Debates of May 28th, 2021

The House resumed from April 23 consideration of the motion that Bill C-21, An Act to amend certain Acts and to make certain consequential amendments (firearms), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Criminal Code

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

The hon. member for Kingston and the Islands has 17 minutes and 39 seconds remaining in the debate.

Resuming debate, the hon. member.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to continue my discussion on this piece of legislation. You were actually sitting in the chair when you gave me the first two minutes and 21 seconds of debate on this, so I am glad to see that we are coming full circle to complete this.

It is important to point out, as many people have, not just within the House, but also outside of the House, that this piece of legislation is not what unfortunately the Conservatives are trying to label it as, an attack on legal gun owners. As a matter of fact, the bill is only going to affect about 3% to 5% of gun owners as it attempts to only ban military-style assault rifles, in other words, guns that are designed to kill the maximum number of people possible.

I come from a family both on my side and on my wife's side of proud hunters who have hunted for many generations going back whether they were in Canada or immigrated from another country. A close uncle of mine on my mother's side owns a lodge near Westport, Ontario with acres and acres of land, where he hunts regularly and uses the guns that he has to hunt. He is not concerned about this bill because he does not have military-style assault rifles. He does not see the need to have semi-automatic or automatic weapons that are designed to kill people in combat to be used for the purpose of hunting.

My late father-in-law grew up on a hunting and fishing lodge in Plevna, Ontario, where he, his father and his grandfather routinely hosted visitors, a lot from the United States, who would come to the lodge where they would be taken out fishing and hunting and shown the great outdoors of Canada.

If people in these situations had listened to the narrative coming from the Conservative Party, they would have great concern over what they were hearing. That is because the Conservatives like to leave out some of the very important points as to what the bill is attempting to do. I will get to why I think that is later in my speech.

It is important to address the fact that the bill is meeting the concerns of not just parliamentarians, but of many citizens and stakeholders throughout this country.

Let us go to chiefs of police for starters. Over the years, there have been a number of chiefs of police who have warned about the risks associated with weapons of this style. The Saskatoon Police Chief, Troy Cooper said in an interview, “People who use firearms in committing crimes in Saskatchewan obtain them primarily by theft”. The Regina Police Chief, Evan Bray, said that crime guns are “not being brought in by the United States....[but are] coming from break and enters”.

Therefore, people have to ask themselves if they should believe the Conservative narrative that all these guns that are being used for this purpose are coming through illegal means through the border, because that is the narrative that the Conservative Party has trumpeted for years in the House as I have heard it myself, or do we believe the chief of police from Regina? With all due respect to my Conservative colleagues, I tend to side with those who seem to have the facts and evidence and the real-life experience, notwithstanding the fact that of course there would be members from the House who would have real-life experience in law enforcement as well.

Recently, Edmonton Police Chief, Dale McFee, “said roughly five to 10 per cent of Edmonton's crime guns are coming across the U.S. border.” That is 5% to 10%. The quote goes on to say, “The remainder have either been acquired legally, obtained through 'straw purchasers' or stolen”.

There was a quote recently in Ontario from Inspector Chris Renwick, who told a Crime Prevention Ottawa board meeting that half the crime guns recovered within Canada are usually legally registered, but stolen. However, we hear the narrative from the other side of the aisle that all the guns that are used in committing crimes are coming from across the border, and that we have to strengthen those border measures and get tough on crime. Although I am sure that it does give a fraction of the picture, it indeed misses a vast majority of what the police chiefs are identifying as concerns.

Since I am on the topic of talking about making sure that the proper tools are there for crime prevention, I should remind the House that, when the Conservatives were in power, billions of dollars were removed from the CBSA's ability to do this work. However, over the last number of years, money has been returned to ramp up those efforts: in the last Parliament, $327 million to combat gun and gang violence, $86 million to prevent cross-border smuggling of illegal firearms. The Conservative Party voted against that. The Conservatives are going to have to explain that one to me, even though they claim that is how all of these guns are coming into Canada. This year alone, there is $30.8 million allocated to support the CBSA's efforts to reduce border-related gang activity and prevent firearms from being smuggled into Canada.

Therefore, are we interested in working on that smuggling problem; are we interested in working at combatting the crime that is related? We are absolutely interested. We are doing that and working on that, but it is not the only solution. We do not attack a large problem like this by thinking that working on one thing, which, as I already said, the Conservatives scaled back on, is going to be the only solution.

I want to turn briefly to an issue that came up in the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security because it is extremely germane to the discussion and, indeed, the position that is being taken by Conservatives.

Before I do that, let me just jump to something else here. The Canadian National Firearms Association has been quoted saying that the Leader of the Opposition met numerous times with the National Firearms Association in Canada when he was running for leadership. One might ask the question of why that is relevant to the Conservative Party's position on this bill. It is quite relevant because when we take the main firearms policy goals of the CCFR and compare those to what is in the platform of the leader of the Conservative Party, they are almost identical. They could have been written by the CCFR.

The CCFR asked for a simple classification system. In the document released by the Leader of the Opposition, he specifically talks about introducing a simplified classification system.

The CCFR asked that people be able to discharge any firearm they own on their own property. That is the Leader of the Opposition's platform commitment.

A definition of a converted fully automatic and variant is requested to be clearly described in legislation. Guess what? The Conservative Party leader commits in his platform to remove the arbitrary classification of firearms.

The CCFR requests to re-establish the service standard for issuing new FRT numbers; and, guess what, the Conservative Party leader committed to that in his platform.

There is a request by the organization to change the limits to 10 rounds for all magazines. Guess what the leader said in a town hall meeting: “I don't like the restrictions” that are inherently there as they relate to the number of rounds in all magazines. He said that on May 15, 2020, only one year ago.

We can see that it is hard, when we compare these documents, to not come to the conclusion that the Conservative Party is beholden to the National Firearms Association in Canada, considering that its own document on this, as it relates to what they are running on in the election, is almost a carbon copy of what the association is asking for.

This brings me to what I had mentioned a few moments ago, and that is an issue that happened in the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. I really wish I could share a prop in here, but I will not, because that is against the rules, but I draw the attention of members to two particular cartoons. I am looking at them, so I will try to describe them to the best of my ability. There are two cartoons that were issued by the National Firearms Association of Canada, that are quite demeaning in their approach to the representation of the member for Oakville and our Deputy Prime Minister. There is another one that has the Prime Minister in it and what appears to be his wife. These are demeaning in the fact that they try to associate fearful women and guns, and there are other individuals standing in the picture holding guns saying, “I think we'll be fine....” By any measure, nobody in this House should accept those as being a proper way to engage in our democratic society.

In any event, the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security brought forward a motion to their committee meeting in February that said something I want to read into the record of the House. It said:

That the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security condemn the National Firearms Association and statements made by Sheldon Clare, President, on February 16, 2021 in a video posted online with regards to the introduction of the Bill C-21 which states: “…revisit their old woodworking and metal working skills and construct guillotines again (laughter). That would really be the best kind of Committee of Public Safety to get this reestablished. If they want to make it about public safety that was the way. The sound of this person’s voice is not one that is joking. He was not joking. I don’t think they understand that this is not New Zealand, this is not the United Kingdom, this is not Australia. This is a country made up of people who been here for thousands of years, our aboriginal people, immigrants from Europe who fled tyranny, who fought against tyranny and ... know tyranny when they see it. And this my friends is tyranny”

The House of Commons standing committee introduced this motion asking the committee to condemn a comment made by the National Firearms Association president that specifically referred to their committee as a committee that should go back to studying woodworking and metalworking skills and “construct guillotines”. That is what the National Firearms Association president said, and all the committee asked was that the comments be condemned.

I will fast-forward to the vote on that. Do members know how the vote went on that? Everybody voted in favour, except for four members: the member for Lakeland, the member for Battle River—Crowfoot, the member for Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner and the member for Langley—Aldergrove. They did not vote against it; they abstained. I went back and watched the video of that. I watched the rationale that the member for Lakeland used in trying to put that into an in camera meeting. She basically said this is an issue that if somebody's life feels threatened, they should be contacting the police, and therefore they really should not be talking about this in public, because, if they did, then it is an ongoing investigation. What a load of crock that is, with all due respect. This is a public statement that had been made in the public about not somebody being attacked individually, but specifically about what the committee should focus its work on.

“Perhaps the committee should focus its work on revisiting their old woodworking and metal skills to construct guillotines.” The members for Lakeland, Battle River—Crowfoot, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner and Langley—Aldergrove could not not even bring themselves to vote in favour of the motion condemning those words. We have to wonder why that would be. How tightly does one have to be intertwined with the National Firearms Association to not vote in favour of that? I believe I have already demonstrated that by telling members how intertwined the leader of the opposition's policy and platform commitments on firearms are with the requests of the National Firearms Association.

As I conclude, I will leave members with the thought that perhaps the opposition to this bill is less about people coming here and genuinely trying to look for solutions as much as it is being directed by an organization that has a stranglehold on a party. I hear members from the other side saying “wow”, but maybe they can explain to me why the four members I pointed out would somehow not be willing to vote in favour. What makes it even worse is that somehow they thought they were skating the issue by abstaining. If they were against it and truly believed what the member for Lakeland said, why did they not vote against it? It is because they knew that by voting in favour they would be sending a message back to the organization their party is so intertwined with, which would not be beneficial to their future campaigns. That is the only conclusion that I can come to.

This legislation is necessary. We need to move forward with it and we need to protect Canadians' lives. We need to listen to the chiefs of police, whom I quoted earlier, so that we can save lives in Canada. We need to stop playing games for the benefit of some people in this country who are trying to promote, rightfully so, their position on the matter but unfortunately are completely intertwined with the Conservative Party.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Madam Speaker, I wish I could take more than just a few minutes to refute all the misinformation the member put over. However, I will start with his comment about the four members abstaining.

Maybe the member could tell us how many members of the Liberal cabinet abstained on voting to declare as genocide what the Chinese government is doing to a million Uighurs. He does not have to answer, because the answer is zero. Not one of them had the courage to stand up and say that.

I will go on to some of the other falsehoods. I wonder if perhaps the member has read something called the Public Accounts. People may lie and present misinformation, but the Public Accounts do not. If the member looked, he would see that when the Liberal government took over, it slashed $400 million from CBSA. It slashed hundreds of FTEs, and its departmental plans going forward show that, based on inflation, it is cutting $200 million more from CBSA. The truth hurts. Perhaps the member should acknowledge that.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, what a distraction that was. The member should know that I voted in favour of that motion. However, he is trying to compare two completely different issues.

As the member said that he had a lot more to say to me on this issue, he should email me. I would love to get into a discussion about this with him. We could go back and forth all day on it, and I will continue to prove my point to him as best I can, but whether he will believe me is a different issue.

I voted in favour of the motion that the member brought up. I thought it was an important issue. If he wants to wait to ask a question of a minister during question period, which he has the ability to do, he should do that so that he could get the answers to those questions.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech.

The Conservatives are obviously not happy about Bill C-21. I think that was to be expected, even though the bill only sets out half-measures, particularly the fact that the buyback program is optional.

Does my colleague agree that, since the government was introducing a bill in this regard anyway, it could have gone with one that was much clearer and that did not alienate people who support the cause, such as those affected by the events at the École Polytechnique?

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, here is the difference between an opposition that is trying to work with a government on a bill and an opposition that is outright against it no matter what.

There are some good arguments for what the Bloc has been advocating for, which is making the purchase program a requirement rather than it being voluntary. Personally, I am undecided on that issue, but I think there could be more compromise given to that.

I hope to be able to work on this side of the House with the member and the Bloc Québécois to make this the best legislation for Canadians. Personally, I have not ruled out what the member is proposing as an option.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Madam Speaker, the NDP wants legislation that is going to make Canadians safe. We have also been hearing from groups saying there has been very little consultation. In fact, there has been no consultation when it comes to airsoft and replica guns. We have received letters and calls from hundreds of concerned airsoft owners and businesses who do not understand why airsoft guns are going to become illegal under this legislation. We have seen states in the United States create regulations around brightly-coloured plastic tips, trigger guards and age restrictions. The industry is open to a regulatory regime if necessary, but there has not been appropriate consultation.

Could the member speak about whom the government consulted from the airsoft industry when it was preparing the bill? The industry is directly impacted by this bill.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, I think the member knows that I cannot comment directly on whom the government consulted. The information I would receive would be the same information he would receive regarding that. I will say the intent of this was not to affect the paintball industry. The minister has said that is not the intent, and if more work needs to be done to further clarify that I would certainly support it.

The paintball industry has a number of operations in my region, if not specifically in my riding, as it is primarily rural. That is a legitimate concern that has been brought forward, but we should not allow that legitimate concern and our work to fix that to somehow throw us off course, as the Conservatives are trying to do with this issue.

I appreciate the way the member brought it up. I think there is an opportunity to work together to ensure clarity around this, but let us not allow this to derail us from the work that we need to do.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate that the member seem exercised today. I am a passionate advocate myself, so I do not judge that, but I thank him for a lot of the details he gave about his family, his family background and his rant about the public safety committee. Maybe I will ask a question about the details of the legislation, as it seems to me that is what we are supposed to actually be doing today.

I am curious about the member's comments about the hunters he knows who believe they will not be impacted, and that no firearms used for hunting would be impacted by Bill C-21 or by the May 2020 OIC, because the government has built in an exemption for indigenous hunters. Of course, they use firearms for sustenance hunting that are banned under the Liberals' bill, as do thousands and millions of sport shooters and hunters across the country.

One of the other problems, though, is that the government has made it so that indigenous hunters cannot take their firearms to licensed gunsmiths because they are not covered by the exemption. Obviously, that causes a safety concern. It prevents indigenous hunters from being able to use their firearms, and it is a contravention of their section 35 rights.

Will the member fight to fix this?

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, I would agree with the member that we are equally as passionate on our opposing sides of the issue. I appreciate that. She asked about the people I know.

I have an uncle who is a big part of the Italian community and a big hunter. Not only is he a hunter, but he also helped to build a shooting facility as part of the Italo-Canadian Club in Kingston. Once they are aware of the legislation and have gone beyond the talking points of what we are hearing from the Conservatives, the concern genuinely starts to dissipate. I had a very good conversation with him about that specifically and his concerns when he first started hearing about this. Once I was able to reference actual legislation, not highly charged comments or lobbying organizations, and show exactly what was going on, by and large his concerns dissipated.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech and for the open-mindedness he demonstrated earlier.

I have another suggestion for him. Will the members of his government also be open to sitting down and defining which firearms should be prohibited, as a first step?

As the bill currently stands, we see that some assault weapons are banned while others are not, and there is no real reason for that.

The first thing to do would be to define the characteristics of weapons that should be prohibited so that they can be put on the list. This is not just a matter of picking out of a hat the models of firearms we have heard most about.

I would like to know what my colleague thinks about that.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, first of all, I cannot commit to anything on behalf of the government, as requested by the member, but I can say that the government has always been there, in my opinion, and wanted to work with stakeholders. The member would know that the Minister of Public Safety banned roughly 1,500 weapons through an order in council about a year ago. As to how the classifications work and how things are specifically addressed, I personally am a little leery of members of Parliament, politicians, weighing in on discussions of one consideration or another. I would prefer that experts define what those are. I would prefer that chiefs of police are consulted on this.

If the member is asking my personal opinion of whether it is important to consult and have discussions to get some kind of classification system, I would agree with that. I cannot comment specifically on the amount of consultation that went on with respect to that or on anything more that will happen.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time today with the member for Sarnia—Lambton.

For this debate, I am adding my thoughts to those of my colleagues from Lakeland and Provencher, who have already pointed out what is wrong with Bill C-21's wrong-headed idea of firearms policy.

The member for Lakeland, who serves as the shadow minister of public safety, has done an incredible job in exposing many of the fallacies and misconceptions in how the Liberal government deals with firearms. After doing so in this House, she received a shockingly bad and partisan response from the Minister of Public Safety. That says it all about how Liberals are handling this important issue.

Simply put, the Liberal government proposes to take firearms from co-operative, law-abiding citizens while doing nothing to stop the flow of illegal guns to dangerous criminals and gangs, which is where the crisis is coming from in the first place. Of course, violent crime with illegal firearms is happening in Canada and has especially been a growing concern for certain cities.

There is a lot more to say about the alarming rise of rural crime as well, which has to do with a completely different set of circumstances for citizens and law enforcement, but today I will focus on a basic principle the Liberal government is totally missing.

Instead of targeting law-abiding Canadians and firearm retailers, the government should be investing in police anti-gang and gun units, and in the CBSA, to provide law enforcement with all the resources it needs to stop illegal smuggling operations and get dangerous criminals and gangs off our streets. This is a common sense approach that would proactively save lives and prevent crime.

In his speech, the member for Kingston and the Islands indicated that rather than deal with high rates of crime, we should just ban guns instead and all crime would magically stop. This is the dangerous mentality the government has when dealing with crime. Rather than deal with the actual problem, it chooses to make a splashy announcement that sounds like it is doing something, but in reality, it continually harasses law-abiding gun owners, who are the most highly vetted citizens in Canada.

This is exactly the problem with what the Liberals have presented in Bill C-21. They are not directing the necessary effort to where expert advice and data indicate it should be going. If we are not keeping illegal guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals, then nothing will change.

If there is any real hope of better protecting the public from these threats, we must focus on stronger enforcement and on deterrence of criminal activity, gangs and illegal gun trafficking. That is what it will take for any new firearms policy to be effective. This is what the experts and professionals are telling us. It is what police departments across Canada are saying when discussing this legislation. I will quote a few prominent members of those respective forces.

Toronto Police Association president, Mike McCormack, said, “There's no way in my world or any world I know that this would have an impact on somebody who's going to go out and buy an illegal gun and use it to kill another person or shoot another person.”

Retired Toronto staff inspector Mike Earl noted, “A handgun ban is ridiculous and doesn’t address the actual problem of criminals shooting up the city. If those people aren't obeying the laws that are already in place, why would they obey a ban?”

Winnipeg police inspector Max Waddell said that, while a ban on all guns might seem like a common sense approach, banning guns wouldn't necessarily stop gun violence. He explains:

I’ll draw a parallel. Illicit drugs are also banned. Yet we see dramatic increases and challenges around methamphetamine...because it’s that supply and demand force that causes individuals to obtain these firearms whether it’s to protect their drug trade, prevent harm, to use it for extortion. Whatever the criminal element is needing these guns for.

There are many more quotes from professionals, people the government clearly failed to consult while drafting this legislation, or else it would have reconsidered a full-scale ban on handguns. If we think about it for a moment, it is a bizarre move for how it wants to set up such a ban and really shows the major flaw with its entire program.

The government would be creating conditions on federal firearms licences to restrict handgun storage of transport within municipalities that have passed such bylaws. These bylaws would effectively be conditions on licences, which means it would only target lawful Canadians who already have the paperwork and are complying with the rules. This provision would only add more red tape and regulations for law-abiding Canadians, and these would be subject to change from community to community depending on whether a particular municipality has passed a bylaw. This is nothing but redundancy and ineffectiveness, and there are mayors who have already spoken out against this bizarre legislation.

Don Iveson, the mayor of Edmonton said, “it’s not the direction we would go in...to pursue a city-specific ban when the issue of the flow of these weapons and their ties to, particularly, drugs and organized crime is much more than a municipality-by-municipality issue”.

He makes a good point. I am all for the division of powers and decentralized government, but when it comes to tackling gun crime and illegal guns, there needs to be a consistent and national approach.

The mayor of Halifax, Mike Savage, points out what we think would be obvious, but clearly it is not. He questioned whether a handgun ban would successfully counter gun violence in a city because, as he says, “A lot of them are not registered weapons”. These are the same handguns used by criminals. Further to his point, these are firearms and they are not obtained legally.

We need to focus on a cost-effective gun control program that is designed to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, while at the same time respecting the rights of law-abiding Canadians to own and use firearms responsibly. The reality is that at least 80% of guns used in Canadian gun crimes are illegally smuggled in from the United States, meaning that municipal regulations on law-abiding firearms owners will not change much.

Why is the government not focusing on the main supply for gun crime in this country? If it would have consulted those who are dealing with gun crime on the front lines, this bill would be significantly different. Some of the measures that we all support in this House are going to be mandatory minimum sentences for the criminal use of firearms, although the government is moving to remove some of those.

We already have strict processes for people who go in to buy firearms. I referenced earlier in my speech that they are among the most highly vetted citizens in Canada because of the process it takes to acquire the certification to be able to acquire and possess a firearm. One of the most important elements this bill fails to address is putting more law enforcement officers on our streets to deal with the illegal guns and the gangs that plague our cities.

A strange part of the legislation has caught many of my constituents off guard with the prohibition of the importation, exportation and sale of all non-regulated air guns that look like modern firearms. In case members in other parties, especially the governing Liberal Party, were not aware, airsoft guns are not real firearms. We do not have to be afraid of them. They are intentionally designed for games or simply for practice in a controlled environment.

Under Bill C-21, virtually all airsoft guns in Canada will be banned based on their muzzle velocity, as well as their similar look to real firearms. Basically, the government want to ban a hobby enjoyed by thousands of Canadians, including many of their own constituents. In all seriousness, this is more than the Liberals being killjoys. This will affect the real jobs and livelihoods of our fellow Canadians.

According to Airsoft in Canada, the Canadian airsoft market is worth $100 million, and more than 260 Canadian businesses are linked to the paintball or airsoft community. Distributors and retailers are left unsure as to what to do with both their current stock and their stock on order because all of it would be rendered worthless immediately if the government goes through with its ridiculous ban.

There is also a lack of clarity on how this would be enforced. Will they be confiscated, or is the government planning a costly buyback plan for these airsoft guns as well? With this example, it cannot get any clearer that Bill C-21 is not serious about tackling gun crime at all. Sadly, this is the superficial response they are offering to Canadians. They are full of distractions and empty rhetoric.

Canadian lives are at stake here. The government had an opportunity to actually listen to the experts, who have all come to agree that any legislation tackling gun crime must be directed at criminals and gangs, but they have chosen to ignore data-driven policies so they can try to score cheap political points. This is something my Conservative colleagues and I cannot play along with. We will continue to demand real action on gun crime so all Canadians can live in peace and security. This can and should be done while fully respecting the rights and freedoms under the law.

There is one other point I want to address. I addressed this when I spoke to the budget earlier this week. One of the biggest discrepancies we face here in Canada continues to be the difference between urban and rural Canadians. This gun ban particularly hits at the lives of rural Canadians because a lot of the firearms that were banned by the order in council are tools that are used by ranchers and farmers. They are actually necessary for their day-to-day operations in that they help to deal with pests. They help them to protect their herds and their livestock.

There is actually a real need for some of the firearms that were banned by the order in council. To arbitrarily use the bore diameter and the muzzle velocity chosen by the government really does not make any sense because it directly impacts the people who are using them for common sense purposes and reasons.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Indigenous Services]

Madam Speaker, as the hon. member knows, the National Firearms Association has close ties to the Leader of the Opposition. In fact, the Leader of the Opposition has made promises to the National Firearms Association about what he will do. Back in February, this organization called for guillotines to be constructed because, as they said, they “know tyranny when they see it, and this, my friends, is tyranny.” The public safety committee condemned this kind of language. At the time, the Conservative Party abstained from voting.

Will the member here today stand in the House and condemn this kind of language and these kinds of attacks on our democracy and on our politicians here in Canada?

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Madam Speaker, the first thing I want to say is that the leader of the Conservative Party does not have any ties to the NFA, so I will just clear that up.

Second, let us focus on the legislation at hand. We are talking about a bill that is banning firearms and harassing law-abiding Canadians. As I referenced in my speech, they are the most highly vetted Canadians in Canada. The process and training that is required to even acquire a simple possession and acquisition licence, a PAL, is very extensive.

The process I had to go through as a teenager with my hunter safety and safe handling courses, and all the different things I had to go through, are very important aspects as well. We need to highlight the fact that these are law-abiding Canadians who the government is choosing to go after.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. I understand his opposition to Bill C-21. I would like to know if he is open to working on a technical and scientific definition of the type of firearms that should be prohibited rather than including firearms such as the airsoft guns that are in there now but should not be. There are a lot of options there.

Would the Conservatives be interested in sitting down with experts to take a scientific approach to deciding which firearms should be banned, or are they completely opposed to any control over automatic weapons, which most civilians do not need?

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Madam Speaker, I think the point the member is making, which I fully agree with, is that the government is not really focused on anything with this bill other than trying to ban as much as it possibly can.

Yes, I think sitting down and having the conversation about practical approaches to what this legislation should have done should have been the process all along. Automatic weapons have been illegal in Canada for a number of years, so I think we need to make that distinction as well.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Madam Speaker, we keep hearing from the Conservatives that we need to tighten our borders to stop the flow of illegal guns, but, when the the Conservative Party had a majority in the House of Commons, it cut 7% of the Canada Border Services Agency positions, more than 1,000 jobs. It got rid of the very people who stop the flow of illegal guns into Canada.

Does the member agree that was a mistake? Does he recognize that in order to stop gun smuggling and the smuggling of fentanyl, which is killing people through the opioid crisis, we need to increase resources at the CBSA, not decrease them?

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Madam Speaker, obviously I was not part of that Conservative majority government. I was only elected in 2019, so I cannot comment as to what the backroom discussions were or what the reasoning and motives were for what it was doing.

However, right now, based on the evidence that we are seeing and the information we are receiving from experts, we need to stop the illegal flow of firearms into Canada from the United States, and these illegal drugs the member mentioned as well, because it is a huge and growing problem. It seems just about every day in the news police forces are continuing to make busts on illegal firearms and drugs, but it is barely making a dent into the supply. It continues to come in, so, yes, practically, I think bolstering the enforcement of our CBSA forces would be a good thing.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to speak today to Bill C-21, hoping that I can bring a calm and reasoned approach to this discussion. All parties in the House are united in their desire to get rid of gun crime in Canada. The question is, what is the best way to go about doing that?

We know that we need to be fact- and evidence-based. In fact, the Liberal government is always talking about how it is fact- and evidence-based, but in this particular discussion, it has missed the mark.

We know that 95% of gun crime in Canada is illegal guns and guns used illegally. What does Bill C-21 do to address illegal guns coming into Canada? The answer is, nothing. What does Bill C-21 do, then, about guns used illegally? The answer, again, is nothing. In terms of trying to address gun crime in Canada, this bill misses the mark.

If we look at the 261 gun-related crimes that happened last year, 60% of those were committed with handguns that are already prohibited or restricted. One in four homicides was related to gang activity. If we look at the people who were arrested for illegal firearms offences in 2019, the Toronto chief of police said that the 326 people charged with firearms offences are free on bail. Even when people commit a crime, we are not enforcing the law, and the penalties are reduced.

If we look at an approach of what we ought to be doing to reduce gun crime in Canada, the first thing is to address the illegal guns coming into the country. I am sad to note that the Liberal members voted against a private member's bill from the member for Markham—Unionville that would have introduced measures against illegal guns coming into the country.

Certainly the point has already been made today that we need to step up the effort at the border, because we know from the statistics that most of the guns coming in are coming in from the U.S.A. There is a role to play there. I know that the National Police Federation has called on the Government of Canada to increase the funding to the RCMP border integrity program to enable dedicated and proactive RCMP investigative weapons enforcement activity in order to address gun crime at the border.

Another issue that Bill C-21 does not address is organized crime and gangs. We have heard the statistics about one in four homicides being related to gang activities. This is something that has not yet been addressed.

What does Bill C-21 actually do? There are a number of things in the bill, but basically, for firearms that have already been banned for lawful gun owners, they are allowed to keep them but there is no defined compensation yet. Again, this is a measure that comes against people who are abiding by the law, and now the government is punishing them. They are not allowed to use these guns, and they are not going to be compensated. Nothing has been put forward on that.

At the same time, the Liberals are trying to remove the provincial authority for the chief firearms officer to “approve, refuse, renew and revoke authorizations to carry” and to give that power to a federal commissioner of firearms, another “Ottawa knows best” kind of strategy coming from the government.

In terms of importing ammunition, the government wants to add additional requirements for a licence to import ammunition. Again, it is always focused on people who will obey the law, and what it is missing is the main point that criminals do not obey the law. They do not obey the existing gun laws, and they would not obey these new guns laws. They would not obey a requirement to have a licence to import ammunition. The naïveté needs to stop, and we need to start with reasoned approaches to actually address the issue.

The municipal ban that is proposed by Bill C-21 has actually been opposed by many of the mayors across the country. The government ought to listen to mayors who are saying that this is not municipal jurisdiction. The RCMP has the expertise in this area, and that is where the power should rest.

At the same time that the government is implementing things that will not do anything about gun crime in Canada, we also see that it is introducing other bills, like Bill C-22, that will reduce the penalties for crimes committed with guns. I cannot even imagine why Liberals would think about doing that.

Bill C-22 repeals several minimum penalties. Let me read the list: unauthorized possession, possession of a prohibited firearm, possession of a weapon obtained by crime, weapons trafficking, possession for the purpose of trafficking, reckless discharge, discharge with the intent to wound or endanger, and robbery with a firearm. Why would we ever reduce the penalties for those very things that are part of the problem of gun crime in Canada, which is the thing we are trying to solve?

At the same time, Bill C-22 would also eliminate a number of offences that would be ineligible for conditional sentencing, such as sexual assault, kidnapping, trafficking in persons for material benefit, abduction of people under 14, motor vehicle theft, and arson for fraudulent purposes.

Again, we are trying to solve the problem of gun crime in Canada: illegal guns, guns used illegally, and the kind of organized crime and gang crime activity that is related to all these illegal activities. We have a huge issue of drugs in the country, so we should definitely be putting our money there.

I see that my time is drawing short, and yes, I am going to get to my points. There has also been an allegation that suicide is a reason for the banning of weapons for lawful gun owners, that it would really do something about suicide in the country. I would offer that people who are going to kill themselves, sadly, are going to find other ways: hanging themselves, slicing their wrists, taking pills.

We see a huge increase in suicide in this country. In fact, because this pandemic has gone on so long and the Liberal government has failed to get a plan to exit, we have seen a quadrupling of suicides. Instead of the 4,000 people a year who typically commit suicide, if that is quadrupled, the number of people dying from suicide is approaching the number of people dying from COVID-19. This is why it is important for the government to focus its efforts there and, if it really wants to eliminate suicide, get us a plan to exit this pandemic, absolutely.

The undefined buyback program needs to be clarified so that we can actually comment on it. Right now it just looks like weapons will be banned and there is no defined plan, but the plan is likely to be very expensive and it looks to me like the initial estimates have underestimated what that cost will be.

All in all, Bill C-21 misses the mark on eliminating gun crime in Canada. I want to summarize by saying that the problem is illegal guns and guns used illegally. Bill C-21 does nothing about illegal guns. It does nothing about guns used illegally.

What do we need to do? Let us step up the efforts to keep illegal guns from coming into the country and the penalties associated with being involved in gun smuggling, and once those people are convicted, let us keep them in jail and not let them back out on the street with their weapons again.

Let us make sure that we focus on organized crime and gang activity. I think there are resources that would be better applied there. In fact, the National Police Federation said that we should divert from the monitoring activities on lawful gun owners that we spend on and put some of those resources into crime prevention. That is a very good thing to do as well.

At the end of the day, all of us want the same thing. We all want to eliminate gun crime in Canada, but Bill C-21 does not do it.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, I want to quote something the member said in her speech. She said that we need to step up protection as it relates to the borders and gun smuggling.

This government introduced spending of $327 million to combat gun and gang violence, with $86 million to prevent cross-border smuggling of illegal firearms. The member voted against it. Why did she vote against measures that she is now claiming are so important?

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Madam Speaker, unfortunately, the Liberal government put forward an omnibus budget bill that is 720 pages long with a plethora of things in it. Although this specific action I do agree with, the amount of debt that the government has racked up without providing for a growth budget has created $250 a month of payments, for the next 10 years, from every Canadian to the government in order to pay off its existing debt. There is no plan to exit that, no plan to restart the economy or grow the economy in the budget, and that is the reason I did not vote for it.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Madam Speaker, I will ask the member questions in two areas.

The first is about smuggling and ensuring that CBSA has the resources to do that job, yet when the Conservatives were in government, they actually cut CBSA resources to the tune of 1,000 staff, which would have helped prevent smuggling at the borders. I wonder what the member's response is to that.

Second, the member mentioned that municipalities are opposed to it. In Vancouver and Surrey, the mayors actually do support it. Do their voices not count?

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Madam Speaker, I was not involved in the previous Conservative government's decisions. My mother always told me that we cannot change the past; we can only change the future. In the go-forward, to really solve this crime, we are going to need additional efforts at the border because most of the guns are coming in from the U.S., as I said.

With respect to the second question, I think the municipalities in some cases are misinformed about what is happening. If we look at the gun crime statistics, they will say they are happening with weapons that are already prohibited. If a handgun ban is put in place, criminals are not going to obey. If we say tomorrow that no more handguns are allowed in Vancouver, the criminals and people involved in organized crime are still going to have them, so it is not addressing the root of the issue.