- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Bloc Québécois
- Shefford
- Quebec
- Voting Attendance: 66%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $81,135.43
- Government Page
Madam Speaker, as I mentioned, Bill C‑21 deals with legal firearms in particular, but there is the whole issue of illegal firearms. That is why I was talking about Bill C‑279, which would make it possible to make a list of criminal groups, look at what is happening at the border, invest in the work associated with public safety.
As I said, what is happening south of the border has consequences here. Weapons trafficking is happening on both sides and we definitely need to do a better job on this. The numbers show that there are far too many illegal firearms, specifically 95%. That is huge. Now that Bill C‑21 has been worked on, we definitely need to address these illegal firearms.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to build on the question my colleague asked earlier.
When I worked as the assistant to the member for Brome—Missisquoi, the president of the Customs and Immigration Union, Jean-Pierre Fortin, visited our office. In the early 2000s, we saw the negative effects of the Conservative government's cuts to border crossings. Those cuts created a lot of extremely frustrating situations for the workers.
My colleague brought up the issue of illegal weapons at the border and how it is important to better control them. I would like to hear what he has to say about that.
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Madam Speaker, I would say that this lack of interest by federal governments goes back much further than seven years. From 2007 to 2011, I was an assistant to a member of Parliament who had border crossings in his riding, and even back then, there was tension. It was palpable.
As we saw during the pandemic, the government does not seem concerned about our border crossings and has failed to competently manage what happens there. It was clear that it did not pay enough attention to this issue. This is one of the criticisms that can be levelled at the government. We saw it during the pandemic, the borders were real—
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Madam Speaker, I thank my most hon. colleague from Drummond for his question and commend him for all of his work.
I will come back to what he said, but, as I said in my speech, there is also a part of the bill that will enable us to better document these cases of racism and to collect data. I spoke about it in my speech, but I thank my colleague for bringing me back to the subject.
It is thanks to that data that we will be able to make changes. It takes facts and figures to get an overall picture of what is happening, and that is what the bill will enable us to do, so that we can avoid the type of situation that his friend has all too often experienced.
We all have stories about times when it was more complicated to cross the border than usual. Having worked for an MP who had border crossings in his riding, I heard some pretty crazy things. This bill will enable us to document it all to prevent this sort of situation from happening. I hope that the CBSA will do some soul-searching so that it can build public trust.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question, but I am going to split it into two and try to answer both parts quickly.
First, on the question of time, I realize that I did not answer sufficiently in my previous response. We can only denounce the fact that this bill is still not in place and that there have been delays in getting this common-sense bill passed. The Liberals, like the Conservatives, have been slow and have decreased investments so much in border crossings and services that we have ended up in a situation where staff are overworked, tired and exhausted, which does not help matters. I really want to emphasize those two aspects.
On the other point, one thing is certain. Migrants must be treated with dignity. I would like to emphasize once again the issue of the safe third country agreement. What should be at the heart of everything related to refugees is that behind the number of refugees arriving at our borders, there are people, there are faces. They are human beings who absolutely must be treated with dignity. Unfortunately, this is not happening under that agreement.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague spoke about the border. I know that this is an important aspect of this debate. I was formerly the assistant to an MP whose riding was on the U.S. border, and I know that people can get very creative when they want to bring all kinds of things across the border.
This evening's debate reminds us that guns are obviously getting across the border. I am not referring to legal guns but to smuggled guns that are illegally imported by train or boat.
It was rather surreal today to see the Quebec public safety minister make an announcement about Akwesasne without a federal representative being present, given that the federal government should be contributing to and helping with this important fight.
I would like to remind members about my Bloc Québécois colleagues' idea of creating a joint task force whose members would all work together to crack down on illegal guns. What does my colleague think of that?
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