Mr. Speaker, congratulations on your appointment.
This is my first substantive opportunity to speak in the 45th Parliament. Before I speak on Bill C-2 today, allow me to begin with a few words of thanks. I thank my election campaign team for their commitment, their long hours and their belief in what we stand for. Every door they knocked and every conversation they had helped bring us here.
I thank my family, my spouse Angela and my twin daughters Jennie and Emma, for their love and patience. This job is demanding; it takes me away from home, from holidays and from dinners, but their support never wavers, and I am forever grateful for it.
I thank the great people of Brantford—Brant South—Six Nations for trusting me to be their voice in Parliament. I carry their hopes, frustrations and priorities into everything I do in this place. They have given me a mandate to be their voice, their advocate and their defender. I carry that duty into this chamber with great responsibility and deep humility.
Now, let us get to the heart of this bill, but more importantly, let us get to what is missing from it. While the government may be eager to pat itself on the back, Canadians deserve to know that this bill stops short of promises made in the Speech from the Throne and doing what is actually needed to protect them.
In the throne speech, the government said it would bring a renewed focus on car theft and home invasions by toughening the Criminal Code to make bail harder to get for repeat offenders charged with committing these crimes, along with human trafficking and drug smuggling. However, none of this is to be found anywhere in all 172 pages of this bill. It is as if the Liberals have been tone-deaf to the pleas of premiers, law enforcement and victims who have been demanding bail reform for well over three years. While there are pieces that may be helpful, these are small steps in a system that is already broken at its foundation after a decade of soft-on-crime laws.
This bill may tighten a few screws around the edges, but it ignores the structural damage done by the Liberals' own justice reforms. It does not touch bail, not once. There is not a word about repealing or reforming the principle of restraint that is allowing repeat violent offenders back out on the street before the ink is even dry on their charge sheets. There is not a word about empowering Crown attorneys to actually keep dangerous individuals behind bars. There is not a word about protecting victims from seeing their attacker back in their neighbourhood hours after an arrest.
That revolving door opened by Bill C-75 is still spinning, and this bill does nothing to stop it. It does not touch sentencing either. The Liberals talk a big game about cracking down on traffickers, smugglers and organized crime, but they have kept in place their signature legislation, Bill C-5, which stripped away mandatory minimum sentences for the very criminals they now claim to be targeting.
The bill does not bring back any of those minimums. It does not impose serious time for serious crimes. It does not deliver justice for the victims who have been left behind, even in the middle of a national fentanyl crisis that is taking thousands of Canadian lives every single year. Those traffickers are pumping lethal drugs into our communities. Often, those with links to organized crime and foreign cartels are still eligible for a light sentence or, in some cases, conditional releases that are a form of house arrest. It certainly does not send a message to the organized criminals who are exploiting our legal system, flooding our streets with fentanyl and laundering their dirty money across borders that their time is up. This is a missed opportunity, a chance to clean up the mess the Liberals created.
Here is the reality right now in Canada: Violent crime is up 50% in this country; homicides, up 28%; sexual assaults, up 74%; auto theft, up 46%; extortion, up a whopping 357%; gang-related homicides, up 78%; violent crimes with guns, up 116%; terrorism charges, up 488%; and hate crimes have more than tripled. Those are the tragic stats that show the disheartening reality right now in this country.
While the crime crisis sweeps across our country, what this bill would really do, beneath all the legal jargon and bureaucratic language, is keep the worst parts of the Liberals' justice record firmly intact. It would keep Bill C-75, the law that tied the hands of police and prosecutors and told judges to favour release over detention, even when dealing with repeat violent offenders. It would keep the so-called principle of restraint that has allowed known gang members, gun criminals and repeat abusers to walk free even before officers finish their paperwork. It told Canadians that violent history does not matter and that past behaviour should not prejudice future bail decisions. What has been the result? Repeat offenders are back on our streets, and arrests made in the morning have criminals out before the officer even finishes their shift. However, the bill does not touch that law. It would keep it in place, and by doing so, it keeps that revolving door spinning.
The bill keeps Bill C-5, the Liberals' flagship soft-on-crime legislation that wiped out mandatory minimum sentences for some of the most serious offences in the Criminal Code. We are talking about drug trafficking, gun smuggling, armed robbery and repeat violent offences. Instead of sending a message that these crimes carry consequences, Bill C-5 said they might be eligible for house arrest, which is the message fentanyl dealers and gang leaders heard loud and clear. Now, even in the middle of the worst drug crisis our country has ever seen, the government refuses to put those minimums back in place. The very offenders we should be locking away are still being given second, third and fourth chances, and the government calls that justice.
While the bill claims to be a response to growing threats at the border from organized crime and transnational drug trafficking, it does not say a single word about reversing the same Liberal policies that got us here in the first place. We can tighten customs inspections, but if the trafficker is still released on bail within 24 hours, if the fentanyl producer still walks away with time served, if the gun smuggler knows there is no minimum sentence waiting at the end of the line, then what exactly are we doing as legislators? Without serious bail reform, mandatory minimums and real consequences for serious crimes, the system is still broken. These are the same policies that let fentanyl traffickers off.
Fentanyl is a public health crisis. It is a criminal epidemic being driven by organized crime, enabled by weak laws and made worse by a justice system that fails to deliver real consequences. We are losing more than 20 Canadians every single day to opiate overdoses, and fentanyl is at the centre of it. It is cheap, it is lethal, it is everywhere, and behind almost every fatal dose is a trafficker, a producer or a cartel that profits from death and misery. Despite the crisis, the bill says nothing, would do nothing and would fix nothing when it comes to holding fentanyl traffickers truly accountable.
Let me remind the House of what happened last year in Falkland, British Columbia, where the RCMP dismantled the largest and most sophisticated illegal drug lab ever uncovered in Canadian history. What they found was shocking: 54 kilograms of finished fentanyl, 390 kilograms of methamphetamine, 89 illegal firearms and half a million dollars in cash, all inside a rural compound operating under the radar. To put that seizure into perspective, those 54 kilograms of fentanyl were enough to create over 95 million lethal doses. That is enough to kill every Canadian in this country twice over.
This was not a low-level street dealer. This was not some desperate individual struggling with addiction. This was a high-level, professional drug-production operation. It had all the markings of transactional organized crime, and the RCMP confirmed direct links to Mexican cartels, the same cartels responsible for mass killings, political assassinations and destabilizing entire countries. Now they are operating here on Canadian soil, building superlabs and churning out poison every day. Still, there is no mention in this bill of mandatory life sentences for those who operate fentanyl labs capable of killing millions.
The message is clear here. Prior to the passage of Bill C-5, there was a mandatory minimum penalty for those producers, those manufacturers, those importers, those exporters and those traffickers. However, according to the soft-on-crime Liberal government, that was too draconian a law; it had to be repealed.
There has been no effort to bring back mandatory minimum sentences for large-scale drug production or trafficking. There is no recognition in this bill that Canada's criminal justice system needs to change to meet the scale and violence of this threat. What message does that send? To the cartels watching us from across the border, it says that Canada is easy money. The low- and mid-level traffickers in this country have a big smile on their face now that the weak, soft-on-crime government is back in Ottawa. To the fentanyl traffickers, it says that they will get a deal, maybe even a conditional sentence. To the victims, to the thousands of parents burying their children, to the first responders administering naloxone day after day, to the communities being hollowed out by addiction and death, it says that their pain is not enough to warrant serious change by the weak government. That is not acceptable.
When a criminal operation can manufacture enough fentanyl to wipe out the entire country and still not face life in prison, something is deeply broken. Criminals have taken note. The RCMP says there are now more than 2,000 organized crime groups operating in this country. What good is controlling fentanyl precursors if we are not throwing the book at the criminals making it? What good is data sharing if repeat offenders are out on bail before the paperwork is even processed? What good is fighting crime on paper if the sentences handed down in court do not match the seriousness and the moral culpability of the offender?
This bill is a good starting point, but it is simply not enough. For all the government's talk and for all the legal language and administrative tweaks buried in all 127 pages, the bill still fails to deal with the single most urgent problem we face in this country: violent, repeat offenders who face no real consequences under the government's so-called justice reforms. This is the crisis Canadians live with every single day on their streets, on their transit systems, in their neighbourhoods and in their homes. Canadians are seeing criminals cycle in and out of jail like it is a revolving door, and we are being told that is progress.
Canadians do not want more promises with headlines; they want results. They want their kids to walk to school without fear. They want fentanyl dealers to face real prison time, not house arrest and a slap on the wrist. They want to see gang members and gunrunners behind bars, not out on bail within hours. They want a justice system that puts their safety first, not a system that prioritizes the release of repeat offenders.
The bill does not deliver. Instead, it leaves untouched the broken laws that started this crisis and refuses to bring back protections that Canadians and law enforcement have been demanding for years. Canadians have a right to ask, why have the Liberals not brought back mandatory minimums for fentanyl traffickers? After the largest fentanyl bust in Canadian history, with enough poison to kill the entire population, why are life sentences still off the table? Why is the principle of restraint, which prioritizes releasing offenders over protecting communities, still baked into our bail system? How many more innocent Canadians need to be attacked, robbed or killed before the government admits that its soft-on-crime approach has significantly failed Canadians? Why are we tiptoeing around the rights of traffickers, gang members and repeat violent offenders while law-abiding citizens pay the price in blood, trauma and fear?
The bill focuses on border security and public safety, but it completely fails to deliver on core fundamentals.
Conservatives have long called for decisive action to protect Canada's borders. For years, we have urged the Liberals to fix the border crisis that they created, yet they have ignored the warnings and failed to act. The fundamentals are clear. If we want safer communities, we need tougher sentences for serious crimes. If we want to stop organized crime, we need real punishment for drug traffickers, not plea deals. If we want to stop repeat violence, we need to end the revolving door of bail. Most importantly, if we want to restore trust in our justice system, we need to stop coddling criminals and start standing up for victims.
The bill, unfortunately, does none of those things. It fixes the optics but leaves the core problem untouched. It offers minor changes when what we need is structural reform. It fails to reverse the damage done by Bill C-75 and Bill C-5. It fails to recognize that organized crime is not a future threat; it is here now and has been for many years. It fails to respond to the fentanyl crisis with the seriousness it demands. It fails to protect Canadians while crime surges in every category.
Canadians are demanding real change, and they are right to. Mandatory minimums must be restored for serious gun and drug offences. Fentanyl traffickers and cartel-connected criminals should face mandatory life in prison, no exceptions, full stop. The so-called principle of restraint has to be repealed so repeat violent offenders stay behind bars, where they belong. What this country needs is a justice system that protects victims, enforces accountability and puts public safety first, before political ideology, because keeping Canadians safe is not negotiable. It is the prime responsibility of a government.
Conservatives are committed to real, results-driven public safety measures. That means securing our borders, closing loopholes in our immigration system and shutting down the financial lifelines of terrorism and organized crime. Let us not forget why we are here in the first place. The bill only exists because of 10 years of Liberal inaction. The bill only exists because they have problems dealing with the American administration to the south. For a decade, they have watched crime rise and courts weaken.
Since the Liberals took office, illegal border activity has not just risen; it has exploded. There has been a 632% increase in U.S. border patrol encounters with people crossing illegally from Canada. That is not just a stat; it is a failure of national security. It is what happens when the government refuses to enforce its own borders and lets crisis become the norm, the status quo. The Liberals say they are investing $300 million in border security, but where is it? There is no rollout plan, no timeline and no public accountability, just more vague promises. Canadians are tired of the talk. Opposition members are tired of this talk. They want action. They want to see trust.
We cannot protect Canadians by turning law-abiding citizens into suspects. The expanded surveillance powers in this bill raise very serious privacy concerns. Conservatives will ensure that in the name of security we are not trampling on the rights of innocent Canadians. We can be tough on crime without being reckless at the same time with civil liberties. Our job does not end at opposing what is wrong. It is about pushing for what is right.
Conservatives will keep fighting for real protection at our borders, stronger enforcement at our ports, and sentencing that reflects the seriousness of the crimes Canadians face. The goal is not just to punish crime; it is to prevent it and to restore trust in a system that too often lets people down. Justice in this country should not be optional. Public safety should never be negotiable, and the rights of law-abiding Canadians must always come before the rights of repeat offenders.
