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Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 198

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 16, 2023 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 198 - May/16/23
Ms. Raquel Dancho
  • May/16/23 10:20:32 a.m.
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  • Re: Bill C-21 
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
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