Andrew Lawton
Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, Ontario · Conservative · Canada
“They will claim full coverage, as we see across southwestern Ontario in particular, when everyone who lives there knows that is just a joke. I thank my colleague across the aisle from Compton—Stanstead for introducing this very important discussion. I have actually spent some time in her riding in the past, and I know it is very rural.”
“I want to see us identify ways to ensure accuracy in telecom coverage maps in rural Canada, but I also want to see us fix and expand those areas where we know the coverage is not there.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is a great privilege, as always, to rise and speak on behalf of the people of Elgin—St. Thomas—London South. It is a particular privilege to speak to a bill such as this one, which speaks directly to one of the most persistent concerns I hear from people in the rural communities in my riding, scattered across Elgin County…”
“We still have the same problem, which is that we have people looking to a new technology, but that not solving the problem, which is applicable to not just the farmers in my riding, but all the people who live in these rural communities who want to work in these communities, want to study in these communities and, as my colleague for Aval…”
“As technology evolves, we see farmers incorporating more and more technology into their work that requires cellular connectivity, especially if they are out in the field, far from the Wi-Fi routers they may have in their homes or, increasingly, in their barns.”
“Mr. Speaker, I have two petitions to present today. It is with great pride and pleasure that I present a petition on behalf of representatives of the Elgin County Drowning Prevention Coalition, including Briar McCaw, Linda King and Nathan MacIntyre of the RIP Current Information Project.”
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“The question that I was asking the Secretary of State, a question that I reiterate tonight to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice , with whom I have the great privilege of serving on the justice committee, is whether the Liberal government has truly heard the concerns of Canadians, whether its justice priorities are in dealing with the revolving-door bail system, acknowledging the role that Liberal laws have played in making that problem what it is today, and whether it will commit now to focusing on these real criminal justice priorities and not on this bill that countless Canadians have said will infringe on their rights. Can we get that commitment from the parliamentary secretary right now?”
“I am very pleased that, right now, the justice committee is working on Bill C-14 , a bill that, despite not going far enough, is at least a response to some of these concerns that we have heard. We similarly have a bill that just today was referred to the committee, Bill C-16 . Again, I believe it has flaws, but at least it is tackling the real criminal justice priorities that Canadians have identified.”
“Countless more have phoned our offices, emailed or dropped by. I believe one group said 40,000 phone calls were made by their volunteers to Liberal members of Parliament, urging them to withdraw Bill C-9 . I cite that now to show the priority issue that we have seen from the government when it comes to justice. In my question to the Secretary of State for Combatting Crime , I said that Canadians wanted action on real crime, not thought crime. I am pleased that between then and now, finally, my Liberal colleagues on the justice committee have agreed to do what we tried, I believe, close to 20 times to get them to do in December, which was to set aside this divisive and toxic Bill C-9 and focus on bail.”
“I was quite frustrated when the very first bill that came before this committee from the government was not a bill fixing the bail system. It was not a bill reforming sentencing. It was not a bill that was beefing up mandatory minimum sentences. It was, in fact, a bill that took aim at freedom of expression and religious liberty. I am talking, of course, about Bill C-9 , the very first justice priority identified by the Liberal government. This is a bill that I have spent a lot of time on, engaging with representatives of faith communities and, basically, all communities that feel it will infringe on their rights. I have had round tables in my own riding with faith leaders, and I have had round tables and town halls across the country. Thousands of Canadians have come out personally to these to share their concerns.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is an honour, as always, to rise on behalf of the people of Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, all of whom have seen first-hand the rise in crime that has taken place over the last 10 years, aggravated largely by Liberal reforms to bail and Liberal reforms to criminal justice that have made it easier for repeat, often violent, offenders to be out on the streets. This is why I spent much of the summer engaging with members of the community, members of municipal governments and members of law enforcement, to hear their concerns and bring them to Ottawa, not just as a member of Parliament but also as a member of the House of Commons justice committee, a committee I was tremendously honoured to be appointed to because I wanted to have a hand directly in addressing some of these issues.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is always good to see my hon. colleague, who is my riding neighbour. She mentioned in her remarks that the Liberal government, as an affordability measure, removed the consumer carbon tax. However, in a previous speech in the House, she said, “The central plank of our climate plan, the federal carbon pricing system, is giving Canadian households more money back in climate action incentive payments than they pay in.” Was she misleading then, or is she misleading now? I am just having trouble reconciling these two contradictory statements.”
“Mr. Speaker, I am proud to rise on behalf of Canadians, including those in my own constituency, who are alarmed by what the Liberal government would do through Bill C-9 . They are concerned that in spite of claims that Bill C-9 would protect communities from hate, in actuality it would expose faith communities to harm from the government for daring to express their faith and to quote religious texts. Petitioners are very concerned by this proposed infringement on religious liberty, which was aggravated of course by comments from the Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture , who argued that there should be prosecution for citing certain religious texts. Petitioners are calling on the government to withdraw Bill C-9 and focus on upholding freedom of expression and freedom of religion.”
“Madam Speaker, I am proud to present a petition on behalf of Canadians concerned over Bill C-9 . Canadians believe that the state has no business involving itself in matters related to sacred texts or religious teachings and that freedom of expression and freedom of religion are fundamental rights that must be safeguarded.”
“Madam Speaker, it is a great privilege to rise on behalf of Canadians, many of them in my riding, raising very severe concerns with the way that the Liberal government is, through Bill C-9 , attacking the religious freedoms of Canadians. The petitioners are concerned in particular about the amendment adopted by Liberal members of Parliament that would remove long-standing protections for religious speech. Petitioners are calling on the government to withdraw the divisive and toxic Bill C-9 to stand up for the fundamental freedoms of Canadians.”
“Mr. Speaker, the Federal Court of Appeal has once again affirmed that the Liberal government broke the most supreme law in this country, which is the Constitution, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, when it wrongly used the Emergencies Act. It also ruled that the government violated the charter rights of Canadians by freezing the bank accounts of political protesters and limiting the legal right to protest. If this truly is a new government, will it say to Canadians right now that it will accept this ruling, uphold the civil liberties of Canadians and not appeal to the Supreme Court?”
“Why is the government not committing to remove the hidden taxes on the cost of food, such as on farm equipment, fertilizer, shipping and fuel standards, which are all things we have laid out and have given to the government in a neat package with a bow as a course of action? Canadians are struggling. Where is the solution?”
“Mr. Speaker, I understand that my hon. colleague had more to say. I hope that in what is remaining is a plan to reduce the prices. We will support the government in giving Canadians a bit of relief, but this relief does not deal with the underlying problem that is causing the crisis, which is that food costs have gone up and continue to rise. A family that is skipping meals because it cannot afford food is not a family that is buying a $1.5-million house right now. This is the crucial step that I have to ask the government to take: Every lever imaginable must be pulled.”
“Why is the government not eliminating the hidden carbon taxes and taxes on food, the industrial carbon tax and the food and plastic packaging taxes, and reining in its reckless inflation to stop further increases?”
“I have some data today from the Corner Cupboard Food Bank in Aylmer. They have also seen record increases. Aylmer is a small community. In 2025, the Corner Cupboard had 1,919 household visits. That was an 8% increase over the prior year. More importantly, 40% of their clients were under the age of 18. There were 110 new families, people who have never before had to rely on a food bank and who, in 2025, could not take it anymore and needed that extra help. We have seen a massive problem. A quarter of Canadian households are considered food insecure, and the government has not used every lever it has available to it. That is my question today. This is a complex problem. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, but there are levers the government can deploy.”
“All of these are, though, I think, subordinate to the real crisis people feel at the grocery store when they see the increases. This is not a global problem. This is a uniquely Canadian problem in the sense that Canada has the highest food inflation of anywhere in the G7, outpacing other countries. We know that 30% of students in the country are skipping meals. I will share that this is very much a local problem in my communities, which I have the great privilege and honour of representing. One thing I can share about the St. Thomas Elgin Food Bank, which just released its numbers for 2025, is that the St. Thomas Elgin Food Bank had to feed 26,278 mouths in 2025. That is triple the number that it had to feed six years ago. The St. Thomas Elgin Food Bank had to feed three times as many people as it did just six short years ago.”
“Inflation affects everything across the board, but there are few things as essential as food and few things where we can see so demonstrably the rise in costs. “Canada's Food Price Report” has been abundantly clear on this. We know that this year alone, in 2026, the average Canadian family will expect to spend $1,000 more on food than it did last year. The average family is not guaranteed a $1,000 increase in its income. The average family is also shouldering increases in other costs, such as interest rates on mortgages and credit card bills, which are increasingly necessary for people to even maintain necessities in their homes. We are also seeing fuel costs go up. The fuel standard responsible for about 17¢ a litre is, again, a hidden tax on productivity and on a necessity, especially in a riding as rural as mine.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is a great privilege, as always, to rise on behalf of the people of Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, although I am not rising at this moment with any pleasure. We know that people across the country, and certainly people in my community, are struggling with the price of food right now. I spoke to a woman last week. She shared something that I know is not unique to her and that was not easy to hear, which is that she has to periodically skip meals. She said this in a whisper, because her husband was nearby and she did not want him to know that she was making this sacrifice for their family, that this was the only way they could balance the many costs that their family was shouldering.”
“Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his desire to seek transparency in food prices in Canada, although I would offer up that Canadians are already aware of how bad food prices are. Canadians are aware of what the food price report in Canada is saying, which is that they are going to spend $1,000 more this year on food. The average family of four will spend $17,500. I wonder if my colleague would, in the interest of transparency, be open to acknowledging exactly how much of the price of food is directly tied to government policies, such as the industrial carbon tax and the plastic and packaging taxes, and whether, beyond transparency, he would support measures to reduce those prices on food.”
“Mr. Speaker, I thank you for your great work and it is good to see you after a lengthy winter break. Conservatives always stand ready, in good faith, to deal with the criminal justice priorities of Canadians. We have been saying that since the justice committee was convened, I have been saying it since I was placed on the justice committee and we have been saying it as the justice committee has worked through legislation, including the bill the member opposite raises, which Canadians have been clear they do not want. We stand in good faith, as always, to deal with the real criminal justice priorities of Canadians, and I am glad we are finally moving forward in that vein. I welcome the Liberals to the team that we have been on for a while, which is the team that wants to get serious about bail.”
“We have a tremendous honour to be in this chamber. I have not been here as long as the member has, but I appreciate the honour it is to be here and actually be able to respond to the concerns of Canadians on justice.”
“I appreciate the opportunity to clarify this, Mr. Speaker. Let me take a step back. Conservatives tried, in December, at the justice committee 19 times for the government to let us focus on Bill C-14 , to allow us to focus on bail. The Liberals on the justice committee denied that while this very member was speaking in this House of Commons asking why the justice committee was not focusing on bail. We tried. Finally, today, we were able to break that impasse and set aside the divisive Bill C-9 to focus on Bill C-14 . If Bill C-16 is coming before the justice committee soon, this is also an issue that we agree is very important. However, I note that we should not be taking our cues from the courts on matters that are so very clear to members of this chamber and to Canadians. We are the ones responsible.”
“In the case of Bill C-16 , we know that bad bail laws hurt women, children and people who are very vulnerable to these particular crimes. That is why we are standing up, again hoping to work across party lines to fix some of these core issues facing society and our legal system.”
“Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Peace River—Westlock , my brother's former member of Parliament, for his intervention. The issues dealing with crime across the board, and not just the crime we are dealing with in the context of Bill C-16 , have been rampant. This very quickly became one of the top issues I face from constituents. In fact, after affordability and the cost of living, crime is the top issue that my constituents raise. We have seen a string of incidents in the communities I represent, notably St. Thomas, where people on bail for serious offences commit other identical offences. The police have been throwing their hands up in the air, incredibly frustrated with this, because they have been calling for legitimate reforms to laws.”
“As a party, we have been very clear in saying that. Mandatory minimums for child sexual abusers is a prime example of that. It is very important that we understand that it is our responsibility and our duty as lawmakers to set out Criminal Code penalties.”
“Mr. Speaker, I have had the privilege of working with my colleague on the justice committee. While we obviously do not see eye to eye on some issues, I know that he does have a passion for public safety. I think that is underscoring the work we need to do on this and any other justice bill. There is a long-standing legal debate in Canada about who ultimately has the authority to make the laws. To put it glibly, I know that members of Parliament are called lawmakers for a reason. It is our job to make laws. It is the Supreme Court's job and the judiciary's job to interpret laws. We have been very clear that there are certain things that are so imperative that if we have judges standing in the way of what Canadians clearly want and deserve, we should be open to using the notwithstanding clause to protect some of these fundamental measures.”
“Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for at least sort of listening to the speech, but what she missed was me talking about the fact that by embedding a safety valve, by giving judges a tool to disregard mandatory minimums, we are not actually bolstering or expanding those mandatory minimums. That is the crucial point that we have to acknowledge, that if mandatory minimum sentences are to be mandatory, knowing what we have seen, such as with the Senneville case, that certain judges entirely desire incredible leniency at the expense of victims and at the expense of public safety. That is what we are talking about. By the way, I have said good things about the bill, but I also cannot turn a blind eye to things that move us further away from what we are trying to do.”
“However, if we are to truly seek a law that upholds victims' rights, we cannot embed in this something that undermines the strength of sentencing measures that Parliament has passed, that undermines mandatory minimum sentences, that makes them discretionary minimum sentences. Mandatory and discretionary cannot exist at the same time. That is why my colleagues and I stand ready, as always, to ensure we are reforming trust in the justice system, that it is looking after public safety and victims, that people like Bailey McCourt, Cait Alexander and Breanna Broadfoot will never again be traumatized and terrorized or face a system that either allows it to happen or does not seek true justice when it does.”
“It is something we need to take to heart to understand exactly how we can pass laws that are victim-centred and victim-focused, to protect children, to protect people who are being extorted and to protect women from intimate partner violence. This is something I have never had to witness in my family, but I know people who have. The more I have learned about this, the more I have realized this needs to be an all-hands-on-deck issue. This is where I welcome some of the reforms and proposals the Liberals have adopted from things we have called for, and some of the things they are doing in Bill C-16 .”
“I asked Jennifer Dunn before committee about some of the reforms we have put through that were proposed in Bailey's law. She was enthusiastically supportive. She knew they would support women. One of the things Jennifer shared in her testimony was that so many of the women at the London Abused Women's Centre that LAWC deals with call our system the injustice system. They do not even wish to engage with our system. They do not trust it to have their backs. I would say that is a failing of all institutions. I do not lay that blame on any particular party. I think it is something we need to take as a wake-up call.”
“She has shared online photos that are so painful to see of her body covered in bruises, scrapes and scars because of vicious abuse in an attempted murder by an intimate partner. That person walked free because of the Jordan principle, because of the justice system's inability to fulfill its core basic mandate of protecting people from harm and punish those who inflict harm when protection and prevention could not happen. We also heard, to use another local example, from Jennifer Dunn of the London Abused Women's Centre, LAWC. This is an organization I know very well. My wife serves on its board. It is an organization that has been advocating for and providing respite and shelter for women dealing with abuse for many years.”
“We have seen a series of justice bills from the government that it often claims would rectify a problem, but in the end these bills create a new problem or even a host of new problems. I return to the testimony we heard from victims and people who work in the space of victims. There is one woman I have had the great privilege of meeting. She has become a tremendous advocate for victims' rights, not because she set out to do that with her life, but because she herself was a victim and saw that she had no one speaking for her. That is Cait Alexander, who has founded a tremendous organization called End Violence Everywhere. I was very pleased to meet her when she was testifying before the justice committee a little while ago. Cait Alexander almost lost her life because of delays in court.”
“They have put forward Bill C-16 , a bill that has many things in it that we are entirely supportive of, but we cannot undermine the very nature of why these laws and provisions exist. Parliament set mandatory minimums for a reason. The passage of the provision would undermine that, as we would be saying to every victim in the country. The mandatory minimum sentences were put in place ostensibly to protect victims, and not just as a deterrent. Ideally, with many of these offences, we want to stop the offences from taking place in the first place, which means we want a penalty on the books that someone would think twice about before they violate. (1540) We also know that the Liberal government has ended a lot of mandatory minimums in the case of Bill C-75 .”
“The one tool available is a mandatory minimum sentence that will force a criminal to be behind bars and off the streets. There are some things we can debate, and there are some things on which there are differing opinions in politics, in law and in policy. However, one thing we can be very clear on is that someone cannot be doing a drive-by shooting if they are in jail; they cannot be trafficking in weapons, trafficking in humans or trading in child sexual exploitation and abuse material online if they are locked up. This is something that should not be, and to most Canadians it is not, a partisan issue. We have been talking about the calls for reform of our justice system. They have been coming from Liberals, New Democrats and Conservatives at the provincial level. The federal Liberals have been slow to respond to this.”
“I would like to share what are the offences we are talking about that have mandatory minimums: aggravated sexual assault with a gun, human trafficking, multiple violent firearms offences, extortion with a firearm, trafficking in weapons, and drive-by shootings with a restricted or prohibited firearm. These are not benign cases. I was just in Surrey, British Columbia, and I was also just in Brampton, Ontario. These are two communities that have had exceedingly high rates of extortion in recent years, and this is something that has actually caused people in these communities to feel fearful. There is one cudgel the state has available to it when people who are guilty of these crimes are finally arrested and convicted. This is assuming they have not been released on bail several times over, which we know is happening.”
“We also consider this in the context where a judge could look at a case and say, as one did in Quebec, that they think that maybe a one-year mandatory minimum for child sexual exploitation and abuse material, which is already, in the eyes of most Canadians, offensively low, should not apply to someone. We know that every single offender in this country who is found guilty of a crime that warrants a mandatory minimum sentence under the law would try to avail themselves of this escape hatch. Why would they not? Bill C-16 would now say that a mandatory minimum sentence should not in fact be mandatory and that there should be no minimum sentence. We would be baking leniency in, and in doing so undermining the very idea of having a mandatory minimum sentence in the first place.”
“We have seen an example, and this is something our Conservative team has tried to rectify in the system, where someone takes into consideration an external factor, even though the criminal has committed a crime and been found guilty. I cannot stress that enough. We are talking about sentencing. We are talking about people who have already been found to have committed the crime and are now facing the question of whether they will have to pay the time, and if so, how much. However, there are judges who have said that if they sentence someone to a certain amount of time, it would jeopardize their immigration status. That is egregious.”
“(1535) Bill C-16 would actually empower judges to ignore mandatory minimum sentences. Mandatory minimum sentences have a very operational word in them, “mandatory”, which means they are to be mandatory. They are mandated. I cannot stress this enough. Under Bill C-16 there would be an escape valve. A judge could decide on a case-by-case basis that they believe a particular application of the mandatory minimum in a given case would be cruel and unusual. We have already seen examples where judges in this country have given sentences that were more lenient than what they should have been, in order to protect someone's immigration status.”
“The laws of this nation, the Criminal Code, dictate maximum penalties, so why is it so egregious and offensive to some people to have a minimum penalties? How are these two things fundamentally at odds with each other? It is because when we look at parameters and constraints that exist around sentencing, we understand that there are some penalties where a sentence could be too severe. No one supports a life sentence for speeding or for running a red light, for example. Similarly, we also need a minimum standard to understand that there is no earthly justification to not put someone behind bars for certain offences. I am thinking especially of offences against children, of murder and of some of the other offences we talk about often in the context of rising crime that are continuing to terrorize communities.”
“However, we can also point to areas of the bill where critical protections are being watered down, and I am referring specifically to mandatory minimums. When I mentioned the Supreme Court decision regarding mandatory minimums for offences dealing with child sexual exploitation and abuse material, I gave an example of, even with a mandatory minimum being in effect, there being judges who want to do the bare minimum and in some cases go below that standard. That is why mandatory minimums must exist. There is a place for them, and we need to have a law and a judiciary that respect that, because for certain offences there should not be an ability for leniency below what is already an incredibly low standard.”
“When we lose sight of that in the creation of our laws, we do not have the ability to fulfill the fundamental and most important role of a government, which is to protect its citizens from harm. As we look at Bill C-16 and the context in which the Liberals have presented the bill, we see that there is much in it that should be agreeable across party lines. There is much in the bill I am grateful for and for which the Liberal government has actually taken its cues from proposals that we have been championing for, in some cases, many years. This is an example where I do not care who gets the credit; I just want the right thing to be done. I want people in this country to have the protections they desperately need and desperately deserve.”
“He was released the same day. If we fast-forward, we find out that Breanna ended up dying at the hands of her abuser. Victims have rights. We have an obligation to stand up for victims and to speak for victims. It was not long ago in the chamber that the House of Commons unanimously passed a private member's bill brought by my colleague, the hon. member for Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola , Bailey's law. In the gallery at the time that we voted on the bill was the family of Bailey McCourt, another family that will never be able to undo the harm that it has suffered. Again, laws bear a level of responsibility for this. It is not the same degree of responsibility that the perpetrators of crimes bear, but laws are meant to protect the most vulnerable in our society from the most dangerous in our society.”
“I hope also to speak on behalf of other victims of intimate partner violence, for all the women who continue to live in fear of their abusers because they are still out on the streets after being charged with no accountability for the violent acts they have committed. I would like to share my family's personal experience at this time. On March 15, 2024, my daughter Breanna was brutally attacked by her boyfriend. She was left with two black eyes, a fractured orbital bone, several other broken bones in her cheeks and severe bruising around her neck from his hands having been wrapped around them in strangulation. She was only 16 years old at the time. Her attacker, age 18, was arrested on March 15 and charged with assault plus assault with choking and suffocation or strangulation. He was released from custody on the same day he was arrested.”
“I will share one example that comes from London, Ontario, where Breanna Broadfoot was killed by an intimate partner at the age of 17. Her family has taken this horror, this tragedy, and they have turned it into advocacy. I cannot imagine the strength someone requires when they lose their 17-year-old and are still able to face a parliamentary committee and face the community around them, but that is exactly what the Broadfoots have done. Breanna's father, Brett Broadfoot, testified at committee. In his testimony he spoke about how the system itself has a role. I would like to quote Mr. Broadfoot: ...I'm here to speak for my family, and most importantly, for my beautiful and now deceased daughter Breanna.”
“I do not talk about it often, because it is difficult, and it is difficult for so many other people who have been victimized by something or other in their life, but I share this so people know there is a human face to these things. We cannot simply look at the perpetrator of a crime without acknowledging the victim. We cannot simply look at the sentence applied to a perpetrator without considering the effect that the person's crimes have had on the victim, whoever it is, whether it is a defenceless child, a defenceless woman, an intimate partner or someone else. (1530) Crime has a collective cost for society. It also has an individual cost. In some cases the scars of criminality, often preventable criminality if the justice system were doing its job, run deep and can run forever.”
“Instead of dealing with the case at hand, they talked about some absurd hypothetical that had nothing to do with the case at hand, in order to talk about why a mandatory minimum for child sexual abuse and exploitation material could be cruel and unusual punishment. In doing so, they undermined the idea that we as lawmakers have to send the strongest possible message to people who commit the worst possible offences. There is no justification for giving a slap on the wrist to someone who abuses children, as a fundamental example of this. I shared in committee a story that was very personal to me as someone who is a survivor of sexual abuse as a child.”
“What we saw in the trial judge's ruling on these cases was an application of the bare minimum and even, in one case, below the bare minimum, because they thought that these cases did not meet the standard of what was already a paltry mandatory minimum for these offences, which was 12 months. One of the offenders got 90 days. This is why mandatory minimums have to exist. There is a current within parts of the judiciary in which judges are exceedingly lenient on cases that Canadians and, I would say, the fundamental laws of nature would find deplorable. This is so important because the Supreme Court decided to rule on mandatory minimums in an abstract way.”
“This is probably a prime example of where we have seen a desire to disregard victims because of what can often be abstract concepts. I can give a very real and very shameful recent example of this, when the Supreme Court of Canada ruled, regarding mandatory minimums for people who traffic in child sexual abuse and exploitation material, which was referred to as child pornography in the court ruling, that “cruel and unusual punishment” is the description for mandatory minimums. The two cases that came up in that Supreme Court ruling involved men who each had hundreds of videos and images depicting heinous, vile things that I do not want to utter in the chamber, the most heinous acts we can imagine against children as young as, I believe, four and five years old.”
“We have heard testimony from victims' rights advocates about the ways in which women in particular are disproportionately affected by these and other offences. We have also seen in recent months a very concerning trend in the way that courts and, in some cases, I will say, even politicians view legal theory and the way they prioritize legal theory above the real-world experiences of victims and the real-world implications of our laws on victims. I want to make sure that everything we do as a chamber that deals with matters of crime and justice is not relegated to the realm of the abstract, that we are not making legal theory the priority of what we are doing and that we are actually putting victims and public safety front and centre. I spoke before the justice committee not that long ago about the idea of mandatory minimum sentences.”
“This is why today the House of Commons justice committee passed a motion that I am very proud we were able to pass, one that would prioritize the study of bail and sentencing reform, an issue for which there has been a near-unanimous call among large swaths of society, from municipal governments to law enforcement agencies and victim advocacy groups, that something needs to change. We are talking about Bill C-16 . I want to drill down into a subset of crime that has also not been immune to the increases we have seen across the board in violent and serious crime. In particular, since 2015, human trafficking has increased 84%. Sexual assaults are up almost 76%. Violent crime is up almost 55%.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is a great privilege, as always, to rise on behalf of the people of Elgin—St. Thomas—London South and, I will also say, as a member of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights and as a representative of an issue that has become a galvanizing one for many Canadians. It is an issue around which I saw tremendous attention, with issues pertaining to justice. We have seen very clearly the rise in crime in Canada over the last decade.”