- Member of Parliament
- Member of the panel of chairs for the legislative committees
- Conservative
- Red Deer—Lacombe
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $146,499.79
- Government Page
Mr. Speaker, I cannot say that I am happy to be rising today to discuss this piece of legislation, but I am happy to be rising as a law-abiding firearms owner to defend my fellow law-abiding firearms owners.
How did we get here? I will put things in context so the people who might be watching at home know whom they are listening to. I am a member of Parliament for an urban-rural split riding in central Alberta. Half of my constituents live in Red Deer, the third-largest city in Alberta, and the other half live on a first nation reserve, or in a rural setting in Red Deer County, Lacombe County or Ponoka County, or in a small town, city or village therein.
I would consider the people I represent to be honest, hard-working, law-abiding folks who want their tax dollars spent wisely and want the freedom to pursue whatever they want to pursue in life. Many of them pursue various things that involve firearms, including hunting, farming on farms like the one I grew up on, where firearms are just a tool and an everyday part of life, or sport shooting. This is very popular in my constituency. There are numerous stores and vendors in central Alberta that supply firearms, ammunition and parts because of the demand that is there.
I can tell members that we do not have the problems that my colleague who just spoke talked about in her large urban centre, because we respect the law. We put policies in place at the provincial level, and when we are the governing party, we put laws in place that actually crack down on criminals. That is where the actual issue lies.
I can assure Canadians who might be watching at home that the firearms I own are doing nothing right now. They do not do anything until someone picks them up. The issue at hand is violent crime and who has access to firearms. There are numerous provisions in this bill, Bill C-21, that do not address, penalize or in any way affect the outcome of dealing with the wrong people getting a hold of firearms.
How did we get here? Over the course of the preceding decades, Canada was a country that was a rugged place to settle, and it is still a rugged place for some who live in rural areas or adjacent to wild areas or who are farming, involved in forestry, or doing something as seemingly innocuous as keeping beehives. Anybody watching at home who grew up with cartoon books would know that Winnie-the-Pooh was addicted to honey. This is not by chance. Bears often frequent these places, and good, honest people have bought firearms to protect themselves, many of whom were caught up in the order in council that came out a number of years ago.
It all started in the 1930s. If we go back that far, every single firearm and handgun in this country has been put in a registry, but that does not stop criminals from obtaining guns illegally. The government of the day, whenever it is Liberal or Liberal-leaning, seems to want to blame the law-abiding citizen, so, for decades, we have had a firearms registry and the government knows where all the lawfully owned handguns in this country are. Changes were brought in back when Jean Chrétien was the prime minister, including a long-gun registry, which was wasteful and ineffective. The government of the day said it would cost only $2 million, but it was actually closer to $2 billion. Of course, it did not do anything to address violent crime.
We have seen the current government, in its first mandate, put in place Bill C-75, which basically codified in law bail provisions that would let people out in the shortest amount of time with the smallest number of restrictions, and now we see what has happened with that.
What did Bill C-21 originally do? When the members of this House were invited to speak to the bill, it was simply the codification in law of an order in council to ban the transfer of handguns. Then, sneakily, the government decided to table-drop, back in November, a huge stack of amendments that had absolutely nothing to do with handguns. They were all about long guns, and of course the government bit off far more than it could chew.
The government managed to alienate almost all of its voting base when it comes to indigenous Canadians, who were offended by the fact that the firearms used by indigenous people were largely going to be caught up in amendment G-46, taking away their ability to use that firearm.
There was also an evergreen clause in G-4, and I am sorry to report that there is a new evergreen clause put in place that does virtually the same thing, with a minor exception, which I will explain in a few minutes, when I get back to what the problem actually is with the government's notions going forward on its new evergreen clause.
We all remember what happened. It was pretty obvious, because we heard the recordings from the Mass Casualty Commission. The government actually interfered. It took this mass casualty event in Nova Scotia and interfered in the investigation by demanding that the officers who were investigating at the time turn over information to advance a political agenda of the government of the day.
We know it is not about evidence. It is not evidence-based policy-making; it is policy-based evidence-making and evidence-finding, even if it interferes with a police investigation. That is why there is very little trust by law-abiding firearms owners in the intentions of the Liberal government, which is supported by the NDP, and what it is doing.
What is the problem? The problem is violent crime. In the last eight years, violent crime has risen because of the provisions that have been passed by the government when it had a majority and with the support of other left-leaning parties in this place. They passed numerous pieces of legislation, such as Bill C-75 and Bill C-5, that have basically eliminated any consequences whatsoever for people who commit crimes, so much so that violent crime in the last eight years is up 32% over what it was when the Prime Minister and his government inherited the government offices of this place.
More astonishing is this number: 94% increase in gang-related homicides. One would think that an almost doubling of the number of homicides by gang members would trigger a response from the government to crack down on organized crime, but it actually has done the opposite. The passages and clauses in the Criminal Code that would deal with people who are repeat violent offenders have largely been removed, as well as any semblance of a minimum sentence. I am not even talking about mandatory minimum sentences put in place by Stephen Harper when he was prime minister, and by the way crime went down over those 10 years, but I am getting to the point of the fact that numerous basic minimum sentences were removed.
These were put in place by people like Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Jean Chrétien. Of the 12 firearms-related clauses in that piece of legislation, 11 were actually put in place by previous Liberal governments, and the current version of the Liberal government has removed even the most basic minimum sentences for violent crime, including smuggling, firing a gun irresponsibly or even holding a gun to somebody's head for the purpose of extortion. It has removed any mandatory jail time whatsoever for those.
That is the tone and the signal Liberals have sent to the country. Why would criminals not want to increase their activity? There are no consequences, and this is the problem.
I will give an example of the illogic of what the government is doing right now. According to the RCMP's website, there are approximately 430 gangs in Canada with 7,000 members in those gangs. If we look at the average number of homicides committed by people associated with gangs over the last five or six years, it is about 50% of murders. Fifty per cent of murders are committed by gang members, or about 125 a year. There are 2.2 million licensed gun owners in this country. If we look over that same time period, we will see that they are charged for homicide about 12 times a year.
That is 12 out of 2.2 million people versus 125 out of 7,000 people. Who does the government go after? It goes after the 2.2 million. It does not make any sense whatsoever. If we do the math, a gang member is 3,300 times more likely to commit murder with a firearm than a law-abiding firearm owner is, yet the government focuses only on the law-abiding firearm owner.
Gary Mauser, professor emeritus, did an analysis for Statistics Canada that shows that Canadians who are not licensed firearms owners are still three times more likely to commit a homicide than a vetted, licensed gun owner is. For the people who are watching at home, the safest people in Canada for them to be with are legally vetted, law-abiding firearm owners who, at any time, could have their firearms taken away with any complaint lodged against them. That means that every firearm owner meticulously follows the laws of storage, the laws of transportation and the laws of safe discharge. As a matter of fact, we jokingly quip sometimes that gun control meetings are about making sure one's muzzle is always pointed downrange. That is what gun control is to a law-abiding gun owner. We follow all the rules because we do not want to risk losing our privileges, because the fact is that every firearm in Canada is illegal unless it is in the possession of somebody with a licence who is authorized to have that firearm.
We have to go through a renewal process every five years, during which our entire history, including our mental health history, our medical history and anything that might have happened before the courts is reviewed in detail. We wait months to get our licence renewed. Sometimes it is not renewed on time. This puts us in a situation, as law-abiding firearm owners, where we are now in possession of our firearms, which were legal one day, but of which, because of the incompetence of the government to process an application on time, we are now technically, according to the law, illegally in possession. We actually had a clause, when Stephen Harper was the prime minister, where people had a six-month grace period. I am very frustrated by the removal of that grace period, and I will get to that in a minute.
In committee, Dr. Caillin Langmann from McMaster University basically laid it out for everybody to see. His brief states:
The foregoing research papers are peer reviewed and conclude that Canadian legislation to regulate and control firearm possession and acquisition does not have a corresponding effect on homicide and suicide rates.
It also states:
I was asked to produce a review paper for the Journal of Preventive Medicine in 2021. This paper entitled, “Suicide, firearms, and legislation: A review of the Canadian evidence” reviewed 13 studies regarding suicide and legislative efforts and found an associated reduction in suicide by firearm in men aged 45 and older but demonstrated an equivalent increase in suicide by other methods such as hanging. Factors such as unemployment, low income, and indigenous populations were associated with suicide rates....
My conclusions are based on sound statistical analysis and information specifically related to Canada. I am not aware of any other Canadian research which uses reliable statistical models to dispute or disagree with my conclusions.
The brief also states:
Bans of military-appearing firearms, semiautomatic rifles and handguns, short barrel handguns and Saturday night specials in the 1990s has resulted in no associated reduction in homicide rates.
To summarize the results, no statistically significant beneficial associations were found between firearms legislation and homicide by firearm, as well as spousal homicide by firearms, and the criminal charge of “Discharge of a Firearm with Intent”....
Other studies have demonstrated agreement with my studies that laws targeting restricted firearms such as handguns and certain semi-automatic and full automatic firearms in Canada also had no associated effect with homicide rates. Canadian studies by Leenaars and Lester 2001, Mauser and Holmes 1992, and McPhedran and Mauser 2013, are all in general agreement with my study.
The issue is violent crime. It is about controlling violent criminals, controlling those people. One can control inanimate objects all one wants, but it will not change anything. Therefore, the “who” is not the problem. It is not hunters. Over eight million people in this country hunt and fish, contributing $19 billion annually to the GDP, and the order in council has already banned rifles used for hunting, some that even conservation officers use. I was a conservation officer. I was a national park warden and I was issued firearms for my duties. I was a park ranger in charge of a park in the province of Alberta and I was issued firearms for those duties as well. Every person I dealt with as a conservation officer was at least a camper who had an axe, a fisherman who had a knife or a hunter who had either a rifle or a bow and arrow. I had no trouble with those good people, no trouble whatsoever.
We are going to ban the very guns that conservation officers use, but they do not have those firearms. The Yukon government actually had to go around the order in council to buy firearms for its conservation officers, because those are the best firearms available to protect its officers from bears, mountain lions and all of the other issues that conservation officers face, because that is where the real issue lies.
It is very clear to me as a hunter, that, with the changes the Liberals have made, they are weasel words, especially the evergreen clause that deals with magazines. I laid it out very clearly at committee that anybody who wants to interpret it that way can say that, as long as a firearm can take a magazine that holds more than five rounds, it shall be banned. After this becomes law, we would end up in a situation in which, with guns that are functionally identical, one from 10 years ago and a new firearm, one would be prohibited and the other would still be legal. This is because of the clear lack of knowledge and understanding, when it comes to firearms, of people who do not own guns, making laws that simply do not work. We are going to have that scenario again.
However, if people think their gun is safe because they have an older gun that is not included in the new evergreen clause, they should think again, because the firearms committee that would be struck would still have the same authority to do a firearms reference table analysis and ban whatever guns it does not like.
I have news for everybody in this room. If we look at all of the hunting regulations in all of the provinces and territories in this country, a hunting rifle is a rifle that is in the hands of a hunter, used for the purposes of the hunt. It does not matter what it looks like; it just matters what the calibre of the bullet is, so the animal can be safely dispatched.
I could go on for literally a couple more hours and talk about the end of cowboy mounted shooting, cowboy action shooting, IPSC, all of these sports for all of these good people. They are mostly Filipinos there, by the way, when I go to an IPSC event. They are people who have moved here from a country that never allowed them to own firearms, but they have come here and taken up this sport and activity. They are frustrated because, when we take away the ability to transfer these handguns between law-abiding citizens, it will be the end of thousands of people's enjoyment of the sports that involve handguns. I look forward to answering some hopefully logical questions from around the room.
Before I conclude, I move:
That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following: “Bill C-21, An Act to amend certain Acts and to make certain consequential amendments (firearms), be not now read a third time, but be referred back to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security for the purpose of reconsidering clauses 0.1, 1.1 and 17, with a view to ensure that the government cannot take away hunting rifles from law-abiding farmers, hunters and Indigenous peoples.”
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- Jan/30/23 2:09:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it has been eight years since the Prime Minister took office, and his soft-on-crime policies have unleashed a crime wave in Canada. The government has made life easier for violent criminals by providing easy access to bail and repealing mandatory minimum sentences for serious crimes. As a result, violent crime has gone up 32% in the past year, and gang-related killings have gone up by 92% since 2015.
Furthermore, Liberals have failed to stop the flow of illegal firearms across the border. As a consequence, five police officers have tragically lost their lives this past fall in the line of duty. Our communities feel less safe, and the government is making it worse. Despite their dismal record, Liberals recently initiated a ban on hunting rifles and shotguns, making thousands of these firearms illegal. Hunters, farmers and target shooters are not the problem; Liberals are the problem. This Liberal made-in-Canada crime wave must stop.
Only a Conservative government will do what is necessary to keep violent criminals off our streets.
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- Dec/1/22 2:10:23 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, since the government took office in 2015, gang-related homicides have increased by 92%. The Liberals reduced sentencing requirements for serious gun crimes and now violent crime is up 32%. The Liberals will not admit their soft-on-crime approach is failing all Canadians.
Last week, the government initiated a ban on rifles and shotguns. This will ban hundreds of thousands of firearms in Canada that are used for hunting. The ban includes slow-to-fire guns and purpose-built hunting firearms that are designed to shoot birds or deer. It said it would not, but it did. There is no trust in the government.
Instead of addressing gang crime and gun smuggling, the government is vilifying hunters and farmers. The Liberals know Canadian hunters are not causing the crime surge in Canada, but they are going after them anyway because it is all about politics and not fighting crime. Their ill-conceived plans to go after hunters is the largest attack on law-abiding firearms owners in Canadian history. It is a direct attack on our Canadian cultural heritage.
The Conservatives will always stand up for victims, go after gangs and smugglers and trust Canada's law-abiding gun owners.
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Mr. Speaker, I represent constituents who also participate in airsoft activities. It is a small but important industry to those who take great enjoyment in it and have fun with it. It is great for exercise and a number of reasons. The fact that the Liberal government is actually not even differentiating between a toy gun and an actual firearm shows me just how little Liberals actually know or understand about actual firearms.
I would welcome any changes to this legislation that would extract those who legitimately want to use airsoft. If there are any mechanisms that are reasonable and make sense so that people who just want to go out and have a little bit of fun can continue to do so, they would have my support.
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Mr. Speaker, this is an excellent idea and worthy of debate in the House. I look forward to my colleague in the Bloc Québécois tabling a private member's bill, or somebody in the House tabling a bill, to establish just such a thing.
As I said in my comments, I am checked as a law-abiding citizen every day to ensure that I am able to continue to legally possess firearms in the this country, yet we do not have a system in this country that would keep track of people who are prohibited from having firearms because of their affiliation and association with criminal gang activities and prior convictions.
This government, through Bill C-71, now Bill C-5 before the House, would make it easier for criminals to be out on bail, to be out on parole and to have zero time served in jail. At the same time, the only people it would make life difficult for, when it comes to firearms, are law-abiding firearms owners in this country. It is shameful.
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Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today to speak to Bill C-21, the NDP-Liberals' most recent attempt to scapegoat law-abiding firearms owners and to trick the average Canadian into believing they are trying to improve public safety while doing absolutely no such thing.
If we looks at the balance of the government's agenda on public safety and justice, we see that Liberals seem content to undermine both of these departments and the essential institutions that support them. This is being done in order to virtue signal and play petty politics to the detriment of our entire society.
While this is deeply disappointing, it is hardly surprising. The government is light on substantive policy solutions and heavy on press conferences and so-called alternative facts.
Today additional details came to light about interference by the government and the Prime Minister in the investigation of the tragic mass murders in Nova Scotia in an attempt to create a narrative that would fit their political agenda. This is important, because it speaks to the foundation on which substantial parts of the Liberals' firearms policy rests, including parts of Bill C-21, the bill we are currently debating.
The Halifax Examiner reported yesterday that “RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki 'made a promise' to [the] Public Safety Minister...[at the time] and the Prime Minister’s Office to leverage the mass murders of April 18/19, 2020 to get a gun control law passed.”
To be clear, that former public safety minister is now the current Minister of Emergency Preparedness.
The article makes it clear that the commissioner was being pressured by the Prime Minister's Office and the current Minister of Emergency Preparedness to ensure that information was released that would help them politically, to the detriment of the ongoing investigation and potentially placing it in jeopardy.
As the Minister of Emergency Preparedness is a former police chief, we would expect better from him. However, maybe this is how he has always operated. This is a pattern of behaviour with this Prime Minister: He puts himself first, the Liberal Party second, his donors and insider friends third, and then if there is time and the chance for a really good photo op, he might try to do something that actually helps a few Canadians.
This is an example of the first two. The Prime Minister was willing to interfere with the ongoing police investigation in order to try to leverage a political edge. This used to be unimaginable, but given the Prime Minister's SNC-Lavalin track record, it is totally in line with his character. The way someone does one thing is the way that person does everything.
I want to read part of this article, because it is important and deserves to be heard in this place. Nova Scotia Superintendent Darren Campbell wrote about a meeting he had with Commissioner Lucki, stating:
The Commissioner was obviously upset. She did not raise her voice but her choice of words was indicative of her overall dissatisfaction with our work. The Commissioner accused us (me) of disrespecting her by not following her instructions. I was and remain confused over this. The Commissioner said she told Comms to tell us at H Division to include specific info about the firearms used by [the killer]….However I said we couldn’t because to do so would jeopardize ongoing efforts to advance the U.S. side of the case as well as the Canadian components of the investigation. Those are facts and I stand by them.
Those are the words of Superintendent Campbell.
I will add that every police officer carries with them an evidence notebook. I, as a former law enforcement officer back in the 1990s, still have today my evidence notebooks in case I need to recall facts about events that happened while I was on duty.
The article continues:
Campbell noted that Lucki went on at length and said she was “sad and disappointed” that he had not provided these details to the media. Campbell continued:
The Commissioner said she had promised the Minister of Public Safety and the Prime Minister’s Office that the RCMP (we) would release this information. I tried to explain there was no intent to disrespect anyone however we could not release this information at this time. The Commissioner then said that we didn’t understand, that this was tied to pending gun control legislation that would make officers and the public safer. She was very upset and at one point Deputy Commissioner (Brian) Brennan tried to get things calmed down but that had little effect. Some in the room were reduced to tears and emotional over this belittling reprimand.
The article makes it clear that this was not the only way that the government interfered with this investigation and the release of information, by pressuring the commissioner to break agreed-upon protocols.
The article also attributes a quote to Lia Scanlan, communications director for the RCMP, that says, “The commissioner releases a body count that we don’t even have. She went out and did that. It was all political pressure. That is 100% the minister and the Prime Minister. And we have a Commissioner that does not push back.”
Those are the words of RCMP communications director Scanlan. It is deeply concerning that the commissioner would not push back against the government on this request, but it is completely and totally unacceptable that she should ever have had to. I can only surmise that she is all too familiar with what happens to women who speak truth to power to the Prime Minister and his underlings.
This is the foundation on which Bill C-21 was constructed: political pressure and interference with the RCMP, misinformation about the perpetrators of gun violence and naked political opportunism. The bill was also announced on the heels of an American tragedy, deliberately importing American political discourse into domestic Canadian policies. The Prime Minister seems to be confused about the impact of Canadian legislation on American society, of which there is virtually none.
Unless he is announcing his plan to run for president of the United States, he should start trying to address the issues that Canadians face, not American issues here in Canada.
The firearms regimes in our two countries, Canada and the United States, are completely different. It has been made clear that the mass murderer from Texas would not be able to get a gun in Canada. In most U.S. states, a 21-year-old American with no convictions could purchase a firearm and, in pretty much every state, carry it. In about half of them, they could carry concealed with limited regulations. That is not the reality in Canada.
I am a law-abiding firearms owner. In Canada, people need to take a firearms safety course, apply for a licence and submit to a background check, not only on the initial application but on every reapplication every five years, in which the RCMP can contact former conjugal partners. Then, they wait for that information to come back for a few months, and maybe then can go and purchase a firearm and abide by stringent safe storage and transport laws. That is the reality in Canada. Every day, my ability to continue to own or possess firearms is checked against the Canadian Police Information Centre’s database to ensure that I am still legally and lawfully able to.
If only the government of the day would spend that much time following up on people who are prohibited from possessing or acquiring firearms, spend that much time policing our borders and making sure that the people on our borders had the tools and equipment that they needed, and spend that much time in this chamber actually focused on criminals who commit crimes: they shoot guns in our urban centres, in our communities and in our rural areas and have no respect for the law and no respect for human life.
That is not the case with the 2.1 million law-abiding Canadian firearms owners. In fact, the data clearly says the opposite. If we are going to be harmed by somebody in the country with a firearm, the vast majority of that harm is coming from somebody who is not licensed to have the firearm in the first place.
Every gun in this country is illegal unless it is in the possession of somebody licensed to have it. We have the best firearms laws in the world, and I will put that up against the record of any other country.
It is shameful that the government is importing U.S. politics into Canada to sell misinformation to the voters of this country and disenfranchise law-abiding Canadian citizens.
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- May/17/22 2:22:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, a database with Canadians' personal information attached to a unique identifying number attached to the serial number of a firearm and administered by the firearms registrar is a gun registry.
We know the Prime Minister does not think much about Canadians who support legal firearms ownership, but we are not fools. What is foolish is gutting penalties for criminals who steal firearms, possess stolen firearms, traffic in firearms or smuggle firearms.
Could the Prime Minister explain why he has such a vendetta against target shooters in Estevan while he lets gun-wielding criminals run free in ridings his backbenchers represent?
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- May/17/22 2:20:59 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is mind-boggling that the Prime Minister thinks that gangsters who use guns on our streets do not deserve jail time.
Conservatives know for a fact that law-abiding firearms owners are among the least likely people to commit an offence with a firearm. The original long-gun registry was a $1-billion boondoggle that did nothing to enhance public safety. This new Liberal backdoor registry will not either.
Why will the government not focus on criminals and smugglers and leave law-abiding Canadians alone?
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- Mar/2/22 2:15:12 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, responsible firearms ownership should be acknowledged as part of Canada's cultural and sporting traditions. We know that firearms owners are among the least likely people in society to commit a criminal offence with a firearm. We have a robust system of checks and balances for law-abiding firearms owners in our country, yet the Prime Minister is still rolling ahead with the forced confiscation of Canadians' sporting rifles under the guise of removing assault-style weapons.
It is no coincidence that the Liberal government is not sending AR-15s to Ukraine. They are not military-grade rifles. It is time for evidence-based policy when it comes to firearms, not an ideological crusade that will cost billions of dollars without increasing public safety.
We need to focus on combatting gang-related gun violence and ensure that the hard-working men and women of the CBSA have the resources they need to stop the illegal flow of firearms. It is time for the government to target criminals and not law-abiding Canadians who they simply disagree with.
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