- Member of Parliament
- Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada
Leader of the Opposition
- Conservative
- Carleton
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 63%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $61,288.13
- Government Page
We will also ensure that Canadians have a better way. We are not only going to ban the drugs. We are not only going to stop giving out taxpayer-funded drugs. We are going to provide treatment and recovery.
If people are watching today and are suffering from addiction and do not know how they can turn their lives around, I want them to know that there is hope. There is a better future ahead. We will put the money into beautiful treatment centres with counselling, group therapy, physical exercise, yoga and sweat lodges for first nations, where people can graduate drug-free, live in nearby housing that helps them transition into a law-abiding, drug-free life, and come back to the centre for a counselling session, a workout or maybe even to mentor an incoming addict on the hopeful future that is ahead. That is the way we are going to bring our loved ones home, drug-free.
As I always say, we are going to have a common-sense dollar-for-dollar law, requiring that we find one dollar of savings for every new dollar of spending. In this case, that will include how we will partly pay for this. We will unleash the biggest lawsuit in Canadian history against the corrupt pharmaceutical companies that profited off of this nightmare. We will make them pay.
Finally, we will stop the gun crime. We know that gun crime is out of control. Just yesterday, we saw this gold heist. By the way, all of the gold thieves are out on bail already, so do not to worry. They will have to send the Prime Minister a nugget of gold to thank him for passing Bill C-75 and letting them out of jail within a few days of this monster gold heist.
Why did they steal the gold? They stole the gold so that they could buy the guns, because we know that all of the gun crime is happening with stolen guns. The Prime Minister wants to ban all civilian, law-abiding people from owning guns, but he wants to allow every criminal to have as many guns as they want. I am not just talking about rifles. I am talking about machine guns, fully loaded machine guns that are being found on the street, which never existed since they were banned in the 1970s. Now the criminals can get them because the Prime Minister has mismanaged the federal borders and ports and because he is wasting so much money going after the good guys.
The Prime Minister wants to ban our hunting rifles. He said so in a December 2022 interview with CTV. He was very clear. If someone has a hunting rifle, he said he will have to take it away. He kept his word by introducing a 300-page amendment to his Bill C-21, which would have banned 300 pages of the most popular and safe hunting rifles. He only put that policy on hold because of a backlash that common-sense Conservatives led, which included rural Canadians, first nations Canadians and NDPers from rural communities. He had to flip-flop.
I know that in places like Kapuskasing, the law-abiding people enjoy hunting. While the NDP leader and the Prime Minister look down on those people and think that they are to blame for crime, we know that the hunters in Kapuskasing are the salt of the earth, the best people around, and we are going to make sure that they can keep their hunting rifles. God love them. God love every one of them.
While the Prime Minister wants to protect turkeys from hunters, common-sense Conservatives want to protect Canadians from criminals. That is why we will repeal his insane policies.
By the way, I should point out that he has not even done any of the bans. We remember that he had that big press conference during the election. He said to his policy team that morning that he needed them to come up with a policy that would allow him to put a big, scary-looking black gun on his podium sign. They said, “Okay, we will think of something.” He put that scary-looking gun on his podium sign, and he said he was going to ban all of these assault rifles. They asked him what an assault rifle was, and he said he did not know, just that it was the black, scary thing on the front of his podium sign. That was the assault rifle he was referring to.
It is now three years since he made that promise. He was asked again in the hallways what an assault rifle was. He said he was still working to figure it out. These rifles that he says he is going to ban one day, he does not know what they are but one day he is going to figure it out and ban them. In the meantime, he has spent $40 million to buy exactly zero guns from owners. He said he was going to ban them and buy them from the owners. Not one gun has been taken off the street after spending $40 million.
We could have used that money to hire CBSA officers who would have secured our ports against the thousands of illegal guns that are pouring in and killing people on our streets. When I am prime minister, we will cancel this multi-billion dollar waste of money. We will use it to hire frontline boots-on-the-ground officers who will inspect shipping containers and to buy scanners that can pierce inside to stop the drugs, stop the illegal guns, stop the export of our stolen cars and stop the crime.
What we are seeing is a very different philosophical approach. The finance minister said in her concluding remarks that what we need is bigger and stronger government. Does that not sound eerie? In other words, she and the Prime Minister want to be bigger and stronger. That is why they are always trying to make Canadians feel weaker and smaller. The Prime Minister literally called our people a small, fringe minority. He jabs his fingers in the faces of our citizens. He calls small businesses tax cheats. He claims that those who own hunting rifles are just Americans.
The Prime Minister points his fingers at people who disagree with him. He has the audacity of claiming that anyone who is offside with him is a racist. This is a guy who dressed up in racist costumes so many times he cannot remember them all. He has been denigrating other people his whole life. That is because it is all about him. It is all about concentrating more power and more money in his hands. This budget is no different. It is about a bigger government and smaller citizens. It is about buying his way through the next election with cash that the working-class people have earned and he has burned.
By contrast, I want the opposite. I want smaller government to make room for bigger citizens. I want a state that is a servant and not the master. I want a country where the prime minister actually lives up to the meaning of the word: “prime” meaning “first”, and “minister” meaning “servant”. That is what “minister” means. “Minister” is not master; “minister” is servant.
We need a country that puts people back in charge of their money, their communities, their families and their lives, a country based on the common sense of the common people, united for our common home, their home, my home, our home. Let us bring it home.
Therefore, I move:
That the motion be amended by deleting all of the words after the word “That” and substituting the following:
“the House reject the government's budget since it fails to:
a. Axe the tax on farmers and food by passing Bill C-234 in its original form.
b. Build the homes, not bureaucracy, by requiring cities permit 15% more home building each year as a condition for receiving federal infrastructure money.
c. Cap the spending with a dollar-for-dollar rule to bring down interest rates and inflation by requiring the government to find a dollar in savings for every new dollar of spending.
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Mr. Speaker, there is no question that his policies are more expensive than our policies, but they have delivered poorer results. Today violent crime is 32% higher than when he took office and that includes a massive increase in gang violence.
The head of the Toronto Police Service said that 82% of the firearms that are used in crime in Canada's biggest city come smuggled in from the United States of America. They are not brought here by hunters from Cape Breton or rural Alberta.
Once and for all, will the Prime Minister stop wasting money on hunters and go after the real criminals instead?
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Mr. Speaker, I have been meeting with first nations leaders from across the country, and they have been unanimous in their desire to protect their millennia-old tradition of hunting. That requires, in the modern sense, the use of hunting rifles. The Prime Minister's government has tabled 300 pages of banned hunting rifles before a Canadian parliamentary committee. He is wasting hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions, targeting the legitimate hunting tools of rural people and first nations.
Why does he not put that money into securing our borders and fighting crime instead?
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Mr. Speaker, that is not what he is doing. He is banning firearms that, in many cases, are not even semi-automatic. These are firearms that have to be re-chambered every single time. They are deliberately created for hunting and sustenance.
The Assembly of First Nations has unanimously spoken against this ban on hunting rifles, as have numerous experts and now members of his own caucus. They all agree that his ban does not target weapons that are designed to kill people. It targets weapons that are for the legitimate Canadian tradition of hunting.
Will he announce he is backing down from attacking our hunters today?
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister sent out his public safety minister today, we thought to back down on his hunting rifle ban. Instead, he gave a rambling endorsement of the same policy. He announced that his rural MPs from across the country, including rural Newfoundland, support the ban on hunting rifles. The Prime Minister has tried to deny that he is banning those rifles, even though first nations have said so, his experts have said so and his own caucus members have said so.
Will he stand in the House today, really look us in the eye and tell us that there are no hunting rifles on his banned list?
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Mr. Speaker, only he is not capturing the right weapons, according to his very own Liberal MP for Yukon, who said, “This is really upsetting. Many, many Yukoners...regularly hunt, either as a food source or for the recreational aspects of hunting.” He said, “I'm not happy with this [bill].” Other Liberal MPs have said likewise, and the Prime Minister's own public servants have testified that hunting rifles will be banned under his proposed amendment.
Now that he has been caught with his real agenda, which is to go after hunters and farmers rather than gun smugglers and gangsters, will he reverse himself and promise never again to go after our hunters in our country?
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Mr. Speaker, the government has the wrong target when it comes to public safety. It is banning hundreds, and in fact we do not know exactly how many because its officials cannot tell us, of previously legal hunting rifles and shotguns that are used by first nations, by farmers and by rural people right across the country.
Meanwhile, last week, a man who was convicted of second degree murder had been released early and is now rearrested for 51 counts of trafficking firearms.
Why will the Liberals not go after this criminal and others like him instead of targeting Grandpa Joe's hunting rifle in Cape Breton?
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Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the official opposition, I wish to join all those expressing their condolences to the family of the Hon. Jim Carr, the Liberal caucus and all his friends. Our thoughts and prayers are with them in their grief.
The Prime Minister says he does not want to ban hunting weapons, but now there are Liberal members, government officials and indigenous groups who say that the 300-page list includes a large number of hunting weapons that are entirely appropriate for civilian use.
When will the government target real criminals by adding resources at our borders and going after the real criminals instead of hunters who are doing their work legally?
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Mr. Speaker, the results of the Liberals' policy are a 32% increase in violent crime and a massive 92% increase in gang murders. No matter how expensive their policies are and no matter how much they target law-abiding hunters, it is not getting the job done to protect our people.
Why does the government not want to help fight actual crime instead of targeting our hunters and farmers?
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Mr. Speaker, of course, we are all in solidarity in ending the violence committed with guns. In fact, today we saw an example of the real problem. Police seized 62 firearms in Toronto and 57 of them came from the United States of America. Only one of them was from Ontario and it was stolen over a year ago.
The problem is not hunters in Wainwright, Alberta or in Happy Valley-Goose Bay on the east coast, who are using their tools to feed their families. The problem is the illegal guns coming across the border.
Why will the government not reinforce our border instead of attacking our hunters?
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Mr. Speaker, not only is Christmas dinner going to be especially expensive if people buy it at the grocery store, but now the government wants to ban people in rural country sides from actually hunting for their turkey. It has targeted a long list of hunting rifles and shotguns with a sweeping ban that is being widely condemned by experts, by hunters and by first nations people.
The government has admitted in recent testimony that the ban will apply to hunting rifles contrary to prior talking points. Will it reverse this ban?
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