- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Regina—Lewvan
- Saskatchewan
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $123,656.05
- Government Page
- Mar/19/24 6:40:00 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is true that things would have been done very differently if there had been a Conservative government that had the opportunity to govern during the pandemic. Perhaps people would have been able to go to funerals. I know other countries did take a different approach. We can see that people had the ability to do some of those things in different countries, like Sweden, while we did not have the opportunity to be with our loved ones—
Mr. Kevin Lamoureux: Those were provincial.
Mr. Warren Steinley: Madam Speaker, the member said that was provincial and I hear that, but I remember we lost my uncle. At my uncle's funeral, when we listened to the eulogies, I listened to them in the truck, because there were only a few people allowed in the church. I believe Canadians never want to get back to a point like that.
We do agree that there have to be more reviews done. They have to be done fairly, and we have to know who is going to be doing them. Like I said earlier, we did talk about how the constitutionality of the Emergencies Act was challenged. It was done by an independent body, and that review came back and said the Emergencies Act was invoked and it broke the constitutional rights of Canadians. Those are the things we need to really come together on and say they should never happen again.
People's bank accounts were frozen in this country because they donated $25 or bought a T-shirt to support a movement. That is not the Canada I want my three kids to grow up in. I think we are better than that, and we should always be vigilant and stand on guard to make sure things like that never happen again.
We talked about what happened with the spending, and my Liberal colleague from Winnipeg North was talking about spending the millions and billions of dollars. How many people made a lot of money during the pandemic who did not have the ability to follow through on contracts? I can think of several. They talk about being there for Canadians and having Canadians' backs. A big chunk of the spending, billions of dollars of COVID spending, was never spent on COVID programs. It was not spent at all on COVID programs, so there should be an audit of finance during COVID as well, because I think we have only hit the tip of the iceberg when it comes to programs like the arrive scam app.
We should not forget that it is not just about the money when it comes to the arrive scam app. Tens of thousands of people were forced by the government to quarantine who never should have had to. The failure of that app was not just the millions of dollars of taxpayers' money that was wasted. It was that it actually took away some more rights and freedoms of Canadians. They had to quarantine, miss work and not be with their kids for no reason at all.
There are a lot more of these funds and this spending that happened during COVID-19 that we really should take a look at, and I cannot wait to see what happens when we are—
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Madam Speaker, it is with a heavy heart that I join this debate. I am going to speak for a bit and then I will take some questions because I have some answers I would like to give to a few of the questions that were asked in the chamber this evening. I hope members will stay and have the courage to ask me the same questions they asked other members.
I am really standing up for the law-abiding firearms owners in Saskatchewan this evening, because despite what the junior coalition partner NDP and the Liberals say, we all know that the two amendments that were brought forward with members kicking and screaming were about, with one, trying to create a backdoor registry and, with the second, a minimal change to the definition, which really did not affect the legislation at all.
When we talked about amendments, several times this evening my colleagues tried to put forward a unanimous motion to change an amendment that had a clerical error. Years ago, this would not have happened. Years ago, under Tom Mulcair or Jack Layton, they would have been honoured to accept that unanimous consent motion and it would have been changed because it was simply a clerical error. Time and time again, the House leader stood and mischaracterized what happened, which is a sore spot for Conservatives because we do like to try to work together in this House. What we have seen tonight was complete disrespect for how this chamber is supposed to work.
I will go back to standing up for law-abiding firearms owners across Saskatchewan. Regina—Lewvan is an urban riding that has sport shooters, hunters, people who go to the range to trap-shoot and the Regina Wildlife Federation, good, salt-of-the-earth people who just want to keep their traditions alive. Earlier on in this debate about law-abiding firearms owners, we learned that it really was not about decreasing crime. It was really about going after something that people do not understand.
I have some quotes by people who are are not traditional Conservatives. One is from Chief Heather Bear from the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations. Chief Heather Bear stated:
When guns are confiscated from sustenance hunters, it impacts them and their families when they have merely been trying to put food on the table. When guns are confiscated it may also impact the whole nation, especially those who hunt for ceremonial purposes, in that sometimes we only need traditional food for ceremonies....
If there are no safety issues and there is no issue of domestic violence or any kind of violence, then taking away a gun impacts our nations and our citizens' ability to assert our inherent, and treaty and constitutional rights. We also view our guns as a tool of our first nations sustenance hunters.
That is not a traditional Conservative supporter. I would also say that I do not think she would be a conspiracy theorist. I think she has some genuine concern about what is going to happen with their traditional way of life and how they will feed their families. I dare any member in this House to stand and say that is fearmongering, as has been said so often tonight about Conservatives who have brought forward concerns from their constituents.
We all represent our constituents and it is being boiled down by some in the NDP who are terrified by this debate right now because they know they are going to lose seats in rural Canada due to being on the wrong side of history on this. We need to remember when Liberals, in the 1990s, brought in the long gun registry. I remember that they were going to drop crime and crime statistics were going to plummet because they were going to take long guns away from our hunters and farmers. This is just rinse and repeat.
We see right now that violent crime has gone up 32% in our country, with the Liberals doing nothing with their hug-a-thug policies. We are seeing gang violence increase by over 90%. Do we think this legislation is going to prevent that?
I have my PAL. I know how long it took to get my possession and acquisition licence. I know that every morning my name goes through CPIC, and the Liberals and NDP are trying to take advantage of people who do not know what the regulations are around this. Every morning my name goes through CPIC, like every other person who has a PAL, to make sure they have not done anything wrong. If they go through, police officers know that people have firearms in their possession because of RPAL and that there could be dangerous situations, which does not happen with law-abiding firearms owners.
Robert Freberg came and talked to the Saskatchewan caucus. Do members know how many crimes in Saskatchewan have been committed with a legally owned firearm? Fewer than a handful, he said. If people in this chamber think voting for the bill is going to drop crime rates in our country, either they are lying to themselves or they do not understand what the bill would actually do.
We know that with the so-called NDP standing up for these amendments, there is going to be a firearms advisory committee. This committee is going to then use it as a back door to bring through more legislation and take guns away from law-abiding hunters and farmers.
I just got off the phone with the Agribition CEO, Kim Hextall. She asked why they would want to take away firearms from people who use them for protecting their livestock and for varmints. These are the people none of these members in this chamber are standing up for, and I think it is something that should be taken very seriously. If they are going to take gun crime seriously and try to get gang members to not have illegal firearms, perhaps they should not have voted in favour of Bill C-5, which lessened the penalties for all these crimes.
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Mr. Speaker, we hear this narrative all the time with the Liberal Party saying that the Conservatives do not co-operate. We had unanimous consent on the constitutional amendment for Saskatchewan, so we have co-operated—
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