44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 16, 2023 10:00AM
moved:
Motion No. 1
That Bill C-21 be amended by deleting Clause 0.1.
Motion No. 2
That Bill C-21 be amended by deleting Clause 1.1.
Motion No. 3
That Bill C-21 be amended by deleting Clause 4.
Motion No. 4
That Bill C-21 be amended by deleting Clause 5.
Motion No. 5
That Bill C-21 be amended by deleting Clause 6.
Motion No. 6
That Bill C-21 be amended by deleting Clause 17.
Motion No. 9
That Bill C-21 be amended by deleting Clause 36.
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Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to be speaking to Bill C-21 yet again. Last week, the Liberals moved a time allocation motion in the House to limit our ability to debate this at committee. After that passed, and after they forced a closure motion on my ability to speak in the House on that time allocation motion, then time allocation came to a vote. They did not really like what I had to say and wanted to shut me up, which is why they moved the closure motion. This meant that, in committee, every party, but our party in particular, only had five minutes to discuss each amendment and clause. There were many amendments and clauses, and their impacts were very far-reaching.
The Liberals restricted us significantly on time in committee; Conservatives, having only that limited time, were sure to use every last moment of it. We were at committee until, I think, almost one in the morning on Thursday, doing our due diligence on this bill. The bill should have taken weeks to thoroughly examine and question the officials at length on. Our debate was severely limited in many important ways.
Again, there are 2.3 million lawful firearms owners in this country whom many of these measures in Bill C-21 will impact. Therefore, I know the firearms community and their families were deeply concerned about that debate, as well as the fact that the NDP and the Liberals, working together, severely limited it.
However, that was last week, and here we are this week. This is likely our very last opportunity to debate this in the House, and today is the report stage amendment debate. I moved a number of amendments in a last-ditch effort to really fight for the people who are wrongfully impacted by Bill C-21. These are the lawful and good Canadian people who are the target of the Liberal government. Meanwhile, criminals get away free with bills like Bill C-5 and the government's reckless and dangerous catch-and-release bail policies, which were brought forward in 2019.
That is all going on; meanwhile, the firearms community, particularly hunters and Olympic sport shooters, will be deeply impacted by what is happening with Bill C-21. We have made that very clear; they also made it clear when they had the opportunity to come to committee and put words on the record.
Today, with my limited time, I want to address a few of the issues the minister has brought forward in recent days to communicate on his bill, Bill C-21. There are a number of falsehoods, or at least things I believe he is not telling the whole truth on.
The first thing I would like to talk about is that the minister mentioned recently, and it seems to be his go-to talking point, that 87% of Canadians support him in what he is doing. We found out at committee from the parliamentary secretary that this statistic is from one poll. For Canadians who do not follow polls, it is mostly an inside baseball political thing. An average poll has about 400 to 1,500 people. Okay, polls do tell us a lot; however, it is one poll.
Interestingly, a few years ago, the Liberal government spent $200,000 on a public consultation on its gun control ideology. This consultation was on what it is trying to do with Bill C-21 and its so-called buyback program, as well as the secret firearms advisory committee coming forward, which will ban hundreds of hunting rifles in the coming months. A couple of years ago it spent $200,000 of taxpayer dollars and consulted about 133,000 people.
There were 133,000 people consulted. Let us say that the poll, which the minister is arguing is the reason he is claiming the support of Canadians to do all this damage on the firearms and hunting community, likely included 1,000 people. There were 133,000 people who responded to this consultation, and 81% responded “no” on the question of whether more should be done to limit access to handguns, while 77% responded “no” on the question of whether more should be done to limit assault weapons.
Of course, “assault weapons” is a term made up by the Liberal government. It is not a real term. The Liberals are trying to make it one. When they say “assault weapons”, we know they really mean things like hunting rifles and sport shooting rifles. We heard this first-hand from firearms advocates from the hunting, indigenous and sport shooting communities, notably Olympians.
Regardless of Liberals' using their tricky language, 77% of 133,000 people still said they did not want anything more done to limit assault weapons. Moreover, 78% said to focus on the illicit market. This is brilliant, because that is what police and anti-violence groups are saying. We know criminals are being caught and released because of this reckless bail system they brought in a few years ago.
Canadians overwhelmingly agreed that we should go after the illicit market. I will say this again: This was based on consultation with 133,000 people. That is what all the data and the evidence says would have the biggest impact when we are talking about reducing gun violence, which I think every single party and every single person in the House of Commons supports. It is just the way that they are doing it that is so contentious, so divisive.
It is not just one thing. The minister also mentioned that he is focusing on the border. Oh, the border—
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moved:
That Bill C-21 be amended by deleting Clause 43.
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Madam Speaker, with the CBSA, he talks about all these investments, hundreds of millions of dollars of investments he says he has made, because gun smuggling is the major contributing factor to gun violence. In this one regard, I agree. We have heard from the Toronto police that eight to nine out of every 10 handguns used in crimes are from the U.S. We know that smuggling is also a huge problem in Montreal and Winnipeg. I have seen them myself from Winnipeg police. If we are going to tackle this problem, of course, we need to focus on the border. The problem is this: Where is all the money really going? Is it having a real impact?
The minister says it is, but if we look at the employment numbers, when the Liberals first came to power in 2015, there were 8,375 frontline officers, or just under 8,400. These are hard-working investigators and all the people who are the last front line at our border to stop drug smuggling, gun smuggling, human trafficking and all other illicit behaviour. Eight years later, with all this spending that he has announced, there are only 25 more frontline workers.
If the money is not going to the frontline workers who supposed to be, and are working on, stopping gun smuggling and drugs and all the other terrible things coming across the border, where is that money going? It is going to middle management. Again, we absolutely respect our public service, but when it comes to stopping gun violence and gun smuggling, we need those frontline officers. However, he has taken the number of middle managers from 2,000 in 2015 to 4,000 in 2023. Those are the numbers that we have. He has doubled the number of middle managers and done nothing for the frontline officers who are actually doing the hard work. Therefore, I am not going to give him a lot of credit when he wants to claim victory on the work he is doing at the border. I am not seeing it reflected in the hard-working and brave frontline officers we need to stop this problem.
Lastly, I will talk about police. The minister mentions police. I have given him credit; I think it is important to be fair. It is important that he has made some investments in police. When I talk to police, what do they tell me? I have talked to police in every corner of the country. Actually, I would love to go to the north. It is the last place I need to go to talk to police.
What they tell me is that funding is great, but what really impacts their day-to-day work is the fact that they are rearresting the same dangerous, violent repeat offenders every single weekend. Sometimes, they know these individuals on a first-name basis, because they arrest them so many times. Sometimes, they rearrest them in the same day. They are getting out and back on the streets, terrorizing innocent Canadians and inflicting violent crime on them.
We see this in Toronto. Last year, 40 individuals were responsible for 6,000 violent crime incidents in this country. Just to be specific, 40 individuals had 6,000 interactions with police that included violent crime in one year. We can imagine how much more good the police would be able to do if we could just tackle those 40 people. How many more drug rings, gun smugglers, human traffickers and all those complex crime rings could they take down if they were not caught up with 40 people causing 6,000 incidents, causing mayhem for the people of Vancouver? That is the same across every city that I have heard about.
Police are burnt out, exhausted and suffering from serious PTSD, because they are overworked. No amount of money is going to fix that. What will fix that is a government that comes in and focuses on getting tough on crime; jail, not bail, for violent repeat offenders; fixing the parole system, so that we are not letting people who are very dangerous out into our parole system and overburdening our parole officers; and fixing conditional sentencing, where people are now under house arrest after raping women. The conditional sentencing issue is because they brought in Bill C-5, which impacted people who commit sexual assaults; they can now serve their sentences from the comfort of home. Those kinds of things would sure help police fight violent crime and really make a difference in fighting gun violence.
That is what they want to see. That is what Toronto police and letters to government are universally saying. Premiers from every political stripe agree and have written multiple times to the Prime Minister, demanding bail reform. Those are the things that would really have an impact on reducing gun violence, not spending what estimates say is $6 billion on their so-called buyback regime, which is really a confiscation regime. That is where the resources they want to spend are going to go. Those are their priorities.
A Conservative government led by the member for Carleton would actually deliver results to Canadians, clean up our streets and reduce gun violence. That is our commitment to the Canadian people.
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Madam Speaker, perhaps the member has not been paying a lot of attention, but I believe the Minister of Public Safety has met with groups that are advocates for firearms ownership as well. I would be surprised if he did not.
Hon. Marco Mendicino: I did.
Ms. Raquel Dancho: Madam Speaker, he just mentioned that he did, and I am glad that he has. Perhaps he should talk to the member who just asked the question. Is she suggesting that we do not talk to those who fight for our hunters and sport shooters? I am really unclear in that regard.
I will say that the individuals with whom the minister and the government are consulting are part of a group of doctors for gun control; this group wants to ban all civilian ownership of firearms. This includes banning ownership by indigenous Canadians, hunters and Olympic sport shooters. A main member of that group has met with the Liberals over 20 times; that member has been a key stakeholder in advising them what to do when it comes to firearms and has said publicly, on the record and multiple times on Twitter that all civilian ownership of firearms should be illegal and that it should all be banned. That is their true intention.
Perhaps the member does not represent any indigenous Canadians, hunters or sport shooters, but I would urge her to ask them what they think of that.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate working with the member. I think that I had a clear record of working very well on the public safety committee until November, when the Liberal government snuck through the largest hunting rifle ban in Canadian history at the eleventh hour. The government blew up committee with that. The minister then made us wait six weeks before we could resume.
It was the Liberals' fault that months went by and then weeks went by before we resumed. When we finally did, they had the support of the Bloc, which has largely abandoned its rural hunting community, unfortunately. The Bloc worked in lockstep with the Liberals and the NDP to call time allocation.
When we only have five minutes to talk about complex things, that can be very concerning. There were a number of times when we could have talked about issues at length, but we were not allowed to do so. The member is absolutely right. We used every five minutes that we could, that they allowed us to have.
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Madam Speaker, the member is spreading purposeful misinformation or disinformation. I know, for a fact, that I have done more consultation with police than that member has, particularly on ghost guns across the country. I have been on that committee for a year and a half, and we have talked extensively about ghost guns.
What surprises me is that the Liberal government did not include ghost guns in the original form of its bill. If ghost guns were so important to the government, why did it not do that?
Why did it make us wait for months to talk about it? Why did the minister make us wait for six weeks? It is not on us to make up for all the time that he wasted.
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Madam Speaker, on a point of order, since the subject is about me. I would like to know if the member would like to see a doctor's note. Is he my father now? Do I need his permission not to go to committee—
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- May/16/23 2:46:41 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the fact remains that this minister celebrated when the Liberal government's catch-and-release policies were brought in by Bill C-75. We need an entire overhaul of the Liberal system that has created the violent crime surge across the country and has led to the deaths and harm of innocent Canadians from violent repeat offenders.
The reality is that the only way this gets fixed, the only way that violent repeat offenders get jail, and not bail, and the only way that the rights of victims are put first, is with a Conservative majority government. Is that not right?
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Madam Speaker, the hon. member just misled the House. I would ask him to correct the record. He is well aware that a clerical error was made on the Conservative side. We need his unanimous consent to withdraw that clerical error. He has refused.
I would ask him to stop spreading—
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