MP Viersen updates Town Council on the Conservatives fight against carbon tax, inflation, and Bill C-21

During a recent meeting, MP Arnold Viersen provided a parliamentary update to Whitecourt Town Council. Viersen said the issue at the top of the list for the Conservative Party was the Carbon Tax. “The Carbon Tax continues to go up, and the government hopes to be able to triple it from where it is currently, so if you thought it was bad enough now, wait until it reaches the goal they are trying to achieve.”

Viersen said the Conservatives had been fighting “tooth and nail” against it, calling it one of the primary drivers of inflation. He then turned to the Federal Budget, which had yet to pass at the time of his meeting with Town Council. “The government was prepositioning that it was going to be fiscal restraint. The Prime Minister said that the budget would balance itself, and we thought maybe this was the year that it would balance itself, but low and behold, it’s a 43 billion dollar deficit projected and 60 billion dollars of new spending in this budget. Hardly the fiscal restraint that they were prepositioning. It is deficit spending, and we are all living and feeling the inflationary effects of all of that.”

In a press release on June 5, Viersen said the Conservative Party attempted to stop the Liberal budget by tabling 904 amendments in the House of Commons and forcing over 600 recorded votes at Finance Committee. On June 8, despite pushback, the budget passed with 177 votes for and 146 against. The Liberals and NDP supported the budget, while the Conservatives and Bloc Quebecois did not.

Viersen then spoke about crime. “In 2018, the Liberal government changed the way the bail system works in this country. While us living in northern and rural Canada have been noting this and frustrated with the crime, this is now starting to affect every part and corner of this country. Forty-three individuals in Vancouver were responsible for over 1100 incidents in Vancouver.” He said the Catch & Release program introduced is “definitely not working.”

Viersen said a new bill, Bill C-48, which aims to amend the Criminal code, should fool no one. “It will do nothing to stem the tide that we have. It is not really a bail reform. It adds reverse onus to a number of offences, mostly firearms offences.” Reverse onus means the accused must show why they should be released instead of the prosecution proving why someone should remain in custody. The bill focuses mainly on firearm offences and intimate partner violence offences. Viersen said repeat violent offenders in general, not just those listed in the bill, shouldn’t receive bail by default. “They should be proving that they should be getting bail. That is a program that was in place prior to 2018, and it has been reversed. We are calling for jail, not bail.”

Another bill Viersen focused on in his update was C-21. “It has now passed the House of Commons and is off to the Senate. It’s continuing its way through. The Liberals have walked back a big amendment that they had put in there that would have made a lot of rifles that people use for hunting illegal. They walked that back now, but they’ve basically been caught with their hand in the cookie jar. We know what they are about. They are fundamentally opposed to firearm ownership in this country and are doing whatever they can. They’ve taken a step back, but be assured that they will, when given the opportunity, they will try again,” he explained.

Bill C-21 was introduced on May 30, 2022. As per www.canada.ca, the bill is “our country’s most significant action on gun violence in a generation.” It aims to strengthen rules to prevent gun violence by placing “responsible restrictions” on some guns used in the country. In May 2020, setting the stage for C-21, the Government of Canada prohibited over 1,500 “assault-style” firearms. The site explains, “these prohibited firearms are tactical and/or military-style design and function.” C-21 also proposes a national freeze on the “sale, purchase and transfer” of handguns into law and addresses concerns over “mid-power replica airguns.”

Viersen called the bill the Liberals’ “fix” to escalating crime. “If you take a graph of the violent crime in Canada, it’s on a declining trend to 2015, and then it starts to peak up. But, in the last couple of years, it has seen exponential growth in violent crime. Their answer to this is C-21. They’re saying, hey, there’s increased violent crime; therefore, we have to take away the guns. It’s not going to work. Even if they took all of the guns away, the vast majority of the firearms being used (for a crime) are illegal firearms.”

Viersen said the Nova Scotia shooting was a prime example, saying it was done with “illegal firearms by a non-licensed gun owner. He didn’t have a license to own firearms, let alone be in possession of them.” Viersen said C-21 is to fix problems that “don’t actually exist” because there are already laws in place. He said the topic has been a problem for the Liberals in their rural seats in parliament, saying, “They won’t even let their rural guys speak to the committees.”

At the meeting, Viersen thanked the Town of Whitecourt for its role in receiving hundreds of volunteers during the recent evacuations. “I’ve heard from many across Northern Alberta who are very grateful for the support Whitecourt has provided, Valleyview and Fox Creek residents in particular.”