Mr. Speaker, I think the introduction of this bill is a sad day for Canada.
We know why the Conservative government is introducing the bill. The Conservatives know it has no chance of being passed, but they are trying to deliver on a promise that they made, which is fair enough.
However, they know that the gun registry is supported by Canadians, maybe not in their political constituencies generally but by Canadians generally, who overwhelmingly support not only the handgun registry but the long gun registry, and I certainly do as well.
I listened with interest to the minister's comments. He quoted a member of a gang who said that the gun registry has not worked at all with respect to the acquisition of handguns. That might be true; I am not sure. However, by his own logic, then, he would be banning or dismembering the handgun registry, which does not make any sense at all.
We also know that the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, not a handful of police chiefs, voted on this particular matter and it supports the handgun registry and the long gun registry. The Canadian Professional Police Association, the association that represents the rank and file police officers across this country, voted and supports the gun registry.
So, for the minister to argue that there are one or two police officers across Canada who support this is nonsensical and absurd.
We have heard the figure of $1 billion to build the gun registry. It did cost a lot of money to build the gun registry. In fact, it cost too much to build the gun registry. That was as a result of a number of problems, organizational problems, policy influx problems, a whole host of systems development problems that emerged, which our Liberal government restructured and fixed, but at that point in time, the costs had been incurred.
However, I would remind members in this House, for those who have worked in the private sector, systems development budget overruns are not unique to the Government of Canada, believe me. In my experience in the private sector, I have seen many large systems development projects run way over budget. Does that justify it? Of course not.
However, there is another reality. There is a concept in economics and business called “sunk cost”. Sunk cost means if it cost that much, it may have cost more than it should have, but the money has been spent.
So now we are faced with a house, let us say, that costs more than it should have. Does that mean we burn it down? The question really at that point in time is: What is that house providing in terms of benefits and what is it costing?
The reality is that operating the gun registry today is costing in the vicinity of $15 million a year, which is a very manageable cost for the benefit that it delivers.
I come back to the issue that if 5,000 police officers and law enforcement officers access the gun registry daily, which is the case, they might do it through the window of CPIC but these are the actual hits on the gun registry itself.
I do not know how the members opposite, who have a respect for law enforcement officers, I think they do because they seem to present themselves that way, would ignore the support of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police and the Canadian Professional Police Association, and ignore the fact that 5,000 times a day law enforcement officers across this country access the gun registry, and that is a fact.
The other fact that I think the minister conveniently ignores, or in fact I think he misstated, perhaps he had not had the right information when he made his remarks, is that all forms of gun violence are down in Canada. While other types of murders have increased, murders with guns have declined, and I think that is partly the result of the gun registry. The mistake that is often made is to say that the gun registry is a panacea for crime, to deal with criminality.
Of course one cannot look at it that way. One has to look at the gun registry as a tool that is used by law enforcement officers. I am told it is very useful to them. I am told this on very good authority that it is very useful, especially for domestic violence calls when they want to know how many guns are registered in a home.
We all realize that police officers are not naïve people and if there are not guns registered they do not automatically assume that there may not be guns there. Unfortunately, there are some Canadians who have not registered their guns.
On that point it is only about 10%. We believe that 90% of Canadians have registered their guns, in contrast to the statistics that were quoted earlier. The police do know if the guns are registered and when they are going to a home where there is domestic violence they have to be very mindful of that. It is a useful tool for the police.
In fact, most countries in the world licence guns and register guns. Of course the government would be totally irresponsible if it eliminated gun licensing because that is something that is very valuable and results in guns being denied to many people who should not have guns.
Since the gun registry was put in place there have been approximately 16,000 firearms licences that have been refused or revoked.
Something else that the members opposite do not highlight or bring forward in a debate is that the Canadian firearms registry provides many affidavits that are used in the prosecution of firearms related crime. In fact, more than 5,000 of these affidavits have been used. This is a tool that is used by Crown prosecutors to convict people who are charged with gun related crimes.
For the member to say that people on this side do not support enforcement and conviction of criminals with firearms, this tells it right there. These affidavits are useful in convicting and putting people in jail.
The minister talked about how long guns are used. He used the expression that they were used by squirrel hunters and duck hunters. It sounds interesting, but the reality is that long guns are used in equal amounts in contrast to handguns for violent crimes.
In fact, if we look at the police officer deaths from firearms, I have a list and the number of police officer deaths from long guns is about the equivalent to the police officer deaths with handguns from 1996 to 2006. Long guns are used to commit murder and also by people to commit suicide.
The other aspect is to try to think of the long gun registry and the handgun registry as separate and distinct. I would like to read into the record from the Supreme Court of Canada. 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 has to do with the linkage especially between licensing and registration, the point that my colleague made earlier, that the two go hand in hand. There has to be both registration and licensing to make the system work and for it to be an effective tool for law enforcement.
We also know that if we look at the statistics and this was in 1995 I believe, the trend is very much the same. If we look at the percentage of firearms that are recovered at crime scenes, something in the vicinity of 47% are rifles and shotguns. Handguns comprise about 22%. So, to ignore long guns, we do at our peril.
These are rifles and shotguns. If these guns are not registered I shudder to think how the criminal world will adapt to that new reality and start sawing off more shotguns and using rifles indiscriminately to commit more crimes.
The part that I find particularly amazing is the fact that we have no difficulty licensing a car. In some areas we have no difficulty licensing pets. We do not have any problem with that but when it comes to registering a firearm, a lethal weapon, then some people get very upset and I am not quite sure why.
Gun ownership is a huge responsibility. It is a lethal weapon. We as Canadians have the right to know who owns the guns, who is licensed to own a gun, and are they responsible gun users.
There are crimes in the area that I represent, Etobicoke North. There is a sad history of gun related crime, drugs and gangs. Therefore, the argument often comes up that the guns that are used in those crimes, are all those guns registered? That is a fallacious argument. It does not have any merit whatsoever. It is like the equivalent of arguing that because we have police there should be no crime.
Of course we cannot eradicate criminality. We cannot eradicate gun related crime, but to deny police authorities a useful tool that they themselves are saying is a useful tool, and the capital costs have been managed away, at $15 million a year, if it saves one life it is worth keeping in place.
As I said earlier, the notion that the guns are not licensed or registered flies in the face of the data that everyone knows: some 90% of the owners are licensed and 90% of guns are registered.
I think we have to look at the gun registry as part of an overall scheme of dealing with criminality. In my riding of Etobicoke North we have taken advantage of the national crime prevention program to launch a number of crime prevention initiatives in Etobicoke North.
This program was introduced by our Liberal government. I am told that the program, like so many other programs that the Liberal government brought in, is being re-examined, repackaged, relabelled and rebranded. In fact, I am told the crime prevention program might be focused more on gun and gang related crime which frankly in my riding of Etobicoke North would not be a bad thing.
However, before we start changing the national crime prevention program, we should look at it very carefully because it has been quite useful in my riding, getting young people into activities other than drugs, gangs and violence. Has it eliminated drugs, gangs and violence in Etobicoke North? No, it has not, but to give up on effective tools like that, to give up on the gun registry, is a bogus argument and certainly something that I will not support. We know that most members of the House will not support the bill. It is sort of a masquerade going on in the House as the Conservative Party knows.
The idea is that we have to have a holistic approach. We have to look at crime prevention. We have to look at enforcement. We need more visible policing. In fact, I am very pleased that in Etobicoke North the police have taken action. They have used some of the tools that our Liberal government brought in, the anti-gang legislation, to arrest a whole range of people who are involved in drugs, gangs and violence.
It was our party, when we were in government, that introduced increases to mandatory minimums for gun related crimes. Notwithstanding what the minister said, and I know that he has tabled new legislation. This party will generally support any legislation that is reasonable. However, the reality is that young people do come out of prison, they have to be integrated back into society, and the idea that we can just lock them up and throw away the key just does not work.
We on this side support mandatory minimums and support increases in mandatory minimums for gun related crimes. In fact, that was the legislation that we tabled before the last election.
It was our party as well in the 2006 election that argued for a complete ban on handguns. The former prime minister, the member for LaSalle—Émard, came to my riding of Etobicoke North and we announced a complete ban on handguns which I think would have been useful.
Would it have solved the problem of gun related crime? How could anyone be so naïve, yet that is the argument we hear. It is the same argument, as I said, that there is no point in hiring police officers because there is still going to be crime. It is a totally bogus argument. I think that banning handguns would have been useful.
The minister said earlier that there is an effective ban on handguns today. Well, that is not the case because we know that many of the handguns that are used in crime in Toronto have been traced back to collectors.
