Bill C-21

An Act to amend certain Acts and to make certain consequential amendments (firearms)

This enactment amends the Criminal Code to, among other things,
(a) increase, from 10 to 14 years, the maximum penalty of imprisonment for indictable weapons offences in sections 95, 96, 99, 100 and 103;
(b) establish a regime that would permit any person to apply for an emergency prohibition order or an emergency limitations on access order and allow the judge to protect the security of the person or of anyone known to them;
(c) deem certain firearms to be prohibited devices for the purpose of specified provisions;
(d) create new offences for possessing and making available certain types of computer data that pertain to firearms and prohibited devices and for altering a cartridge magazine to exceed its lawful capacity;
(e) include, for interception of private communications purposes, sections 92 and 95 in the definition of “offence” in section 183;
(f) authorize employees of certain federal entities who are responsible for security to be considered as public officers for the purpose of section 117.07; and
(g) include certain firearm parts to offences regarding firearms.
The enactment also amends the Firearms Act to, among other things,
(a) prevent individuals who are subject to a protection order or who have been convicted of certain offences relating to domestic violence from being eligible to hold a firearms licence;
(b) transfer authority to the Commissioner of Firearms to approve, refuse, renew and revoke authorizations to carry referred to in paragraph 20(a) of the Act;
(c) limit the transfer of handguns only to businesses and exempted individuals and the transfer of cartridge magazines and firearm parts;
(d) impose requirements in respect of the importation of ammunition, cartridge magazines and firearm parts;
(e) prevent certain individuals from being authorized to transport handguns from a port of entry;
(f) require a chief firearms officer to suspend a licence if they have reasonable grounds to suspect that the licence holder is no longer eligible for it;
(g) require the delivery of firearms to a peace officer, or their lawful disposal, if a refusal to issue, or revocation of, a licence has been referred to a provincial court under section 74 of the Act in respect of those firearms;
(h) revoke an individual’s licence if there is reasonable grounds to suspect that they engaged in an act of domestic violence or stalking or if they become subject to a protection order;
(i) authorize the issuance, in certain circumstances, of a conditional licence for the purposes of sustenance;
(j) authorize, in certain circumstances, the Commissioner of Firearms, the Registrar of Firearms or a chief firearms officer to disclose certain information to a law enforcement agency for the purpose of an investigation or prosecution related to the trafficking of firearms;
(k) provide that the annual report to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness regarding the administration of the Act must include information on disclosures made to law enforcement agencies and be submitted no later than May 31 of each year; and
(l) create an offence for a business to advertise a firearm in a manner that depicts, counsels or promotes violence against a person, with a few exceptions.
The enactment also amends the Nuclear Safety and Control Act to, among other things,
(a) provide nuclear security officers and on-site nuclear response force members with the authority to carry out the duties of peace officers at high-security nuclear sites; and
(b) permit licensees who operate high-security nuclear sites to acquire, possess, transfer and dispose of firearms, prohibited weapons and prohibited devices used in the course of maintaining security at high-security nuclear sites.
The enactment also amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to
(a) designate the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness as the Minister responsible for the establishment of policies respecting inadmissibility on grounds of transborder criminality for the commission of an offence on entering Canada;
(b) specify that the commission, on entering Canada, of certain offences under an Act of Parliament that are set out in the regulations is a ground of inadmissibility for a foreign national; and
(c) correct certain provisions in order to resolve a discrepancy and clarify the rule set out in those provisions.
Finally, the enactment also amends An Act to amend certain Acts and Regulations in relation to firearms so that certain sections of that Act come into force on the day on which this enactment receives royal assent.

Department of Justice—Main Estimates, 2024-25

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would be very open to looking at what is transpiring in California. Centring victims at the heart of our criminal justice strategy is important, and we have been attempting to do that with respect to victims of hatred, through the online hate bill; victims of child sex predation, through Bill C-63; victims of intimate partner violence, through our changes to the bail regime, not once but twice, through Bill C-48 and Bill C-75; and fundamentally, victims of gun violence in this country, through bills like Bill C-21, which would put a freeze on handgun sales and ensure tougher penalties with respect to things like gun trafficking. These are important provisions, but I am definitely willing to entertain suggestions about what California is doing and look at whether the model could be brought over.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Madam Chair, we are constantly working to ensure the rights of victims, including female victims, are entrenched in law in Canada. That is why Bill C-21 included red flag laws. That is why we established the sex offender registry. That is why I have worked on two occasions to ensure there is a reverse—

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Madam Chair, the issue of safety is a priority for me, and I hope it is a priority for the members opposite. I am troubled by their opposition to basic premises, such as Bill C-21, which is about reducing the number of handguns in Canadian society and keeping women, like the member opposite—

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there were a number of points in there, and I will respond to all of them.

The first point would be that in respect of Canadians' safety, what I would put to him is that Bill C-21, which he voted against, also dealt with intimate partner violence and things like red flag laws. Those have now become law, no thanks to him and his party and their voting pattern. The red flag laws actually allow the police to intercept firearms from the home of someone who is deemed to be a threat to their partner or to other individuals. That is called keeping Canadians safe, so I reject outright the premise of his earlier question.

With respect to bail, he will be aware that bail is a determination that is made by actors in our justice system, including justices of the peace. We have taken steps to strengthen the bail system to keep Canadians safe. On that piece, I will credit the member. He did vote in favour of Bill C-48, which deals with serious violent repeat offenders, on whom there is now a reverse onus for procuring bail. That is a step in the right direction in keeping Canadians safe.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would indicate to the member opposite that when he and his party vote against initiatives that keep Canadians safe, I think Canadians question the sincerity of questions like the one he just put to me.

Bill C-21, which I mentioned, talks about a national freeze on the sale, purchase and transfer of handguns. He voted against that. It also increased penalties for firearms trafficking. He voted against that. It also created new offences to help stop ghost guns. He voted against that.

If there was sincerity on the part of the member opposite with respect to tackling the pressing issue of gun violence, I would presume the voting pattern would have been the opposite.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased that the member for Fundy Royal has decided to raise issues that relate to gun crimes, because I can indicate to Canadians watching this evening that we take gun violence very seriously. That is why we have taken steps with initiatives such as an assault rifle ban and a national ban and freeze on the sale of handguns. That was done in legislation in Bill C-21, which the member voted against.

Financial Statement of Minister of Finance

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am not finished.

I will continue in English. I want to share this great speech with English-speaking Canadians.

After nine years of the Prime Minister's deficits doubling the national debt and doubling housing costs and a new budget that brings in $50 billion of new unfunded spending on promises he has already broken, this budget, just like the Prime Minister, is not worth the cost, and Conservatives will be voting no.

Before I get into the reasons, and my common-sense plan to axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime, I would like to pay the Minister of Finance a compliment for a page in her speech I thought was extremely illustrative. She said, “I would like Canada’s one per cent—Canada’s 0.1 per cent—to consider this: What kind of Canada do you want to live in?”

Before I go any further, let us point out the incredible irony that, as she and her leader point out, Canada's 0.1% are doing better than ever after nine years of the Prime Minister promising to go after them. Yes, they have benefited from the tens of billions of dollars of undeserved corporate welfare handouts and grants, ironically supported by the NDP; of corporate loan guarantees that protect them against losses in cases of incompetence or dishonest bidding; of contracts, of which there are now $21 billion, granted to outside and highly paid consultants, many of them making millions of dollars a year in taxpayer contracts for work that could be done inside the government itself if that work if of any value at all; and finally, of those grand fortunes that have been inflated by the $600 billion of inflationary money printing that has transferred wealth from the working class to the wealthiest among us. That 0.1% is doing better than ever after nine years of the Prime Minister pretending he would get tough on them.

Let me go on. I am interrupting myself. The Minister of Finance asked, “Do you want to live in a country where you can tell the size of someone’s paycheque by their smile?” Wow. How many Canadians are smiling when they look at their paycheque today? People are not smiling at all because a paycheque cannot buy them a basket of affordable food, according to Sylvain Charlebois, the food professor. He has said that the cost of a basket of food has gone up by thousands of dollars per year, but the majority of Canadians are spending hundreds of dollars less than is required to buy that basket. That means they are not getting enough food. We live in a country now where the average paycheque cannot pay the average rent, so nobody is smiling when they look at their paycheque.

The minister went on to ask, “Do you want to live in a country where kids go to school hungry?” According to the Prime Minister, one in four kids are going to school hungry after his nine years. I look here at a press release his government released on April 1, on April Fool's Day of all days, where he says, “Nearly one in four children do not get enough food”. In fact, it says that they do not get enough food “to learn and grow.”

No, we do not want to live in a country where kids go to school hungry, but according to the Prime Minister's own release, we do live in a country where one in four kids do go to school hungry. The Minister of Finance then said, “Do you want to live in a country where the only young Canadians who can buy their own homes are those with parents who can help with the downpayment?” No, we do not want to live in that country, but we do live in that country today.

According to data released by RBC Dominion, for the average family to afford monthly payments on the average home in Canada, the family would have to spend 64% of its pre-tax income. Most families do not keep 64% of pre-tax income because they pay so much in taxes. Therefore, most families would have to give up on eating, recreation, clothing themselves and transportation to be mathematically capable of making payments on the average home. For young people, it is even worse because they do not have a nest egg. They cannot afford a down payment that has doubled in the last nine years. That is why 76% of Canadians who do not own homes tell pollsters they believe they never will. Do we want to live in a country where the only young people who can afford a down payment are those whose parents can pay it for them? No. However, that is the country that we live in today.

“Do [you] want to live in a country where we make the investments we need in health care, in housing, in old age pensions, but we lack the political will to pay for them and choose instead to pass a ballooning debt on to our children?”

Are we living in the twilight zone here? These are the minister's words: Do we want to live in a country where we pass the bill on to our children with “ballooning debt”? She asks this as she is ballooning the debt by adding $40 billion to that debt. She asks this while giving a speech about the perils of passing ballooning debt to our children. She is the finance minister for the government that has added more debt than all previous governments combined in the preceding century and a half. It is worth noting that the Prime Minister has added his deficits as a share of GDP that are bigger than we had in World War I, in the Great Depression and in the great global recession of 2008 and 2009.

I should also note that the majority of debt that has been added under the Prime Minister was unrelated to COVID. The “dog ate my homework” excuse, of blaming COVID for all that is wrong in Canada, no longer works. I will add that we are now three years past COVID and the deficits and debt continue to grow, putting a lie to that entire endless, nauseating excuse that the government has made.

The Prime Minister has added so much debt that we are now spending more on interest for that debt than we are spending on health care; $54.1 billion in debt interest this year; more money for those wealthy bankers and bondholders who own our debt; and less money for the doctors and nurses whom we await when we sit for 26 hours in the average emergency room right across the country.

No, we do not want to live in a country that passes on a ballooning debt to our children, but after nine years of the Prime Minister, that is exactly the country in which we live.

The Minister of Finance asks, “Do [you] want to live in a country where those at the very top live lives of luxury?” Who does that remind us of? Somebody who flies around in a private jet to stay on secret islands on the other side of the hemisphere, where they treat him to $8,000 and $9,000-a-day luxuries, and he pays for it with the tax dollars of Canadians and emits thousands of tonnes of greenhouse gases into our atmosphere, somebody luxuriates in that way at the expense of everyone else. He shall remain unnamed because we cannot say the Prime Minister's name in the House of Commons, so I will not break that parliamentary rule. However, I do point out the irony.

I will start again. The Minister of Finance asks:

Do [you] want to live in a country where those at the very top live lives of luxury but must do so in gated communities behind ever-higher fences using private health care and private planes because the public sphere is so degraded and the wrath of the vast majority of their less-privileged compatriots burns so hot?

She says that the wrath of the majority of less privileged compatriots burns so hot. She is right that some people do not have the ability to live in gated communities, behind armed guards. Those people are told that they should leave their keys next to the door so that the car thieves can just walk in and peacefully steal their cars.

Communities across the country are being ravaged by crime, chaos, drugs and disorder. What she has described is exactly what is happening after nine years of the government. We have nurses in British Columbia hospitals who are terrified to go to work because the Prime Minister, in collusion with the NDP Premier of B.C., has decriminalized hard drugs and allowed the worst criminals to bring weapons and narcotics into their hospital rooms, where they cannot be confronted. We have 26 international students crammed into the basement of one Brampton home. We have a car stolen every 40 minutes in the GTA. We have 100% increase in gun killings across the country.

We have communities where people are terrified to go out. We have small businesses across Brampton and Surrey that are receiving letters weekly, warning them that if they do not write cheques for millions of dollars to extortionists, their homes will be shot up, and their children will have bullets flying through the windows as they are sleeping.

That is life in Canada today. Do we want to live in that country? No, we do not want to live in that country. After eight years of rising costs, rising crime and rising chaos, the Prime Minister is not worth the cost. We will replace him with a common-sense Conservative government that will bring home a country we love.

What does that country look like and how will we get there? Fortunately, we have a common-sense plan that will axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime.

Let us start with the carbon tax that went up 23% on April 1. Now we see the raging gas prices at the pumps across Ontario. There is chaos as people are desperately trying to get to the pumps and fill up before the latest hikes go ahead.

The Prime Minister celebrates, saying that high gas prices are his purpose, and he has the full support of the NDP leader on most days, when the NDP leader can figure out what his policy is. The NDP leader has voted 22 times to hike the carbon tax. Both parties, along with the help of the Bloc, have voted for future increases that will quadruple the tax to 61¢ a litre, a tax that will also apply on home heating bills and, of course, a tax that applies to the farmers who produce the food, the truckers who ship the food and therefore on all who buy the food.

That is why common-sense Conservatives will axe the tax to bring home lower prices. We take exactly the opposite approach of the Prime Minister when it comes to protecting our environment. His approach is to raise the cost on traditional energy we still need. Our approach is to lower the cost on other alternatives. We will green light green projects, like nuclear power, hydroelectric dams, carbon capture and storage, mining of critical minerals, like lithium, cobalt, copper and others. We will do this by repealing the unconstitutional Bill C-69 so that we can approve these projects in 18 months, rather than in 18 years.

Here is the difference, the Prime Minister wants taxes, I want technology. He wants to drive our money to the dirty dictators abroad, I want to bring it home in powerful paycheques for our people in this country.

The same approach that will allow us to unleash energy, abundance and affordability is the approach we will take to build the homes; that is to say getting the government gatekeepers out of the way.

Why do we have the worst housing inflation in the G7 after nine years of the Prime Minister? Why have housing costs risen 40% faster than paycheques? It is by far the worst gap of any G7 country. Why did UBS say Toronto had the worst housing bubble in the world? Vancouver is the third most overpriced when comparing median income to median house price according to Demographia. Why? Because we have the worst bureaucracy when it comes to home building.

After nine years of the Prime Minister, Canada has the second slowest building permits out of nearly 40 OECD countries. These permitting costs add $1.3 million to the cost of every newly built home in Vancouver, and $350,000 to every newly built home in Toronto. Winnipeg blocked 2,000 homes next to a transit station that was built for those homes. The City of Montreal has blocked 25,000 homes in the last seven years. Literally hundreds of thousands of homes are waiting to be built, but are locked up in slow permitting processes.

What do we have as a solution? The Prime Minister has taken the worst immigration minister in our country's history, the guy the Prime Minister blamed for causing out-of-control temporary immigration to balloon housing prices, and put him in charge of housing. Since that time, the minister has said that his housing accelerator fund of $4 billion does not actually build any homes.

Since he has doled out all of this cash to political friends in incompetent city halls across the country, home building has dropped. In fact, home building is down this year and, according to the federal government's housing agency, it will be down next year and again the year after that. That is a housing decelerator not accelerator.

That is what happens when a minister is chosen because he is a media darling and a fast talker, rather than someone who gets things done, as I did when I was housing minister. The rent was only $973 a month for the average family right across the country, and the average house price was roughly $400,000. That is results. There was less talk and less government spending, but far more homes. That is what our common-sense plan will do again.

Our plan will build the homes by requiring municipalities to speed up, permit more land and build faster. They will be required to permit 15% more homes per year as a condition of getting federal funding, and to permit high-rise apartments around every federally funded transit station. We will sell off 6,000 federal buildings and thousands of acres of federal land to build. We will get rid of the carbon tax to lower the cost of building materials.

Finally, we will reward the working people who build homes, because we need more boots, not more suits. We will pass the common-sense Conservative law that allows trade workers to write off the full cost of transportation, food and accommodation to go from one work site to another, so they can build the homes while bringing home paycheques for themselves.

These homes will be in safe neighbourhoods. We will stop the crime by making repeat violent offenders ineligible for bail, parole or house arrest. That will mean no more catch and release. We will repeal Bill C-5, the house arrest law. We will repeal Bill C-75, the catch-and-release law. We will repeal Bill C-83, the cushy living for multiple murderers law that allows Paul Bernardo to enjoy tennis courts and skating rinks that most Canadian taxpaying families can no longer afford outside of prison.

We will bring in jail and not bail for repeat violent offenders. We will repeal the entire catch-and-release criminal justice agenda that the radical Prime Minister, with the help of the loony-left NDP, has brought in. The radical agenda that has turned many of our streets into war zones will be a thing of the past.

We will also stop giving out deadly narcotics. I made a video about the so-called safe supply. I went to the tragic site of yet another homeless encampment in Vancouver, which used to be one of the most beautiful views in the entire world. Now it is unfortunately a place where people live in squalor and die of overdoses. Everyone said it was terrible that I was planning to take away the tax-funded drugs and that all of the claims I made were just a bunch of conspiracy theories, but everything I said then has been proven accurate, every word of it.

I noticed that the Liberals and the pointy-headed professors they relied on for their policies have all gone into hiding as well. Why is that? It is because the facts are now coming out. Even the public health agency in British Columbia, which has been pushing the NDP-Liberal ideology, is admitting that the tax-funded hydromorphone is being diverted. The police in Vancouver said this week that 50% of all the high-powered hydromorphone opioids are paid for with tax dollars and given out by public health agencies supposedly to save lives. Now we know that those very powerful drugs are being resold to children, who are getting hooked on them, and the profits are being used to buy even more dangerous fentanyl, tranq and other drugs that are leaving our people face-first on the pavement, dying of record overdoses.

The so-called experts always tell us to ignore the bumper stickers and look at the facts. The facts are in. In British Columbia, where this radical and incomparable policy has been most enthusiastically embraced, overdose deaths are up 300%. They have risen in B.C. faster than anywhere else in Canada and possibly anywhere else in North America. The ultraprogressive state of Oregon has reversed decriminalization, recognizing the total chaos, death and destruction the policy has caused.

What does the radical Prime Minister, with the help of his NDP counterpart, do? They look at the death and destruction that has occurred in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver and other communities and say we should have more of that. They took a walk, or better yet, these two politicians probably drove through the Downtown Eastside in their bulletproof limousines. They looked around at the people who were bent over completely tranquilized by fentanyl, saw the people lying face-first on the ground, saw the tents that the police would have pointed out are filled with dangerous guns and drugs, saw all the small businesses that were shuttered by this policy and said that we should have more of that. They want to replicate all the policies that have created it so that we can have tent cities and homeless encampments in every corner of the country.

That is exactly what they have done. In Halifax, there are 35 homeless encampments in one city after nine years of the Prime Minister, his NDP counterpart and the Liberal mayor of Halifax. If we look at every town in this country, we will find homeless encampments that never existed before the last nine years. This policy will go down in infamy as one of the most insane experiments ever carried out on a population. Nowhere else in the world is this being done. The Liberals gaslight us. They love to say that all the civilized people believe that giving out these drugs will save lives, but nowhere else is this being done. When we tell people this is happening, they have a hard time believing that we are giving out heroin-grade drugs for free to addicts and expecting it to save lives.

Now they spill into our hospitals, where nurses are told by the NPD government in B.C. and the Liberal government in Ottawa that they are not allowed to take away crack pipes or knives or guns. They are just supposed to expect that someone is going to consume the drugs, have a massive fit and start slashing up the hospital floor. This is something out of a bad hallucination and a hallucination that will come to an end when I am prime minister. We will end this nightmare.

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.

Firearms

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I have several petitions to present.

The first one is a petition of the House that comes from Canadians who are concerned about Bill C-21, a bill that targets law-abiding firearms owners. The petitioners say that hunting and firearms ownership play an important role in Canadian history and culture. The petitioners are concerned about the government's intent to ban several hunting rifles and shotguns, including bolt-action rifles.

The petitioners ask that the government leave their guns alone, that it votes against Bill C-21 and that it protects the property rights of Canadian hunters.

I support that wholeheartedly.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have a number of petitions to present today.

The first petition comes from Canadians across the country who are concerned about Bill C-21. The bill targets law-abiding firearms owners.

The petitioners state that hunting and firearm ownership play an important role in Canadian society and history. They are concerned about the government's intent to ban several hunting rifles and shotguns, including bolt-action rifles. The petitioners ask the government to leave their guns alone and, to protect property rights of Canadian hunters, to vote against Bill C-21.

Alleged Inadmissibility of Amendment to Motion, Government Business No. 34

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your accommodating the timing of this. I apologize to the members who are involved in debate, but because the matter is currently under consideration by the House, I think giving the Speaker as much time as possible to consider it would be appropriate.

I am rising to ask that you rule the amendment made to the motion, Government Business No. 34, out of order, since according to Bosc and Gagnon, at page 541, it introduces a new proposition which should properly be the subject of a separate substantive motion.

The main motion proposes two things in relation to Bill C-62. Part (a) would establish committee meetings on the subject matter of Bill C-62. It proposes one hour to hear from a minister and two hours to hear from other witnesses.

Part (b) deals specifically with the time and management for each stage of the bill. Part (b)(i) would order the consideration by the House of a second reading stage and provides for the number of the speakers, length of speeches, length of debate and deferral of the vote at second reading. It would also restrict the moving of dilatory motions to that of a minister of the Crown. Part b(ii) would deem that Bill C-62 be referred to a committee of the whole and be deemed reported back without amendments, and it would order the consideration of third reading on Thursday, February 15, 2024.

Nowhere does the motion deal with the substance or the text of Bill C-62; it is a programming motion dealing with process, not substance. While this can and has been done by unanimous consent, it cannot be done by way of an amendment. The consequence of an amendment to allow for the expansion of the scope of Bill C-62 and, at the same time, proposing to amend the text of Bill C-62, is that it would, if accepted, expand the scope of the motion.

The process to expand the scope of the bill outside of unanimous consent is to adopt a stand-alone motion after the proper notice and procedures were followed. Page 756 of Bosc and Gagnon describes that procedure as follows:

Once a bill has been referred to a committee, the House may instruct the committee by way of a motion authorizing what would otherwise be beyond its powers, such as...expanding or narrowing the scope or application of a bill. A committee that so wishes may also seek an instruction from the House.

Alternatively, a separate, stand-alone bill would suffice to introduce the concept of the subject material that is under the amendment for MAID. It is not in order to accomplish this by way of a simple amendment to a programming motion dealing with the management of House time on a government bill.

If you were to review the types of amendments to programming motions, and I am not talking about unanimous consent motions, they all deal with the management of House and committee time, altering the numbers of days, hours of meetings, witnesses, etc. As recently as December 4, 2023, the House disposed of an amendment that dealt with the minister's appearing as a witness and the deletion of parts of the bill dealing with time allocation. This was also the case for the programming motions for Bill C-56, Bill C-31 and Bill C-12.

Unless the main motion strays from the management of time and routine procedural issues and touches on the actual text of the bill, an amendment that attempts to amend the bill is out of order. For example, on May 9, 2023, the House adopted a programming motion for Bill C-21, the firearms act. Part (a) of the main motion then stated that:

it be an instruction to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, that during its consideration of the bill, the committee be granted the power to expand its scope, including that it applies to all proceedings that have taken place prior to the adoption of this order...

The motion went on at some length, instructing the committee to consider a number of amendments to the act. This in turn allowed the Conservative Party to propose an amendment to the programming motion and offer its own amendments to the bill itself, which addressed illegal guns used by criminals and street gangs and brought in measures to crack down on border smuggling and to stop the flow of illegal guns to criminals and gangs in Canada, to name just a few.

The point is that if the main motion does not address the text of the bill, an amendment cannot introduce the new proposition of amending the text of the bill to the programming motion, which should properly be the subject of a separate substantive motion.

Opposition Motion—Auto Theft

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Thank you, Madam Speaker.

I was just saying that this man, Jacques Lamontagne, is a seasoned professional and he said the following:

There are more legal consequences to crossing the border with four kilos of cocaine than with stolen vehicles. Both crimes pay big dividends [to criminal groups and] the criminal underworld. Young thugs run less of a risk if they steal a Jeep Wrangler than if they sell narcotics on the street....There's not much of a deterrent if people know that they'll probably be let off for a first [offence] or, at worst, serve four to six months for car theft compared to a sentence lasting years for selling illicit substances.

I will return to Mr. Lamontagne's use of the term “young thugs”. The phenomenon is fairly widespread. Crime gangs often use young people who often have no criminal record and are sometimes minors. They are asked to steal cars or transport illegal guns because the punishment for first offences is rarely harsh. It is a kind of strategy that these people use. I am not saying that the thieves should not go to prison, but I think that we need to focus primarily on going after these criminal gangs and their leaders.

Where the Conservative Party goes wrong is in assuming that this entire crisis was created by the Prime Minister himself and by lax policies, like Bill C-5, as the Conservatives are claiming.

The motion specifically calls on the government to "immediately reverse changes the Liberal government made in their soft on crime Bill C-5 that allows for car stealing criminals to be on house arrest instead of jail.” Reading the motion, it is clear that the Conservatives are trying to link the increase in auto theft since 2015 to Bill C-5. As my colleague mentioned earlier, Bill C-5 received royal assent at the very end of 2022. I have no idea how the Conservatives came to the conclusion that Bill C-5 is to blame, since auto theft has been increasing since 2015. I do not think there is one simple explanation. The Conservatives are trying to find simple solutions to complicated problems. They say that this Prime Minister has been in office since 2015, so he is responsible for all of society's problems. Again, I am not defending the Prime Minister, but at some point, members have to put forward serious arguments.

Contrary to Conservative claims, Bill C‑5 did not do away with minimum sentences for auto theft. Subsection 333.1(1) of the Criminal Code provides for a minimum sentence of six months in the case of a third offence. The Conservatives may well say that is not enough, but there is one major problem with their assertion. Are they aware that subsection 333.1(1) was added to the Criminal Code by the Conservatives themselves in 2010 via Bill S‑9? If they now find that that is not enough, they have only themselves to blame.

In this motion, the Conservatives also say that Bill C‑5 allowed for conditional sentences for auto theft. These are also known as house arrest, or what the Conservative leader likes to call Netflix sentences. It is true that the Liberals repealed subparagraph 742.1(f)(vii), which prevented conditional sentencing for auto theft. However, the other paragraphs in section 742.1 set out conditions for conditional sentencing: The court must be convinced that there is no risk to society, and the term of imprisonment must be less than two years. The judge may also impose any conditions they deem necessary. In other words, there is nothing preventing a judge from saying no to a conditional sentence. A judge should be able to exercise judgment. The Conservatives are assuming judges are not capable of doing that.

A conditional sentence cannot be imposed for a sentence of two years or more, so it is not an option in the most serious cases, because the maximum sentence is actually 10 years.

The Conservatives are also forgetting that there is always a bail hearing to determine whether an offender can be released while awaiting trial. Unless there are aggravating factors, it is rare for a person to remain in jail while awaiting trial for auto theft. In other words, the Conservatives' claim that criminals are being caught and then immediately released because of Bill C‑5 is unfounded, because that was happening long before Bill C‑5 came into force.

Once again, it is up to the judge to decide whether an offender should be kept in jail while awaiting trial and what conditions the offender must meet, especially since, as I mentioned earlier, criminals often use minors because they are handed lesser sentences.

I agree with the Conservatives about one thing in every case. Part of the problem is that Ottawa has done absolutely nothing to control auto theft. Under the current conditions, even life in prison will not act as a deterrent, because the federal government is doing absolutely nothing to monitor the port of Montreal, where criminals can easily ship stolen vehicles overseas. I will come back to that later.

However, I want to close by talking about the second part of the Conservative motion, which seeks to “strengthen Criminal Code provisions to ensure repeat car stealing criminals remain in jail”.

Once again, it was the Conservatives who created a specific offence for auto theft, with their Bill S‑9 and section 333.1 in 2010. If they believe that sentences are not long enough, they have only themselves to blame.

The Conservative leader proposed that a third offence be punishable by three years in prison instead of the six months set out in the Criminal Code. The current six-month sentence in the Criminal Code was a Conservative initiative. What the Conservative Party is proposing today are changes to measures it put in place when it was in power.

The Conservative leader is also talking about eliminating house arrest, or conditional sentences, for thieves. As I said, a sentence of two years or more already cannot be served at home. That said, Bill C-5 did allow judges to impose house arrest if they deemed it appropriate, but not automatically, as the Conservatives like to claim. However, the bill did not make any changes to release pending trial.

Let us make one thing clear: The Bloc Québécois is entirely open to revising the Criminal Code to deal with auto theft. That is what the Montreal police department wants as well. This time, they believe that new sections should be added concerning the export of stolen vehicles and that there should be stricter penalties for ring leaders. I think that might be a good solution. I imagine that will come out in the discussions at the national summit on Thursday.

The last proposal in the Conservative motion concerns the Canada Border Services Agency, or CBSA, and the export of stolen vehicles. It asks that the CBSA be provided with the resources it needs to prevent auto theft in Canada. I could not agree more with this proposal.

I spoke about this a few months ago. I think that the CBSA, which is under federal jurisdiction, needs to do more. Some people say that it does not have the resources it needs to do more right now, that it is short on labour and funds. They need to figure out what the problem is. Clearly, the CBSA is not doing enough right now.

I spoke about auto theft and how thieves steal vehicles; that is the first step. The second step is exporting the vehicles. Like auto theft, shipping the vehicles out of the country is practically risk free. Clearly, for criminal gangs, it means higher costs and more organization, but it seems to be going well when you look at what is happening at the port of Montreal. That is because it is a sieve.

Around 700,000 containers leave the port of Montreal every year. According to the Customs and Immigration Union, only 1% of all containers are searched. According to the Montreal Port Authority, or MPA, the law does not allow employees or the port authority to open a container unless a person's life is in danger or there is a serious environmental hazard. According to the port's director of communications, when the containers arrive at the port, it is already too late to do anything. The containers remain sealed unless law enforcement intervenes for a specific reason. They need a warrant to open them, so they need reasonable grounds.

Police forces have access to the port and can intervene. However, they do not patrol there because the MPA already has its own security guards. The MPA does not intervene because the police can do it and the police do not intervene because the MPA has its own security guards, so that is just great.

As for customs, the CBSA is responsible for controlling goods for export. CBSA agents can open containers. However, in October, we learned from the Journal de Montréal that there are only five border agents to inspect the containers in Montreal, which makes the task practically impossible. Yes, the CBSA is responsible for overseeing exports, but its mandate is more focused on imports. It also needs to look at what is coming into the country. That is understandable. Do changes need to be made to the CBSA's mandate to ensure that exports are better monitored? I think that is something we need to think about.

Another reason why it is easy to export stolen cars is that anyone can rent a container by filling out a simple online declaration form for the shipping company. We could do it without any problem, just as a small business could. Anyone can change their form up to 48 hours after shipping, so that obviously makes it possible for thieves to cover their tracks once the goods are already on their way to Europe, the Middle East or Africa.

Finally, criminals use numbered companies to fill out those forms. They often use the same or similar serial numbers to defraud the CBSA on their export declaration form.

It should be easy for the Canada Border Services Agency to spot, easy to see that a vehicle serial number comes up repeatedly. At least, Le Journal de Montréal was able to do just that and identify the issue using a simple Excel document. However, for some unknown reason, it seems too difficult for the CBSA.

As early as the fall of 2015, an Auditor General's report stated that export control at the border is ineffective and that only one in five high-risk containers was inspected. Now, we are being told that there are almost no inspections and that, even when there is a concern that there may be high-risk contents, only one container in five is searched and checked. It is easy to understand why there are a huge number of stolen vehicles passing through the port of Montreal without anyone noticing.

I asked the customs union to come testify before the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security on Bill C‑21. The union told us that a lot of illegal or stolen material is shipped in containers that travel in and out of Canada not only by water, but also by train, and that the agency performs almost no inspections. At the time, the government dismissed the criticism out of hand, saying that it did not consider this information important.

What Le Journal de Montréal's investigative bureau reported, in a nutshell, is that only five officers at the Port of Montreal conduct searches. They rely on a temperamental cargo scanner that is constantly breaking down. The agency refuses to second an investigator to a special stolen vehicle export squad. The same serial numbers come up again and again. Critical information is not being forwarded to port services or police in a timely manner, and the agency apparently omits to report high-risk containers to its partners.

We see that many organizations are involved, but, despite that, nothing is getting done.

I would be very pleased to answer my colleagues' questions and I hope the summit being held next week will contribute to finding solutions to address this scourge.

Criminal Code

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands for outlining that important situation. It reflects the needs and concerns of communities right around this country, particularly with respect to firearms.

What I would identify for him is that we have firearms legislation that is currently in the Senate: Bill C-21 is geared toward promoting community safety.

I would also refer him to the specific provisions asked for by Conservative, Liberal and NDP premiers right around the country about ensuring that bail is not provided when people have violated the rules relating to having a loaded, prohibited or restricted firearm. We have added to those and have actually gone further than what was asked for by the premiers to include those who break and enter to steal a firearm, use robbery to steal a firearm or make an automatic firearm.

There is no doubt that ensuring that we get tough with firearms and those who use firearms to commit crimes is part and parcel of keeping our communities safe. This bill will help do that by ensuring those types of people do not get bail, as will Bill C-21.

Carbon Pricing

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety]

Mr. Speaker, let us keep talking about respect for democracy in the House of Commons. Unelected Conservative senators are blocking the passage of an important gun control bill that passed the House. If our friends across the aisle want to do something for democracy, they should ask the Conservative senators in their caucus to pass Bill C‑21, which was passed by the House of Commons, to protect Canadians from illegal firearms in Canada.

Criminal Code

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to speak to Bill C‑332, which amends the Criminal Code to create an offence of engaging in controlling or coercive conduct that has a significant impact on the person towards whom the conduct is directed, including a fear of violence, a decline in their physical or mental health or a substantial adverse effect on their day-to-day activities.

The issue of controlling and coercive conduct has been an interest of mine for quite some time. This type of conduct includes physical, sexual and emotional abuse, financial control, and implicit or explicit threats to the partner or ex-partner and to their children, belongings or even pets.

First I will spend a little more time talking about the definition, before moving on to other measures we are currently looking at to address violence. I will conclude by explaining some of our concerns with the bill.

First, I have discussed the topic with my colleague from Rivière‑du‑Nord on a number of occasions. That is how I found out that Megan Stephens, one of the witnesses who participated in the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights' study, had mentioned a minor complication, namely, the fact that there is no universally accepted definition. However, the following are some of the definitions that were given over the course of the study: limiting transportation, denying access to household, controlling food consumption, disconnecting phone lines, breaking cell phones and preventing them from going to work or going to school. Combined together, all those forms of behaviour fall under coercive control.

Abusive partners uses isolation, both physical and psychological, as a means to control their partner's contact with friends and family to emotionally bind the partner to them with the shackles of fear, dependency and coercive tactics of control.

In some cases, the violent partner uses state-sanctioned structures to continue to coerce and control their victim by creating problems related to custody of the children and visitation rights. The justice system is used as a weapon against the victim. According to a study published by Statistics Canada in April 2021, intimate partner violence is a serious problem, and controlling and coercive behaviours are an integral part of that. It is difficult to know the exact scope of this type of violence in Canada, because most cases are not reported to the police.

I want to point out that, in 2021, we were in the midst of the pandemic and victims were at home with their abusers 24-7. The fact that most cases of intimate partner violence are not reported to the police is the biggest impediment to determining how many people are affected, documenting the situation and implementing solutions for the victims of these types of behaviour. It is difficult for them to find a way to talk so someone.

During her testimony in committee, Lisa Smylie, the director general of communications and public affairs for the research, results and delivery branch at the Department for Women and Gender Equality, said that only about 36% of domestic violence incidents and 5% of sexual assaults are reported to the police. Those numbers are very low.

According to the data reported by the country's police forces in 2018, women living in rural areas experience intimate partner violence the most. That is also important to note. What is more, even though coercive and controlling violence may be present in other cases, it is present in 95% of cases of domestic violence as we know it.

Today, it is facilitated by technological advances such as geolocation systems, miniature cameras, smart phones and social media platforms. This makes everything more complex. All these things make it easier for the abusers when they want to continue to inflict harm and reinforce the isolation and control, regardless of where their victim may be. There are also the traditional forms of blackmail on social media, such as identity theft, the repeated sending of threatening messages or the disclosure of personal information or content about the victim that is sexual in nature.

In light of the testimony offered during the study at the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, a rather high number of offences under the Criminal Code can apply to domestic violence. The committee noted a few problems with the enforcement of the current legislation in the cases of victims of coercive or controlling violence.

Victims are wary of and have little confidence in existing mechanisms, police services and the justice system to adequately deal with their trauma. A number of stakeholders noted that victims believe that they will not be taken seriously and they worry about myths. They do not want to be judged by institutions on their credibility when they report their abusers.

Abusers often create financial and other forms of dependence, which limits the actions that victims caught in this vicious circle can take, because they could lose everything, end up on the street or lose custody of their children.

The divide between the criminal justice system, family courts and community organizations needs to be addressed.

When elements of coercive control and other forms of control are present, the criminal and judicial systems too often say that simply telling one's story is not enough to file a complaint.

Lastly, one of the most serious obstacles is the under-enforcement of the law. Multiple charges against violent men are often reduced to a single charge, usually assault. This charge is then often withdrawn in exchange for a peace bond. This is the infamous section 810.

The many femicides and cases of harassment demonstrate the limitations and the weakness of section 810 in cases where violent men pose a high risk of reoffending. They must be treated differently and required to wear an electronic monitoring device.

Second, the bill proposed by the member for Victoria is part of a growing trend among legislators to focus on coercive violence. In recent years, the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights released a report on this issue, which was presented in the House on April 27, 2021. The Standing Committee on the Status of Women also touched on the issue during its study on intimate partner violence and made two motions a priority for the winter of 2024, one of which was my study proposal to look at international best practices in this area and try to learn from them.

I also examined this issue to a lesser degree at the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, when I participated a few times in its study on safe practices in sport and the topic of coercive control came up.

More recently, the Liberal member for Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle's Bill C‑233, which was also examined by the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, received royal assent on April 27.

The bill amended the Criminal Code to require judges, in cases of domestic violence, to consider whether it is appropriate for the accused to wear an electronic monitoring device before issuing a release order. In addition, the bill amended the Judges Act to include an obligation to hold continuing education seminars on issues of sexual assault, intimate partner violence and coercive control.

To a lesser extent, Bill C-21, which is currently before the Senate, focuses primarily on gun control and revoking possession when an individual is suspected of, or has engaged in, domestic violence, including coercive and controlling behaviour. This is part of a trend.

Third, Bill C-332 amends the Criminal Code, after section 264, by introducing the concept of controlling or coercive conduct as a criminal offence. The Bloc Québécois supports the objective of Bill C-332. However, we see several major shortcomings that will have to be studied in committee. The scope of the bill should be expanded to allow former spouses or other family members who are not part of the household to testify, in order to break the infamous “one person's word against another's” system. That is good.

What is more, consideration of testimony from neighbours, colleagues or others might also make it easier for victims to come forward. The severity of sentences and the consideration given to children in cases of coercive or controlling violent behaviour are other important factors. Reviewing the grounds on which prosecutors drop several charges and opt for the lowest common denominator shows that this can hinder the administration of justice and undermine public confidence and the victims' confidence in the courts that deal with these issues. We have to study all of that.

There are already 35 sections in the Criminal Code that can apply to domestic or family violence. They just need to be rigorously enforced, and we need to think of ways of ensuring that prosecutors rely on these sections more often in cases of coercive or controlling violence. We also need to address the difficulties associated with collecting evidence and ensuring solid and sound prosecution.

Megan Stephens, Executive Director and General Counsel at Women's Legal Education and Action Fund argued that Bill C‑247 and Bill C‑332 can make the legislation unnecessarily complex because new concepts are being introduced when the Criminal Code already contains very similar offences, particularly on criminal harassment and human trafficking. We will need to take a closer look at that.

The wording of the two NDP members' bills does not address the issue of victims having to relive their trauma. They will have to retell their stories over and over again, just as they do now, which has been roundly criticized. Furthermore, Bill C-332, as currently drafted, does not change how these matters are dealt with by the courts and the authorities.

In closing, if we want to ensure that this never happens again, if we want to put an end to this shadow epidemic, we must take action. We must take action because violence is not always physical, but it always hurts.

As a final point, the Quebec National Assembly has also made this call. I had a discussion with an MNA in Quebec City this summer. She told me that the Quebec National Assembly had done its part, that it had produced the report “Rebuilding Trust” and said that the ball was now in Ottawa's court. She said that the National Assembly does not have jurisdiction to study coercive control in the Criminal Code. I took it upon myself to heed the call from the Quebec National Assembly, a call made by female MNAs who did exceptional, non-partisan work.

Let us try to examine it intelligently in committee.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Madam Speaker, I rise today on behalf of the Bloc Québécois to speak to Bill C‑325. I would like to say from the outset that we will be voting in favour of the bill so that it can be studied in committee. I am confident that my colleague from Rivière-du-Nord will make a constructive contribution. I will begin my speech with a summary of the bill. I will then go over Quebec's requests. Lastly, I will briefly go over some highly publicized cases, such as the one involving Marylène Levesque.

First, the bill would create a new offence for the breach of conditions of conditional release for certain serious offences with a maximum sentence of two years, or at least in relation to a summary conviction. It would require the reporting of the breach of conditions to the authorities, and it would amend the Criminal Code to preclude persons convicted of certain offences from serving their sentence in the community.

The reality is that judges have the discretion to impose a community-based sentence, but are not obligated to do so. Judges must weigh a series of factors before handing down a sentence. Crown prosecutors could also agree with the defence on a community-based sentence if they felt that the circumstances warranted it.

The bill is short. It contains only three clauses and amends two acts, namely the Criminal Code and the Corrections and Conditional Release Act.

Clause 1 of Bill C‑325 adds a subsection to section 145 of the Criminal Code. It adds a criminal offence after subsection 5 for the breach of conditions of conditional release; for the breach of a condition of parole; and for breach of a condition of a release on reconnaissance. As mentioned in Bill C‑325, schedules I and II of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act include a wide range of offences, from child pornography to attempted murder. The intention is to tighten up the legislation for breaches of conditions of parole or statutory release, which is the almost automatic release after completion of two-thirds of a sentence. However, there is no evidence that Bill C‑325 is necessary, since the Parole Board of Canada, or PBC, already has the power to revoke parole. For example, a sexual predator in Montreal recently had his parole revoked by the PBC for breach of his conditions.

Subclause 2(1) of Bill C‑325 replaces paragraph 742.1(c) of the Criminal Code, which specifies that a sentence may be served at home for certain offences, to simply disqualify a sentence from being served in the community for any offence that carries a maximum sentence of 14 years or more. The current paragraph 742.1(c) of the Criminal Code states that a community-based sentence cannot be handed down for the following offences: attempt to commit murder, torture, or advocating genocide. Bill C‑325 is therefore much broader than paragraph 742.1(c), since many offences now carry a maximum sentence of 14 years, such as altering a firearm magazine once Bill C‑21 receives royal assent.

Subclause 2(2) adds two new paragraphs after paragraph 742.1(d) to specify that a conditional sentence, that is, a sentence to be served in the community, cannot be imposed for an offence that resulted in bodily harm, that involved drug trafficking, or that involved the use of a weapon. In addition, a community-based sentence cannot be imposed for the following offences: prison breach, criminal harassment, sexual assault, kidnapping, trafficking, abduction of a person under the age of 14, motor vehicle theft, theft over $5,000, breaking and entering, being unlawfully in a dwelling-house, and arson for a fraudulent purpose. That is a pretty broad list, and we will have to see in committee whether certain offences need to be added or removed.

Clause 3 amends the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. It states that, if a parole supervisor discovers that an offender on conditional release has breached their parole conditions, they must inform the Parole Board, the Attorney General and the police force with jurisdiction where the breach occurred of the breach and the circumstances surrounding the breach.

It is important to note that, contrary to what the Conservatives suggest, judges have discretionary power to give individuals community-based sentences. It is not automatic, and judges must factor in the risk of reoffending and the consequences of a sentence served at home.

Second, the Bloc Québécois intends to introduce a bill that addresses problems with Bill C‑5. The member for Rivière-du-Nord talked about the upcoming introduction of a bill to close some of the gaps in Bill C‑5. According to my colleague, conditional sentences should be not be allowed for most sexual assault cases and gun crimes, and he will be introducing a bill in the coming weeks to reinstate minimum sentences for those crimes. While Bill C‑5 was up for debate, the National Assembly unanimously passed a motion condemning its controversial provisions. My colleague's bill is based on that motion.

The motion accused Ottawa of setting back the fight against sexual assault. The member for Rivière‑du‑Nord had already moved an amendment to the bill that would have retained minimum sentences while giving judges discretion to depart from them in exceptional cases, with justification. This amendment was defeated, but the Bloc Québécois ended up voting for Bill C‑5 anyway, since it also provided for diversion for simple drug possession offences. As justice critic, the member for Rivière-du-Nord intends to call for the government to go back to the drawing board and come up with a new bill that, in his opinion, could satisfy both the Liberals and the Conservatives. I know that he has spoken about this a few times.

Third, I will talk about a few cases to provide some food for thought in this debate. A man who assaulted a sleeping woman benefited from the leniency of a judge who sentenced him to serve his sentence in the community, even though he himself was prepared to go to jail.

On Monday, a Crown prosecutor expressed outrage that, after eight years of legal proceedings, a sex offender was let off with a 20-month sentence to be served in the community. In his words, the federal Liberals “have a lot to answer for to victims”. Since the passage of Bill C‑5 in June, it is once again possible to impose a conditional sentence, or a sentence to be served in the community, for the crime of sexual assault, which had not been allowed since 2007. The Crown prosecutor blames Parliament for passing Bill C‑5, which reintroduced conditional sentences.

The other highly publicized case is that of Marylène Levesque. Coroner Stéphanie Gamache determined that an electronic bracelet with geolocation could have prevented Ms. Levesque's murder in January 2020 in a Quebec City hotel room. The coroner recommended that all offenders convicted of homicide tied to domestic violence should be required to wear the device upon release as part of their correctional plan. As a result of pressure from Quebec, the matter has now made its way to Ottawa. I even had an opportunity to study the bill on the device at the Standing Committee on the Status of Women following pressure from Quebec. It was a recommendation in the report entitled “Rebâtir la confiance”, on rebuilding trust in the justice system. Some progress has been made on advancing the issue in Ottawa through the work of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women.

Following Marylène Levesque's murder, Correctional Service Canada and the Parole Board of Canada reviewed their practices and adopted a series of measures to ensure better monitoring of offenders. However, the coroner ruled that this is not enough. It is not just a question of electronic bracelets, either. According to the coroner, the correctional plan of the murderer, Eustachio Gallese, should also be reviewed in order to identify what elements may have led to his lack of accountability.

This could help prevent another similar tragedy. In her report, coroner Gamache wrote that the comprehensive correctional intervention plan prepared for this offender was a resounding failure. Marylène Levesque's murder occurred less than a year after he was granted parole. At the time, Eustachio Gallese was on day parole for the 2004 murder of his ex-wife. His parole officer had given him permission to visit erotic massage parlours once a month, but in reality, according to the police investigation, he was going up to three times a week. In short, an electronic bracelet with geolocation would at least have made it possible to detect these lies and subterfuges and to take action before it was too late. That is what the coroner argued. This bracelet allows for better monitoring, but that is not all.

In conclusion, for all these reasons, this bill must be referred to committee. We need to go back to the drawing board and rise above partisanship. The Bloc Québécois intends to make a constructive contribution to this debate.

We have made a lot of progress in Quebec, and we have done a lot of thinking. I hope to have the opportunity to come back to this, but on Thursday evening, I celebrated the 50th anniversary of the community organization Joins-toi, which works to help people who have committed crimes re-enter society. Working to reintegrate people and offering them alternatives to the criminal lifestyle is an intrinsic value that we cherish in Quebec. At the event, we heard about all the progress that has been made thanks to the community and to dedicated stakeholders who believe in restorative justice. This is a model that Quebec has done a lot to develop. I would like to pay tribute to the entire Maison Joins-toi team. I hope that I will have another opportunity to commend its members and highlight their work, as I was able to do on Thursday on the occasion of this milestone anniversary.