Bradley Trost

[Instruction to Committee on Bill C-71, June 4th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, for the amount of effort it would take, what would it actually help with? As I said earlier, we have an issue of 4,000 people per year dying of opiate overdoses in this country, and the government is not making it a priority. We have 50 homicides with rifles and shotguns. Again, that is 50 more than we want, but where is the proof that the bill would actually do anything to help address those 50 homicides?

[Instruction to Committee on Bill C-71, June 4th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the remarks that my hon. colleague has made. He has touched on a good point, both specifically and the broader principle.

Specifically he points out that this legislation is about a lot of bureaucratic changes to essentially harass law-abiding firearms owners. That is not the problem. The problem is the criminals, the people who have no intention of taking their PAL down to the local Cabela's and buying a 22, a 270 Savage, a 12-gauge Remington, or something like that to go hunting. This legislation harasses those people who want to do it honestly. It would not do anything to the gangs, to the criminals, the people who buy their firearms on the black market, who buy sawed-off shotguns or small handguns.

The bill speaks to the broader philosophy that is often present in the Liberal government's legislation, that it is not the criminal who is responsible for the crime, but it is broader society. We need to do something to punish or harass broader society to go after the individual criminal. That is a philosophical premise that I do not share.

For people who commit the crimes, who break the laws, their rights should be curtailed. They are the ones who should be punished. We should not try to curtail the rights of broader society, of people who are following the law.

That is the philosophical problem that the Liberal government has whenever it approaches, not just this legislation but any legislation dealing with criminal law.

[Instruction to Committee on Bill C-71, June 4th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I think I caught members of the House napping a little bit.

I do not think the calculation is all that sophisticated. Very simply, the government saw a news item from the United States, and it realized that a lot of Canadians confuse American legislation with Canadian legislation. We have a very different firearms regime here in Canada, particularly with handguns. I think the government was trying to capitalize on that perceived need.

The other thing is the obvious political calculation that has been made here. The Liberal Party is trying to squeeze out the NDP on the left, thinking this is the sort of legislation that it can take votes from New Democrats in parts of the country and therefore push those votes. The PMO has calculated that some Liberal MPs are expendable, the ones in rural areas, so the government will get rid of them in exchange for capturing more seats from the NDP.

While my hon. colleagues do not appreciate being written off in the next election by their own leadership in the Prime Minister's Office, I think that is the calculation that has actually been made.

[Instruction to Committee on Bill C-71, June 4th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, as I was reflecting on this legislation and listening to the debate tonight, some of which I enjoyed and some of which I think the House could do without, the one thing that came to my mind was, “Where are the government's priorities? Where are the government's priorities when it comes to legislation, when it comes to protecting the lives of Canadian citizens?”

This is one of the criticisms that was directed earlier tonight at one of the Conservative members: that our arguments were about the waste and the misappropriation of money, and the fact that this will add expense to firearms owners.

I was thinking about that today when I was reading about the opioid crisis that we have here in Canada. Let us compare what this legislation, Bill C-71, is attempting to deal with. In the year 2016, there were approximately 50 homicides with rifles and shotguns. That is what this legislation is really about, dealing with rifles and shotguns and homicides. There were 50. That same year, just under 3,000 Canadians died of opioid drug overdoses. For the year following, the numbers we have, which have not been fully compiled yet, rose to around 4,000.

Let us just think about that. We have legislation. We have a major government priority here to effectively try to deal with 50 homicides. I do not want to, in any way, diminish the value of those human lives. Every human life is precious. However, we need to think about what our public policy priorities are, where we are putting our energy, and we are putting our legislative efforts.

Is it 4,000 people or 50 people? We can and we should try to help people in both categories, but this is something I think the government members should perhaps think about. While they are looking to deal with this smaller issue, perhaps they need to put a more proportionate effort into dealing with the larger issue.

That brought me to ask, “Why is the government actually trying to deal with an issue of approximately 50 homicides per year?” I struggled to come up with an answer. Again, one is too many, so perhaps that is an argument, but the only real answer I could come up with as to why the Liberal government was doing this is the real understanding that the United States has been having its own gun control and firearms issues and the real understanding that when we go door-knocking to constituents and when we talk to them, many Canadians do not understand the differences between firearms legislation and debate in the United States and firearms legislation and debate in Canada.

To me, that is really the only reason that I could come up for why the Liberals are dealing with a comparatively minor problem while at the same time ignoring a much more major problem. I understand that. A lot of Canadians get their news and confuse American with Canadian policy and politics, and that becomes a problem. I would urge government members not to fall into that temptation of just trying to do something to window-dress for a problem that actually does not exist in Canada.

Specifically, today we are dealing with a motion to try to encourage the committee that is dealing with this legislation to get out there, to travel, and to listen to the views of Canadians across the country on this legislation. If we listen to committee members, we hear that they have had a a very abridged debate in dealing with this issue. I think it is important on this legislation.

However, the point has been well made by members of my caucus from urban areas that there are a large number of Canadians, myself included, who live in urban areas and possess firearms and hunt, and lawfully and quite proudly use their firearms. There are very large cultural differences in how firearms are used.

I come from a farm background, so I am comfortable with this. I remember specifically when I worked in Nunavut in the far north. As I have told the House before, I used to be an exploration mining geophysicist. For us, firearms were not just a toy or something to be played with on the weekends. We had to deal with a grizzly bear in one situation, in one area where I was working. In some situations we would have one gun on the block, and, if necessary, a variety of people had to learn how to use it.

I remember one member of my crew, when I was doing an induced polarization survey, telling me how his aunt had actually been mauled to death by a polar bear.

Anything the government or this legislature does to inhibit or discourage the use, sale, and ownership of firearms in the north and in rural areas of Canada can have safety consequences. Widespread ownership of firearms is actually something that makes people safer. While people who live in downtown Toronto or Saskatoon do not often see wildlife that is dangerous, where I worked in the northern territories, this was very much a real and serious issue.

The Liberals are very proud of the Charter of Rights. If a judge invokes the Charter of Rights, the Liberals absolutely follow that path and do not consider using the notwithstanding clause or looking at different interpretations. Looking through my briefing notes, one of the things that came up was the concern that this legislation may have charter issues. For the Liberal Party, which is always concerned about the charter of rights, which they view as one of their great contributions to Canadian debate, I have to wonder why they are not more open to discussing, looking at, and possibly amending this and going on the road, listening to witnesses, and listening to testimony to deal with it.

The political part of me is somewhat glad the Liberals have introduced this legislation, because it reminds Canadians what they did the last time they tried to introduce comprehensive firearms legislation. They ended up wasting millions of dollars and irritating law-abiding firearms owners across the country, something that eventually, as my colleague, the hon. member for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, pointed out earlier, cost them many seats. On the political side of my mind, I think this is a good thing. The brain trust of the Liberal Party's PMO will end up costing them seats. It is the same group of people who brought them things such as changes to small business taxes, the Prime Minister's trip to India, and the summer job attestation.

Having said that, this is bad legislation. This is legislation that will continue to harass and cause hindrances for people who want to use firearms for sport, hunting, and their livelihoods in rural areas. That is why I urge all members of the House to vote for this motion to go out across the country to listen to different people, people from different communities in different parts of this country, from Newfoundland to British Columbia and from Yukon to southern Ontario. This is a motion asking Parliament to listen to something that has an impact on millions of Canadians in their day-to-day lives, something that while it is important, maybe has been given higher priority than it should here in Parliament, compared to things I mentioned earlier in my speech.

We are getting close to midnight, and I have another seven minutes to have some questions and comments, because I am not planning to come back to finish my speech on another day.

[Instruction to Committee on Bill C-71, June 4th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I guess it is my job tonight to possibly calm the place down, but more importantly to bring the time up to 12 midnight as the person who is probably the last speaker this evening.

[Federal Sustainable Development Act, May 24th, 2018]

Madam Speaker, it is fairly clear that the Liberals have a large deficit. They need to find extra revenue. They are trying to put together a moral rationalization for them to raise extra revenues due to their excessive spending. The carbon tax is about that.

[Federal Sustainable Development Act, May 24th, 2018]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the hon. member's remarks, but I will point this out. It is often big business that has the least difficulty dealing with these government regulations. They have the resources. They have the lawyers. They have the capital. In fact, sometimes we can see big business supporting government regulation because it will be a more onerous burden on their smaller competitors and therefore allow for a more monopolistic market.

It is often the small businesses, the individual proprietors, people like them who suffer the most. Someone such as myself, who came from the mining industry and worked with the junior mining companies, I know they were often the ones that had the biggest difficulty meeting the regulatory burdens that the government put into place. The big players have the resources. It is often the little guy who suffers the most when these sort of regulations are put into play.

[Federal Sustainable Development Act, May 24th, 2018]

Madam Speaker, I would have not put the price on emissions that the then Progressive Conservative government in Alberta did.

[Federal Sustainable Development Act, May 24th, 2018]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to be joining the debate today. For people who are watching on TV or following the debate in the galleries, Bill C-57 is one of those pieces of legislation that would be in many ways be viewed more as a process piece of legislation. It is not so much about a particular policy; it is about how to set up the particular processes, the mechanisms, the various government reports, etc. to come to a particular policy. Therefore, it is often fairly difficult to explain for people who do not live, breathe, and inhabit Parliament Hill why legislation needs to exist. However, we need certain processes and mechanisms to accomplish legislative aims.

What is fundamental about this bill is that it would expand the number of people who would be involved and the number of departments that would have to report. While that is all fairly interesting and probably useful in the long term, and may or may not have positive outcomes, I think the underlying question most Canadians want to ask is whether all these processes actually make for a better environment, do they get Canada where it wants to go. A process is only as useful as its end result.

Therefore, this is in many ways a difficult bill to comment about because we really do not know what the end result of all these changes to process will be.

What I will contribute to today's debate is to make some suggestions based upon the history and knowledge of what actually works in environmental policy, so when these processes come to fruition, the people who are involved in it will have some idea of what the various parliamentarians thought about what would be good input to have to create proper legislation in the future.

Again, to some degree, we are buying a pig in a poke today because the bill would create more fees and funding for people who would be on the advisory committees. It would require more departments to have more reports. Maybe that is good, maybe it is not, but as far as what the substance is to make the environment better, we really will not know based upon this legislation.

Let me give some advice for the House as to what has worked in history to make better, more proper, more positive environmental legislation.

For all the talk we have nowadays from the Liberal government about what works or what does not, the Liberals have not looked at the broader scope of world history to see what has fundamentally made our environment better. I know this may get some challenges from some parts of the House, but one of the things that has been most useful and successful as far as making the environment better has been the rise of capitalism and free enterprise.

Around the world, the countries that were the first and earliest to embrace capitalism and free enterprise now have the best environment. They may be drifting away from the free enterprise system, but systematically this is one of those things that cannot be disputed from history.

In places like Europe, which was having massive problems with deforestation, the Europeans brought in coal technology. The market brought it in to replace wood for energy. They began to use things like the market mechanisms to move food around the world. Ships that were run by oil, diesel, fuels, and coal were able to take food from parts of the world, such as North America, Europe, and various other places, and move it around.

How did that help the environment? Very simply, instead of local areas having to use their marginal resources to produce food, they were able to bring it from different parts of the world by using market mechanisms.

Technology has also helped to improve the environment. One of the ironies of the expanding debate around fracking and tight shale and different things about that, is these technologies have helped to create a greater supply of natural gas, lowering the price for natural gas which then replaces coal. I am no critic of the coal industry, but natural gas, when it is used for electricity, produces less greenhouse gases than coal.

Here is the irony. Petroleum engineers, through free enterprise, have done more to cut greenhouse gases than all the government regulations proposed by the various left-wing regimes around the world. If we look at the other place in the world, where there were major cuts to greenhouse gases, it was after the collapse of the Soviet communist bloc in Eastern Europe. They got rid of the heavy industry that was subsidized by the socialist-communist regimes of Eastern Europe. That was why the European Union was able to claim such massive credits. However, the irony of it all, for all the talk about regulation and taxation that the Liberal government puts forward, is that free enterprise and capitalism have actually done more for the environment than anything else. This is not surprising when we look at what people take responsibility for. They take responsibility for their own actions and their own property.

I used to live in the former Soviet Union for a short while as it was transitioning to becoming the various republics and independent nations it is now. I could see, as was to be expected, that people had environmental respect of their own property. However, the broader collectively-owned property did not. Free enterprise, responsibility, and all those basic things work to help protect the environment.

If we look at what the current government is doing, it has not been following those historical patterns. It has not looked at what broadly works to integrate with human nature to do it. Its ultimate policy is to do things like Bill C-57, which is about process, more talking, more reports, and more people being appointed to more committees to get more per diems and more payments, and so forth. Unfortunately that all tends to lead to more taxes and more regulation. The whole drive of the Liberal Party's environmental policy is to tax more and more.

What do people naturally do when they are taxed more? They do not necessarily change their behaviour in regard to the environment. They would if it were their own property and they needed to preserve and protect it. They do what people naturally should do. They try to avoid these carbon taxes.

I worked with the Saskatchewan Mining Association, which has been trying to communicate with the Minister of Environment, and not all that successfully I might add. However, it is very clear that it wants to work and do the best job it can for the environment. However, if the government overtaxes it with carbon taxes and regulations that have no basis in reality, its investment will move. Therefore, we do not actually clean up the environment. We do not actually have a better environmental outcome. What we do when we put on these carbon taxes and other regulations that are unnecessary for environmental improvement is that we move the industrial activity, hurt the Canadian economy, and do nothing to improve the environment.

If we tax electric plants in Canada that are generated by coal and we tax them so they move from Saskatchewan to North Dakota, all we have done is kill economic activity in Canada and moved it to the United States. We have not done anything to improve the environment.

This is what I encourage the government to do today. Process legislation is fine. Bills such as Bill C-57 could, if the process is actually implemented, do something positive.

Here is my challenge to other members of the House. When we look to support legislation, such as the bill before us, look to see what the historical record shows has been done to improve the environment. It has not been taxes, big government, or big government regulations. It has been people taking their own initiative under a free market, free enterprise systems, doing what they can with private property rights to improve it. That is what the historical record has shown and that is what we can expect to see in the future.

Again, a policy of big taxes, more regulation, and more government interference and bureaucracy will not improve the environment.

I realize I will not have convinced all of my hon. colleagues in the House, but I hope they are willing to enter into a discussion on what fundamentally will help improve the Canadian environment.

[Down's Syndrome, May 4th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take a few moments and speak about an energetic woman named Christina Lee Fast.

Christina has a good sense of humour. She likes to seek out the sense of humour in others. Being a sociable person, she started a young adults group in her church, and that group has grown in time. Christina likes to work out a her local gym. Naturally, her love of fitness led her to become an Olympic athlete in the Special Olympics.

Christina loves her life, and the people in her life love her, but not all people in Canada love or even value women like Christina. Why is that? It is because Christina has Down's syndrome. Once diagnosed with Down's syndrome in the womb, 90% of Down's syndrome children in Canada are aborted. Instead of being valued and accepted, sadly, they are viewed as a burden to be avoided.

Canadians with Down's syndrome, Canadians like Christina, make Canada a wonderful place. We should all be proud of their contributions.