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.

Criminal Code

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to be joining colleagues from all parties in this debate tonight on Bill C-21.

I want to acknowledge the time I have enjoyed as the NDP's public safety critic. It is a big responsibility. There are many different departments to keep track of. I also want to say in deference to previous speakers that I have enjoyed working with the minister on a number of issues and with my Conservative and Bloc colleagues. I will echo previous comments tonight that we do enjoy a good working relationship. If we look at previous Parliaments, that might seem a bit odd for the public safety committee because we do deal with some fairly explosive issues where there is not always a lot of agreement to be found.

I come at this debate tonight as a representative of a rural riding. My riding of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford is about 4,700 square kilometres in size. A lot of the constituents whom I represent are responsible firearms owners. They enjoy going to the range. They enjoy using firearms for hunting and other recreational activities.

However, it has to be stated, and this is a key difference between Canada and our southern neighbours, that owning a firearm in Canada is a privilege. By far the vast majority of firearms owners in Canada respect that privilege. They use their firearms in a very safe and respectful manner. Gun safety and the careful operation and storage of guns have always been paramount to the constituents that I have spoken to.

Indeed, I do have a lot of friends who are firearms owners. I grew up with firearms. My father has several that he inherited from his childhood. I have enjoyed spending time at various ranges throughout my riding. A few years ago, I was a guest at the Victoria fish and game club. Under the careful supervision of someone with a restricted possession and authorization licence, I was shown how to safely use a handgun at the range. There a lot of people who do enjoy the target shooting aspect of it.

I have seen a lot of debate on firearms before and during my time in Parliament and it is a pretty explosive issue. It can be very often used as a wedge in our political system. I want to find a way to talk about the legislation before us in a respectful way, one that lowers the temperature and where we can depolarize the debate while maybe seeking to make some parts of the bill better at committee.

I am trying to walk the line between the Liberals and the Conservatives. The Liberals sometimes have a tendency to put forward a bill, hold it up as a shiny trophy, and say it is going to fix the problem. The Conservatives on the other side tend to have a knee-jerk reaction to firearms legislation and their default position is to oppose. This is an issue where we have to walk the line between those two, where we recognize that legislation is important. We cannot simply say no for the sake of saying no, but we also have to realize that legislation by itself is not going to solve a problem as complex as gun violence. It has to be part and parcel of a whole range of things.

Bill C-21 in this Parliament does share the same number as the previous firearms legislation in the 43rd Parliament, which was also Bill C-21. That bill, however, never advanced past second reading. Unfortunately, it was allowed to die on the Order Paper when we had, in my view, the unnecessary election of 2021. There was a lot of hullabaloo about the introduction of that bill, but not a lot of effort was put forward by the government to advance it in any meaningful way.

Here we are again. We are in the 44th Parliament. We are in June. We have been at this for quite some time and we are only now just getting to the first round of second reading debate on the bill.

There is an important human element to this debate. Many lives have been lost in Canada to rising gun crime and we have to acknowledge that many communities are feeling unsafe.

Canadians want their government to act to prevent tragedies, not just respond to them. That is the proactive piece of the puzzle here, not just reacting to the bad news we often see. We need to demonstrate that follow-through and commitment to addressing firearms violence. That is where I think Bill C-21 comes into play. Not only is the smuggling of illegal firearms a big problem in Canada, but there is also a very real issue with the domestic diversion of legal firearms and the way they can find their way into the hands of criminals.

I am proud to be a member of a party that has supported the goal of getting military-style assault weapons off the streets. I support the plans for a mandatory buyback. That is a significant improvement over the voluntary buyback that was proposed in the previous Parliament, because we want to find a way of making sure that these weapons are forever off of our streets and do not pose a danger. Back in 2008, Jack Layton, our leader at the time, was the first political leader in Canada to propose giving municipalities the power to ban handguns within their jurisdictions.

I think whatever side of the spectrum we fall on with respect to this debate, we can all agree it is time for the government to get serious about tackling gun crime. We have different ideas on how that is to be achieved, but I think we agree on the same basic premise.

I want to give a nod to the public safety committee. The great report that we tabled earlier this year has been referenced in a few speeches tonight. That report was the result of 50 witnesses over seven meetings. We had numerous representatives from different police services across Canada, criminal defence lawyers, community organizations and also important government bodies like Statistics Canada. I want to acknowledge the Bloc Québécois for bringing forward that motion for a study. It resulted in 34 recommendations. We are awaiting a government response. I know that takes time, but I am looking forward to reading the government's response to those solid recommendations.

We had a number of recommendations. We realized that Statistics Canada needs additional resources. It has reported that there are gaps in its reporting. There are limitations in its knowledge about the firearms that are used in crimes. We need more information and details about particular firearms, their exact type, who owns them, how they are stored, whether the owners are licensed, and so on.

There was also a recommendation about increasing funding to the Canadian criminal intelligence service to enable comprehensive intelligence sharing across all police services so we can improve their effectiveness in tracing firearms. There was a recognition that smuggling is a significant contributor to gun and gang violence in Canada and that more resources must be allocated to combatting it. Also, the Government of Canada, as part of its prohibition on firearms, should implement a mandatory buyback program. That was a recommendation in the report that was supported by committee members.

In addition, I also think that because the report also illustrated the context in which we operate, this problem is not going to be solved by legislation, funding or a shift in policies alone. It is a multi-faceted issue that is going to require reflection, a comprehensive set of solutions, including data collection and research, prevention and intervention, coordination and collaboration between all levels of government, law enforcement and civil society actors.

We know the statistics have not been favourable. That has been mentioned by a few of my colleagues. We know that the rates of firearms-related violent crimes started an upward climb in 2014, with the largest documented increase between 2014 and 2015. Between 2019 and 2020 there were notable increases, including in southern rural British Columbia, the northern part of Ontario, rural Alberta, the Northwest Territories and Nova Scotia. This is the important part: Handguns were the most serious weapon present in most firearm-related violent crimes between 2009 and 2014, and also between 2015 and 2020.

I now want to focus on the smuggling, which we know is a major problem. It is a consequence of our sharing a border with the United States. The problem, and this goes to the data collection, is that we do not have an accurate figure. It might even be impossible to ever get an accurate figure, because for every successful interdiction, there are so many that will get through. It is simply impossible to extrapolate what the full problem is in that regard.

In this conversation about firearms and the root causes of gun and gang violence, we have to know that there are so many different factors at play here. This is far from a black and white issue. During our committee study, we learned from great testimony from witnesses that things like poverty, inequality, racism, mental illness, social isolation, substance abuse, extremist ideologies, education and health, are all factors which in some way contribute to the phenomenon of gun violence and how bad it can be in some communities.

There is also a very strong correlation between the drug trade in Canada and firearms violence. I think this is important. This House has recently been seized with the issue of Canada's drug laws. We have seen reference to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act in another government bill, Bill C-5, which sets out a declaration of principles.

The member for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke was able to successfully amend that to make sure that criminal records for simple possession will be sequestered after two years. That is an important amendment. The member for Courtenay—Alberni, my friend and neighbour to the north, has his very important private member's bill, Bill C-216.

Almost every single police agency that was before our committee spoke of the interwoven nature of the drug trade and the gun trade. The simple fact is that there are obscene amounts of money that can be made in the drug trade. The introduction of fentanyl and carfentanil has completely changed the profitability game. Every single witness who was talking on this subject said that gang members involved in the drug trade feel the need to have guns on their person to protect their turf and their trade because of the competitive nature of it.

One of the most successful ways we can tackle gun problems in Canada is to enact bold, progressive policies to deal with the demand side, to deal with people's addictions and to make sure we are not harming the people who are out there being nabbed by police for simple possession. Instead, we should be trying to make sure that we are relieving them of the criminal stigma of substance use. We should be drying up that demand so that gangs are not competing for that turf. That is a big scourge for many of our big cities in Canada, and until we see bold policy to deal with this, I fear that years from now we are still going to be having the same conversation about gun violence in Canada.

Let us now turn to some of the main features of Bill C-21. By far, the one that has garnered the most attention is the handgun freeze. It is essentially going to prevent the chief firearms officer from approving the transfer of handguns to individuals. It will effectively ban the buying, selling, transferring and importing of handguns to anyone other than certain businesses and exempted individuals.

To be clear, my technical reading of the bill is that if Bill C-21 were to receive royal assent tomorrow, anyone who is a current RPAL holder and owns a handgun will still be able to lawfully use that handgun just as they did today and yesterday. That will have no change.

It will impact people who are seeking to buy new handguns, but again, exemptions are carved out, for example, if someone can demonstrate that they need a handgun for their line of work. I know foresters who will not travel out into the bush in grizzly country unless they are carrying a handgun. That will be considered an exempted individual.

If someone is a professional target shooter and belongs to an Olympic-qualified organization, we might look at amending that and broadening the scope. The person would still be allowed to use a handgun, and so on.

I acknowledge that smuggling is a huge problem, but we have also had witnesses talk about the problem of the domestic diversion of legal weapons and people using their licences for straw purchases. I think, if we were to completely ignore that side of the equation, we would be doing a disservice to Canadians and to the whole question of public safety on this issue.

The other big aspect of Bill C-21 is the red flag and yellow flag regime, which would basically allow anyone to bypass the police and go directly to a provincial court judge to request the immediate removal of weapons from an individual who they believe is going to pose a danger to themselves or to others. I will note that, in the way Bill C-21 is written, there is an improvement to this aspect of the previous bill, because it would allow a judge to protect the privacy of an individual applying for that emergency prohibition. The judge could also have the option of holding hearings in private and sealing court documents. That is an important improvement to the previous version of the bill.

However, we know organizations such as PolySeSouvient still have problems with how this section is written. I believe that at committee we are going to have to take a deeper dive into whether this can be improved upon.

We also know that members of the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians were not fans of the previous red flag law. They said:

...placing the onus on a family member of a depressed person, a demented parent, or the perpetrator of domestic violence to go through the court system is a largely unworkable and unwelcome hindrance to getting guns temporarily out of the home of those in crisis.

Others said that the current version of Bill C-21 was “a big, evidence-based step towards reducing gun injury and death in Canada,” so kudos to the government for getting that from physicians who deal with gunshot wounds on a regular basis. They still want to see the particular details of the new red flag law and how it is actually going to work. Of course, the yellow flag law would allow the chief firearms officer to temporarily suspend and review an individual firearms licence while that eligibility is determined.

I want to end on airsoft. In my riding of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, there is a massive airsoft community and people love this sport. I had previously only participated in paintball, so I know the fun and the thrill of it, and people who engage in airsoft as a sport love what they do. It is a great outdoor recreational activity, and these people are concerned by the provisions in this bill that are targeting replica models.

We have to find a way to have members of the airsoft community come before our committee. I think we have to have a conversation with the government on how we can find a workable solution so that people are not unfairly targeted for participating in a sport they enjoy. I think there is a middle ground in there somewhere. I acknowledge the concern that law enforcement has with replica airsoft rifles. At a distance, it is not easy to tell whether it is a replica or the real thing, and we certainly did hear at committee that some people had been successful at converting airsoft guns into fully functioning firearms, so that is a very real concern out there.

I know I am in my final minute, so I will just conclude with this: The firearms debate is never a black and white issue, and I know there are a variety of opinions on this topic, but I am going to try to thread the needle. At this point in the debate, I am going to signal my support for getting this bill to committee, because I do not want to just throw it out at this stage. I believe it deserves a closer look, and I believe all members, including my Conservative colleagues, deserve to have the opportunity to focus on the particular sections of the bill, bring forward their witnesses and have an adult conversation about the direction we want to take our country in and what we ultimately want to see out of this.

With that, I will conclude. I appreciate this opportunity, and I look forward to questions from my colleagues.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Madam Speaker, I am very honoured to put words on the record concerning Bill C-21.

We have a very serious gun violence problem in the country, one that Conservatives across the country are deeply concerned about. I have to say that when there were rumours that this announcement from the Liberals was coming forward and it was going to be a big splashy event at the Château Laurier here in downtown Ottawa, I was looking forward to hearing something that could really make a meaningful impact on this devastating issue that has ripped families apart and taken innocent lives. However, I was left feeling deeply, deeply disappointed. It was a missed opportunity to provide real hope for Canadians that gun violence would go down.

What is interesting is that since the Prime Minister formed government seven years ago, gun violence and violent crime in Canada has consistently gone up. It has never been so bad since I have been alive when it comes to the gun statistics in this country and those killing each other with guns in Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Edmonton and Vancouver. It is a serious, serious issue. That is why I felt so let down by the government's announcement, because it will not make any meaningful impact on gun violence and we so desperately needed a meaningful announcement.

I am going to mention a couple of crime statistics, because they are very alarming. Homicide rates went up 7% from last year. That is a consistent increase, year over year over year, 7% more from last year, so now two out of 100,000 Canadians are victims of a homicide. Violent crime, again, is up 5% in the last six years. Firearm-related offences increased for the sixth year in a row. These are stats from last year, so we will see what they are this year, but from the police reports, it sounds like it is going to be one of the worst years on record. Homicides are at a 30-year high and at least a third of them are committed with firearms.

I represent a riding in Winnipeg. It is ranked the violent crime capital of Canada, frankly, year over year, so I know first-hand the devastation that gun crime and violent crime cause in communities, especially our vulnerable communities.

In fact, in Toronto, in 2014, before the Prime Minister came to office, there were 177 instances where firearms were shot illegally. Now that number is up to 462. Is has gone from 177 to 462 in Toronto. Clearly, the Liberal approach is a resounding failure when it comes to keeping our communities safe. It is a fact that our communities are less safe. Canadians are less safe since the Prime Minister took office. Again, the Liberals had the opportunity to address that at their announcement, but they failed to do so.

In Winnipeg we have serious concerns. Winnipeg's North End is a predominantly indigenous community that suffers significantly with addictions, homicides, violent crimes, domestic abuse, spousal abuse, child abuse. In fact, in Manitoba, child and family services remove the most children per capita than anywhere else in the world, and at least 90% to 97% of them are indigenous. Our prisons at all levels are filled with indigenous youth. It is a serious problem that we are facing in this country.

We have also the missing and murdered indigenous women. Indigenous women in Manitoba are most impacted by those horrendous statistics, and yet we have Bill C-5 from the government. On one hand, the minister said in his speech that he is increasing maximum penalties for firearm offences, some of them, to send a message to criminals, while on the other hand, his colleague is eliminating mandatory prison time for serious firearm offences.

We are talking about robbery with a firearm. If a person robs someone at gunpoint, there is no guarantee that person is going to prison now. The individual may actually get to serve house arrest in the community where the person caused the violent crime. Extortion with a firearm and firing a firearm with the intent to injure someone, that is, shooting at someone and planning to hit them with the bullet, no longer results in mandatory prison time under the Liberal government. There is using a firearm in committing a crime, and I could go on. In fact, someone who is a drug trafficker will no longer face mandatory prison time under Bill C-5.

On one hand, the Liberals say they are getting tough on criminals. On the other hand, they are letting them completely off the hook, allowing them to serve, perhaps, house arrest in the communities they have terrorized.

There is the removal of the mandatory prison time for drug trafficking, which is deeply related, as my NDP colleague referred to in his question, to gun violence in the country. Just last year, over 7,000 Canadians died from drug overdoses, mostly opioids, that is, fentanyl, carfentanil. It was more deadly for young people to die from a drug overdose than COVID. That is how serious the drug epidemic in this country is.

We all have different approaches on how to solve that, but I would say that removing mandatory prison time for the individuals who push drugs on vulnerable Canadians, who traffic drugs into this country, is the wrong approach.

They are responsible for murdering thousands of Canadians, especially in B.C. It is especially an issue with young people, so the government's approach to firearms and violent crime, despite the rise in statistics, does not make sense.

Then we have the government bringing forward this handgun freeze. The minister has consistently said that we are stopping this trend with the handgun freeze, but we know that the handguns used in Toronto gang crimes are not from legal gun owners. They are smuggled in from the United States, and I will get to that.

What I think is particularly interesting is all the individuals, particularly police, who have come out to say that handgun bans and buybacks will not work. They will not work to address the rising gun violence in this country.

In fact, I will start with an interesting quote here by an individual who said, “The long-gun registry, as it was, was a failure.... There are better ways of keeping us safe than that registry which...has been removed.” We are not talking about the registry today, but it was a gun control mechanism that was brought in formerly by a Liberal government, so I think it is relevant.

This individual said, “I grew up with long guns, rifles and shotguns.... The RCMP guarding me had handguns and I got to play with them every now and then”, although the RCMP was “very responsible” around him. He said, “I was raised with an appreciation and an understanding of how important in rural areas and right across the country gun ownership is as a part of the culture of Canada.” It was a very important person who said this. He continued, “I do not feel that there's any huge contradiction between keeping our cities safe from gun violence and gangs, and allowing this important facet of Canadian identity which is having a gun.”

That was the Prime Minister of Canada, back in 2012 or 2013. Wow, how times have changed.

In reference to a handgun ban, another important individual of the Liberal government said, “I believe that would be potentially a very expensive proposition but just as importantly, it would not in my opinion be perhaps the most effective measure in restricting the access that criminals would have to such weapons, because we’d still have a problem with them being smuggled across the border”. That was the Minister of Emergency Preparedness, the former minister of public safety. Those were his words.

There is also the deputy chief of the Toronto Police Service, Myron Demkiw, who deals with this on the front line and puts his life on the line dealing with criminals shooting guns in downtown Toronto. He and his officers put their lives on the line to keep communities safe from gun violence. In reference to guns, he said, “They're not domestically sourced. They are internationally sourced. Our problem in Toronto is handguns from the United States.” I asked him about the handgun ban and the buyback proposed by the government, which is going forward, and he said, “Investing in what you described is certainly not going to deal with the crime problem we're facing in Toronto as it relates to criminal handguns and the use of criminal handguns. We believe an investment upstream is a very valuable focus of resources.” When I asked him if we should invest more in police or if we should ban guns, that was his response. Clearly, he does not believe it will be effective, and he is someone at the epicentre of gun violence in this country.

In fact, I have pages and pages of quotes from frontline officers, who deal with this more than anybody else, who have said that bans will not work because they do not tackle the problem.

We recently studied this issue, guns and gangs, at the national security and public safety committee, for which I am the vice-chair. We had a very robust debate. We had police experts. We had crime experts. We had community advocates. Not one recommendation in that report was to ban handguns, because none of the experts, none of the police experts and none of the community anti-gang experts said that that would be a solution. All of them said that that would not work, because we know from the Toronto police that over 85% of the handguns used in violent crimes in Toronto are smuggled in from the United States. This is a serious and growing problem that the government has failed to address.

I am an MP from Winnipeg. Recently, I took a tour of the Winnipeg police headquarters, where they showed me a half-a-million-dollar drug bust: all these deadly opioids, piles of cash and a very long table with all the firearms they had seized from the gangsters who were responsible. They are making these busts monthly. I took a look at all the guns. They said that, number one, every single gun on that table was already prohibited, not just restricted but prohibited. No one would have been able to legally get those guns in the country, no matter what kind of licence a person had. The second thing they said was that all of them were smuggled in from the United States. Then they showed me a map of the train tracks across North America, major rail lines that went all the way from Mexico, all the way through the central United States, all the way to Winnipeg.

They suspect that a significant number of the drugs and the guns from the United States that are killing Canadians are coming in on rail, so at committee I asked the border agents why they cannot stop it. They said they do not have the capacity, beyond checking one one-millionth, which is effectively none, of the railcars coming into Canada. We also have very little capacity to check marine ports of entry. We are struggling on retention issues at the border. We need many more border officers and much increased and improved technology to stop gun smuggling. All experts agree that this is where the problem is coming from.

The current government has spent more money than any government in history, actually all combined, if we look at deficits. If it really wanted to solve gun violence, it would be dumping billions of dollars into the border to shore up our security, because of course we share the longest undefended border in the world with a country that has more guns than people. Therefore, we have to get real about the Herculean effort it is going to take to stop this problem, which I think every single person in this House agrees we must do.

I am going to talk about police. I mentioned the police. We know that, particularly in rural Canada but in cities as well, the police are struggling to respond to calls. If there is a break and enter in Winnipeg, it may take them a month to come and investigate it because they are so overwhelmed with gun violence and violent crimes. That is how bad it is getting. Do not even get me started on the calls for service in rural Canada. It is unbearable for people in rural Canada.

The answer is that we need far more police and far more investments in guns and gangs units in this country. If we talk to police officers on the front lines, they will say that they are strapped and cannot keep up with demand. Drug and gun deaths are going up and they need more help. Therefore, it is about border security investments and police guns and gangs unit investments. That is what would make a real difference in reducing gun violence, significant investment.

As well, at committee we had a number of remarkable people from the grassroots community in Toronto. One of them, Marcell Wilson, was a hardened criminal who was rehabilitated. He turned his life around and started the One by One Movement. The One by One Movement saves at-risk youth in vulnerable communities from joining a life of gangs and following a life of crime. This man and his organization are saving young people from this life of crime. There is a similar organization in my community, called the Bear Clan Patrol. It really focuses on Winnipeg's north end, which is dealing with a lot of trauma. There are community organizations like this all across the country. They need significant investment and support from all levels of government. That is a long-term solution for the gun violence we are seeing.

I think there is a lot we can agree on with respect to this. The minister talked about red flag laws, increasing the penalties for those who try to smuggle guns into this country, and a few other minor things that I think all members of this House can agree on, so today, in very good faith, we talked to the other parties and we brought forward the following motion. I was not allowed to read it because I was cut off, but I will read it now into the record. This motion was to be brought forward so we can depoliticize this issue. Conservatives firmly believe, as do nearly all firearms owners in this country, that the current government does not have an interest in solving gun violence but wants to stigmatize and divide Canadians on this issue. Therefore, we wanted to take the politics out of it and say that there are parts of this bill we are really keen on, so we can work together, get them to committee, study them and get them passed. Let us quicken the process and save lives, hopefully, if they are effective, which we will find out at committee. Let us put the really difficult political issues through the debate in the House. This is not something that is foreign. We split bills. That is a possibility. It is a democratic tool that we have.

I wanted to say, before I was cut off by Liberal members, that given that the debate on combatting gun violence needs to be depoliticized and centred on the rights of victims and the safety of communities, the House should call on the government to divide Bill C-21 into two parts to allow for those measures where there is broad support across all parties to proceed separately, namely curbing domestic violence and tackling the flow of guns over the Canada-U.S. border, from those aspects of the bill that divide the House. That is fairly collaborative, I would say.

I have to say that Liberal, Conservative, Bloc and NDP members on the public safety committee have worked very well together. We really tried to put our politics aside and we came up with a really great guns and gangs study that we all signed on to. Can members imagine all parties signing on to a guns and gangs study? It is unheard of.

That is how we can work together and how I have shown that I can work together with others on this issue to create real solutions. When I attempted to do that in the House today, the Liberals shot it down, so I will take no lessons from them about playing politics with this. We made a good-faith effort today and they shot it down.

I also want to talk about some of the people who are impacted by this ban. The minister said something very odd recently on the news. He said that this bill does not impact law-abiding citizens and it does not impact law-abiding gun owners. I am not sure if he has read his own bill, because this bill, the handgun freeze, impacts only legal owners. It impacts only people who follow the law.

I will remind the House that those who possess RPAL, the restricted licence, need to be trained, vetted and background-checked. They are some of the most background-checked individuals in the country, and with good reason. Conservatives support very strict gun laws in this country. Only the most responsible, law-abiding citizens should ever come near a gun.

We have a situation where those individuals are the only ones being targeted by this. It is not the criminals in Toronto. They do not care. They are laughing about this handgun freeze. They already own them illegally. They are carrying them around and shooting up their communities illegally now. Do members think they care about a handgun freeze? They are laughing; it is ridiculous.

I would like to talk about some of the individuals who are impacted by this, because I think it is pretty important. Some of them are in the sport shooting community. There is a large sport shooting community. For folks who are watching at home, if they do not own a firearm or have never been around one, I understand this is very foreign to them. I understand. I am not a sport shooter myself, so it is not something that necessarily impacts me.

However, it certainly impacts our Olympic sport shooting community, which has thousands and thousands of sport shooters below it: associations, provincial competitions, national competitions, international competitions. This bill would end that sport in Canada, a sport in which we have competed at the Olympic level for well over a hundred years. The Liberals say they have consulted, but I am hearing from the very large, law-abiding sport shooting community that it has not had a call from the minister. The Liberals are not giving any dignity to these individuals, while ripping apart a major part of their cultural heritage in this country without even a conversation.

The Liberals are trying to push this through at committee with no debate, with a sneaky UC motion at committee. They do not even want to debate it. They want to do it today and completely eliminate any dignity from a large part of this country that values sport shooting and is proud of it. These people pass down their firearms to their daughters and sons. That is all eliminated. I just do not understand how the Liberals can bring forward something like this with no consultation with the community it impacts the most, because it is not impacting the illegal community. It is not impacting the individuals who are killing people in our cities.

If one looks at the crime stats and the trends since the Prime Minister took office, one would think the Liberals would bring forward a bill that would go after the problem, but no, they have chosen politics. They have chosen to go after the individuals who are least likely to commit crimes. Lawful gun owners are actually three times less likely to commit crimes, because they are so vetted and so background-checked, as it should be.

It is infuriating. I cannot tell members how many calls I have received from across the country, from women, educated people, professionals, doctors, pilots and academics who engage in sport shooting. They are asking why they are being attacked again by the government and why the government is not going after the problem. It is spending billions of dollars. The sky is the limit. Why is it not spending it in the cities so we can save people?

It is unbelievable. I can go on and on about this. I am very passionate about it, as I am sure we all are from our own perspectives, but I am willing to work and collaborate on the elements of this bill that we do agree on. That was shot down today, but maybe the Liberals will agree another day.

I would like to move an amendment. 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 second time but that the Order be discharged, the Bill withdrawn and the subject matter thereof referred to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security.”

The purpose of my motion is to say we have to go back to the drawing board. This is not going to work. It is not going to solve gun violence. Conservatives will work together on the committee to solve gun violence in this country. We will collaborate and bring forward real solutions to tackle the problem, which is criminals and gangs smuggling guns in from the United States and hurting our communities.

Rest assured.

[Marco Mendicino, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Madam Speaker, I think my colleague will know I carry no truck for criminals and I carry no truck for individuals who would use guns to do harm to the community or to individuals whatsoever. However, the fact of the matter is that, before she became a member of Parliament, the last time the Conservative Party had the reins of government, there was a failed and prosecuted agenda around sentence reforms that simply did not work. The Supreme Court of Canada repeatedly struck down those failed policies that were introduced under the Conservative government, which is why my hon. colleague, the Minister of Justice, has put forward Bill C-5.

Members can reconcile that with what we are doing in Bill C-21, which will ensure that the judiciary, in whom we have respect, trust and confidence, can dispense justice. By raising maximum sentences from 10 to 14 years, we would be sending the very clear and unambiguous signal that if someone is going to illegally traffic across a border or in our communities illegal firearms, they will face stiffer sentences.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Madam Speaker, I rise in this House today to speak to Bill C-5, an act to amend the Criminal Code and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

I have listened to voices on all sides of this House, from members whom I have known and worked with, and I hear a conflicting difference in the connection between crime and sentencing, crime and punishment as Fyodor Dostoevsky would say.

I hear from some friends and colleagues in this House that there is no connection between longer, mandated prison sentences and the rate of recidivism in society and the rate of crime increasing in Canada. I hear the other side that clearly illustrates the connection between the length of time mandated for a specific crime and the reduction in criminal offences of that nature.

Further, I have listened to the government speakers on the legislation and I hear a familiar refrain from those on the government bench, as in all things, that this bill will let society have its cake and eat it too at the same time, as in there are no real choices to make here. But there are real choices.

Somewhere in this sea of data and information, there is obvious narrative, all of which cannot be completely factual. That is that all these facts cannot live in the same narrative.

I will deviate a little here because I have seen this much from the Attorney General of Canada playing fast and loose with the facts and trying to make the facts fit his narrative when examination clearly shows the insincerity of his statements.

With this cacophony of facts, statements, theories and postulations, and yes, misstatements, I took the liberty of examining my own pre-established beliefs in the connection between crime and punishment.

Life is a good teacher. I remember a time in our history when society was less safe. Murders were more common. Criminal activity was growing. There were parts of our cities across North America where people ventured at their own peril.

Some brave politicians in the United States started implementing a program knows as “broken windows” at the time. In short, if we prosecute small crimes to the utmost, the perpetrators understand the consequences of crime and do not drift into more serious crimes. The effect over the years was a reduction of crime in the cities. Places became safe again. People moved back downtown in large cities. Social problems abated. People knew where they stood in the eyes of the law again.

We are far from that in our current society. In fact, we are moving quickly in the opposite direction. I walk to work and it is obvious over the past two and a half years that there is more crime on the streets of Ottawa and on the streets of Calgary.

We can go over the statistics, but at this point, they are redundant. The connection between the proliferation of severe drug abuse and street crime is clear, as is the increase in mental health problems among those at-risk people.

However, the government wants the criminals who have preyed on these poor people in our society, pushing more of them onto the street and outside of the care they require, pushing them further toward the final outcome that the proliferation of drugs, like fentanyl, lead to, which is untimely death, to receive lighter sentences.

I try and resolve these clear inconsistencies being offered by various narrative constructors on all sides. I think it is healthy to overcome what might be confirmation bias, which is something I used to deal with in my previous profession, and that is the propensity to accept data that confirms one's own preconceived opinions on any given matter.

The source of data I found to be instructive was from Public Safety Canada and the report entitled “2019 Corrections and Conditional Release Statistical Overview”. I used the government's own source to determine which information was fact, as we know it, and which is narrative fiction.

The report clearly shows that Canada's federal incarceration rate declined from 2009 to 2019 from 117 people per 100,000 Canadians in 2009, down to 107 people per 100,000 Canadians in 2019. That is a 9% reduction over a decade. There are many other touchpoints and I know that correlation and causation are not necessarily the same thing, but something clearly was going right during the period where mandatory minimums were enforced.

I like to believe I am a rational thinker and the notion of what drives people to the choice of criminal activity as a means to earn a living is, like all things, a measure of pros and cons. I will reference the common phrase of do not do the crime if one cannot do the time.

When the assessment of return, with the proliferation of a misery that is a trait of the trade in hard drugs, is greater than the assessed cost of being caught in that trade, the logical choice, outside of absolute shame, is to make that calculation. They make millions of dollars illegally and visit absolute misery upon society's most vulnerable with an assessed chance of imprisonment of, say, 20%. That is one in five perpetrators of this death and destruction will get caught and serve time for committing that crime.

That punishment had better suit that crime. The calculation of risk versus return needs to be very punitive. In contradiction to my colleagues who have spoken in favour of lowering sentences, the cost needs to include the shame of being removed from loved ones and communities. These crimes impact our society significantly. There should be no free pass for the consequences, particularly when those consequences are so unequally shared by our Canadian society. We cannot normalize crime.

What are these costs? They are addiction, rehabilitation, property crime, violent crime and death, and the dismantling of the social contract that binds us as a society to take care of each other. Removing these consequences for tearing down society will accelerate dire outcomes.

Now, let us address the inequities the government hangs its virtue hat on in every speech it gives about this bill, which is that Canadians of certain ethnicities are over-represented in our prisons. That fact is true, sadly, and it bears out in the statistics. It is not getting better. Let us revisit my previous comments on what drives rational people to attempt to profit from criminal activity, which is an assessment that the return is higher than the risk. Crime is a big business. Where do criminal organizations, those making millions moving fentanyl and other destructive drugs through our cities, get their foot soldiers?

I looked at a study, an American study, that examined factors correlating with recidivism. The clear correlation with lower recidivism was education level. This legislation will tilt the scales back towards forcing Canadians in marginalized communities to make choices early in life that would remove their future opportunities. It is doing exactly the opposite of what the government seems to pretend it is intended to do.

I also want to draw upon clear data, and that is that crime committed by Canadians in minority communities is inordinately committed against Canadians in their own communities. Sadly, crime is a local activity. Thus, the legislation reduces the legitimacy of the victims in those minority Canadian communities in the eyes of the law. If we were tilting the law to avoid incarceration from certain minorities, we are penalizing those same minority Canadians who no longer have the same legal protection as other Canadians. It is discrimination, and it will lead to more unequal outcomes in society. Surely we could do better.

Lastly, I will comment on the ability of judges to interpret what minimum sentences should be delivered. Judges are human beings who bring their own outlooks and emotions to their job. They are not perfect. They are not social workers. Having appeared in court and having heard judges at committee here in Parliament, I am certain the outcomes they decide are also imperfect. We have an imperfect judicial system, but perhaps it is less imperfect than other judicial systems. Let us not make the perfect the enemy of the good, as we say.

That being said, we need to recognize the limits of what we expect judges to do. As much as they believe they could decide all matters, it is our job as parliamentarians to clearly decide for society what are the consequences of certain crimes. We will hear examples where mandatory sentences are absurd. All rules have exceptions. There is already much leeway in sentencing for crimes before our judiciary. Let us not put them in a position where they are responsible for the societal outcomes for which we, as parliamentarians, are responsible.

This is an attempt by some of my colleagues to delegate their responsibilities to appointed judges. I would ask them why. Society, which is made up of our constituents, has elected us to decide these issues, and as the pendulum of issues swings, we will see again that Canadians will demand their cities and communities to be safe. They will demand it from their elected representatives, who are responsible. We cannot delegate this responsibility.

I know where my constituents stand on this issue. I know the clarity I have heard in meetings I have had with citizens in communities as they have seen the significant rise in crime. Mandatory minimum determination is our job. Let us not dumb down Parliament by delegating this important function to others. We are responsible.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Madam Speaker, I do enjoy working with the member at the public safety committee. We, the whole committee, have done some very good and important work together. We have put out some pretty good studies, including the one on guns and gangs. I hope that leads to further legislation and policies to be considered by this Parliament. Bill C-5 is not one of them. I do not think that Bill C-5 accomplishes what the government says is the stated purpose of reducing or responding to the overpopulation of indigenous people and people of colour in our prison system.

In one of our earlier studies, we also talked a lot about indigenous policing. That, to me, is a much better government response to the problem of overpopulation of indigenous people in our prisons.

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

Madam Speaker, my colleague and I work together on the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, notably on the gun control file.

Every time I hear my Conservative colleagues ask questions about Bill C-5 in question period, I hear the Minister of Public Safety respond with something about Bill C-21. I find that somewhat unfortunate because they are not the same thing.

Although I quite like my colleague, we both know that our opinions differ on this subject. For example, the Bloc members are big believers in rehabilitation and social reintegration. I think that Bill C-5 will help with that.

However, I think my colleague will agree with me that this is not the time to be introducing this bill, given the rise in gun crime across the country. We are trying to find ways to combat that situation.

What message does my colleague think is being sent to the public by introducing this bill at this time?

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Madam Speaker, the member's comments are well thought out and sensitive to the needs of many people. Bill C-5 eliminates mandatory minimum penalties for very, very serious crimes. That is the objection I have to this legislation.

I believe that addiction should be, in certain circumstances, treated as a health issue, rather than a criminal issue, but that is not what we are talking about today. We are talking about drug traffickers. We are talking about people who are trafficking in guns. We are talking about people who are in gangs. We are talking about people in my home community of metro Vancouver who are using guns out on the streets, out in the public, in places where my grandchildren go. That is unacceptable.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today in the House of Commons to join the debate on Bill C-5, which is a seriously flawed bill, in my opinion.

It presents itself as wanting to keep Canadians safe against gun crime and illicit drugs, but if the bill is passed by Parliament, it will eliminate mandatory minimum penalties for many of the serious crimes listed under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and many of the serious firearms-related crimes listed under the Criminal Code as well.

This hits very close to home, as it does, I am sure, for many Canadians. Last year we witnessed a series of gangland-style murders in Metro Vancouver, including two in my home riding of Langley—Aldergrove. It was shocking to see familiar places in Langley on the news and in the newspaper. One of the murders happened in front of the Sportsplex where I drop my grandsons off to play hockey, right in broad daylight. There was another one in the parking lot of the Willowbrook mall in downtown Langley, and there were a series of other gangland-style murders throughout the Lower Mainland, including at the Vancouver International Airport, do none of this is theoretical; it hits all of us, and it is a real problem that real Canadians across this country feel personally. We want to feel safe when we are out and about in town, on our streets, in shopping malls and schools and hockey rinks, but, sadly, that is not always the case.

It is our job as parliamentarians to do whatever we can to develop laws, regulations and policies that are designed to be and will be effective in keeping Canadians safe. However, the soft-on-crime bill before us that would eliminate mandatory minimum penalties for many of these serious crimes does not do that. I believe that the Liberals are introducing the bill in the faint hope that our prisons might become fairer and safer for criminals, and I believe it fails there as well.

The public safety committee, on which I sit, recently completed a study on gun control, illicit arms trafficking and the increasing numbers of gun crimes committed by members of street gangs. It is a very important study, and we learned that there is a very close tie between the drug trade and gun violence. In that study, we were seeking to find and introduce tools and policies to give guidance to Parliament to combat both of them, but again Bill C-5 misses the mark.

We heard from experts, and in the process we learned that guns and drug trafficking are inherently related to each other. This is what Mitch Bourbonniere, an outreach worker active in the city of Winnipeg, had to say about the tie-in between gang violence, guns and drug trafficking: “Anyone in Winnipeg can purchase a firearm illegally, much the same way as you would be purchasing illegal drugs. My understanding is that guns are manufactured mostly in the United States and smuggled through our two provincial borders and the American border.”

Evan Bray, chief of police with the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, said that “we can't overstate the importance of seeing the correlation between drugs and drug-related activity and firearms. They are intertwined.”

Mike Rowe, staff sergeant at the Vancouver Police Department, said that “Yes, certainly, sir, there's a correlation there that I don't think can be disputed, especially as the manufacturing or sale of fentanyl produces an extremely lucrative drug market.”

Grand Chief Abram Benedict of the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne said that “It is no secret to anyone that our community is exploited by organized crime, but what we do know is that many individuals involved in cross-border trafficking do it because of the money.”

We discovered at the public safety committee that to tackle gun crime, we need to tackle illicit drug trafficking, as they are so closely tied together.

Another fact of life that shocks Canadians is the number of deaths from toxic drugs that are readily available on our streets.

I am going to focus on my home province of British Columbia, where last year and so far this year, five people die every day of illicit drug toxicity. This is completely unacceptable. Seventy-four per cent of these victims are age 30 to 59 and 77% are male. More than half of these deaths occurred at home when the person was alone.

I grieve for a family whose son died of an apparent overdose about a year go. He had a family. He had people who loved him. He had children who relied on him. He had a good job. He had a boss and co-workers who relied on him. One evening, at home, alone, he consumed fentanyl-laced drugs and became part of our nation's terrifying statistics. The question remains open as to how he got his hands on fentanyl-laced drugs. His family wants to know.

Today, we are talking about Bill C-5, which would eliminate mandatory minimum penalties for drug-related crimes. Canadians must be made aware that the government has also introduced, in the province of British Columbia, an agreement by which possession of small amounts of illicit drugs for personal use would be decriminalized.

The problem is twofold. First, even a small amount of fentanyl can and regularly does kill people. Second, it would be indisputable evidence before Parliament that gun trafficking and illicit drug trafficking are the opposite sides of the same coin. It should be evident even to the casual observer that easing up on penalties for drug traffickers and gun traffickers is the wrong way to go, and certainly will not make our streets any safer.

The criminal justice system talks a lot about the principles behind sentencing. The two principles are denunciation and deterrence. Society denounces certain behaviour and, of course, we want to deter future behaviour like that. Parliament, over the years, has recognized these principles and has created mandatory minimum sentences in response thereto. We want to denounce and we want society to develop safer environments for everybody.

There is a quote from an important Supreme Court of Canada decision, R. v. Proulx, from 2000, which is, “the need for denunciation or deterrence is so pressing that incarceration will be the only suitable way in which to express society's condemnation of the offender's conduct or to deter similar conduct in the future.”

This is the principle that has guided Parliament over many years to introduce mandatory minimum penalties and, as previous speakers have said, it is a mystery to us why they would now want to reduce that.

We recognize that prison is not right for all people and for all situations. The Conservatives believe that those struggling with addictions should get the help they need, treatment for their addictions rather than prison. In the 2021 federal election, Conservatives put forward in their platform a plan to create 1,000 drug treatment beds, to create 50 recovery community centres and to support local and culturally appropriate addiction treatment.

We recognize that prison is not always the best way forward. We think that people should always be given the hope of recovery, not just reduced harm, not just safe supply and not just safe injection sites, but real long-lasting solutions full of hope for a better life.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Madam Speaker, that was the peculiar thing about Bill C-5. The government says it is very concerned about crimes involving firearms. What it would do is take away the requirement for people who commit crimes using a firearm to go into jail. Instead, they would be let out to commit the same crimes again and hurt more people.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Madam Speaker, Bill C-5 is legislation that seeks to reduce sentences for violent criminals. It is the same bill, unfortunately, that was introduced as Bill C-22 in the last Parliament before the Prime Minister called his completely unnecessary $630-million pandemic election.

For the second consecutive election, the Liberal Party received fewer votes than the Conservative Party. The voters did not give the Prime Minister a mandate to experiment with the criminal justice system or any other ideological experiment on how Canadians govern themselves. The evidence on how opportunistic the election was is the length of time it took for the government to recall Parliament to avoid democratic scrutiny of its failed policies. Parliamentary committees were only formed just before we were shut down for the Christmas season. So much for the sense of urgency in calling an election.

During the election, the Prime Minister and his party used vulnerable and marginalized Canadians, the same Canadians who they say suffer from systemic racism from a justice system they have been running for the last six and a half years, as a cover for the real objective of the bill, which is to pursue a Liberal ideological agenda of going soft on criminals. Canadians heard endless political rhetoric from the Liberals about how firearms pose a significant threat to public safety and the security of our communities.

As has been the Liberal practice in all eight elections I successfully ran in, the Prime Minister, on cue, attacked the one group that is statistically proven to be the most law-abiding, that being Canadians who own and responsibly use firearms. Within three and a half weeks of the House reconvening following the election, what did the Liberal Party do? It introduced legislation not to get tough on firearms offences, but to help criminals who illegally use firearms and put the lives of people at risk.

Bill C-5 will allow criminals to stay out of jail and in the community. It is only common sense, when the court system puts dangerous offenders back out on the street rather than putting them behind bars where they belong, that there is going to be a greater risk they are going to commit other offences. It is known that there is a high proportion of repeat offenders in Canada's criminal justice system and Bill C-5 will contribute to the perpetuating of the backlog in the courts.

There has been silence from the justice minister that Bill C-5 will lead to our justice system being overwhelmed by repeat offenders, basically exacerbating the situation in our trial system, which is already heavily backlogged with cases. This backlog led to the infamous Jordan decision. Canadians would be interested in hearing how Bill C-5 will increase the safety and security of individuals as applied to the Jordan decision.

The Prime Minister and his Liberal-socialist alliance want Canadians to believe that Bill C-5 is only about reducing minimum sentences for simple drug possession, but that is not so. Most Canadians would be alarmed to learn that this legislation is aimed at eliminating mandatory prison time for criminals who prey on our communities and victimize the vulnerable.

Bill C-5 puts the rights of criminals first and the rights of victims last. It endangers public safety, while doing nothing to help marginalized vulnerable Canadians. Bill C-5 proposes to eliminate mandatory prison time not for petty crimes, but for crimes like drug trafficking and acts of violence. It would even allow violent criminals to serve their sentences on house arrest and not in prison, putting communities at continued risk.

Let us now look at the elimination of mandatory prison time for firearm offences. In contrast to the Liberal election spin that demonizes lawful firearms owners to placate the anti-firearms lobby on it being so-called tough on gun violence, there is the complete hypocrisy of Bill C-5. It will eliminate mandatory minimum sentences related to gun crimes, including serious gun crimes, such as robbery with a firearm, extortion with a firearm, using a firearm in the commission of an offence, discharging a firearm with intent, which is Criminal Code language for shooting at someone, illegal possession of a prohibited or restricted firearm, importing an unauthorized firearm, discharging a firearm recklessly, and other firearms offences, such as weapons trafficking, importing or exporting knowing the firearm is unauthorized, possession of a prohibited or restricted firearm with ammunition, possession of a weapon obtained by the commission of an offence in Canada and possession for the purpose of weapons trafficking.

What Bill C-5 does, which is baked into every piece of legislation brought forward by the Liberal Party, is blame the victim. Conservatives believe that criminals should be held responsible for their actions. Victims should have just as many rights in our criminal justice system as criminals do.

Canadians know from the famous Kokanee grope incident comment about women perceiving things differently that the fake-feminist Prime Minister likes to blame the victim.

Violence against women continues to be fact of life in Canada. On average, one woman is killed by her intimate partner every five days. On September 22, 2015, Carol Culleton, Nathalie Warmerdam and Anastasia Kuzyk were murdered by someone known to each of them. The man finally convicted of their murders had a long criminal history, including charges involving two of the three women. Happening in my eastern Ontario riding during the middle of the 2015 federal election campaign, their violent death scarcely caused a ripple in the too cynical national media, leaving the families and the rural Ontario communities these women were members of to grieve in silence.

I can assure the Prime Minister that I have not forgotten what happened to these women. The system failed these women. Talk is cheap when I hear members of the government saying to scrap the progress our Conservative governments made in reforming the criminal justice system, but I invite the Minister of Justice to spend some time listening to the families of these murdered women. Changing our laws to blame the victims by giving the criminal a pat on the head is just plain wrong. Let us not allow Carol, Nathalie, Anastasia and all the other women who have been murdered by their intimate partners to have died in vain.

During this debate, Canadians have heard the Liberal Party confirm in their statements, while omitting the fact that they have been the government for the last six and a half years, that they have presided over a justice system plagued by systemic racism. The Criminal Code is supposed to apply equally to everyone in Canada, and if the government were actually serious about ending systemic racism, it would be tabling a plan to build the communities instead of resorting to blame-the-victim legislation.

An Ottawa publication has stated that Sam Goldstein, a criminal lawyer and former Crown attorney, has said that mandatory minimum sentences act as general deterrents to crime and has argued that if there are problems with marginalized communities, like social dislocation and poverty, fixing those makes more sense than adjusting criminal law. He said, "I don't like it when politicians try to interfere in criminal justice for their own social justice ends, because ultimately it doesn't serve people well." He expanded further, noting that moves toward support for therapeutic drug courts makes more sense than decriminalization.

Mandatory minimum sentences simply protect society at every level. They deter crime. They make society safer. They do not violate the Constitution. Remember, the Criminal Code is supposed to apply equally to everyone in Canada. Mandatory minimum sentences do not discriminate against those who are marginalized, and if they do intrude on judicial independence, it is to restrain activist judges who forget that their role is to uphold the law, not to rewrite it in every case.

Do not tinker with amendments to the law that will make people feel less safe in their own homes. The public has a right to feel safe, and that is no longer possible for Carol, Nathalie and Anastasia, whom our criminal justice system failed.

In closing, Bill C-5 puts the rights of criminals first and the rights of victims last. It endangers public safety while doing nothing to help marginalized and vulnerable Canadians. This bill needs to be defeated.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-5 deals with the issue of minimum sentences and diversion. Beyond the question of whether or not minimum sentences should be abolished, what impact will their abolition have on the communities in my colleague's riding or province?

We are seeing a rise in gun violence, and the government is proposing to eliminate minimum sentences for a number of firearm offences. I would therefore like to hear my colleague's views on this. Once again, I am not talking about whether these minimum sentences should be eliminated; rather, I would like to know what impact eliminating them would have and what people in his riding think about this.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to this important debate today on Bill C-5 at third reading.

It is disappointing that this bill was returned from committee virtually with all the same flaws that it arrived there with. One of the issues I want to highlight with Bill C-5 is how it would allow dangerous criminals to avoid jail time and to serve their sentences at home, in the community. In particular, Bill C-5 would extend house arrest to a number of serious crimes, including criminal harassment, sexual assault, kidnapping, abduction of a person under 14 and trafficking in persons for material benefit, in section 279.02. Extending house arrest to those offences would place victims at serious risk of abuse from their trafficker or abuser.

Earlier this year, when I asked the justice minister why this bill did this, he rejected the premise of my question. The justice minister does not seem to know what Bill C-5 would allow. It would allow human traffickers to serve their sentence at home. This is crazy, but the minister does not even know his own bill. Human trafficking is a vicious crime and traffickers prey on the most vulnerable. Criminal harassment, sexual assault and kidnapping are violent crimes by dangerous individuals.

That is why I am surprised to see this bill supported by my hon. colleagues in the NDP. The member for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke has introduced Bill C-202 on coercive control. I support that bill, and I believe I was the first MP to jointly second it. I have also written to the Minister of Justice to ask him to support Bill C-202. I have heard from constituents who have experienced domestic violence and face challenges accessing justice and safety, in particular in the face of coercive control by their former partners during and/or following the separation.

Further, having worked with survivors of human trafficking, I also know that coercive and controlling behaviour is the primary method used by human traffickers to control their victims, and many traffickers seek to continue to control their victims after the victims have left or escaped. Therefore, I have recommended that the dynamic between traffickers and victims of trafficking be included within the definition of persons “connected” in Bill C-202 or government legislation on coercive control. This would provide an additional tool to counter-trafficking units to protect victims of trafficking.

The fact is that at no time should we be allowing individuals who traffic or kidnap or sexually assault others to serve their sentences in the community. This was raised multiple times at committee by witnesses.

The chief of police of Laval, Chief Pierre Brochet, said that his force had experienced a crisis relating to sexual exploitation a few years ago. He said:

In Quebec, we are making the fight against sexual exploitation a priority, because many minors are taken and exploited by unscrupulous individuals. It is obvious that crimes such as those you mentioned must be severely punished. If we were to decide instead to impose suspended sentences on those who commit this type of crime, this could send an extremely difficult message to the victims.

Brantford chief of police Robert Davis also raised this concern about the conditional sentences for violent crimes like human trafficking and sexual assault. He testified:

We already have weak bail conditions. They will be exacerbated by weak sentences. Essentially, conditional sentences are so that they can serve in the comfort of their homes. That is not a sentence. They will be able to operate.... There are sexual assaults and kidnapping that we see tied to the drug industry with firearms being involved. There's trafficking in persons. If we're serious about human trafficking, are we going to allow house arrest for a human trafficker? It makes no sense.

Jennifer Dunn, the executive director of the London Abused Women's Centre, also testified on the danger of the government's plan to allow house arrest for human trafficking. She said:

When we consider human trafficking as a conditional sentence based on the section of the Criminal Code you mentioned, it really undermines the seriousness of this particular crime.... The problem is that when you have an individual who has a conditional sentence and is put back into the community, oftentimes women are faced with having to face the offender as well, and that is very harmful.... It really puts women at a higher risk, and it makes women have to watch their backs wherever they go.

Jennifer emphasized this: “Women are left to pick up the pieces.”

That is what this bill would do. It would leave women and survivors to pick up the pieces instead of having a government that cares enough to keep their abusers and traffickers in jail.

I also want to share the voice of Kelly Tallon Franklin, who is a survivor and the founder of Courage for Freedom. She wrote to me and the other co-chairs of the All Party Parliamentary Group to End Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking. She stated, “As a survivor of human trafficking and child sexual exploitation and abuse, I am both personally and professionally aware of how the results of certain crimes named in this bill would give access to potential criminals to victims and survivors on house arrest or accelerated bail. With over 529 active engagements with survivors that are minors since 2013, I can attest, with the support of the case notes and the testimonials, that there are already instances of breaches of bail and house arrest conditions resulting in harm and repeated violence to victims and risks to their families and communities. These are just two small samplings of the lack of protection in our communities and across the country. As the business and professional women of Canada and as a chairperson in anti-human trafficking, I am gravely troubled that house arrest is being made available for the offence that could cause women and girls at greater risk of revictimization and sex trafficking, gender-based violence and femicide situations by a lack of protection and prevention. Our volunteers and committee team members, legal and policy analysts continue to research policy and laws that affect the requirement to the removal for amendment of these serious offences by any way of any consideration.”

One of the examples that Kelly shared was an Alberta man named Jade Buro, who police had to track down last fall again after he breached his bail conditions. Jade was under a 24-hour house arrest at the time for allegations of human trafficking. What did he do? He cut off his ankle monitor and the police had to issue several public warnings that he was considered violent and dangerous and may have access to firearms. It took the police two months to track him down. With the adoption of Bill C-5, how many more human traffickers, abusers or kidnappers will breach their conditions and continue to hurt and exploit their victims?

It is unconscionable that the government wants to place such a great burden on the victims by allowing their traffickers to serve their time in the community. Once again, I will ask my Liberal and NDP colleagues why they believe that pimps and sex traffickers should be serving their sentences at home. In what situation would they support a kidnapper receiving house arrest?

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague's intervention this evening was an important intervention. Obviously, the concern on our side is that, on the one hand, we see with Bill C-21 an appearance, real or otherwise, that the Liberals are increasing firearms laws, but on the other hand, with Bill C-5, there is actually an option for those offences to be minimized and not have mandatory sentences. An example the member mentioned was the illegal use of a firearm in the commission of a crime, and there is a whole series of things.

I am wondering if he could comment on this: on the one hand, giving the appearance, as the Liberal government is doing, of strengthening gun laws, which will have no effect, and, on the other hand, diminishing that and allowing criminals to be even more emboldened, more brazen in their activities.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Mr. Speaker, today I rise to speak to Bill C-5, which seeks to make changes to the Criminal Code that would make life easier for criminals charged with violent firearms offences and criminals who are fuelling the opioid crisis here in Canada. Most of the offences we are discussing today, for which the Liberals want to get rid of mandatory jail time, are crimes that involve firearms.

To be clear, the charges for which the government is seeking to remove mandatory jail time are not for otherwise innocent individuals who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. This bill would specifically allow repeat offenders to avoid mandatory jail sentences. These are hardened criminals who have already made the choice to live outside the law and have not made an effort to change their behaviour. These are the people the Liberals would be helping with Bill C-5.

Before I get too far in my speech, and with some leniency from the House as this might be my last chance to speak before we rise for the summer, I would like to draw the attention of the House and those watching at home to something I find quite unique that is happening in my riding leading up the municipal elections on October 24 here in Ontario.

In Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, there are seven lower tier municipalities. Come election day, at least six of those will have a new face as head of council. So far, six of the seven mayors, with the exception of David Burton of Highlands East, have announced they will not be seeking re-election.

That is a major changeover, and I would be remiss if I did not take this time to acknowledge the immense contribution these remarkable individuals have made in their communities. I will quickly name them and then get back to Bill C-5.

In Algonquin Highlands, Carol Moffatt, after 16 years of public service, will not be on the ballot. Mayor Moffatt was first elected as councillor in 2006. She was elected mayor in 2010 and then acclaimed as mayor in 2014 and again 2018, where she led one of two all-female municipal councils in Ontario.

In Brock Township, after the sudden passing of the township's first female mayor, Debbie Bath-Hadden in 2021, John Grant, a former councillor and Durham regional councillor and mayor, stepped into the role and pledged to guide the municipality with a steady hand into the next election.

Scott McFadden will not seek re-election in Cavan-Monaghan after being first elected as deputy mayor in 2010, then elected mayor in 2014 and re-elected in 2018.

After 16 years in public service, Andrea Roberts will not re-offer as mayor of Dysart. In addition to leading council, Mayor Roberts previously served as councillor and deputy mayor. Joining her is Patrick Kennedy, deputy mayor of Dysart, who informed the community recently he would not be seeking re-election after just one term.

In Kawartha Lakes, Andy Letham will not seek a third term as mayor. He was first elected to lead the municipality in 2014 and re-elected in 2018. He also spent a term as a councillor in 2003.

Brent Devolin, first elected in 2014 and re-elected in 2018, will not seek re-election and a third term as mayor of Minden Hills.

Over the years, in my previous role with my predecessor, I got to know each one of these municipal leaders very well. I consider them friends and not just colleagues. Each council and staff faced many challenges during their time. They dealt with natural disasters and the COVID pandemic while at the same time claiming many accomplishments, such as new community centres, Internet connectivity, improved roads and bridges, new parks, and increased water and sewer capacity to prepare for future growth. The list, of course, goes on.

It is no secret that municipal representatives are often the closest to the issues being felt at home. Most, especially in small and rural communities, are accessible to the public and many openly publish their personal telephone numbers. All of the mayors and deputy mayors I just mentioned, along with the councillors and staff, have placed their marks on the people they serve. I am confident to say that those not seeking re-election depart leaving their respective municipalities in strong shape and well prepared for the future.

Now, I move on to today's debate on Bill C-5. As I mentioned off the top, it is a bill that would remove mandatory jail time in some circumstances for a lot of crimes that involve firearms. Again, the charges for which the government would be removing the mandatory jail time would specifically allow repeat offenders to avoid mandatory jail sentences.

For example, the bill proposes to eliminate mandatory jail time for criminals charged with robbery with a firearm, extortion with a firearm, weapons trafficking, importing or exporting knowing a firearm is unauthorized, discharging a firearm with intent, using a firearm in the commission of an offence, possession of a prohibited or restricted firearm with ammunition, possession of a weapon obtained by the commission of an offence, and possession for the purpose of weapons trafficking. These are just a few of the types of offences for which mandatory jail time would be removed under Bill C-5.

If people do not think it can get much worse after the list I just mentioned, it really does. In this bill, the Liberals are making more criminal charges eligible to receive conditional sentences, also known as house arrest.

There may be cases where house arrest is acceptable, but house arrest should never be made available to dangerous offenders and criminals whose actions have victimized an innocent person or family. Should a criminal who abducted a child under the age of 14 be eligible for house arrest? Should a criminal who benefits financially from the scourge of human trafficking be eligible for house arrest? Should someone convicted of kidnapping get house arrest? Should criminals charged with sexual assault be able to serve their time back in that same community, potentially near their victims?

The Liberals say yes to all of the above. There is an even better one still to come. The Liberals are trying to expand house arrest for those charged with prison breach. In what world does that make any sense? We would be rewarding people for breaking out of prison with house arrest, so they do not have to bother spending time behind bars if they can just break out.

As many members have said in this debate, one really cannot make this stuff up. The government is trying to make a complete mockery of the Canadian justice system, demoralize law enforcement and frighten victims, all at the same time.

A few months ago, the community I live in, Lindsay, held a public forum. The specific topic was to talk about the increase of petty crimes in the neighbourhood. Citizens did not feel safe. They had concerns that criminals were getting arrested, and a few moments later they were out and back on the streets, what is called a “revolving door”. They did not seem to feel that the justice system was working for them. We had a community meeting to discuss this. What was talked about a lot at the time, a few months ago, was Bill C-75, another bill that decreased sentences and made them more lenient so criminals could get out of jail more easily. The Crown prosecutor made that very clear. The Crown's hands were tied. This was a piece of legislation, and obviously the law has to be enforced through the judicial system, so these were the cards they were dealt. The community felt it.

As my friend from Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon just mentioned, people need to have faith in the criminal justice system. When they pay their taxes and do everything right, they expect a safe community and they expect their government to work for them and to provide laws that allow law enforcement to do its job and keep the community safe. They just were not feeling it.

These people are just becoming victims, scared in their own community. People are scared to go out at night. This is a community of 20,000 people. It was unheard of, just a few years ago, for people to feel they could not leave their house at night. It is unbelievable. It really is. We have just heard story after story from colleagues in this place about how communities are becoming less safe because of poor legislation brought in by the government.

If we want to talk about ways to help people, this party had a massive plan to fund mental health and treat it as health, to talk about getting people treatment for their addictions and expanding economic opportunities across the board to Canadians in general. There was a robust plan to deal with that. At the same time, those who are committing the most heinous of crimes, the ones I just mentioned, should be behind bars, not walking our streets. I know police have said we cannot arrest our way out of this, and I totally agree. That is why we had those robust options, as well as putting those who are violent, repeat offenders behind bars, where they deserve to be, not out on our streets.

To conclude, I will be strongly voting against Bill C-5, and I encourage each and every member of this House to do so as well.

[Jenica Atwin, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Mr. Speaker, at the end of his speech, the hon. member questioned why the government brought this bill forward to begin with. I would encourage the member to look at the extensive research around mandatory minimums and the harms they actually cause in the justice system.

I want to pick up on something he said. I completely agree that Canadians struggling with addiction deserve compassion. This is a very important line from his speech today. I would also pick up on some of the words that the member for Vancouver Kingsway said around statistics: that about 70% of those in prisons currently may have undiagnosed mental health issues or addictions.

In recognition of the social determinants of crime, if Bill C-5 is not something to be considered by this member, what should we be doing to address some of these issues?