Mr. Speaker, my colleague just asked if we want bail in it. Heck yes, I want bail in it. We really want to deal with bail. We, as Conservatives, want to deal with bail. In fact, I had two private members' bills that dealt with bail during the last Parliament. One of the bills was in response to the killing of Constable Pierzchala, a police officer. He was in his mid-twenties.
I believe I could say that Constable Pierzchala was killed, as the person is no longer accused, as they went to trial. He was killed by somebody who was out on bail. It was the constable's first shift alone. He had just passed his probation period. That person also had a firearms prohibition, and those prohibitions are now being treated like they are not worth the paper they are written on.
Therefore, to my colleague from Winnipeg, who heckled me and asked if I want bail in the bill, yes, we want bail in the bill. I will gladly take him up on that. I will gladly meet with the Minister of Public Safety.
In fact, in questions and comments, I want the member for Winnipeg North to stand up. It does not take much to cajole him to stand up, even if there are 30 people behind him. The Liberals are laughing because they know it is true. I want the member to stand up to tell me whether the Liberals will pass Bill C-313 from the last Parliament, which would make the hill much harder to climb for people who were previously convicted of gun charges and placed on firearms prohibitions. This is a small, discreet group of people.
In the member's prelude, I challenge him to say that the Liberals will support Bill C-313 or my other private member's bill on bail, which targeted a very small, discreet group of people who were being accused of three indictable offences at one time, as in those files had not been resolved, with 10 years or more. Those are offences such as robbery, manslaughter, assault with a weapon and assault causing bodily harm, by indictment. The member has been here for a long time, and he speaks on behalf of the government. Does he have the guts to stand up to say that the Liberals will incorporate the principles of those bills in this bill? I would love to work with the government to address bail.
What about fentanyl sentencing? I wonder if the member for Winnipeg North is onside with his party's views on sentencing. We are getting this tough-on-crime stuff from the Liberals. Do members know what we heard? In fact, now that I come to think of it, it was from the member from Winnipeg. I introduced a bill about sexual offences, and the whole point of the bill on sexual offences was to raise the sentences. A lot of people do not know this, but sexual offences are treated less seriously than property offences in some regards. For instance, if someone breaks into a house, the maximum sentence is life imprisonment. If they rob somebody, which is theft with an element of violence, they can go to jail for life. However, if someone takes a person's dignity and consent, which is a crime of violence just like robbery, the maximum sentence is 10 years, so I brought this up. The member for Winnipeg heckled, “Tough on crime.” The Liberals are telling us how tough on crime they are now, when they mocked us the last time. They will not only tell us how tough they are on crime but also do little about it.
In this omnibus bill, it says that offenders can serve their sentence for trafficking in fentanyl from their couch. There is going to be 10 minutes for questions and comments, and I challenge any Liberal who rises to say to me, through the Speaker, “I agree with that. I agree that, for people who traffic in one of the deadliest drugs, if not the deadliest drug that we know of, who are literally peddling poison, it is okay that they sit at home playing their video game system, listening to their favourite music and sleeping in their bed, when they are literally peddling poison.” I am speaking right to the Liberals here, those who are prepared to look me in the eye to say that.
Let us go to another one, which is firearms offences. One of the offences in a case called R. v. Oud, out of British Columbia, and it was upheld by the B.C. Court of Appeal as being a constitutional mandatory minimum. Discharge with intent is a drive-by shooting and those types of things. The Liberals legislated that offenders could serve that sentence at home. Previously, it was a four-year mandatory minimum. They kept the five-year minimum if it was a handgun or a restricted firearm, but oftentimes the guns are not ever recovered. Nobody says, “I just did a drive-by. Police, here is the gun.” This does not happen.
The Liberals are telling us that they are tough on crime. They say, “Look at our borders act.” It is 130 pages. “Look at this, we are so tough on crime.” I challenge any member of the Liberals to stand up to say, through the Speaker, “I am okay with people who do drive-by shootings to serve their sentence at home.” People will say, “Oh, you are just tough on crime indiscriminately.”
To the contrary, I think most people deserve a second chance. In fact, a lot of people do. Some people deserve a second chance because they have done something stupid. They have made decisions. They got into an addiction. A lot of people I saw were in a car accident and were then prescribed opiates. The next thing they knew, they had an opiates addiction.
We are not talking about locking the door and throwing away the key for the majority of offenders. We are talking about a small, discreet group of offenders. Nowhere in this bill does it talk about those things. We are prepared to talk about everything but. We are prepared to talk about Internet service providers and whether they have to turn over their materials without a warrant. That is in response to a recent Supreme Court of Canada decision. For those who do not know, an ISP address is easily discoverable. As I recall, and I have not read or looked at the case in some time, the court said a warrant is needed. There is an expectation of privacy there.
I could go on and on about what is not in this bill. Again, I will challenge my Liberal colleagues. Will they have the guts to stand up to say, “I am okay with those things.” If they are not okay with those things, then why are they not petitioning the government to amend the bill to be tough on the crimes they say they are tough on.
This bill has a number of elements to it. It has 16 parts. Obviously, the first part we are dealing with looks at CBSA, the Canada Border Services Agency, and its ability to do searches. This is interesting, as the Leader of the Opposition, in the last Parliament, would say people were literally tracking their cars to our ports and seeing them go into containers. They were told they could not trespass on that port. People wanted to get their cars back, but they could not do it. We got laughed at, as Conservatives, for this, for our supposed tough-on-crime approach, yet the Liberals are saying that Conservatives need to pass this omnibus bill.
We have a lot of questions about the bill, and I think Canadians deserve to have those questions answered.
The Canada Post Corporation Act would be amended, through part 4 of the bill “to permit the demand, seizure, detention or retention of anything in the course of post only in accordance with an Act of Parliament.” As I understand that, this is a judicial authorization commonly known as a warrant. Typically, it is a warrant that is embedded there. This is really interesting, and I would love for the government to expand on this, because this is something I know I am going to get mail about, if I have not gotten it already.
Part 4 would allow Canada Post Corporation to open mail in certain circumstances. As I understand it, and I am not an expert in this regard, the nature of mail has been that it has been regarded as private since Confederation. In other words, Canada Post has not been able to open somebody's mail. This is the reason we are now talking about the language in the Charter and what is referred to as an expectation of privacy.
The highest expectation is on our bodies. Then we have things like our phones and letters, but there is still an expectation of privacy there, so I would really like for the government to explain what that threshold would be and why it is that Canada Post would be doing this. Those are questions that we really need to have answered.
Similarly, there are the Canadian Coast Guard provisions. How are they going to look in practice? This is a really significant bill that I think we need a bit more information on. I am mindful of the fact that we always will have rights of the individual, and I noticed that many of my Liberal colleagues stood up and clapped when they spoke about being the party of the Charter of Rights. As my colleague from Calgary Nose Hill noted, there is no charter statement here.
The government was able to give us a 130-page bill with 16 parts, and when we ask where the charter statement is, there is a bit of the proverbial shoulder shrug, with the statement, “It just came out two days ago.” If the Liberals can put out a 130-page bill, certainly they can put out a four- or five-page charter statement. It would amaze me if nobody in the government went through this document and asked if it was charter compliant. Certainly somebody did.
We have a government that is saying, “We are all about the charter; we believe in this,” but it will not tell Canadians what its experts have said about whether this legislation is charter compliant. As a critic, how am I to respond to people who have very good faith inquiries about this type of legislation?
The next part of the bill gets into citizenship and immigration. I am not going to touch on that, because I know that my colleague from Calgary Nose Hill will be dealing with that.
The last thing I want to do is reflect on the life of a good friend. His name was Mark Evevard. He was not Canadian, but he touched the lives of many Canadians. Mark passed away unexpectedly of a heart attack just before the election. I cannot understate the profound influence that this man had on my life. He leaves behind his children, Stephen, Lauren and Patrick. I got to spend time with Mark and Patrick right around the pandemic and just before it. Mark touched so many lives, and I wanted to recognize him here, through his work in youth ministry for the church and as a servant. May perpetual light shine upon him. It was my honour to know him.
With that, I will conclude my speech and take questions.
