44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 16, 2023 10:00AM
- May/16/23 2:18:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, veterans and their families deserve a safe and affordable place to call home. That is why I am so pleased that the newly announced veteran homelessness program will provide comprehensive support to veterans experiencing or at risk of experiencing homelessness.
A total of $79.1 million in funding will be available by way of two streams. One will provide rent supplements and wraparound services, while the other will support research on veteran homelessness and capacity building. Eligible recipients, including veteran-serving organizations, can apply to either or both funding streams through an online portal on the Infrastructure Canada website. Applications are open until June 23, and I encourage all organizations to make an application.
Canada’s veterans have long served and sacrificed for our country, and it is our duty to support them.
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise this evening at this relatively late hour to speak to this bill.
I just want to mention, before I start, that, earlier this evening, I had a chance to spend some time with Persian Gulf War veterans. We were at an event, the airing of a new film on the Canadian involvement in the Persian Gulf War. These veterans are fighting the government for the classification of wartime service, and I think it is about time that we classify them as having wartime service, and even our Afghanistan veterans, as well. It was a very powerful evening, and I am very glad to have been there in support of our veterans.
As we sit here to discuss report stage amendments on Bill C-21, let us not get lost on the history of how we got to this point. Sadly, the events in Nova Scotia and the mass killing out there really led to a political response by the government. It saw an opportunity. It issued an order in council on May 1, 2020, that effectively banned thousands and thousands of what were legal firearms in the country. It was so rushed, in fact, to propose the order in council, that they banned the cannon at Stanley Park that fires ceremoniously at nine o'clock every evening as part of this order in council ban.
As we moved forward, the government was indicating that it was going to push a gun ban in this country, effectively an attack on law-abiding firearms owners. It was about a year ago that we saw the iteration of Bill C-21 that was tabled as legislation, and immediately, the reaction across the country was one of shock at the fact that they included an additional thousands more of what were legal firearms. They proposed a handgun ban as well if we will recall.
That sent a ripple effect right across the country because they were attacking not only law-abiding firearms owners, but also hunters and indigenous people. Basically, hundreds of years of history in this country were being attacked by the Liberal government, aided and abetted by their partners in the NDP, but a funny thing happened with the NDP. When the legislation was proposed, its members were joyous about the fact that the government had proposed such a sweeping ban of firearms against law-abiding firearms owners, until they realized just what an impact this was going to have, a disproportionate impact, on rural Canadians. Then, all of a sudden, they started backing up.
They said whoa, and that this piece of legislation is going way too far, because they saw that there was a political threat in those rural and remote ridings where rural Canadians and indigenous Canadians use guns to hunt, feed themselves and participate in a long-standing cultural heritage in this country, not to mention to protect themselves in those rural and remote areas.
All of a sudden, here we were, revisiting this legislation. It is clear that the Liberal government and the public safety minister did not think of the implications of this and the impact it would have on hunters and indigenous people, and they were backtracking. They said whoa, they were not going to introduce this iteration. They were going to pull back on this and go back into consultation with Canadians to try to figure out how to get this right.
The reason why they were in this place was because they made a political calculation, because law-abiding firearms owners in this country have always been an easy target, pardon the pun, for Liberal and leftist-leaning governments. They are the target. They are not worried about going after gangs, guns and illegal smuggling. That is the hard work. The easy work is to go after the low-hanging fruit, and that is law-abiding firearms owners.
Canada has the most strict regime of registration and training of firearms owners anywhere in the world. I do not have an RPAL. I do not own a firearm. I have fired one firearm in my life, at the Barrie Gun Club, in a controlled environment, so I have no skin in the game.
What I believe in is the right of individuals in this country, because of our culture and our heritage, because of our laws and because of the training, to have the right to own firearms and use them responsibly. What I do not agree with are gangs, illegal smuggling and those guns that are coming in across the border, which are easily obtained by gangs in the use of criminal activity. We have seen an increase in gang-related activity, and we have seen an increase in gun-related activity, so instead of going after the low-hanging fruit, instead of going after the law-abiding firearms owners, they are not doing what they need to do as far as guns and gangs.
One only has to follow the Toronto Police Service operations twitter feed to understand the depth of the problem in Toronto, not to mention there is a problem in Vancouver and Montreal as well. It is illegal guns. It is gangs and gang-related activity that are showing the most increases in illegal gun activity in this country. It is not law-abiding firearms owners.
I had the opportunity to go to the Moncton Fish and Game Association, as I did some stakeholder engagement on this issue, when we were at the height of it. The government at that time was rethinking its position. There was a policy proposal. Colleagues may recall in 2017 the then minister of public safety was going around the country because they were thinking about implementing additional firearms restrictions.
I had an opportunity to speak to members of the the Moncton Fish and Game Association, who are salt-of-the-earth guys, responsible firearms owners and proud Canadians. They submitted a document to the then minister of public safety that should have served as a template for any discussion. It was called a discussion paper, but it should have served as a template for what the discussion was to be about. They talked about the “long history of firearms control in this country.” The document said, “1892 saw the first Criminal Code controls with a permit system for small arms; 1934 saw the requirement for all handguns to be registered with police with RCMP issuing registration certificates”.
The discussion paper that was submitted to the then minister of public safety could have and should have been used as a template. It went on:
There is no clear definition as to what Canada considers to be an “assault weapon” or “assault rifle”. The outdated US Dept of Justice definition (1994-2004) is so broad that a typical rabbit hunting rifle such as the semi-automatic Marlin 60 with a tube magazine that can hold 15 rounds of 22LR ammunition might be construed as an assault weapon as might the Ruger 10/22.
There have been some amendments, clearly, as we have dealt with this to not classify some of these weapons, but had these stakeholders been listened to, had there been a thorough discussion, I think the then minister of public safety would have really understood just the level and the depth of responsible firearms ownership in this country and how they want to be part of the solution to the gun and gang problem.
The discussion paper goes on. One part that stood out for me, section 26, stated;
Unfortunately, with every “mass shooting” and even for single victim incidents, there is an immediate reaction by the media and especially politicians to immediately blame the object for the actions that were perpetrated. It is easy for the Mayor of Toronto, Toronto Council or Montreal City Council to blame the object and call for a gun ban, but it takes political courage to identify the underlying social issues and address realistic solutions that protect people from harm by addressing the root causes of violence. The issue is not “what” was used in the incident but rather “why” the event happened, “what” was the reason, “how” was the firearm obtained and “how” could it have been prevented? It is easy to blame the gun and ignore the underlying and difficult to address societal or mental health factors.
This piece of legislation is flawed in many ways. It still continues to attack law-abiding firearms owners. There are other concerns that I will address in questions and comments.
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