Bill C-5 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act

This enactment amends the Criminal Code and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to, among other things, repeal certain mandatory minimum penalties, allow for a greater use of conditional sentences and establish diversion measures for simple drug possession offences.

Criminal Code

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

moved that Bill C-325, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Corrections and conditional Release Act (conditions of release and conditional sentences), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Madam Speaker, I am proud to be here today to speak to my bill, which I think is very important.

Bill C-325 is important because I know that many members of the House of Commons realize that we need to do something to address the violence in our once peaceful streets and communities. As parliamentarians, we work for the public and, of course, our role is to pass laws that seek to improve the quality of life of our constituents.

I am sure that when he introduced Bill C-5, the Prime Minister was trying to do the right thing. I sincerely believe that his heart was in the right place, but we should all now realize that we need to backtrack. This country belongs to all of us. We are not only responsible for maintaining the quality of life it offers us, but we also have a solemn duty to protect it from those who flout our laws.

Canada used to have an international reputation for being extraordinarily beautiful and safe. Shootings in broad daylight used to be an other-country problem, but now, gangs are trying to establish themselves all over the country. They know that laws like Bill C‑5, which the House passed, make their criminal activity easier.

We are all politicians, but I am convinced that, when it comes to Canadians' safety and matters of life and death, order and chaos, justice and injustice, we all have the same point of view. All members of the House agree that violent criminals deserve tough sentences. All violence against women, children or any other person must be severely punished.

The Prime Minister has 24-hour security. Everywhere he goes, he is surrounded by highly trained security guards. When he goes to bed at night, they stand guard in front of his house. The Prime Minister is probably the safest Canadian there is and, as Prime Minister, he understands the importance of security. He too must see that it is time to restore order in our society for the good of Canadians.

My Bill C‑325 has two objectives.

Under the first part of this bill, violent criminals would not have the option to serve their sentences in the community. It is unthinkable that a violent criminal would have the luxury of serving his sentence in the comfort of his home while watching Netflix, but that is exactly what is happening in Quebec and across Canada.

The case of Jonathan Gravel is a good example. He received a 20-month sentence for sexually assaulting his former girlfriend, and the court allowed him to serve his sentence in the community. It is supposed to be a 20-month sentence, but he will actually serve 14 months.

As MPs, we all have a responsibility to do what we can to keep Canadians safe. I do not know any woman who finds it funny that our courts grant violent criminals the right to serve their sentences at home. As we know, judges enforce the laws that are passed here in the House.

Surely members have noticed that more and more notorious sex offenders are serving their sentences in the comfort of their homes while their victims are still psychologically traumatized and fearful of meeting their abuser on the way to work or at the end of an aisle at the grocery store.

That is one of the reasons I am asking all members of the House to support Bill C‑325. Victims deserve justice; they deserve to see violent criminals put behind bars. Serving a sentence at home with access to Netflix or Disney+ is not the best route to rehabilitation, nor does it create the conditions necessary for serious reflection.

The second part of my bill would create a Criminal Code offence for violent offenders who breach their parole conditions. It would also require probation officers to report these breaches, which is not currently the case. This provision would reduce recidivism among violent criminals.

We all remember Marylène Levesque, who was murdered by a killer who violated his parole conditions with impunity. Bill C‑325 would have put Marylène Levesque's killer behind bars immediately, and a life would have been saved.

Then there is the case of Myles Sanderson, the murderer responsible for the knife attacks in Saskatchewan last September. Despite being charged with 59 crimes, many of them violent, he was released and did not hesitate to violate his release conditions because he knew there would be no consequences. As a result, 10 people were murdered. He should not have been released, but the current law made it impossible to detain him, instead of ensuring the safety of those who became his victims.

If members believe that victims and crime prevention should come first, and that our justice system should not allow violent offenders to serve their sentences at home, then I implore them to support Bill C-325 at second reading, as several organizations do.

The president of the Canadian Police Association, the Fraternité des policiers et policières de Montréal, the founder of Montreal's Maison des guerrières, the Fédération des maisons d'hébergement pour femmes du Québec, the Murdered or Missing Persons' Families Association and Communauté de citoyens and citoyennes en action contre les crimes violents, among others, have expressed their support for Bill C‑325. They all support Bill C‑325

Earlier this year, REAL Women of Canada insisted that it is time to reconsider the 1995 Criminal Code reforms on sentencing given their failure to address the high rates of recidivism among indigenous offenders and the ongoing threats to our families and to the communities in which violent offenders are released on parole with alarming regularity.

This is what the organization said:

In the spirit of reforming Criminal Code sentencing and offender rehabilitation, REAL Women of Canada welcome the introduction on March 10, 2023...of Bill C‑325, a private member's bill...

Bill C‑325 provides a much needed opportunity for changing the way in which we protect our families and communities while also furthering the safe re-integration of offenders into society, which is ultimately the best way to protect our families and communities. A full and frank discussion on Bill C-325 provides the potential for much needed reforms and greater public awareness of the issues involved.

REAL Women of Canada looks forward to making submissions to the committee once Bill C‑325 passes second reading and proceeding to a more thorough examination of the recent shortfalls of the Parole Board of Canada to properly carry out its mandate under the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. This includes parole as well as the failure of the justice system to properly protect society from dangerous offenders.

This examination should also take into account the impact of the proposed amendments in Bill C‑325 on the existing statutory requirements under the Criminal Code and the Corrections and Conditional Release Act.

What is more, the president of the Canadian Police Association, Tom Stamatakis, said the following, and I quote:

The need to effectively target repeat violent offenders is significant because, as front-line law enforcement officers know all too well, a defining reality of our justice system is that a disproportionately small number of offenders are responsible for a disproportionately large number of offences. The Canadian Police Association has long advocated for statutory consequences for offenders who commit new offences while on conditional release, and this proposed legislation is a common-sense solution that effectively targets those very specific offenders.

The Fraternité des policiers et policières de Montréal stated the following, and I quote:

We welcome this bill which would strengthen public protection against violent repeat offenders and prevent dangerous offenders from serving their sentences in the community. The Montreal Police Brotherhood believes the justice system must prioritize the safety of law-abiding citizens and this bill is clearly aimed at that goal.

I will close by saying that making Canadian streets and communities safe again should not be done through a partisan process, but a common-sense one.

I hope that all members of the House will support Bill C‑325.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, traditionally, members' statements are used for non-partisan purposes. I assure the House that today, my statement will uphold that tradition.

When the government adopted Bill C‑5, I am sure that those who supported it meant well. We now see, however, that we need to go back to the drawing board.

We all agree that violent criminals deserve harsh sentences. Any form of violence against women, children or any other person needs to be taken seriously.

It is possible that some people saw Bill C‑5 as a way to modernize the Criminal Code, but in fact its application has been quite the opposite. That is why I am introducing Bill C‑325.

This bill has two objectives. First, it will ensure that violent criminals have no chance of serving their sentence at home. Second, my bill seeks to create an offence for violent criminals who breach their parole conditions. There are currently no consequences for breaching conditions. Everyone agrees that this is wrong.

We all have people in our lives who are dear to us. As elected members, we must ensure that they are protected. Let us support Bill C‑325.

Sitting Resumed

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Mr. Speaker, hunting season is over. That is what a lot of Canadians are hearing tonight. I am trying to give them comfort and understanding of what has transpired in the months on this bill and why the Liberals, supported by the NDP, are going after Grandpa Joe's hunting gun.

This is one of the most frustrating parts of the job, of being a member of Parliament. It is almost midnight. There is no reason for us to be up this late. We were up last night debating this as well. It is the mismanagement and incompetence of the Liberal government, which is why we are having to debate this late in the evening. There are real problems with the bill and it is just ramming it through.

I will try to walk us through why and some of the ways that it is going after Grandpa Joe's hunting rifles.

It is really because, eight years ago, when the Prime Minister got to Ottawa, he started changing things within our country, changing some of the fundamental principles of our justice system. The corresponding result was an increase in violent crimes of 32%. My heart goes out to family members who have lost a loved one due to violence. We know that gang-related murders have doubled under the watch of the Prime Minister. Instead of going after real criminals, he is going after Grandpa Joe.

Grandpa Joe might be in Newfoundland. He has enjoyed hunting moose for generations and is fearful of the next generation's inability to carry on a very important part of our heritage and our traditions in this country, because of the changes.

Common sense would dictate that, if we have a problem, we could ask where the problem is coming from. Once one has identified where it was coming from, that is where one should put one's efforts into stopping it, and we all want to stop violent criminals. I believe everyone, at heart, when they say they would like to stop the crime rates that continue to increase. This bill would do nothing for that because 90% of all firearms-related crimes are done with an illegal firearm.

Criminals do not follow the law. We know this. We know that the statistics out of British Columbia earlier this year showed that 40 criminals have been arrested 6,000 times. It is the catch-and-release bail policies that have been introduced by the government over the last eight years, which are driving this up.

We catch and release. We catch and release. Go out, commit a violent crime, get arrested and get released. That is the policy that has driven this spike in violent crime, up 32%, under the Prime Minister's watch.

Where does he decide to spend millions, if not billions, of dollars? Going after Grandpa Joe's firearms. It is wrong. Instead of going after illegal gun smugglers and criminals, they are going after the hunting rifles and shotguns of law-abiding farmers, hunters and indigenous people. That is where they are going to be spending the money.

I do want to remind everyone that I will be splitting my time with the member for Fundy Royal.

While I have the floor, I just want to walk through the common-sense understanding of the problem and what we can do to fix it.

The Liberals have, in every way possible, made it easier for these criminals. There used to be minimum sentences. In Bill C-5, they repealed mandatory minimum sentences for gun crimes. Why would they do that?

We know these people cannot help themselves. These individuals need to be behind bars and in programs to straighten out their lives, but instead, they are getting lighter sentences because of Bill C-5. There are no minimums.

The Liberals like to make a lot of noise about how they are going to increase the maximums. There are no judges in Canada who hand out maximums anymore. That is the higher threshold that should be there, but they have bumped it up to a point where it does not have an impact. We are talking about criminals who are getting firearms across the border and, for the most part, committing the crimes that are concerning families in some of our larger cities. My heart goes out to them because losing a loved one for no reason is a heinous thing to think about. A lot of times these are senseless, unprovoked crimes using firearms coming over from the United States. We have a government that will not even shut down the illegal crossing of people, let alone firearms.

A much more common-sense approach to deal with this problem would be to go after the individuals who are committing the crimes and the firearms that enable those crimes, 90% of which are coming here illegally, but with all these laws on the books, the only ones who are going to be affected are the law-abiding hunters and indigenous people of this land.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Banff—Airdrie.

I rise in strong opposition to Bill C-21, the latest ideological, evidence-free attack by the Liberals on law-abiding firearms owners.

Canada is facing a crime wave after eight years of this disastrous Liberal government. Violent crime is up 32%. Gang-related homicides have nearly doubled, up a staggering 94%. An unprecedented 10 police officers since September have been murdered in the line of duty. Random violent attacks on public transit and on the streets are now commonplace in cities right across Canada. More and more Canadians are feeling less safe in their communities, and that is because more communities that once were safe are no longer safe or are less safe now than when the Liberals took office.

By contrast to the staggering 32% increase in violent crime under the Liberals, under Prime Minister Harper's Conservatives, violent crime went down 33%. In fact, the Liberals have managed to do something that no government has done, which is to reverse a 30-year trend in which Canada, until the Liberals came to power, saw a downward spiral in crime. Now it is up 32%.

I say that because this violent crime wave did not happen in a vacuum, it did not happen by accident and it did not even happen as a result of inaction on the part of the Liberals. It happened as a result of very deliberate and very specific policies regarding Canada's criminal justice system embraced by the Liberals.

The Prime Minister has embraced, full stop, a series of virtue-signalling, woke criminal justice policies. These are policies that the Prime Minister has imported from the United States. They are disastrous policies that have been implemented south of the border by radical, left-wing, big-city mayors and district attorneys. They are policies that have resulted in large swaths of once great American cities, such as Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle and Portland, Oregon, turning into crime no-go zones. It is these American-style policies that the Prime Minister is importing to Canada.

Let us look at the disastrous record of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister, in 2018, was responsible for passing Bill C-75, which established catch-and-release bail. Thanks to the Prime Minister, a judge is now required to make it the primary consideration that an accused be released at the earliest opportunity with the least onerous conditions possible. This has resulted in a revolving door. It has meant that, in many instances, criminals are released back onto the streets and are out committing crimes the very same day they were arrested for the crimes they committed. That is catch-and-release Liberal bail.

Let us look at some of the statistics as a consequence.

In the city of Vancouver, 40 hard-core criminals are responsible for 6,000 arrests a year. That is 150 arrests per offender. Liberal catch-and-release bail has meant that a small number of hard-core criminals are overwhelmingly and disproportionately responsible for a significant number of criminal incidents.

In Edmonton, a community I am proud to represent in this place, a young mother, Carolann Robillard, and her 11-year-old daughter, Sara, are now dead thanks to Liberal catch-and-release bail. Carolann and Sara were brutally murdered, stabbed to death at a park, of all places, at an elementary school.

They were brutally stabbed to death by who? It was a total stranger who happen to be a hard-core violent criminal, who, thanks to Liberal catch-and-release, had been released on bail just 18 days prior. Who was this violent offender who stabbed to death an 11-year-old girl and her young mother outside an elementary school? He was someone who had a 14-year rap sheet of committing violent attacks.

He had been convicted multiple times of serious offences such as aggravated assault, assault with a weapon, multiple robberies and assaulting a correctional officer. Last year, he attacked a 12-year-old girl on an LRT in Edmonton. That is who was released thanks to Liberal catch-and-release bail. He never should have been released. He should have been kept behind bars. He never should have been on bail. It is outrageous that he was.

It is outrageous that the folks across the way can so sanctimoniously defend a series of policies that are indefensible. They are putting lives at risk and endangering public safety. How dare they.

It is not just catch and release. This is a government that, last year, passed Bill C-5, the fourth piece of legislation the government introduced in this Parliament. It is obviously a top priority for the government. What does Bill C-5 do? It significantly expands house arrest for some very serious offences, including sexual assault, kidnapping and human trafficking. In other words, criminals convicted of such offences will not have to spend a single day in jail.

What about firearms? We hear a lot about the Liberals' professed concern about firearms. It seems they are obsessed with firearms as objects, but they have not figured out that firearms do not commit crimes; criminals with firearms commit crimes. What have the Liberals done about criminals who go out and commit offences with guns? Bill C-5 actually eliminates mandatory jail time for serious gun crime, including robbery with a gun, using a firearm in the commission of an offence, discharging a firearm with the intent to injure and weapons trafficking. That is the approach of the Liberals.

It is a policy of the woke. It is a policy grounded in absurdity. Compounding that absurdity is Bill C-21, which is now before the House. It is a bill that does not take illegal firearms off the streets. It does not keep repeat offenders behind bars where they belong. Incredibly, it goes after law-abiding, licensed firearms owners, who are among the group of Canadians least likely to commit a crime.

Those are the people the Liberals are going after. It could not be more absurd. The government's set of priorities could not be more backwards.

[Richard Lehoux, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will try to measure up to my colleague. It is not easy to speak after the official opposition whip. She gave a wonderful speech and did a great job of illustrating the challenges we face.

Today, I am speaking to Bill C-21, this government's flawed gun bill. Before I begin, I would like to acknowledge the hard work my colleague from Kildonan—St. Paul has done on this file, as well as the work put in by all of my colleagues on the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security.

Since the bill was introduced in the House, the Liberal Party has changed direction so often that it is difficult to keep up. The Liberals' inordinate attacks on the Canadian people have not gone unnoticed. The Liberals have shown their true colours to Canadians. Instead of cracking down on illegal guns and gang members, this government has introduced legislation targeting hunters, farmers and indigenous communities.

As usual, the Liberal government is completely out of touch with rural Canada, widening the all-too-real divide in our country. No one believes that going after hunters will reduce violent crime across the country. This is part of the Liberal plan to divide Canadians.

As Conservatives, we support common-sense gun policies that prevent guns from falling into the hands of dangerous criminals. The most important thing we can do is to crack down on smugglers at the borders and prevent illegal weapons from getting into Canada and falling into the hands of criminals and gang members.

I have had the opportunity to talk with many citizens in my riding about this bill. I talked to Mr. Vachon from Saint‑Georges, who served in the army for 14 years and who is very worried about the impact this bill will have on him and his ability to hunt and sport shoot. He is an advocate for the safe use of firearms and understands very well that those who commit crimes with illegal firearms will not be concerned at all about this bill. The only people who are worried about it are law-abiding hunters and sport shooters.

I also talked to Mr. Deschênes from Sainte‑Marie, who is extremely concerned about the impact this bill will have on shooting clubs in the region. They may have to close their doors in the future. He is a federal agent and needs to regularly train at these shooting ranges to keep up his skills and keep himself safe. He emphasized the importance of these shooting ranges for public safety because many police services use them to perfect their skills and maintain their accreditation, and they also educate other Canadians about gun safety.

Finally, Ms. Turcotte from Beauceville contacted my office just last week to express her dissatisfaction with amendments G‑4 and G‑46. These amendments were completely inappropriate and were subsequently withdrawn. However, hunters still worry about what the Liberal government will do next. How far is it prepared to go? Will it amend the same bill once it comes into force, introduce those amendments and shut down debate again?

In my riding, countless farmers also contacted me for fear that they would no longer be able to protect their livestock, which is their livelihood. The problem with this government is that it has a strange way of sending messages. It claims to have discussed this bill with stakeholders, but when the text of the bill and the amendments were published, many groups, such as hunters, indigenous groups and professional sport shooters were taken completely by surprise.

A member of the Alberta Mounted Shooters Association said that they are a very safety-conscious group. She added that before they can become mounted shooters, they must complete training, testing and background checks to obtain their restricted gun licences. They want more Canadians to practice their sport. They want to grow and develop skilled target shooters and equestrians. They also want the ability to continue the legacy for our youth and produce more world champions.

At the rate this bill is going, I do not know if there will be any sport shooters left when this is all over. New athletes will have so many regulatory hurdles to overcome that any shooting discipline outside of the Olympics will be eradicated. Even Canadian Olympians will be forced to spend countless hours obtaining the necessary licences to travel with their sporting equipment.

This lack of comprehensive consultation has not just affected hunters and sport shooters; it has also affected the most important segment of the Canadian population, indigenous communities. As Chief Jessica Lazare of the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake put it, the lack of thorough and comprehensive consultation with indigenous communities is demonstrated by the incoherence and inconsistency of the proposed legislation, the amendments and the lack of recognition of the rights of indigenous peoples.

This is further proof of the complete ignorance shown by this government and the Minister of Public Safety.

Let us talk about how the Prime Minister continues to fail Canadians when it comes to public safety. With bills like C-5, the government is making our country less safe. Bill C-5 removes mandatory minimum sentences for gun crimes. How backwards can this government be?

For people who are guilty of armed robbery or firearms trafficking or who recklessly discharge a weapon, it is easier to get away with it thanks to the Prime Minister's soft on crime approach. This government has made things twice as bad with Bill C‑75. The Prime Minister's bail policy has triggered a wave of violent crime in our country.

Our communities feel less safe, and the Liberal government is responsible for making the situation worse. A common-sense Conservative government will ensure that violent reoffenders stay behind bars while awaiting trial, and it will bring back the mandatory sentences for serious violent crimes that were cut by this government.

The bail reform measures that were announced this week are reactive and respond to weeks of news about the dramatic increase in violent crime in this country. Why does the government always have to play catch-up? It is incapable of getting ahead on anything. A Conservative government will ensure Canadians' safety and introduce bills that will truly keep Canadians safe.

Does the government realize that illegal guns are used in 99% of gun crimes? More than 85% of those guns are smuggled in from the United States. Why are they not allocating more resources at the borders to prevent these firearms from entering?

In my riding, there are two border crossings that do not even have CBSA officers. Truckers coming into Canada simply pick up the phone and call the nearest border service officer to open the gate and the shipments come into Canada without any screening. I am sure this may surprise some members of the House, but it shows just how low a priority border security is for the Prime Minister and the Minister of Public Safety.

In conclusion, I think everyone in this House wants to make Canada a safer place to live, but Bill C-21 was never the right way to go about it. This bill was flawed from the start, and the government has completely missed the mark.

I also think the NDP has a lot to do with this failure, as the New Democrats continue to support the government in this process. However, many of the NDP members are from rural ridings. I hope their constituents have been watching them all this time and will remember this failure. Conservatives will always be there to keep Canadians safe and to protect law-abiding gun owners, whether they are hunters, farmers, sport shooters or indigenous people.

We will always protect their right to own and use firearms safely and lawfully. We will ensure that violent criminals and smugglers are prosecuted, instead of our law-abiding neighbours and farmers.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to speak to Bill C-21, an act to amend certain acts and to make certain consequential amendments (firearms).

I want to speak today in solidarity with all the honest, law-abiding people in Lévis—Lotbinière who legally own guns for reasons other than committing violent crimes.

My colleagues will no doubt understand that I have come here to defend honest hunters and shooters, farmers, and collectors who own guns passed down from one generation to another.

The absurd thing about the Liberal government is that their bills miss their targets most of the time—that is probably a bad pun—as does their budget, for that matter.

How will legalizing drugs prevent or reduce crime? That is utter nonsense. How can anyone believe that restricting the use of certain registered and legal weapons is going to reduce the same criminal activity that continues to rise because of bad Liberal decisions?

The solution to the ever-increasing crime is quite simple, and it is the same for everything else that has not worked in our country since 2015. We are headed straight for a cliff because the Liberals are in power and they are making bad decisions.

The goal of the new Liberal amendments to Bill C‑21 is not to protect us, but to score political points and instill a false sense of security in the population. The facts prove otherwise and nothing will change.

I would like to talk about academic and government stakeholders, such as Dr. Caillin Langmann, assistant clinical professor at McMaster University. He stated that available research has demonstrated that the proposed ban on handguns and semi-automatic weapons would not reduce the rates of homicide and mass homicide.

Someone who wants to inflict harm has the imagination and means to do so. What causes an individual to commit the irreparable quite often begins with the family violence that children witness. These children will become uncontrollable adults who abuse drugs that have become legal and who commit increasingly serious crimes.

The rehabilitation system for these individuals is not working and the Liberal Party encourages this scourge through bad policies and complacency. As proof, the Liberal Party's catch-and-release policies are not working. After eight years of Liberal governance, violent crimes have increased by 32% and gang-related homicides have doubled.

Rather than cracking down on the illegal guns used by criminals and street gangs, the Prime Minister is working to take hunting rifles away from law-abiding farmers, hunters and indigenous peoples.

Let us be clear. The Liberals' new definition is the same as the old one. The commonly used hunting firearms targeted by the Liberals in the fall will likely be added to the ban by the new Liberal firearms advisory panel.

Let there be no mistake. There is nothing new in the amendments proposed by the Liberals. They have just wrapped the initial amendments up in a new package. Hunters, farmers and indigenous peoples are not naive, and neither are the Conservatives. The Conservatives do not support taking guns away from law-abiding farmers, hunters and indigenous peoples. When the Liberals say that they are banning so-called assault-style firearms, they really mean that they are banning hunting rifles. The Prime Minister even admitted as much a few months ago.

No one believes that the government is going to reduce violent crime across the country by going after hunters and legitimate hunting rifles. That is part of the Liberal government's plan to distract Canadians from the real issues our country is facing and to divide them.

For eight years now, have the Liberals been aware that they are making life easier for violent criminals by repealing mandatory minimum sentences for gun crimes with legislation stemming from Bill C‑5?

Are the Liberals aware that they are making it easier for violent criminals to get bail with legislation stemming from Bill C‑75?

Are the Liberals aware that they are making life easier for violent criminals by not stopping the flow of illegal guns across the U.S. border?

Conservatives support common-sense gun policies, policies that will stop dangerous criminals from getting guns. That is why a Conservative government will invest in policing and securing our borders rather than spending billions of dollars confiscating guns from farmers, hunters, indigenous people and law-abiding Canadians.

Let us not be fooled. The Liberals are the champions of wishful thinking. The Liberals are also the champions of empty gestures, empty words and wasting our hard-earned money.

Quality of life has gone down considerably in Canada in the past eight years in every area of daily life and not just because of the increasing crime rate, which, again, jumped by 32%. When we look at the facts, the current situation and the numbers, we see that this is no longer working. One just needs to look at the number of available jobs, the backlog in immigration cases, the applications for temporary foreign workers that are blocked and have caused businesses back home such as Olymel to shut down.

I am thinking about the Liberals' rejection of my Bill C‑215, which sought to promote life by allowing people with a serious disease such as cancer to be entitled to 52 weeks of employment insurance to get back on their feet. I am thinking about all these young people to whom the Liberal Party is offering addiction to dangerous substances as a life work; as we all know, using hard drugs brings more problems. That is obvious and it only makes sense to acknowledge it.

I have a hard time seeing how Bill C‑21 will achieve the Liberal Party's murky goal of lowering the crime rate and making our streets safer.

In closing, in Lévis—Lotbinière, the majority of us are responsible, law-abiding people. More than ever, we need a return to a Conservative government to restore order in our country and in our politics, and to put money back in our pockets.

Criminal Code

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot say that I am happy to be rising today to discuss this piece of legislation, but I am happy to be rising as a law-abiding firearms owner to defend my fellow law-abiding firearms owners.

How did we get here? I will put things in context so the people who might be watching at home know whom they are listening to. I am a member of Parliament for an urban-rural split riding in central Alberta. Half of my constituents live in Red Deer, the third-largest city in Alberta, and the other half live on a first nation reserve, or in a rural setting in Red Deer County, Lacombe County or Ponoka County, or in a small town, city or village therein.

I would consider the people I represent to be honest, hard-working, law-abiding folks who want their tax dollars spent wisely and want the freedom to pursue whatever they want to pursue in life. Many of them pursue various things that involve firearms, including hunting, farming on farms like the one I grew up on, where firearms are just a tool and an everyday part of life, or sport shooting. This is very popular in my constituency. There are numerous stores and vendors in central Alberta that supply firearms, ammunition and parts because of the demand that is there.

I can tell members that we do not have the problems that my colleague who just spoke talked about in her large urban centre, because we respect the law. We put policies in place at the provincial level, and when we are the governing party, we put laws in place that actually crack down on criminals. That is where the actual issue lies.

I can assure Canadians who might be watching at home that the firearms I own are doing nothing right now. They do not do anything until someone picks them up. The issue at hand is violent crime and who has access to firearms. There are numerous provisions in this bill, Bill C-21, that do not address, penalize or in any way affect the outcome of dealing with the wrong people getting a hold of firearms.

How did we get here? Over the course of the preceding decades, Canada was a country that was a rugged place to settle, and it is still a rugged place for some who live in rural areas or adjacent to wild areas or who are farming, involved in forestry, or doing something as seemingly innocuous as keeping beehives. Anybody watching at home who grew up with cartoon books would know that Winnie-the-Pooh was addicted to honey. This is not by chance. Bears often frequent these places, and good, honest people have bought firearms to protect themselves, many of whom were caught up in the order in council that came out a number of years ago.

It all started in the 1930s. If we go back that far, every single firearm and handgun in this country has been put in a registry, but that does not stop criminals from obtaining guns illegally. The government of the day, whenever it is Liberal or Liberal-leaning, seems to want to blame the law-abiding citizen, so, for decades, we have had a firearms registry and the government knows where all the lawfully owned handguns in this country are. Changes were brought in back when Jean Chrétien was the prime minister, including a long-gun registry, which was wasteful and ineffective. The government of the day said it would cost only $2 million, but it was actually closer to $2 billion. Of course, it did not do anything to address violent crime.

We have seen the current government, in its first mandate, put in place Bill C-75, which basically codified in law bail provisions that would let people out in the shortest amount of time with the smallest number of restrictions, and now we see what has happened with that.

What did Bill C-21 originally do? When the members of this House were invited to speak to the bill, it was simply the codification in law of an order in council to ban the transfer of handguns. Then, sneakily, the government decided to table-drop, back in November, a huge stack of amendments that had absolutely nothing to do with handguns. They were all about long guns, and of course the government bit off far more than it could chew.

The government managed to alienate almost all of its voting base when it comes to indigenous Canadians, who were offended by the fact that the firearms used by indigenous people were largely going to be caught up in amendment G-46, taking away their ability to use that firearm.

There was also an evergreen clause in G-4, and I am sorry to report that there is a new evergreen clause put in place that does virtually the same thing, with a minor exception, which I will explain in a few minutes, when I get back to what the problem actually is with the government's notions going forward on its new evergreen clause.

We all remember what happened. It was pretty obvious, because we heard the recordings from the Mass Casualty Commission. The government actually interfered. It took this mass casualty event in Nova Scotia and interfered in the investigation by demanding that the officers who were investigating at the time turn over information to advance a political agenda of the government of the day.

We know it is not about evidence. It is not evidence-based policy-making; it is policy-based evidence-making and evidence-finding, even if it interferes with a police investigation. That is why there is very little trust by law-abiding firearms owners in the intentions of the Liberal government, which is supported by the NDP, and what it is doing.

What is the problem? The problem is violent crime. In the last eight years, violent crime has risen because of the provisions that have been passed by the government when it had a majority and with the support of other left-leaning parties in this place. They passed numerous pieces of legislation, such as Bill C-75 and Bill C-5, that have basically eliminated any consequences whatsoever for people who commit crimes, so much so that violent crime in the last eight years is up 32% over what it was when the Prime Minister and his government inherited the government offices of this place.

More astonishing is this number: 94% increase in gang-related homicides. One would think that an almost doubling of the number of homicides by gang members would trigger a response from the government to crack down on organized crime, but it actually has done the opposite. The passages and clauses in the Criminal Code that would deal with people who are repeat violent offenders have largely been removed, as well as any semblance of a minimum sentence. I am not even talking about mandatory minimum sentences put in place by Stephen Harper when he was prime minister, and by the way crime went down over those 10 years, but I am getting to the point of the fact that numerous basic minimum sentences were removed.

These were put in place by people like Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Jean Chrétien. Of the 12 firearms-related clauses in that piece of legislation, 11 were actually put in place by previous Liberal governments, and the current version of the Liberal government has removed even the most basic minimum sentences for violent crime, including smuggling, firing a gun irresponsibly or even holding a gun to somebody's head for the purpose of extortion. It has removed any mandatory jail time whatsoever for those.

That is the tone and the signal Liberals have sent to the country. Why would criminals not want to increase their activity? There are no consequences, and this is the problem.

I will give an example of the illogic of what the government is doing right now. According to the RCMP's website, there are approximately 430 gangs in Canada with 7,000 members in those gangs. If we look at the average number of homicides committed by people associated with gangs over the last five or six years, it is about 50% of murders. Fifty per cent of murders are committed by gang members, or about 125 a year. There are 2.2 million licensed gun owners in this country. If we look over that same time period, we will see that they are charged for homicide about 12 times a year.

That is 12 out of 2.2 million people versus 125 out of 7,000 people. Who does the government go after? It goes after the 2.2 million. It does not make any sense whatsoever. If we do the math, a gang member is 3,300 times more likely to commit murder with a firearm than a law-abiding firearm owner is, yet the government focuses only on the law-abiding firearm owner.

Gary Mauser, professor emeritus, did an analysis for Statistics Canada that shows that Canadians who are not licensed firearms owners are still three times more likely to commit a homicide than a vetted, licensed gun owner is. For the people who are watching at home, the safest people in Canada for them to be with are legally vetted, law-abiding firearm owners who, at any time, could have their firearms taken away with any complaint lodged against them. That means that every firearm owner meticulously follows the laws of storage, the laws of transportation and the laws of safe discharge. As a matter of fact, we jokingly quip sometimes that gun control meetings are about making sure one's muzzle is always pointed downrange. That is what gun control is to a law-abiding gun owner. We follow all the rules because we do not want to risk losing our privileges, because the fact is that every firearm in Canada is illegal unless it is in the possession of somebody with a licence who is authorized to have that firearm.

We have to go through a renewal process every five years, during which our entire history, including our mental health history, our medical history and anything that might have happened before the courts is reviewed in detail. We wait months to get our licence renewed. Sometimes it is not renewed on time. This puts us in a situation, as law-abiding firearm owners, where we are now in possession of our firearms, which were legal one day, but of which, because of the incompetence of the government to process an application on time, we are now technically, according to the law, illegally in possession. We actually had a clause, when Stephen Harper was the prime minister, where people had a six-month grace period. I am very frustrated by the removal of that grace period, and I will get to that in a minute.

In committee, Dr. Caillin Langmann from McMaster University basically laid it out for everybody to see. His brief states:

The foregoing research papers are peer reviewed and conclude that Canadian legislation to regulate and control firearm possession and acquisition does not have a corresponding effect on homicide and suicide rates.

It also states:

I was asked to produce a review paper for the Journal of Preventive Medicine in 2021. This paper entitled, “Suicide, firearms, and legislation: A review of the Canadian evidence” reviewed 13 studies regarding suicide and legislative efforts and found an associated reduction in suicide by firearm in men aged 45 and older but demonstrated an equivalent increase in suicide by other methods such as hanging. Factors such as unemployment, low income, and indigenous populations were associated with suicide rates....

My conclusions are based on sound statistical analysis and information specifically related to Canada. I am not aware of any other Canadian research which uses reliable statistical models to dispute or disagree with my conclusions.

The brief also states:

Bans of military-appearing firearms, semiautomatic rifles and handguns, short barrel handguns and Saturday night specials in the 1990s has resulted in no associated reduction in homicide rates.

To summarize the results, no statistically significant beneficial associations were found between firearms legislation and homicide by firearm, as well as spousal homicide by firearms, and the criminal charge of “Discharge of a Firearm with Intent”....

Other studies have demonstrated agreement with my studies that laws targeting restricted firearms such as handguns and certain semi-automatic and full automatic firearms in Canada also had no associated effect with homicide rates. Canadian studies by Leenaars and Lester 2001, Mauser and Holmes 1992, and McPhedran and Mauser 2013, are all in general agreement with my study.

The issue is violent crime. It is about controlling violent criminals, controlling those people. One can control inanimate objects all one wants, but it will not change anything. Therefore, the “who” is not the problem. It is not hunters. Over eight million people in this country hunt and fish, contributing $19 billion annually to the GDP, and the order in council has already banned rifles used for hunting, some that even conservation officers use. I was a conservation officer. I was a national park warden and I was issued firearms for my duties. I was a park ranger in charge of a park in the province of Alberta and I was issued firearms for those duties as well. Every person I dealt with as a conservation officer was at least a camper who had an axe, a fisherman who had a knife or a hunter who had either a rifle or a bow and arrow. I had no trouble with those good people, no trouble whatsoever.

We are going to ban the very guns that conservation officers use, but they do not have those firearms. The Yukon government actually had to go around the order in council to buy firearms for its conservation officers, because those are the best firearms available to protect its officers from bears, mountain lions and all of the other issues that conservation officers face, because that is where the real issue lies.

It is very clear to me as a hunter, that, with the changes the Liberals have made, they are weasel words, especially the evergreen clause that deals with magazines. I laid it out very clearly at committee that anybody who wants to interpret it that way can say that, as long as a firearm can take a magazine that holds more than five rounds, it shall be banned. After this becomes law, we would end up in a situation in which, with guns that are functionally identical, one from 10 years ago and a new firearm, one would be prohibited and the other would still be legal. This is because of the clear lack of knowledge and understanding, when it comes to firearms, of people who do not own guns, making laws that simply do not work. We are going to have that scenario again.

However, if people think their gun is safe because they have an older gun that is not included in the new evergreen clause, they should think again, because the firearms committee that would be struck would still have the same authority to do a firearms reference table analysis and ban whatever guns it does not like.

I have news for everybody in this room. If we look at all of the hunting regulations in all of the provinces and territories in this country, a hunting rifle is a rifle that is in the hands of a hunter, used for the purposes of the hunt. It does not matter what it looks like; it just matters what the calibre of the bullet is, so the animal can be safely dispatched.

I could go on for literally a couple more hours and talk about the end of cowboy mounted shooting, cowboy action shooting, IPSC, all of these sports for all of these good people. They are mostly Filipinos there, by the way, when I go to an IPSC event. They are people who have moved here from a country that never allowed them to own firearms, but they have come here and taken up this sport and activity. They are frustrated because, when we take away the ability to transfer these handguns between law-abiding citizens, it will be the end of thousands of people's enjoyment of the sports that involve handguns. I look forward to answering some hopefully logical questions from around the room.

Before I conclude, I move:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following: “Bill C-21, An Act to amend certain Acts and to make certain consequential amendments (firearms), be not now read a third time, but be referred back to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security for the purpose of reconsidering clauses 0.1, 1.1 and 17, with a view to ensure that the government cannot take away hunting rifles from law-abiding farmers, hunters and Indigenous peoples.”

Justice

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, when he starts talking about his interest in improving public safety, the Prime Minister will say anything. His actions tell a different story, though.

To start with, he passed Bill C-75, which makes it easier for violent criminals to obtain bail. After that, he passed Bill C‑5 to get rid of mandatory jail sentences for serious crimes. Now he has a bail reform bill, which was tabled yesterday, that is so weak that even the person charged with murdering police officer Greg Pierzchala would still have gotten bail.

Can the Prime Minister admit to his mistakes and simply repeal the law arising from Bill C‑75?

Criminal Code

[Warren Steinley, Conservative, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Madam Speaker, it is with a heavy heart that I join this debate. I am going to speak for a bit and then I will take some questions because I have some answers I would like to give to a few of the questions that were asked in the chamber this evening. I hope members will stay and have the courage to ask me the same questions they asked other members.

I am really standing up for the law-abiding firearms owners in Saskatchewan this evening, because despite what the junior coalition partner NDP and the Liberals say, we all know that the two amendments that were brought forward with members kicking and screaming were about, with one, trying to create a backdoor registry and, with the second, a minimal change to the definition, which really did not affect the legislation at all.

When we talked about amendments, several times this evening my colleagues tried to put forward a unanimous motion to change an amendment that had a clerical error. Years ago, this would not have happened. Years ago, under Tom Mulcair or Jack Layton, they would have been honoured to accept that unanimous consent motion and it would have been changed because it was simply a clerical error. Time and time again, the House leader stood and mischaracterized what happened, which is a sore spot for Conservatives because we do like to try to work together in this House. What we have seen tonight was complete disrespect for how this chamber is supposed to work.

I will go back to standing up for law-abiding firearms owners across Saskatchewan. Regina—Lewvan is an urban riding that has sport shooters, hunters, people who go to the range to trap-shoot and the Regina Wildlife Federation, good, salt-of-the-earth people who just want to keep their traditions alive. Earlier on in this debate about law-abiding firearms owners, we learned that it really was not about decreasing crime. It was really about going after something that people do not understand.

I have some quotes by people who are not traditional Conservatives. One is from Chief Heather Bear from the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations. Chief Heather Bear stated:

When guns are confiscated from sustenance hunters, it impacts them and their families when they have merely been trying to put food on the table.

When guns are confiscated it may also impact the whole nation, especially those who hunt for ceremonial purposes, in that sometimes we only need traditional food for ceremonies....

If there are no safety issues and there is no issue of domestic violence or any kind of violence, then taking away a gun impacts our nations and our citizens' ability to assert our inherent, and treaty and constitutional rights. We also view our guns as a tool of our first nations sustenance hunters.

That is not a traditional Conservative supporter. I would also say that I do not think she would be a conspiracy theorist. I think she has some genuine concern about what is going to happen with their traditional way of life and how they will feed their families. I dare any member in this House to stand and say that is fearmongering, as has been said so often tonight about Conservatives who have brought forward concerns from their constituents.

We all represent our constituents and it is being boiled down by some in the NDP who are terrified by this debate right now because they know they are going to lose seats in rural Canada due to being on the wrong side of history on this. We need to remember when Liberals, in the 1990s, brought in the long gun registry. I remember that they were going to drop crime and crime statistics were going to plummet because they were going to take long guns away from our hunters and farmers. This is just rinse and repeat.

We see right now that violent crime has gone up 32% in our country, with the Liberals doing nothing with their hug-a-thug policies. We are seeing gang violence increase by over 90%. Do we think this legislation is going to prevent that?

I have my PAL. I know how long it took to get my possession and acquisition licence. I know that every morning my name goes through CPIC, and the Liberals and NDP are trying to take advantage of people who do not know what the regulations are around this. Every morning my name goes through CPIC, like every other person who has a PAL, to make sure they have not done anything wrong. If they go through, police officers know that people have firearms in their possession because of our PAL and that there could be dangerous situations, which does not happen with law-abiding firearms owners.

Robert Freberg came and talked to the Saskatchewan caucus. Do members know how many crimes in Saskatchewan have been committed with a legally owned firearm? Fewer than a handful, he said. If people in this chamber think voting for the bill is going to drop crime rates in our country, either they are lying to themselves or they do not understand what the bill would actually do.

We know that with the so-called NDP standing up for these amendments, there is going to be a firearms advisory committee. This committee is going to then use it as a back door to bring through more legislation and take guns away from law-abiding hunters and farmers.

I just got off the phone with the Agribition CEO, Kim Hextall. She asked why they would want to take away firearms from people who use them for protecting their livestock and for removing varmints. These are the people none of these members in this chamber are standing up for, and I think it is something that should be taken very seriously. If they are going to take gun crime seriously and try to get gang members to not have illegal firearms, perhaps they should not have voted in favour of Bill C-5, which lessened the penalties for all these crimes.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is always an honour to rise on behalf of the residents of Kelowna—Lake Country, including, in this very late hour, to talk about an important piece of legislation, Bill C-21.

I would like to express my concerns about this legislation and the potential consequences of it. While the intention of this bill may be to address issues of public safety, it is crucial that we critically examine its provisions and the implications they may have on our society as a whole, especially for law-abiding citizens.

It is important to prioritize public safety. However, this bill fails to acknowledge that attacking responsible law-abiding firearms owners is not a solution to the 32% increase in violent crime we have seen since the Liberals took office. Casting a wide net and imposing bans on firearms owned legally infringes upon the rights of law-abiding citizens, who use firearms for legitimate purposes such as sport shooting and hunting.

This firearms legislation, Bill C-21, is one of the biggest topics I have heard about during my time as a member of Parliament. There is so much about this bill that does not make sense. It treats law-abiding firearms owners as criminals, undermining the principles of due process and fairness. The overwhelming majority of firearms owners in Canada are law-abiding citizens who have undergone thorough background checks and are responsible in their use, transport and storage of firearms.

This bill has wide-reaching effects on law-abiding farmers, sport shooters, hunters and indigenous peoples. Instead of going after illegal firearms used by criminals and street gangs, the Liberals are focused on going after law-abiding farmers, hunters and indigenous peoples.

This is from Blane, a resident from Kelowna—Lake Country who reached out to me:

The gun buy back and focus is a bad idea and I reject it. I would hope that you would too. The program targets people who are not the typical culprits in violent crimes. Go after the criminals. And the cost to implement and maintain the proposed program is outrageous! I protest the Liberal program and even its intent because it will neither alleviate nor change violent crimes with guns. Criminals, as a reminder, don't follow the rules.

This bill does not adequately address the root causes of gun violence in our society. Instead of focusing on addressing mental health issues, improving law enforcement and strengthening border controls to combat illegal firearms trafficking, Bill C-21 targets legal firearms owners. No one believes that going after hunters and legal firearms owners will reduce violent crime across the country. This is part of the Liberal plan to distract and divide Canadians.

The Liberals' approach on firearms fails to address the core issues and instead burdens law-abiding citizens with unnecessary restrictions. The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police pointed out that restrictions on legal firearms would not “meaningfully address the real issue” about gun violence, as it is illegal weapons that have led to gun violence.

Recent reports have shown that about 85% of handguns used in crimes are imported from the United States illegally. Criminals do not adhere to laws or regulations, and they will continue to access firearms through illicit means regardless of the restrictions imposed on law-abiding citizens. In essence, the bill penalizes responsible gun owners while doing little to address the criminal elements driving gun violence.

A comprehensive approach to reducing gun violence should involve measures that address underlying causes, such as poverty, inequality and mental health issues, while also targeting illegal firearms trafficking and strengthening law enforcement efforts. While the goal of enhancing public safety is important, the Liberals' Bill C-21 misses the mark by imposing ineffective measures that infringe upon the rights and freedoms of law-abiding citizens.

If we are truly committed to addressing the issue of gun violence, we must invest in comprehensive solutions. They include strengthening mental health services, focusing on addiction treatment and recovery, getting tough on criminals through bail reform and securing our borders against firearms smuggling. By focusing on these efforts, we can address the root causes of violence and ensure that firearms are used responsibly and safely by law-abiding citizens.

Since the Prime Minister took office, violent crime has increased by 32% and gang-related homicides have nearly doubled. The Liberals are making life easier for violent criminals by repealing mandatory minimum sentences for gun crimes with Bill C-5. They have also made it easier to get bail with Bill C-75 and are failing to stop the flow of illegal guns across the U.S. border.

If the Liberals were serious about addressing public safety, they would listen to Canadians. Recently, I sent out a survey in my community in Kelowna—Lake Country, and the results were astonishing. More than 91% of people said that living in Kelowna—Lake Country had become less safe in the last eight years. This is not due to law-abiding local firearms owners.

Canadians are no longer feeling safe in their own country. There is a demand to get tough on crime, and these Liberals refuse to. Ninety-four per cent of people who filled out my survey said that our bail system is broken, and the overwhelming majority of respondents called for stronger sentencing, the return of minimum sentences and no bail for repeat offenders. A legacy of these Liberals will be disorder and a crime wave on Canada made worse by the Liberal, revolving door bail system.

Here is another part of the firearm legislation that will continue to evolve into the future with no debate in Parliament. There will be a firearms advisory council that will continue to add firearms to the banned list, and this group will be set up by the Liberals. That is the order in council list from May 2020. Regardless of what may be in this legislation, the list will continue to grow with no public consultation.

This firearms legislation has been a disaster from the beginning. It created so much uncertainty from the very moment the order in council occurred in 2020. Then there was the legislation and the dropping of last minute amendments at committee. There was public outcry, government backbenchers speaking out, and many law-abiding residents in my community and across Canada getting involved. This is how the Liberals govern: It is always a mess.

There are so many people that the government did not even consider when it was initially putting this legislation together. A resident reached out to me very concerned as he stated he was a local elite athlete competing in the sport of target shooting. Another issue that has been bought up to me by my local fish and game clubs is that law enforcement officers use the local ranges to train. If these local clubs are not able to sustain themselves because this legislation is making it just too difficult for residents to continue with their sport shooting and training for hunting, this could put in jeopardy the ability for law enforcement members to train. This is a real concern for the clubs and RCMP members I have spoken with.

I have heard from law-abiding firearms owners in Kelowna-Lake Country, who are licensed and follow all the rules. They are concerned with turning in firearms they have collected, and in many cases they have said that they have never used, as they may have been passed on from a deceased family member. They have them stored properly, and they say they have not been anywhere outside of proper areas.

We must strive for a balanced approach that respects the rights and freedoms of law-abiding citizens while addressing the underlying causes of gun violence. Rather than imposing blanket bans and restrictions, we should focus on comprehensive solutions that promote responsible firearm ownership, address mental health concerns, strengthen law enforcement efforts and combat the illegal trafficking of firearms. Canadians are suffering, and everything feels broken.

Conservatives support common-sense firearms policies that keep guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals and secure our borders rather than spending billions confiscating firearms from law-abiding citizens.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Madam Speaker, since the Harper government was in power, it is 32%. That is the figure that the member for Winnipeg North should remember.

There has been a 32% increase in violent crime in Canada despite everything the Liberals have done. Actually, I should say because of everything they have done, such as the changes in Bill C-5 concerning parole and violent offenders serving their sentences at home in their living rooms. That is the Liberal government's record after eight years.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Madam Speaker, 32% is the Liberal government's record after eight years in power. Violent crime in Canada has increased by 32% since the election of this Prime Minister and his Liberal ideology of freeing criminals as quickly as possible, allowing them to be released more quickly and serve their sentences in their living rooms.

After eight years of this Liberal government, gang-related homicides have doubled. In 2019, the Liberal government saw fit to pass Bill C-5, which I will refer to in a moment, that makes the bail process easier. As a direct result of that legislation, more and more criminals are ending up at home rather than in prison. Let us remember this number: a 32% increase in violent crime.

Today we are discussing the Liberal government's solution to this violence. I want to ask my colleagues to use their imagination. Imagine the kind of scenario that resulted in the Liberal Party making a recommendation such as this and introducing a bill such as this. Imagine the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Public Safety meeting in a coffee shop, probably downtown in some major Canadian city, wondering how to combat gun crime on the streets. The Minister of Justice, seeing the number of illegal guns coming into the country, tells the Minister of Public Safety that the government cannot ban illegal guns because they are already illegal. The Minister of Public Safety adds that weapons that enter illegally at the borders are not easy to seize, because criminals have their ways, obviously. The Minister of Justice says he wants nothing to do with threatening armed citizens who commit violent crimes with longer prison sentences. The Prime Minister said not to be too tough on criminals.

It was in that coffee shop that the Minister of Public Safety came up with this brilliant idea. He knows who owns firearms and he even knows where to find them. They have licences. They took courses, and they have a lot of guns. The Minister of Justice was starting to question all of this, but he already saw a good opportunity to divert attention from his inability to put an end to violence in the streets, violence that has made families in too many of our cities afraid. He asked where those guns can be found. The Minister of Public Safety proudly responded that they can be found in all regions of Canada, on farms, in the north and in indigenous communities. They could seize thousands of weapons. The Minister of Justice felt like saying that those guns are not used to commit crimes, but he did not. He preferred to remain silent. Why let facts get in the way of a great Liberal initiative?

In this story, that is how Bill C-21 was born, and quite frankly, I do not see any other way it could have happened, since the Liberals are so far off the mark. This bill had just one objective: to make the Liberal government look good. Unfortunately, it was to the detriment of law-abiding gun owners and sport shooters.

I listened to several speeches today. I should point out that this bill was supported by the Bloc Québécois, who left out a part of the story in everything it was saying today. When the Liberal amendment that would have made hunting rifles and sport shooter firearms illegal, the Bloc member from Rivière-du-Nord said in committee that the definition contained in amendment G4 almost feels like the Bloc Québécois wrote it. It meets our expectations.

I do not often quote members of the Bloc Québécois, but when it is time to set the record straight, I like to set the record straight. That truly is what the member for Rivière-du-Nord said. It is a fact.

Then they strut their stuff and claim that they changed things, but when we see that from the outset they supported a bill that would ban firearms used in every region of Canada and did not react when they realized that people were reacting in their own region, there is a problem. Most of all, there is a lack of credibility.

We are here after hours of debate to ask the government to see the light. Although they did backtrack, which was rather strategic and the result of the strong opposition from the Conservatives, hunters and residents of rural areas in Canada, no one has any illusions about the Liberals' intent to go after honest people who are just engaging in a centuries-long tradition.

We expect that, as a result of these measures, most of the firearms targeted by the Liberal amendments at the end of last year, including hunting rifles, will again be subject to prohibitions in the future, end of story. We are saying this because we have lost confidence in the Liberal government. Unfortunately, I deplore the naivety of the Bloc Québécois, who seems to be defending the government today. It seems to want to have faith in the Liberal government once again.

I must admit that I am not surprised by the position of the NDP, the Liberal government's coalition partner. It cannot be denied that the NDP also reacted to public opinion. It too had openly supported Bill C-21, its first iteration and the amendments.

Why do I not trust the Liberals? It is not because I am a Conservative. It is not because I listened to the hunters. It is because the Prime Minister himself, the member for Papineau, was very clear when he said, “our focus now is on saying...yes...we're going to have to take [these rifles] away from people who were using them to hunt”. Instead of going after the illegal guns used by criminals and street gangs, the Prime Minister is going to great effort to confiscate the hunting rifles of law-abiding farmers, hunters and indigenous people.

Let me be clear. The new definition, or the supposed new definition, is really the same as the old one. Commonly used hunting rifles, which were targeted by the Liberals in the fall, will likely be added to the ban by the new Liberal firearms advisory committee. I am sure a bunch of very independent people will also be appointed to this committee. I would not be surprised to see a Trudeau Foundation executive on this committee.

I have had the opportunity to speak with hunters in the Mégantic—L'Érable area. That is why I am here today. They are not reassured by the government's changes to Bill C-21, nor by the amendments. Most of all, they are hurt that they are being used by the Liberal government for political purposes. They have witnessed the increase in violent crime in Montreal, as we all have. They are shocked that they have been targeted by the government as criminals. These people are careful, trained, and most importantly, they take gun safety very seriously.

The Liberal government has the wrong target in its crosshairs. Hunters, sport shooters and farmers are paying the price. No one believes the Liberal government anymore.

That being said, these people are realists. They are wiser. I want to quote Martin Bourget from Aventure Chasse Pêche, with whom I had the pleasure of speaking during a big interview on Bill C-21. He said, and I quote, “Legitimate gun owners in Canada are deeply puzzled about the very legitimacy of the process set out in Bill C-21 and the enforcement of these measures. They are asking for nothing less than a study of the bill's true impact on the safety of Canadians and on traditional hunting and harvesting, and sport shooting.”

Does that sound extreme? No, not at all. It is reasonable. People want to know whether Bill C-21 will really bring down the crime rate on the streets of big cities and across the country.

In closing, I would like to remind members that violent crime in Canada is up 32%. That is the Liberal government's track record over the past eight years. That is the Liberals' grade, and it is not even a passing grade. Unfortunately, because of what they have done in the past, we do not have any confidence in them moving forward.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Madam Speaker, it is an honour to stand tonight and speak to the debate on Bill C-21, discussing firearms in this nation of ours, Canada. I am not simply standing here as a Conservative member of Parliament. I do not want to improperly represent anything or anybody, because the people I am representing here tonight are amazing people. They are not just people from my riding; they are people from right across this country who see this legislation as something nefarious, quite honestly.

I look at the whole process that the government, the NDP-Liberal coalition, has gone through in contortions of creating an order in council that banned certain firearms, then moving to handguns and then bringing in amendments to add in a huge plethora of other firearms to that list. Then it reneged on that and took the list away, and now it just has a definition. Whoever made that list up for the government had fun doing it, because it is clear they really did not understand the breadth of firearms on that list and how ridiculous it is that so many of them were even there.

When I am speaking here tonight, I am speaking on behalf of people across this country who truly understand firearms and know exactly what this legislation is. I get the impression that Liberals are talking about firearms owners, hunters, farmers and even indigenous people as those who do not really know what is going on here, and they are the ones who are speaking out.

As with so many issues in this House, we are standing on this side of the floor and I firmly believe we are the ones who are representing the majority of Canadians in this place, who see legislation brought forward that says one thing but suddenly there are all these additional amendments, or it is a bill brought in with nothing and everything needs to be added in after they have made their speeches about what it is.

It is very clear that what we have here is a government and its partner turning themselves into pretzels trying to figure out how to carry on with what they truly want to do. I can say very confidently that I hear over and over again that this emperor has no clothes. Canadians are seeing through what their intentions are. It is so clear because common sense does not exist in the majority of this legislation.

What we are supposedly talking about here is public safety and protecting Canadians, yet as the government is introducing this legislation and other pieces, crime in Canada has grown exponentially. There is no clear rational reason to focus on hunters, farmers and indigenous people who use firearms responsibly, safely and legally as a means of dealing with the violence we are facing, which is growing in our nation.

It is really clear that this legislation would not impact the important things in regard to violence in our country. Catch-and-release policies of the government have been brutal, where Canadians have become victims because it has been so poorly laid out. Now all of a sudden Liberals will say they are fixing this and fixing that. My word, it never should have gotten to where it needs to be fixed to this extent eight years into the government's mandate. Violent crime has increased 32%. Gang-related murders have doubled. People have been killed across this country in all kinds of scenarios in larger numbers, with no relation to the person who was attacking them in any way.

It seems the only focus of the legislation before us is on the law-abiding people in Canada, so that is a question that comes to me all the time, not just from people in my riding, but quite honestly from rural ridings right across the country. We know that on that side of the floor there are Liberal members who have barely won their ridings in rural Canada. We pit east against west, but rural Canada is rural Canada, and firearms owned by respectable, honest Canadians, rurally, should not even be considered by the government in trying to deal with the issues it has with growing violence in this country. It is the Liberals' poor mandates and it is their poor legislation that are opening up crime more and more in our country.

The new Liberal definition is exactly the same as the old one. It is simply under a new look and a new package, because that definition still describes many of the firearms that are used legally, that are used properly and that are not part of the dynamics of violence in our country. We do not support confiscating the firearms of law-abiding farmers, hunters and indigenous people, and we are on the right side of the Canadian public on this issue.

No one believes that going after hunters and legitimate hunting rifles would reduce violent crime across this country. This is part of the Liberals' plan to distract and divide Canadians, and we refuse to be divided on this issue. Right across the nation, the majority of Canadians agree that this emperor has no clothes. There is some reason behind this mandate that the Liberals want to press onto Canadians to remove the freedoms we have in this country to be law-abiding firearms owners.

The Liberals are making life easier for violent criminals by repealing mandatory minimum sentences for gun crimes with Bill C-5. How in the world does that make sense next to removing firearms from law-abiding Canadians? The Liberals have made it easier to get bail with Bill C-75, and they are failing to stop the flow of illegal guns across the U.S. border. I would suggest that they focus their energies on doing what would make the big difference on violence in this country, because as we have heard, and it is true, in cases where a firearm is used illegally and violently, it is about the person holding that firearm.

Maybe we need to do more research on who commits these crimes and why we let them out of jail over and over again to the point that, as we heard earlier today, the majority of crimes in our large cities, and New York City was actually mentioned as well, are committed by repeat offenders who get out and do it again, and then get out and do it again. The focus here is on law-abiding firearms owners: hunters, farmers and indigenous people. We support common-sense firearms policies that keep guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals.

I am going to switch to some comments where there is unity in this country on firearms. I am going to quote Vice-Chief Heather Bear from the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations. She said:

When you go out to hunt, you're not just hunting. You're teaching your child courage and you're bonding. You are passing on protocols, ceremonial protocols, of how to look after your kill. There are the rites of passage, the reverence to the animal and the tobacco. Along with that tool come many teachings and also matters of safety. When you take a gun away, you take away the opportunity for that oral tradition to happen.

I am just going to quote something I said at the Parkland Outdoor Show & Expo in Yorkton, the largest outdoor show in Canada, where the focus is on outdoor activities. I said, “The Parkland Outdoor Show & Expo champions our great outdoors heritage by celebrating nature, environment, hunting, angling, trapping, hiking, camping and more. What impacted me the most as I reflected on my experiences year after year with this event is the visible passion and joy I see for those who spend quality time with family and friends while they are teaching skills, respect and how to deeply enjoy the great outdoors to the next generation.”

“On behalf of the federal Government of Canada,” I said, “and as the member of Parliament for Yorkton—Melville, serving His Majesty's Official Opposition, with an amazing group of people, under the servant leadership of the Leader of His Majesty's Loyal Opposition, I thank them for enjoying, promoting and valuing Canada's natural beauty, our heritage and outdoor traditions— ”

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Madam Speaker, I am glad to be joining this debate at this late hour. I have been sitting through many hours of debate on this particular subject of Bill C-21.

I will begin by thanking constituents again for returning me to Parliament. It has been a few years now since the election, but I am thankful every single day that I can represent them in this House. Part of my thanks for them will be that I am going to read into the record later many of the emails I have received with respect to Bill C-21 from hunters and sport shooters who are upset that the government is continuing on with Bill C-21.

I want to begin, though, with a quote from someone I consider an expert on firearms legislation, Dr. Teri Bryant, Alberta's chief firearms officer:

Even after the withdrawal of G-4 and G-46, Bill C-21 continues to undermine confidence in our firearms control system while contributing nothing to reducing the violent misuse of firearms. Bill C-21 is built on a fundamentally flawed premise. Prohibiting specific types of firearms is not an effective way of improving public safety. It will waste billions of taxpayer dollars that could have been used on more effective approaches, such as the enforcement of firearms prohibition orders, reinforcing the border or combatting the drug trade and gang activity.

That is just common-sense Alberta right there from a well-known Albertan, for many of us.

The original definition of a firearm, or what I will call the old definition used by the government, was: “...a rifle or shotgun, that is capable of discharging centre-fire ammunition in a semi-automatic manner and that is designed to accept a detachable cartridge magazine with a capacity greater than five cartridges of the type for which the firearm was originally designed,...”.

That original definition alone was in proposed clause G-4, and I have rarely seen so many emails received in my constituency office, that were written by people who were upset that they were being targeted after having done nothing. They were simply sport shooters and hunters who, through no fault of their own, were being targeted by the Minister of Public Safety. Now the Liberals have changed the definition to something new.

It says now, “It would include a firearm that is not a handgun...”, and I draw attention to “not a handgun”. It continues, “...in a semi-automatic manner and that was originally designed with a detachable magazine with a capacity of six cartridges or more.”

I will note also that in the French version of the legislation they have dropped the reference to fusil de chasse, and now are using a very odd wording that looks like bad French maybe, but fusil de chasse for most francophones anywhere would mean hunting rifle, which is what the Prime Minister said was the intent of Bill C-21. It was exactly to go after hunters. He himself said, outside of the House, that some hunters would have to lose their hunting rifles. That was the purpose of Bill C-21.

I go on now to some of the comments made by my colleague, the member for Kildonan—St. Paul, again drawing attention of people to comments made by the public safety minister. I have more to expand on that, too. He called into question the fact that in the future, they will have to do something about “permanent alteration of magazines”. Now, permanent alteration to magazines of any sort would go a step further than what is being done now and would impact many firearms.

I want to draw attention of the House to the fact that changing magazines would also require changes to a firearm like the Lee-Enfield, a very popular British firearm until about the 1950s. It was used broadly in World War I. It is a firearm widely used in Canada by many indigenous hunters. Many hunters in my riding have these firearms that were passed down through generations. Requiring them to alter that magazine would basically destroy the firearm. That is something the public safety minister is musing publicly. When I see other members of different parties say to trust them and it is written in the legislation, why would we trust them? Why should any hunter or any sport shooter trust them? There are 2.3 million firearms owners in Canada. Why should any of them trust what the Liberals have said so far?

I will draw attention to one more fact that kind of disturbs me. It is that the public safety minister, when Bill C-21 first came in, said there was a public safety crisis across Canada. He said that there were these “assault-style rifles” and then said it was a public emergency that Bill C-21 needed to be passed right away. Now in this legislation, months and months later after so much public blowback, the Liberals are grandfathering all previous firearms. Therefore, now it is okay to have these so-called by his own words assault-style rifles and now they are grandfathered in. They are not affected; only future firearms are affected. It is actually a point that has been made by several members of the Bloc and by the New Democrats as well that it is only future firearms that have not been manufactured yet, and hunters should be satisfied with that.

One, two or three generations from now, these firearms will get older, break down, be lost or damaged through use or misuse or simply be sold off due to families not wanting to keep them anymore because there is so much licensing involved. The Liberals are talking about the future. There will be a dwindling number of hunters, and the intention of the government is to dwindle them down. The public safety minister claimed there was this crisis going on, that we must seize these firearms from lawful firearms owners, that they should be taken away from hunters, and now, suddenly, we do not have this crisis. Now it is suddenly okay. Now they are grandfathered. I find that interesting. Constituents pointed it out to me.

More seriously, though, a member is a former member of the RCMP, in I Division. We used to joke in our caucus that decades ago, if we heard a cough at the end of our analog phone line, it was probably I Division listening in. The member was an RCMP officer. I was looking at the statistics for how many peace officers and police officers have been killed. In the past 20 years, 40 police officers and peace officers have been killed in the line of duty, 11 in the last 30 months and eight in the last nine months.

The reason we are going down this dark path is government legislation that has been passed since 2015. Bill C-21 is trying to make up for the errors the Liberals have made in criminal justice legislation, from Bill C-75 that hybridized a bunch of offences to Bill C-5. In Bill C-5, they changed things like extortion with a firearm, weapons trafficking, importing or exporting, knowing the firearm is unauthorized, discharging a firearm with intent, including things like drive-by shootings, possession of a firearm, knowing its possession is unauthorized or illegally possessing a firearm. None of those have mandatory prison time any longer. The offenders serve their time at home if the judge determines that is appropriate.

I have a Yiddish proverb, before I read some thoughts from my constituents, who are my bosses. The proverb is, “The truth comes out like oil on water.” It percolates right to the top. I have been listening to the speeches and interventions by different members so far in this House. Again, we were told by the public safety minister that there was an urgent public safety crisis on our streets with these Black Stock firearms that should be taken off our streets, and now, suddenly, they are all grandfathered in. That has now become a talking point with some members. Something has changed. What has changed is low polling numbers and bad emails from upset constituents.

I will read some emails from my constituents, but I will only use their first names because I do not want the government to go after them. Ryan said, “Today, the federal Liberal government and their disgusting coalition with the federal NDP, as well as the Bloc, shut down the possibility of any further debate around their proposed amendments to C-21. The plan moving forward will be to appoint a meaningless panel that will essentially prohibit any firearm that they see fit.” A wise man is this Ryan. He knows exactly where this is going with this so-called firearms advisory committee. He went on to say, “All whilst completely disregarding the long heritage and tradition of firearms in Canada. This is a vicious slap in the face to the millions of responsible PAL and RPAL holders in Canada.”

I should probably disclose to Ryan and other constituents that I do not have a PAL or an RPAL, but I do appreciate the fact that they have a right to hunt and sharp shoot.

Christina and Maury said, “Considering the unethical and unconstitutional implementation of Bill C-21 originally, I would suggest that the bill be scrapped in its entirety.” Terence said, “Stop motion on Bill C-21.” Matthew said, “I'm not asking to kill the bill but vote against the Liberals' motion to ram the bill through the House without proper representation and debate.”

Craig said, “What the Liberals are doing is not democratic or constitutional. As a law-abiding firearms owner I feel insulted this bill is before us in the first place. We are not the issue, the criminals are the issue and yet it feels like they are getting a free pass.” Darren said, “This federal government is circumventing democratic and parliamentary due process and it must be stopped.” Another Matthew said, “I want it also to be known that I strongly oppose bills C-11, C-15 and C-21.”

When the general public knows the numbers of the bills, we know that there is a problem. We know that the oil has floated up to the top of the water, and the common-sense Canadian is seeing that Bill C-21 makes no sense.

An email from Brian said, “Like the many law-abiding hunters, farmers, sport shooters and indigenous peoples in this country I feel betrayed [by the Liberal government].” Pat said, “It will cost taxpayers upwards of a billion dollars, money that would be better spent on increased monitoring of our borders to prevent gun trafficking.” Lee-Ann said, “Those of us who own guns have gone through training and vetting to be able to legally purchase and own these guns. We are responsible members of society who are being unfairly penalized because of leftist ideology, and it needs to be stopped.”

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Madam Speaker, it is with great sensitivity that I will be speaking this evening about Bill C-21.

I will reiterate that we will be voting in favour of the bill. Thanks to the efforts of the Bloc Québécois, and especially thanks to the member for Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, who did exceptional work on this file, the bill, which was criticized by hunters, gun control groups and airsoft players, was improved and is now satisfactory for most of these groups.

Obviously, we recognize that the bill is not perfect. I will talk about that in my speech. The government refused some very reasonable proposals put forward by the Bloc Québécois, but it did accept many others.

In particular, Bill C-21 freezes the sale of legal handguns, but we will have to wait several years for these guns to disappear. However, there are also some illegal firearms that will continue to circulate. I will talk about that as I present some figures. I will first address the issue from the perspective of victims' groups. I will also mention the contradictions of the different parties and the Bloc Québécois's exceptional efforts.

First, the federal government estimates that there are more than one million legal handguns in Canada and that more than 55,000 are acquired legally every year. As I said, the Bloc Québécois is proposing to add handguns to the buyback program in order to allow owners to sell them to the government if they so wish. In short, it would be an optional buyback program to reduce the number of guns people own more quickly.

Bill C-21 should also help in the fight against the proliferation of ghost weapons in Montreal, but the government still needs to do a lot more to control the borders.

It is interesting to note that, according to Montreal's police force, the SPVM, 95% of the handguns used to commit violent crimes are purchased on the black market. However, this should not relieve us of our responsibility when it comes to Bill C-21. There are other Bloc Québécois bills that aim to address this problem, including Bill C-279, but we will come back to that later. Legal weapons are still used, as was the case in the Quebec City mosque shooting. They continue to be used, and it is precisely to avoid such mass shootings that the Bloc Québécois supports survivor groups in their demands to ban these guns altogether.

Second, I would like to digress for a moment to say that the government, which claims to be feminist, is adding maximum sentences for certain weapons offences but has removed minimum sentences with Bill C-5. That sends mixed signals to victims. The Bloc Québécois wanted to make an amendment to a Conservative amendment to reinstate minimum sentences in order to add judicial discretion to override them. However, because of the super closure motion, that was no longer possible.

The Liberal Party and NDP also voted to keep clauses that allow victims of domestic violence to file a complaint with a judge to have guns taken away from the spouse. This is known as the red flag provision. However, women's rights groups testified that this measure could allow police to offload their responsibility and place the burden of proof on women. Women's rights groups wanted this red flag provision withdrawn because they were concerned that it would allow police to offload their responsibility and put the burden of proof on the victims. The Bloc Québécois listened to these groups and voted against the clause, while the NDP and the Liberal Party voted in favour.

Third, I would like to remind the House that, during the last election campaign, the Bloc Québécois was already proposing that a definition of what constitutes a prohibited assault weapon be added to the legislation before banning all of those weapons. In the end, the government tabled, without any explanation, 400 pages of amendments listing thousands of models of firearms, which caused a lot of anger and confusion among hunters. It is important to note that the Bloc Québécois is the one that convinced the government to scrap that useless list.

The government also added a relatively complicated definition that included words like “hunting rifle”. Pro-gun groups jumped on that and used it to convince people that the amendment would ban hunting rifles.

The result is that the pro-gun groups were easily able to strike fear into the hearts of hunters, who looked at the list and saw their own firearms there. However, the list included both legal and prohibited firearms, depending on calibre. That created all sorts of confusion.

Worse yet, the main hunting associations were never consulted by the government. Again, the Bloc Québécois proposed reopening the study to be able to hear from expert witnesses on assault weapons and experts on hunting rifles. The Bloc Québécois was against the list in the Criminal Code, believing it to be an unnecessary burden, since the Criminal Code does not reflect in real time the models of firearms and their classification, because it would need to be amended. There are 482 more models of firearms that need to be prohibited thanks to this list, but the government could very well proceed by order, as it did before. We hope to provoke that thought.

Many of these firearms have similar characteristics to the AR-15 and are not at all used for hunting. It would have been utterly ridiculous for the government to keep these firearms legal when it banned more than 2,000 by regulation on May 1, 2020. Again, they sat on this.

Members will recall that the Bloc Québécois asked the government to immediately ban the 470,000 models that are not used for hunting and to ask a committee about 12 models that are potentially used for hunting, such as the popular SKS.

Throughout the process, the government did a poor job and created a tempest of its own making. It was rather unfortunate. For its part, the NDP also pushed to relax the ban on assault weapons and the freeze on handguns. The Bloc Québécois managed to block most of the NDP manoeuvres. Once again, I say hats off to my colleague.

The government's definition seeks to ban semi-automatic weapons that discharge centrefire ammunition and that were originally designed with a detachable magazine with a capacity of six cartridges or more. This definition is easy to circumvent by selling the gun with a five-round magazine. Then there is nothing preventing the manufacturer from marketing and selling the gun with a 30-round magazine in the United States, for example. These magazines are prohibited in Canada, but their proliferation in the United States makes it easy to import them. For the time being, this is still a flaw, but we hope that this will be resolved in the next few months. The government has said that it will look at that again. We will be monitoring that.

The definition presented in the fall of 2022 talked about firearms designed with a magazine with a capacity of six cartridges or more. In other words, it was the characteristics of the gun that were being considered and not the way it was being marketed. Nova Scotia's Mass Casualty Commission also proposed that the definition talk about firearms designed to accept this type of magazine. The Bloc Québécois proposed a subamendment to that effect, but senior officials implied that this wording was rejected by the government for political reasons. The NDP clearly wanted to narrow the scope of the definition. The three other parties voted against our subamendment in committee. However, PolyRemembers and gun control groups supported it.

The government imposed a gag order to quickly wrap up the study of Bill C-21, but the government itself is responsible for how slowly the bill is moving forward. It chose to quickly introduce a bill that was incomplete following the shootings in Uvalde, rather than take an extra few months and introduce a more complete bill.

Even in committee, the government complained that clause-by-clause was proceeding too slowly, but the fact is that members were never able to consider these amendments properly at committee. If the government had done its work properly prior to that, members could have heard from experts and asked questions on a bill that was much more complete. Things dragged on as a result.

The bill also restricted the acquisition of all replica firearms, including airsoft and paintball guns. The original wording of the bill was vague and implied that an airsoft or paintball gun that cannot be mistaken for a real gun could still be legally acquired. For example, if the gun were neon yellow, it could probably still be legally acquired. The problem is that the police did not want to ban these guns because they were concerned that they would be used to commit crimes such as robberies, but rather because many models allow criminals to assemble a complete weapon by purchasing only a barrel and slide, or the barrel and chamber, in the case of an assault weapon. In addition, police believe that many of these guns are designed to look exactly like the real thing, using the original blueprints, to the point where the parts could be interchanged. Criminals can buy a cheap airsoft gun legally. Then they simply have to get the gun's barrel and slide across the U.S. border, which substantially reduces the risk and cost for organized crime.

Here again, the Bloc Québécois scored a win. It succeeded in convincing the government not to ban toys simply for their appearance, but rather to proceed with a ban by regulation. The Bloc Québécois suggested that the government ban the import of replicas designed to be interchangeable with a real gun. That was another Bloc Québécois improvement to this bill.

In closing, what is happening south of the border is just plain crazy. Gun violence has become an epidemic. The tragedies of the last few weeks simply defy imagination. Society must force politicians to get to the root of the problem. There is still much to be done, but Bill C-21 is a step in the right direction this thanks to the improvements made by the Bloc Québécois, and thanks to the improvements made by my colleague from Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia.

I would simply like to end by saying that this is all very sad. It is May 2023. I remember that the Bloc Québécois had already reacted after the 2019 election. That was the 30th anniversary of the events at Polytechnique. At the time, groups were already pointing out that our proposals were well-thought-out and sensible. This issue is important to us and we work hard on it. Even my colleague from Chicoutimi—Le Fjord pointed out today how hard the Bloc Québécois has worked on this. Indeed, and that is because we have been listening to the groups involved. We have always worked in a sensible way.

We need to avoid the disinformation I have been hearing since this morning from my Conservative colleagues in the House. It is time to take action. As I said, it is a file that has been dragging on for far too long.