Bill C-21 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Firearms Act (non-registration of firearms that are neither prohibited nor restricted)

This enactment amends the Criminal Code and the Firearms Act to repeal the requirement to obtain a registration certificate for firearms that are neither prohibited firearms nor restricted firearms.

[Heidi Rathjen, Spokesperson, Students and Graduates of Polytechnique for Gun Control]

Good morning. I will continue in English.

Up until now, the debate surrounding Bill C-19 has mainly focused on the registration of guns. However, the impacts of this legislation reach well beyond the issue of registration.

For example, clause 11 eliminates the requirement to keep any record of the transaction involving long guns. This means that there won't be any more paper or electronic traces indicating that a sale has taken place. There are more than 1.5 million of these private sales in about two years.

The requirement to record sales was introduced in 1977 and, in the absence of a more effective centralized registry, was at least able to serve the public safety by helping police in some criminal investigations. For example, sales records allowed police to identify the perpetrator of the Polytechnique shooting, who was unrecognizable, having shot himself in the face.

So unless a store voluntarily keeps a detailed sales record, there will no longer be any trail linking a seller to a buyer or to a gun that was sold, nor will there be any trace indicating that the sale took place. The sales will be taking place in the dark.

Bill C-19 will also critically weaken a second crucial component of gun control: the controls on ownership or licensing.

When in 2006 the Conservative government tabled Bill C-21, an earlier attempt to abolish the registry, it nevertheless recognized the importance of verifying the validity of a licence to own when selling or transferring a gun--any gun. In the accompanying fact sheet, the Conservatives reassured the public that the proposed amendment would still “require current owners to verify that a potential purchaser or another new owner of their non-restricted firearm has a valid firearms license by contacting the Chief Firearms Officer”. It stated, “This measure will assist in ensuring that guns do not end up in the hands of individuals who shouldn’t have them, such as convicted criminals”.

Yet clause 11 also repeals the obligation for anyone selling or transferring a long gun, whether it is a gun store or a private individual, to verify the validity of the buyer's licence. All they have to do is have “no reason to believe that the transferee is not authorized to acquire and possess that kind of firearm”. Technically, they don't even have to ask to see a licence.

In order to properly understand the implications of this incredible loophole, consider this. Someone about to purchase a long gun can simply hold out something that looks like a licence. It could be a revoked licence, a counterfeit licence, or even a shabby but slightly official-looking plasticized card that could be produced in any copy shop.

With Bill C-19, there would be no obligation for the seller to check the validity of the licence with the Firearms Centre or to record anything about the licence, its number, the rifle being sold, or the person he is selling it to. He just has to believe that the owner is authorized to own a gun. The buyer can convince the seller: “I promise that I have a licence”. Is that enough?

In the event that the rifle is used in a crime, it will be practically impossible to hold accountable the person who sold the gun to an individual without a licence. All the person has to say is: “Yes, I sold a gun to someone. I seem to remember that he or she had a valid licence. At least, I believed he or she did at the time, but I didn't verify its validity or write down the licence number or the buyer's name”. There is no technical violation of the law unless the police can prove that this person didn't believe something.

Opposition Motion—Gun Control

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Madam Speaker, as you know, my riding is home to a lot of farmers and hunters. The gun registry is certainly a controversial issue in my area.

When the registry was put in place, had it been clear and simple, everyone would have been happy and we would not be facing the dilemma we are today. It must be said that the Prime Minister was the only Reform member to vote in favour of gun registration when the Liberals first introduced their bill.

My colleague mentioned a few bills.

The hon. member talked about Bill S-5. What is really interesting about the bill is that it is virtually the same as Bill C-21, introduced by the Conservatives in 2006, and Bill C-24, introduced in 2007, and the Conservatives never allowed either bill to come to a vote.

The other point I want to make is that introducing the bill through the Senate is very unusual and that the Conservatives again seem to be playing partisan games with divisive issues. Senators are already signalling that they will amend the bill, so we really do not know what it is going to look like.

So my question for the member is, what are his concerns with regard to Bill C-301 because he also mentioned that bill?

Criminal Code

[Joy Smith, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to rise today, albeit for three minutes, and speak to this very important legislation.

The bill is about accountability. We have a duty as elected representatives of the people of Canada to be accountable for the safety of our loved ones. We have a duty to be accountable with the taxes we receive. We have a duty to be accountable with the freedoms we have. We also have a duty to be effective. We need to ensure the bills we pass, the laws we implement and the programs we establish are effective.

This leaves us with a role that we must play wisely and carefully, so I would request that when examining and debating Bill C-21, we do so while remembering the importance and duty we have to be accountable and effective for all of Canada.

Gun crime is a serious issue in Canada; there is no doubt about that. There have been a number of recent incidents in my city of Winnipeg.

On Friday, May 25 of this year a 22-year-old man was shot early in the morning in Winnipeg's Spence Street neighbourhood. The man was out walking around 1:30 a.m. when he was approached by a pair of teenage boys. They reportedly made comments related to gang involvement before shooting the man in the upper body, police said.

Just this past weekend a 20-year-old man was gunned down on an inner city street. He died after being taken to hospital in critical condition.

Just an hour before in a separate incident, a 15-year-old girl and a 37-year-old man were shot and taken to hospital. The residents in the area where the shootings occurred were frightened and would only suggest the shootings might be gang related and they were fearful of repercussions.

The residents in my city of Winnipeg should not be afraid. They should not have to live in fear. We need to protect these citizens in an accountable and effective manner. That is why our government is taking steps to strengthen gun control by making it effective. We want to tackle the criminal misuse of guns, not hunters and farmers.

Bill C-21 will address the concerns of legitimate hunters and farmers as well as the legitimate concerns of the public for their safety and the rising gun crimes.

Bill C-21 will refocus our gun control efforts on what works in combating the criminal use of firearms by repealing the requirement to register non-restricted long guns and requiring firearms retailers to record all sales transactions of non-restricted firearms.

It is clear that requiring legitimate long gun users to register their guns is not a way to prevent gun crimes. Hunters and farmers are not criminals and should not be treated that way.

Long guns are not commonly used in gun crimes. In fact, there are over seven million registered long guns in Canada. However, as I said earlier tonight, of the 569 murders recorded in Canada in 2003, only two were committed with long guns known to be registered. That is only .3% of all the murders in 2003.

I would like to point out that it is not only the government side of the House that feels the long gun registry is ineffective. There are many members in the official opposition who feel the same and want to ensure that legitimate gun users are not penalized. I feel it is important to recognize their wisdom on this issue. The deputy leader of the Liberal opposition--

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House and speak to something that I and a large majority of my constituents are very passionate about, and that is Bill C-21, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Firearms Act, also known as the long gun registry.

It has been well stated tonight that the country has had the toughest handgun laws in the world since the 1930s, yet that has not prevented gun crime from happening. It is unfortunate, but it is a fact.

In 1989 we had the troubling and tragic Montreal massacre at École Polytechnique Institute. This is remembered to this day. In 1995, as a result of that terrible incident, the Liberal government of the day, with a knee-jerk reaction and without thinking, introduced Bill C-68. It was a Firearms Act that was called the strictest gun control legislation in the world.

When it was first established, the Department of Justice estimated the cost of the Canadian firearms program, also the gun registry, to be $2 million. In the end, the Auditor General reported the cost as way over a billion dollars and approaching $2 billion and still climbing. It has turned out to be the biggest single deception of the Canadian people ever, another Liberal boondoggle, nothing more than a black hole for taxpayer dollars. Their money went nowhere and was used to accomplish nothing, our money.

The goal of the bill was to license all firearms, including shotguns and rifles. Furthermore, it was supported by the anti-gun, anti-hunting crowd that put their support behind it, knowing full well that it would do nothing to reduce crime, but would move them one step closer to their ultimate goal and their naive dream of the total ban of guns from the average citizen. This would suit the criminal element in society just fine.

We all know that we cannot eliminate guns totally and that the criminals will always have their way. A good example was during the temperance movement years ago. Liquor was still smuggled in. The criminal element will always find a way.

Do we throw up our hands and penalize the rest of society instead of targeting the real problem? No. That is the Liberal way. They did it. It was “let us go after the farmer, the duck hunter, the target shooter”.

Bill C-68 will not and has not prevented gun crime from taking place. Now, unfortunately, last fall there was another tragic example of that in our country. The shooting at Dawson College was carried out by a man using a registered gun. This registry was supposed to stop this kind of thing, but the reality again was it did not.

These events, in addition to the numerous shootings that have taken place in other Canadian cities, have all occurred with that legislation in place. The gun registry has not saved any lives. Many speakers, including the hon. member beside me, have spoken to that point. Any member in the House or any police officer would support that kind of an objective, but unfortunately Bill C-68 did not do this.

History speaks for itself. If we continue along this same path, the future will repeat itself. We need to make changes, and Bill C-21 is about that.

Something that needs to be pointed out is the lack of on the ground police support for the gun registry. While some police leaders have supported it, it is very hard to find an actual police officer out there on the ground who will say the registry is needed. That is a fact.

The opposition and the anti-gun, anti-hunting lobby continually mislead the public and the media by telling them the police use the registry 5,000 times a day to check out criminals. This is a total misrepresentation.

The gun registry is automatically linked so when an officer investigates someone on a regular traffic infraction, he or she is also checking that person out on the gun registry. However, the officer does not even know that he or she is running that person's name in the gun registry. The officer does not see any information from it and does not keep or use that information. Total blarney, a whitewash, just another “fiberal” scam.

Unlike the previous government, the Conservative government is not interested in licensing guns. It is committed to licensing people. People with long guns do not rob Mac's Milk stores. People with long guns do not hold up gas stations. People do not use legal long guns in drive-by shootings.

We believe in targeting criminals, not duck hunters and farmers. That is why in budget 2007 we allocated $14 million over two years to improve front end screening of first time firearms licence applicants. This will help prevent firearms from falling into the wrong hands.

Individuals will still be required to have a valid firearms licence. We are not opposed to that. They will still go through a police background check. For 25 years I went through a police check to purchase a gun. I do not have a problem with that and neither does the long gun owning crowd.

Safety training is still going to be part of it. We have no problem with that. In order to purchase or possess firearms and ammunition, individuals will still also continue to be required to register prohibited and restricted firearms such as handguns.

Through a quick background check, our police officers will be able to determine who is in legal possession of firearms and who is not. The government invested $161 million over two years to add 1,000 more RCMP personnel to focus on law enforcement priorities, such as gun smuggling, restricting conditional sentences such as house arrest for serious crimes, especially gun crimes, imposing mandatory prison sentences for gun crimes and keeping the most violent and dangerous repeat offenders in the country in prison.

I have to point out that the opposition party across the way and many other members in the House en masse voted against our tough on crime bills. It is unbelievable. Yet they still stand and say that they want to get tough on crime.

Bill C-21 will refocus our gun control efforts on what works in combatting the criminal use of firearms by repealing the requirement to register non-restricted long guns and requiring firearms retailers to record all sales transactions of non-restricted firearms.

At the outset, I said this was a passionate issue for my constituents. In my last householder I conducted a survey in my riding just to be sure the mood had not changed. On the topic of the gun registry, more than 95% said yes to scrapping or revamping the long gun registry.

The government has introduced an amendment to the Firearms Act that will eliminate the expensive and ineffective long gun registry. It has not saved lives. It has cost us billions and is still climbing. The bleeding must stop.

It is fair to say that all in the House truly want to reduce gun crimes, but I implore everyone on all sides of this issue to think with their heads. Let us tackle gun smugglers, gangs and all criminals and give our police officers and border guards the tools and support they need, and we will make headway.

In that battle, unfortunately, we will never eliminate all the Marc Lepines of the world or get them off the street before it is too late. Unfortunate as it is, it is simply a reality.

I urge everyone here to support Bill C-21.

[Kevin Sorenson, Conservative, Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from the NDP for her support on Bill C-21., and we appreciate that.

She made reference to the tragedy of December 6, and we all recognize that as a tragedy. There is nothing we can say here tonight that would in any way bring out the degree of sympathy we feel, and that we feel all the time, when such tragedies take place.

However, I will mention this. Retired Montreal detective sergeant Roger Granger was there. He was one of the individuals who investigated the Lepine shooting in 1989. He was a police officer. I have never met the individual, but I am certain he has probably been to many tragedies and seen many things. One thing he said in regard to that was that federal gun registry created by the Liberals under former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien was totally ineffective.

When I go around my constituency and when I stop in and speak to the detachments, to the RCMP and municipal police, they make it very clear that they do not support the gun registry.

[Kevin Sorenson, Conservative, Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to stand this evening and participate in the debate on Bill C-21, an act to amend the Criminal Code and the Firearms Act.

Where I come from, predominantly a rural riding in Alberta, this bill is one of the most important changes that my constituents, over the seven years that I have been a member of Parliament, have asked for. They want to see the gun registry changed and the long gun registry dropped.

This bill is the start of a process that would reverse the burden that has been placed on rural Canadians by Liberal governments for far too long, approximately 10 years. Farmers and ranchers, those of us who live in remote and rural communities, have been taxed and red-taped by the Liberal government's failed gun registry for a decade now and they are saying that enough is enough and that it is time to make changes.

We have lived with this type of registry for a long time but we have lived with firearms, and long guns specifically, for generations in rural Canada. We have lived with them safely as responsible and law-abiding owners and users. However, when urban Canada, and our largest cities in particular, began to suffer from gun violence on an increasing basis, the Chrétien government launched a long gun registry. However, it did not address the problems in these urban centres and caused considerable hardship to rural Canada.

The Conservative Party campaigned on a promise to address what some estimate to be now a $2 billion waste of taxpayer dollars and to remove the yolk that the Liberals placed on rural residents when it comes to firearms ownership.

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound.

Unlike the current Liberal leadership, Canada's new government is committed to effective gun control in tackling the criminal misuse of firearms. We understand that serious gun crime problems are very evident in our urban areas. They continue to rise and this government will do something about it.

The truth is that the vast majority of these firearm homicides are committed with illegal, unregistered firearms. That is why we believe in targeting the criminals themselves, the criminals who use and traffic in illegal firearms, not the duck hunters, not the farmers and not the ranchers who have nothing to do with the criminal element or criminal activity.

The Liberals continuously neglected our licensing system. We allocated $14 million over two years in budget 2007 to improve front end screening of first time firearm licence applicants.

I have listened to people tonight from the other side say that we were getting rid of every type of regulation. That is not right. We want to ensure that those who apply for a firearms licence will be trained and screened so they will be responsible firearm owners. Those are very important measures that will help prevent firearms from falling into the wrong hands. It was the aspect of a licensing and screening system that was totally neglected by the previous government.

Instead, over more than a decade the Liberal Party wasted hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on a long gun registry that could have been used for fighting crime and the sources of criminal behaviour.

The other failure of the Liberals' long gun registry is well-documented by the Auditor General. Data was too often inaccurate and costs skyrocketed while Parliament was, in my opinion, intentionally misinformed about the progress that was being made.

As a government, I am proud to say that my party has changed the focus from paperwork and charging fees to farmers and duck hunters to focusing on dealing with crime on the front lines.

We have invested $161 million over two years to add 1,000 more RCMP personnel to focus on law enforcement priorities, such as gun smuggling, a very real problem in this country that needs to be addressed.

Since taking office, we have brought forward 11 new legislative proposals that will help crack down on crime, proposals such as restricting conditional sentences such as house arrest for serious crimes, imposing mandatory prison sentences for gun crimes, and keeping in prison the most violent, most dangerous repeat offenders in the country.

Canadians are watching as the opposition parties in this minority Parliament are being soft on crime and blocking our tough on crime bills from moving forward.

Canadians expect action, not further delays, yet that is what the opposition is doing with its majority of votes at the justice committee. They opposition members are slowing down and watering down and doing everything they can to postpone the proposals to strengthen our criminal justice system. Yet again, getting tough on crime was one of our major planks in the previous election and the Canadian electorate supported our proposals.

The Liberals' attempt to count and track every long gun in Canada has been ineffective and costly. It has misdirected police resources from what is most important: going after criminals who use firearms in crime.

Bill C-21 will take the focus back to where it should be. It will refocus our gun control efforts on what works in combating the criminal use of firearms by repealing the requirement to register non-restricted long guns and requiring firearm retailers to record all sales transactions of non-restricted firearms.

Under our Bill C-21, in order for a Canadian to purchase or possess a firearm and to purchase ammunition, a person will still be required to have a valid firearms licence. In fact, when a person purchases a non-restricted firearm, the validity of his or her licence will have to be verified. This can be done relatively simply and not at a huge cost, but we want to make certain that the right and responsible type of firearm owners are the ones doing the purchasing.

Applicants will continue to go through police background checks and safety training. Canadians also will continue to be required to register prohibited and restricted firearms, such as handguns, as has been the case since 1934.

Our intention is not to change the handgun registry. It is not to take that away. We recognize that it is the gun of choice for the criminal element. It is not our intention to touch that.

Again, we are talking about the long gun registry. Through a quick background check, our police officers will be able to determine who is in legal possession of firearms and who is not.

In 1995, the Liberal government told Parliament that the long gun registry would involve a net cost of just $2 million. That is a fact. Anyone can check. That is what was in the Auditor General's report in 2002 in chapter 10.

In May 2000, the Liberals admitted that the cost had actually ballooned to at least $327 million. Again, that is a fact. Members can check the Auditor General's report of 2002 in chapter 10.

By March 2005, the net cost of the firearms program was over $946 million. Today those costs exceed well over $1 billion, according to the Auditor General's report of 2006 in chapter 4.

This $1 billion figure does not even include the costs incurred by law enforcement agencies in enforcing the legislation or the compliance costs for law-abiding firearms owners and businesses, which are astronomical and likely run in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

What is worst of all is that by 2006 the Auditor General said that the Liberals had misinformed Parliament about the many costs of their failed long gun registry.

In the many towns and villages in my riding, the waste of these taxpayer dollars by the Liberals in a phony attempt to fight gun violence is overshadowed only by the tremendous and terrible burden placed on rural Canadians and, I dare say, also on western Canadians. The Liberal gun registry targeted every rural Canadian and certainly out west it would seem to me that we felt it the most.

The Liberals deny and then after electoral defeat they wonder why they are having problems in western Canada. Their long gun registry is a prime example.

I will not mention the fact that the Liberals ignored and dragged their feet on the agriculture file, that they denied rural Canada a real and useful child care policy, that they refused to appoint our elected senators, that they racked up surpluses while forecasting deficits, and many other things.

Bill C-21 would put an end to the waste of taxpayer dollars being spent on a failed Liberal long gun registry. That is why I am proud to stand in this place and support Bill C-21 and say goodbye to the long gun registry.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Western Arctic for his support of this bill. He is a member from rural Canada and understands the importance of legitimately owned firearms in our areas.

He mentioned and I agree with him totally that Bill C-21 does not change the screening process of ownership of a firearm. A person still has to become licensed to own and purchase firearms. There are still the areas of safe storage which are so important to us.

The member mentioned the problem in urban centres. What we are seeing across Canada are illegal guns and how they are tied to the drug trade. I know in Manitoba we see a lot of people growing marijuana and then trading that for illegal guns in the United States and bringing those back so that they can carry out their crimes.

I want to get back to this issue of legitimate ownership. I know that one of the things we both talked about was the need for subsistence living. We have a lot of Métis and aboriginal hunters in our ridings that use their firearms as part of their daily living. I know in my riding a lot of people hunt for geese, ducks and deer in the fall, and they stock up their freezers and they are good for the year. The member mentioned that and that is important to me as well.

Also, what has been affected in my riding is the outfitting business. It has become difficult for people to transport their firearms across the line. We do not have those international visitors coming in any more and supporting these people. That has hurt our local economy.

Would the member expand upon that and explain if that is one of the same concerns that they have in the western Arctic as we have in Selkirk—Interlake? Again, I want to thank the member for his support of this bill.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Trinity—Spadina.

I am very pleased to have an opportunity to speak to Bill C-21. I would like to thank the government for finally bringing the bill forward, for finally finding the courage of its conviction at this very late date. If we approached all the bills with the same degree of courage the government has shown with this one, we would be way behind in our legislative agenda.

Coming from the Northwest Territories and being our party's critic for rural and remote communities, I have run in three elections supporting the concept of taking away the registry on long guns and shotguns. Throughout those three elections people across the north consistently said to me that it is not required, it is not necessary and it is not really working for them.

I want to take a step back from that and look at what is working in gun control in Canada now. What is clearly working right now is the registry that is in place for licensing. Quite clearly, we have a better system of licensing now. I guess we can thank the Liberal Party for delivering that in the legislation in 1995. We have a better computerized system. It delivers for licensing. We are more organized and efficient at processing licences. I have heard the number of rejected licences, some 16,000, for people who were not considered appropriate to have firearms. That is a good and meaningful figure. It is a figure that makes Canadians safer on the ground. We can thank the Liberal Party for that.

However, when it comes to suggesting that one party or the other in Parliament has the vision to put everything together, that has the ability to transcend the ideology and politics of the day, whether it is in 1995 or 2007, and come up with a plan that is going to match what is required for Canada, that is a very egotistical approach.

We suffered under that with the majority Liberal government. It did not understand the nature of gun control. The Liberals had a law that tried to do too much. The things that it did not do well are the certificates for individual firearms, for long rifles and shotguns. Those are the things that were not done well. Those are the things that this bill will take out of the system. This is not the end of gun control in Canada. It is an adjustment to the gun control legislation that we have in the country. Quite clearly, that is what we are doing here and that is why we should all look at it in that fashion.

This is not about one party being against the other. This is about looking at what is good for Canadians. As a New Democrat in an open party, I feel very good about standing here today and supporting the adjustment that is being proposed by the government. Why? Because in my territory, before the gun registry, the value of subsistence hunting was some $60 million for 45,000 inhabitants. That same message is repeated right across northern Canada and northern parts of the provinces. For people who use rifles and shotguns for their way of life, the gun registry did not work.

It was said at the time in 1995 in Parliament that it would not work. It was not adjusted to make it work. The importance of that to many people across the country was not recognized. We had a situation where a majority government, not a minority government as we have today, made a decision in its magnificence to create a gun control law that went too far.

We are taking it back now perhaps with this bill. This is a minority government and we may find that this bill will not meet the test of all members in this House. It meets the test of this member standing here right now. I support it because I see it as a necessary adjustment to gun control.

The bill does not pass up the good work that is in gun control now. If the government decides to put more effort into licensing by ensuring that the people who own firearms are capable, competent and not criminal in nature, then the gun registry is an excellent investment of public funds. It is an investment that will be returned to everybody in the country.

Storage is extremely important. Safety is extremely important. Training is extremely important. These characteristics that we have built into gun control now should be enhanced and regulated to a greater degree. Quite often if guns are not stored properly, they become available to people who may use them wrongly. I have seen too many tragedies involving young people or people who are not in their right mind who are impaired in one way or another, taking somebody else's rifles or guns that are not stored properly and either doing themselves in or doing in others. We can control that through legislation. We can make a difference to all legal gun owners and the safety of this country.

There is a huge requirement for the control of handguns in our cities. There is a huge requirement for the control of restricted weapons that are easily concealed and are the basis of the criminal industry in this country. A ban on handguns in the future may be part of the legislative agenda of this House, perhaps not with the present government, but perhaps with the next. There would be an onward evolution of gun control in this country. I hope when we debate it that we make sensible choices about how to put that in place.

There is one other aspect of the use of guns in this country that I want to speak to and that is what guns are being used for. Guns are being used to feed the appetite of Canadians for drugs and illicit goods. The majority of illegal guns are causing death and havoc in our cities.

We say that we have to stop criminals by catching them and putting them in jail. We need to recognize the necessity of adjusting our legislation to truly change the criminal state. We need to take some of the oxygen out of the criminal system, what makes it worthwhile for someone to have a handgun in his or her possession, the tens of billions of dollars of illicit drugs that are being sold in this country.

How do we stop the appetite of Canadians for illegal drugs and illicit goods? Are we doing a successful job at that through enforcement, through all the tricks of the trade that we have developed in our war on drugs? I do not think so. I think it has been an abject failure. If this legislature does not come to grips with that, we will never truly understand how to deal with crime in this country.

On the one hand I support this legislation. It is a great adjustment to the gun control legislation in Canada. On the other hand, we have so much work to do to reduce crime in this country.

[Lynne Yelich, Conservative, Blackstrap, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I think the member is incorrect. I think it is an impression that has been created by members who do not seem to want to believe that the Liberals' gun registry was a complete fiasco. Bill C-21 has been misrepresented by remarks and comments members made earlier tonight.

I do not think the member comprehends what the bill will do or how important it is for gun owners and responsible firearms owners.

[Lynne Yelich, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources and Social Development]

Mr. Speaker, I may be from the west but I am not an Annie Oakley and I have never handled a gun. I do not know if I could shoot, aim or load one but I do know that responsible gun owners in my riding and across the country continue to say that the Liberal gun legislation did not focus resources where they were needed. They believe that the current long gun registration is inefficient, unnecessary, wasteful, intrusive, ill-conceived and badly executed.

I am rising in support of Bill C-21, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Firearms Act for the purpose of non-registry of firearms that are neither prohibited nor restricted. For the past seven years, as a member of Parliament, I have been told repeatedly by constituents that the registry needs to be replaced. I have been reminded that we promised to do that and I have been encouraged to carry through on that pledge.

I am happy to say that today we are doing that. Needless to say, I am anxious to speak to this bill and express my certainty that it has a speedy passage because it is both necessary and just. However, I thought perhaps a constituent should be allowed to speak first, and since he relies on my presence in this House to make his opinions known, I would like to quote from a letter that he has sent me.

On May 10, 2006, Mervin Hollingsworth wrote:

I want to ensure that our new government follows through with their commitment to repeal the ENTIRE Firearms Act and their pledge to replace that unjust legislation with efficient, effective, rational laws that recognizes the right of responsible citizens to own firearms.

That is why we are here today and that is why I am standing with my colleagues to support Bill C-21.

Although this government has applied the principle of amnesty for long gun owners, vis-à-vis the registry, clearly that is not enough and not what Canadians from coast to coast and a vast majority of my constituents in Blackstrap are demanding from us.

As another constituent, Doreen Ross, put it, she was distressed “over the uselessness of the gun registry in keeping weapons out of the hands of those that choose to conduct themselves in ways that are deadly and illegal”.

Lest there be any in this House or among those listening to my words today who would question whether Mrs. Ross has sufficient knowledge of guns or an adequate knowledge of gun violence, I can only say that she knows the problem well and better than most of us. One of her family members was killed by a man wielding an unregistered gun.

From this tragedy that the gun registry did not prevent, I would turn to a typical story of frustration that the registry has created. Steve Beck from Watrous, Saskatchewan, cannot even shoot a gopher because he has yet to receive confirmation of his registration. He recently called my constituency office to tell us about it.

Ordinary Canadians know that this registry has not kept guns out of the hands of criminals. They know that it has not saved lives. They know that it is not an effective tool in fighting crime, in reducing violence or in making our streets and communities safer.

They do know that it has cost over $1 billion. They do know that it has intimidated, harassed and criminalized law-abiding gun owners and duck hunters. They do know that it is yet another example of how the previous Liberal government created ineffective programs that never dealt with the problems that they were intended to target.

I have been hearing this message from my constituents since I was first elected in the House of Commons and I am happy to be able to deliver on our promise to repeal this registry as Bill C-21 begins its legislative journey to hopefully passage.

Let me be clear that this government is very concerned about gun-related crime. Unlike the Liberals, the Bloc and the NDP, this government is committed to effective gun control and tackling the criminal misuse of firearms. We believe in targeting criminals, not farmers and not duck hunters.

The Liberals continuously neglected our licensing system, which is why we allocated $14 million over two years in budget 2007 to improve front end screening of first time firearms licence applicants. This will help prevent firearms from falling into the wrong hands.

The Liberal Party wasted $1 billion on a failed long gun registry, which was acknowledged by the Auditor General, and our government is investing $161 million over two years to add 1,000 more RCMP personnel to focus on law enforcement priorities such as gun smuggling.

We have brought forward 11 new legislative proposals that would help crack down on crime.

The government passed legislation to restrict conditional sentences for violent criminals.

Although Bill C-9 was weakened by opposition parties during justice committee hearings, those convicted of most violent crimes will no longer walk the streets and enjoy the freedom of serving sentences at home.

Bill C-19 bans street racing.

The government raised the age of consent from 14 to 16 years of age to protect children from sexual predators. That was something we tried to do in opposition on at least six occasions, through private members' bills and opposition day motions, but the previous Liberal government kept saying no.

We are trying to impose mandatory prison sentences for gun crimes but the opposition does not like that either.

The government just does not talk about fighting crime. We do not create another committee or another registry to create the appearance of fighting crime. We go to the heart of the criminal justice matter and insist that violent criminals serve their time. We do not blame the victims. We punish the criminals. We do not arrest duck hunters. We try to stop violent offenders. We do this because Canadians told us that they were tired of the Liberal delay, confusion and diversion.

Canadians expected action and the Liberal gun registry was not the kind of action they wanted. Canadians already knew that nobody could find ways to waste a billion dollars like the previous Liberal government. They did not need to be shown again by the example of the gun registry, which has been a disaster for Canadians.

Attempting to count and track every long gun in Canada has been ineffective and expensive. It has misdirected police resources from what is most important, which is going after criminals who use firearms in crime.

Bill C-21 would refocus our gun control efforts on what works in combating the criminal use of firearms by repealing the requirement to register non-restricted long guns and by requiring firearms retailers to record all sales transaction of non-restricted firearms.

Individuals would still be required to have a valid firearms licence and to go through police background checks and safety training in order to purchase or possess firearms and to purchase ammunition. Individuals would also continue to be required to register prohibited and restricted firearms, such as handguns.

Through a quick background check, our police officers would be able to determine who is in legal possession of firearms and who is not.

In 1995, the Liberal government told Parliament that the long gun registry would involve a net cost of $2 million. That was in the Auditor General's report 2002, chapter 10.

In May 2000, the Liberals admitted that the costs had actually ballooned to at least $327 million. That was in the Auditor General's report 2002, chapter 10.

By March 2005, the net cost of the firearms program was over $946 million. Today it exceeds $1 billion. That was in the Auditor General's report 2006, chapter 4.

The $1 billion figure does not even include the costs incurred by law enforcement agencies enforcing the legislation and compliance costs to law-abiding firearms owners and businesses, which likely runs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. That was in the Auditor General's report 2002, chapter 10.

The Auditor General said that the Liberals misinformed Parliament about many of these costs. That was in the Auditor General's report 2006, chapter 4. However, misinformation has ruled the day.

I will be happy to end my speech by quoting Edward Hudson of Saskatoon. He stated:

Canada's current Firearms Act is not achieving the stated goal of improving public safety.

Historical government data indicate that compliance with both licensing and registration has been grossly overstated by the previous administration.

I do not think the voice of the people can be more emphatic and yet restrained at the same time.

Firearms legislation needs to be refocused toward the criminal use of firearms and away from the regulation of law-abiding citizens and their activities. For these reasons, the current Firearms Act must be repealed and replaced.

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, as I already indicated when I went through the facts and the myths that are being perpetrated by the official opposition and others on this very subject, Bill C-21 is not about the licensing of individuals. This is about the long gun registry, nothing more, nothing less. Our position is to scrap that and no longer have a requirement where law-abiding, legal firearm owners would need to register their rifle or shotgun.

It is not about the licensing. I have said that we are open to discussion on the licensing provisions. There will still be licensing requirements and they will still need to strenuously go through a system to check their background, et cetera.

[Charles Hubbard, Liberal, Miramichi, NB]

Mr. Speaker, in order to own a firearm in this country, the owner must have a licence and that licence must be renewed every five years, which is the major complaint with the system.

Could the government whip please indicate to the House tonight whether his party also intends to do away with the need for a farmer back in Prince George who has an old shotgun to pay a licence fee every five years in order to maintain the firearm that Bill C-21 talks about?

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I think my hon. colleague, as I do, echoes the concerns and sentiments of the vast majority of our constituents in rural western Canada and obviously others who have spoken tonight demonstrate that this is not unique to western Canada. It is all across the land that law-abiding firearm owners are incensed about this and they continue to be because they believe it is a direct attack upon them. They want to be law-abiding and obviously they will try their best to obey whatever laws there are in the land.

I would contend that this new Conservative government has brought forward over a dozen pieces of substantive legislation now. We recognize that we are a minority government but with the help of some of the other parties we have been successful in moving some of that legislation through.

Bill C-9 is just one example of something that I fought for unsuccessfully for 10 years against Liberal governments of the past. It would impose certain restrictions on the use of conditional sentencing, which is known as house arrest. We finally put that through so that we could hold criminals accountable for their actions. We are about holding criminals responsible for their actions.

Bill C-21 would help us to take the onus away from law-abiding firearms owners and instead impose stronger restrictions and laws on those who criminally misuse firearms.

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Secretary of State and Chief Government Whip]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to rise. I would like to state at the outset that I will be splitting my time with my colleague, the member for Blackstrap.

I will begin by describing a little about the riding I am privileged to represent in the House of Commons. The riding of Prince George—Peace River is over a quarter of a million square kilometres up in northeastern British Columbia. It is almost perfectly dissected by the Rocky Mountains. It is a huge rural riding. Without a doubt, one of the most controversial and emotional issues that my constituents deal with and feel about is the long run registry and their opposition to it. It is almost uniform throughout my riding. I am very pleased to have this opportunity to rise tonight and raise their concerns.

As someone who was a member of the House of Commons, when the original legislation to establish the firearms registry was being debated in 1995, I cannot adequately convey my relief that we have now been provided with an opportunity through Bill C-21 to right that wrong.

We knew back then that the move to register each and every long gun in Canada was the wrong move. Many of us spoke out about that increasingly and persistently throughout that debate and in the years since. We knew then it was a waste of tax dollars that would do nothing to keep Canadians safe. Of course, history has proven us correct. The statistics have proven us correct.

Unfortunately, even MPs, like myself, who opposed the long gun registry could have predicted that the cost of this failed Liberal experiment would spiral from their projected estimate of $2 million to somewhere in the order of $2 billion today.

This evening I will use my limited time to reassure those Canadians who may have been misled by distorted facts and misinformation by the official opposition and others, as they attempt to defend their fiasco known as the long gun registry. In other words, I want to dismiss the most obvious myths about the long gun registry that members from the other side of the House are attempting to portray as fact. Indeed, we have heard a number of them repeated here again tonight.

The myth is the Conservative legislation to scrap the long gun registry will make it easier for Canadians to obtain firearms.

The fact is the registration of each and every shotgun and rifle in Canada is separate from firearms licensing. Nothing will change in regard to licensing. Canadians will still require a thorough background check and safety check. Violent behaviour and certain criminal convictions will continue to be checked as well. Applicants for a licence will also be subject to specific safety standards and training. Stringent storage requirements will also be maintained.

The former Liberal government was fond of quoting the fact that tens of thousands of firearms licences were refused or revoked under firearms legislation. Again, this is a licensing issue and is not a registry issue.

The myth is the proof that the long gun registry is an essential tool relied upon by law enforcement agencies is the fact that the Canadian Firearms Registry On-line, or the CFRO, gets 6,500 hits per day from police officers. We hear various numbers. Some people say 5,000 or 5,600. I will quote 6,500.

The fact is that figure certainly sounds impressive until we realize that whenever a police officer enters a person's name for any reason, even an address check, an inquiry or hit is generated with the CFRO. Regardless of any changes to the registration of long guns through Bill C-21, police will still know whether a person is authorized to own a legal firearm.

The myth is the $2 billion spent on the problem ridden long gun registry are well worth it because the registry helps to reduce gun deaths in Canada.

The fact is according to Statistics Canada 2004 homicide report, firearms homicides actually went up 13% over a two year period. In fact, statistics continue to demonstrate that the long gun registry has done absolutely nothing to reduce firearms homicides. That is because most gun crimes are not committed with registered firearms. I know it has been repeated many times before in the House, but criminals do not register their firearms. That is why our Conservative government has taken concrete steps to target criminals on our streets.

As we also heard tonight, Bill C-10, which I am pleased was passed by the House late last month, targets organized crime and gangs by imposing tougher mandatory penalties on those who use firearms to commit crimes. We recognize that we have to target the people who are using firearms to commit crimes, not the firearms themselves. Two billion dollars are better spent cracking down on the people who commit gun crimes than on reams of paper and bug ridden computer systems to chase down millions of rifles and shotguns legally owned.

The myth is Bill C-21 will remove the need to register handguns.

The fact is the handgun registry has been in effect in Canada since 1934. Bill C-21 does not change that. Whereas shotguns and rifles are an essential tool in many parts of Canada, and I already mentioned my particular riding, handguns are primarily for the use of sportsmen and collectors. Handguns are also easier to conceal and are best registered to better avoid their misuse.

Two-thirds or 65% of firearms homicides in 2004 were committed with handguns. That is because they are the weapon of choice for organized crime and gangs. Again, Bill C-10 targets the real root of gun crime and firearms homicides by going after the real criminals.

The myth is a complete ban on handguns is a worthy consideration to enhance the safety of Canadians.

The fact is although our Conservative government believes handguns should continue to be subject to registration, we do not believe they should be banned. As I said earlier, it is a perfectly legitimate use for sportsmen and collectors to possess handguns. A handgun ban will do nothing but unnecessarily impact upon those individuals.

I contend that gangs and other criminals could care less whether there are registration requirements or an outright ban on handguns. If they want a gun, it has been well proven, not only in our society but in other western societies, that criminals will get their hands on a gun if their intent is to use it for a criminal purpose.

The final myth about firearms registration, which I will address tonight, concerns the Conservative government's fundamental position on this matter. I want to reassure my constituents and all Canadians that this Conservative government, as demonstrated by Bill C-21, remains as committed as we ever were before to putting an end to this long gun registry that imposes a great burden upon law-abiding Canadians, consumes substantial federal resources, yet brings no measurable benefit to public safety.

In short, we are as committed today as we were for the last 12 years, which seems like a lifetime, not only to myself but to those of us who have been waging this fight against this senseless registry. We will scrap the long gun registry and redirect those previous resources to measures that will actually make our streets and communities safer for all Canadians.

[Susan Kadis, Liberal, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to speak today to Bill C-21. I am speaking steadfastly against Bill C-21, and further, against it moving forward to committee. This bill should not even be seeing the light of day.

Bill C-21, whose intention is to repeal the requirement to obtain and hold the registration certificate for a non-registered firearm, specifically rifles and shotguns, is a dangerous weapon in and of itself, created by the minority Conservative government. If it is passed, millions of people in possession of long guns will no longer be required to register their firearms.

This act means gutting the gun registry and seriously weakening gun control in our country. It means that the registrar of firearms will no longer issue or keep records of registration certificates for non-restricted firearms.

The Conservative minority government is seriously flawed and its wrong-headed objective to remove the long gun portion of the gun registry is patently wrong. Not only is this attempt by the government against the wishes of the majority of Canadians, as reflected in the Ipsos Reid poll with 67% of Canadians who said so, against the wishes of the majority of parliamentarians, against the wishes of the victims of the tragic recent Dawson College shootings and their families, as well as victims of other such tragedies and their families, it completely flies in the face of the vocally stated wishes of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, the president of the Ontario police chiefs, York Regional Police Chief Armand La Barge, the Centre for Suicide Prevention, and more than 40 national women's associations. All oppose strongly this attempt to cripple the gun registry and to weaken gun control in Canada, in turn diminishing the capacity of police to keep Canadians safe, to err on the side of caution, all for the sake of a flawed and ill-conceived election promise, even though it is clear that by including the long gun portion the gun registry works.

It is an important preventative tool. We cannot only look at the measures after a crime is committed. It is essential that we always strengthen prevention, not lessen it. This is inconceivable when we consider that on average more than 5,000-plus queries are made daily by police. Approximately 15,965 firearm licences have been refused or revoked since the firearms act came into effect, and this was born of the tragedy of École Polytechnique in Montreal. Also, more than 500 affidavits have been provided by the Canadian firearms registry to support the prosecution of firearms-related crime in court proceedings across the country.

As is abundantly clear, the gun registry in its entirety continues to provide a vitally necessary tool used by both police and the courts, helping to safeguard and strengthen the safety of Canadians. The safety of Canadians is paramount. This is not something to be taken lightly or trifled with and that is precisely what the Conservative government did when it implemented an amnesty last year and recently extended it for one more year, which has already resulted in an increasingly outdated registry.

This action by the government is of particular concern and is another blatant example of its pattern of governing by stealth, totally disregarding Parliament, its duly elected representatives, and in effect, then, disregarding, disrespecting and bypassing the very Canadians that we as MPs are elected to represent. The removal of the important long gun portion of the registry will have significant far-reaching implications that will reverberate, adversely impact Canadians and compromise the safety of Canadians.

Also, a number of legal implications surrounding the untracked firearms will definitely lessen our ability to carry out searches for firearms and ensure effective enforcement of no firearms conditions on bail or prohibition orders. The fact is that all types of gun deaths, homicides, suicides and accidents, have declined since the registry was brought into force. This includes deaths involving handguns and long guns.

The Minister of Public Safety and National Security has repeatedly defended this decision by stating that Canadians will not be any less safe with these actions because owners will continue to be licensed even while long guns would no longer have to be registered. This is completely misleading, erroneous and disturbing. The fact is that we need both: licensing the individual and the registration of every firearm, including long guns. Without the critical requirement of registering each long gun, police will not know how many long guns people possess when approaching a potentially dangerous offender or crime scene. There could be 5, 10, 20 or more.

This diminishes the capacity of our law enforcement personnel and puts our officers and others at higher risk because, in the words of the president of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, Winnipeg Police Chief Jack Ewatski, who also opposes removal of the gun registry and the long gun portion, “information is the life blood of policing”. He says, “The more information we can give our front-line officers, the better position they are in to perform their duties”.

The Conservative minority government is demonstrating a smoke and mirrors approach on this issue at the expense of the safety of Canadians. It is time for the Conservatives to come clean, be honest with Canadians and tell them that licensing and registering are not one and the same, as both are equally essential to Canadians' safety. One cannot take the place of the other. This fact cannot be overstated.

Clearly, the Conservative government knows it is on very shaky ground and is not secure in this action. This is further reflected in its new firearms advisory committee, which the Conservatives have kept secret. As my hon. colleague from York West said, “They have turned the committee into a gun-loving secret society”. That is, until the muzzle slipped, she said, and the member for Yorkton—Melville boasted that the Conservative faction was stacked with pro-gun activists opposed to gun control.

Unusually, there was no routine announcement and there were no biographies released. This was kept under wraps and under the radar of accountability. As the member for York West continued, she said, “Why did the government change it from the firearms advisory committee to the firearms advocacy committee?”

As the member for London West continued, she said, “If the government really supports the police, why was the Canadian Police Association left off this list?” Why was there no representation, she wondered, asking, “Could it be because it dared to support the gun registry?” She asked, “Why does the advisory committee only hear the voices of the pro-gun lobby?” She asked where the balance is that we had before when we were in government.

The Conservative government has repeatedly put forward money as the primary rationale for these dramatic changes to the gun registry, as the rationale for taking out the long gun portion and weakening gun control. The fact is that since the government's amnesty was implemented, there have been virtually no savings. Total spending remains stable, this after the government crippled the gun registry and after the two year amnesty for long gun owners who are exempted from the existing law.

As the former vice-chair of public safety and national security committee, I participated in the committee meetings on both the departmental estimates and the Auditor General's report. The Minister of Public Safety meanwhile implied that by cutting the long gun registry the government would be saving $10 million this year, when in fact his own deputy minister expressly testified that the $10 million in savings would happen no matter what, because they were administrative savings due to management. It had nothing to do with reducing the registration of long guns. This was erroneous again. This completely debunks the government's supposed rationale.

In addition, I state strongly on behalf of Thornhill residents and all Canadians that we must invest in the safety of Canadians. It is non-negotiable.

While on that committee, I vigorously supported a motion to keep the gun registry intact in its entirety, including the long gun portion. This motion was unanimously passed by all three opposition parties yet was ignored by the Conservative government. The government continually states that it supports the average Canadian, yet when it comes to gun control, and in fact all issues, it is completely out of touch with what Canadians want and displays a total disregard toward the wishes of the majority of Canadians, the wishes of the average Canadian.

To the contrary, the government turned its back on Canadians and used a backdoor, non-transparent method of weakening gun control, getting around what it clearly saw as a little nuisance: Parliament and therefore Canadians themselves.

The Conservative minority government's dogged determination to fulfill its ill-conceived election promise despite indisputable facts and the absolute responsibility of government to do everything in its power to ensure the safety of its citizens is indefensible. Anything less than a fully intact gun registry is unconscionable.

Tonight we heard the Minister of Public Safety say that the government's intention with Bill C-21 is to dismiss the long gun portion of the gun registry. The truth is out. The Conservative government, through this bill, is dismissing the safety of Canadians. This is shameful.

We also heard the minister tonight call the registration of guns in Canada an unfortunate journey. This belittles and makes light of Canadians' safety and it is also a major slap in the face to those who have been victims of firearms.

From day one the government has made it abundantly clear that it is ideologically committed to weakening gun control in our country. In fact, incredibly, tonight we heard from one of the hon. members who spoke that it probably would be good to abolish the entire gun registry.

How can Canadians have any confidence in the Conservative government when it is clearly putting a misguided, deeply flawed election promise before the safety and well-being of Canadians? The government, through this bill, will fail to uphold the most important responsibility of any government: the safety of its citizens. I take this very seriously, as do Canadians.

I do not support Bill C-21 and I definitely do not support sending it back to committee. This bill should not even be on the table. To pass it would go against the very sensibility of the majority of Canadians, against what they know is right and what they know is in keeping with the needs in Canada today. What I do support is protecting Canadians and strengthening, not weakening, gun control in our country.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am grateful for this opportunity to show my support for Bill C-21 concerning the repeal of the requirement to register non-restricted firearms. The Government of Canada strongly believes that it is vital to protect the safety and security of Canadians. In fact, it is our top priority.

I am often saddened and even shocked by what is happening in some of our communities. Blatant acts of violence committed by gun-toting criminals all too often make the headlines. There are too many perpetrators and there are too many victims. We hear of gang members gunning down their rivals on sidewalks or in parking lots, or even in local parks where children play. We see the reports of them waving handguns openly in neighbourhoods, frightening residents into complete silence about what is going on in their area.

These acts are committed by criminals, people who show no regard for our laws. Therefore, the government believes it is time to put in place effective gun control measures that work, while streamlining requirements for law abiding citizens. This will help to ensure the focus stays where it belongs, on those who would harm our families and our communities.

The government introduced Bill C-21 to eliminate the requirement to register non-restricted firearms, generally ordinary rifles and shotguns, by legitimate firearm owners, while maintaining important safeguards to help protect Canadians. It is important to focus on measures that keep guns out of the wrong hands and that the public safety is protected.

Let me first clarify an important issue, the difference between licensing and registration. Licensing focuses on the individual. It is a way of identifying who can own a firearm. Individuals who want licences must meet various criteria that help to ensure they do not pose a risk to public safety.

However, registration focuses on the firearm. It involves providing a complete description of a firearm to firearms program employees, who then add the information to a database. Authorities can then know which licenced owner owns the firearm.

If passed, Bill C-21 would repeal the requirement to register non-restricted firearms, that is to say, ordinary rifles and shotguns such as those used for hunting. There are two reasons behind this decision.

The first is, as I have previously mentioned, to ease some requirements for law abiding owners of non-restricted firearms who have been demanding that this requirement be eliminated for many years.

The second reason is of even greater importance. The government believes that registration does not prevent gun crime. We believe that we must invest resources where they can be most effective. Under the current firearms program, an individual must hold a licence to possess or obtain a firearm, or to obtain ammunition. This will continue.

Bill C-21 requires that everyone who purchases a non-restricted firearm will have to have his or her licence verified. This can be done through a simple phone call to the firearms centre.

The government is committed to strong, reinforced licensing. Budget 2007 invested $14.2 million over two years to enhance the screening of 20,000 new applicants for restricted licences every year. This is a real investment in public safety and it was an area totally neglected by the previous government which did not provide resources to fulfill this important task effectively.

As it now stands, to obtain a new licence for any class of firearm, including a non-restricted firearm, a person must pass the required Canadian firearms safety course exams. The course was developed in partnership with the provinces and territories, national organizations with an ongoing interest in firearms safety, and many firearm and hunter education course instructors from across Canada.

I have heard completely inaccurate comments from the Liberal benches that we are doing away with gun control. This is completely false and ridiculous. What we are determined to do is to make gun control focused and more effective. Indeed, firearms safety training is something that firearm owners and users support, and this government believes in.

We recognize that firearms safety starts with well trained, law abiding firearms owners. That is why we are maintaining the requirement for safety training as part of the firearms program. In this way we will help protect Canadians from possible tragic accidents. Teaching firearms owners how to store their firearms safely and securely helps prevent children from accessing those firearms and can reduce the chance that firearms could be stolen.

During the election campaign we made a commitment to keep Canadians safe. When it comes to firearms safety, an ounce of prevention is certainly worth a pound of cure.

There is another requirement individuals must meet before they can be issued a firearms licence. They must pass a background check. Background checks are performed by chief firearms officers or their representatives who employ law enforcement systems and resources to ensure the individual in question has not committed a serious criminal offence in the recent past, is not under a court sanctioned prohibition order for firearms, and does not pose a threat to public safety.

As I mentioned earlier, in budget 2007 we committed $14.2 million over two years to enhance the screening of new firearms licence applicants. For the first time, this investment means that each year 20,000 new restricted licence applicants and their two references will be interviewed by a firearms officer before determining whether that applicant should be issued his or her first restricted firearms licence.

These resources were not provided by the previous government. Instead, it funded a long gun registry that we know does not work, but our government is determined to invest in what really benefits public safety.

While a background check is run before every applicant is issued a licence, another type of verification is also carried out by authorities. The Canadian Firearms Information System, which houses all information on firearms licence holders and registered firearms, is connected to the Canadian Police Information Centre known as CPIC.

This means that every time information on a person of interest is uploaded in CPIC, for example, information on someone who has threatened to harm his or her neighbours or colleagues, the Canadian Firearms Information System runs an automatic check to see if that person is a licence holder.

If the person is a licence holder, the chief firearms officer of the province is warned and action can be taken to follow up on the case. If an investigation shows that the person is a threat to public safety and should not be allowed to own firearms, the individual's licence can be revoked. The police are then made aware of the situation and can take the appropriate action.

This process is called the continuous eligibility check. It is done automatically and allows for the proper identification of licence holders who should no longer be in possession of firearms.

Background checks and continuous eligibility checks are critical in helping to ensure that firearms are only held by responsible law abiding citizens. However, ordinary citizens also have a responsibility to the firearms program when it comes to protecting public safety.

The firearms program has a 1-800 public safety line that individuals can call if they believe someone could pose a threat or should not be allowed to have firearms. That number is indicated on the form the applicant must fill out for a licence and that the applicant's spouse signs. This means that the spouse as well as the references have access to this number, so they can call and inform the chief firearms officer of their concerns, even if they feel pressured to sign the form.

Through the steps that come before the licence is issued and the ongoing checks while a person holds a licence, authorities know who is entitled to own a firearm. This is the type of tool the Government of Canada believes is effective in protecting the public.

It is clearly evident that licensing is the most important dimension of a firearms control system. This is because licensing screens the individuals themselves regardless of the types of firearms they intend to acquire.

That said, as I mentioned before, we are maintaining the registration of restricted and prohibited firearms. These firearms include handguns, some semi-automatic long guns used for target shooting, and gun collecting and other automatic weapons.

Individuals can only possess restricted firearms and prohibited handguns for legitimate purposes such as target shooting or collecting. Target shooting has a long history in Canada and covers all types of firearms disciplines right up to competition at the Olympic level.

As hon. members can see, our work on gun control is part of a larger effort to strengthen the overall safety of Canadians. We believe in focusing our efforts on those who would harm our families and our communities, not on law abiding—

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think it is fair to say that Bill C-21 would have the effect of basically scrapping the gun registry in that it would eliminate the requirement for registering non-restricted firearms, which are rifles and shotguns, about 5 million to 6 million firearms, which effectively guts the purpose of the registry totally.

If there were clear evidence that the lives of 100 police officers were saved as a consequence of having that registry would this bill be before us today? I believe the answer is that it would not. Members would not support this bill because of the importance of the registry.

Given that police officers have indicated that they use the registry some 5,000 times a day, which is the reported amount, I would then ask the member if the lives of 100 police officers would stop this bill. What is the member's number? How many police officers is he prepared to live with in terms of deaths?

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time tonight with the member for Northumberland—Quinte West.

It is an opportunity for me to discuss Bill C-21. This legislation addresses firearms control, an area of great concern to all Canadians. Everyone who watches the news knows how prevalent gun violence has become in some communities and this is extremely troubling.

Gang members carrying illegal handguns and brazenly settling scores in public areas have brought fear to cities across the country. In some neighbourhoods, people witness gun violence regularly but are intimidated into silence by criminals. This kind of criminal activity must be stopped. Canada has always had the reputation of being a peaceful country. We must do something now to help ensure this remains the case, and that means cracking down on violent crime.

The government made a commitment to protect Canadians and that is what we intend to do. Bill C-21 is part of the government's larger plan to strengthen the safety and security of Canadians. The government has taken steps over the last year to keep Canadians safe and to do so in a way that simplifies compliance for law-abiding citizens.

The first responsibility of any government should always be to protect its citizens from harm but governments should also be careful to do this in a way that law-abiding citizens can comply with easily. This government is working diligently to ensure that this balance is respected.

We have introduced Bill C-21 to reinstate a balance between protecting Canadians and easing requirements for responsible firearms owners. I would like to highlight some of the public safety measures our government has taken in the past year. The government has an overall plan for safer communities and Bill C-21 fits within our vision of a safe and prosperous Canada.

First, the government felt that policing and law enforcement needed to be bolstered in Canada. In budget 2006, we invested a significant amount of money to give the RCMP additional resources to focus on law enforcement priorities. These included the expansion of the RCMP's National Training Academy, known as Depot; increasing the DNA samples on file to include a greater range of offenders; support for a special contingent of first nations RCMP; and an additional 1,000 RCMP resources to focus on drugs, corruption and border security.

Now in Budget 2007, we have continued this support for our national police services to protect children from sexual exploitation and trafficking and supporting the Canadian Police Research Centre's work in science and technology in policing and public safety.

Furthermore, we are taking action to crack down on white collar crime by appointing a senior expert adviser to the RCMP to help develop and guide the implementation of a plan to improve the effectiveness of the integrated market enforcement teams. We are also investing $80 million over two years to make the Canadian Security Intelligence Service's operations more effective.

On another front, the government took steps to strengthen our borders in a way that keeps legitimate goods and people moving across the border and threats out of our country. We put in place a plan to start arming border guards. Through our plan, approximately 4,800 officers will be trained and armed. This includes 400 officers who will be hired so that no officer will be required to work alone. Some of these officers will be deployed as early as this summer and we expect that by March 2008, between 200 and 250 armed officers will be working at the border.

There is another issue that affects our communities directly and that is youth crime. Many communities in Canada have youth crime problems. It can sometimes mean vandalism, drug abuse or even gang involvement.

Our work is based on the principle that the surest way to reduce crime is to focus on the factors that put individuals at risk, factors like family violence, school problems and drug abuse. We aim to reduce crime by tackling crime before it happens. That is why my hon. colleague, the Minister of Public Safety, announced in January $16.1 million in funding for youth at risk. These projects are funded through the National Crime Prevention Centre and they help youth make good choices and stay or get back on the right track.

Firearms control should focus on criminals, not on law-abiding and responsible firearms owners.

I hope that the hon. members of this House can now better understand the broader public safety context within which our gun control measures operate. Gun control is but one of many ways we are working to protect Canadians.

The object of today's debate, Bill C-21, deals with an aspect of the firearms control program that has been at the centre of discussion ever since the introduction of the Firearms Act in 1995: the registration of non-restricted firearms. These are ordinary rifles and shotguns most often used for hunting.

Why do we wish to abolish the requirement to register these firearms? The answer is twofold. The first reason is that we are not convinced that the registration of non-restricted firearms prevents gun crime. The second reason comes back to what I said earlier. Governments have a responsibility to direct limited to resources where they will have the most effect. With respect to gun control, we believe this means investing in measures that focus on criminals rather than on law-abiding citizens.

The most recent example of this was the successful raid carried out in Toronto last week that resulted in over 60 arrests and the seizure of 30 illegal guns, dealing a significant blow to a notorious street gang that terrorized the neighbourhood. Protecting the most vulnerable is where our limited resources should be directed to, not inundating law-abiding citizens with cumbersome rules and regulations.

Therefore, the government has decided to remove the registration requirement for legitimate and responsible non-restricted firearms owners and focus on gun crime.

Indeed, to achieve this very goal, my colleague, the hon. Minister of Justice, tabled a bill on May 4, 2006 to strengthen the mandatory minimum sentences for violent gun crimes. The government has introduced a number of legislative initiatives that target gun crimes and we encourage opposition MPs to support these initiatives.

Bill C-10 passed third reading in the House on May 29 and is awaiting second reading in the other place. Bill C-10 proposes escalating minimum penalties for specific offences involving the actual use of firearms. These offences include attempted murder, sexual assault and kidnapping, among others. Minimum penalties are also proposed for certain serious non-offence uses, such as firearm trafficking and smuggling. The higher minimum penalties rest on specific aggravating factors such as repeat firearms offences, use of restricted or prohibited firearms or the commission of firearm offences in connection with a criminal organization which includes a gang.

Bill C-35 is another important piece of legislation on our agenda to tackle gun crimes. It deals with the burden of proof during bail hearings for firearm related offences.

These reforms will lower the risk that people charged with serious offences may reoffend while out on bail. It will also reduce the risk that they may take flight to avoid facing trial for the charges. This bill was also recently passed by the House of Commons and is awaiting second reading in the Senate.

These new measures send a clear message that the Government of Canada will not tolerate gun crime on our streets and in our communities. However, as the members of the House no doubt know, firearms control includes much more than handing tough sentences to those who commit crime. Firearms control includes measures that aim to prevent firearms from falling into the hands of ineligible individuals.

The registration of non-restricted firearms has not proven itself to be effective in accomplishing this goal. In fact, in our view the most effective system currently in place that accomplishing that goal is licensing. We have the support of many groups that agree that licensing is the critical information necessary.

As deputy commissioner of the RCMP, Peter Martin, stated to the public safety committee:

If we go to a residence on a call, we're not interested in articles in the house as much as the person in the house and what they have available to them.

The critical piece of information right now is who is licensed and who has the potential to have in his or her possession a firearm, regardless of whether it's a long gun or a restricted or prohibited weapon.

Through the steps that an individual must take to obtain a licence, authorities can determine if the individual in question poses a security risk. The steps include passing the exams for the Canadian firearm safety course, passing the background checks that are performed using police files and answering personal history questions to identify the possible safety concerns such as serious problems with substance abuse. The answers to these questions must be corroborated by two references who have personally known the individual for at least three years.

Screening individuals before they are issued a licence is paramount to an effective firearms control system. Even once a licence is issued to an individual, a continuous check is performed through an automated link between the Canadian firearms information system and the Canadian police information system or CPIC. If any new information is entered on the CPIC system by police, such as a report on threats made to another person, the firearms information system automatically checks to see if the person in question is a firearms licence holder. If so, steps can be taken to suspend or revoke the licence and law enforcement authorities are notified so they can take appropriate action to remove the firearms.

Bill C-21, is an important piece of legislation that would re-establish the proper balance in the area of firearms control. It would ease the requirements for firearm owners while ensuring that records of firearm purchases continue to be kept. Our government believes that resources should be invested to keep Canadians safe. However, we believe in investing those resources in effective initiatives and programs. That is why we have focused on areas such as law enforcement, border security, youth crime and, of course, gun control. In all cases we are taking a results based approach.

I therefore encourage all members of the House to support Bill C-21.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. minister for bringing forth Bill C-21. In my last householder I did a survey on this to reassure myself that thoughts had not changed in the riding. It came back and overwhelmingly 95% still felt that the long gun registry had to be, if not revamped, scrapped altogether.

The Liberals reacted to a very terrible incident in bringing in the long gun registry. Some people said that they lied about the cost of it. Grossly underestimated is certainly a fact, so I will give them the benefit of the doubt on that. However, the fact that really bothers me was when a member across the way from the GTA said a few minutes ago that the Liberals supported toughening up the sentencing for gun crimes, but they voted very recently against that. It is pretty hard to say that is literally not telling the truth. What are the reasons for that? Could the minister comment on that?

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Mr. Speaker, first, I thank the minister for tabling Bill C-21 in this House and keeping another Conservative platform commitment to eliminate the long gun registry.

I also thank the minister for implementing the amnesties. I know my constituents are very appreciative of that. I know a lot of them received some of the money they had used on their application forms back, and I have received some positive feedback on that.

I also thank the minister for the tremendous work he has done to ensure there are enough RCMP officers on the streets. I have met with my constituents in Breton and Hobbema and there is a lack of RCMP and resources on the ground to do the police work that needs to be done.

However, the question I have for the minister is on something he brought up during his speech. I would like to bring some clarification to the House.

In a former life I was a database administrator. I am fairly conversant in how databases work and how queries work between databases. One of the things I used to do, when I was a faculty member teaching databases, was talk about the importance of processes in place to ensure the information that went into a system was good. We used to call it garbage in equals garbage out.

Could the minister clarify and give us more information about whether the information in the database is good, whether the police officers can use, through CPIC, the licence database, as there is obviously a repository of information there, and whether that information is useful to police officers in lieu of the fact that the registry information is obviously flawed?

[Stockwell Day, Conservative, Minister of Public Safety]

Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for that demonstration of collegiality from the members.

My friend who just completed speaking had talked about a lowering of the emotions and I think that is important. I think the debate tonight has been civil although people feel strongly about it. Previously there have been unfortunate references, which I have not heard tonight, to almost a questioning of whether one really loves one's loved ones if one is supporting getting rid of the long gun registry.

I am glad that has not entered into the debate. Most of us here have children. Some have grandchildren. We all have loved ones. We all want to see crime with firearms reduced. We all believe there is a way to do that. It is not a question of how much we love our loved ones. I am glad that has not entered into the debate.

As a matter of fact, in two cases I have talked to parents, each of whom lost a son who was tragically slain by a firearm. In each case, those parents said to me, “Don't fix the problem by trying to keep the long gun registry”. They said that it is a waste of money and a waste of police time and resources. Both sets of parents had sons who were police officers and who were slain by long guns.

I share that with members and will share just as emphatically that I have talked with parents who have lost loved ones because of a handgun and want to see the long gun registry maintained. I say this to show that even among parents whose children have been slain there is a difference of opinion on this.

I want to emphasize some things that we are not changing as we look at Bill C-21.

We are not changing the requirement to have a licence if a person wants to own or acquire a firearm of any type. A person still must have a licence. That does not change. A person still must have the training that is involved in the handling of a firearm. The storage laws remain in place. We are still maintaining those.

The handgun prohibitions still remain. We do not endorse a ban on handguns because effectively there is one now. A person can own a handgun only under very strict conditions. A person can transport it only under very strict conditions.

I notice with interest some new legislation being proposed by one of the provinces. I am glad to see provinces engage in this discussion. That province is saying that it should be illegal to carry a handgun on a bus or to take it to school, for instance, but it already is illegal to do that.

A point should be noted about virtually any country where we look at a handgun prohibition, where handguns were banned and ordered to be removed from the hands of all citizens, such as Ireland, the United Kingdom and Jamaica. We watched this debate play out in our newspapers about two weeks ago. In all countries, everybody was agreed that over the period of time in the last 10 years or so where these handgun eradications took place, firearm use, death by firearms and the use of firearms in crimes all went up and went up substantially. I agree with my colleague who just shared his comments. It is difficult to try to endorse what we are doing here with actual statistics.

There are some things that we are changing and that we have changed.

Last year, recognizing that thousands of people were out of compliance because of the fees that were involved in being registered themselves, we waived those fees to encourage people to come into compliance so we would know who is out there with a licence to own handguns. Literally thousands of people came back into compliance, back into the system that tells us who has a firearm licence. We changed that and it proved to be a positive thing.

We also are proposing, with an allotment from our budget this year, that $14.2 million go into screening people who want any type of firearm. It would be screening at a much higher level than before. A person is going to need to have an interview with a firearms officer or his or her designate. Also, the person's two references will have to be interviewed. It is going to be tougher from the screening point of view to get a firearm licence than it is to get a passport. We are going to be checking into that more thoroughly.

Again, I have heard colleagues on all sides of the House recommend other things that can be done to alert those in the health care professions, and in other ways, to the possibility that they are dealing with a person who possibly should not have any type of firearm. Those are things that we need to continue to look at.

We also have put the funding in place because we believe that we fight crime by having more police officers on our streets and in our communities. We have put in the funding for a thousand more RCMP officers from coast to coast. I am engaged right now in discussions with provincial ministers and territorial ministers for a cost sharing formula to have 2,500 more municipal officers on the street.

We are proceeding with arming our border officers so that no longer when there is a concern about someone who is armed and dangerous coming to the border do they vacate their posts and shut down the border. That is going to assist them and it sends a message to people south of the border who may be carrying firearms that they will be greeted by people who are equipped to handle that eventuality.

We are giving extra funding to the teams that work together across the border on the whole area of smuggling. Police officers and police associations talk about the huge percentage of firearms smuggled into the country. We are being very aggressive on increased resources to deal with that.

We are putting literally millions of dollars into the whole area of gang activity and it is especially directed toward youth who would be prone to being drawn into gang activity. We want to show them that there are other choices. Millions of dollars will be and are in the process of going to local jurisdictions and local organizations that can be effective in reaching out and providing prevention programs.

Everything I have just mentioned in terms of more police, going after smuggling and a more aggressive police presence on the street also has to be accompanied by legislation. As members know, we now have legislation dealing with the mandatory requirement for somebody to spend jail time if they commit a crime with a firearm. We think it is right that a multiple offender with a firearm should go to jail for at least seven years.

I was disappointed that most of the Liberals did not agree with that. They voted against that. I have never fully understood it. The Liberals want a long gun registry for farmers and duck hunters, but they do not want people who have committed more than one offence with a firearm to have to go to jail. I have not fully comprehended that and I will be listening to hear an explanation.

This type of aggressive action of going after the criminals and going after the problems is something that the city of Toronto police have done over the last year following the tragedies in that city. Crime with firearms has been drastically reduced, notwithstanding two very tragic incidents that have happened recently. The Toronto police are putting into practice what we endorse. We think that we will continue to see crime with firearms go down.

Bill C-21 talks about three basic things. It is mentioning and making it a matter of law that to acquire any type of firearm an individual is going to have to be licensed. For any type of firearm, that individual will have to be licensed.

The bill also lays out rules for how businesses are going to have to record and maintain the records of any firearm transactions.

Then, getting to the contentious point, the area of long guns themselves, we are proposing that the long gun registry of non-prohibited weapons be dismissed, be removed.

There are reasons for that. There are millions upon millions of long guns out there, primarily used by duck hunters and other types of hunters and sports shooters. There are literally millions of long guns. Rightly or not, and I will always assume good intentions on the part of members of Parliament, in the last decade the Liberals thought they could embark upon a journey to see every single one of those long guns all across the country registered, the long guns themselves, millions and millions of them.

It proved to be a disaster. I will quote the Auditor General herself. She said that the long gun registry was “significantly over budget” and that her office had evidence that they were looking for an accounting solution. She also said, “The quality of the information is doubtful”, in reference to the long gun registry, “and they don't have the mechanisms to verify it”.

She went on to say, “If a police officer is consulting it, he cannot be certain that the information is complete and exact”. That is quite an indictment, with $946 million spent up to that point to support a long gun registry that the Auditor General herself said simply did not give accurate data. It may have been well intended, but it was an impossible task.

That leads us to the question that often comes up about something called the CPIC system. It is a police information system. I consistently hear that it is used 5,000 times a day to check for firearm occupation or firearm possession. It is not.

That CPIC system is available to police officers all across the country. If they pull somebody over for speeding or they catch someone for jaywalking, whatever the serious or less serious nature of an event may be, they plug into the system. They have a person's car licence there. They want to see who it is they are dealing with.

Coincidental to that, there are also links, as those who are familiar with websites know, to a number of different sites from the CPIC system. One of those sites is linked to the firearms registry. If they want to hit the link button and go into that particular registry, they can, but this is predominantly used by police officers who want to check that system daily for any person they stop.

There are 5,000 police officers in Toronto alone and 6,500 in British Columbia. In a day, they use the CPIC system thousands of times, but in the vast majority of those times they are not checking whether or not a person has firearms. It is some other related activity on which they are checking.

I wish people would exercise caution when they use that number.

In terms of the facts of the matter related to the firearm registry, in 1998 there were 51 deaths as a result of long guns. In the year 2003, just before the long gun registry was fully implemented, finally, after the Liberals had tried for many years to do so, the number dropped. The number of long gun deaths dropped from 51 to 32 without the long gun registry. Two years after the long gun registry was in place, the numbers went up to 55.

I will not use a specious argument and say that the long gun registry caused more deaths, because I do not think it did, but it certainly did not reduce any. What it did do was take away millions upon millions of dollars of resources and time that police officers could have been more effectively using in all of their efforts to reduce crime with firearms.

There is no evidential coincidence at all that over the period it has been place the long gun registry has reduced crime with firearms in any way, shape or form. The only thing that reduces it is aggressive activity, with more police officers on the street and some of the other items I mentioned.

We often hear quotes from those who want to substantiate the reason why there should be a long gun registry of sports shooters, duck hunters and farmers. Often we hear that this is one group of elected people who endorsed this particular bill and this path that we are embarking on.

Let me quote some other people whom we never hear quoted. Samara McPhedran is the chairwoman of the International Coalition for Women in Shooting and Hunting and she says, “The ideologically driven registry has not reduced rates of violence crime”. That is a fact. She says that it “has not improved public safety”. That is a fact. She says that it “has not prevented criminals from illegally obtaining firearms”.

She goes on to say:

Massive ongoing expenditure of public funds upon an ineffective system achieves nothing more than the misdirection of resources away from where they are urgently needed--social services, education, health care and policing.

We endorse what she says there 100%.

This is something that is not partisan or politically driven. I remember that the member of Parliament for Yukon, the Liberal member, talked about being very passionately against the long gun registry. He said, “One thing that upset Canadians, even those that support the registry, was the administrative mismanagement”. He said, “That made people think it was a gross waste of money”.

The Liberal member for Kings—Hants, who was also a federal Liberal leadership candidate, said,“We should be getting rid of the long-gun registry”. He said, “A billion dollars would have been better spent on health care or education or, for instance, in strengthening the RCMP”. That is from a Liberal member who was running for the leadership of the Liberal Party.

The Liberal member for Newmarket—Aurora was previously a Conservative, and I respect that. She ran for the leadership of the Conservative Party and now is a Liberal and I understand she is stepping down. That is certainly her choice and I respect that, but she said something interesting. She said, “As a mother, I am scared by gun violence”.

She said, “I believe we must protect law-abiding citizens from criminals, which is why we should increase the minimum sentence for violent crimes involving guns”. She is one of the few Liberals who think repeat firearm offenders should actually go to jail. She went on to say, “I believe it is not a crime for law-abiding farmers, ranchers and hunters who use firearms a as tool”. She said, “It is wrong the federal government has penalized them”.

Those are good quotes.

The Liberal member for Huron—Bruce is on record as showing once again that the gun registry does not work and makes that point very clearly.

Many in the NDP share the government's view on this. The member for Winnipeg Centre said that he and likely half of the NDP caucus would back a Conservative bill to scrap the registry.

The MP for Skeena—Bulkley Valley has said that he will keep his promise to abolish the gun registry. He is a man of his word and I believe he will. He says that there is no uncertainty about that. Politically, this view is shared by many.

We often hear the term “the police” want the long gun registry maintained. A few senior officers in a few associations, for a variety of reasons not totally understood, have said that they want to see the long gun registry maintained, but people should be honest. When they say that the police want the long gun registry maintained, at the very least they should say a few police officers are on record as wanting the long gun registry maintained.

For instance, the president of the Winnipeg Police Association said, “the Winnipeg Police Association has never supported the long gun registry”.

The Manitoba Police Association passed a motion saying that Ottawa should scrap the long gun registry.

The executive officer of the Saskatchewan Federation of Police Officers, about the long gun registry, said:

We've been against it right from the beginning...That's been our position since 1994 and it hasn't changed—we've been in opposition to our brothers at the Canadian Professional Police Association (on the registry).

The president of the Calgary Police Association is also opposed to the long gun registry, but he is proposing mandatory minimum sentences for gun crimes. That is what we are proposing.

An officer from the Fredericton police said that officers responding to a potentially dangerous situation always assumed there was a firearm involved. He said that they always took the corrective practices approaching a domicile that there could be a firearm involved. He went on to say, “We don't check with the registry during a gun-related incident”. They have been trained to always assume that possibility is there.

It is not just western police, if somebody is reflecting on that. I have talked about some in Fredericton. The deputy chief of the Toronto police said that the money spent on registering shotguns should be used instead on stricter law enforcement and social programs to keep kids out of gangs. He said, “The $1 billion could be better spent elsewhere. It really has done nothing to solve the crime problem. The gun registry registers legal guns. Gangsters do not register their guns”.

Brian Ford, former Ottawa police chief, supported the registry at one point but makes an interesting statement. He says he supported it because he did not know the Liberals were lying to him. He stated, “I was assured by government—it's on budget”. He said, “They were lying. It bothers me. I was telling people what I believed to be the truth”. That is a dramatic statement from the former police chief in Ottawa.

Former Toronto police Chief Julian Fantino, now head of the Ontario Police, supported scrapping the long gun registry. He recognized that forcing law-abiding Canadians to register their rifles did nothing to reduce gun crimes and the money would be better spent on front line police resources.

Chief Bill Blair has done much to reduce crime with firearms in Toronto. He is not taking the position precisely on the long gun registry, but says this:

—we know the gun problem in Toronto is overwhelmingly a problem of illegal handguns....Gangsters who carry guns in the city of Toronto do not register those guns so any changes in the gun registry are not going to have a significant impact on our efforts to control the operation and use of illegal handguns on our streets.

I have one more quote. I have quoted moms who have lost sons, parliamentarians and police. We should listen to the words of a former gang member. Former Toronto founder of Vice Lords and gang member said, “The gun registry has not had any impact on the availability of guns to gangs. If you want a gun, you can get one in a day, a couple of hours maybe”.

Across the board there is a consensus that we need to do all the things we are going to do to reduce crime with firearms, and I have gone through them. However, we also need to eliminate the long gun registry and let those precious resources get into the hands of our police officers.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we were joking a little as I finished that I was just getting wound up, and I was getting wound up around being critical of the government.

I want to go back to how I started my comments this afternoon, which was about trying to reduce the passion around this issue. Although I am being critical of the government because I think it has gone down the wrong road on this, I want it to be seen as constructive criticism rather than a diatribe against it.

However, I am concerned and I actually was angry at the government because of the process it embarked upon with regard to Bill C-21.

We know that the Conservatives sought legal opinions shortly after they were elected. They were told by legal counsel at that time that they had to bring in a bill. They looked at various ways, through regulation or other methodologies, that would have avoided a vote in this House. Ultimately, they determined that they did not have a choice, that the democratic process had put the long gun registry in place and only the democratic process in the form of a bill and a vote in this House could do away with it.

As I had said earlier, the Conservatives introduced the bill into the House exactly a year ago today and have not done anything since then to bring it forward, which is anti-democratic. I am bothered that they took that approach. However, they compounded their inaction with regard to Bill C-21, in the sense of bringing it forward, having a debate and having a vote twice, by publishing and putting into place amnesties for individuals who had long guns who would no longer be required to register them. If they came up for re-registration, they would not need to do that.

There are a couple of things with that. The amnesty provisions within the Criminal Code, in my opinion, were never designed for that purpose and it is really abusive to use them in that way. Amnesty is to be used in very limited ways, mostly for individual crimes rather than in these circumstances where a whole group of people were exempted from the application of this legislation as it existed and as it continues to exist today.

They granted that amnesty and at the same time made the decision not to collect fees. That has cost the Canadian taxpayers now over $20 million per year. We are into the second year and we are approaching the $40 million mark that it has cost the Canadian taxpayers.

The obvious question is why the government would have taken this approach, given the Conservative Party's long antipathy toward the long gun registry. Why would it sit on this? The very simple answer is that it knows it does not have the votes in this House to support this piece of legislation, even at second reading and to send it to committee.

Instead of that, it has engaged in a campaign to avoid its democratic responsibility to bring this matter to this House in a timely fashion and to let this House decide, to let the elected officials in this country decide whether in fact we were going to have a long gun registry. It has avoided doing that and I am highly critical of it for doing that.

Even though we are having this debate tonight until 10 p.m., I do not see it going any further than that. We will not have a vote on it this week and the House is scheduled to end on the 22nd, this Friday. The House will return in the fall and I have no sense that this bill will be brought back in the fall. To some significant degree, the government is avoiding the issue.

The essential point I want to make is that we need to lower the passion around this issue in this country and this does not do it. In fact, it is just the opposite. It feeds it, both for those of us who are opposed to the gun registry and those of us who support it.

In the remaining time I would like to briefly address the bill. The bill is pretty straightforward. Although it is some 10 or 12 pages long, it is very basic. It would amend the Firearms Act. It is legislation that refers to long guns and in effect it would systematically dismantle the long gun registry in this country if this bill were to go ahead and become law at some point in the future.That is all it would do. I suppose I should not say that because it would do a bit more, but that is essentially what the bill would do, which why those of us who feel the long gun registry performs a function are opposed to it.

In that regard, there is no question that the debate around whether this has reduced violent crime in this country is a debate. There is not sufficient evidence on either side to absolutely control that question. There are strong arguments that I voice on a regular basis that have convinced me that the long gun registry has had a substantial impact in reducing violence in this country.

The evidence, I believe, is incontrovertible that the suicide rate has been reduced substantially since 1996 when the long gun registry began to have an impact. Certainly in the period of time from 2001 to 2003 when it really began to have an impact, the suicide rate went down.

The accidental death rate dropped dramatically, in the 20 percentile range, as a result of the controls that the long gun registry imposes upon the storage, transportation, et cetera, of long guns.

It is interesting as well to look at what happened. It was one of those unintended consequences. I certainly did not hear anyone during those debates on the long gun registry legislation speak to this. One of the unintended consequences of the legislation, because it costs money to register, or at least it did before the Conservative government got hold of it, was that it dissuaded people from keeping their long guns when they had to register them. It also had the effect of dissuading people from buying long guns knowing that they would have the ongoing cost of registration.

In that regard, there was a pretty extensive survey done at one point that showed that in the previous year of the survey being conducted slightly more than half of the people who owned long guns in this country did not use them. We have this image portrayed of us making it difficult for hunters to use their long guns for hunting and other recreational purposes, including target practice. The reality is, from what we have been able to ascertain, that continues to be the case. A large number of long guns, slightly more than 50%, in any given year, are not used at all by the owners of those guns,.

To go back to the point of that unintended consequence, when the legislation came into play, people who had to begin to pay fees gave up their long guns rather than pay the fees because they were not using them and had no use for them.

One of the fears, of course, if the long gun registry is done away with and the requirements for storage and the sequence that we follow in terms of enforcing and patrolling that legislation, is that we will see an increase in mishaps, at least in accidental deaths. Suicide is another issue but the fear is that accidental deaths will go up because casual owners, not the hunter who is devoted to a recreational pastime, but the casual owners, who on a whim in many cases buy long guns, will not be careful in how they store the guns and, in effect, protect their families, friends and the environment from the accidental use of the guns. We will see an increase in accidental deaths and for that reason alone it is well worthwhile to keep the registration in place.

One of the other statistics that is very clear, which my colleague from the Bloc mentioned in his address, is that the number of violent crimes within domestic settings between partners, almost all of it males serviced on females, has dropped dramatically as we got rid of that many guns. We got them out of the households where they should not have been. We restricted the use by other people who should not have been owning them.

Some of that will continue. I do not want to mislead the public in that regard. This legislation would continue to require people who own guns to be registered and screened.

What should we be doing to improve the registry of both handguns and long guns? I believe the government has gone wrong by spending so much energy, including the amnesty and including forgiving the fees. Rather than doing that, if it had been spending time and effort and doing analyses of what we should be doing, we probably would have had some significant impact.

I want to talk about the Dawson situation. The long gun that was used, which looked like an assault rifle, at one point could have been banned as an assault rifle because there are provisions within the legislation now that say this type of a gun, if it looks this way, which is the kind of wording and essence of the legislation and the regulations, is banned. That was during the Liberal government administration. There were a number of opportunities but because of the opposition that was coming from those people who opposed the long guns, the Liberals were not prepared to take those administrative decisions to get guns like that out of the hands of people who, as my colleague from the Bloc said, have this fascination with guns.

I do not want to taint all owners of guns that way but it was one of the places where we could have done better as a government. We did not do that because of the opposition to the long gun registry. We should be doing that. There are other assault rifles appearing in this country that should be on our prohibited list and no one should be allowed to own them, rifles similar to the one used in the Dawson killings.

We should be tightening up quite dramatically the screening of everyone, whether they own a handgun or a long gun. There are simply too many other possibilities. I want to point to one of the suggestions that has been made, which has come out of the province of Quebec, around screening people by getting the gun clubs more on side, requiring them to provide information and, in particular, concerns, if they have them, over individuals who have gone through the training process that they needed to go through in order to get themselves and their weapons registered in this country, requiring them to do more in that regard.

The financial reason that they should be required to do that is because they benefit from the use of guns in this country at the clubs they run, whether they are private or non-profit. They have an additional responsibility and I believe it is one that we should be imposing upon them and should be enforced. That would have some significant difference. Again, in the Dawson situation we should have done additional screening with regard to military records. It is quite clear in that case that it would have brought forward to the registrar that this individual had a problem and that may very well have prevented that.

We can go down the list. There are a number of other areas where we could be doing much better. The concentration that we have done on simply getting rid of the long gun registry is a major error. We should be doing much more work in these other areas of screening and getting other guns out of circulation that really have no purpose in a society such as Canada.

I urge all members of this House in the debate that will be taking place through the rest of this evening to try to limit the passion, look at the facts and to argue from whichever side, because there are facts on both sides of this, but to reduce the passion and hopefully that will spill out into the rest of the country.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Bill Blaikie]

I believe the hon. member for Windsor--Tecumseh has 14 minutes left in his speech to Bill C-21.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-21, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Firearms Act (non-registration of firearms that are neither prohibited nor restricted), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to have the opportunity to participate in this debate because I want to be on the record that I do support gun control in Canada. I see Bill C-21 as an attempt to weaken the gun control regime that we have in Canada.

I have two brief questions for the member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin. I wonder if he could comment on why it took the Conservatives so long to bring the bill forward for debate in the House. They tabled the bill over a year ago. The member for Yorkton—Melville talked about how he waited for 12 years to debate this issue in the House of Commons. One full year of that was with his own government having legislation tabled before the House.

I am also glad that the member talked about the culture of responsibility that registration provides in Canada.

I also know that Wendy Cukier, president of the Coalition for Gun Control, talked about it in a slightly different way. She said:

Registration is essential to ensure that licensed gun owners are held accountable for their guns.

I think that is another way of looking at the responsibility issue talking about being accountable for specific weapons.

I wonder if the member might comment on those two things.

[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.

[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—

[Stockwell Day, Conservative, Minister of Public Safety]

moved that Bill C-21, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Firearms Act (non-registration of firearms that are neither prohibited nor restricted), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Public Safety

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it does not work, any more than the seven-year minimum sentence for importing marijuana did in the past.

The only logical choice for the government is to withdraw its Bill C-21, something being called for not only by victims' parents, but also by police, who still consider the registry to be an effective tool for prevention.

Will the Minister of Public Safety finally get out of his ideological bubble and withdraw the bill?

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Do I have the floor? Thank you.

Bill C-21 is coming up for debate in the House this afternoon. I assume several of us will want to be there to debate that, and I can't be here tomorrow afternoon after question period. I'm in Montreal as soon after question period as I can leave. So why don't we just do it on Thursday when we are already scheduled?

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, I will be happy to address that in the affirmative in a moment but there is more that we should know about in terms of the business we are doing.

We will continue today with Bill C-42, the quarantine act, Bill C-58, the railway transportation bill and Bill C-21, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Firearms Act (non-registration of firearms that are neither prohibited nor restricted).

Tonight we have the emergency debate pursuant to Standing Order 52 that the Speaker has determined should proceed.

On Friday we will call Bill C-33, the income tax bill and Bill C-6, the aeronautics bill.

Next week is got the job done week when the House has completed the nation's business for this spring's session. During the got the job done week we will continue and hopefully complete the business from this week, as well as some new legislation and legislation that will be out of committee or the Senate.

The list of bills that are currently on the order paper, in addition to those I have identified for this week that I would like to see completed by the House before the summer recess are: Senate amendments to Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act.

There are also the following bills: Bill C-32, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (impaired driving) and to make consequential amendments to other Acts; Bill C-44, An Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and Bill C-53, An Act to implement the Convention on the Settlement of Investment Disputes between States and Nationals of Other States (ICSID Convention).

Another bill includes Bill C-54, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act (accountability with respect to loans).

By the end of next week, Canadians expect that the Senate will have completed its consideration of budget Bill C-52 without any amendments so that they can relax for the summer with the knowledge that $4.3 billion in the 2006-07 year end measures will be in play.

If there are amendments, we will have to be here in the House to respond and protect measures that might otherwise be lost, such as a $1.5 billion for the Canada ecotrust for clean air and climate change; $600 million for patient wait times guarantees; $400 million for the Canada infoway; $100 million for the CANARIE project to maintain the research broadband network linking Canadian universities and research hospitals; $200 million for protection of endangered spaces; and much more.

Criminal Code

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the government has not put Bill C-21 back on the legislative agenda. It is not there. When it brings it forward we will be able to discuss it.

The member's question on the issue of the long gun registry was a good one. I have asked a lot of police officers about it. Regarding the operating costs for the gun registry, the economic cost of supporting it, one has to question whether that money would best be used where it is today in the long gun registry or whether it would best be used somewhere else.

I argued against the long gun registry. In fact, I went in front of the justice committee to argue against having it. If it were reintroduced today I would not support it. However, we have it. I have asked police officers should we or should we not get rid of the long gun registry and I have received two answers.

Police officers who work in urban areas say we should keep it because they access it quite frequently. There are thousands of hits on the registry every single day. I have received that answer from that population of police officers.

The other population of police officers to whom I spoke are those who work in rural areas. They say they do not need it. They do not use it. They respond to a situation with the presumption that there are guns in the house. They always do that. The rural police offers say that the registry is not needed.

At the end of the day, I have to say I am in a quandary. The overriding principle as to whether or not I support the abolition of the long gun registry resides in a simple question. What is in the best interests of the police who have to deal with people in a very dangerous situation and what is in the best interests of the Canadian public? It boils down to whether or not the money is best spent doing something else as the hon. member quite rightly said, or since the money has been spent on creating the registry, is it better to have the money there so that the police who are working in an urban area can access the registry? I would not advocating and I am sure that nobody in the House would advocate doing anything that would increase the insecurity and danger to our police officers. At the end of the day, that is the question that we all have to answer.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for his impassioned speech. We are discussing reverse onus on gun crimes. I know that the hon. member did talk a little bit about gun stuff in his speech. I want to thank him for his support and hopefully for his and his entire party's support when it comes time to pass Bill C-35.

I noticed that in his speech he went through the life cycle of a law-abiding citizen acquiring a firearm. A law-abiding citizen would apply for a firearms acquisition certificate, or the possession only, or possession and acquisition licence, go through the waiting period, go through all the criminal checks, dot all the is, cross all the ts and then have to fill out a registration form to purchase a firearm. He said very clearly that these are not the people that we want to go after.

I have a simple question for my hon. colleague. If it makes so much sense to support Bill C-35, which is to put the reverse onus on people who commit dangerous offences, whether their motivation is through drug trafficking or anything else, would it not make more sense to use those resources that we are currently spending on the gun registry, which is Bill C-21? It sounded to me he was making an excellent case for passing Bill C-21 and getting rid of the long gun registry and taking the resources from that and using it for implementing Bill C-35 and some of the other programs that the hon. member thinks are so important for the social well-being of members of his community.

I am just wondering if I could count on his support for Bill C-21 as much as I could count on his support for Bill C-35.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Do you have any plans on bringing Bill C-21 forward so that we can have a vote in the House to deal with this issue, as opposed to unilaterally making these decisions?

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety]

Mr. Speaker, Canada's new government is committed to effective gun control. As the Prime Minister has said, “We want to make sure that what we do is actually effective”. That is why the government has proposed in Bill C-21 the repeal of Canada's costly and ineffective long gun registry.

The Minister of Public Safety has been very clear. The government will maintain registration of restricted and prohibited firearms, including all handguns and automatic firearms. However, non-restricted firearms, generally ordinary rifles and shotguns, will be removed from the registry if Bill C-21 passes.

The hon. member suggests that police speak with one voice in support of the long gun registry. However, that is simply not the case.

In April 2006, more than 11 years after the Firearms Act was introduced, the president of the Winnipeg Police Association said, “The Winnipeg Police Association has never supported the long gun registry”.

The Manitoba Police Association, which includes Winnipeg, Brandon and rural police associations, passed a motion in the spring of 2006 calling on Ottawa to scrap the registry.

The head of the Saskatchewan Federation of Police Officers stated in 2006, “We've been against it right from the beginning....That's been our position since 1994 and it hasn't changed”.

The deputy police chief of the Toronto police stated last year that, “The $1 billion could be better spent elsewhere”. He said, “It really has done nothing to solve the crime problem. The gun registry registers legal guns. Gangsters don't register their guns”.

Many other local and provincial police associations as well as working police officers across Canada oppose a long gun registry that focuses on law-abiding Canadians, not criminals. We need to remember that the firearms registry contains both firearm registration and individual licensing information.

Parties opposite have claimed that the government is in some way getting rid of gun control in Canada. That in no way represents the government's position.

All firearms owners will still be required to be licensed and will be screened for public safety. That will not change. Individual licensing information, critical for determining whether an individual may or may not lawfully possess firearms, will be maintained and will remain available to police across Canada.

In fact, the government is focusing resources more effectively on what works best in our system. That is why budget 2007 commits $14.2 million over two years to enhance screening new firearms licence applicants.

For the first time, this investment means that 20,000 new licence applicants and their two references will be interviewed by a firearms officer before determining that applicants should be issued his or her first firearms licence. That is a real investment in public safety and that is the difference between this government and the previous one. We want to focus on what works best and what is the greatest benefit to Canadians. We believe that rank and file police officers will join with us in meeting that objective.

Business of the House

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Wascana, SK]

Mr. Speaker, when we return to the House on Monday, there will be exactly two weeks left before the normal adjournment for Christmas. I wonder if the government House leader could inform us in his usual comprehensive way as to what he expects to be dealing with in the first week of December. Also, because there is only that two week window after we come back, I wonder if he could offer any advice about the second week of December as well. Specifically, I wonder if he plans at any point in that two week period to call Bill C-21.

Firearms Registry

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Mr. Speaker, recently the Quebec National Assembly unanimously demanded that the firearms registry be maintained, and it condemned the federal government's Bill C-21.

How can the Minister of Public Safety ignore the demands of parents and victims of the Dawson College tragedy, ignore the Quebec National Assembly's unanimous appeal, and pursue its intention to remove hunting guns from the Canadian Firearms Registry? For all practical purposes, this would render the registry useless.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

If we are going to proceed that way, then perhaps at the meeting the following week we could have agenda items that deal with Bill C-12 and the report. I forgot the gun registry, Bill C-21. Perhaps we could have that on the agenda to discuss how we're going to proceed.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Criminal Code

[Stockwell Day, Conservative, Minister of Public Safety]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-21, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Firearms Act (non-registration of firearms that are neither prohibited nor restricted).

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)