Bill C-5

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.

Justice

[David Lametti, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, serious crimes in the country will always carry with them serious consequences. Indeed, the crimes the hon. member is talking about do attract serious penalties.

What we would be doing with Bill C-5 is entirely the opposite. Failed Conservative policies on tough-on-crime, with minimum mandatory penalties and no possibility of conditional sentence orders, have only clogged the justice system with less serious cases that have resulted in the over-incarceration of indigenous, Black and racialized people in our system.

We are removing those to spend more time and more resources precisely on the offences about which he is talking.

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as of September 19, Toronto police have recorded 31 homicides out of 302 shootings this year. Recent victims of gun violence include a Toronto police officer killed in a shooting rampage and a 17 year old who was killed in broad daylight in Scarborough. The vast majority of these shootings are conducted by repeat offenders and drug traffickers with illegal guns. What is the Liberal solution? Remove Chrétien and Trudeau Sr. mandatory minimums and target law-abiding hunters and firearms owners.

Considering these disturbing statistics, will the government remove its soft-on-crime Bill C-5?

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

Mr. Speaker, there is a growing trend in Montreal called “scoring”, which consists of scoring points by shooting at innocent victims chosen at random. According to police sources, this trend may be the reason for an attack in the Rivière‑des‑Prairies neighbourhood, where an innocent 25-year-old woman was hit in the legs when shots were fired.

In response to this violent incident in Montreal, the Prime Minister wants to abolish minimum sentences for crimes like illegal importation of guns, intentional discharge of a gun and armed robbery.

Will the Prime Minister finally admit that he got it wrong with Bill C-5 and put it through the shredder?

[David Lametti, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, the security of Canadians is our absolute priority. What we are doing with Bill C-5 is allowing for more resources to be spent on the very serious crimes that the hon. member is referring to. Those serious crimes will always carry with them serious consequences.

However, all that the failed Conservative tough-on-crime policies left us with was not greater public security but increased overrepresentation of indigenous and Black people in our criminal justice system. We are reversing that by putting the resources on the serious crime, where they ought to be.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Mr. Speaker, since the Liberals formed government, serious violent crime has substantially increased. Homicides alone are up 30%. This is a direct result of the government's soft-on-crime agenda and lack of empathy toward victims. Now, thanks to Bill C-5, weapons trafficking, robbery with a firearm, drive-by shootings, fentanyl trafficking and kidnapping will no longer be punishable by mandatory sentences.

Why does the government continue to advocate for criminals while recklessly neglecting the rights of victims?

[David Lametti, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, the security of Canadians is our absolute priority and serious crimes will always carry with them serious consequences.

I reject the premise of the hon. member's question. What we are doing with Bill C-5 is putting an end to policies from the Harper government that have failed. They have failed to make Canadians safer and they have wasted valuable police and judicial resources on infractions that are better treated, not incarcerated.

What we are doing with Bill C-5 is being able to put more resources into serious crime, as Justice Michael Moldaver has recently said we ought to be doing.

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

Mr. Speaker, last week in the justice minister's hometown, there was a shooting outside the Bell Centre, and yesterday a man was shot near the riding of the public safety minister. In fact, violent crime in Canada has increased 32% since the Liberals took office, but instead of reducing crime, Liberals are reducing the number of violent criminals going to jail, thanks to their soft-on-crime Bill C-5. We do not need fewer criminals in jail; we need fewer victims of crime.

On this side of the house, Conservatives will always put the safety of Canadians first. Will the Prime Minister finally withdraw the soft-on-crime Bill C-5?

Human Trafficking

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am tabling two petitions today on behalf of British Colombians.

The first petition is regarding human trafficking. The petitioners call upon the Government of Canada to strengthen the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act to address Canada's significant shortcomings on human trafficking, which were embarrassingly highlighted by the U.S. State Department's 2022 Trafficking in Persons Report. The petitioners also call upon the Government of Canada to remove any references to human trafficking from Bill C-5.

Justice

[David Lametti, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, the reality is quite the opposite of what the hon. member is saying.

Serious crimes will always have serious consequences in our system. What we are doing with Bill C-5 is abolishing an ineffective strategy that clogged up the criminal justice system, so we can focus on serious crimes that should have serious consequences.

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

Mr. Speaker, Canadians still cannot believe that this Prime Minister wants to abolish minimum sentences for crimes such as illegally importing firearms, discharging a firearm with intent and committing robbery with a firearm.

With the upsurge in violent incidents and murders happening in broad daylight, the people of Montreal are living in fear. Meanwhile, members of street gangs and organized crime are delighted. They can hardly wait for Bill C-5 to be passed. It gives criminals more freedom and, in the meantime, people are staying home because they are afraid.

Will the Prime Minister promise to withdraw Bill C‑5?

[David Lametti, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, serious crimes, such as those described by my hon. colleague, will always carry serious consequences. What Bill C-5 would do is that in cases where a sentence would be less than two years and, most important, there would no threat to public safety or public security, it would allow for a better alternative to incarceration in those cases. This precisely allows us to focus our resources in the criminal justice system on those serious crimes, which we all agree we need to treat quite seriously.

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

Mr. Speaker, Canadians expect that criminals convicted of sexual assault, kidnapping and human trafficking serve their sentence from behind bars, but not these soft-on-crime Liberals, with their do no crime Bill C-5, which incredibly allows criminals convicted of these and other serious offences to serve their sentence from home.

Could the Liberals explain how letting loose into the community the likes of sexual predators, kidnappers and human traffickers protects public safety?

[David Lametti, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the fundamental point is that serious crimes will always carry serious consequences. What we are doing with Bill C-5 is ensuring that we have more resources to focus on those serious crimes and ensuring that our police authorities have more tools in their tool kit to deal with them.

A former justice of the Supreme Court, Michael Moldaver, in an article he published this week, told us that we should go precisely in that direction, to focus our resources on those serious crimes and incarcerate less people, and nobody can accuse Justice Moldaver of being soft on crime.

[David Lametti, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, serious crimes will always carry serious consequences. That is the basic principle.

What we are trying to do with Bill C-5 is to make sure we can concentrate our resources on those serious crimes, whether in the judicial system or in enforcing our police—

Criminal Code

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Grande Prairie—Mackenzie, AB]

Madam Speaker, today we are debating Bill C-21. My Conservative colleagues have already laid out some of the bill's content and really the false narrative the Liberals have tried to advance in trying to pass this bill.

We know there is a significant crime problem in many of our urban centres, especially in those where we have seen a rise in shootings and gun crime. We also know that illegal weapons are the real problem. In the city of Toronto, the police have clearly stated that in over 85% of crimes involving a firearm in that city the weapons were smuggled in illegally from the United States. As a matter of fact, CBC reported that municipalities across the country report very similar stats. It said that, depending on the municipality, between 70% and 95% of all guns used in the commission of a crime have been imported from the United States.

The stats clearly prove that very few crimes were committed by those who are legally permitted to own them, who are the real targets of Bill C-21. Members will notice the Liberals never share that data. They never say that legal gun owners are not the problem because that is the group of people they like to target. They want to have Canadians believe that legal gun owners are the problem, are scary and need to be eliminated. They are stating in this bill that they want to see an end to the trading of these guns.

It is important that Canadians know that anybody who owns a weapon that is addressed in this bill has gone through extensive training and background checks, and the stats clearly indicate they are not the problem when it comes to crime in our cities. The Liberals have been fabricating a narrative that is completely hypocritical when we see what they have done. Bill C-21 does next to nothing to deal with smuggled firearms or target the criminals who import, sell and use them.

What makes the Liberals even more hypocritical is the fact that they have a bill to deal with these criminals, which is Bill C-5. In that bill the Liberals are reducing the mandatory minimum imprisonments for criminals who are involved in the following crimes: unauthorized possession of prohibited or restricted weapons; possession of prohibited or restricted firearms with ammunition; possession of firearms obtained by commission of an offence; firearms trafficking; possession of firearms for the purposes of trafficking; and knowingly importing and exporting an unauthorized firearm. They are reducing the penalties for the people who are actually the problem when it comes to gun crime in this country. It is clear to see the Liberals have no interest in dealing with the real problem, taking illegal weapons off of our streets.

As if we needed any additional evidence that the Liberal government would go to disturbing lengths to advance its own political agenda, in breaking news just yesterday afternoon we learned that the Liberals would jeopardize the independence of the institution of the RCMP for their political interests. The evidence in the report that was released included some of the scariest evidence of how low the government will go and how many boundaries it will break to advance its own political agenda. The Halifax Examiner exposed the rot that exists in the government and the manipulation it expects from the highest levels of what should be an independent trusted public institution.

The headline screams, “RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki tried to 'jeopardize' mass murder investigation to advance [the Prime Minister's] gun control efforts”. In her report, Jennifer Henderson stated:

RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki “made a promise” to Public Safety Minister Bill Blair and the Prime Minister's Office to leverage the mass murders of April 18/19, 2020 to get a gun control law passed.

A week after the murders, Lucki pressured RCMP in Nova Scotia to release details of the weapons used by the killer. But RCMP commanders in Nova Scotia refused to release such details, saying doing so would threaten their investigation into the murders.

The Trudeau government’s gun control objectives were spelled out in an order in council issued in May 2020....