP oversight and transparency, especially the indigenous communities in my riding of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford. Why must they be made to wait for their turn to speak to Bill C-20, which has been waiting in the wings of the public safety committee and is an equally important piece of legislation? There has been ample time given. Why have the Conservatives not taken advantage of those offers?
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Madam Speaker, it is hard to find the words to start given how long I have personally been involved with this piece of legislation. I know there are a few select members of this House who would agree with me. I think for each one of us, this has been our own personal odyssey, and to get to this point is really remarkable. All of the different twists and turns that this one bill, Bill C-21, has taken are going to be studied in parliamentary procedure for years to come.
I have had the privilege of representing my riding of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford for three terms, now being in my eighth year, and I have discovered that in my time here, Parliament has demonstrated that it is indeed the last place to go for an open, honest and logical debate on firearms. A lot of the debate we have seen on this bill and on firearms regulations, policy and legislation in general has done a very real disservice to Canadians. Both sides of the issue have torqued up their arguments. There has been blatant misinformation and labelling, and this has really descended the level of debate into something that I think a lot of Canadians would quite rightly be disgusted by. It is very difficult in this place, when we have all of these torqued up emotions and political agendas, to have a reasoned debate on firearms. That certainly has been the story.
I know a lot of people on Twitter are following this debate very closely. I would say that the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security is probably the most watched committee of them all, and I know that my words right now are being analyzed and tweeted about, even in real time. I just want the people who are listening to brace themselves, because I have equal amounts of criticism for both the Liberals and the Conservatives as to why we now find ourselves in this place.
I first want to start by talking about the committee, because ultimately today's motion is one of instruction to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. One could be forgiven for thinking that all this committee does is study policy and legislation surrounding firearms, because that is indeed all it has really been consumed with since the bill was referred to the committee late last year. In fact, we started Bill C-21 at committee in October 2022, and here we are now, well into May 2023, and we are still only at the clause-by-clause part of the bill.
I think it is useful for people to understand what the mandate of this committee is. It is responsible for reviewing legislation, policies, programs and expenditure plans of a whole host of different government departments and agencies that are responsible for not only public safety, but national security, policing, law enforcement, corrections, the conditional release of federal offenders, emergency management, crime prevention and of course the protection of our borders. When we are doing things like the estimates for the spending plans of Public Safety Canada, quite often we have representatives included from the Canada Border Services Agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the Parole Board of Canada and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
What I am trying to underline here is that this committee is an extremely important committee of the House of Commons, and all the work it does in all of these different areas in looking after our intelligence gathering, law enforcement and border protection has been sidelined by the incredible amount of time that has been consumed. Time is our most valuable resource in Parliament, and once we spend it we do not get it back.
Because of the shenanigans that have occurred with respect to Bill C-21, the public safety committee has quite correctly been prevented from examining all of these other different areas, keeping tabs on those different departments, examining different pieces of legislation and keeping tabs on what the government's policies and practices are going to be with respect to other key areas. That is an important element that we first need to establish when we are talking about where we are today.
As many members will know, including members in my own community, I used to be our party's public safety critic. I found my time on that committee to be personally quite valuable. I found that the subject matter we were dealing with was quite intellectually challenging and stimulating, and it is important work.
I know from my interactions with other members of the committee, whether on the Liberal, Conservative or Bloc Québécois side, that they all conducted themselves very well, and I enjoyed my working relationships with them. That even goes for our work on Bill C-21.
Believe it or not, there was actually a time when Bill C-21 was progressing through committee in relatively good order. We concluded roughly eight meetings with witnesses. The committee then had time to come forward with its amendments, and there seemed to be an acknowledgement that aside from a few differences with a few clauses here and there, the bill was probably on schedule to be reported back to the House for report stage and eventually third reading sometime in December.
We then got to November, and all hell broke loose. This was when the eleventh-hour amendments were dropped by the Liberals. I should correctly say “the Liberal government”, because I do not think they were, by design, from the Liberal members of the committee. They did come from the government.
I do not want to go into the details of the bill too much, because I think that is a well-trodden path and a well-known story, bu allow me to take this moment in my speech to levy what I think are some well-earned criticisms on both the Liberals and the Conservatives. I know some of my colleagues will probably laugh at this, particularly the member for Hamilton Centre, because he has heard me joke about this before.
I often feel like the character Mercutio in Shakespeare's play, Romeo and Juliet, when he is expressing his frustration with the Capulets and the Montagues, because I feel that same frustration with the Liberals and the Conservatives. It is difficult sometimes to watch the shenanigans between those parties and the way our level of debate around this issue descends into the depths and scrapes the bottom of the barrel.
Let me start with the Liberals. One day, someone is going to write a book about this sorry episode, and it is probably going to be titled something like “How Not to Amend One's Own Legislation”. It is going to be a warning guide for governments in the future on what not to do and how not to spring a surprise on an unsuspecting committee when they have not done their homework, when they have not done consultation and, most importantly, when they have not consulted with the members of the committee who are actually responsible for shepherding those amendments through.
I want to caution members: My comments are not, in any way, directed to the colleagues I work with, but more to the Liberal Party brain trust. I understand the reasoning behind where they are coming from. Gun violence in our major urban centres is a very concerning thing. It needs to be dealt with appropriately. I want to take a moment to acknowledge the extreme grief that is out there within so many families who are dealing with a loss due to firearms violence.
Sometimes the road forward for the Liberals has been paved with good intentions, but it has led to some pretty awful results. I would ask them to step back and try and heal some of the wounds that exist in that divide between urban and rural Canada. We need to understand that yes, firearms violence is a big issue, but there also has to be a level of respect afforded to Canadians who are lawful firearms owners, who play by the rules and who have done everything right. I would encourage the Liberals to consult more with their rural MPs.
When the Liberals introduced those amendments, one of the groups that were leading the way was indigenous communities—not only hunters and farmers, but indigenous communities, not the least of which was the Assembly of First Nations. In an extremely rare move, the AFN came out with a unanimous emergency resolution on the last day. That is almost unheard of. They were going after the government for those ill-thought-of eleventh-hour amendments.
No consultation had taken place. One could make a legitimate argument that the Liberals, in bringing in these amendments, were not respecting the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples or even the legislation we have passed that enshrines that within our own laws to make sure that all federal laws are in harmony with the declaration itself. It went against the spirit of that.
Now I will turn to my Conservative friends.
What do we say about the reams of ridiculous hyperbole we have seen from that party on Bill C-21? The bill has been a fundraising boon for the Conservative Party. That giant sucking sound we hear is Conservatives hoovering money from the harvest of their rage-farming operation around the bill, and I think a part of me wonders whether the Conservatives do not want to see the bill go forward because it has been so financially viable for them. The evidence is all out there. I do not think there is any interest at all in trying to move the legislation forward, because doing so would essentially stop the goose from laying golden eggs for them. It has been an incredible money-maker for them.
When I look at some of the misinformation that has been put out by the Conservative Party around the bill, I see they are fanning flames of rage over amendments that no longer exist and incorrectly saying that the government wants to take away all their guns. It is just completely off-the-wall bonkers stuff that can be easily disproven, and it is completely not helping the standard of debate we expect of our parliamentarians. It just makes the rest of our jobs harder when we have to fight that completely untrue disinformation that is being actively fanned on social media.
Yes, it is a sorry state due to the actions of both parties in so expertly playing politics with the bill, and that is a large part of the reason we are here today.
We know that the problematic amendments were withdrawn by the Liberals. That is fact number one. All current owners of long guns in Canada are not going to have those firearms impacted, because the problematic amendments were withdrawn. What we now have being proposed as an amendment to the bill would go after firearms that will be manufactured in the future, after the bill receives royal assent. There is also an important amendment, I understand, that would make sure that nothing in the bill takes away from the rights of indigenous peoples. That is recognized and affirmed under section 35 of our Constitution.
Of course, there are incredibly important amendments dealing with the exponentially growing problem of ghost guns. This is a problem that has been brought to the committee's attention repeatedly by law enforcement agencies. I would hope that more attention is paid to those particular amendments, and of course we, the remaining members of the House of Commons, have to reserve our judgment on the bill until we see the final version that the committee ultimately reports back to us.
Now let us turn to the motion of instruction and what it would do.
First of all, we have to understand that as of this morning, the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security had already spent approximately five hours on clause-by-clause consideration. If they had been able to complete their meeting this afternoon, and I know it was interrupted by a series of votes, that would have brought the total to eight hours, which is roughly equivalent to four full meetings. The motion being debated today would add a further 17 hours to that, bringing it to roughly 25 hours, which is the equivalent of 12-and-a-half meetings.
I understand from the member for New Westminster—Burnaby, our member on the public safety committee, that he has tried multiple times to extend the sitting hours of the public safety committee so that Conservatives, the Bloc and New Democrats could have additional time to look at the amendments that are being proposed by various members. I understand that in each of those instances, these attempts were either rejected or filibustered so that the committee ultimately could never get to a vote. To hear Conservatives complain that they are being silenced in the House when they have, in fact, had multiple opportunities at committee to extend the sitting hours of that committee does come across as a bit rich.
I would say that because I have had my staff look at bills similar in size and complexity to Bill C-21, Bill C-18 comes to mind. That particular bill, when it went through clause-by-clause study at its committee, had seven meetings, the equivalent of 14 hours, for clause-by-clause study, so that is more than enough time to get through it.
I know from my own experience, because I used to be a member of the public safety committee and have seen a lot of these amendments, that are a lot of them are very technical, small changes to the bill, especially the parts that deal with ghost guns. Not a lot of debate is going to be required on them. In fact, the committee can probably get through them in short order because they are repetitive and many different areas of the Criminal Code and the Firearms Act have to be updated to make sure that those existing statutes are in harmony with each another.
The other thing I want to turn to in my final three minutes goes back to the earlier part that I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, the overall mandate of the public safety committee. We have two really important pieces of legislation waiting in the wings, waiting for their turn to be examined at the public safety committee. They are Bill C-20 and Bill C-26.
Bill C-20 is going to create our first-ever public accountability and transparency network that is independent of the RCMP and the CBSA. In fact, the CBSA has never had an independent oversight mechanism. Looking at the public safety committee's report from the previous Parliament looking at systemic racism in policing and looking at all of the instances of injuries and sometimes death that have happened to people who had been in the custody of the CBSA, we see that these are important measures. We have had so many racialized Canadians, so many indigenous Canadians who have been calling out for these types of oversight measures for years. Why should those pieces of legislation continue to be pushed back while we draw out this process on Bill C-21?
Bill C-26 is an important piece of legislation, which I will be the first to admit needs a lot of work at committee, but it is going to really bring in line a lot of the cybersecurity requirements that are needed for some of our critical sectors, be they in banking, transportation, energy and so on. It is going to be a requirement for many of those private actors to bring their systems in line with a standard that is acceptable to the federal government. Again, a lot of work is needed, but no one in this House can deny or absolve themselves from the fact that these are important issues that deserve to have their turn at the public safety committee.
My ultimate motivation for this motion today is to get Bill C-21 on its way. We have had enough time at the committee. It has occupied so much time at the public safety committee, and it is time for the public safety committee to move on to other bills that are equally important to many other Canadians.
In conclusion, I ultimately am going to reserve my judgment on Bill C-21 until I see what the committee reports back to the House, but I will not agree to let that committee continue to be bogged down, especially when there is so much other important work to be done.
With that I conclude. I welcome any comments and questions from my colleagues.
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Mr. Speaker, I am not going to disagree with the principle that I think is behind the parliamentary secretary's remarks and question.
Of course, amendments are always welcome, and they should be informed by feedback received from the public and committee, but I have to draw the line at the particular amendments that were introduced in November because those took everyone by surprise, and not just the committee members. They took indigenous communities by surprise. They took hunters and farmers by surprise. It was such a huge overreach from the bill we originally thought we were debating at second reading. When we started debating Bill C-21, its main provisions were on airsoft, red flag laws and a handgun freeze.
I want to take a moment to also thank members of the committee for passing my amendment on airsoft. That amendment was passed, and I am happy to report to the airsoft community that the offending section of Bill C-21 has now been removed, thanks to an NDP amendment. That is definitely a bright light in this whole journey.
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- May/9/23 7:49:10 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I do enjoy working with the member from the Conservative Party. I too have seen the rumours on Twitter and have been greatly amused by all of the different reasonings out there.
Let me say clearly and for the record that my moving off the public safety committee was done by mutual agreement. I am still a member of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food. If the member will recall, at the time, I managed to bring forward two successful motions, one in the House of Commons and one at the agriculture committee, that focused the committee's investigative efforts on the role that corporate profits are playing in driving inflation, which is a huge issue not only for my constituents but also for the member's constituents.
It was agreed between me and the leader of the NDP that it was important for me to refocus my efforts on an issue that was affecting so many Canadians because of their purchasing power, their inability to buy sufficient groceries for their families and the incredible climb in food bank usage. That is the reason. It was mutual agreement and I had other extremely important work to take care of.
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- May/9/23 7:51:26 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am no longer a member of the committee, but I can say from my time there and through close consultations with my NDP colleague from Winnipeg Centre, that many women raised concerns with the red flag provisions because many women right now have an incredibly difficult time trying to access basic protection from their local police service. I have heard those same arguments from many women's organizations. Their argument is a solid one. Their main question is this: If police services are inadequate and not living up to a standard that we all expect, why would someone in a domestic violence situation, under fear of their own life or fear of a loved one's life, be forced to go through an already overburdened court process to apply for a protection order?
During my time at committee, with many of the amendments that I put forward, which I cannot speak about in detail because they still have not been dealt with by the committee, my focus was very much on the yellow flag provisions, strengthening licensing requirements and empowering authorities to remove licences when there were definite examples of domestic violence and threats of violence. I want to particularly thank the National Association of Women and the Law because its submissions to our committee were extremely helpful in guiding many of our amendments.
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- May/9/23 7:54:35 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member for Hamilton Centre has a very thoughtful question, and he is extremely right. I am very fortunate to live in a riding that does not suffer from firearms violence, so I personally have never had that opportunity to grieve with families in my riding.
However, that does not take away from the testimony that we have heard at committee. It really goes right to our hearts when we hear survivors talk about their personal experiences, or the loss of a close personal friend or loved one within their family. All of us would do well to remember that ultimately our main goal is to make our streets safer for those people.
The member is also very right in raising the issue of ghost guns. We have heard testimony from multiple police agencies that this is an exponentially growing problem. The fact that people could construct a fully functioning firearm with zero traceability and no serial numbers or anything, all with the benefit and aid of a 3-D printer, is a very scary prospect. Police are on the record asking us to tighten up the legislation so we clamp down on who is able to import trigger assemblies, barrels and slides, and all of the other components that are necessary to manufacture a working firearm.
That is the important part of this bill that a lot of people are missing in all of their focus on the other aspects of this bill. There is still a lot in this bill that law enforcement has specifically asked for, and which I believe needs to be put up on a pedestal, on an equal plane of importance as all of those other elements.
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