Mr. Speaker, I rise in the House today to raise concerns about radical criminal justice policies being introduced and considered by the Liberal government.
Right now, before the Minister of Justice is a report commissioned as part of the so-called Black justice strategy, and that report contains several radical policy proposals, including the decriminalization of a 30-day supply of hard drugs like meth, cocaine and heroine. The Minister of Justice has not rejected this proposal, as one might hope. In fact, the Minister of Justice celebrated it as “history-making” and “an important milestone”. It is unbelievable that the minister would celebrate policies that threaten to flood more drugs into our communities, when one looks at our country's overdose statistics. Over 42,000 Canadians, including children, have died from drug overdoses under the Liberal Prime Minister's watch.
The policy proposals in front of the Minister of Justice also include proposals to defund police departments by limiting their access to federal grant money and to reduce Canada's prison population through mass decarceration of 30% over the next 10 years. I am pleading that the Liberal government and its justice minister reject these ideas as the harmful ideas they are and not celebrate them as achievements.
We have seen a massive increase in addictions and overdoses since the Liberals began to fund hard drugs with taxpayer dollars. We have seen an increase in crime since the Liberals made bail more accessible to repeat violent offenders. Police officers in our communities, including my home community of Durham, are doing their part. They are working hard to enforce the law, but they are being let down by the laws and policies of the current federal government. Police want to do their jobs, but when they arrest somebody multiple times for multiple crimes, and a repeat offender is allowed back on the streets in short order, it undermines policing across our country. How could the minister celebrate a proposal to cut police budgets?
There is an ideological problem in the federal government right now. It is an ideology that has moved away from seeing the justice system as a system that ought to keep people safe and punish crime. Instead, there is an ideology running rampant all over this place that wants to weaken our justice system, because it regards our system as oppressive or racist.
Some people call this ideology “woke” or “far left”. Whatever label we choose or do not choose, I hope we can recognize the system needs to work for the good of the Canadian people. Tearing it down to permit more crime and more chaos will not help any of us. No matter what colour we are or where our parents come from, we need a strong system that is accountable, fair and true to its core mission of public safety and justice.
With that core mission in mind, I return to my plea to the Liberal government and its justice minister to please reject these radical criminal justice policies and please reject these radical policy proposals. Canadians do not want more drugs flooding into our communities. We do not want violent repeat offenders to have easier access to bail. We want our police to be resourced and empowered to enforce the law.
I ask the minister to reject these radical policies and to side with law-abiding Canadians.