Marilyn Gladu

[Criminal Code, May 28th, 2021]

Madam Speaker, absolutely, the experts should be making those decisions, but in fact it is not clear that this is what happened in the order in council, which made no sense, about hundreds of guns and people with a lot of experience in firearms and their use. That is worthy of note.

The other thing that is worthy of note is that a lot of the handguns being discussed are already prohibited or restricted and the government keeps pretending that they are not. That is simply not the case.

[Criminal Code, May 28th, 2021]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

We must absolutely consult with people who have a lot of experience to develop a plan for eliminating gun crimes in Canada and to bring in a program to compensate people who have to give up their firearms.

[Criminal Code, May 28th, 2021]

Madam Speaker, I was not involved in the previous Conservative government's decisions. My mother always told me that we cannot change the past; we can only change the future. In the go-forward, to really solve this crime, we are going to need additional efforts at the border because most of the guns are coming in from the U.S., as I said.

With respect to the second question, I think the municipalities in some cases are misinformed about what is happening. If we look at the gun crime statistics, they will say they are happening with weapons that are already prohibited. If a handgun ban is put in place, criminals are not going to obey. If we say tomorrow that no more handguns are allowed in Vancouver, the criminals and people involved in organized crime are still going to have them, so it is not addressing the root of the issue.

[Criminal Code, May 28th, 2021]

Madam Speaker, unfortunately, the Liberal government put forward an omnibus budget bill that is 720 pages long with a plethora of things in it. Although this specific action I do agree with, the amount of debt that the government has racked up without providing for a growth budget has created $250 a month of payments, for the next 10 years, from every Canadian to the government in order to pay off its existing debt. There is no plan to exit that, no plan to restart the economy or grow the economy in the budget, and that is the reason I did not vote for it.

[Criminal Code, May 28th, 2021]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to speak today to Bill C-21, hoping that I can bring a calm and reasoned approach to this discussion. All parties in the House are united in their desire to get rid of gun crime in Canada. The question is, what is the best way to go about doing that?

We know that we need to be fact- and evidence-based. In fact, the Liberal government is always talking about how it is fact- and evidence-based, but in this particular discussion, it has missed the mark.

We know that 95% of gun crime in Canada is illegal guns and guns used illegally. What does Bill C-21 do to address illegal guns coming into Canada? The answer is, nothing. What does Bill C-21 do, then, about guns used illegally? The answer, again, is nothing. In terms of trying to address gun crime in Canada, this bill misses the mark.

If we look at the 261 gun-related crimes that happened last year, 60% of those were committed with handguns that are already prohibited or restricted. One in four homicides was related to gang activity. If we look at the people who were arrested for illegal firearms offences in 2019, the Toronto chief of police said that the 326 people charged with firearms offences are free on bail. Even when people commit a crime, we are not enforcing the law, and the penalties are reduced.

If we look at an approach of what we ought to be doing to reduce gun crime in Canada, the first thing is to address the illegal guns coming into the country. I am sad to note that the Liberal members voted against a private member's bill from the member for Markham—Unionville that would have introduced measures against illegal guns coming into the country.

Certainly the point has already been made today that we need to step up the effort at the border, because we know from the statistics that most of the guns coming in are coming in from the U.S.A. There is a role to play there. I know that the National Police Federation has called on the Government of Canada to increase the funding to the RCMP border integrity program to enable dedicated and proactive RCMP investigative weapons enforcement activity in order to address gun crime at the border.

Another issue that Bill C-21 does not address is organized crime and gangs. We have heard the statistics about one in four homicides being related to gang activities. This is something that has not yet been addressed.

What does Bill C-21 actually do? There are a number of things in the bill, but basically, for firearms that have already been banned for lawful gun owners, they are allowed to keep them but there is no defined compensation yet. Again, this is a measure that comes against people who are abiding by the law, and now the government is punishing them. They are not allowed to use these guns, and they are not going to be compensated. Nothing has been put forward on that.

At the same time, the Liberals are trying to remove the provincial authority for the chief firearms officer to “approve, refuse, renew and revoke authorizations to carry” and to give that power to a federal commissioner of firearms, another “Ottawa knows best” kind of strategy coming from the government.

In terms of importing ammunition, the government wants to add additional requirements for a licence to import ammunition. Again, it is always focused on people who will obey the law, and what it is missing is the main point that criminals do not obey the law. They do not obey the existing gun laws, and they would not obey these new guns laws. They would not obey a requirement to have a licence to import ammunition. The naïveté needs to stop, and we need to start with reasoned approaches to actually address the issue.

The municipal ban that is proposed by Bill C-21 has actually been opposed by many of the mayors across the country. The government ought to listen to mayors who are saying that this is not municipal jurisdiction. The RCMP has the expertise in this area, and that is where the power should rest.

At the same time that the government is implementing things that will not do anything about gun crime in Canada, we also see that it is introducing other bills, like Bill C-22, that will reduce the penalties for crimes committed with guns. I cannot even imagine why Liberals would think about doing that.

Bill C-22 repeals several minimum penalties. Let me read the list: unauthorized possession, possession of a prohibited firearm, possession of a weapon obtained by crime, weapons trafficking, possession for the purpose of trafficking, reckless discharge, discharge with the intent to wound or endanger, and robbery with a firearm. Why would we ever reduce the penalties for those very things that are part of the problem of gun crime in Canada, which is the thing we are trying to solve?

At the same time, Bill C-22 would also eliminate a number of offences that would be ineligible for conditional sentencing, such as sexual assault, kidnapping, trafficking in persons for material benefit, abduction of people under 14, motor vehicle theft, and arson for fraudulent purposes.

Again, we are trying to solve the problem of gun crime in Canada: illegal guns, guns used illegally, and the kind of organized crime and gang crime activity that is related to all these illegal activities. We have a huge issue of drugs in the country, so we should definitely be putting our money there.

I see that my time is drawing short, and yes, I am going to get to my points. There has also been an allegation that suicide is a reason for the banning of weapons for lawful gun owners, that it would really do something about suicide in the country. I would offer that people who are going to kill themselves, sadly, are going to find other ways: hanging themselves, slicing their wrists, taking pills.

We see a huge increase in suicide in this country. In fact, because this pandemic has gone on so long and the Liberal government has failed to get a plan to exit, we have seen a quadrupling of suicides. Instead of the 4,000 people a year who typically commit suicide, if that is quadrupled, the number of people dying from suicide is approaching the number of people dying from COVID-19. This is why it is important for the government to focus its efforts there and, if it really wants to eliminate suicide, get us a plan to exit this pandemic, absolutely.

The undefined buyback program needs to be clarified so that we can actually comment on it. Right now it just looks like weapons will be banned and there is no defined plan, but the plan is likely to be very expensive and it looks to me like the initial estimates have underestimated what that cost will be.

All in all, Bill C-21 misses the mark on eliminating gun crime in Canada. I want to summarize by saying that the problem is illegal guns and guns used illegally. Bill C-21 does nothing about illegal guns. It does nothing about guns used illegally.

What do we need to do? Let us step up the efforts to keep illegal guns from coming into the country and the penalties associated with being involved in gun smuggling, and once those people are convicted, let us keep them in jail and not let them back out on the street with their weapons again.

Let us make sure that we focus on organized crime and gang activity. I think there are resources that would be better applied there. In fact, the National Police Federation said that we should divert from the monitoring activities on lawful gun owners that we spend on and put some of those resources into crime prevention. That is a very good thing to do as well.

At the end of the day, all of us want the same thing. We all want to eliminate gun crime in Canada, but Bill C-21 does not do it.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2021, No. 1, May 27th, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, that is a great question from my colleague, who works hard on the Canada-U.S. committee. There is nothing in this budget. In fact, not only is there nothing for oil and gas and for natural resources, but there is no contingency in this budget in case Line 5 does shut down. That will certainly drive the costs of everything up, including fuel that the government uses.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2021, No. 1, May 27th, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, what a great question that is from my colleague. It is a big fail for the Liberal government to announce that it is going to have this big child care thing without even checking with the provinces first, when it has made it contingent on the provinces participating. Clearly, this is just an empty promise, then.

What we ought to do is make sure that the federal government can do something that does not require the provinces necessarily to intervene. There are a number of different ways we can make child care more affordable. A lot of people who are paying for child care, if they could get all that money back, then not only have we made child care more affordable for them, but we also have all the people who are working in the child care sector who are paying taxes and all of the businesses associated with that. There is a revenue stream there.

I would argue that getting more women into the workforce and getting them all working is going to generate the revenue to offset having quality child care and having a variety of solutions that will work—

[Budget Implementation Act, 2021, No. 1, May 27th, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the good question. It is very important for everyone to pay their fair share. I think that the Liberals do not have a good plan for recovering money from the wealthiest people.

When we look at the measures the Liberals have taken when they tried to raise taxes on the 1%, they actually got less tax revenue overall. That did not work out. They have done nothing that I can see to follow up on the paradise papers and the Panama papers and all the different lists of people who are definitely sheltering things offshore.

Clearly, rules exist but are not even being enforced. We probably need more stringent rules to prevent other people from hiding their money.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2021, No. 1, May 27th, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, certainly the member opposite would know that the Conservatives have supported to assist people to get through the pandemic.

However, the government failed to close the borders adequately from the beginning, when it still allowed planes in from China, Iran and Iraq, and learned nothing from that. I was the shadow health minister. I read the pandemic plan. Border control is number one. The next thing we know, the variants came, but the government still allowed people in from the U.K and South Africa. Then the next wave came along, with India and Pakistan. Again, the borders were not closed. Then there was the bungling of the vaccines.

With all of these things, that is what is dragging out the pandemic recovery that is needed. People do not want a government handout. What they want is their jobs back and to get back to work, and that is what the government should be focused on.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2021, No. 1, May 27th, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to have an opportunity to speak to the budget bill, because I have a lot of concern about the budget.

I will start with the amount of debt the government has added. The Prime Minister has added more debt to Canada than did all the prime ministers, together, since the beginning of Confederation. We are now at a debt of $1.3 trillion and the government has asked to raise the ceiling of that to $1.8 trillion.

People may wonder why that matters to me. The amount of debt that has been added to each Canadian is about $30,000. Let us think about this. That means for people who are watching, they will have to pay the government $250 a month every month for the next 10 years to pay off just what the government has spent so far. As we continue to spend, those numbers will go up. Let us think about in terms of a family. Partners and their children, everyone, will be paying $250 a month for 10 years. That is a lot of money.

There does not seem to be a plan. I asked the finance minister last night and she was unable to articulate a plan that would resolve this in the longer term. Nobody certainly expects an immediate adjustment, because we are trying to exit the pandemic, but where is the plan to exit the pandemic and restore the economy?

If we look at some of the substance in the budget, we will see that the Liberals have extended many of the programs that were put into place to help people during the pandemic, and that is great. The Conservatives always supported that. However, a lot of the programs had flaws and people were falling through the cracks. Those things were identified early on, even in April and May of last year. Therefore, I do not understand why the government has extended programs without fixing the things. Many people had start-up businesses. This was a clear area where folks who had unfortunately started up just prior to the pandemic or a few months in advance of the pandemic did not have the revenue to show for the previous year. If the government really wants to help people, why are these little holes in the programs not fixed?

It is the same situation for a lot of the women entrepreneurs. We have heard how disproportionately affected women were in the pandemic. We have seen the maternity leave issue. Women who were going to take maternity leave in the future but then had to stay home from work because of COVID were unable to get their maternity leave. The Liberals have not sorted that out in a whole year. The government knows about these issues and it needs to fix them. I do not understand why they were not fixed for the budget.

The member for Kingston and the Islands talked about the accusations that the Liberals were vote-buying and electioneering with this budget. It is hard not to think that is the case when we see money for everybody. Certainly, the Liberals will continue to give money away until they run out of the taxpayer money, and we are just about there.

I have looked at some of the promises in the budget. In particular, I want to talk about child care because that was flagged as a huge need. We have certainly heard that at the status of women committee which I chair. However, it is contingent on the provinces paying half. What if the provinces do not have the ability to pay? With the pandemic and the expenses they face, that may be the case. I asked the finance minister last night what the plan was if provinces could not afford to pay and she was not able to articulate a plan. It is very concerning when the person who is supposed to be in charge of the financial plan cannot say what it is.

We need to ensure that there is something to address the child care need because women have left the workforce and many of them will not return because they are unable to get child care.

In terms of some of the other things, this was put forward as being a growth budget. Again, last night when we looked at the estimates, I asked the finance minister about the plans for growth in the oil and gas sector and if she could point to measures that would achieve that. There was really nothing in the budget for that. It is the same for the natural resources sector. That is about 17% of our GDP. Again, there was really a blank space where there should have been some kind of a plan to grow that sector. This sector could really bring in revenue that would then pay for a lot of the social programs we are wanting.

I asked the same question about agriculture and where in the budget were the plans to spur growth in the agriculture sector. Again, there was no answer.

Therefore, this is not a growth budget. The only thing growing in this budget is the debt, and that is not what we need.

We really need to start to create jobs and get people back to work: the million jobs that were lost in the pandemic and those that will continue to be lost. We need to find help for the sectors that are struggling, and the tourism sector is well recognized as one that is struggling.

The government picked its favourite, Air Canada, and did something there, but nothing for WestJet, nothing for Air Transat and nothing for the other carriers. At the same time, the $1 billion for fairs and festivals is woefully inadequate for one of the hardest-hit sectors, which employs many people in the country. The plan needs to be realistic, and we need to appreciate that it could be a two-year recovery for the people in that sector.

At the same time, high-speed Internet is known to be a need across the country. In fact, it is essential to do business today. There is $1 billion in this budget for high-speed Internet, but I would point out that in the last few years $1.5 billion has been spent and that is a drop in the bucket compared to what is needed. This is something that the government is saying it wants to accelerate.

Again, in terms of the priorities of the spending, there are some things that I think we need to stop spending on and other things that we need to divert to and accelerate, like high-speed Internet.

I was happy to see long-term care being addressed, and certainly that is important. In the area of seniors, the increases to OAS that we have long been calling for are appreciated, for those over 75 years of age. We have seen that during this pandemic the government did two carbon tax increases, and the cost of everything is going up: food, groceries, etc. Seniors are on a fixed income in many cases and are very hard pressed. While the government is busy spending, why only the 75-plus? What about the people between 65 and 75? I should point out to the Liberals that those people do vote, so that could be a consideration for them.

The other thing I see here is a top-up for low-wage earners. To me, that looks like a basic guaranteed income that just was not called a basic guaranteed income.

Of course, in this long budget bill, the omnibus budget bill that the government always promised it would never do, the government has decided to sneak in something about the Elections Act, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the budget. What happened was that, in the last Parliament, Bill C-76, a bill to change the Elections Act, tried to introduce measures to make it an offence to say false things about a candidate or a public figure, but the court struck that down as being a violation of people's freedom of speech.

Instead of challenging the court's decision or respecting the court's decision, the government has decided to take the sneaky approach and stick it in a 720-page budget bill, and put the provision in there that this would take effect on any election that occurs within six months of the coming into force of this budget. Well, that certainly sounds like the Liberals are intending to have an election in the next six months, does it not? This is just more evidence that the Liberals are desperate to have an election and that they do not keep their promises, because this is an omnibus budget bill.

At the end of the day, when we look at the measures in the budget, what did we get for it? I have just a few questions that remain.

First of all, I do not see the plan to exit the pandemic. We thought maybe the vaccines would be it, even though that has been badly bungled. Now we are saying, “Well, you know what, even if you get the vaccine you might still be able to transmit COVID and might still be able to get it, so you are not going to get your freedoms back there.” I really do not have a lot of confidence that the government is going to give back Canadians' freedoms, and if it does, that it would restore the economy. Because there is no growth plan in this budget and there are no adequate sector supports defined, there may be nothing left to reopen to, if the government does not address this. The government has to come up with a plan to address the unsustainable debt. We cannot continue to operate in this way.

Finally, the government needs to stop the war on freedom of speech of Canadians in this country.