I sit on another committee, and I always find that when things get a little too hot, the government likes to hide behind this privilege that they've identified. It's rather interesting.
I guess I can come to my own conclusions, and the Canadian public certainly will come to their own conclusions, about when this was actually thought of: Do you know what? Let's not put it in right away. If we put it in right away, we're going to have a huge debate on our hands. The Canadian public is going to be up in arms—pardon the pun—about expanding the definition of prohibited firearm to include hunting rifles and shotguns that are, right now, before this passes, non-restricted firearms in this country.
I think it was a deliberate attempt to mislead the Canadian public and mislead Parliament. This was planned.
At any rate, this is for the public at home to see what we're talking about and why this is so disconcerting. In G-4, which is a government amendment, one thing they're adding there is that they want to change the definition in subsection 84(1) of the Criminal Code to expand the definition of a prohibited firearm. They want to expand and add to the definition to include the following:
a firearm that is a rifle or shotgun, that is capable of discharging centre-fire ammunition in a semi-automatic manner and that is designed to accept a detachable cartridge magazine with a capacity greater than five cartridges of the type for which the firearm was originally designed
In effect, this eleventh-hour backdoor change to the definition of a prohibited firearm will render hundreds of thousands of firearms that are currently in circulation in this country—legally acquired, many of them non-restricted—to now be not restricted but completely prohibited.
On a personal note, my grandchildren hunt. Their father has passed on some incredible legacy to them from his father about hunting. They hunt for food. They don't have regular beef in the fridge. They have antelope, deer, elk, moose and bear. Everything else that they can hunt, they hunt. It's a great legacy. I'm so proud of what my grandchildren are doing and how my son-in-law is teaching them these skills. This year they got an antelope and a moose. They have other animals that they are seeking to fill up their fridges with.
The firearms they use, legally acquired and legally possessed, are now going to be prohibited. Why? The suggestion earlier was that these firearms that exist and that we have on this list now are military. Strangely, they're using a military firearm for that. My grandson has a semi-automatic rifle, and I asked him recently why he has one. He said, “Papa, I care about my animals. I don't want them to suffer. If I take an animal and he doesn't go down right away, I need to have access to make sure I can take him down in a humane way.” I find that to be pretty remarkable for a 14-year-old little boy.
It just shows, again, the absolute and utter ignorance of this government and the members of this government with regard to this whole process of trying to identify these big, bad people who are the Canadian firearm owners who are somehow a risk to the Canadian public, and of having firearms that, in some cases, have been passed down for generations now all of a sudden be illegal.
I find that to be incredibly problematic, and it is an example, again, of how ideology trumps common sense.
Again, this is not directed at you folks.
I want to pick up on a comment that my colleague, Mr. Lloyd, spoke about with respect to the Canadian Bill of Rights in 1960. Section 1 says:
It is hereby recognized and declared that in Canada there have existed and shall continue to exist without discrimination by reason of race, national origin, colour, religion or sex, the following human rights and fundamental freedoms, namely,
(a) the right of the individual to life, liberty, security of the person and enjoyment of property, and the right not to be deprived thereof except by due process of law;
That's the key. Because as I understand what will happen, the fact that this deceptive Liberal government intends to try to push this through means that they won't have to then compensate anyone if they make all these firearms illegal, because that's the due process of law in this country. Would that be a fair assessment?
By listing what originally was a non-restricted firearm as a prohibited firearm, and this is now prohibited, would mean that the government could take that property, because that follows the due process of law. Would that be a correct assumption?