Bill C-75 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Criminal Code, the Youth Criminal Justice Act and other Acts and to make consequential amendments to other Acts

This enactment amends the Criminal Code to, among other things,
(a) modernize and clarify interim release provisions to simplify the forms of release that may be imposed on an accused, incorporate a principle of restraint and require that particular attention be given to the circumstances of Aboriginal accused and accused from vulnerable populations when making interim release decisions, and provide more onerous interim release requirements for offences involving violence against an intimate partner;
(b) provide for a judicial referral hearing to deal with administration of justice offences involving a failure to comply with conditions of release or failure to appear as required;
(c) abolish peremptory challenges of jurors, modify the process of challenging a juror for cause so that a judge makes the determination of whether a ground of challenge is true, and allow a judge to direct that a juror stand by for reasons of maintaining public confidence in the administration of justice;
(d) increase the maximum term of imprisonment for repeat offences involving intimate partner violence and provide that abuse of an intimate partner is an aggravating factor on sentencing;
(e) restrict the availability of a preliminary inquiry to offences punishable by imprisonment for a term of 14 years or more and strengthen the justice’s powers to limit the issues explored and witnesses to be heard at the inquiry;
(f) hybridize most indictable offences punishable by a maximum penalty of 10 years or less, increase the default maximum penalty to two years less a day of imprisonment for summary conviction offences and extend the limitation period for summary conviction offences to 12 months;
(g) remove the requirement for judicial endorsement for the execution of certain out-of-province warrants and authorizations, expand judicial case management powers, allow receiving routine police evidence in writing, consolidate provisions relating to the powers of the Attorney General and allow increased use of technology to facilitate remote attendance by any person in a proceeding;
(h) re-enact the victim surcharge regime and provide the court with the discretion to waive a victim surcharge if the court is satisfied that the victim surcharge would cause the offender undue hardship or would be disproportionate to the gravity of the offence or the degree of responsibility of the offender; and
(i) remove passages and repeal provisions that have been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada, repeal section 159 of the Act and provide that no person shall be convicted of any historical offence of a sexual nature unless the act that constitutes the offence would constitute an offence under the Criminal Code if it were committed on the day on which the charge was laid.
The enactment also amends the Youth Criminal Justice Act in order to reduce delays within the youth criminal justice system and enhance the effectiveness of that system with respect to administration of justice offences. For those purposes, the enactment amends that Act to, among other things,
(a) set out principles intended to encourage the use of extrajudicial measures and judicial reviews as alternatives to the laying of charges for administration of justice offences;
(b) set out requirements for imposing conditions on a young person’s release order or as part of a sentence;
(c) limit the circumstances in which a custodial sentence may be imposed for an administration of justice offence;
(d) remove the requirement for the Attorney General to determine whether to seek an adult sentence in certain circumstances; and
(e) remove the power of a youth justice court to make an order to lift the ban on publication in the case of a young person who receives a youth sentence for a violent offence, as well as the requirement to determine whether to make such an order.
Finally, the enactment amends among other Acts An Act to amend the Criminal Code (exploitation and trafficking in persons) so that certain sections of that Act can come into force on different days and also makes consequential amendments to other Acts.

Report Stage

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, absolutely, I can be very concise, because the insurance company told my staffer that the reason for the $1,000 increase in premiums was inflation and car theft. The Liberal government, with Bill C-75, made car theft go up 100% across the country, and it is driving inflation by pouring deficits on the inflationary fire.

Budget Implementation Act, 2024, No. 1

[Doug Shipley, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Fort McMurray—Cold Lake.

I am honoured to rise in the House and add the voice of the people of Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte to today's debate. I want to take a moment to go over the unfortunate state of this country's finances after nine years of deficit budgets and how the Liberal government's inflationary policies are affecting families in my community.

Under the Liberal government, mortgage payments have doubled, down payments have doubled, rents have doubled, the cost of gas, groceries and home heating has skyrocketed and people cannot afford to eat, heat or house themselves. The Prime Minister said repeatedly that doubling the national debt would have zero consequences and the budget would balance itself. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister did not have the foresight to realize that doubling the national debt would drive up interest rates to historic modern highs, and now the government will spend over $54 billion in interest on the national debt. That is more than the government is spending on provincial health care transfers.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer, in his latest report, stated that budget 2024 marks the third consecutive fiscal plan in which the government's new measures, even after accounting for revenue-raising and spending reviews, have exceeded the incremental “fiscal room” resulting from economic and fiscal developments.

Conservatives had three simple demands leading up to this year's budget. We committed that if the Liberal government introduced measures to immediately pass Bill C-234 in its original form, require cities to permit 15% more homebuilding each year as a condition for receiving federal infrastructure money, and cap spending with a dollar-for-dollar rule to bring down interest rates and inflation, we would give our support to the budget. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister and the finance minister ignored our pleas for a balanced budget, lower taxes and more homes for Canadians, and decided to add more than $60 billion in new spending that will keep inflation and interest rates higher than Canadians can afford. That means higher taxes, higher inflation, higher interest rates, higher rents and higher mortgage payments.

I would like to spend some time discussing three central issues that I hear often from members of my community: the high cost of housing, the carbon tax and public safety.

First, one of the top concerns for residents in my community is housing affordability. In my riding, the cost of housing has skyrocketed under the Liberal government. Residents in my riding are now forced to spend almost $2,000 a month on a one-bedroom apartment. The only solution to this crisis is for the Liberals to build more homes. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister told Canadians directly that housing is not a federal responsibility, and bureaucrats in his own housing department have confirmed that the government has no plans to bring down housing costs by building the homes that Canadians need.

According to Statistics Canada, between January 1 and November 30, 2023, Canada built 17,000 fewer homes than in the previous year. Instead of taking real action to address this issue, the Liberal government is concerned with photo ops and ribbon cuttings. The numbers do not lie. The government has failed an entire generation of Canadians who fear that they will never be able to own a home.

I see the crisis surrounding interest rates playing out in my community. I receive calls and emails constantly from residents whose mortgage rates have doubled. Recently, a retiree in my riding saw their mortgage jump from $1,100 a month to $2,600 in less than a year. It has not always been like this in Canada. Nine years ago, the average down payment on a home was approximately $20,000. Now the massive cost of even a modest home in my community is forcing residents to save for longer and longer. It now takes 25 years to save up for the cost of a down payment, and the needed down payment for a home has doubled.

Roughly 64% of the average pre-tax monthly income is needed to pay the monthly costs associated with housing. This crisis has made the dream of home ownership impossible for all but the wealthiest few. In fact, 76% of Canadians who do not own homes believe they never will. The Liberal government had nine years to address this issue. The housing crisis is a policy and leadership failure from the Liberal government.

I will go on to an issue that is directly affecting families and farmers in my community: the carbon tax. Just a few weeks ago, the Prime Minister hiked his punishing carbon tax by 23% as part of his plan to quadruple the carbon tax over the next six years. The Parliamentary Budget Officer told members of this House that Canadians would be better off without the carbon tax, saying that they would experience higher income growth while the price of food would come down, but the Liberal government went ahead with its tax anyway.

To illustrate the impact this tax is having on the lives of Canadians, I want to share some of the correspondence I have received from people living in my community. I have a bill here from a family of six in my riding that is paying $142 a month plus HST in carbon tax on their home heating bill.

I have another Enbridge bill from a Barrie resident where the carbon tax makes up 33% of the total bill when the HST is factored in. This resident bought a programmable thermostat that automatically turns down the temperature in her home to 15°C from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. She believes that she is doing all she can do lower her gas bill, but she still feels punished by this costly carbon tax.

I hear this government boast often about the rural top-up of the carbon rebate. Meanwhile, we know that the calculations it made on who qualifies as a rural Canadian are deeply flawed. Residents in my riding who live in rural places like Anten Mills, Elmvale, Hillsdale, Midhurst, Minesing, Phelpston, and Snow Valley are deemed to be living in urban areas, according to the Liberal government's rural top-up formula. Budget 2024 finally says that the government will look to better define rural areas, but it only commits to putting forward a proposal to do so later in the year. This is unacceptable for residents in my riding who are forced to pay more in carbon tax, and it is proof of why we simply need to axe the tax for everyone, forever.

I will move on to how this tax is affecting the hard-working farmers in my riding. I am proud to represent a riding with a large, vibrant agricultural industry. I was recently sent an Enbridge bill for almost $10,000 from a farmer in my riding who runs a poultry operation. Their bill shows a carbon tax charge of $2,700 on the cost of fuel to dry grain corn. Shockingly, the carbon tax is more than the value of the gas before delivery and global adjustment. The Prime Minister just does not understand that if we tax the farmer who grows the food and the trucker who ships the food, we end up taxing the food that a family buys.

Finally, I will spend some time discussing the crime and chaos that the Prime Minister has unleashed, which is deeply affecting members of my community.

Small businesses bring life and a sense of community to our downtowns and neighbourhoods, yet they are sounding the alarm about the impacts of crime on their livelihoods. These businesses, including in my community, face significant challenges related to vandalism, theft, loitering, and public intoxication.

In my riding, a beloved Italian restaurant named Limoncello Bistro was recently broken into for the sixth time. Thieves who recently broke into Limoncello Bistro stole everything from the restaurant, even the meat and seafood. These repeated break-ins have cost the owners thousands and thousands of dollars. One of the owners of Limoncello Bistro has stated, “I find it hard to swallow that I have to pick up and leave a place where 5 short years ago this wasn't as bad as it is today. We fell in love with downtown Barrie. The waterfront, the community and the people. We as business owners shouldn't have to leave because criminals are putting us out of business.”

I agree. Small businesses like Limoncello Bistro are on the front lines of the Canadian public safety crisis, and we urgently need to address this issue of skyrocketing crime rates. We know that the Liberal government caused this problem with its soft-on-crime laws: Bill C-5 and Bill C-75.

Another issue that is directly affecting small businesses in my community is the Liberal government's nonsensical attack on law-abiding hunters, farmers, and sport shooters. The budget proposes to spend $30.4 million on a hunting rifle buyback plan that does not exist. This is on top of the $42 million it has already committed. Members can think about that. The Liberal government will now spend $72.4 million to buy exactly zero guns from owners and businesses. Not one gun has been bought back after spending $72.4 million.

I recently received an email from a small business owner in my riding. He is a responsible business owner who gives back to the community and is facing devastating financial losses because of this failed policy. He is now struggling to pay for his everyday expenses. He has over 40 firearms, worth almost $50,000, sitting in safes that cannot be sold but must be insured and housed in a secure rental space, while the Liberal government forces him to pay GST on them. The owner of this business says that this government is “clearly bent on just winning political points and not truly caring about the safety of the general public surrounding firearms and criminals who use them.” I agree with him. While the Prime Minister wants to protect turkeys from hunters, common-sense Conservatives want to protect Canadians from criminals.

The only way to reverse the damage the Liberal government has caused is by reversing course and doing the opposite. Canadians want change. They want lower taxes, lower mortgage rates, lower grocery bills and safer communities. Most of all, they want a change in government. The Conservative promise is simple: no gimmicks, no half measures. We will axe the tax, build more homes, fix the budget, stop the crime and bring home affordability for all Canadians.

I will be voting alongside my Conservative colleagues against the budget, and we will be voting no confidence in this costly NDP-Liberal coalition.

Public Safety

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour to present petitions on behalf of my constituents.

I rise for the 35th time on behalf of the people of Swan River, Manitoba, to present a petition on the rising rate of crime. Jail has become a revolving door for repeat offenders. Bill C-75 allows violent offenders to be in jail in the morning and back on the street the same day, while Bill C-5 allows criminals to serve their sentences from home.

The people of Swan River are calling for jail, not bail, for violent repeat offenders. They demand that the Liberal government repeal its soft-on-crime policies, which directly threaten their livelihoods and their community. I support the good people of Swan River.

Motions in Amendment

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I will continue with my remarks.

It is vitally important that we debate the proposed legislation. As it came out of committee, there were numerous concerns that we, as Conservatives, raised in the amendments to the legislation; they were not addressed. Certainly, it is not enough to impede the legislation, but it is critically important that we have a debate on it and see it come through.

I find it curious that the NDP-Liberal government, which told us last fall how important it was to get the legislation passed, has dithered. The legislation came out of committee in November, and we have had months to bring it forward for third reading debate. Here we are in May, and the government has finally brought it forward. Therefore, we do not take it very seriously when the NDP-Liberal government talks about how important it considers the legislation to be, while it is only bringing it up in May.

Our RCMP and CBSA officers make incredible sacrifices, and we need to do the very best we can to ensure that they and their families are safe and protected. They are consistently putting their lives in danger every day. It is in the interest of the public, as well as the brave members of the RCMP and CBSA, that complaints be dealt with in a timely and efficient manner. This is crucial to guard against potential abuses of power and to maintain Canadians' trust in their agencies.

Canada has the largest undefended border in the world, and the lack of resources for the CBSA to perform its role to the fullest extent is seen in the rising crime in cities, such as Montreal and Toronto, and across the country. Illegal firearms are being smuggled through our porous border and used every day in horrific crimes. Even in rural areas, including in my riding, in towns such as Bon Accord, crime is on the rise after nine years of the NDP-Liberal government's soft-on-crime policies.

Unfortunately, it seems that the government is more focused on targeting law-abiding Canadian firearms owners and hunters than on fulfilling promises to implement a policy and provide resources for our border. There, we find rampant illegal activities, such as auto theft and gun smuggling; it is at a point where the fastest-growing export in this country is stolen vehicles.

At the public safety committee, we heard the Liberals continually attempt to distract from their miserable record on crime. Amidst this ongoing auto theft crisis that is impacting communities across the country, desperate Liberals have resorted to blaming car dealerships, small businesses, for the rise in car thefts. It is clear that they do not want to talk about the facts, and the fact is that auto theft has risen to unprecedented levels as a direct result of the Liberals' soft-on-crime agenda.

We can all agree that the proposed bill is important for maintaining public trust in the RCMP and the CBSA. However, we cannot have productive debates unless we discuss the tremendous strain that is currently being placed on our brave men and women. Our law enforcement agencies, much like the Canadian Armed Forces, are suffering from significant recruitment and retention issues. What exactly is the government doing to ensure that these brave men and women feel valued and supported in their role?

Of course, the public should have a right to an independent and effective complaints commission to hold the RCMP and CBSA accountable for their actions. However, when we are not providing the resources for frontline police officers, the CBSA and other first responders to do their job effectively, it is no surprise that we are seeing mistakes. Our law enforcement personnel are under tremendous pressure as they deal with the impacts of the crime wave that is occurring across this country. When mistakes happen in the line of duty, it is frequently because these exemplary men and women are being pushed to their limit, overwhelmed by the crisis the government has created.

In fact, the National Police Federation put forward very commonsensical amendments that it wanted to see in this motion. Its members are concerned because RCMP officers are often being pulled off the front lines to do bureaucratic paperwork and deal with complaints, when complains should really be dealt with by an independent commission. Unfortunately, the proposed bill has some flaws, because it would still maintain a requirement for extensive bureaucratic red tape for RCMP officers in providing information and supporting these investigations, which would pull our resources off the front line.

We want to see an independent commission that does its job and that is resourced and staffed. In this way, RCMP officers and CBSA officers could focus on the front lines and not the back lines.

Let us talk about drug use. Our law enforcement officers are expected to act as social workers. They are confronting daily crime and disorder that the government's drug policies have inflicted on our communities, and we know this is causing a mental health crisis within the ranks.

On violent crime, we have heard at the public safety committee that the chiefs are fearful for the safety of their officers, especially since violent offenders are able to continuously terrify communities as a result of the “bail, not jail” provisions of Liberal Bill C-75. It should come as no surprise that the government does not want to have these conversations. Its record on crime is miserable.

Since this government came to power in 2015, Canada has become a massive importer of illegal firearms from the United States, a massive exporter of stolen cars to Africa and to the Middle East, and also has become an exporter of fentanyl across the world. It is shameful. While implementing this soft-on-crime agenda, the Liberal government has taken very little action to ensure that the brave men and women who choose to serve their communities and their country feel supported and respected in their work.

Everyone who goes through a border crossing should be able to go without facing discrimination or unfair treatment by border agents. Bill C-20 would allow people who have had negative experiences and who feel that their rights have been violated to submit complaints formally and to have them reviewed within a six-month period. I think it is critically important that we talk about this six-month period because we have seen some cases that witnesses have brought forward, where people made complaints, and those complaints were not addressed for months, and in fact, some complaints were not addressed for years. In some tragic cases, the complainants actually passed away before they could get responses to their complaints, and we do not want to see that happen. Of course, sometimes it is unavoidable, but we need to set standards to ensure that these complaints are being dealt with in a timely manner.

Currently, CBSA is the only public safety agency in Canada without any independent oversight body for public complaints. Establishing an independent review body would foster and would enhance public trust and confidence in Canada's law enforcement and border services institution, which I think is something that we can agree is desperately needed in this country.

In closing, we know that the NDP-Liberal government has ignored its promises and has put off this critical legislation for years. It failed to deliver this important change; although, we hope this change will soon be delivered. It would help Canadians to renew their trust in our public safety agencies. It is a trust that I know many Canadians have, but when they see things like the police complaints commission not operating effectively or not being in existence in some cases, I think it causes some people to have some doubts about the transparency and accountability in the system.

How is it that so many Canadians had to face nothing but endless bureaucracy, when for years, we could have had legislation and a system to streamline the process for public complaints and could have established an oversight body for the CBSA?

The government has had plenty of opportunities to deliver and to fulfill its promises over these last nine years, but it failed to do so. If we have proven anything to Canadians it is that the promises of the NDP-Liberal government are just empty words, and years go by before any meaningful action or promise can be accomplished, if at all.

To perform their jobs effectively and to deliver the best possible service to Canadians, the RCMP and the CBSA require an efficient complaints process. While common-sense Conservatives are supportive of this effort, we believe that the Liberal government needs to do more to support our brave men and women in uniform who support our communities. My Conservative colleagues and I will continue to advocate on behalf of Canadians and to ensure that the highest standards are being met within the CBSA and the RCMP.

Combating Motor Vehicle Theft Act

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I guess the truth hurts. The hon. member who just protested was proclaiming that he has all the answers and that, in British Columbia, auto theft is not an issue. Did colleagues know that in Victoria, British Columbia, an individual was arrested for auto theft? He was let out on April 21. On April 22, he was arrested for auto theft and let out again. Then, on April 23, he was arrested for breaking into a house in Victoria to steal an automobile. In three days, he had three arrests and was out on bail. The facts run contrary to the suggestion that the Liberals and the NDP have all the answers.

There has been a 216% increase in charges in Toronto from 2015, when the Liberals took government, to today. There have been increases of 190% in Moncton, New Brunswick; 122% in Ottawa; and 105% in Montreal. Toronto has seen a 300% increase in vehicles stolen. In the last few years, the automobile that is used to transport the Minister of Justice of this country has been stolen not once or twice, but three times. The Minister of Emergency Preparedness has had his vehicle stolen. The minister for the CRA had their vehicle stolen, and it is still not recovered.

For colleagues to suggest that everything is okay and that we do not need a bill such as the one that the member for Prince Albert has proposed is completely wrong. Canadians are listening. They understand that auto theft is an issue across the country, in every province, whether one lives in an urban centre or a rural community. As well, crime is an issue. Since the Liberal government took power in 2015, just nine years ago, violent crime is up 39%; homicides are up 43%, for the highest rate in 30 years; gang-related homicides are up 108%; violent gun crimes are up 101%; assaults with a weapon are up 61%; sexual assaults are up 71%; and sex crimes against children are up 126%. I already gave some of the statistics on the subject matter of this bill, which is auto theft.

We are not going to turn to the failed policies of the NDP and the Liberals for the answers. We need common sense, and this is a common-sense piece of legislation. Let us talk about what it would do. The members opposite falsely claimed that it introduces a new mandatory minimum penalty. It does not. There is a six-month mandatory penalty in the Criminal Code for the third offence of stealing an automobile. Most Canadians would agree with this: It would increase the mandatory penalty to three years if someone is arrested, charged, convicted and then commits an offence again; they are arrested, charged and convicted, with the full benefit of the charter, and then there is a third offence.

The police tell us the number of Canadians stealing vehicles is not large. Quite the contrary, a small number of criminals are stealing a lot of vehicles. If those individuals are taken off the street, then they will no longer do so. That is why the police in Victoria laid blame for the out-of-control incident that happened there and said it is the fault of the Liberal government; it is the fault of Bill C-75, legislation that allows for catch-and-release. I mentioned this incident earlier, where an individual was arrested three times in three days for stealing automobiles.

The police do their job. They investigate; they catch the criminal. They have done a fantastic job, but the Liberal justice system has been letting those people back out onto the streets. That is no way to keep Canadians safe or to have a justice system.

We had a victim of crime at our justice committee who said that, in Canada, we do not have a justice system anymore; we have a legal system. That is how Canadians are feeling and why they are looking for answers. That is why the member for Prince Albert has put forward this tremendous piece of legislation. As I mentioned, on a third offence, an individual would receive a mandatory penalty of jail time for stealing a motor vehicle. It would remove the eligibility for house arrest if someone is convicted of a motor vehicle theft by way of indictment. That would be a more serious case of motor vehicle theft.

Who in the world would think it is a good idea that, when a serious criminal steals automobiles, is caught by the police, and is charged and convicted in our system, a judge should be able to sentence them to serve their sentence in their own home in the community where they stole the vehicle? No one would think that is fair.

However, that is a direct result of the Liberals' bill, Bill C-5, which allows for house arrest for such issues as arson, theft over $5,000, motor vehicle theft and sexual assault. These are all serious offences that people should get serious jail time for.

The member for Prince Albert has rightly said that is wrong. If one is a serious auto thief, one should serve time not in the comfort of one's own home and one's own community, not where one could revictimize members of the community, but in jail.

Finally, as has been mentioned, organized crime is increasingly active in motor vehicle theft in Canada. We hear the cases where individuals' vehicles are stolen and show up in the Middle East, across the ocean. That is organized crime. This legislation would create an aggravating factor in sentencing if the offence of motor vehicle theft is committed for the benefit of organized crime.

We all increasingly have examples of the victimization from motor vehicle theft. In fact, two out of five Canadians have either had their vehicle stolen or know somebody who has had their vehicle stolen. As a matter of fact, every member of Parliament knows at least one person who has had their vehicle stolen. We know the Minister of Justice has had his stolen three times. There is absolutely no doubt that this is an epidemic in Canada.

In my home province of New Brunswick, there was a situation where someone stole a motor vehicle. The police did their job and arrested him. He was brought before a judge in Saint John, and because of the Liberal legislation, Bill C-75, the judge had to let him out. How was he going to get back home? Of course, he stole a motor vehicle in Saint John and drove it home.

These are the kinds of things happening across the country, and only one party seems to be serious about doing something about it. We hear a lot of victim blaming. We hear that people should pay more money and have more expensive theft deterrents. We even hear from police that we should probably keep our keys right at the entrance of our home rather than inside so we do not end up in a conflict with car thieves in our home.

That is not a Canada any of us wants. We want a Canada where people are safe and the Canada where people used to leave their doors unlocked. We are a long way from that now. We need a Canada where we take crime seriously, where we have a true justice system and where Canadians do not go to bed wondering if their car is going to be in the driveway in the morning.

I commend the member for Prince Albert on a fantastic private member's bill, and I am happy to support it.

Justice

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Leader of the Opposition]

Mr. Speaker, in Canada's biggest city, gun crime is up 66%. It is 100% nationwide. I just shared the tragic story of someone out on bail, slamming his car into an innocent family. Two wonderful grandparents are dead. A beautiful baby is dead. He was out on bail under the Prime Minister's catch-and-release bill, Bill C-75.

How many more will have to die before he repeals catch-and-release, and brings jail, not bail, for repeat offenders?

Public Safety

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that member knows and should know that the bail reform bill, which the member actually voted in favour of, tackles serious violent repeat offenders, which include those who use serious violence in committing an auto theft.

What the member should also realize is that when the very bill he impugned, Bill C-75, was before this chamber in the 42nd Parliament, we promoted an augmentation, an increase in the penalty available for auto theft. He and all of his colleagues voted against that.

What I would prefer is some collaboration and a bit less hypocrisy.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, that member knows that repeat violent offenders are already dealt with by our bail regime. He voted in favour of that. He should also know that when Bill C-75, the very bill—

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

Mr. Speaker, after nine years of the Prime Minister, car theft in Canada is completely out of control. Two out of five Canadians have either had their car stolen or know someone who has.

Last week in Victoria, a repeat offender was arrested three times in three days for stealing cars. The police in Victoria had to put out a statement and they laid the blame for this on the Liberals' failed bill, Bill C-75.

Will the justice minister listen to the police and reverse their soft-on-crime Bill C-75?

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise tonight on a very important issue.

In November of last year, a 12-year-old child committed suicide in British Columbia, after being the victim of online sexual extortion. The Liberal government has known that this has been a growing problem during the entirety of its nearly nine-year mandate and has taken no action to address this issue. It has gotten worse, and more children have been victimized. It is not just children who are the victims of extortion, and it does not just happen online, but I want to specifically address the extortion of children in Canada, particularly sexual extortion.

This is a federal problem. The gaps in the Criminal Code that allow these criminals to operate are in the federal jurisdiction. The RCMP, which is responsible for catching these organized criminals, is federal. The Prime Minister passed federal Bill C-5, which eliminated mandatory jail time for committing extortion with a firearm. On top of this, he brought into place very detrimental, very poor bail reform, with Bill C-75, which makes it easier for offenders to get back on our streets.

Instead of reacting in a way that would address these gaps, the federal government has proposed a very large bureaucracy that is extrajudicial, that has no costing associated with it, that does not have a set timeline for coming into force and that would be subject to regulations that would not be built for years down the road. That is opposed to supporting common-sense measures, like establishing increased mandatory sentences for criminals convicted of extortion; bringing in five-year prison sentences for any criminal convicted of extortion who is acting on behalf of gangs, and there could be modifiers for cases of children; also restoring mandatory four-year prison sentences for the offence of extortion with a firearm; making arson an aggravating factor for the charge of extortion; and reversing the damage done by Bill C-75.

There are other things the government could be doing as well. We know that the problem of bringing people to justice, for any crime in Canada, but certainly for serious criminal issues, has been a problem since the government took office because the government has not been appointing judges. Across the country, there is a lack of judges. That lack of the ability of the government to appoint judges, coupled with Jordan's principle, has created this system where essentially the criminals act without any sort of deterrent.

I am just wondering why the government has chosen this “kick the can farther down the road” approach to dealing with child online sexual extortion, as opposed to closing loopholes in the Criminal Code and ensuring that there are adequate resources and tools for law enforcement agencies and the judiciary to bring criminals to justice.

Justice

[Doug Shipley, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Mr. Speaker, after nine years of the NDP-Liberal government, the Prime Minister is not worth the cost or the crime. Today, we learned that thieves who stole $20 million in the biggest gold heist in Canadian history are out on bail. This is because of the Liberal government's shameful Bill C-75, which allows offenders to be in jail in the morning and back on the streets in the evening.

Will the Prime Minister reverse his bail-over-jail policies in Bill C-75?

Public Safety

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, on the contrary, I think that the Minister of Justice is forgetting that car thieves and other criminals in Montreal are not afraid because of Bill C‑5 and Bill C‑75, which deal with catch-and-release. They know that there will not be any consequences. If they are arrested, then they will be immediately released. That is what Bill C‑75 does.

Can the Minister of Justice or the Prime Minister answer the question? Will they impose harsher sentences for car thieves so that these individuals are afraid of being arrested and stop stealing cars in Montreal?

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, there are two things I would like to point out.

First of all, as soon as Bill C‑75 was introduced in the House two Parliaments ago, the member opposite voted against it, even though it included longer sentences for auto theft.

Now we have a budget. In the budget, we have already announced that we are going to increase the maximum sentences for auto theft. However, the member and his leader have already said that the Conservatives oppose our budget and our efforts to control auto theft.

Justice

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it did not work because Liberals do think that these criminals should be released back into the community. They passed the very bills that made it possible. They are the reason why gunrunners and gangsters who steal millions of dollars in gold get turned back loose onto the streets.

Did the Prime Minister get a little golden nugget from these criminals to pass his catch-and-release bill, Bill C-75? When will the government finally reverse these policies, protect our communities and keep criminals in jail where they belong?

Financial Statement of Minister of Finance

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am not finished.

I will continue in English. I want to share this great speech with English-speaking Canadians.

After nine years of the Prime Minister's deficits doubling the national debt and doubling housing costs and a new budget that brings in $50 billion of new unfunded spending on promises he has already broken, this budget, just like the Prime Minister, is not worth the cost, and Conservatives will be voting no.

Before I get into the reasons, and my common-sense plan to axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime, I would like to pay the Minister of Finance a compliment for a page in her speech I thought was extremely illustrative. She said, “I would like to ask Canada's 1%, Canada's 0.1%, to consider this: What kind of country do they want to live in?”

Before I go any further, let us point out the incredible irony that, as she and her leader point out, Canada's 0.1% are doing better than ever after nine years of the Prime Minister promising to go after them. Yes, they have benefited from the tens of billions of dollars of undeserved corporate welfare handouts and grants, ironically supported by the NDP; of corporate loan guarantees that protect them against losses in cases of incompetence or dishonest bidding; of contracts, of which there are now $21 billion, granted to outside and highly paid consultants, many of them making millions of dollars a year in taxpayer contracts for work that could be done inside the government itself if that work is of any value at all; and finally, of those grand fortunes that have been inflated by the $600 billion of inflationary money printing that has transferred wealth from the working class to the wealthiest among us. That 0.1% is doing better than ever after nine years of the Prime Minister pretending he would get tough on them.

Let me go on. I am interrupting myself. The Minister of Finance asked, “Do [you] want to live in a country where [you] can tell the size of someone’s paycheque by their smile?” Wow. How many Canadians are smiling when they look at their paycheque today? People are not smiling at all, because a paycheque cannot buy them a basket of affordable food, according to Sylvain Charlebois, the food professor. He has said that the cost of a basket of food has gone up by thousands of dollars per year, but the majority of Canadians are spending hundreds of dollars less than is required to buy that basket. That means they are not getting enough food. We live in a country now where the average paycheque cannot pay the average rent, so nobody is smiling when they look at their paycheque.

The minister went on to ask, “Do [you] want to live in a country where kids go to school hungry?” According to the Prime Minister, one in four kids are going to school hungry after his nine years. I look here at a press release his government released on April 1, on April Fool's Day of all days, where he says, “Nearly one in four children do not get enough food”. In fact, it says that they do not get enough food “to learn and grow”.

No, we do not want to live in a country where kids go to school hungry, but according to the Prime Minister's own release, we do live in a country where one in four kids do go to school hungry. The Minister of Finance then said, “Do [they] want to live in a country where the only young Canadians who can buy their own homes are those with parents who can help with the down payment?” No, we do not want to live in that country, but we do live in that country today.

According to data released by RBC Dominion, for the average family to afford monthly payments on the average home in Canada, the family would have to spend 64% of its pre-tax income. Most families do not keep 64% of pre-tax income because they pay so much in taxes. Therefore, most families would have to give up on eating, recreation, clothing themselves and transportation to be mathematically capable of making payments on the average home. For young people, it is even worse because they do not have a nest egg. They cannot afford a down payment that has doubled in the last nine years. That is why 76% of Canadians who do not own homes tell pollsters they believe they never will. Do we want to live in a country where the only young people who can afford a down payment are those whose parents can pay it for them? No. However, that is the country that we live in today.

“Do [you] want to live in a country where we make the investments we need in health care, in housing, in old age pensions, but we lack the political will to pay for them and choose instead to pass a ballooning debt on to our children?”

Are we living in the twilight zone here? These are the minister's words: Do we want to live in a country where we pass the bill on to our children with “ballooning debt”? She asks this as she is ballooning the debt by adding $40 billion to that debt. She asks this while giving a speech about the perils of passing ballooning debt to our children. She is the finance minister for the government that has added more debt than all previous governments combined in the preceding century and a half. It is worth noting that the Prime Minister has added deficits as a share of GDP that are bigger than we had in World War I, in the Great Depression and in the great global recession of 2008 and 2009.

I should also note that the majority of debt that has been added under the Prime Minister was unrelated to COVID. The “dog ate my homework” excuse, of blaming COVID for all that is wrong in Canada, no longer works. I will add that we are now three years past COVID and the deficits and debt continue to grow, putting a lie to that entire endless, nauseating excuse that the government has made.

The Prime Minister has added so much debt that we are now spending more on interest for that debt than we are spending on health care; $54.1 billion in debt interest this year; more money for those wealthy bankers and bondholders who own our debt; and less money for the doctors and nurses whom we await when we sit for 26 hours in the average emergency room right across the country.

No, we do not want to live in a country that passes on a ballooning debt to our children, but after nine years of the Prime Minister, that is exactly the country in which we live.

The Minister of Finance asks, “Do [you] want to live in a country where those at the very top live lives of luxury?” Who does that remind us of? There is somebody who flies around in a private jet to stay on secret islands on the other side of the hemisphere, where they treat him to $8,000- and $9,000-a-day luxuries, and he pays for it with the tax dollars of Canadians and emits thousands of tonnes of greenhouse gases into our atmosphere. Somebody luxuriates in that way at the expense of everyone else. He shall remain unnamed because we cannot say the Prime Minister's name in the House of Commons, so I will not break that parliamentary rule. However, I do point out the irony.

I will start again. The Minister of Finance asks:

Do [you] want to live in a country where those at the very top live lives of luxury but must do so in gated communities behind ever-higher fences using private health care and private planes because the public sphere is so degraded and the wrath of the vast majority of their less-privileged compatriots burns so hot?

She says that the wrath of the majority of less privileged compatriots burns so hot. She is right that some people do not have the ability to live in gated communities, behind armed guards. Those people are told that they should leave their keys next to the door so that the car thieves can just walk in and peacefully steal their cars.

Communities across the country are being ravaged by crime, chaos, drugs and disorder. What she has described is exactly what is happening after nine years of the government. We have nurses in British Columbia hospitals who are terrified to go to work because the Prime Minister, in collusion with the NDP Premier of B.C., has decriminalized hard drugs and allowed the worst criminals to bring weapons and narcotics into their hospital rooms, where they cannot be confronted. We have 26 international students crammed into the basement of one Brampton home. We have a car stolen every 40 minutes in the GTA. We have a 100% increase in gun killings across the country.

We have communities where people are terrified to go out. We have small businesses across Brampton and Surrey that are receiving letters weekly, warning them that if they do not write cheques for millions of dollars to extortionists, their homes will be shot up, and their children will have bullets flying through the windows as they are sleeping.

That is life in Canada today. Do we want to live in that country? No, we do not want to live in that country. After eight years of rising costs, rising crime and rising chaos, the Prime Minister is not worth the cost. We will replace him with a common-sense Conservative government that will bring home a country we love.

What does that country look like and how will we get there? Fortunately, we have a common-sense plan that will axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime.

Let us start with the carbon tax, which went up 23% on April 1. Now we see the raging gas prices at the pumps across Ontario. There is chaos as people are desperately trying to get to the pumps and fill up before the latest hikes go ahead.

The Prime Minister celebrates, saying that high gas prices are his purpose, and he has the full support of the NDP leader on most days, when the NDP leader can figure out what his policy is. The NDP leader has voted 22 times to hike the carbon tax. Both parties, along with the help of the Bloc, have voted for future increases that will quadruple the tax to 61¢ a litre, a tax that will also apply on home heating bills and, of course, a tax that applies to the farmers who produce the food, the truckers who ship the food and therefore to all who buy the food.

That is why common-sense Conservatives will axe the tax to bring home lower prices. We take exactly the opposite approach to that of the Prime Minister when it comes to protecting our environment. His approach is to raise the cost on traditional energy we still need. Our approach is to lower the cost on other alternatives. We will green-light green projects, like nuclear power, hydroelectric dams, carbon capture and storage, mining of critical minerals, like lithium, cobalt, copper and others. We will do this by repealing the unconstitutional Bill C-69 so that we can approve these projects in 18 months, rather than in 18 years.

Here is the difference, the Prime Minister wants taxes; I want technology. He wants to drive our money to the dirty dictators abroad; I want to bring it home in powerful paycheques for our people in this country.

The same approach that will allow us to unleash energy, abundance and affordability is the approach we will take to build the homes; that is to say getting the government gatekeepers out of the way.

Why do we have the worst housing inflation in the G7 after nine years of the Prime Minister? Why have housing costs risen 40% faster than paycheques? It is by far the worst gap of any G7 country. Why did UBS say Toronto had the worst housing bubble in the world? Vancouver is the third most overpriced when comparing median income to median house price according to Demographia. Why? It is because we have the worst bureaucracy when it comes to homebuilding.

After nine years of the Prime Minister, Canada has the second-slowest building permits out of nearly 40 OECD countries. These permitting costs add $1.3 million to the cost of every newly built home in Vancouver and $350,000 to every newly built home in Toronto. Winnipeg blocked 2,000 homes next to a transit station that was built for those homes. The City of Montreal has blocked 25,000 homes in the last seven years. Literally hundreds of thousands of homes are waiting to be built but are locked up in slow permitting processes.

What do we have as a solution? The Prime Minister has taken the worst immigration minister in our country's history, the guy the Prime Minister blamed for causing out-of-control temporary immigration to balloon housing prices, and put him in charge of housing. Since that time, the minister has said that his housing accelerator fund of $4 billion does not actually build any homes.

Since he has doled out all of this cash to political friends in incompetent city halls across the country, homebuilding has dropped. In fact, homebuilding is down this year and, according to the federal government's housing agency, it will be down next year and again the year after that. That is a housing decelerator, not an accelerator.

That is what happens when a minister is chosen because he is a media darling and a fast talker rather than someone who gets things done, as I did when I was housing minister. The rent was only $973 a month for the average family right across the country, and the average house price was roughly $400,000. Those are results. There was less talk and less government spending but far more homes. That is what our common-sense plan will do again.

Our plan will build the homes by requiring municipalities to speed up, permit more land and build faster. They will be required to permit 15% more homes per year as a condition of getting federal funding, and to permit high-rise apartments around every federally funded transit station. We will sell off 6,000 federal buildings and thousands of acres of federal land to build. We will get rid of the carbon tax to lower the cost of building materials.

Finally, we will reward the working people who build homes, because we need more boots, not more suits. We will pass the common-sense Conservative law that allows trade workers to write off the full cost of transportation, food and accommodation to go from one work site to another, so they can build the homes while bringing home paycheques for themselves.

These homes will be in safe neighbourhoods. We will stop the crime by making repeat violent offenders ineligible for bail, parole or house arrest. That will mean no more catch and release. We will repeal Bill C-5, the house arrest law. We will repeal Bill C-75, the catch-and-release law. We will repeal Bill C-83, the cushy living for multiple murderers law that allows Paul Bernardo to enjoy tennis courts and skating rinks that most Canadian taxpaying families can no longer afford outside of prison.

We will bring in jail and not bail for repeat violent offenders. We will repeal the entire catch-and-release criminal justice agenda that the radical Prime Minister, with the help of the loony-left NDP, has brought in. The radical agenda that has turned many of our streets into war zones will be a thing of the past.

We will also stop giving out deadly narcotics. I made a video about the so-called safe supply. I went to the tragic site of yet another homeless encampment in Vancouver, which used to be one of the most beautiful views in the entire world. Now it is unfortunately a place where people live in squalor and die of overdoses. Everyone said it was terrible that I was planning to take away the tax-funded drugs and that all of the claims I made were just a bunch of conspiracy theories, but everything I said then has been proven accurate, every word of it.

I noticed that the Liberals and the pointy-headed professors they relied on for their policies have all gone into hiding as well. Why is that? It is because the facts are now coming out. Even the public health agency in British Columbia, which has been pushing the NDP-Liberal ideology, is admitting that the tax-funded hydromorphone is being diverted. The police in Vancouver said this week that 50% of all the high-powered hydromorphone opioids are paid for with tax dollars and given out by public health agencies, supposedly to save lives. Now we know that those very powerful drugs are being resold to children, who are getting hooked on them, and the profits are being used to buy even more dangerous fentanyl, tranq and other drugs that are leaving our people face-first on the pavement, dying of record overdoses.

The so-called experts always tell us to ignore the bumper stickers and look at the facts. The facts are in. In British Columbia, where this radical and incomparable policy has been most enthusiastically embraced, overdose deaths are up 300%. They have risen in B.C. faster than anywhere else in Canada and possibly anywhere else in North America. The ultraprogressive state of Oregon has reversed decriminalization, recognizing the total chaos, death and destruction the policy has caused.

What does the radical Prime Minister, with the help of his NDP counterpart, do? They look at the death and destruction that have occurred in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver and other communities and say we should have more of that. They took a walk, or better yet, these two politicians probably drove through the Downtown Eastside in their bulletproof limousines. They looked around at the people who were bent over, completely tranquilized by fentanyl, saw the people lying face-first on the ground, saw the tents that the police would have pointed out are filled with dangerous guns and drugs, saw all the small businesses that were shuttered by this policy and said that we should have more of that. They want to replicate all the policies that have created it, so that we can have tent cities and homeless encampments in every corner of the country.

That is exactly what they have done. In Halifax, there are 35 homeless encampments in one city after nine years of the Prime Minister, his NDP counterpart and the Liberal mayor of Halifax. If we look at every town in this country, we will find homeless encampments that never existed before the last nine years. This policy will go down in infamy as one of the most insane experiments ever carried out on a population. Nowhere else in the world is this being done. The Liberals gaslight us. They love to say that all the civilized people believe that giving out these drugs will save lives, but nowhere else is this being done. When we tell people this is happening, they have a hard time believing that we are giving out heroin-grade drugs for free to addicts and expecting it to save lives.

Now they spill into our hospitals, where nurses are told by the NPD government in B.C. and the Liberal government in Ottawa that they are not allowed to take away crack pipes or knives or guns. They are just supposed to expect that someone is going to consume the drugs, have a massive fit and start slashing up the hospital floor. This is something out of a bad hallucination and a hallucination that will come to an end when I am prime minister. We will end this nightmare.

We will also ensure that Canadians have a better way. We are not only going to ban the drugs. We are not only going to stop giving out taxpayer-funded drugs. We are going to provide treatment and recovery.

If people are watching today and are suffering from addiction and do not know how they can turn their lives around, I want them to know that there is hope. There is a better future ahead. We will put the money into beautiful treatment centres with counselling, group therapy, physical exercise, yoga and sweat lodges for first nations, where people can graduate drug-free, live in nearby housing that helps them transition into a law-abiding, drug-free life, and come back to the centre for a counselling session, a workout or maybe even to mentor an incoming addict on the hopeful future that is ahead. That is the way we are going to bring our loved ones home, drug-free.

As I always say, we are going to have a common-sense dollar-for-dollar law, requiring that we find one dollar of savings for every new dollar of spending. In this case, that will include how we will partly pay for this. We will unleash the biggest lawsuit in Canadian history against the corrupt pharmaceutical companies that profited off of this nightmare. We will make them pay.

Finally, we will stop the gun crime. We know that gun crime is out of control. Just yesterday, we saw this gold heist. By the way, all of the gold thieves are out on bail already, so do not to worry. They will have to send the Prime Minister a nugget of gold to thank him for passing Bill C-75 and letting them out of jail within a few days of this monster gold heist.

Why did they steal the gold? They stole the gold so that they could buy the guns, because we know that all of the gun crime is happening with stolen guns. The Prime Minister wants to ban all civilian, law-abiding people from owning guns, but he wants to allow every criminal to have as many guns as they want. I am not just talking about rifles. I am talking about machine guns, fully loaded machine guns that are being found on the street, which never existed since they were banned in the 1970s. Now the criminals can get them because the Prime Minister has mismanaged the federal borders and ports and because he is wasting so much money going after the good guys.

The Prime Minister wants to ban our hunting rifles. He said so in a December 2022 interview with CTV. He was very clear. If someone has a hunting rifle, he said he will have to take it away. He kept his word by introducing a 300-page amendment to his Bill C-21, which would have banned 300 pages of the most popular and safe hunting rifles. He only put that policy on hold because of a backlash that common-sense Conservatives led, which included rural Canadians, first nations Canadians and NDPers from rural communities. He had to flip-flop.

I know that in places like Kapuskasing, the law-abiding people enjoy hunting. While the NDP leader and the Prime Minister look down on those people and think that they are to blame for crime, we know that the hunters in Kapuskasing are the salt of the earth, the best people around, and we are going to make sure that they can keep their hunting rifles. God love them. God love every one of them.

While the Prime Minister wants to protect turkeys from hunters, common-sense Conservatives want to protect Canadians from criminals. That is why we will repeal his insane policies.

By the way, I should point out that he has not even done any of the bans. We remember that he had that big press conference during the election. He said to his policy team that morning that he needed them to come up with a policy that would allow him to put a big, scary-looking black gun on his podium sign. They said, “Okay, we will think of something.” He put that scary-looking gun on his podium sign, and he said he was going to ban all of these assault rifles. They asked him what an assault rifle was, and he said he did not know, just that it was the black, scary thing on the front of his podium sign. That was the assault rifle he was referring to.

It is now three years since he made that promise. He was asked again in the hallways what an assault rifle was. He said he was still working to figure it out. These rifles that he says he is going to ban one day, he does not know what they are but one day he is going to figure it out and ban them. In the meantime, he has spent $40 million to buy exactly zero guns from owners. He said he was going to ban them and buy them from the owners. Not one gun has been taken off the street after he spent $40 million.

We could have used that money to hire CBSA officers who would have secured our ports against the thousands of illegal guns that are pouring in and killing people on our streets. When I am prime minister, we will cancel this multi-billion dollar waste of money. We will use it to hire frontline boots-on-the-ground officers who will inspect shipping containers and to buy scanners that can pierce inside to stop the drugs, stop the illegal guns, stop the export of our stolen cars and stop the crime.

What we are seeing is a very different philosophical approach. The finance minister said in her concluding remarks that what we need is bigger and stronger government. Does that not sound eerie? In other words, she and the Prime Minister want to be bigger and stronger. That is why they are always trying to make Canadians feel weaker and smaller. The Prime Minister literally called our people a small, fringe minority. He jabs his fingers in the faces of our citizens. He calls small businesses tax cheats. He claims that those who own hunting rifles are just Americans.

The Prime Minister points his fingers at people who disagree with him. He has the audacity of claiming that anyone who is offside with him is a racist. This is a guy who dressed up in racist costumes so many times he cannot remember them all. He has been denigrating other people his whole life. That is because it is all about him. It is all about concentrating more power and more money in his hands. This budget is no different. It is about a bigger government and smaller citizens. It is about buying his way through the next election with cash that the working-class people have earned and he has burned.

By contrast, I want the opposite. I want smaller government to make room for bigger citizens. I want a state that is a servant and not the master. I want a country where the prime minister actually lives up to the meaning of the word: “prime” meaning “first”, and “minister” meaning “servant”. That is what “minister” means. “Minister” is not master; “minister” is servant.

We need a country that puts people back in charge of their money, their communities, their families and their lives, a country based on the common sense of the common people, united for our common home, their home, my home, our home. Let us bring it home.

Therefore, I move:

That the motion be amended by deleting all of the words after the word “That” and substituting the following:

“the House reject the government's budget since it fails to:

a. Axe the tax on farmers and food by passing Bill C-234 in its original form.

b. Build the homes, not bureaucracy, by requiring cities permit 15% more home building each year as a condition for receiving federal infrastructure money.

c. Cap the spending with a dollar-for-dollar rule to bring down interest rates and inflation by requiring the government to find a dollar in savings for every new dollar of spending.