- Member of Parliament
- Member of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians
- Conservative
- Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $91,173.06
- Government Page
- Feb/2/23 6:31:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am here tonight to elaborate on something that is related to our opposition day motion today. It was a question I put to the government back in November about violent crime, Bill C-5 and the current Liberal government's soft-on-crime approach, which is not doing anything to make Canada safer.
In particular, I talked about how violent crime has risen 32% since the Liberals formed government, which equates to over 124,000 more violent crimes since they have been in government. I talked about local headlines of people “arrested again” for participation in a criminal organization, failure to comply with a probation order, 11 counts of knowledge of possession of a firearm while prohibited, two counts of disobeying a court order and two counts of breaching a weapons prohibition.
I am going to provide more local statistics from my own riding, because this is a prevalent problem. We see the media coverage all the time in our urban centres, but this problem of repeat offenders committing crimes is pervasive right across Canada.
Here is something from December 16, 2022, in my riding: “Charges laid in drive-by shooting”. Charges included possession of a weapon for dangerous purpose, careless use of firearm, assault with a weapon and discharging a firearm with intent. The key point is possession of a firearm contrary to a probation order. This individual also faces an attempted murder charge after a shooting in my riding back in August.
Here is another one: “Man suffers fractured skull in Hanover hammer attack”. I know the Prime Minister likes to speak about banning assault weapons. Well, guess what. A hammer used in an assault is an assault weapon, and good luck trying to ban all the hammers in the country. I do not think that is going to achieve much for public safety either. This happened at a convenience store. There were seven different charges, including several counts of breaching probation.
I have another one here, just miles from my own farm. It required significant resources from our law enforcement in the local area. A 53-year-old woman and a 48-year-old man were each charged with countless drug trafficking issues. The woman was additionally charged with two counts of disobeying a court order and failure to comply with a probation order. The man was additionally charged with two counts of breach of a weapons prohibition.
The fourth example is of a man in my riding. He has 25 weapons charges, with 15 different counts of a restricted or prohibited firearm and two breaches of a firearms prohibition.
Finally, I have one more example that required multiple police units to be involved. A 40-year-old man, a 63-year-old woman and a 24-year-old woman all got drug charges, and one was in possession of a firearm contrary to a prohibition order.
What is the government's solution? It removed mandatory minimum sentences for repeat offenders, including 10 of the 12 that were introduced by two former Liberal prime ministers, Trudeau senior and Chrétien. I do not know what the Liberal government had so wrong back in those days, but now we have seen every premier in this country table a letter to the government demanding bail reform. We also have police groups calling for stricter rules against these violent repeat offenders.
When are the Liberals going to repeal portions of Bill C-75 and Bill C-5 and stop targeting law-abiding firearms owners, sport shooters and farmers?
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- Feb/2/23 5:16:59 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I got to know my colleague from the Bloc quite well last year in Europe. However, I would like him to reread the motion. He made a statement that was factually incorrect when he said that our motion is calling for the complete repeal of Bill C-75. The motion does not state that. It states that we want to repeal those aspects that are allowing violent repeat offenders to get out there and commit additional violent crimes and murders.
My question is simple enough. Does the member agree the bail system does need reform and, as all the premiers have called for, including the premier of la belle province, we need that reform immediately and it needs to happen now?
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. I have a great deal of respect for him.
I have no issues with lists of criminal organizations right across this country. The challenge I have in my riding, as in a lot of rural ridings, is how we quantify that and get down to it, etc. I have no issues with criminal organizations being listed. I think that is important information that law enforcement should have if it can help, because I think it really gets to the root causes of gun violence in Canada: illegal crimes and gangs. Let us fix that.
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Madam Speaker, first, I would like to acknowledge the member's speech. He spent a lot of time talking about the root causes and the need to address those. To me, the key thing is to sort out the poverty, the drugs, the gangs and the crime in the country if we really want to get down to reducing gun crime.
I would like the member to clarify something. He mentioned that he thought it would be statistically impossible to get to some of the data. I want to remind the member that every legal handgun in Canada is registered. Whether they are straw purchased or not, they are registered, so it is not difficult to figure out how many legal handguns are involved in gun crimes in this country.
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- Jun/9/22 8:11:11 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague's speech was really fascinating and it triggered a memory of mine of Michael Sheehan's book, Crush the Cell: How to Defeat Terrorism Without Terrorizing Ourselves. That book talks about an aspect of cleaning up crime in New York. When they went after the subways and cleaned up the graffiti and cleaned up those lower crimes, that lowered crime writ large.
Could the member please explain just a bit more about the broken windows theory and the idea that it is important to nip this in the bud right away and deal with criminals at that early stage before they escalate to more violent crimes?
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