44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 16, 2023 10:00AM
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.
884 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased with some of the changes made to Bill C-21 along the way, and I really want to highlight the extraordinary work of my colleague from Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia. We saw her take charge and manage this file for the Bloc Québécois. We are all very proud of what has been done on this file, which was very complex and whose path was very chaotic. I believe that the final result is very impressive.
One of the issues of great concern to people in my riding, and probably in many others as well, is that of airsoft guns, the controversial replica toy guns. Many people back home will be satisfied. As we worked on Bill C‑21, we also raised the issue of smuggling, crime and gun trafficking at the border. I would like my colleague from Winnipeg North to tell us more about this.
What will Bill C‑21 do to fight organized crime and gun trafficking at the border?
182 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Mr. Speaker, Conservatives are trying to paint this bill as something else, but in their defence, they have spent so much time doing that, that it would be literally impossible for them to try to backtrack on it. The member for Battle River—Crowfoot has shared so much misinformation about this bill, as have so many other Conservatives, that to try to reverse that position now would be blatant hypocrisy. They have no choice but to continue to push the same agenda. I feel for the situation they are in.
This bill would primarily do three things: put a freeze on handguns; introduce the red and yellow flags, which I will speak about in a couple of minutes; and combat smuggling. In particular, for crimes related to smuggling, there would be an increase in the penalty from 10 years' imprisonment to 14 years' imprisonment.
Let us start with some of the statistics from Statistics Canada, which are quite contradictory to what the member for Battle River—Crowfoot said a few moments ago. According to Statistics Canada, gun crime in Canada is down 5% between 2020 and 2021. In 2022, as the other parliamentary secretary said before me, 1,200 guns and 73,000 weapons were seized at the border. Those are 100% and 50% respective increases from 2021. In Toronto, one of the major cities in Canada, gun violence dropped by 22% between 2020 and 2021.
Eighty-four per cent of Canadians believe that the government is on the right track in its reforms to gun control. The 16% of Canadians that remains, whom the Conservatives are apparently working hard to make so much money off of through fundraising, must be incredibly important to them for them to be laser-focused on this particular issue and that 16% of Canadians.
The red flag provisions, as I alluded to in my opening, would allow for the petition of an individual to the court for emergency prohibition purposes. That is extremely important because another statistic is that a woman who lives in a household that has a gun in that household is statistically five times more likely to become a victim of violence that involves that weapon. That is a statistical fact. What we are trying to do with this red flag provision is give potential victims the opportunity to flag to the court that perhaps this gun should not be in the household. How do Conservatives respond to that? The member for Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, in committee, said that this would increase “malicious false claims”.
The default reaction of the Conservatives is not how do we help protect women who we know are the victims more often than not? How we protect them is not the member's concern. His default concern is about the malicious people who are out to get their former spouse or farmer partner and that people are going to make a fake report so they can get that weapon taken away. That is the Conservatives' concern. Their concern is not the potential victims of the violence, and I find that extremely troubling. The 16% of the population in Canada who do not agree with the gun control reform we are bringing in must have a lot of money because that is whom the Conservatives are laser-focused on.
I am reminded of the 2021 election. I really wish I could use a prop in the House because, if I could, I would hold it up and show it to everybody, but I will not. I will describe it to members. It came into my riding.
By the way, I am in a semi-rural riding. I hope it is rural enough for the Conservative members who were making fun of the member for Milton during his last question for claiming that he has a semi-rural riding. The islands in my riding, in addition to pretty much all of the areas north of the 401 and east of the Cataraqui River in Kingston and the Islands, are rural areas.
I come from a strong family of hunters. All three of my mother's brothers hunt and own hunting properties in Ontario. My late father-in-law grew up in a hunting lodge where visitors from Canada and the United States would come to be taught how to hunt, fish and explore the outdoors responsibly, so I take great offence to the members who come into the House to try to lecture other members because they believe their ridings are not rural enough.
Nonetheless, the National Firearms Association showed up in my riding, as it did in many other ridings in the 2021 election, dropping off pamphlets at doors that looked an awful lot like the pamphlets we were already delivering. It had literally copied the Prime Minister's stock photo, put the Liberal red on it, and had “Meet Your Liberal Team” written on it, with a QR code to get to the website. By the way, that website is still up right now, as I just went to it.
I heard the back-and-forth earlier with the member for Battle River—Crowfoot, who challenged the assertion made by the parliamentary secretary and member for Milton that the gun lobby in Canada and the Conservative Party are one in the same. If we go to that website, we can literally see every single question from Conservatives in period question on it. That website does not only talk about gun laws. Literally every Conservative grievance is there, so, yes, there is a lot of money to be made in this, as the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader said earlier.
Conservatives are laser-focused on that. They had no problem encouraging their partners to go to ridings to drop off these pamphlets to try to trick Canadians into thinking it was a genuine “Meet Your Liberal Team” flyer to go to the website to see the candidates who were running. However, this was a flyer that was printed, manufactured and links to a website that is all under the control of the Canadian Coalition for Firearms Rights, a branch of the Conservative Party of Canada.
I think it is extremely unfortunate, as members have said before me, that time and again Conservative members get up in the House to misrepresent the law we are creating, the facts and the statistics, all in the name of raising more money. They are trying to capitalize off this as much as possible. Who knows, maybe later today we will have the Leader of the Opposition filming a video as he is running out of the House of Commons, with the mace in the background, as he did with a previous bill we had, just to raise a last bit of money before the issue is dead. It is shameful that His Majesty's opposition operates in this way, yet we see it time and again.
Canadians should take great comfort in knowing that, despite the differences that exist between the Liberals, the Bloc Québécois, the NDP and the Green Party, we are all united around this legislation because we know it is what Canadians want. We know it is the right step forward, and there are adults in this room who are making sure that we do everything we can for the safety of Canadians throughout our country. Unfortunately, the Conservatives are not acting that way.
1254 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- menumenu
- notificationsnotifications
- home
- mailmail
- searchsearch
