Another thing about the good old days was we had a bit more room in our seats. That has nothing to do with the makeup of the Senate but, rather, of the building.

Honourable senators, I rise today to speak to Bill C-21. Before I get into the meat of my remarks on this bill — and I have a lot of meat here — I wish to devote a few comments to the unjustified pressure that this government has attempted to exert on us here in the Senate to simply adopt this bill without even hearing from witnesses, as they have with so many other bills.

I find it extremely objectionable that both the minister and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons have, in recent weeks, been pressing for the Senate to simply rubber-stamp this bill. Even before Senator Yussuff or a single senator spoke on this bill in the chamber, the Parliamentary Secretary tweeted that I should stop delaying the bill.

To set the record straight, I believe it is useful to go over the timeline of Bill C-21.

Bill C-21’s journey began in the House of Commons with first reading on May 30, 2022. Second reading occurred on June 23, 2022, and the bill was then sent to the House committee. There, the bill ran into multiple and serious problems.

As I will explain in my remarks, this is a very badly thought‑out bill, and its problems were made worse by the amendments that the government itself attempted to make to the bill in the late fall of 2022. As we shall see, these amendments were proposed with no meaningful consultation and certainly without meaningful consultations with the Indigenous people whom they seriously impacted.

The government was forced to withdraw these amendments from the bill itself, though I do not believe that it had actually abandoned the objectives behind those amendments. I will discuss this matter as well in my remarks later on, but I think it is fairly clear that the government will now attempt to leave further changes to future regulation and orders-in-council, just as they have already done through the arbitrary gun ban they imposed in 2020 and through their arbitrary ban on the purchase and sale of legal handguns held by licensed sport shooters and collectors, which they imposed last year through an order-in-council.

To stifle all further debate, the government then introduced time allocation in the House and forced the bill through third reading on May 18, 2023. It was only then that Bill C-21’s journey in the Senate began. Although the bill was introduced in the Senate on May 18, debate did not begin until May 31, when our colleague Senator Yussuff, the sponsor of the bill, delivered his speech over a period of two days. But even before Senator Yussuff had said one word, the parliamentary secretary to the Government House Leader was again accusing me of delaying the bill.

The minister then followed this up with a letter sent to the leaders of the different Senate groups on June 8, demanding that we pass the bill. The minister even had the gall to write to the chair of the Senate National Security and Defence Committee with this demand. Colleagues, the Senate itself determines which committee will study any piece of government legislation, and the minister attempted to intervene in that process before we had even taken a decision.

The minister not only demanded that the bill be passed without any substantive debate; he also prejudged which committee might review the bill. In effect, he made additional demands about how exactly the committee should review it. This represents an unprecedented level of interference in the business of the Senate, and it fully exposes the very little respect the government has for this chamber.

Since June 8, we have had a number of senators who are not from the official opposition speak to this bill, and I submit that these senators had every right to prepare their remarks to be able to speak to this bill. We have an unwritten rule here that the critic is typically the last person to speak. I have done the same as my colleagues and spent a fair bit of time preparing my remarks. I was also informed by a critic briefing that I received from officials. My remarks are also informed by the research that my staff had to do on this bill. That research work reveals how deeply flawed this bill actually is, and I submit that it will be absolutely the duty of the Senate to hear from a broad cross-section of Canadians who are very concerned about this bill and who have views on all sides of this issue in relation to this legislation.

In that regard, colleagues, I want to assure the government that up until now, the official opposition has not delayed this bill. However, having personally reviewed the very negative implications of this bill, I wish to say that since the last speaker in this chamber spoke on the bill literally two minutes ago, I have now officially begun to delay Bill C-21. So let there be no question, and let the minister know so the minister and his parliamentary secretary can mark that in their calendars for future reference.

Colleagues, this bill amends the Firearms Act and other legislation to impose new requirements and restrictions on Canada’s legal firearms owners. There are currently well over 2 million gun licences in Canada, and in almost all cases, Canadian gun owners are extremely responsible members of our society. That has been the case throughout Canada’s history.

I think we need to understand who Canada’s gun owners are. They are, of course, Indigenous peoples who have used firearms as an integral aspect for their sustenance for centuries. They are Canadian hunters who have also used firearms responsibly for centuries. They are rural and urban Canadians. They are sport shooters and collectors who use firearms at clubs across the country. They are shooters who use pistols in a variety of disciplines, including Olympic competition.

These are people like Linda Thom from Ottawa, who won the Olympic gold medal at the 1984 Olympics in the 25-metre pistol competition. They include people like Lynda Kiejko, who won double gold at the 2015 Pan American Games, also in the 25‑metre pistol event. They include thousands of Canadians who participate in International Practical Shooting Confederation matches across the country. They are people who will be subject to the new restrictions being proposed by Bill C-21, a bill that the government claims is “. . . part of a comprehensive strategy to address gun violence and strengthen gun control in Canada.”

Bill C-21 does no such thing. It does not do so since there actually is no strategy from this government to address gun violence in Canada. In fact, this bill not only fails to address gun violence, it also significantly weakens gun control in Canada, and it may even destroy it.

In my remarks today, I will examine the policy rationale for this bill. In doing so, I will need to speak about the many flaws of this bill.

Second, I will discuss some of the implications of this bill and, in particular, about how I believe this bill will actually contribute to a growth in violent crime on our streets.

Third, I will address what I believe are the negative implications of all of this for gun control in Canada.

I want to begin by looking at the government’s policy rationale for this bill. At a core level, I believe this legislation illustrates the fact that ministers in charge of this bill don’t know very much about firearms. I believe this ignorance explains many of the serious flaws of this bill. It also explains why, over the past year, this bill has faced so many tumultuous ups and downs.

This became particularly evident late last year when a series of amendments were hastily proposed to the bill, which made it clear that ministers themselves did not understand the key issues. The government now claims to have abandoned these amendments, but I believe the mistaken ideas that led to the amendments remain at the heart of this bill. It is reasonably clear that the government will now attempt to do by regulation what they failed to do as completely as they would have liked through legislation.

The amendments in question were proposed by Liberal MP Paul Chiang, and what they did was expand the scope of the bill significantly to try to introduce bans on a wide range of hunting rifles. The amendments opened to complete prohibition any semi-automatic centrefire firearms that were designed to accept a detachable cartridge magazine and whose magazine capacity was greater than five cartridges. The provision would have immediately applied to as many as 1 million legal firearms in Canada, most of them non-restricted and almost all of them owned by hunters. I do not believe ministers gave the slightest thought about the likely impact these measures would have on Indigenous hunters, many of whom rely on them for subsistence hunting. I do not think that ministers really understood that when one talks about semi-automatic firearms, these are actually employed by hundreds of thousands of Canadian hunters.

For the information of colleagues who may also not be familiar with long guns, rifles and shotguns are actually manufactured in several different firing modes called actions. Some firearms are pump-action firearms, where the cartridges are moved into the chamber based on a pumping action. Some are lever-action firearms, where the same process is accomplished through a lever-action mechanism. Some are bolt-action firearms, where the process is accomplished — you guessed it — through a bolt‑action mechanism. Some are semi-automatic firearms, where the process is accomplished automatically when a previous round is discharged.

All of those actions can be fast, particularly when the firearm is in the hands of an experienced shooter. It is a commonly held belief that the semi-automatic action is the fastest, but that is not necessarily the case. Much depends upon who is using the firearm and how well it is maintained.

In Canada, semi-automatic long guns are legally limited to no more than five rounds in the firearm. That has been the case for decades, colleagues. There is no similar limitation for lever‑action, pump-action or bolt-action firearms. Those firearms might commonly hold 10 rounds, for example.

What colleagues should understand and what ministers should have understood is that semi-automatic long guns are very common among hunting firearms. They should also have understood that semi-automatic firearms already have magazine restrictions that are greater than those imposed on other long guns.

I think a reason that was overlooked and not well understood is because the government has consulted so inadequately on this bill. They certainly did not consult with Indigenous authorities on this amendment. We have often heard government ministers claim that when it comes to laws impacting Indigenous peoples, the slogan “nothing about us, without us” applies. But the reality is that this slogan is observed more in its omission than in its implementation.

Despite the government’s repeated claims that the enactment of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples requires them to consult with Indigenous peoples on issues affecting them, that certainly did not occur in any systematic way on Bill C-21.

The question, “With whom did you consult?” was posed to the officials during my critic’s briefing on the bill. When the officials were asked to describe their process of consulting with Indigenous peoples, they turned and looked for answers to the representative who was present from Minister Mendicino’s office. Departmental officials did say they had consulted on the previous Bill C-21, which died on the Order Paper, but they engaged in no such consultations with Indigenous peoples in advance of introducing this bill, which has different provisions from the previous bill.

Subsequent to my critic’s briefing, officials sent my office a list of meetings they held with Indigenous groups after the bill was introduced. In other words, those were meetings held between January and May this year. But that was months after Bill C-21 had been introduced and only occurred after the public opposition to the government’s amendments had arisen, colleagues.

As on so many other occasions, Indigenous peoples were only an afterthought. That really makes a mockery out of the claim that when it comes to Indigenous peoples, it is “nothing about us, without us.”

On Bill C-21, officials also failed to consult with outside experts who are well-informed on firearms.

All of that makes Bill C-21 remarkably similar to another Liberal gun bill, Bill C-68 in the 1990s, which enacted a universal firearms registry. Like that earlier bill, Bill C-21 will achieve almost nothing when it comes to enhancing public safety. Yet it will prevent legal handgun owners from buying or selling their firearms, but it still allows them to keep those guns and use them. Where, exactly, is the public safety benefit in that?

The bill will also set up a red flag law that will permit Canadians to take other Canadians to court if they fear that those other Canadians have guns and might pose a risk to others. Colleagues, Canadians can already call the police to deal with those sorts of concerns, so where is the public safety benefit in that?

That is what makes Bill C-21 so similar to Bill C-68 of the 1990s. Bill C-68 was ultimately rejected and, in large measure, repealed because it could not be explained how creating a universal gun registry at an enormous cost would enhance public safety.

Remember, colleagues, that the Chrétien government originally claimed that creating a universal firearms registry would carry a net cost of $2 million, but those costs subsequently exploded to $2 billion. By the time the Harper government repealed the long-gun registry, the public safety benefits of the costly long-gun registry had become impossible to explain.

Like Bill C-68, the provisions of Bill C-21 are already proving difficult to explain and to justify, and the bill has not been enacted yet. Ultimately, the Canadian public lost confidence in what was being claimed would be the benefits of Bill C-68. The same is already happening with Bill C-21, and once again, we have a piece of Liberal legislation that risks undermining the very foundations of gun control in Canada.

What, then, is the government claiming that it will achieve with this bill?

When he spoke on the bill in June 2022, Minister Mendicino stated that this bill is “. . . how we will eradicate gun violence and protect all Canadians.”

Reluctantly, I take the minister at his word that this is actually his objective and the objective of his government. In that sense, it is an emotive reaction to the scourge of gun crime. I’m sure that every senator in this chamber would agree that gun crime is a scourge on our society, but the minister says that his government’s goal is to eradicate gun violence. The word “eradicate” is defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as “to do away with as completely as if by pulling up by the roots.” That is a very noble objective in theory, but the sad reality is that no piece of government legislation can hope to accomplish such a sweeping objective when it comes to any criminal activity; it is simply not possible.

We do not know if the minister literally believed what he said, but if that is actually his goal, then he simply doesn’t know what he is doing, and we’ve raised that issue in the Senate a few times here in the last few weeks.

If we consider the other bills the government has enacted when it comes to criminal justice — ones like Bill C-5 and Bill C-75 — those bills have actually undermined the ability of law enforcement to fight gun crime.

Under Bill C-5, the government repealed a number of mandatory sentences for gun crime, including the following: using a firearm or imitation firearm in the commission of an offence; possession of a firearm or weapon knowing its possession is unauthorized; possession of a prohibited or restricted firearm with ammunition; possession of a weapon obtained by commission of offence; discharging a firearm with intent; robbery with a firearm; and extortion with a firearm.

The mandatory sentences for all of those offences were repealed. Many of those provisions had actually been put in place not by the previous government, but by previous Liberal governments.

In 1995, Justice Minister Allan Rock said the following about the need for mandatory penalties for gun crimes:

The right approach to firearms control in Canada is to find an efficient way to fight criminal use of firearms while respecting legitimate uses and interests of law-abiding firearms owners.

. . . we must strengthen controls at the borders and impose tougher sentences for smuggling and trafficking in illegal firearms.

. . . the longest mandatory minimum penitentiary terms in the Criminal Code for those who use firearms for any one of ten serious crimes, including robbery; the prospect of a mandatory jail term for possessing stolen or smuggled firearms . . . .

The minister continues:

Our efforts at the borders must be more effective. It makes a mockery of our domestic controls if we cannot staunch the flow of illegal arms coming into Canada.

That, colleagues, is what the Liberal Minister of Justice said in 1995.

To be sure, what Allan Rock did in creating the long-gun registry was foolish, but he was at least right when he spoke about the need to prevent firearms trafficking and the criminal use of firearms.

Is it not strange for today’s Liberal government to declare that its objective is to completely eradicate gun violence, and then to turn around and deliberately eliminate mandatory sentences for those very same crimes?

As Allan Rock argued, the reality is that mandatory sentences can assist in reducing gun crimes. They are particularly useful in removing violent and repeat offenders from circulation on our streets and in preventing them from committing new violent crimes. Mandatory sentences provide some measure of assurance that gang members and other violent criminals won’t be back to prey on people in vulnerable communities that are most often plagued by gun crime.

But keeping measures in place to stop that sort of crime has not been a strong consideration in this current government’s policy-making. Instead, this government decided that a range of firearms offences should no longer attract any mandatory sentencing. How is that consistent with the government’s pledge to eradicate gun violence?

And, of course, the government did not stop these contradictory measures with Bill C-5. Under Bill C-75, the government also introduced a new legislative “principle of restraint” for police and the courts to observe when it comes to granting bail. The government argued that these specific measures would “. . . ensure that release at the earliest opportunity is favoured over detention . . . .”

The impact of this policy has been nothing short of devastating, and I now want to discuss some of these impacts.

In British Columbia, a recent study looked at 425 bail hearings involving a suspect both accused of a violent crime and with a breach of bail conditions on their file. Of those 425 hearings, the Crown sought detention orders in only 222 cases, or 52% of the time. That meant that in nearly 50% of the cases, violent criminals with bail breaches on their files were back on the streets.

If we look at Ontario, this province has experienced a 57% increase in serious violence and weapons cases before the courts between 2018 and 2021. Who was in government?

Constable Greg Pierzchala of the Ontario Provincial Police was shot and killed last year. He was murdered by a repeat criminal, Randall McKenzie, and another man. McKenzie was out on bail on assault and weapons charges. He also had a warrant out for his arrest.

At the time that Bill C-75 was passed, the eradication of gun violence was supposed to be the goal of this government. But somehow that goal did not impact the provisions of Bill C-75. When Bill C-75 was passed, the government already knew that crimes committed by repeat offenders were skyrocketing. And Bill C-75 added fuel to that fire.

The Toronto Police Service reports that in the last two years, 17% of accused in Toronto charged with shooting-related homicides were already out on bail at the time of the alleged fatal shooting. Think about that, colleagues: Of the perpetrators of fatal shootings in Toronto, 17% were out on bail. Once again, how did the government’s supposed goal of eradicating gun violence fit with this outcome?

Colleagues, we can only come to two possible conclusions when we consider facts like these: Either the eradication of gun violence is really only a slogan for this government, or this government is completely and totally incompetent. If we are honest, colleagues, it’s probably a mixture of both.

This is a government and a minister who pay far too little attention to the details of policy. Like the Prime Minister who leads them, they somehow believe that slogans are sufficient and that slogans themselves will determine and set policy. We see this approach time and time again, and it is leading to disastrous policy outcomes. The government’s policy approach in Bill C-21 is only the latest illustration of this incompetence.

In his second reading remarks on Bill C-21 a year ago, the minister referenced the experiences of numerous Canadians who have been impacted by gun violence. No words can ever comfort those whose loved ones have been murdered in senseless acts of violence, but if he actually wants to eradicate gun violence as he claims, then the problem is that he has absolutely no idea how to accomplish that objective. That is because this government blames society for the actions of criminals. It is a government that identifies legal gun owners as the primary problem when it comes to gun crime. And it is a government that somehow believes that shorter periods of incarceration, even for repeat violent offenders, will produce less crime.

Colleagues, this is an incompetent approach, and it has significantly contributed to increasing violent crime in the past eight years. According to Statistics Canada, in 2021, 788 people were murdered in Canada. Let’s contrast that with 2013, when there were only 509 murders. Now, 509 murders are still way too many, but just eight years later, the number of murders increased by more than 50%. And in 2021, one quarter of those murders were gang-related.

Shootings, always using illegal firearms, represent three quarters of all gang-related homicides. In Winnipeg, there were a record 53 homicides in 2022. Firearms were used in more than 30% of Winnipeg’s homicides, but knives were involved in about 28% of homicides.

I asked the minister about this when he was here in the Senate to answer questions. I asked how the government’s repeal of eight mandatory minimum penalties for gun crime in Bill C-5 would help combat the rise in violent crime. The minister did what his government always does: He hid behind court decisions and claimed, by implication, that he had no choice.

Colleagues, that is a pathetic response from a minister and is cold comfort for the victims of rising violent crime.

Effectively, what the minister is saying is:

We are sorry, but as a government we are completely helpless. We have no choice but to go after legal gun owners because the courts won’t let us go after the violent criminals.

First of all, the minister’s response is factually wrong. The courts have not struck down all mandatory minimum penalties. In fact, the Supreme Court has upheld the principle that Parliament may impose mandatory penalties and, in specific cases, has often given the government options to respond to its judgments.

The Supreme Court gave such an option to the government in R v. Nur, a decision of the Supreme Court in 2015 which struck down one aspect of a minimum penalty related to firearms possession.

The court struck the provision down, but it nevertheless provided room for the government to modify the existing law. The Harper government did just that in response to that particular ruling when it introduced Bill C-69. Unfortunately, that bill died on the Order Paper prior to the 2015 election and the current government chose not to proceed with it.

If the current government is too afraid to respond to Supreme Court rulings in order to work within those rulings to protect Canadians in the face of gun crime, it should say so. But it should stop hiding behind the courts and claiming that it has no choice but to do nothing. That is an abdication of responsibility and it ensures that many Canadian communities will continue to be plagued by gun crime.

Second, even where the court provides the government with few options in a particular case, we still have a principle of parliamentary supremacy in this country.

When Canadian streets are plagued by rising violent crime, there are other constitutional and legislative tools available for a government and Parliament to protect Canadians. If the current government doesn’t have the courage to use those tools, then that government deserves to be replaced; it is as simple as that.

Parliament and the Government of Canada have an obligation to protect Canadians. When Parliament fundamentally disagrees with a Supreme Court ruling, it should be prepared to act. What we require is an elected Parliament that is willing to do just that. Hopefully, colleagues — and I am, indeed, positively hopeful — that we will have such a Parliament after the next election.

What we have now is a government that is doing exactly the opposite of what is required to protect Canadians. There is ample evidence to suggest that various government measures, including badly thought out criminal justice legislation, as well as Liberal policy on drug distribution, have contributed significantly to the major increase in violent crime in Canada.

The sad fact is that, since 2015, violent crime in Canada has increased by 32% while gang-related murders, many of them committed with firearms, have doubled. None of these trends are impacted at all by Bill C-21.

The government may argue that Bill C-21 is part of a larger effort but I see no evidence of a larger effort. The truth is that Bill C-21, like Bill C-68 before it, diverts and wastes the efforts and resources to go after legal firearm owners when the attention of police, instead, should be on real criminals.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer has estimated that the government’s decision in 2020 to ban certain classes of previously legal firearms and to pay the necessary compensation will cost as much as $750 million. Others say the costs may be even higher.

This money, colleagues, should be used to support front-line officers. Instead, these funds are being completely and totally wasted. This, again, leads one to ask with whom the government actually consulted in order to produce this bill.

In his remarks on the bill a year ago, the minister claimed:

Bill C-21 represents the culmination of the advice we have received from so many constituencies, including from survivors and many others . . . .

If Bill C-21 represents the culmination of advice that the government has received from so many constituencies, then there remains a remarkable degree of public opposition to this bill.

If we consider even what earlier supporters of the bill are saying, it does not seem that the government listened to any advice they provided. Their expectations were unrealistically raised by the government when the minister unrealistically claimed that he could somehow eradicate gun violence. Now these groups feel betrayed.

The group PolySeSouvient supports Bill C-21 but has declared that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will no longer be welcome at future Polytechnique memorials.

Nathalie Provost, a survivor of the terrible shooting at the École Polytechnique, in speaking about the Prime Minister’s attendance at future commemoration events, reportedly said, “We won’t invite him and if he wants to come, we will not agree for him to be there.”

I understand why they are angry. The government promised a bill that would do the impossible. Then, when expectations were dashed, people became angry. You can’t promise the unachievable and then backtrack and not expect severe disappointment.

What about the total lack of government consultation with Indigenous peoples? Chief Jessica Lazare of the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake told members of Parliament that the absence of comprehensive consultation with Indigenous peoples is clearly evident given what she says is the “incoherence and inconsistency” of the bill itself.

She further said:

We ask that you address the real underlying problems that cause gun violence, not further restrict Indigenous peoples from carrying out their lives in a sustainable ceremonial and generational way.

This, again, is the essence of the problem with Bill C-21. The government claims that this is a bill that is designed to address gun violence. The real target is law-abiding firearms owners, including Indigenous hunters.

Vice Chief Heather Bear of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations said that Bill C-21 and its proposed amendments infringe on Indigenous rights to hunt both on reserve lands and on traditional territories. This includes the provisions in the bill that target legal handgun owners.

Bill C-21 proposes to freeze the sale, purchase or transfer of legal handguns. This provision impacts more than 1 million legal firearms that have been used by law-abiding competitive shooters and collectors for a century and more.

Naturally, this measure will have no impact on criminal gangs who are largely interested in illegal firearms, which they can easily acquire from across the border. Instead, this so-called handgun freeze goes after those who hold restricted firearms licences for a variety of legal purposes.

As Vice Chief Bear stated, “Handguns are used in the far north. . . .” Why are they used? They are sometimes employed for safety reasons, where an animal such a bear may come upon a hunter very quickly, making a handgun easier to use at close quarters than a rifle. Having an available tool like a handgun might actually mean the difference between life and death; not only did the government not consider that when it drafted Bill C-21, it also did not, of course, consult with the people most affected.

It is scarcely surprising that, in December, First Nations leaders at the AFN General Assembly voted to oppose Bill C-21.

Cat Lake First Nation Chief Russell Wesley, who brought forward the resolution at the AFN Special Chiefs Assembly, referred to the bill as “just another demonstration of our First Nations constantly being attacked with respect to our rights.”

When it comes to Indigenous consultation, the Department of Justice states:

The Government of Canada has a constitutional duty to consult Indigenous peoples when it considers measures that might adversely impact their potential or established Aboriginal or treaty rights. This has been consistently confirmed by the Courts. The Government of Canada has consistently worked to uphold this duty and has shown its commitment to taking additional steps to do so.

What happened to that commitment? I believe that it is absolutely imperative that when our Senate committee reviews this bill, it must take the time to hear from all Indigenous witnesses who want to be heard.

If the government is not going to consult Indigenous peoples in the manner that it promised, then the Senate must do that job for them. We will do our utmost to ensure that this bill receives full hearing at the Senate committee, and that Canadians can and will be heard.

In that regard, I want to come back to the matter of the handgun freeze that is proposed in this bill. The minister said that this provision:

. . . would introduce a national freeze on handguns for the first time. In very clear language, this means that on a go‑forward basis no one would be able to buy, sell, transfer or import a handgun.

That is the purpose, according to the minister. But what will that provision actually accomplish when it comes to public safety? We know it will do nothing when it comes to illegal handguns, which are the weapon of choice for criminal gangs. The Deputy Chief of Police of the Toronto Police Service, as he then was, Myron Demkiw, recently testified in the House of Commons that approximately 86% of crime guns seized were ones that had been smuggled into Canada. A recent CBC story noted that 90% of gun crimes in Ontario were committed with smuggled guns.

Deputy Chief Demkiw was very clear about handguns on Toronto’s streets, saying:

They’re not domestically sourced. They are internationally sourced. Our problem in Toronto is handguns from the United States.

When asked about the proposed handgun freeze and the government’s other firearms buy-back program, he said:

Investing in what you described is certainly not going to deal with the crime problem we’re facing in Toronto as it relates to criminal handguns and the use of criminal handguns.

We must ask again: Who did the government listen to or consult with? There is no public safety benefit in legislating that legal handgun owners can keep their 1 million firearms, but they can’t legally buy or sell them. Neither does restricting competitive pistol shooters make our streets safer.

The government claims that in many areas of Canada, the theft of legal firearms must be combatted, but freezing purchases and sales of legal firearms that are already tightly controlled does not address that problem. The major problem for a city like Toronto is organized firearms smuggling. On that, Bill C-21 does nothing at all.

In his remarks on the bill, the minister claimed that:

Bill C-21 will take on, in a very intentional and direct way, organized crime. It does this by first and foremost raising maximum sentences for illegal gun smugglers and traffickers at the border, from 10 years to 15 years. What is the effect of that statement of intent? It is to send a very powerful and clear message to anyone who is in the business of illegal gun smuggling that they are at greater risk of facing stiffer sentences.

It’s hardly surprising that the minister actually got the proposed new maximum wrong. The new maximum proposed in the bill is 14 years, not 15 years as the minister said. He doesn’t know his own bill. He’s a lawyer and a former prosecutor, but somehow he missed the fact that 14 years is a normal maximum sentence in the Criminal Code, not 15 years.

Be that as it may, what does this increase in the maximum possible sentence actually accomplish?

First of all, in relation to the current 10-year maximum for firearms smuggling, we need to be honest that even this sentence is rarely imposed in Canadian courts. I asked Library of Parliament researchers how often the 10-year maximum sentence had been imposed in the past 20 years. Library researchers failed to find a single example.

When officials from the department briefed me during my critic briefing, they acknowledged that very few sentences for firearms smuggling are at the higher end of the sentencing range permitted under the law. There may be such cases, but they’re so rare that they’re very difficult to find even by officials.

In the face of that fact, the minister claims that raising the maximum to 14 years will send a strong signal to the courts. This seems highly doubtful when most custodial sentences are five years or less.

I recognize that some gun offences may at times attract stronger sentences. In his second reading remarks, Senator Yussuff claimed that “on average those who are convicted [of smuggling] serve eight years of their sentence.” I believe what Senator Yussuff was likely trying to claim was that the average sentence was eight years, not that they actually served eight years in custody. In fact, serving eight years in prison is almost impossible if someone were to receive a maximum 10-year sentence. That is because statutory release of all inmates occurs at about the two-thirds mark of a sentence, so even on a maximum 10-year sentence, all inmates would be released even before the 7-year mark.

I also don’t believe that there is any evidence that eight years is actually the average sentence for gun smuggling. I can only repeat what the Library of Parliament said. They could find no example of a maximum sentence being imposed on firearms smuggling, and officials acknowledged that there were very few sentences at the high end of the sentencing range. One would hope that this trend might change, but, in fact, the tendency is actually towards sentencing at the lower to middle range of the scale.

One illustration of how this works is the case of William Rainville who, in 2021, tried to smuggle 248 Polymer80 Glock‑type pistols into Canada. These pistols were smuggled without serial numbers. The guns had an estimated street value of $1.6 million and they were destined for criminal use. He, colleagues, received a five-year sentence.

Some might argue that is a stiff sentence, but it’s actually only in the middle range, and the fact is that William Rainville was out on day parole in 12 months of that five-year sentence.

Colleagues, think about that: 12 months served for smuggling 250 firearms into our country with the serial numbers filed off. These were guns that were clearly destined for criminal use and would likely have killed people, but he was out in 12 months.

Why only 12 months? Here we have to reference another bill passed under this government, Bill C-83. That bill introduced a principle into the Corrections and Conditional Release Act mandating that all offenders must be incarcerated at the least restrictive level of security consistent with public policy. That means that as long as offenders keep their noses clean while inside, they are often transferred to increasingly lower levels of security, speeding their way to early day parole and full parole. It means that, regardless of the seriousness of the offence, if an offender knows how to work the system, he can often be out very quickly.

The government was warned that this would happen when they passed Bill C-83. Those warnings included ones given by our very own colleague Senator Boisvenu, but those warnings were ignored.

Another individual, Tony N’Zoigba certainly knew how to work the system. He was arrested in February 2020 after crossing the St. Lawrence River in a motorboat in which he had a duffle bag containing nine guns. These guns were clearly intended for criminal use, since their path had been traced through a joint Canada-U.S. sting operation. His intent was to sell those guns to criminal gangs right here in the city of Ottawa.

For that, he faced 92 charges. What was his sentence? He received 18 months.

A few months later, he was out on day parole. And what was he up to on day parole? Allegedly, he was working on yet another deal to smuggle even more guns into Canada, so his day parole had to be suspended.

Colleagues, when it comes to cross-border firearms smuggling, criminals are highly organized and they take advantage of lax Canadian laws, weak Liberal judges and limited law enforcement at the border. I am afraid that neither the limited measures that the government has taken nor the proposed minor increase in a maximum sentence — that even today is rarely if ever used — will have any impact on the grave problem that Canada faces.

The minister has argued that the bill grants new investigatory powers by expanding the list of eligible firearms offences. This, he says, will allow police to obtain more wiretaps. His government also claims that they have invested over $1 billion to combat gun crime. But statistics of money spent are not the same as results. This is a government that is very willing to throw money at problems but never wants to ask detailed questions about whether their policies are actually working.

We also need to be honest that this money is spread over many years. It is spread across the country. It is spread over multiple initiatives. Much of it does not go to the support of front-line officers. Certainly, the $750 million or more that is being wasted to compensate legal gun owners for the 2020 gun ban enacted by the government does absolutely nothing to support our front-line policing.

The reality is that gun crime is going up, and much of that crime is fuelled by smuggled guns. With regard to that problem, the minister is actually doing very little. He claims that border officers are seizing record numbers of guns at border crossings. But how are such seizures actually impacting the crime on the streets?

My office posed an Order Paper question related to firearm seizures at border crossings. We asked how successful the Canada Border Services Agency, the CBSA, has actually been in intercepting illegal guns destined for street gangs. In response to that question, the Department of Public Safety responded that in 2019 the CBSA seized 713 firearms from all sources at the border. That sounds impressive, but the reality is that the CBSA also reported that only 72 of these firearms were identified as prima facie crime guns, that is to say, firearms that were believed destined for illegal use in Canada.

In 2020, the numbers were less impressive. While 470 firearms were seized by the CBSA at the border in 2020, a mere 8 of these were identified as likely crime guns, in other words, about 2% of all gun seizures.

Seizing guns from otherwise unsuspecting American travellers, unfamiliar with Canadian laws, who will only be in Canada for a few days or weeks, has no impact on crime in urban Canada. We need instead to stop gun smuggling by organized groups who are funnelling those guns to gangs on our streets.

For all the minister’s talk about investments and money spent, the sad reality is this, colleagues: If we don’t have sufficient numbers of officers on hand to investigate organized gun smuggling, then we will not seriously address violent crime on our streets. If we don’t have aggressive and well-funded intelligence-led policing that targets gun smuggling, then we will not address violent crime on our streets. If we don’t have sufficient numbers of police officers or border officers policing the border between ports of entry, then we will not seriously address violent crimes on our streets. If we don’t have sufficient numbers of officers and Crown attorneys to pursue wiretap warrants and to support major investigations, then we will not seriously address violent crimes on our streets. Lastly, if we don’t have serious sentences for gun smuggling and gun crime, sentences that will permanently remove violent criminals off our streets, then we simply will not address gun crime on our streets.

To be honest, Bill C-21 and all the rhetoric surrounding it provide none of those capabilities. This bill is focused almost exclusively on legal firearms owners. It views them as the problem. The approach is particularly evident in another provision of this bill. It relates to the so-called “red flag” provisions.

Minister Mendicino said:

We are seeing gender-based violence in our workplaces, communities, homes or wherever online. There is a trend between gender-based violence and guns. Between 2013 and 2019, the incidents involving gender-based violence and guns went up more than 30%, and that trend has continued.

The minister is suggesting that the mere existence of legal guns is a problem, but there are millions of legal guns in Canada. Unless the minister is suggesting taking them all away from every hunter and sports shooter, then I don’t know how he plans to address this. He certainly won’t address this through any provisions of Bill C-21.

I do think that all Canadians agree that the increasing incidence of violence, sometimes rampage attacks, that we are seeing in our society is extremely disturbing. Such attacks may be driven by religious or other ideological extremist ideas. They may simply be driven by a collapse in an individual’s mental health. Whatever the reason, we seem to be seeing more of them. They may be random stabbings or other assaults. They may involve someone using a car as a weapon, or they may involve firearms.

Our legal firearm controls are designed to help address that issue. That is why, in Canada, we have long recognized the need for reasonable firearm controls. There has been a broad political consensus in Canada when it comes to firearms licensing, mandatory safety training and ensuring the safe storage of firearms. There has also been a broad consensus around police background checks. Holders of firearms licences in Canada must renew their firearms licences every five years. Firearms owners are subject to continuous review. If issues of concern arise, licences can be suspended, and firearms seized. These are comprehensive legal provisions, but we must recognize that we will never have fully foolproof solutions.

In Bill C-21, the government is proposing to add a new set of provisions called “red flag” laws. The provision will allow anyone to go to court and ask a judge to seize the gun or suspend the licence of a person who owns a gun if they believe they pose a threat to anyone else or themselves. What does this provision really add in terms of enhanced public safety?

The Criminal Justice Section of the Canadian Bar Association, the CBA, notes that police officers already have the power to seek a warrant to seize firearms under specific circumstances. The law allows police to seize firearms without a warrant when obtaining one is impractical or when someone fails to show a licence or other authorization.

The seizure of a firearm means an automatic revocation of licences and authorizations. The individual then has an opportunity to be heard in court. In other words, any individual can already file a complaint or a concern with the police, who are then empowered to act.

As stated on the CBA website, the Criminal Justice Section of the CBA believes:

. . . the current law contains sufficient powers to accomplish the goal of seizing weapons believed to have been used in a crime or removing them from the hands of persons who are believed to be a danger to themselves or to others.

It is difficult to understand what precisely layering “red flag” provisions on top of these already existing provisions will achieve. Is an individual more likely to call the police if they have a serious concern, or are they more likely to take the time to go to court? The answer seems rather obvious.

It will be very important for the Senate committee studying this legislation to hear from legal and other witnesses on this matter. These issues are complicated, and it will be necessary to understand how the current law functions, as well as what these proposed new provisions add when it comes to enhancing public safety.

In considering all of these issues, this bill appears to have no practical value. What is its actual purpose? I believe that purpose is not to eradicate gun violence, as the government claims, but to lay the foundation for future actions that can target legal firearms owners more comprehensively. In that regard, the government proposes to incorporate in this legislation an expanded definition of prohibited firearms. That definition would now include semi‑automatic centre-fire firearms that were originally designed with a detachable magazine with a capacity of six cartridges or more. That will technically incorporate, perhaps, the 1 million‑plus existing non-restricted firearms that I have already referenced.

The government claims that this definition would apply prospectively, meaning that it would only apply to firearms designed and manufactured on or after the definition comes into force. It would not impact the classification of the existing firearms in the Canadian market. But if that is the case, what is the public safety benefit of the amendment? New firearms that may be largely the same as old firearms, and that shoot the same ammunition, would be banned, but the 1 million-plus existing firearms would not be banned.

When I use the number “1 million-plus,” I do so because nobody actually knows the exact number. What we do know is that banning new guns — that are exactly the same as the old guns — and then leaving the old guns in circulation makes absolutely no sense. The government claims that the purpose is to “close a regulatory gap where firearms that enter the Canadian market may be misclassified.” But the capacity to do much more than that is there, and the government’s ultimate intent is shown in the amendments that have, for now, been withdrawn. This means that no one should be fooled into thinking that firearms — which may have been held by Canadians for decades — are safe from arbitrary prohibition. In the firearms prohibitions that the government introduced by order-in-council in 2020, the government showed that it is more than willing to initiate completely arbitrary firearms prohibitions whenever the political considerations suggest that this would be a good idea.

Canadians are not made safer when governments arbitrarily take a political decision to ban a few classes of firearms simply based on their look, but leave other similar classes of firearms, often shooting exactly the same ammunition, in legal circulation. That, of course, makes no sense, but it is exactly what the government did in 2020.

Previously, the government argued that its decisions related to firearms prohibitions would always be based on facts and on professional input, but that promise has gone out the window, and the reclassification of firearms will now take place behind closed doors, subject to all manner of pressure from politicians.

What are the implications of all this for gun control in Canada? As occurred with Bill C-68 exactly 30 years ago, it is probable that support for gun control will take a major blow. Gun control of legal firearms is, by its very definition, focused on law-abiding citizens. For the most part, gun owners in Canada have always cooperated with gun control in Canada, and their cooperation is necessary in order to maintain viable and effective gun control. It is, after all, their firearms that are being regulated. But laws must be seen as legitimate and necessary if they are to retain the cooperation of those who are most impacted by those laws. Bill C-21 undermines that public confidence. This bill is already being perceived as a politically driven and gratuitous attack on gun owners. It is their personal property being targeted.

As a result of the government’s actions, 1 million handguns held by law-abiding gun owners can no longer be legally bought or sold. This arbitrary decision comes with absolutely no financial compensation, making it particularly unjust.

Shooting disciplines and handgun clubs across the country are being impacted. When it comes to the various handgun shooting disciplines, the government has decided that only Olympic shooters will be exempt from buying and selling handguns. What sense does that possibly make? How can you sustain Olympic‑level competitors in Canada without allowing any other shooters into the shooting sport? As I have said before, it’s as if we were to say that the only hockey that will be allowed is the NHL, but we won’t allow anybody in amateur hockey to play. Every legal gun owner knows that the real objective here is to kill all shooting sports in Canada.

We have also been told that a side impact of this is that police officers across the country, who are often only able to train at their local gun club, may suddenly have nowhere to keep up their shooting skills, as these clubs start to close in the years ahead. Did anyone in the government think about this public safety impact? How will our police officers keep up their shooting skills as clubs start to close?

It is hardly surprising that — when one looks at all of the implications — people are reacting very negatively to this bill. That is why this bill is already opposed by a broad cross‑section of Canadians. Colleagues, it is also opposed by most provinces and territories. In fact, some provinces are enacting legislation that will thwart the very objectives of Bill C-21.

Some senators in this chamber will, no doubt, console themselves by believing that this is only what Conservative provincial governments are doing. But this is what Irfan Sabir, justice critic for the Alberta NDP, said about this legislation:

There are legitimate criticisms of the federal firearms program, and absolutely they needed to withdraw and reconsider their amendments that would have captured many firearms, including those used by Albertans and Indigenous peoples for hunting.

Honourable senators, that is the view of the Alberta NDP.

The only point of correction I would make is that, unfortunately, the federal government has not walked away from its amendments to Bill C-21. Instead, it has merely tried to temporarily freeze those amendments with the full intent of bringing them back in future regulations. These regulations will be recommended by a ministerial committee composed entirely of individuals appointed by the Minister of Public Safety — a man whose credibility is already completely shattered by the bad bill that he has introduced. We should not be surprised that this minister is simultaneously presiding over other fiascos, such as his demonstrated incompetence over the transfer of killer Paul Bernardo to a medium-security institution.

Honourable senators, the reality is that this minister and his government have mishandled the entire criminal justice file from the very beginning. Its approach to combatting gun and gang violence in our communities is wrong, and it should simply start fresh.

What should it be doing instead? First, it should admit its mistakes on Bill C-5, Bill C-75 and Bill C-83. In regard to Bill C-75 and bail conditions, it has now done that half-heartedly, but the new measures that it has proposed are unlikely to have a major impact on stopping crime on our streets. All of the bad bills that the government has passed need to be completely revisited if we are going to make a dent in the rise of violent crime in Canada.

Second, in regard to firearms smuggling, tackling this problem should become the real top priority. We will never be able to fully stop crime guns from entering Canada from the United States, but we can, at least, try to make it very costly for criminal gangs to engage in cross-border smuggling. We need to make it monetarily costly for them — and we need to ensure that when someone is caught smuggling guns into our country, they are removed from our streets, either for a very long time or, if they are repeat offenders, permanently. Parliament, not the courts, is supreme when it comes to law-making in Canada, and we need a government that is ready to stand by that important principle.

Third, the government needs to work closely, and in a collaborative fashion, with vulnerable communities. We need a government that invests in them and in the youth with measures that actually work.

Most importantly, those communities, like all other Canadian communities, deserve an environment in which law and order can be taken for granted and where children and youth can grow up without fear. You can have all the programs you want, but if the streets around where those programs are being delivered are unsafe, then the impact is going to be very limited.

Fourth, we need a federal government that is willing to work collaboratively with provinces and not at cross-purposes from their objectives. In other words, we need a federal government that is more interested in real results than it is in bills like Bill C-21 that are based on slogans and on targeting law-abiding Canadians. I understand that provinces have different views on this matter. The federal government needs to be prepared to work with all of them, not to impose solutions from afar.

Lastly, colleagues — I’m sure you are happy to hear — we need to maintain a firearms licensing regime in Canada that is both effective but also reasonable. This is not the United States, and in Canada, we have a strong tradition of responsible but reasonable gun control.

For gun control to be effective, it must be seen as being legitimate. Gun control must retain the support of legal firearms owners. With this bill, the government risks losing that support. It took years to build back a measure of support for an existing gun control regime after the debacle of the long-gun registry created by another Liberal government 30 years ago. Now, this government has thrown that support away. That makes this bill extremely foolish and short-sighted.

Colleagues, all of these issues need to be thoroughly examined by the Senate committee that will review this legislation. I trust we will not close the door on the diverse number of Canadians who want to be heard on this bad bill. I hope we will not do what the government did in the House, which was to introduce time allocation and ram the bill through the House committee process as well as third reading. That would be a slap in the face to many Canadians who deserve to be heard. It would also be a betrayal and complete abdication of the Senate’s constitutional role.

I strongly oppose this bill, but if we are going to send it to committee, we also need to give the committee time to do its work effectively. I trust we all agree with that principle, but it would be far better if we would not waste the committee’s time with this bad bill.

Bill C-21 will not make Canada safer. It does nothing to address crime on the streets. It is opposed by legal firearms owners. It is opposed by our Indigenous peoples. It has been opposed by provinces and territories. It risks destroying gun control in Canada.

Colleagues, I urge you to reject and defeat this at second reading. Thank you very much.

I was hanging on to the podium for the last 30 minutes. I would respectfully decline questions.