The bottom line here again—and I'll use the term, and this is not necessarily a question, to give you a break, but a statement—is that the government is not looking at the function of a firearm. It's looking at what it looks like. I guess a case in point about why we ask about the variant is that the Mossberg 715T. It's a .22 calibre rifle. It's identical in structure and operation to the Mossberg 702 rifle. The one difference is that, where the Mossberg 702 has a traditional wood-looking stock on the exterior, the 715T has a plastic shell that's designed to look like an AR-15. We've effectively said that this government is classifying firearms by how they look. If they look scary, we're going to make sure that we prohibit them. That was a lot of what the order in council was about, and it certainly is something that causes consternation now.
What's interesting is that, on Tuesday when this was released to the public by the fact that the motion was made here at committee, there were a significant number of people from around the country who went out and shared the concerns of the public. I know that my phone calls and my emails have certainly picked up about this issue. The Canadian public feels deceived. We had many ministers and members of the government speak in Parliament, at this committee, and elsewhere about how they're not going after hunters and sport shooters, how they're not going after any of these, how there would be no impact on them, how they're trying to make the public safe and how they're trying to deal with gangs and criminals. I don't know how many gang members are worried about this legislation. We don't seem to be focusing any attention on what gangs are doing.
I know Ms. Dancho mentioned earlier the billions of dollars that this particular bill will actually cost if the government considers any confiscation plan whatsoever. I don't think it will. I think it'll just ram this through and screw the public. Forget the Canadian Bill of Rights. It will take property, make it illegal and, in that way, circumvent any responsibility it has to compensate people for this.
However, just think of what that would do. If we had even $1 billion that we would give to legitimate programs that make a difference on.... Kids get involved in gangs. My friend Marcell Wilson from the One by One Movement, who we had here in committee on.... They're making huge inroads in the Toronto area.
The porous areas of our border, law enforcement knows right now, are the main vehicles by which smuggled firearms enter this country. We need to have those resources deployed there to deal with the smuggled firearms out of the U.S. and to deal with kids' getting involved in gangs in the first place.
You know, a couple years back, the now Minister of Public Safety Marco Mendicino and I were on—and, Pam, I'm sure you'll love this—Political Blind Date. I know it's an odd couple, but Marco and I were on a blind date together. I'm not too proud to say it, but he's actually not a bad guy if you get rid of his politics. Anyway, the idea was that TVO did this particular program, and we talked about firearms. I had the privilege of having Marco out in my riding in Medicine Hat, Alberta. We went to a certified firearms instructor, and he provided an abbreviated lesson on what firearms are about, how safe the industry is, what rigour people have to go through to get a PAL, and how much increased that rigour is when you get to an RPAL, a restricted possession and acquisition licence. I have both, by the way.
Marco went through this, and even during our presentation, the firearm instructor had students handle firearms so they would have familiarity with them. Marco refused to participate, and that was his choice.
Then we went out to a gun range, the Medicine Hat Rifle and Revolver Club, a great club in Medicine Hat run by a great group of people. We had some people from industry, some hunters there. We had some gun shops there and we had some individuals who participate in various sport-shooting disciplines there. The idea was to show Marco Mendicino what rigour they go through for safety on the range. It was great.
Then I had the privilege of going down and seeing Marco in his riding. We went down to a number of different areas. Lawrence Heights was one of them. We played a little basketball with some street kids and we had a great time.
There was one thing that really struck me. We went to a housing project where a young mom recounted the story of her two young daughters. I believe they are both under the age of eight, and they were shot in a gang shooting. Thankfully, they were not killed, but I'm sure they will both have trauma for a lifetime.
I asked this lady what we, as legislators in Parliament, should be doing to make a difference for public safety in this country, seeing as she and her family were front and centre in being victims of this. Unfortunately, this particular dialogue wasn't aired. They still have it on their tapes, but it didn't air, which I'm not surprised about. She said, “You know, the gang bangers in this city are not afraid of law enforcement. They are not afraid of the law. Nothing happens to them.” I said, “So how do we change that?” Marco was getting very nervous by this stage. She said, “There needs to be serious accountability by those people in this country who use firearms in the commission of an offence, and there is not. There is no accountability for them.”
I find it rather disconcerting that, again, we have a bill in front of us that does little. It's like lipstick on a pig. It looks as though it does something beautiful, but it actually makes no difference to public safety.
That's not your fault. You have to do the dance to the music that your masters play, and I get that. However, as I said on Tuesday, I'm very concerned about what this will do to an industry that contributes, as has been indicated by my colleagues, significant dollars, billions of dollars, to our GDP and that impacts the lives, careers and businesses of a multitude of Canadians, tens of thousands of Canadians. Millions of Canadians who have the exact firearms that the government is trying to prohibit here, which have now become worthless, will overnight be turned into administrative criminals.
That's what they should be called. They will become administrative criminals. Why? They didn't commit an offence. They didn't go out and harm anybody. They are not a risk to anybody, not at all. It's because, on a piece of paper, somebody said they didn't agree that these firearms should be owned by anyone. They can't find any evidence to show that the 514 firearms and their variants listed are a danger to the public. Guns aren't a danger to the public. People are. The people's use of them is. That's what we have to try to do.
I would be joining government in supporting any legislation that we could work together on that would say that we have a problem with gangs, we have a problem with smuggled firearms, we have a problem with reduced sentencing, and gun crimes aren't taken seriously. We have a revolving-door justice system that keeps people out of jail more than it keeps them in.
I remember when I started policing in 1980—that's probably before you were born, Paul—we had a thing called the Bail Reform Act that actually did something. It was called reverse onus. Paul would remember that. If I charged somebody with a criminal offence, and that person was able to get out on bail, they had conditions and those laid out a whole series of—