House of Commons Hansard #174 of the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was firearms.

Topics

Resignation of MemberRoutine Proceedings

3:50 p.m.

Liberal

The Speaker Liberal Peter Milliken

I wish to inform the House that because of the deferred recorded divisions government orders will be extended by 10 minutes.

Resignation of MemberRoutine Proceedings

3:50 p.m.

Liberal

Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order arising out of question period. The Minister of Public Safety during question period invited the official opposition to advise the government on his task force on the RCMP. Will the minister commit here and now to meet with the official opposition to discuss the membership of the task force and how its work can be made fully transparent with proper oversight and public reporting?

Resignation of MemberRoutine Proceedings

3:50 p.m.

Liberal

The Speaker Liberal Peter Milliken

I am not sure the hon. member has raised a point of order. He seems to have asked a question. I would stress that question period is over. Maybe tomorrow he would like to ask a supplementary and clarify the matter.

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June 19th, 2007 / 3:50 p.m.

Okanagan—Coquihalla B.C.

Conservative

Stockwell Day ConservativeMinister of Public Safety

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3:50 p.m.

Conservative

Garry Breitkreuz Conservative Yorkton—Melville, SK

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to be able to lead off the debate on Bill C-21. I have been waiting 12 years for this day. That is when we started putting an end to the Liberals' infamous $2 billion boondoggle on the firearms program. This is the day we start to dismantle Bill C-68 and return our gun laws to the way they were in 1995.

There was no evidence that those gun control laws were effective, but at least they were only costing taxpayers $12.8 million a year, not $100 million. This is the day we start putting an end to the Liberal gun control laws that do not work, do not save lives, do not reduce violent crime, do not improve public safety and do not keep guns out of the hands of criminals.

Finally, this is the day we start putting in place weapons control laws that have been proven statistically to save lives, to reduce violent crime, to improve public safety and to help to keep deadly weapons out of the hands of criminals.

I want to warn Canadians of the blather they are going to hear from the other parties on this issue, likely today. Their gun control proposals sound too good to be true and they are. They may sound good, but they are not sound policies. Policies that are driven strictly by emotions may actually do more harm than good. They may divert resources away from more useful endeavours. Emotions may encourage us to act to solve a problem, but they can be harmful if they make us act irrationally. Because Bill C-68 was not based on factual evidence, it has done more harm than good.

I intend today to expose that flaw in our response to crime in Canada. Canadians need gun control policies that are effective as well as cost effective, but Liberals have not let logic, facts and truth get in the way of a good sound bite or a scary political advertisement at election time. The truth is they want votes more than they want effective gun laws and this is hurting our nation.

This is not a right versus left issue on the political spectrum. It is a right versus wrong issue to crime control.

Let us start with the colossal overspending by the Liberals on implementing the Firearms Act. On April 24, 1995 then justice minister Allan Rock appeared before the Standing Committee on Justice and promised Parliament and the Canadian taxpayers that implementing the Firearms Act would cost $2.2 million over five years.

On May 17, 2006 the Auditor General of Canada reported that the Liberals had spent more than a billion tax dollars over 12 years to implement that program, and guess what? It is still not completely implemented.

In a letter to me dated June 15, 2006, the Auditor General confirmed that her audit of the firearms program costs did not include enforcement costs, compliance costs, economic costs, and unreported indirect costs to other departments. She also confirmed that the Liberal government's cost benefit analysis of the firearms program and the Liberals' 115 page economic impact study are still cabinet secrets as they have been since 2003 and 1999 respectively. So we still do not know the real costs.

In his 1993 report, the previous auditor general, Denis Desautels, criticized the government for moving forward with new gun control regulations without “important data, needed to assess the potential benefits and future effectiveness of the regulations”, and recommended, “it is essential that the Department of Justice evaluate the effectiveness of the program again”. But it never did.

Political posturing overrode common sense. Mr. Desautels' findings 12 years ago seem very similar to Auditor General Sheila Fraser's report in May 2006. Paragraph 4.36 of her report states:

In particular, the Centre has not set any performance targets and has provided few examples of its outcomes. Instead of reporting the key results achieved, the Centre describes its activities and services.

Paragraph 4.38 added:

The Centre does not show how these activities help minimize risks to public safety with evidence-based outcomes such as reduced deaths, injuries, and threats from firearms.

That quotation is the most important part of my speech because it exposes the tactics used by those that defend the gun registry. This appalling lack of evidence of effectiveness was also confirmed by the Liberal government's response to order paper question No. 19 on November 29, 2004. Statistics Canada's statement was in bold text and underlined that the specific impact of the firearms program or the firearms registry cannot be isolated from other factors.

In fact, their own statistical evidence proves that the Liberal gun control policies and programs have been a dismal failure. Last December the Library of Parliament obtained a special set of tables for me from Statistics Canada showing firearms related statistics for the total number of homicides committed in Canada between 1997 and 2005.

Consider these Statistics Canada findings: Of the 5,194 homicides committed between 1997 and 2005, only 118, or 2.27%, were committed with a registered gun. Of the 5,194 homicides committed between 1997 and 2005, only 63, or 1.21%, were committed with a firearm registered to the accused murderer. Of the 5,194 homicides committed between 1997 and 2005, only 111, or 2.14%, were committed by a person who held a valid firearms licence. Of the two million licensed gun owners in Canada, only 111, that is 0.00555%, used their firearm to murder somebody.

This analysis shows what almost everyone in Canada knows, with the exception of the opposition parties in this House, that criminals do not register their guns and cannot be bothered to qualify for a firearms licence. Sadly, these statistics prove the main point I have been making for the last 12 years, that laying a piece of paper beside a gun does not prevent it from being used to murder someone. These statistics represent a failure of gun registration and gun owner licensing as cost effective measures to save lives, improve public safety or keep firearms out of the hands of people who should not have them.

On November 8, 2006 Statistics Canada released its 2005 homicide report. Here are some of the highlights which show that criminals are the real problem, not the type of weapons they use against their victims. There are two things to keep in mind as I read the highlights from the StatsCan report. Number one, the RCMP have been registering handguns since 1934 and fully automatic firearms, sawed off rifles and shotguns have been banned for decades. Number two, in 1995 when the Liberals passed Bill C-68 they banned some 555,000 handguns and required the licensing of all gun owners and the registration of all rifles and shotguns.

Two billion dollars later, this is the result according to Statistics Canada in 2005: We have the highest homicide rate in nearly a decade. The firearm homicide rate is the same as it was 20 years ago. Sixty-six per cent of murders in 2005 were committed without a firearm; 58% of the firearms homicides were committed with handguns; 9% were committed with banned fully automatic firearms, sawed off rifles and shotguns; and only 30% of recovered firearms were registered.

Here are the more relevant homicide statistics that parliamentarians should be focused on: Sixty-four per cent of the accused murderers had a criminal record, 6% for homicide. I have to ask what were these people doing back on the street? Seventy-three per cent of the accused murderers had been drinking or on drugs. Thirteen per cent of the accused murderers were mentally ill; 45% of the murders occurred while the accused were committing another crime; and 22% of murder victims were involved in illegal activities.

Let us turn to an example of the opposition parties using false statistics in an attempt to keep our government from replacing useless gun control laws with truly effective ones. That is why we are here today.

In June 2006 the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security debated a Bloc motion calling for the retention of the long gun registry. A number of opposition MPs repeatedly quoted a statistic to justify their defence of the gun registry. The researchers in the Library of Parliament later proved there was no evidence to support their claims. They claimed “71% of the firearms assaults perpetrated against women involved long guns”. That is a false statistic. The Library of Parliament researcher could not find the source for that statistic but she did find two different sets of statistics to contradict it. The researcher reported:

With regard to your request concerning statistics presented during the 8th meeting of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, specifically the statement that 71% of firearms assaults perpetrated against women involve long guns (rifle and shotgun), compared to 29% of the assaults perpetrated against men, I have not been able to find the source of these statistics.

I do not have time to read the whole Library of Parliament quotation, but it clearly notes that the number was not 71%. It was 17.1%. Those were misleading statistics by the opposition. While we deplore domestic violence regardless of the type of weapons used, there are far more effective measures the federal government could take up to help spouses living in violent households.

While doing research on domestic violence, we keep finding news stories about women's shelters not being able to accommodate abused women showing up at their doorsteps. The Library of Parliament sent me the most recent statistics Canada reports on shelters for abused women that showed the tragic truth ignored by the Liberals for years: “On the snapshot day, about one-fifth of all shelters referred about 221 women and 112 children elsewhere. Two-thirds of those referrals were made because shelters were full. Eight in ten abused women in shelters were there to escape a current or former spouse common law partner”.

While the Liberals were wasting over a billion tax dollars on the gun registry over the last 10 years, hundreds of women and children were being turned away from women's shelters every day. I do not need to remind the House of the massive cuts to social transfer payments to the provinces that were made by the previous Liberal government during the 1990s.

Another analysis of domestic violence just completed by the Library's parliamentary research branch showed spousal homicides committed each year have remained virtually unchanged over the last 10 years. The futility of it all is driven home by the fact that 70% of the women murdered by a family member over the last 10 years were murdered with something other than a firearm. These domestic violence reports expose 10 years of Liberal deception on the firearms file.

Women should be outraged that they were treated so shoddily when one of the solutions to combat family violence was obvious and blatantly ignored for so many years.

If we were telling people the truth, they would be telling us that helping abused women is more important than simply laying a piece of paper beside our guns, but then the opposition parties will claim that the police use the system thousands of times a day. Members have likely heard that claim.

Here is what the Auditor General, Sheila Fraser, said on May 31, 2006, when she appeared before the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security:

I believe that the indicator of the 5,000 hits a day is more of what we call an activity indicator than an indicator of effectiveness. So those law enforcement people who use the registry would have to give an assessment as to whether or not it was useful to them.

There could be 5,000 hits, and they could say, yes, it was very helpful and helped me in this way; or they could say, no, it wasn't helpful because the information wasn't correct. It takes an additional degree of interpretation or information to assess effectiveness.

Members will understand why I say we should have the Auditor General audit firearms law to see if it is cost effective. That is what we should be doing.

Here is what the RCMP commissioner said on June 7, 2006, when he appeared before the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security:

They're automatic CPIC checks that they automatically go over. I don't have the number of how many are direct checks.

Guess what? The Liberals have known this deceptive statistic for a very long time and yet chose not to be upfront and honest with Parliament or the Canadian people.

On December 3, 2004, the then registrar of firearms emailed the then director of public policy with the Canada Firearms Centre and said, “In sum, CFRO”, the gun registry, “is indeed automatically queried in many cases when police officers query CPIC”, meaning the police computer system.

This email from the firearms interest police coordinator to the registrar of firearms states:

Note that the CFRO auto query of addresses is based on any valid address query response returned through their Intergraph System query. This means that if a parking ticket had a valid address and was returned...the Intergraph System, it would generate a CFRO address query.

This quote is from a young RCMP officer in my riding who was told by his superiors to stop sending requests to the gun registry before attending domestic disputes because he was “putting his life in danger”. The reason, he was told, was that “the usual 'no guns' response to his query 'creates a false sense of security'”.

It may surprise many MPs on the other side that the majority of front line police officers do not support the gun registry nor do they use it. Why should they, when it is so full of errors?

In December 2005, I released Liberal government documents showing that the number of unverified firearms in the gun registry had increased from 5.1 million to 5.6 million over the last two and a half years, and there are only seven million firearms in the registry. The more millions wasted, the further they fell behind. So much for the Canadian Police Association's resolutions in 1999 and 2004 demanding that data entered in the gun registry be “verified as accurate”.

Other Canadian Police Association demands from 1999 that have not been met are as follows: that the Auditor General of Canada conduct a thorough review of the firearms registration system and release a public report on the findings to the people of Canada; that the CPA receive confirmation that the registration system has the capacity to meet the legislative timeframes established for firearms registration; that the CPA receive confirmation that the cost recovery plan for registration can be achieved; that meaningful consultations with the user group take place to ensure that the concerns of stakeholders are addressed in the review process; and that the CPA receive confirmation that the implementation and operation of the system is not taking officers off the street.

It is unfortunate that we are playing politics with public safety.

Now let us get to the meat of Bill C-21, our government's first step toward implementing our party's firearms and property rights policies passed by our delegates in Montreal in March of 2005.

Our firearms policy states:

A Conservative government will repeal Canada's costly gun registry legislation and work with the provinces and territories on cost-effective gun control programs designed to keep guns out of the hands of criminals while respecting the rights of law-abiding Canadians to own and use firearms responsibly. Measures will include: mandatory minimum sentences for the criminal use of firearms; strict monitoring of high-risk individuals; crackdown on the smuggling; safe storage provisions; firearms safety training; a certification screening system for all those wishing to acquire firearms legally; and putting more law enforcement officers on our streets.

I support Bill C-21 because it is the first step toward fixing all that is wrong with Canada's gun control laws. Getting this bill through second reading will get it into committee where the truth can finally be uncovered and we can start building evidence based and truly cost effective measures to control the criminal use of all weapons, not just guns.

Legislation is seldom perfect. Many people support the gun registry because they think it is gun control. I challenge everyone to look below the surface on this issue and not form an opinion based on a superficial impression that some may have created. The long gun registry does not enhance public safety and that is why it should be repealed.

I appreciate the opportunity—

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4:10 p.m.

Conservative

The Acting Speaker Conservative Royal Galipeau

I regret to interrupt the member. Questions and comments. The hon. member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin.

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4:10 p.m.

Bloc

Serge Ménard Bloc Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC

Mr. Speaker, clearly, it was the Liberals who created the firearms registry in its current form. Many mistakes were made in how it was handled. The hon. member who just spoke pointed out the unreliability—

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4:10 p.m.

Conservative

The Acting Speaker Conservative Royal Galipeau

I am sorry to have to interrupt the hon. member, but the technicians had to turn off his microphone because his headphones were too close to the microphone. The microphone is now on. The hon. member may continue.

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4:10 p.m.

Bloc

Serge Ménard Bloc Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC

Mr. Speaker, evidently the Bloc does not need to defend the gun registry as designed by the Liberals. It may perhaps result in mistakes, but it does exist nevertheless. If we are defending it, it is not because it is the creation of one political party or another, but rather because almost every police force in the country and those who look after victims of crime believe that a gun registry is a preventive measure that gives results.

The previous speaker spoke of the weaknesses of the registry and used that as an argument to abolish it in its entirety. I would like to ask him whether he believes that the amnesty granted over a year ago, allowing those who had not registered their firearms or who had to renew their registration to postpone the registration or renewal for a certain period of time, is a measure that will improve the effectiveness of the gun registry, or whether he believes that it will have the opposite effect and make the registry less reliable.

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4:10 p.m.

Conservative

Garry Breitkreuz Conservative Yorkton—Melville, SK

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to lead off on this debate because of all the work I have done on this file in exposing the fraud that was perpetrated on Canadians and the impression that it was somehow gun control when in fact the gun registry was not gun control.

Let me begin with some of the opening comments that my colleague from the Bloc has raised. First, the member said that one of the charges I made was that the firearms registry is not reliable.

Approximately seven million guns out of all the firearms in Canada have been registered in the system. How many firearms are there in this country? A reliable estimate indicates that the minimum number is 16.5 million. If seven million have been registered and at a minimum there are 16.5 million in the country, and probably closer to 20 million, we have barely scratched the surface.

I will let that sink in for members here. If we are trying to put a piece of paper beside every gun in the country, we have barely begun, and this at a cost of approximately $2 billion. So how can the registry be reliable? The police want a tool that will be effective. It is not effective when only a fraction of the guns have been registered.

I can explain how these numbers were achieved, with import and export numbers, the number of guns manufactured in the country, and a reliable estimate by the justice department before all of this was put in place.

The Auditor General also pointed out, and I think my hon. colleague knows this, that 90% of registrations had errors, so what happens if the police go to a system like this and let it in any way affect what they do? I do not think there is a policeman in this country who will allow this registry to affect what the police do.

When the police go to a home, they do not trust any of the information they pick up on their CPIC system, their computer system, because of what the Auditor General said, which is that 90% of registrations have problems. Police want effective tools that will help them in their fight against crime.

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4:15 p.m.

Kootenay—Columbia B.C.

Conservative

Jim Abbott ConservativeParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage

Mr. Speaker, I would like to acknowledge the tremendous hard work that my colleague from Yorkton—Melville has done on this file. He has been tireless. He indeed has exposed the Liberal boondoggle for what it was.

I have a quick question for him. Recognizing that at this particular point there is about a six month backlog for people being able to actually acquire a licence when they purchase a gun, would he not agree with me that it is something like going to an automobile dealership, paying for a car, getting the insurance for the car and then being told that sometime, somewhere, perhaps in the next six months, we could come back and actually use the car?

I think the member would agree with me that it is exceptionally frustrating. For law-abiding citizens in Canada to have to put up with that kind of frustration builds toward the potential for real anarchy as a result of this ill-conceived and useless registry.

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4:15 p.m.

Conservative

Garry Breitkreuz Conservative Yorkton—Melville, SK

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question. It almost answers itself, but the key point is that this registry and the licensing affect only law-abiding citizens, people who are trying to comply with the law. My hon. colleague has pointed out, I think adequately, that people are frustrated with the fact that they cannot do what they would like to do and lawfully use their property.

It has no effect on the criminal. In fact, that is the key problem. We are spending so many resources on a paper-pushing exercise and creating a huge bureaucracy when in fact if we were to ask police what they would like to see, they would say they need more police on the streets in the right areas, combating criminals, gangs and drugs. That is what they want.

Coming back to the question that was asked of me previous to this one, the amnesty does not waive the law. The legislation we are dealing with today is what will repeal that law.

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4:15 p.m.

Conservative

Dave Van Kesteren Conservative Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON

Mr. Speaker, I want to verify what the hon. member has told us.

I have two sons who are policemen and a third in the process of becoming one. One of them is on the tactical team. Obviously my question to him was this: what about the charge we keep hearing that the forces are using the registration at 5,000 hits a day? The member may have mentioned it. I want him to expand on that a bit.

My son said they would never at any time rely on that, because, as the member so correctly stated, it would give them a false sense of security. They do not trust it. When I asked him if that is the prevailing attitude among other policemen, he told me that is precisely the case.

My question, then, for the hon. member is this: why do we keep hearing that access to the registry is at 5,000 hits a day? Why do we keep hearing that as the best reason for why we should be maintaining this flawed gun registry?

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4:20 p.m.

Conservative

Garry Breitkreuz Conservative Yorkton—Melville, SK

Mr. Speaker, that question strikes to the very heart of what has been happening with regard to this over the last decade or more.

Politics has overridden factually based evidence. The previous government was successful in creating the impression that this was somehow gun control when in fact it was not. The gun registry was not gun control, yet that government could get votes in the cities from people who took the Liberals at their word. Because of the words they used, people felt that might be the case.

What we need to do is get back to legislation that is based on effective crime control. I think the Auditor General is the key person who could help us in this.

The country of New Zealand, I will point out, tried to go down this road and about a decade ago scrapped its gun registry. It had no effect on crime in that country. New Zealand saw that and did away with it, yet we are still trying to promote something that is not a tool that will affect criminals in any way. As my colleague has pointed out, the police know this very well.

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4:20 p.m.

Liberal

Sue Barnes Liberal London West, ON

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to Bill C-21, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Firearms Act (non-registration of firearms that are neither prohibited nor restricted).

The bill received first reading in the House of Commons on June 19, 2006. Its primary objective is to repeal the requirement to obtain and hold a registration certificate for a non-restricted firearm, commonly called long guns, what we would know as a shotgun or a rifle.

It is only now that we are finally debating the bill at second reading, a full year later. The government is clearly dragging its feet, aware that it does not have the support for the legislation in the House.

Under Bill C-21, the registrar of firearms would no longer issue or keep records of registration certificates for non-restricted firearms. Provisions of the Firearms Act regarding these expiry and revocation of registration certificates are accordingly amended, as are provisions setting out the documentation that is involved when lending, importing or exporting non-restricted firearms.

Although registration certificates would no longer be involved when transferring, selling or giving away a firearm, a person transferring a non-restricted firearm to an individual would be required to seek an authorization from the chief firearms officer who will verify that the recipient is entitled to possess the firearm.

As a registration certificate would no longer be required to possess a non-restricted firearm, certain offences in the Firearms Act are amended or even repealed.

The Criminal Code is also amended so that the failure to hold a registration certificate for a non-restricted firearm does not give rise to any of the offences relating to the unauthorized possession of a firearm and does not allow police to seize a firearm. This is all part of the Conservatives' bill.

Although Bill C-21 would remove the need to hold a registration certificate for non-restricted firearms, it would not change the requirement for all individuals to hold a licence in order to possess a firearm and, therefore, to undergo a background check and pass any required safety course.

Additionally, Bill C-21 would allow for regulations to require firearm businesses to record transactions relating to non-restricted firearms.

Even before Bill C-21 was introduced, commentators expressed divergent views on the anticipated legislation. Many stated that abolition of the long gun registry would be contrary to the government's general anti-crime message and therefore opposed by the police, public health officials and groups against domestic violence.

Conversely, the firearms organizations welcomed the expected removal of criminal sanctions when normally law-abiding citizens inadvertently fail to possess required documentation for their firearms. We have two divides here.

During a news conference announcing Bill C-21, the Minister of Public Safety stated:

We have found out too painfully over the last number of years that the effort of trying to track down every single long gun in Canada has been ineffective, costly and wasteful and has not led to a reduction of crime with guns.

He goes on to say:

Duck hunters, farmers and law-abiding gun owners do not pose a threat to Canadians. Criminals do.

Commentators have pointed out that the gun registry did not prevent recent high profile shooting deaths, notably the four RCMP officers in Alberta in March 2005, a teenage girl in Toronto in December 2005, a police officer in Laval in December 2005 and two RCMP constables in Saskatchewan in July 2006.

At the same time, the proponents of gun control have referred to these tragedies, and they are tragedies, as a reason for strengthening, not weakening, the firearms registry.

Among others, the Coalition for Gun Control, the Attorney General for Ontario and Quebec's Minister of Public Safety are against any dismantling of the firearms registry. Police organizations, both the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police and the Canadian Police Associations, are in favour of maintaining the firearms registry as police do query over 5,000 times a day.

I know the members opposite can quote individual policemen who have other opinions but the two organizations certainly are on side for keeping the registry complete.

With regard to the total cost of the gun registry, often cited, and I heard this many times, at $2 billion by the Conservative government members, we know that it has been placed at less than $1 billion over more than 10 years by the Auditor General's report.

Proponents of the firearms registry have blamed cost overruns on the opponents of the registry who have forced the government to deal with non-compliant gun owners, as well as to initiate or respond to expensive court challenges and proceedings. They also say that the computer glitches and administrative problems have now been resolved so that abolishing the registry would make no sense now.

There is no doubt that it was an expensive setup but changing it after the investment is made is not smart policy either.

It has further been argued that removing the requirement to register non-restricted firearms will save only $3 million a year and that $22.7 million in revenue a year will be lost by the government if it stops charging for the various fees involved or rebating them.

It has been argued also that because long guns are the ones most frequently found in homes, the long gun registry has successfully reduced domestic violence, suicides and accidents. According to a recent Swiss study, a decrease in gun injuries and gun deaths since 1995 shows that Canada may be saving up to $1.4 billion a year in violence related costs.

Gun laws are an important part of public safety in Canada. They are not the only solution but they are a part of the solution. In spite of the common use of the word “registry”, the 1995 legislation set up a comprehensive screening and licensing system for all gun owners, as well as the registration of firearms, which did include recording details of what guns individuals owned.

The bulk of the $1 billion over 10-plus years was spent on screening and licensing gun owners. Most of the annual costs of gun control in Canada and about $65 million at last count are spent on screening and licensing gun owners, as well as maintaining a system of continuous eligibility.

The RCMP recently stated that the dismantling of the registration of rifles and shotguns would, at most, save $3 million a year.

In May 2006, the Conservatives introduced an amnesty to effectively eliminate the need to renew firearm licences and to register rifles and shotguns. A rifle or a shotgun in the wrong hands is just as deadly as a handgun. The Ruger Mini-14 rifle used at the Polytechnique is still sold today as an unrestricted rifle, one that Prime Minister Stephen Harper has referred to in the past as a duck gun.

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4:25 p.m.

Conservative

The Acting Speaker Conservative Royal Galipeau

The hon. member is an experienced member of the House and a privy councillor. She knows that she cannot do indirectly what she cannot do directly, and I have told her before.

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4:25 p.m.

Liberal

Sue Barnes Liberal London West, ON

Mr. Speaker, I am not quite sure what you are talking about but I should not have used the Prime Minister's name.

All gun owners need to be carefully screened on a regular basis and all guns need to be registered. Of course these measures do not eliminate the possibility of tragedies. No one is saying that.

However, we know with certainty that countries without strong gun laws are more likely and frequently to be the site of these terrible events. We can look to the south. Every year more than 10,000 Americans are murdered with guns, compared to 200 in Canada. The rate of murders without guns is comparable but the rate of murder with guns is dramatically higher in the U.S. Our gun laws are an important investment in public safety.

Many experts have maintained that rifles and shotguns in the wrong hands represent a threat to safety. They include many powerful semi-automatics like the guns used at the Polytechnique and the “elephant gun” used to kill Constable Gignac in Laval. They are also frequently among the caches recovered from gangs and organized crime by our police.

All firearms are potentially dangerous and all guns should be strictly controlled. All guns start as legal guns. Six separate public inquests have maintained the importance of renewable licences and the registration of all firearms. The Supreme Court also emphasized the importance of both. It said:

The registration provisions cannot be severed from the rest of the Act. The licensing provisions require everyone who possesses a gun to be licensed; the registration provisions require all guns to be registered. These portions of the Firearms Act are both tightly linked to Parliament’s goal of promoting safety by reducing the misuse of any and all firearms. Both portions are integral and necessary to the operation of the scheme.

That is the Supreme Court, reference regarding the Firearms Act in June 2000.

Experts have also maintained that the 1995 Firearms Act has aided police in taking preventative action and reducing firearm death and injury in Canada. Supporters of the gun registry include the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, the Canadian Professional Police Association, the Canadian Public Health Association, the Canadian Paediatric Society, more than 40 women's associations, the Centre for Suicide Prevention and the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians.

I will give some statistics, even though the other side on this debate does not believe them. On average, more than 5,000 queries are made daily. Since 1998, approximately 19,600 firearms licences have been refused or revoked since the Firearms Act came into force. More than 5,000 affidavits, which is an even higher number now, have been provided by the Canadian Firearms Registry to support the prosecution of firearms related crime and court proceedings across the country. There have been 333 fewer Canadians who die annually of gunshots than in 1995. Homicides with rifles and shotguns are down, suicides with firearms have decreased and domestic violence with firearms has plummeted.

All these trends suggest that stronger controls on rifles and shotguns have had an effect on improving public safety. Physicians, crisis workers and police have also provided anecdotal evidence of specific cases where the registry was useful in removing firearms from potentially deadly situations.

During the long Easter weekend of this year, an “Order Amending the Order Declaring an Amnesty Period” appeared in the Canada Gazette, Volume 141, No. 14, on April 7, 2007. This order extends the one year amnesty, which expired on May 17, 2007, for another year for individuals who have failed to renew their licences or register their rifles or shotguns.

Because the government bill to abolish the registry would likely be defeated, the Conservative government is deteriorating the effectiveness of the gun registry by stealth. Police associations and powerful anti-gun groups have lobbied to keep the registry and the Conservatives are abusing the democratic process to save face and appease core voters. They are doing it through the back door because the facts do not support their position. The facts show that the gun registry is actually working and that police officers find it to be a very useful tool.

Shortly after announcing the first amnesty in May 2006, the government tabled this legislation to eliminate the requirement to register rifles and shotguns. This does not suggest that the government is committed to building compliance with the law. Indeed, in the public pronouncement around its plan, both the Minister of Public Safety and the Minister of Justice repeatedly stated that the registration of firearms was costly, wasteful and ineffective. We heard that again today.

There is little doubt that the legislation was launched in an effort to implement campaign promises and I heard that from a lead speaker of the government who said, “The long gun registry is by far and away the biggest issue in many ridings in western Canada”. That is a quote from the former justice minister Vic Toews.

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4:35 p.m.

Conservative

The Acting Speaker Conservative Royal Galipeau

I wish that the member would not name members of the House, even in quotes. Please refer to them by their title or by the names of their constituencies.

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4:35 p.m.

Liberal

Sue Barnes Liberal London West, ON

I will, Mr. Speaker, and thank you for that.

Motivation for the 2006 amnesty appears to have been to satisfy political aims and remove “the teeth out of the registry and free rifle and shotgun owners from complying with the rules over the next year”, rather than building compliance with the law as stated when the order was filed.

The objective of the 2007 amnesty order appears to be political rather than as stated, “to build compliance with the existing law”. But if the objective of the amnesty was to address the confusion of gun owners, why did the government not plan a significant media announcement and public education campaign to accompany it?

This is what a previous government did when we wanted to have people comply. Instead, the announcement was published without publicity and only inadvertently discovered by an enterprising journalist. There is no evidence that the previous amnesty improved compliance with the law. There has been no evaluation of the impact of the last amnesty.

The government did not fulfill its responsibilities to undertake a review with an eye to improving the integrity and security of the data. Police have made clear their opposition to a year long amnesty arguing that it undermines respect for the law and that the amnesty penalizes the law abiding gun owners who regardless of their personal views complied with the legislation in a timely fashion. It also encourages groups and individuals who publicly flout the law. It also undermines the integrity of the data in the firearm registration system, a problem that was highlighted in the 2006 Auditor General's report.

There is the issue of the importance of the integrity of data, particularly the address of firearm owners. In the recent killing of a Laval police officer, Daniel Tessier, during a home raid, the media reported that the owner of the legal handgun had not reported the change of address. The Auditor General noted the need to improve the integrity of the data and recommended in the 2006 audit in the chapter entitled “Data quality needs to be addressed”, under paragraph 4.64:

The Canada Firearms Centre should ensure that its new information system will be able to provide management with the performance information it needs to run the Canadian Firearms Registry.

This could prevent police from removing firearms and charging potentially dangerous people. Last year's amnesty has prevented the prosecution of people with illegal guns. As far as we know there has been no assessment of how often the 2006 amnesty has hampered police investigations and prosecutions though I am aware of an instance that it has.

The attorney general of Ontario, Michael Bryant, wrote a letter to Minister Day on April 20, 2007, stating that--

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4:35 p.m.

Conservative

The Acting Speaker Conservative Royal Galipeau

Strike three.

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4:35 p.m.

Liberal

Sue Barnes Liberal London West, ON

I am sorry, Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Public Safety.

The Ontario attorney general stated, “Ontario supports the need for the registration of all firearms, including long guns. There are close to two million long guns registered to licensed owners in Ontario. If the long gun registry is dismantled, as you propose with Bill C-21, these guns will become wholly untracked. We have already identified a number of legal implications surrounding untracked firearms that will certainly lessen our ability to carry out searches for firearms, and to ensure effective enforcement of “no firearms” conditions on bail, or on prohibition orders. In practical terms, this has significant implications for public safety”.

Dr. David McKeown, a medical officer of health in Ontario, has stated, “Gun violence is a serious public health issue and unrestricted rifles and shotguns are most often used in domestic violence, suicide and police killings. Six separate public inquests have maintained the importance of renewable licences and registration of all firearms. Extending the amnesty is not the answer. What is needed is to secure and maintain a strong commitment to the licence renewal process and registration”.

Shortly after becoming the Minister of Public Safety, the minister changed the composition of the advisory committee on firearms. Now the members include people who are on record opposing the existing law, that is, the original 1995 law. They are now going forward and advocating an American-style arming for self-protection. Some have even worked closely with the American National Rifle Association and participated in its infomercials.

Since the firearms advisory committee was first formed by the Conservative justice minister Kim Campbell in 1990, the former Liberal government, as of 1993, made a concerted effort to include crime and injury prevention experts, along with gun enthusiasts, to ensure that there was a balance so we could come up with sound public policy.

For the government, the experts on gun laws are all gun enthusiasts. The committee's pro-gun tilt lends to the perception that the Prime Minister's government is out of step with urban concerns on firearms violence. We hear this repeatedly, especially in Toronto and other places, and Montreal I should add.

While the committee includes some serving and former police officers, their views are at odds with the official positions of the major police organizations in the country. There is no one with expertise in suicide prevention or domestic violence even though these are significant consequences of firearm problems.

Peter Cuthbert of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police said in an article published in Le Devoir last November that it was obvious that the Minister of Public Safety wanted a committee that did not support gun control.

The firearms advisory committee, appointed and operating in virtual secrecy, has a dozen members, including a man who argued that more guns in the hands of students would have helped in the recent Virginia Tech massacre in which 32 people were killed, and another shooting aficionado who described a weapon used in last September's Dawson College killings in Montreal as “fun”.

Dr. Mike Ackermann, a member of the committee, stated:

If even 1% of the students and staff at Virginia Tech had been allowed to exercise their right to self-defence, then this tragedy would have been stopped in its very beginning and dozens of lives would have been saved.

The public safety minister's office recruited the panel members but did not, as has been the practice in previous governments, issue any public announcement about the appointments. We only found out about it from a letter on the former speaker's website.

Recently, we have discovered that the cost of the gun registry has not decreased with the Conservative government taking power and despite less information being recorded with the two amnesties.

I know my time is up, but public safety is an investment. Last year we had a motion passed in committee saying that we need to keep this registry alive. We know that all types of gun deaths, homicides, suicides and accidents, have declined since the registry was brought into force. I think that we have to invest in this registry and continue, so that it will be one element of helping public safety in this country, but not the only element.

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4:40 p.m.

Conservative

Dean Del Mastro Conservative Peterborough, ON

Mr. Speaker, the member may have been out before the third strike there, but then again I was paying attention to the speech so it is hard to tell.

The member cited a number of things namely, that police associations and so forth were on board with the registry. I would just like to begin by pointing out that a gentleman I respect a great deal, the commissioner of the OPP, has gone on record saying that forcing law-abiding Canadians to register their rifles does nothing to reduce gun crimes and the money would be better spent on front line police resources.

Loren Schinkel, president of the Winnipeg Police Association, said that the Winnipeg Police Association has never supported the long gun registry. It has made its position very clear. The Manitoba Police Association passed a motion calling on Ottawa to scrap the long gun registry. The Calgary Police Association and the Edmonton Police Association support calls for scrapping the registry. I could go on. I have a whole list here.

Let us take a look at what Canadians have had to say. The Globe and Mail on September 15, 2006 asked: Do you believe an effective gun registry program could have helped prevent the shooting at Montreal's Dawson College? The response: 77% said no.

I am sure the member has heard of the London Free Press. It asked: “In your opinion, would stronger gun control measures have prevented this week's shootings in Montreal?” The response: 85% said no.

CFRA in Ottawa did a poll. The three guns used by Kimveer Gill, the Montreal Dawson College shooter, were legally registered. They were in the Liberal gun registry. What does this tell us about the effectiveness of the $1.5 billion gun registry? The poll results indicated that 84.7% said the gun registry should be scrapped.

I cannot understand those members over there. They stand against what Canadians know. Canadians, including the commissioner of the OPP, Julian Fantino, have said that the gun registry does not work and that it will never work. It does not make any sense. There is no empirical data that demonstrates that the registry works.

Why did the member, as part of the former government, close nine RCMP detachments along the border so that her government could fund the long gun registry when what we really needed was law enforcement officials to make sure the guns did not get into the wrong hands?

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4:45 p.m.

Liberal

Sue Barnes Liberal London West, ON

Mr. Speaker, there were a lot of non sequiturs in that premise and I do not accept them. I quite honestly do accept that there is a divide on this issue. I think we should respect that there is a divide on it. In a minority situation, this is not a bill that this Parliament should be dealing with.

This is a situation where every gun starts out as a legal gun. Every person starts out as a non-criminal. The bottom line is that we do have evidence showing that there are now more than two million gun owners and 90% of those guns are now licensed. There are over seven million firearms and 90% are registered. That leaves some unlicensed and unregistered weapons, and we know that.

Amnesties by our former government were trying to encourage that. We did amnesties in a way that was respectful of the process. We did not use an amnesty to kill a registry.

We have an act of Parliament. In 1995, this body respectfully put through a piece of legislation and it was put into effect. We have to take out an act of Parliament with an act of Parliament. For a year now we have had this piece of legislation and this is the first time it has been debated in this chamber. That was because commentators in the media were going after the government.

We know that the statistics in all areas are down. The rate of firearm thefts is the lowest in 30 years. Five hundred fewer people are killed per year than in 1991. The firearm homicide rate is down by 29%, even though the homicide rate without guns is down only 23%. The rate of homicides with rifles and shotguns, and the rate of women murdered with guns has plummeted both in 1991 and 1995. We strengthened controls on rifles and shotguns.

I would like to advise the member that the Quebec provincial government is trying to strengthen its controls. Why are we sitting here doing the opposite?

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4:45 p.m.

NDP

Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC

Mr. Speaker, passions flare quite quickly when we get into this issue, but I want to get into something that might be a bit more dispassionate.

One of the major concerns that the people whom I represent in northern British Columbia brought forward to me, when we were debating the gun registry back in 2003, 2004 and 2005, was the issue of cost. There are those who are ideologically opposed to the registry on principle of having to register a firearm of any kind in any place in the country. I do not fundamentally agree with those people. We have been registering firearms in the country, in various ways, for many decades. However, there are those in my constituency, and I would imagine in her constituency as well, who have opposed the cost overruns from the beginning.

I also want to talk about the costing of this registry program since the new government has come in. First, is she aware of what the total cost overruns were for the registry leading up to the break in the last election and the change of governance? Then, what has happened in the last 18 months in terms of the costs of the registry?

I can remember Conservative opponents of mine in my region and former representatives from my region, who were Reform, then Alliance and then Conservative members, often focused and fixated on the costs. That was the major push. They did not often speak of the ideology. However, since taking government, I am curious as to what the current numbers are and if this is a top priority for the current regime, to deal with the registry and the costs.

What has happened to the actual spending on behalf of hard-working Canadian taxpayers in relation to this registry?

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4:45 p.m.

Liberal

Sue Barnes Liberal London West, ON

Mr. Speaker, just last week one of our journalists, Mr. Clark from The Globe and Mail, did some interviews with me and other critics about the costs, and I will quote:

The public accounts for the 2005-06 fiscal year—the last year of the Martin government—show that the Canada Firearms Centre spent $70.5-million. The Conservative government's spending estimates for this year say that the centre spent $71.6-million in 2006-07 and plans to spend $70.4-million in 2007-08, the current fiscal year.

The same estimates indicate that [the Minister of Public Safety]'s amnesty announcement cost the government $21.5-million in refunds in 2006-07 because the Tories also waived...fees. charged to gun owners.

There is only one gun registry and it is for long guns and smaller weapons. This registry is less effective now as we go through the two years of the amnesty. It is not getting complete information. On top of that, there have been refunds, rebates and waivers of fees. This is unusual. Other people pay for their licences out of their own pockets. However, in this one, we have had a considerable length of time now where the government has been forgoing registration and licensing fees and rebating those who had paid before the amnesties were put in place.

The member's question is very apt. One would think that if savings were the incentive here, the savings of the first $10 million, when it was moved to the RCMP, occurred under the previous government. Even though $3 million was said to have been saved, what we have found in going forward is more money is being spent.