Madam Speaker, before I dive into my comments on Bill C-12, I want to acknowledge that I was here 11 years ago on this date, October 22, when Parliament came under attack by a lone gunman. I want to publicly thank the Parliamentary Protective Service and the RCMP for the safety they provided to all members of the House.
I also want to acknowledge that, during that same series of events, Corporal Nathan Cirillo lost his life while being part of the ceremonial guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Constable Samearn Son took a shot to the foot here in Parliament, and Constable Curtis Barrett was able to neutralize the threat. I want to acknowledge those individuals as well.
The Liberal government is asking Canadians to believe that Bill C-12 is different from Bill C-2 and is a new safeguard for the country. It is not. Behind the new title lies the same design: more intrusion, more bureaucracy and less freedom for Canadians. Conservatives will stand as the barrier between Canadians and any act that weakens their privacy or erodes their freedoms, and mistakes government control for public safety.
Bill C-12 must be fixed. When Conservatives forced the government to withdraw Bill C-2, it was more than another Liberal failure. That bill sought to give cabinet sweeping authority to collect and share potential personal data without judicial oversight. By stopping it, we reminded the government and our country that freedom in Canada is not a privilege granted by the government but a charter right, which we will not tolerate being trampled on by the Liberal government. The withdrawal of Bill C-2 proved that a determined opposition can still discipline a government that has grown careless with its authority and abuse of power.
When drafting Bill C-2, the government did not consult the Privacy Commissioner before proposing to grant itself warrant-free access to Canadians' financial and digital records. The text of Bill C-2, and now echoes of it in Bill C-12, envisioned power to retrieve information from banks and telecommunications providers as the “Minister considers necessary”. Wow. There would be no court order, no independent review and no safeguard against those kinds of abuses. A government that can reach into private accounts and call it protection is not defending citizens; it is blatant overreach. Rather than protection, it is control over them, and Canadians deserve better than governance by surveillance.
Law-abiding Canadians should not forfeit their freedoms to pay for the government's negligence at the border. Years of weak enforcement and negligent immigration management have left Canada vulnerable to the very criminal networks that the bill claims to confront. Rather than tightening entry controls, the government has turned inward, treating every citizen as a potential suspect.
Bill C-12 is not a defence of sovereignty, but an admission that the government has been unable or unwilling to control those who seek to enter illegally, so it will instead attempt to control its citizens. Until the government can provide the security and protection of our freedoms and sovereignty, Canadians will be the ones who bear the consequences of bad Liberal policies, policies they never asked for.
Years ago, Justin Trudeau said that he admired what he called the “basic dictatorship” of Communist China. Those remarks were not casual. They revealed a mindset that efficiency matters more than consent, that control is strength and that democracy is a hindrance to decisive rule. Yet again, the Liberal government is demonstrating that it still thinks like Justin Trudeau.
Bill C-12 carries the same impulse. Translated into law, it hides coercion in the language of administration. It expands government access to personal data, centralizes authority in ministerial hands and calls this intrusion public safety. The bill would empower officials to require any person to provide any information relevant to the minister's determination. These are not targeted, investigative powers; they are open-ended instruments of surveillance disguised as administration. Canadians should believe the Liberals when they say things like this. The Liberal project has been to replace accountability with administrative control, one regulation, one surveillance clause and one warrantless power at a time.
Now the government has returned with Bill C-12, revised in wording, but unchanged in purpose. Canadians have learned what that means: less privacy, more bureaucracy and another significant overreach into their lives under the banner of safety.
We will examine every line, every clause and every authority that Bill C-12 would grant. We will ensure there are no hidden regulations that would turn oversight into surveillance. We are not a passive opposition; we are now the country's safeguard in Parliament.
Canadians may have elected the Liberal government, but we will still protect them from its overreach. We will defend their right to live free from suspicion, to transact without intrusion and to remain citizens, not data points in a government database.
Bill C-12 would do nothing to correct the failures of the bail system, which releases violent offenders back into our streets. A government serious about justice would not tolerate repeat offenders moving drugs and weapons while communities bear the costs. The reality is that Canadians are living with the consequences of a system that mistakes leniency for progress.
True public safety begins with control of the border and certainty of punishment. Those who traffic fentanyl, smuggle weapons or endanger lives must face penalties appropriate to the crime and ones that will keep our citizens safe. A government that fails to enforce its own law creates conditions for chaos. A nation that cannot or will not secure its border cannot guarantee the security of its people.
On sentencing, the failures are unmistakable. Bill C-12 leaves untouched the absence of mandatory prison time for those who traffic in fentanyl, an offence that destroys Canadian families and communities every single day. It introduces no new mandatory penalties for gang members who commit crimes with illegal firearms. The government imposes restrictions on law-abiding hunters and farmers while failing to strengthen penalties for those who commit crimes with illegal firearms, which is by far the vast majority of gun-related crimes.
This inversion of justice reveals a deeper problem: the failure to connect law with consequence. Deterrence works only when punishment is certain and proportionate. Without it, every sentence becomes a suggestion and every criminal learns that Canada will forgive what it refuses to prevent.
A government that governs without moral distinction cannot preserve order. When there is virtually no distinction between crime and compliance and they are treated alike, the rule of law decays. Canadians do not ask for vengeance; they ask for accountability. They ask for a justice system that protects the innocent, restrains the violent, re-establishes moral clarity in law and provides appropriate punishments for criminals.
Even for serious violent offences, Bill C-12 would continue to permit house arrest. A criminal who has shattered lives should not complete punishment on the couch in his living room playing Xbox. The government calls this rehabilitation. In truth, it signals that consequences have been replaced by convenience.
When justice no longer imposes real cost on wrongdoing, crime becomes just another risk of the trade for those who profit from it. For those who are accountants and listening today, criminals do a cost-benefit analysis as well and have obviously determined that under the Liberal justice system, the cost is worth the potential benefit. This is so wrong.
The measure of justice is not leniency but credibility. Every time the government offers comfort to those who destroy others' lives, it destroys the authority of law and the safety of the public. If the government will not restore the proportion between crime and punishment, Parliament must.
The government's tolerance of so-called safe consumption sites near schools is a direct failure of responsibility and is abhorrent. No responsible nation permits narcotics facilities near schools and describes it as public health policy. These neighbourhoods deserve order, not policy experimentation presented as compassion by a woke government.
What the government calls harm reduction has become harm relocation, shifting the crisis from alleyways to doorsteps and from addicts to families. Leadership demands drawing lines, and the first line must always be to protect the innocent.
Canadians are watching a government that punishes the law-abiding citizen while excusing repeat offenders. It expands bureaucracy, weakens enforcement and governs through regulation instead of principle.
The Conservatives stand for something different. We stand for a nation where law protects the innocent, not the offender, where privacy belongs to the citizen, not to the government, and where power is exercised under restraint, not carelessly or impulsively. Real leadership defends the public without breaking its confidence. Real justice distinguishes guilt from innocence instead of confusing both through bureaucratic process.
Bill C-12 fails every one of those tests. It would add layers of control but no layers of accountability. It would strengthen institutions while breaking public confidence. It calls expanded surveillance “security” and judicial leniency “reform”.
As Conservatives, we will defend Canadians and ensure the government, once again, serves them rather than manages them. Canada deserves order rooted in freedom, justice grounded in truth and leadership that governs with courage instead of suspicion. That is what Conservatives will restore.