Bill C-75 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Criminal Code, the Youth Criminal Justice Act and other Acts and to make consequential amendments to other Acts

This enactment amends the Criminal Code to, among other things,
(a) modernize and clarify interim release provisions to simplify the forms of release that may be imposed on an accused, incorporate a principle of restraint and require that particular attention be given to the circumstances of Aboriginal accused and accused from vulnerable populations when making interim release decisions, and provide more onerous interim release requirements for offences involving violence against an intimate partner;
(b) provide for a judicial referral hearing to deal with administration of justice offences involving a failure to comply with conditions of release or failure to appear as required;
(c) abolish peremptory challenges of jurors, modify the process of challenging a juror for cause so that a judge makes the determination of whether a ground of challenge is true, and allow a judge to direct that a juror stand by for reasons of maintaining public confidence in the administration of justice;
(d) increase the maximum term of imprisonment for repeat offences involving intimate partner violence and provide that abuse of an intimate partner is an aggravating factor on sentencing;
(e) restrict the availability of a preliminary inquiry to offences punishable by imprisonment for a term of 14 years or more and strengthen the justice’s powers to limit the issues explored and witnesses to be heard at the inquiry;
(f) hybridize most indictable offences punishable by a maximum penalty of 10 years or less, increase the default maximum penalty to two years less a day of imprisonment for summary conviction offences and extend the limitation period for summary conviction offences to 12 months;
(g) remove the requirement for judicial endorsement for the execution of certain out-of-province warrants and authorizations, expand judicial case management powers, allow receiving routine police evidence in writing, consolidate provisions relating to the powers of the Attorney General and allow increased use of technology to facilitate remote attendance by any person in a proceeding;
(h) re-enact the victim surcharge regime and provide the court with the discretion to waive a victim surcharge if the court is satisfied that the victim surcharge would cause the offender undue hardship or would be disproportionate to the gravity of the offence or the degree of responsibility of the offender; and
(i) remove passages and repeal provisions that have been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada, repeal section 159 of the Act and provide that no person shall be convicted of any historical offence of a sexual nature unless the act that constitutes the offence would constitute an offence under the Criminal Code if it were committed on the day on which the charge was laid.
The enactment also amends the Youth Criminal Justice Act in order to reduce delays within the youth criminal justice system and enhance the effectiveness of that system with respect to administration of justice offences. For those purposes, the enactment amends that Act to, among other things,
(a) set out principles intended to encourage the use of extrajudicial measures and judicial reviews as alternatives to the laying of charges for administration of justice offences;
(b) set out requirements for imposing conditions on a young person’s release order or as part of a sentence;
(c) limit the circumstances in which a custodial sentence may be imposed for an administration of justice offence;
(d) remove the requirement for the Attorney General to determine whether to seek an adult sentence in certain circumstances; and
(e) remove the power of a youth justice court to make an order to lift the ban on publication in the case of a young person who receives a youth sentence for a violent offence, as well as the requirement to determine whether to make such an order.
Finally, the enactment amends among other Acts An Act to amend the Criminal Code (exploitation and trafficking in persons) so that certain sections of that Act can come into force on different days and also makes consequential amendments to other Acts.

Protecting Victims Act

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, we are debating Bill C-16, and in doing so, we need to first set out some of the context for why we are having this debate, how we got here and where we are right now as a society in Canada.

One of the unfortunate outcomes of this past 10 years of Liberal government has been a measurable, significant rise in the incidence of crime in Canada. This is not an opinion. This is measured by Statistics Canada and many other observers. In every category of crime, the rate is up after 10 years of the Liberal government. Some of the crimes for which the rates are up spectacularly, in such a negative way, are violent crime on transit systems in our cities, extortion and violent crime. We have seen an increased incidence in the murder of police officers. These are really serious and troubling crimes that Canadians are very concerned about.

How did we get here? Well, the government undertook very specific legislative changes that have affected the incidence of crime in our cities and towns and in all places across Canada. In the 42nd Parliament, the Liberals brought in Bill C-75, which was the catch-and-release bail law change. That is not just a clever political phrase. It is literally what that bill did to our system. The government brought in and legislated the principle of minimum restraint and compelled by law the principle that judges must always apply minimum restraint. Therefore, this plays itself out in our courts, where people are arrested and released and rearrested and released and rearrested and released and so forth.

Police forces across Canada all know who the small number of criminals who commit a disproportionate number of offences are, and they can do nothing about it other than rearrest and rearrest. Officials at the City of Vancouver say there are 40 individuals who are responsible for 6,000 annual police interactions. These are people who are arrested over and over again, literally an average of more than three times a week for this small group of criminals. This is the principle of minimum restraint working itself out in the streets of our cities, and every other city police department has a similar story. I have talked to many police officers in my city who affirm this is the case in our community as well.

During the summer before last, I spoke to people at the city police chief's office in Calgary and heard about a series of home invasions where police arrested the same person, the leader of a group of people who were breaking into homes at three o'clock or four o'clock in the morning. When someone breaks into a house at four o'clock in the morning, that is a home invasion. They are expecting the homeowner to be in their bed at that hour. The police figured out who was doing it, they arrested the suspects, and they were released and were able to do the same offence the same week, were rearrested for the same offence, and on it goes.

The other concrete step the government took that has had the result of increasing, or failing to address, crime in Canada was Bill C-5 in the 44th Parliament. In that Parliament, the Liberals passed a bill that stripped away mandatory minimum penalties for a host of offences, including serious drug and firearms offences.

That is where we are today. We have a measurable, demonstrative increase in crime after decades of falling incidence of crime. We had for the first time in many decades a rise in crime over a 10-year period, and the response of the government during that time was to make it easier for criminals to get out of jail and harder for judges to send repeat violent offenders into custodial sentences.

Here we are today debating Bill C-16, and it contains measures that Canadians and Conservatives have indeed been demanding for years and that we have asked for through private members' legislation from the Conservative benches. The member for Calgary Nose Hill had a bill in the last Parliament to ban artificial deepfakes of intimate images and the circulation thereof, to include that in the Criminal Code and to compel Internet service providers to report incidents of child sex abuse material. The member for Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola proposed, through a private member's bill, the automatic first-degree charge for murder of an intimate partner.

These are things we have proactively suggested to the government, and we are pleased that it has adopted these measures. We are pleased that the government is at least talking about the bottlenecks in the system and that it is introducing legislation about coercive control and about restoring or preserving mandatory minimum penalties. Is it, though?

This bill contains a carve-out that many observers, including prosecutors, suggest would in fact do nothing to protect mandatory minimum penalties, including ones that have been upheld by the Supreme Court for decades and that have been introduced by successive Liberal and Conservative governments exercising their democratic responsibility to determine, as elected officials, what power the state would have to incarcerate somebody for serious crime.

The carve-out contained in this bill may well undo mandatory minimum penalties that currently exist and that have been upheld, while failing to reinstate them in many other cases that the public is demanding, so this bill has problems. This bill is not a panacea to deal with this problem. It really is worth reminding Canadians why we are here.

It has come to my attention that I forgot at the outset to state that I will share my time with the member for Richmond Hill South. I am thankful for the reminder of that, because I am looking forward to his remarks as well.

The carve-out in this bill would potentially take the power of the people of Canada who elect their representatives to come to this place and to determine what the penalties should be for heinous, terrible offences, and turn them into mere guidelines. There are these hypotheticals they always come up with. I was here for the debate on Bill C-5 when David Lametti came up with an outrageous, and actually quite arrogant and offensive, scenario that he imagined for why there should not be a mandatory minimum sentence for the dangerous use of a firearm with intent.

We see this from the Liberals, their trying to imagine a circumstance rather than dealing with the concrete. It goes to an approach, and we do not agree with that approach. That approach is what has gotten us here. I hope Bill C-16 will be examined thoroughly. Probably it will need to be amended, but at the end, we will get to where we need to be and restore the power of Parliament to determine mandatory minimum penalties for serious crime.

[Michael Guglielmin, Conservative, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would first like to take this opportunity to recognize Waves of Changes for Autism, a charity in Vaughan that is celebrating its 10th anniversary. I would like to congratulate Ellen Contardi and her entire board for all their efforts over the years.

Waves of Changes for Autism helps families that have children with autism. It helps them offset the cost of therapies. It has funded over 700 applications and has raised over $2.5 million since 2016. Since its inception, it has made sure that every single dollar has had an impact. In 2026 we dedicate this milestone by marking a decade of hope, a decade of opportunity and a decade of giving. Again, I congratulate Waves of Changes for Autism.

It is an honour to rise today to discuss a very important issue in our country related to public safety. Canadians expect Parliament to approach criminal law with seriousness and humility. Our decisions have the utmost real-life impacts on Canadians. They determine how we protect victims, how we hold offenders to account and whether people feel safe in their home and in their community. That responsibility demands clarity, discipline and honesty. Bill C-16 would meet that standard in many important respects. In others, it would not.

I want to be clear from the outset. I have witnessed, upon returning to Ottawa in this winter session, the falsehoods coming from the Liberal government: that Conservatives are obstructing legislation on public safety. Many of the victim-focused provisions come directly from legislation introduced by my Conservative colleagues prior to the introduction of Bill C-16.

Making the murder of an intimate partner automatically first-degree was a measure first proposed by my Conservative colleague from Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola in Bill C-225. Expanding the offence prohibiting the non-consensual distribution of intimate images to capture sexually explicit deepfakes draws directly from my Conservative colleague's bill, the member of Parliament for Calgary Nose Hill's bill, Bill C-216. Of course, updating the mandatory reporting requirements for child sex exploitation material legislation was originally enacted by a previous Conservative government and later modernized through Conservative initiatives.

We support these measures. We have supported them consistently. We have called for them long before the government had decided that public safety had become politically inconvenient to ignore. That context matters because Canadians are being told a story by the Liberal government. They are being told that Conservatives are blocking progress. They are being told that we are unwilling to move legislation forward, and they are being told that democratic debate amounts to indifference toward victims. That narrative collapses under even modest scrutiny.

Allow me to highlight the case of Bill C-14, the Liberals' bail reform legislation. We all know that for years Conservatives have been calling on the government to get tough on crime and tough on repeat offenders. Bill C-14, while not going far enough, is better than what we have now. It would not address the underlying issue of removing the principle of restraint from Bill C-5 and Bill C-75, which is leading to the catch-and-release issues we are plagued with today.

Since the Liberals are making their rounds in the media, suggesting we are obstructing bail reform, for the people watching at home let me highlight how the Liberals play politics with crime. The Liberals finally introduced their bail reform legislation on October 23. On November 18 they went to committee. Instead of advancing the legislation at committee so it could get expert testimony and be sent back to the House of Commons for a vote and be passed, from November 18 all the way to January 27 they chose to prioritize a different bill, Bill C-9, and support a Bloc amendment that attacks freedom of expression and religious freedom, an amendment they knew we could not support.

We asked 20 times before the Christmas break for bail reform to be moved ahead, but this was denied. Why? The Liberals did so in order to advance a narrative that because we are fighting back against Bill C-9 and their attacks on freedom of expression, we are therefore obstructing bail reform. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a perfect example of how Liberals are playing politics with public safety.

Conservatives have been calling for stronger responses to violent crime, which is up 55%; to human trafficking, which is up 84%; and to sexual assaults, which have gone up 76% in this country since the Liberal government took office. We did so when the government dismissed rising crime as a perception problem. We still have former Liberal members of Parliament, like the one from Vaughan—Woodbridge, suggesting that crime is just a perception problem by using year-over-year statistics instead of a multi-year average to look at the actual trends. We did so while Liberals repealed mandatory penalties, expanded constitutional sentences and pursued a bail framework that has left communities, including Vaughan, less safe.

Bill C-16 combines measures that strengthen public safety with a sweeping restructuring of sentencing law that is fundamentally weakening Parliament's role. That is the problem and that is why the bill should, indeed, be split. The creation of coercive or controlling conduct offences within intimate relationships is a serious and necessary reform. Earlier intervention before abuse escalates into severe violence or homicide is very important. Conservatives support this approach. The expansion of deepfake offences is necessary to respond to modern forms of sexual exploitation. Conservatives support this as well. The procedural reforms aimed at reducing trial delays deserve careful study. Justice delayed serves neither the accused nor the victim. Conservatives are prepared to engage constructively on those provisions.

However, embedded within the bill is a sentencing provision that does not belong with the rest. It is a provision that would transform mandatory minimum penalties into discretionary suggestions. It is a provision that would apply across almost the entire Criminal Code. It is a provision that would fundamentally alter how Parliament expresses denunciation for the most serious crimes. Under Bill C-16, judges would be required to impose a sentence below the mandatory minimum whenever applying the minimum would amount to cruel and unusual punishment for the offender. That provision would apply to nearly every mandatory minimum in federal law, excluding only murder and high treason.

In practical terms, mandatory minimums would no longer be mandatory at all. That includes offences such as aggravated sexual assault with a firearm, human trafficking, extortion with a firearm, weapons trafficking, drive-by shootings and multiple other firearms offences. Parliament set these penalties deliberately, not casually or symbolically, because certain conduct is so dangerous, so destructive and so harmful that incarceration was deemed to be the baseline, not the exception.

The Supreme Court has never held that mandatory minimum penalties are unconstitutional per se. It has never stripped Parliament of its authority to impose them. Section 12 of the charter prohibits punishment that is “grossly disproportionate”. The House should pay close attention to what the court actually said, particularly in Quebec (Attorney General) v. Senneville. In that case, the court was sharply divided. The majority relied on hypothetical scenarios to invalidate mandatory minimum penalties for child sex exploitation offences, but the dissent, led by Chief Justice Wagner, issued a warning that Parliament would be reckless to ignore.

That dissent reaffirmed a foundational principle. Hypotheticals must be reasonable. They must have a real, factual and legal connection to the offence before the court. Parliament is not required to legislate for the least serious imaginable application of an offence. Using remote or extreme hypotheticals to dismantle sentencing floors risks undermining democratic accountability itself. Those words matter.

Bill C-16 ignores that warning entirely. Instead of responding to Senneville with discipline by clarifying offence definitions or crafting a narrow and targeted safety valve, the government chose the most expansive option available. It used a contested decision as justification for wholesale retreat from Parliament's sentencing authority. The government will point to law enforcement organizations and victim advocacy groups that have welcomed parts of the bill. Conservatives respect those voices. We listen to them and we agree with them on many of the reforms contained within the bill. However, broad support for certain provisions does not mean Parliament should abandon its duty to scrutinize the whole.

Millions of Canadians voted for the official opposition to do precisely that: Hold the government to account, improve legislation and demand excellence, especially on matters of public safety. Conservatives stand ready to work. We stand ready to improve this legislation. Of course, we stand firmly on the side of victims, communities and public safety.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I find that incredibly rich coming from the member, who adamantly defended Bill C-5 and Bill C-75 in previous Parliaments and also defended the carbon tax. Now, with a new leader in front of the Liberal Party, suddenly he and the Liberals are going to do a complete 180° on all these things and change them.

The reality is that the Liberals had the opportunity to pass Bill C-14, the bail reform bill that would fix their own problems, in the last Parliament. They did not bring it forward at committee; therefore, there was no opportunity to pass it in the last Parliament.

Justice

[Michael Guglielmin, Conservative, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the York Regional Police recently arrested a man accused of extorting a Vaughan resident for seven years through threats and violence. Extortion is not a talking point; it is impacting real Canadians.

Now Liberals are spreading falsehoods. Let us look at bail reform. The Liberals tabled bail changes on October 23. We agreed to send the bill to committee on November 18, and until yesterday, they sidelined public safety to attack freedom of expression.

Will the Liberal government stop its obstruction, work with Conservatives to restore mandatory minimums for extortion and repeal catch-and-release laws Bill C-5 and Bill C-75?

[Patricia Lattanzio, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, it is always a privilege to rise in the House on behalf of the people of Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, the riding I represent. I would like to wish everyone a happy new year, and I hope for a productive year ahead.

Speaking of productivity, I rise today to respond to a question raised last fall regarding former Bill C-75. At that time, the Conservatives chose partisanship over collaboration and advanced a misleading claim that the bill required the release of violent offenders. Today, at the start of the new year, I welcome their stated desire to work in good faith and collaboratively, and I hope that the spirit of co-operation extends beyond this week's Conservative convention in Alberta. I am sure the Conservative leader is greatly anticipating it.

Let me be absolutely clear. Former Bill C-75 does not require courts to release violent offenders at the earliest opportunity. That claim is simply false and is now acknowledged by police associations across the country. Bill C-75 codified the long-standing principle of restraint affirmed by the Supreme Court, which does not mean automatic release. When an accused is violent, poses a risk to public safety or has a serious criminal history, detention is entirely appropriate. By claiming otherwise, Conservatives are misleading Canadians and undermining the confidence in our justice system for political gain.

Let us turn to what is actually before the House today. The Liberal government currently has six major crime bills before Parliament, legislation that police associations across the country have been explicitly asking for.

Let us take Bill C-2, for example. It would modernize lawful access and give police the tools they need to catch predators before crimes are committed. Conservatives say they care about public safety, yet they are blocking the very tools police say they need.

Let us take Bill C-14, introduced last fall, which directly addresses bail and sentencing. This bill would make it harder for serious and repeat violent offenders to obtain bail. It would strengthen sentences, add new aggravating factors for repeat violent offending and prioritize denunciation and deterrence where communities are being harmed. Importantly, Bill C-14 also clarifies the principle of restraint, making it explicit that restraint does not mean automatic release. Bill C-14 is exactly the kind of targeted, evidence-based reform Canadians are asking for. However, last fall, the Conservatives refused to pass this bill before Christmas.

Then we have Bill C-16, which puts victims first. It would strengthen protections for victims of gender-based violence by creating a stand-alone offence for coercive and controlling conduct, and by clearly identifying circumstances in the Criminal Code where a murder constitutes femicide. This legislation reflects our commitment to centring victims and addressing the realities of gender-based violence. This bill would also restore mandatory jail time for Criminal Code offences, including those previously struck down by the Supreme Court.

To ensure these mandatory minimums are charter-compliant, the bill includes a narrowly tailored safety valve. It would allow a judge, in rare and exceptional cases, to impose a sentence below the mandatory minimum only when applying the mandatory minimum would amount to cruel and unusual punishment. Mandatory jail time remains the rule, and we are glad to have the endorsement of the Conservative member for Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola on the safety valve for MMPs.

The government is acting. We are strengthening bail where it needs to be strengthened. We are targeting repeat violent offenders. We are giving police real tools and we are centring—

[Colin Reynolds, Conservative, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour to rise in the House and speak on behalf of the people of Elmwood—Transcona.

The Liberal government's soft-on-crime ideology has failed. Since the Liberals took office, violent crime is up 54%, sexual assaults are up 75%, and extortion has skyrocketed an astounding 330%. In major Canadian cities like Brampton, Surrey, Vancouver and Calgary, crimes like extortion are out of control. Canadians want action, not more speeches and not more press releases.

The Liberal government must immediately repeal its catch-and-release laws, Bill C–5 and Bill C–75, and put an end to the revolving-door justice system. It must also restore and strengthen mandatory jail time, so extortionists face real consequences for their crimes rather than a slap on the wrist.

Conservatives have put forward a comprehensive plan to protect our communities. Last year, the member for Oxford introduced the jail not bail act, to reverse the disastrous Liberal bail policies created through Bill C–5 and Bill C–75, while the member for Edmonton Gateway introduced Bill C-381, the protection against extortion act, which the Liberals voted down, choosing to put criminals over communities.

The Liberal bail reform bill, Bill C-14, does not remove the principle of restraint, which has caused the revolving-door criminal justice system. This falls short of the comprehensive bail reform that was promised to Canadians in the last election. Even so, we have offered to fast-track the bill so Canadians can get some much-needed relief.

While all this is happening on our streets, the Liberals have chosen to spend $750 million to target law-abiding gun owners. They are continually choosing ideology over facts and political influence over public safety.

Will the Liberal government actually take the concerns of our communities seriously and ensure that career criminals and repeat violent offenders get jail, not bail?

[Harb Gill, Conservative, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as a former police officer, I know a crisis when I see one. Extortion is out of control. Businesses and families are being threatened, shot at and shaken down daily, yet the Liberals deny there is a crisis. They are dragging their feet. Some municipalities are even asking for a state of emergency to be declared.

When will the government stop its hug-a-thug policy, work with Conservatives, restore mandatory minimums and repeal the catch-and-release laws, Bill C-5 and C-75? For crying out loud, do something about this crisis.

Protecting Victims Act

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as always, it is an honour to rise in the House today on behalf of my resilient neighbours in Oshawa.

As this is the first sitting day back in the House of Commons, I want to wish everyone here a happy new year and thank the many Oshawa residents, community organizations and local businesses I had the privilege of spending time with over the winter break, listening, learning and reconnecting. Those conversations were not brief or superficial. They were long, honest and deeply personal. They spoke to me as parents and grandparents, as workers, and as neighbours who care deeply about the future of our community. Those conversations will also continue to guide my work here as I focus on the issues that matter most to the people I represent.

Across those conversations, one concern was raised consistently and without hesitation, and that concern was public safety. Families in Oshawa are worried about violent crime. Seniors are worried about repeat offenders being released back into their neighbourhoods. Women are worried about intimate partner violence, online exploitation and whether the justice system will truly protect them. Quite frankly, they have lost faith in our failing so-called justice system.

These concerns are not theoretical; they are not driven by headlines alone. They are grounded in lived experience and in what people are seeing happen around them every single day. However, we must note that these concerns did not appear overnight. They are the result of deliberate political choices made by the Liberal government over more than a decade. It is in that real and lived context that I rise today to speak to Bill C-16.

Canadians are not judging this Parliament by the titles of our bills or the intentions behind our bills. They are judging us by the results they see in their daily lives. They are judging us by whether they feel safer today than they did 10 years ago. For far too many Canadians, the honest answer is no.

After a decade of Liberal catch-and-release bail policies, the repeal of mandatory minimum sentences and a series of laws that consistently place the interests of offenders ahead of those of victims, Canadians are understandably concerned and afraid. Since 2015, under the Liberal government, human trafficking has increased by 84%, sexual assaults are up nearly 76% and violent crime overall has increased by almost 55%. Those numbers are staggering. They are not abstract statistics pulled from thin air but represent real people in our communities. They represent victims whose lives have been changed forever, families whose sense of safety has been shattered, and communities that no longer feel protected by the justice system that is supposed to serve them.

When violent crime rises by more than half in less than a decade, that is not bad luck; it is policy failure. Crime did not rise by accident. It rose after the Liberals introduced bail reform, their version of it, which actually weakened bail, repealed mandatory minimum sentences and repeatedly signalled that incarceration should be the last resort, even for serious and violent offenders.

When a government lowers consequences, crime rises and Canadians are forced to live with the results of that approach every day. This is the backdrop against which Bill C-16 must be assessed.

I want to pause here to speak directly about what rising crime looks like in Oshawa, because national statistics tell only part of the story. Oshawa is my home, where I was born and raised and where I have raised my children. Our neighbours still believe in looking out for one another. Oshawa is a community built on hard work, responsibility and fairness, and it is a community that deserves to feel safe.

Over the past several years, that sense of safety has been steadily eroding. Parents tell me they think twice before letting their children walk to school or play outside. Over the break, I learned of a couple of teenagers up the street from where I live and where my daughter walks to school, who were brutally attacked by an older teenager who is about 16 or 17. Mothers are crying on the phone with me for almost an hour as they talk about their children's brutal attack and stabbing and not knowing whether their assailant is back out or whether their child can walk safely up the street, the same street my child walks up to her high school. Seniors tell me they no longer feel comfortable answering the door unless they are expecting someone. Small business owners speak about theft, vandalism and break-ins that were once rare but are now routine in the Oshawa downtown core.

What troubles people most is not that the crime has increased, but that the same offenders seem to return again and again. Oshawa residents see individuals arrested on serious charges and released back into the community with little delay, and victims retraumatized when offenders cycle through the system. When I speak with officers and civilian members of the Durham Regional Police Service in Oshawa, they speak with professionalism and dedication, but also with a great deal of frustration. They do their job, make arrests and answer the life-changing calls of so many, but often they see the same individuals back on the street shortly after, not because the police failed but because Liberal policy made accountability optional. This is not the fault of frontline officers; it is the result of decisions made in the House by the Liberal government.

The government claims this bill is about protecting victims. Canadians have heard that promise before, have we not? We heard it when the Liberals passed, for instance, Bill C-75, which made it easier for repeat and violent offenders to obtain bail. We heard it again when the Liberals repealed mandatory minimum sentences for firearms and drug trafficking offences through Bill C-5. Each time, the result was the same: More offenders were released, more victims were terrorized and there was more fear in our communities.

The creation of a new offence targeting coercive or controlling conduct in intimate relationships is sensible and a preventive measure. It finally acknowledges what victims and frontline workers have known, which is that abuse rarely begins with a single act of violence. It usually escalates over time. It isolates and controls, and when governments intervene earlier, lives can be saved. What took the government so long?

We also support making the murder of an intimate partner automatically first-degree murder, a reform proposed by my Conservative colleague from Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola in his private member's bill, Bill C-225, which I proudly jointly seconded. This change acknowledges the seriousness of the epidemic of intimate partner violence and the reality that these crimes are rarely spontaneous.

The bill's expansion of the offence prohibiting the non-consensual distribution of intimate images to include sexually explicit deepfakes is also welcome. This measure is similar to the measures first proposed in Bill C-216, which was introduced by my conservative colleague for Calgary Nose Hill, and it would respond to the growing misuse of technology to humiliate, control and exploit victims, particularly women and girls.

Strengthening mandatory reporting requirements for child sexual exploitation material also builds on work originally done by a previous Conservative government and reflects a shared commitment to protecting children from the most horrific forms of abuse imaginable. Conservatives agree that these measures are positive, necessary and deserve support, but they do not excuse what comes next. Bill C-16 includes a sweeping change that would allow judges to impose sentences below mandatory minimum penalties for nearly all Criminal Code offences, except murder and high treason. These mandatory minimum penalties are not, then, worth the paper they are written on, because they are not really mandatory at all. In practical terms, mandatory minimum sentences could result in lighter sentences for serious and repeat offenders over time.

Weakening those penalties sends a message, whether the government admits it or not, that accountability is negotiable. Criminals pay attention to that message. The Liberals would like Canadians to believe this change is narrow and very technical, but it is not; it is part of a consistent pattern. The government has repeatedly chosen to make the system more lenient on offenders while communities pay the price. Warnings from police chiefs, police associations, provincial governments and victims' advocates have been repeated hundreds of times and ignored just as often.

Parliament has a responsibility to stand with victims. Public safety is not a theoretical construct. It is when a woman feels safe walking home after her shift; it is when parents trust that violent offenders will not be released back into their communities; it is when my neighbours in Oshawa believe their government takes their safety seriously, and I promise that they just do not believe the government takes their safety seriously. Each time concerns were raised, the Liberals dismissed them; each time crime rose, they denied responsibility; and each time Canadians felt less safe, they were told to trust the same approach that caused the problem in the first place.

I want to speak now not only as a member of Parliament but as a mom. Like every parent in this country, I worry about the world my children are growing up in. I worry about whether they will be safe walking to school, riding public transit or navigating an online world that can be just as dangerous as the streets. We want our children to grow up in a country where laws protect the innocent, where laws protect the victims and not the criminals, where criminals face real consequences and where safety is not something we have to think about every time our children leave the house and walk to school. When violent crime rises, when offenders are repeatedly released and when penalties are weakened, it is families who pay the price, it is members who lie awake at night worrying, and it is parents who feel they must constantly shield their children from dangers that government policy has simply made worse.

I also want to take a moment to speak to my neighbours in Oshawa. When people ask how we arrived at this moment, how crime has been allowed to rise year after year after year, the answer is not complicated: It is this same Liberal Party, it is the same government and it is this same set of choices. The policies that weakened bail, repealed mandatory minimum sentences and prioritized ideology over public safety did not end with Justin Trudeau. They continue today under the current Liberal Prime Minister, defended by this very familiar Liberal cabinet and guided by the same approach.

Canadians were told that if they waited, things would improve. Conservatives have offered bill after bill, idea after idea and motion after motion that would protect Canadians, and the Liberal government, time and time again, said, “No, no; that's a bad idea. Just wait, because we are going to come up with the best thing you have ever seen. Just wait, and we will look after you.” After 10 years of waiting, Canadians are tired. They are tired of waiting to see if the government is going to have their backs. Police officers have our backs every day, and they are also tired of waiting to see if the government will have their backs, because it does not.

The people of Oshawa measure governments by results, not reassurance. They measure it by whether their streets feel safer today than they did 10 years ago. They measure it by whether repeat offenders are being held accountable or released. On those measures, the Liberal record is clear. For nearly a decade, the Liberal Party has been responsible for public safety. Over that time period, crime has risen and confidence has fallen. At some point, it is no longer credible to call that coincidence. It is simply cause and effect.

When the same party continues to govern, Canadians are entitled to ask what exactly is supposed to change if nothing else does, especially as our Conservative team has, as I have said, proposed countless measures in this House and at committee to increase public safety. However, the Liberals continue to opt out, delay or vote down these measures. What have they been waiting for? How many violent crimes and deaths could have been avoided? What is the threshold for finally implementing desperately needed change? What will it take?

The Liberals have introduced this bill, which has all sorts of wonderful things that we have been asking for for 10 years. They brought it forward with a little caveat that they know is a poison pill and needs to go: Mandatory minimum sentences are not really going to be mandatory any longer because there will be a safety valve. It is not really worth the paper it is written on anymore.

Parliament has a responsibility to stand with victims. That responsibility does not end with good intentions or a well-worded bill title. A bill cannot claim to protect victims while at the same time weakening the consequences for those who harm them. A government cannot claim to be tough on crime while repeatedly making life easier for criminals. The Liberals cannot have both.

Conservatives believe there is a better path forward. Parliament should pass the victim-focused measures that have broad support and real merit, and it should remove the provisions that weaken sentencing and continue the Liberal soft-on-crime agenda. I honestly do not know why these folks have this soft-on-crime agenda. It does not make a lot of sense to me.

One time I was sitting beside the Leader of the Opposition here in this House. I was listening to him as he was asking questions and the government came back with answers. I said to him, “I do not understand. Do they not see what is happening in our communities? Do they not care?” That is what I kept coming back to. It just feels like the Liberals do not care. Every time they take two steps forward, or one step forward, they seem to take two steps back. There are great provisions, things we want to see, but at the same time the Liberals are making life easier for criminals and giving unelected judges roles they are not supposed to have.

We believe there is a better path forward. Parliament should pass the victim-focused measures that have broad support and real merit, and it should remove the provisions that weaken sentencing and continue this Liberal soft-on-crime agenda.

Canadians deserve a justice system, not an injustice system. We deserve a justice system that deters crime, delivers real consequences and finally puts victims first. Until that happens, Conservatives will continue to hold the government accountable for the crime and chaos that it has created.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a great privilege, as always, to rise on behalf of the people of Elgin—St. Thomas—London South and, I will also say, as a member of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights and as a representative of an issue that has become a galvanizing one for many Canadians. It is an issue around which I saw tremendous attention, with issues pertaining to justice. We have seen very clearly the rise in crime in Canada over the last decade. This is why today the House of Commons justice committee passed a motion that I am very proud we were able to pass, one that would prioritize the study of bail and sentencing reform, an issue for which there has been a near-unanimous call among large swaths of society, from municipal governments to law enforcement agencies and victim advocacy groups, that something needs to change.

We are talking about Bill C-16. I want to drill down into a subset of crime that has also not been immune to the increases we have seen across the board in violent and serious crime. In particular, since 2015, human trafficking has increased 84%. Sexual assaults are up almost 76%. Violent crime is up almost 55%. We have heard testimony from victims' rights advocates about the ways in which women in particular are disproportionately affected by these and other offences.

We have also seen in recent months a very concerning trend in the way that courts and, in some cases, I will say, even politicians view legal theory and the way they prioritize legal theory above the real-world experiences of victims and the real-world implications of our laws on victims. I want to make sure that everything we do as a chamber that deals with matters of crime and justice is not relegated to the realm of the abstract, that we are not making legal theory the priority of what we are doing and that we are actually putting victims and public safety front and centre.

I spoke before the justice committee not that long ago about the idea of mandatory minimum sentences. This is probably a prime example of where we have seen a desire to disregard victims because of what can often be abstract concepts. I can give a very real and very shameful recent example of this, when the Supreme Court of Canada ruled, regarding mandatory minimums for people who traffic in child sexual abuse and exploitation material, which was referred to as child pornography in the court ruling, that “cruel and unusual punishment” is the description for mandatory minimums. The two cases that came up in that Supreme Court ruling involved men who each had hundreds of videos and images depicting heinous, vile things that I do not want to utter in the chamber, the most heinous acts we can imagine against children as young as, I believe, four and five years old.

What we saw in the trial judge's ruling on these cases was an application of the bare minimum and even, in one case, below the bare minimum, because they thought that these cases did not meet the standard of what was already a paltry mandatory minimum for these offences, which was 12 months. One of the offenders got 90 days. This is why mandatory minimums have to exist. There is a current within parts of the judiciary in which judges are exceedingly lenient on cases that Canadians and, I would say, the fundamental laws of nature would find deplorable.

This is so important because the Supreme Court decided to rule on mandatory minimums in an abstract way. Instead of dealing with the case at hand, they talked about some absurd hypothetical that had nothing to do with the case at hand, in order to talk about why a mandatory minimum for child sexual abuse and exploitation material could be cruel and unusual punishment. In doing so, they undermined the idea that we as lawmakers have to send the strongest possible message to people who commit the worst possible offences. There is no justification for giving a slap on the wrist to someone who abuses children, as a fundamental example of this.

I shared in committee a story that was very personal to me as someone who is a survivor of sexual abuse as a child. I do not talk about it often, because it is difficult, and it is difficult for so many other people who have been victimized by something or other in their life, but I share this so people know there is a human face to these things. We cannot simply look at the perpetrator of a crime without acknowledging the victim. We cannot simply look at the sentence applied to a perpetrator without considering the effect that the person's crimes have had on the victim, whoever it is, whether it is a defenceless child, a defenceless woman, an intimate partner or someone else.

Crime has a collective cost for society. It also has an individual cost. In some cases the scars of criminality, often preventable criminality if the justice system were doing its job, run deep and can run forever.

I will share one example that comes from London, Ontario, where Breanna Broadfoot was killed by an intimate partner at the age of 17. Her family has taken this horror, this tragedy, and they have turned it into advocacy. I cannot imagine the strength someone requires when they lose their 17-year-old and are still able to face a parliamentary committee and face the community around them, but that is exactly what the Broadfoots have done.

Breanna's father, Brett Broadfoot, testified at committee. In his testimony he spoke about how the system itself has a role. I would like to quote Mr. Broadfoot:

...I'm here to speak for my family, and most importantly, for my beautiful and now deceased daughter Breanna. I hope also to speak on behalf of other victims of intimate partner violence, for all the women who continue to live in fear of their abusers because they are still out on the streets after being charged with no accountability for the violent acts they have committed. I would like to share my family's personal experience at this time.

On March 15, 2024, my daughter Breanna was brutally attacked by her boyfriend. She was left with two black eyes, a fractured orbital bone, several other broken bones in her cheeks and severe bruising around her neck from his hands having been wrapped around them in strangulation. She was only 16 years old at the time.

Her attacker, age 18, was arrested on March 15 and charged with assault plus assault with choking and suffocation or strangulation. He was released from custody on the same day he was arrested.

He was released the same day. If we fast-forward, we find out that Breanna ended up dying at the hands of her abuser.

Victims have rights. We have an obligation to stand up for victims and to speak for victims. It was not long ago in the chamber that the House of Commons unanimously passed a private member's bill brought by my colleague, the hon. member for Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola, Bailey's law. In the gallery at the time that we voted on the bill was the family of Bailey McCourt, another family that will never be able to undo the harm that it has suffered.

Again, laws bear a level of responsibility for this. It is not the same degree of responsibility that the perpetrators of crimes bear, but laws are meant to protect the most vulnerable in our society from the most dangerous in our society. When we lose sight of that in the creation of our laws, we do not have the ability to fulfill the fundamental and most important role of a government, which is to protect its citizens from harm.

As we look at Bill C-16 and the context in which the Liberals have presented the bill, we see that there is much in it that should be agreeable across party lines. There is much in the bill I am grateful for and for which the Liberal government has actually taken its cues from proposals that we have been championing for, in some cases, many years. This is an example where I do not care who gets the credit; I just want the right thing to be done. I want people in this country to have the protections they desperately need and desperately deserve.

However, we can also point to areas of the bill where critical protections are being watered down, and I am referring specifically to mandatory minimums. When I mentioned the Supreme Court decision regarding mandatory minimums for offences dealing with child sexual exploitation and abuse material, I gave an example of, even with a mandatory minimum being in effect, there being judges who want to do the bare minimum and in some cases go below that standard. That is why mandatory minimums must exist. There is a place for them, and we need to have a law and a judiciary that respect that, because for certain offences there should not be an ability for leniency below what is already an incredibly low standard.

The laws of this nation, the Criminal Code, dictate maximum penalties, so why is it so egregious and offensive to some people to have a minimum penalties? How are these two things fundamentally at odds with each other? It is because when we look at parameters and constraints that exist around sentencing, we understand that there are some penalties where a sentence could be too severe. No one supports a life sentence for speeding or for running a red light, for example. Similarly, we also need a minimum standard to understand that there is no earthly justification to not put someone behind bars for certain offences. I am thinking especially of offences against children, of murder and of some of the other offences we talk about often in the context of rising crime that are continuing to terrorize communities.

Bill C-16 would actually empower judges to ignore mandatory minimum sentences. Mandatory minimum sentences have a very operational word in them, “mandatory”, which means they are to be mandatory. They are mandated. I cannot stress this enough. Under Bill C-16 there would be an escape valve. A judge could decide on a case-by-case basis that they believe a particular application of the mandatory minimum in a given case would be cruel and unusual.

We have already seen examples where judges in this country have given sentences that were more lenient than what they should have been, in order to protect someone's immigration status. We have seen an example, and this is something our Conservative team has tried to rectify in the system, where someone takes into consideration an external factor, even though the criminal has committed a crime and been found guilty. I cannot stress that enough. We are talking about sentencing. We are talking about people who have already been found to have committed the crime and are now facing the question of whether they will have to pay the time, and if so, how much. However, there are judges who have said that if they sentence someone to a certain amount of time, it would jeopardize their immigration status. That is egregious.

We also consider this in the context where a judge could look at a case and say, as one did in Quebec, that they think that maybe a one-year mandatory minimum for child sexual exploitation and abuse material, which is already, in the eyes of most Canadians, offensively low, should not apply to someone. We know that every single offender in this country who is found guilty of a crime that warrants a mandatory minimum sentence under the law would try to avail themselves of this escape hatch. Why would they not?

Bill C-16 would now say that a mandatory minimum sentence should not in fact be mandatory and that there should be no minimum sentence. We would be baking leniency in, and in doing so undermining the very idea of having a mandatory minimum sentence in the first place.

I would like to share what are the offences we are talking about that have mandatory minimums: aggravated sexual assault with a gun, human trafficking, multiple violent firearms offences, extortion with a firearm, trafficking in weapons, and drive-by shootings with a restricted or prohibited firearm. These are not benign cases. I was just in Surrey, British Columbia, and I was also just in Brampton, Ontario. These are two communities that have had exceedingly high rates of extortion in recent years, and this is something that has actually caused people in these communities to feel fearful.

There is one cudgel the state has available to it when people who are guilty of these crimes are finally arrested and convicted. This is assuming they have not been released on bail several times over, which we know is happening. The one tool available is a mandatory minimum sentence that will force a criminal to be behind bars and off the streets. There are some things we can debate, and there are some things on which there are differing opinions in politics, in law and in policy. However, one thing we can be very clear on is that someone cannot be doing a drive-by shooting if they are in jail; they cannot be trafficking in weapons, trafficking in humans or trading in child sexual exploitation and abuse material online if they are locked up.

This is something that should not be, and to most Canadians it is not, a partisan issue. We have been talking about the calls for reform of our justice system. They have been coming from Liberals, New Democrats and Conservatives at the provincial level. The federal Liberals have been slow to respond to this. They have put forward Bill C-16, a bill that has many things in it that we are entirely supportive of, but we cannot undermine the very nature of why these laws and provisions exist.

Parliament set mandatory minimums for a reason. The passage of the provision would undermine that, as we would be saying to every victim in the country. The mandatory minimum sentences were put in place ostensibly to protect victims, and not just as a deterrent. Ideally, with many of these offences, we want to stop the offences from taking place in the first place, which means we want a penalty on the books that someone would think twice about before they violate.

We also know that the Liberal government has ended a lot of mandatory minimums in the case of Bill C-75. We have seen a series of justice bills from the government that it often claims would rectify a problem, but in the end these bills create a new problem or even a host of new problems.

I return to the testimony we heard from victims and people who work in the space of victims. There is one woman I have had the great privilege of meeting. She has become a tremendous advocate for victims' rights, not because she set out to do that with her life, but because she herself was a victim and saw that she had no one speaking for her. That is Cait Alexander, who has founded a tremendous organization called End Violence Everywhere. I was very pleased to meet her when she was testifying before the justice committee a little while ago. Cait Alexander almost lost her life because of delays in court. She has shared online photos that are so painful to see of her body covered in bruises, scrapes and scars because of vicious abuse in an attempted murder by an intimate partner. That person walked free because of the Jordan principle, because of the justice system's inability to fulfill its core basic mandate of protecting people from harm and punish those who inflict harm when protection and prevention could not happen.

We also heard, to use another local example, from Jennifer Dunn of the London Abused Women's Centre, LAWC. This is an organization I know very well. My wife serves on its board. It is an organization that has been advocating for and providing respite and shelter for women dealing with abuse for many years. I asked Jennifer Dunn before committee about some of the reforms we have put through that were proposed in Bailey's law. She was enthusiastically supportive. She knew they would support women. One of the things Jennifer shared in her testimony was that so many of the women at the London Abused Women's Centre that LAWC deals with call our system the injustice system. They do not even wish to engage with our system. They do not trust it to have their backs. I would say that is a failing of all institutions. I do not lay that blame on any particular party. I think it is something we need to take as a wake-up call. It is something we need to take to heart to understand exactly how we can pass laws that are victim-centred and victim-focused, to protect children, to protect people who are being extorted and to protect women from intimate partner violence.

This is something I have never had to witness in my family, but I know people who have. The more I have learned about this, the more I have realized this needs to be an all-hands-on-deck issue. This is where I welcome some of the reforms and proposals the Liberals have adopted from things we have called for, and some of the things they are doing in Bill C-16. However, if we are to truly seek a law that upholds victims' rights, we cannot embed in this something that undermines the strength of sentencing measures that Parliament has passed, that undermines mandatory minimum sentences, that makes them discretionary minimum sentences. Mandatory and discretionary cannot exist at the same time. That is why my colleagues and I stand ready, as always, to ensure we are reforming trust in the justice system, that it is looking after public safety and victims, that people like Bailey McCourt, Cait Alexander and Breanna Broadfoot will never again be traumatized and terrorized or face a system that either allows it to happen or does not seek true justice when it does.

Justice

[Sukhman Gill, Conservative, Abbotsford—South Langley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, since January 1, there has been a minimum of one extortion case every single day in the Lower Mainland. These are real consequences of the Liberals' failure to take crime seriously. Families and businesses across Abbotsford and Surrey are terrified, and entire communities are living in fear. It is time for the Liberals to fix their soft-on-crime laws that have failed to keep innocent Canadians safe.

When will the Liberals stop delaying, finally work with us and restore mandatory minimums for extortionists and repeal their catch-and-release laws, Bill C-5 and Bill C-75?

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, extortion cases are exploding and it is a full-on crisis. In Surrey alone, police are responding to more than one case a day. Families and small businesses are terrified, truckers are feeling the heat and people feel abandoned by Justice Canada. After years of Liberal promises, the results speak for themselves. Crime is up and criminals walk free. Bill C-5 and Bill C-75 strip mandatory minimums and entrench catch-and-release policies.

When will the government work in good faith with the Conservatives to eliminate mandatory minimums for extortionists and repeal the catch-and-release laws that are hurting our country?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Leader of the Opposition]

Mr. Speaker, I just wanted him to defend, for once, the rising cost of living caused by the taxes the Liberals are imposing on grocery prices.

However, that is not all. There is also crime. The Liberals are blocking their own bail legislation. Conservatives have moved 17 motions in the last two days to push the bail legislation ahead. The Liberals are the ones who caused this problem by releasing criminals under the provisions of Bill C-75.

Will they allow us move their bill forward, before Christmas, in order to repair the damage they have done?

Firearms

[Amanpreet S. Gill, Conservative, Calgary Skyview, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister admits that the vast majority of illegal firearms used in crime come from across our border, yet instead of stopping those guns, the Liberals are pushing a billion-dollar gun grab scheme that targets the wrong people. In Calgary, hunters, ranchers and sport shooters who follow the law are being punished, while violent criminals walk free. Law-abiding Canadians are not the threat; the criminals are.

While our city faces rising gun violence, the Liberals refuse to fix the border disorder that lets in nearly all illegal guns. Gun crime is up 130% because of their catch-and-release bail system in Bill C-75 and reduced penalties for gun offences in Bill C-5. The buyback will not stop criminals or smuggling; it only targets responsible citizens.

Conservatives will protect lawful gun owners, crack down on violent offenders and keep Calgary families safe.

Budget 2025 Implementation Act, No. 1

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Madam Speaker, I want to congratulate the colleague who spoke before me on a great speech. I wonder why he does not speak more in the House. Nonetheless, I congratulate him on a great speech.

We thought Justin Trudeau ran things like Fidel Castro, but the current Prime Minister said, “Hold my champagne.” When Canadians scream that there is no democracy happening under the Liberals, the Prime Minister says, “Who cares?”

The Liberals are now trying to ram a 630-plus page budget implementation act through the House without the proper scrutiny, without the proper consultations and without any type of accountability or transparency. They want the opposition to give them free rein on this massive spend, putting each Canadian household a further $5,400 in debt, when Canadians are already struggling. To those 2.2 million Canadians visiting a food bank every single month because of failed Liberal policies, this budget says, “Here is another $5,400.” For struggling families, because of the industrial carbon tax the Liberals want to increase, it means $1,000 extra for groceries this year and next year. Paycheques are not as strong as they used to be because of the government's failed policies.

That does not help young Canadians get into housing. As the government, the Liberals are spending more on bureaucracy, which means they block housing. In this budget, it is clear to those young Canadians who have given up on the dream of home ownership that it is even more impossible for them to get a home and that they will be stuck in their parents' basements. The Liberals are creating a fourth bureaucracy when the first three cost them $89 billion, the result of which is doubled housing costs, doubled rents, doubled mortgages and housing starts that are going down year after year. This is the record of the government.

One of the most pressing issues in this country is crime because of soft-on-crime policies under the Liberal government. They have given more rights to criminals than to victims. When they implemented Bill C-5 and Bill C-75, the Liberals made getting bail easier and reduced sentencing. Now Canadians live in fear. I never thought, when I moved to this country, that we would live in a country where people would be scared to be in their house, be in their cars or drop off their kids. There used to be a time in this country when we could leave our doors unlocked. We would know there was a party at someone's house because everyone's bikes would be outside, on the lawn. Now people lock up their bikes, and these still get stolen. They lock their cars, and these still get stolen. Break-ins are up. This country, under the Liberal government, has become lawless, but the Liberals want it that way.

Any time the Liberals introduce any legislation in the House, Canada becomes weaker, more unaffordable and more unsafe. That is why it is hard to support anything the Liberals do. It is simple, and the stats speak for themselves. Violent crime is up 54% in this country; it was down 34% under the Conservative government. Extortion, which has rocked the South Asian community, is up 330%. Gun crime is up 130% in this country. After 10 years of failed soft-on-crime policies, the Liberals want to trick Canadians into believing that they are going to take this issue seriously, when they are the ones who caused the problem in the first place.

Does anyone really believe that the most anti-development, anti-resource government in Canadian history actually wants to get a pipeline built? They do what they always do. They create confusion among Canadians because they know it keeps Canadians divided. That is what they do to try to keep power. They want to keep all Canadians divided as much as possible. The Liberals' own caucus is divided. They signed a piece of paper, an MOU. They made a grandstand out of it. “We got this paper signed.” Then they did what they always do. Their “keep it in the ground” caucus was unleashed to tell Canadians and all the eco-radicals that there would be no pipeline. In fact, the member for Victoria admitted in a video that the MOU does not mean there is a project, a proponent or a pipeline. He spoke the truth we already knew from before.

What does that mean? It means more investment is going to flee from here. Under the Liberals, $600 billion has already left Canada in jobs, equipment and investment. Under the Prime Minister, $60 billion has already gone to the U.S. The Liberals have created an environment in Canada that is uninvestable, and jobs are fleeing just as fast. That is why Canadians are struggling.

This budget doubled Justin Trudeau's deficit, believe it or not. No one thought anyone was as expensive as Justin Trudeau. Then the current Prime Minister came along and broke the record. He doubled Justin Trudeau's deficit. This means higher costs on everything Canadians buy. It is why we are hearing stories of people wanting to leave. This country has become unaffordable and unsafe for all. There is no future. Youth are doing everything they are supposed to do. They are working hard, going to school and trying to pick up a job or two, yet they cannot afford a home, leave their parents' basements or even find a job in their field after they graduate, because the government has chased away so much investment from Canada.

I was in the GTA this weekend. It was unbelievable how many stories we heard, at event after event, meeting after meeting and round table after round table, about how Canadians feel this is not Canada anymore. Many people left other countries to come here and were promised the Canadian dream, where one could work hard, get a good paycheque with low taxes on it, get a home and afford housing and groceries. Most of all, this country would be safe for them. When they got here, it turned into the Liberal nightmare this country has become after 10 years of failed Liberal policies. In fact, everyone I talked to said, “Why did we move here? It feels like a third world country.”

That is what we are hearing across this country, because that is what the Liberals have turned Canada into. They want to trick Canadians into believing that this budget, their 10th, in fact, will somehow fix all the problems they created over the last 10 years. The last nine budgets put Canadians in this position, and somehow the 10th one is supposed to fix everything. It is nothing but a trick.

What Canadians need is leadership, jobs, hope and homes, which a Conservative leader can provide. The Conservative leader is someone who not only understands that pain but also sees it every single day when he talks to people. Unlike the Prime Minister, who works in the best interest of his Brookfield, banker and bondholder buddies, we will work on behalf of Canadians.

Public Safety

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Abbotsford, BC]

Madam Speaker, what is the consequence of a weak immigration system? It is extortion.

What is the consequence of a government that believes that the perpetrators of crime are in fact the victims? It is extortion.

What is the consequence of loosening bail conditions and reducing sentencing for violent crimes? It is extortion.

We have an extortion problem in Canada because we have a Liberal government that has weakened the Criminal Code. Families and businesses are all suffering the consequences because of the Liberals' decisions.

First, with regard to a weak immigration system, when immigration screening and enforcement are lax, transnational gangs exploit these gaps to recruit members, move individuals across borders and establish operations in Canada. This creates an environment where organized crime thrives, enabling intimidation and extortion schemes targeting vulnerable businesses, especially in sectors like transportation and retail. Strengthening immigration enforcement and closing loopholes are essential to prevent criminal infiltration and protect Canadians.

Second, the government treating perpetrators as victims is an erosion of deterrence. Policies that prioritize offenders over public safety weaken accountability. When violent criminals are portrayed as victims, sentencing becomes lenient and consequences diminish. This emboldens repeat offenders, undermines deterrence and signals to criminal networks that Canada is a low-risk environment for extortion-related crimes.

Third, loosening bail conditions and reducing sentences increases violent crimes. Bills like Bill C-5 and Bill C-75 in previous parliaments have allowed dangerous offenders to be released repeatedly, eroding public confidence and enabling crime to spread. The result is that extortion threats in British Columbia have surged 481% since 2015. Firearms-related offences are up 130%, and homicides have risen 29%. These trends show that soft-on-crime laws are directly correlated with escalating violence and intimidation.

Canada's extortion crisis is not isolated. It is the product of systemic weaknesses in immigration enforcement, criminal justice philosophy and bail-sentencing laws. Businesses and families are paying the price for policies that have prioritized criminals over communities. A year ago, Conservatives put forward a plan to tackle this head-on. Indeed, I sponsored the bill to put in force mandatory jail time for extortion with a firearm and to remove house arrest as an option for these violent crimes. The Liberals did not vote for it. They voted against it. Since then, thousands of new extortion cases have expanded across Canada.

The government's refusal to act until recently has only emboldened criminals and left victims without justice. When will the government make the change, bring forward the legislation that is going to have a real impact and stop this crisis, which is ruining the reputation of Canada, ruining businesses and ruining families?