1 week Ago By [email protected] (Alex Ballingall)
OTTAWA—With the GTA as their backdrop, the Liberals and Conservatives are offering duelling agendas to crack down on crime — and attacking each other for allegedly irresponsible policies. Painting a picture of “chaos” in the area’s streets, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre blamed the Liberal government on Thursday for failing to keep repeat offenders behind bars, while Liberal Leader Mark Carney — making a foray into an issue at the core of the Conservative campaign pitch — accused Poilievre of risking public safety by importing dangerous American gun policies. “He will restore the legality of assault rifles in our communities, and he’s promised the gun lobby that he will give us American-style gun laws,” Carney said Thursday at a press conference in Brampton.
“Canada is not American, and we need to stand up for our country, our values and our beliefs. And we need to do everything possible to keep our communities safe.” Carney’s comments came the morning after Poilievre held a “Stop the Crime” rally in the same suburban city northwest of Toronto, where he excoriated the Liberal government for alleged failures to rein in violent crimes and promised to deny bail to repeat offenders and impose “mandatory” life sentences on fentanyl traffickers and other serious criminals like human traffickers and gun smugglers.
It was there that the Conservative leader handed his microphone to a 12-year-old named Anthony, who told a cheering crowd that all he wanted was “to see crimes being stopped” and for “Canada to turn good again.” Nationally, the volume and severity of crimes has gone up since 2015 — with Statistics Canada reporting a third consecutive annual increase in 2023, when the agency’s “Crime Severity Index” went up two per cent from 2022. Toronto police statistics show reported shooting incidents in the city increased to 461 in 2024 from 345 the previous year, after declining since a peak of 492 incidents in 2019.
At the same time, the number of people killed or injured in shootings declined in 2024 to 164 — the lowest number in five years — while the number of assaults hit a record high of more than 25,800. In Peel region, several types of crime have also increased in recent years, including hate-motivated crimes, robberies and break-and-entering incidents, according to the Peel Regional Police. Last year, the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) reported that they seized 5,600 weapons and 10,000 kilograms of drugs in the GTA.
Poilievre, who said this week he wants a “three strikes” law to ensure people with three convictions for “serious offences” face a mandatory sentence of at least 10 years in jail, told reporters in Milton on Thursday that there “has been absolute crime and chaos in the GTA after the lost Liberal decade, and we cannot trust the same Liberals who caused the problem to fix it.” Later, in Brampton, Carney pushed back, noting Conservative opposition to Liberal government restrictions on guns they deem unnecessary for hunting and sport shooting, including “assault-style” guns and semi-automatic and sustained “rapid-fire” weapons. Since 2020, the government has banned the import, sale, and transport of such firearms, and Carney vowed Thursday to “quickly” implement a long-delayed buyback program for the guns.
Among other measures, Carney also promised to ensure that it is the RCMP — not the gun industry — that is responsible for the classification of new firearms entering the market, and to automatically revoke gun licenses to those convicted of violent offences, including those related to intimate partner violence. Poilievre has promised to scrap the gun buyback program, vowing to use the money — which the Conservatives earmark at $600 million — to beef up border security to stop illegal guns from entering Canada. Carney took aim Thursday at the same problem, arguing that Poilievre “can’t be serious about being tough on crime” if he isn’t “willing to be tough on guns.
” “You can’t be serious about stopping intimate partner violence without being serious about gun control,” Carney said. Nevertheless, the Liberal leader appeared to echo some of Poilievre’s prior border demands, announcing a plan to train 1,000 new CBSA officers to clamp down on drugs like fentanyl and its precursors, illegal guns and cars smuggled by gangs crossing the border. That was on top of another pledge to hire 1,000 RCMP officers to crack down on drug and human trafficking within Canada, along with further tackling threats like foreign interference, transnational repression and cybercrime.
In response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s early tariff threats, which were tied to the flow of illicit drugs and irregular migrants across the Canada-U.
S. border, Poilievre called earlier this year for the recruitment of at least 2,000 new CBSA agents to tamp down on illegal border activity, including gun and drug smuggling. Carney also committed to making it more difficult for those charged with certain offences — like violent car theft, home invasion, and some human trafficking and smuggling offences — to get bail.
A Liberal party backgrounder said that policy would be particularly aimed at repeat offenders — a longtime irritant for Poilievre — and would make it harder for them to get bail by implementing a reverse onus provision that puts the burden on the accused to justify their release. The Liberal leader promised to make murder motivated by hate a constructive first degree murder offence, including when women are killed due to their gender. He also pledged to introduce new criminal offences for intentionally obstructing access to places of worship, schools and community centres; and for sharing non-consensual, sexual deepfake images.
Last year, in response to the Liberals’ online harms bill, the Conservatives introduced a proposed law of their own that also sought to amend the Criminal Code to ban the distribution of artificially generated intimate images. Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha.
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