Mr. Speaker, I thank hon. colleagues who have supported this bill. For those who either take some offence or appear to be unduly concerned about it, I would like to maybe allay some of the concerns and address a few of them, but also make a number of points that I believe are very important.
Probably the most important point that I have to make on this bill right now is that the status quo is not acceptable. I am talking about people like Barbara Turnbull, who was paralyzed many years ago in a gun attack, and the drive-by shooting of Louise Russo. I am talking about the hundreds and hundreds of armed robberies that take place at our mom and pop grocery store operations or variety stores, and the hundreds of assault and weapons charges that are laid. That is suggesting that we just leave things as they are and hope it works.
We are talking about human lives here. We are talking about safety and we are talking about a responsibility of this House. It is not up to us to enforce the law, but to make the law and to give the tools to our police officers, so that they can readily protect society. If we stop anything short of that, we are not serving society.
If what we have now were working, I would suggest that by all means let us not touch it and leave it alone. Every day when I drive into work, I have the radio on at 6:00 or 6:30 in the morning, and there is not a day that I do not hear of yet another assault or another murder.
We have just finished the deadliest weekend in metro Toronto's history since I introduced this bill for the first time. This is taking place across the country including the terrible tragedy of the RCMP situation. There is no end to this.
We must stem the tide, so this does not continue ad nauseam, for the safety of our citizens. We cannot have a society where people are walking around fearful of their right to travel the roads, fearful of their right to go to a party, fearful of their right to shop in a grocery store, or fearful that somehow some ill-advised individual is just going to come in and say, “Excuse me but your rights do not matter”. That is not acceptable. We must do something about the status quo.
Some of my Liberal and Bloc colleagues have expressed reservations and others are supportive of this bill. I am not suggesting Bill C-215 is the entire answer. As a former police officer many years ago, I am not a great fan of minimum mandatory sentencing across the board. I recognize that reality does not work, but there are occasional situations where it does work, and where a very clear message must be sent. I honestly believe this is one of those situations.
There has been a lot of collective data used by my hon. colleagues here today. One colleague mentioned that a person would get 19 years for an armed robbery with the culmination of what I am suggesting and the penalties that exist now. I do not know which province or country he is living in, but if he takes a look at the sentences that are coming out of our courts right now, I have not yet seen a situation where the criminal gets the mandatory sentence. Plea bargaining is rampant and somehow, someway this needs to be addressed. We need to toughen the Criminal Code. There is no doubt about that.
I am suggesting, quite honestly, that this is a start. This is a bill that should go to committee. We must send a message of deterrence. This is not a message of incarceration. We must wake up criminals to the fact that they cannot continue carrying a weapon as if it is a way of life. A weapon cannot be a status symbol. To say that this is out of proportion and an offence against the charter is an absolute joke.
I cannot believe that argument could even be properly put forward at this particular time. When it comes time for proportionality, Bill C-215 carries the punishment. There is not one criminal who does not know that when he picks up a weapon. It is not a case of leaving the scene of an accident or whether a mandatory minimum would be suggested. That is a wrong situation, I would argue. This is a clear decision by the criminal and that simply cannot and will not be tolerated in a society if we really care about the people who we are here to protect.
