I would hope that would be the case, certainly, given how many lives are being taken and given how important it is that we tackle gun smuggling. I would agree with the statement you made; however, the information that your office has provided to my office is that since the Liberals formed government in 2015, not one person has been awarded the current 10-year maximum sentence. It is frustrating to see you talk on national television, here today and in question period to our questions about how you're getting tough on gun traffickers and increasing the maximum to 14 years when the current sentence of 10 years has never been used since your Prime Minister formed government a few years ago.
I just feel that it's really a non-starter. It's really not going to do a lot to combat this issue, unfortunately. That part of Bill C-21 isn't going to make that much of an impact, given that the maximum 10-year sentence has never been used since the Liberals formed government a few years ago.
I want to move on to the red flag provisions.
To be honest, this is an area that I was looking forward to. As you'll recall, I asked that this be split from the bill so that we can take the politics out of it and look to support the red flag provisions. You were in the chamber at that time. You did not allow me to split that out of there.
We found in our testimony that the Canadian Bar Association; the National Association of Women and the Law, which was a Liberal witness; domestic violence groups from Quebec; and also three chiefs and vice-chiefs we invited to committee did not want those red flag laws passed in this bill. They did not support them. They're the very groups that I would have imagined would have supported them, because they were supposed to be for vulnerable groups and women in domestic violence situations. That's why I was interested in supporting them off the bat, yet we've heard first-hand that they're no good.
In fact, the quotes were quite damning. The women's group said that it would prohibit extremely quick action that is essential to preventing femicide and is likely to be risky and impractical for women whose safety is at risk. It also said that it would do more harm than good for women impacted by this. The indigenous groups mentioned that racism could play a factor and that the red flag laws could be abused. If someone just doesn't like you in a first nation, they can have your guns apprehended.
That is the impression that your red flag laws in this bill have given the public: They don't seem to be any good. It's frustrating, because there's not a lot in this bill that we can really talk about. You already passed the handgun ban through regulation in the fall. That major “keystone”, as you called it, in Bill C-21 has already been accomplished by your government.