Madam Speaker, I am pleased to be here today to contribute to this debate on the concurrence of a guns and gangs study that I was pleased to be part of at the public safety committee.
I am reflecting back on how, since just two years ago, times have changed. That study, which was on something that could have been quite controversial, ended up being one for which we had agreement amongst the members of the committee. We produced a report that the Conservatives actually agreed with when we tabled the report.
I find it surprising now that, here we are, two years later, and we have rhetoric and nonsense coming from the Conservative Party of Canada on a report that I am really proud of. At the time, I think that all of the members were very proud of it, especially of the way we were able to come together on an issue that is impacting our communities. Young people are joining gangs because of poverty and addiction. We know, and the report reflected this, that investments in communities can make a difference for these young people in whether or not they end up in the criminal justice system.
I am really disappointed that, once again, the Conservatives are trying to derail our current studies at the public safety committee. We are studying India and foreign interference, through which a Canadian was killed on Canadian soil, as well as Tenet Media and Russia's influence on misinformation in our country. This is something the Conservatives have tried to do repeatedly during both those studies. Today, they are trying to derail those two studies again. Twice we have had Conservatives move motions, once when we had the social media companies in to testify on Russia and once when we had national security experts there, and they were moving motions on completely unrelated topics.
These are issues that are impacting Canadians' lives. It seems like the Conservatives, much like their leader, who refuses to get the security clearance necessary to review, do not really want to study foreign interference. They make a big deal about having an interest in it, but they really do not.
There is a lot of revisionist thinking going on in this place as well. Bill C-83 passed, and I was proud to be part of the committee when we passed that bill, but the Conservatives keep referring to how the Liberal government brought in the least restrictive measures. It is funny that, when that bill went through committee, Conservatives did not oppose that clause, which was introduced by the NDP. Conservatives did not oppose the least restrictive clause on Bill C-83 when it went through committee.
However, now, with the revisionist history that has happened over the years, the Conservatives seem to think that they did. Perhaps they want to go back to just check the record of when that bill passed.
I am reading a book right now called Indictment by Benjamin Perrin. He was the man who shaped Stephen Harper's tough on crime policies as a special adviser and legal counsel to the prime minister. I want to read a quote from his book. He said, “In fact, I’d like to officially replace the term ‘tough on crime’ with ‘stupid on crime.’ It doesn't work. It makes us less safe, while costing a ton of taxpayers money.” To paraphrase former prime minister Harper's top guy on crime, he is saying tough on crime is tough on taxpayers and stupid on crime.
The Conservatives like to talk about how they want to keep Canadians safe, yet, time and time again, they have opposed smart gun control measures when we have brought them through the House. In Bill C-71, there was a clause that ensured that firearms would be forfeited to the Crown in cases of domestic violence.
I had a friend whose husband was abusing her, and he was a firearms owner. When she went to court, the judge said that he had to give up his guns. Do members know where those guns went? They went to his brother because there was no requirement at the time that those guns be forfeited to the Crown. My friend lived in fear because she knew that her husband knew where those guns were. We changed that through Bill C-71, something the Conservatives have said they are going to repeal. If my friend were to go to court today, those guns would go to the Crown, not to her husband's brother.
In Bill C-21, we put in three clauses to make women safer: subsection 6.1, which would make an individual ineligible to hold a firearms licence if they are subject to a protection order or have been convicted of an offence involving violence; subsection 70.1, which would oblige a chief firearms officer who has reasonable grounds to suspect that a licensee may have engaged in domestic violence or stalking to revoke the licence within 24 hours; and subsection 70.2, which would automatically revoke the licence of an individual who becomes subject to a protection order and requires them to deliver the guns to a peace officer within 24 hours.
In my opinion, that keeps Canadian women safer. It is unfortunate that the party opposite wants to revoke Bill C-21, which includes those provisions. It also includes provisions around assault-style weapons, something that was used at Polytechnique Montréal, and that anniversary is coming up on December 6. The Conservative Party still refuses to acknowledge that the individual who killed those women on that day was a legal gun owner at the time, much like the person who went into the Quebec City mosque and killed and injured people.
When we were studying Bill C-21, Blaine Calkins showed up in committee. Sorry, the member for Red Deer—Lacombe—
