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Context: House Hansard - 199 - May/17/23

May/17/23 11:28:27 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-21

Madam Speaker, Conservatives have been receiving a very large number of concerns from constituents, not just in our constituencies but from across the country. We have been responding to their concerns. Can the hon. member opposite ever deny that there is a vast number of Canadians who are concerned, are worried and do not trust what the government is doing with Bill C-21?

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May/17/23 9:56:06 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-21

Madam Speaker, I think the government and the member have selective memories, going back to old memories and short memories. The member never told Canadians which version of Bill C-21 we are talking about. That is the confusion that the Liberals created throughout the whole process with the back-and-forth on this bill. Now they are questioning why Conservatives do not trust what they are putting in the bill. How can we trust them after this long journey of changing their minds back and forth: move this, present this, abandon those models, take out these models? No one can understand anymore what the government is doing due to its short memory. Which version of Bill C-21 are we dealing with here? At least then we will know what the member is talking about.

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May/16/23 5:06:44 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-21

Madam Speaker, I think the hon. member meant to discredit Conservatives by saying we have not read the bill. We have been fighting for a good bill for as long as he and everybody else remembers. I would ask the NDP a question: How many times have they changed their minds on this bill? How many times have they danced back and forth on this bill? Before the NDP members ask us those questions, they should ask themselves how many times they have changed their minds and why, at the end of the day, there was a revelation from somewhere that made the NDP agree to this bill.

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May/16/23 5:04:47 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-21

Madam Speaker, this is the million-dollar question coming from my friend from the Bloc Québécois, and it came from the NDP before. The million-dollar question is what this bill would do to protect Canadians. This bill does not do the job. That is the million-dollar question. We can look at how many times the NDP, the Bloc Québécois and the government have confused Canadians over this bill. The bill has been going back and forth for a few years here. Now the question to me is about how many times and what rifles are mentioned in this bill. I think that is a bit rich.

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May/16/23 5:03:16 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-21

Madam Speaker, we are not against stopping crime. We are for stopping criminals from making those crimes happen. As I clearly said in my speech, we are for finding all the ways to defend Canadians. However, we are against going after law-abiding Canadians who own guns while leaving the criminals on the streets to trade and bring in guns from everywhere in the world and then sell them to kill Canadians. That is what the bill has not addressed.

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May/16/23 4:54:24 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-21

Madam Speaker, to nobody’s surprise, the Liberals are missing the mark once again. As my Conservative colleagues have reinforced time and time again, legal firearms owners are not criminals. However, Bill C-21 treats them this way. This leads me to believe that the bill is not about firearms or assault-style weapons; rather, it is about philosophy and how the government sees the Canadian people. It seems that the Liberals may be forgetting or perhaps ignoring what it means to have a firearms licence in Canada. Any hunter or sport shooter will proudly tell us about how they underwent a series of background, mental health, common-sense and legislative regulation tests to receive and maintain their licences. They are proud because they have received the trust of society and want to show themselves worthy of that trust. If the members opposite actually listened to their rural constituents about these issues, they could also explain that, to legally own and register firearms in Canada, they must subject themselves to random check-ins by law enforcement. Moreover, they must report data, such as residency, more often than do most citizens to ensure the safekeeping of their weapons. Before travelling with a firearm, every firearm has specific safety protocols that must be followed. With this in mind, how would banning the firearms belonging to law-abiding citizens limit the occurrences of violent gun-related crime? How would a crazy repeat offender get a locked-up pistol or hunting rifle from a law-abiding owner? It does not make sense. We cannot deny that violent crime with firearms does happen in Canada. However, they are not mass produced for the Canadian market. People with the technological know-how in the underground market are the real criminals contributing to crime here. People 3-D printing parts of a rifle and mailing them across the international border into Canada are contributing to the illegal underground market; law-abiding firearms owners are not. The Liberals do not trust Canadians. They see every gun owner as a potential criminal. As far as they are concerned, one gun in private hands is one gun too many. That there is no scientific evidence showing that Canadian farmers, hunters and sport shooters are turning to a life of gun crime is something they choose to ignore. They say that Canada has a gun crime problem and that this will solve it. However, the Liberals are missing the mark and ignoring the evidence. Gun crimes are not being committed by people who purchase their guns legally and then suddenly become lawless. Canada’s gun crime problem has been created by a government that is unwilling to clamp down on the illegal smuggling of weapons into Canada. Shutting down the gun pipeline is hard, but targeting hunters and sports shooters is easy. This is not to mention the negative impacts that vastly outweigh the positive; I can only imagine how much this ban will negatively impact many Canadians, ranging from those who inherit rifles to citizens whose everyday lives revolve around a culture of hunting and gathering. I cannot help but wonder what rural Canadians will do if this rifle ban passes. Canada is known to be a well-forested country, meaning that we have a fair amount of rural area. The main source of food for many of these Canadians is hunting, and this has been the case for as long as we can remember. With that in mind, how will these hunters eat if the ban goes through? As seen through the newly proposed passport design, the Liberals’ disregard for the rich Canadian history that preceded us is nothing new. I am not surprised that the Liberal government is living up to its expectation of continued disappointment that Canadians feel toward the government. The more I look at this bill, the more I agree with the member for Kildonan—St. Paul, who said, “This is the largest assault on hunters in Canadian history.” Rifle owners by inheritance will have to face the sad reality that a part of their family history will be stripped from them at the hands of the government, and hunters will have to face an ever-higher rate of food insecurity in this G7 country. Hunters will have their entire way of life uprooted and have to defer to alternative lifestyles, which they may not have the means to adapt to. This is especially the case considering the cost of inflation and the impact that the carbon tax has had on the cost of living. We cannot tell them to go to a grocery store instead. These rural areas have limited access to the essential services they need, and there is no need to take away a major component of how they can be self-sufficient. It is unjustified. What happened to the Canadian dream, where hard work gets rewarded and where we are the land of freedom with responsibility? The Liberals have led not just me but many other Canadians to feel that everything is off. Life in Canada is not as free as it used to be eight years ago, and this unjust firearms ban is a symbol of this broken feeling. Rifles do not harm people; the people behind them do. Instead of attacking the real criminals, the members opposite chose to slap some half-baked idea together and call it a day. This is why I say that the Liberals have missed the mark once again, and it raises the following question: How does this help society? Does it reduce crime in Canada to take rifles away from hunters with no criminal records? It does not. Does it stop gun crime in our nation to make it impossible for an aspiring biathlete or a target shooter to acquire a rifle? It does not. What it really does is make the Liberals feel good. It allows them to pretend that they are doing something without actually having to take real action. When will they finally admit that the legal firearms owners are not the criminals? When will they humble themselves and admit that their catch-and-release policies are not just ineffective but outright dangerous to society at large? Violent repeat offenders, not our licensed gun owners, are the real criminals. When will the Prime Minister stand up, scrap this nonsense once and for all and propose solutions that actually protect Canadian citizens?

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Jun/21/22 5:27:42 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-21

Madam Speaker, it is a question of fairness too. That is why I said that this bill is falling short on so many fronts. One of them is this point. The government should have thought about it longer and deeper to do a better job of bringing a good piece of legislation forward that would really help Canadians.

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Jun/21/22 5:26:45 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-21

Madam Speaker, we would like to see a complete solution to a big problem that is facing Canada and Canadians. We do not want to see any crimes happening in any part of Canada, whether in an urban city or in rural areas. We believe that this bill is falling short in dealing with the problem and bringing the remedy needed to make sure that we have solutions to the big issues we are facing.

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Jun/21/22 5:25:26 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-21

Madam Speaker, the focus of my speech and those of my colleagues is on being tough on crime, and on making sure the borders are protected and smugglers do not bring illegal guns to Canada. Any effort that goes in that direction is well supported by us. That should be the spirit of any bill brought to this place, or to be brought to this place in the future. This is the only point that we disagree with the Liberals on because they are not focusing on where the problem is. They are going after law-abiding Canadians, which is something we do not like to see and we do not support.

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Jun/21/22 5:24:17 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-21

Madam Speaker, I will forgive him because of his short memory. They are known for their short memories on the other side. I will also forgive him for not understanding the difference between broccoli and firearms.

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Jun/21/22 5:23:41 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-21

Madam Speaker, from time to time, it is nice to correct some of the facts. I am not sure if the member remembers this, but I was not here before 2015. Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

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