Mr. Speaker, before I move to the matter at hand, I want to say what a privilege it is to be back in Ottawa to fight for the people of Cambridge and North Dumfries.
It has been nearly three months since members of Parliament have been in this place to debate issues of importance and hold the government accountable for its actions. It is almost like the government did not want anybody to hold it accountable, or maybe it wanted a long, lazy summer vacation. Whatever it was, it certainly was no vacation for me and my team. Every day, we were out in the community attending events, helping constituents with casework and listening to all the things on our neighbours' minds.
What did they have to say? They told me, overwhelmingly, that a decade of Liberal government has made life harder, that finding a good-paying job or any kind of job is harder, that affording a home or even an apartment is harder and that affording the necessities of life, just basics like groceries, is harder. I am always going to stand up for these fundamental issues and be a champion for common sense and the for Canadian dream that hard work can pay off.
Life is also harder for the most vulnerable in our community. The exploding number of homeless encampments and of people experiencing homelessness is an incredibly visible and heart-wrenching concern for all of us. It is hard to take a walk through downtown Cambridge without seeing one of our neighbours in distress and people who do not have a warm place to sleep, a warm meal to eat or a chance of getting back on their feet. What used to be a peaceful area has now been transformed into ground zero of a tent city disaster unfolding right before our eyes. The Liberal-manufactured housing crisis, which has caused home prices to double in less than a decade, is a big part of why there are so many people sleeping on our streets.
However, another huge reason is the wave of addiction and the opioid epidemic that has flooded our communities, big and small. The Liberal government fanned the flames of that program, offering free drugs and a quick high instead of hope and recovery for the people who needed it most, and it left our borders vulnerable and open to international gangs and smugglers to use our country as a dumping ground for drugs like fentanyl. Those drugs end up on the street in cities like mine, and even a tiny amount can literally kill people.
Now the Liberals have put forward a new bill, Bill C-2, that is supposed to address the problem of fentanyl on our streets and narcotics being smuggled across our border. In all seriousness, that is like the person who set a house on fire showing up with a bucket to put out the flames. It just does not make sense. The same people who broke it cannot and should not be trusted to fix it.
Fentanyl is not just another drug; it is a lethal poison that is tearing apart families in Cambridge, North Dumfries and every community across Canada. A few grains can end a life. Paramedics in my riding respond to overdose calls daily, and our hospitals are overwhelmed with patients fighting for their life. Parents tell me they are terrified their child will be the next obituary. That is the human cost: not statistics, but loved ones lost.
Drug smugglers do not operate alone; they are tied to organized crime, violent gangs and international cartels that see Canada as an easy target. When border controls are weak, those criminals walk right through the cracks. Bill C-2 talks about tightening enforcement, but without tougher bail conditions and mandatory jail time, the same gang members will be back on our streets within days. Canadians deserve laws that protect victims, not revolving doors for offenders.
The government can pat itself on the back for introducing Bill C-2, but here is the truth: There are many parts of the legislation that fall far too short. There are no new tools for prosecutors to keep traffickers behind bars. There are no real investments in treatment and recovery that offer people hope instead of despair, and there are no guarantees that the flow of precursor chemicals, the ingredients for fentanyl, will actually be stopped at the border. For all the government's talk, there is no guarantee that the bill would end the opioid epidemic, far from it.
Conservatives believe in strong borders, serious sentences for smugglers and a pathway to recovery for the people trapped in addiction. That is what real leadership looks like.
Let me be clear that I am ready to work with anybody from any party who wants to help fix our borders, stop the drugs and get people in my community the help they need, but we simply cannot afford more of the same things from the same Liberal government: more talk and more empty platitudes with devastating consequences for Canadians, and that is what the bill is all about. It would not implement bail reform for violent gang members and smugglers who make drugs, transport drugs, sell drugs and destroy the lives of people who live in my riding and of hundreds of thousands of people across this country.
That means that the people who are driving the crisis get to keep walking through the Liberal revolving door of no consequences, free to keep flooding our streets with narcotics. If someone does happen to be put behind bars, the bill would not implement stricter sentencing provisions. We would still have no mandatory prison time for fentanyl traffickers and no mandatory prison time for gangsters who commit violent crimes with guns. We need to stop the smugglers, put the bad guys in jail and end the Liberal regime of endless free drugs for everyone.
Instead of cracking down on the drug traffickers and gangs that fuel the crisis, the Liberals are trying to hide the problem by shuffling people into senior housing without safeguards. Individuals dealing with drugs and creating disorder are being placed in the same apartment buildings as vulnerable seniors. The result is theft, fear and seniors who feel like a prisoner in their own home. I hear this every week from seniors in my community. They worked hard all their life, and they should feel safe in their home, but many of them no longer do. Bill C-2 would do nothing to change that. It goes after paperwork, not the predators. It leaves the real criminals free while vulnerable Canadians live in fear.
When the Liberals are not using the bill to keep letting criminals roam free on our streets, they are taking massive new steps to give themselves more power to control the everyday lives of Canadians. For instance, they want to impose a massive new restriction on the use of cash in private transactions, limiting cash payments of $10,000 or more. Our multinational banker and economist Prime Minister should realize that seniors, farmers and small businesses often rely on cash for larger purchases or sales. Restricting those transactions would not stop organized crime; it would just make life harder for people who follow the rules.
Let us talk about what the bill would do. Bill C-2 would give the government the power to open mail without oversight, force Internet companies to hand over their data and give itself more opportunities to perform warrantless searches. Canadians need to know that Bill C-2 would goes well beyond border measures; it would also introduce new surveillance powers that deserve a full and separate debate. If the government believes these powers are necessary, they should be studied carefully in their own bill with the proper scrutiny of Parliament.
To me this looks like the Liberal government is focusing on giving itself more powers at the cost of law-abiding Canadians' civil liberties, instead of actually going after the dangerous criminals who threaten the safety not just of the people of Cambridge but of all Canadians.
These measures are wrong and must be fixed, because we know that when Ottawa gets more powers, it never, ever gives them up. We would not have even needed to introduce a bill like this in the first place if the Liberal government had not broken what it inherited from Stephen Harper: a strong border, a functioning criminal justice system and a safe and secure immigration process that was the envy of the world.
Instead, after 10 years of an incompetent and out-of-touch government, drugs and guns, criminals and contraband flow across our borders with impunity. The criminals often get more rights than their victims, while getting a slap on their wrist and paying no price whatsoever, and that is not to mention an immigration system that nobody, not even immigrants themselves, trusts to work in the best interest of this country.
There is good news and bad news. The good news is that we can fix all these problems. I still believe that Canada is the best country in the world and a place we are so blessed to call home. I remain honoured to be Cambridge's voice in this place through the good and bad times. However, the bad news is that we cannot trust the Liberal government, an overbearing, incompetent and careless government, to clean up the mess it created itself.
Bill C-2 is called the strong borders act, but there is nothing strong about weak sentencing, revolving-door justice and half measures that punish honest Canadians more than criminals. If the Liberals were serious about strong borders, they would listen to the Conservative proposals, secure the border, end catch and release for traffickers and give people struggling with addiction a real chance at recovery.
We are calling for better. Police are calling for better. Victims and their families are calling for better. Is the government going to listen? Only time will tell.
