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.

Criminal Code

[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.

[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—

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

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

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

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

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

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

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

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

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

[Garry Breitkreuz, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Jim Abbott, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage]

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

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

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

[Garry Breitkreuz, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

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

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

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

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

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

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

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

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

[Garry Breitkreuz, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

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

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

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

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

[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.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

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

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

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

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

Strike three.

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

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

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

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

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

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

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

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

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

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

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

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

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. member certainly meant the government of the right hon. member for LaSalle—Émard and did not intend to name him.

There is a short question with one minute for both the question and the answer. The hon. member for Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member has consistently tried to frame her remarks as trying to clear the air and represent a crystal clear, truthful expression about gun control. I would like to go back to what my colleague said, that we want to get rid of useless gun control and get effective gun control. She compares our system here with the United States. Since 1934, handguns in our country have been restricted, so that is an absolutely false premise. She mentions over 19,000 cancellations and she confuses licensing with permits.

How can she state that murders, suicides and accidents are down from long guns, when the Auditor General specifically has said that there are no specific goals of the registry, no measures of success and no way to check the effectiveness of the registry?

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there is nothing I can say to that member or those who do not agree with registration that will change their mind. I will state again that all guns start legal and not everyone who commits an offence with a firearm starts out as a criminal in life. What we have here is an effective message.

There is an honest debate going on here and I will not take the reading into my speech of some of his conclusions.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is strange that we should find ourselves ending the session with an issue that we have talked about here so much for so long, an issue that is very emotional.

There is a definite intensity among those opposed to long gun registration. I am not exactly sure why that is, but I have certainly met my share of people who are fascinated with guns and who think that they are pretty great even though they are not.

Guns are good at just one thing: killing. People use them to kill animals, among other things. Police officers, people who transport large sums of money and people whose lives may be in danger because they protect very valuable goods carry handguns not only to protect themselves, but also to injure or kill others.

Because this is a very emotional subject, people tend to go to extremes. I would not want to fall into that trap. Personally, I think that gun control is the best way to prevent crime. It is also a way to prevent the most dangerous crimes—those that can result in death or serious injury. I think that we can start with a number of premises with which we all agree. Firearms are dangerous. Only responsible people should be allowed to have them. To the extent possible, nobody wants bad guys to have guns, and nobody wants it to be easy for criminals to get them, but we know that is impossible. There will probably always be some criminals who can find a way around the controls we put in place.

We must not become discouraged because it is impossible to implement controls to ensure that criminals cannot get guns. We can still achieve results. We cannot abolish guns entirely, but we can reduce their numbers. That is why it makes sense to look elsewhere in the world to see if other countries and other legislators have gone through what we are going through.

I think that the majority of civilized countries whose homicide rates are similar to ours also have comparable incarceration rates. But there is one—our neighbour—that has an extremely high incarceration rate. It is six times higher than ours and three, four, five or even ten times higher than the incarceration rates of some Scandinavian countries. Does its high incarceration rate get results when it comes to homicides? Not at all. On the contrary, it has the highest homicide rate in the world. So putting more people in prison and leaving more guns in circulation is not the best way to go. We also tend to register dangerous objects that were not created for killing, but that can be a danger. We register vehicles, large and small. We even register snowmobiles and scooters.

I wondered why we register automobiles. Some think that it is so the government can collect fees. If the government really wanted to make money off drivers, the easiest and cheapest solution would be to increase the tax on gas. It is true that the government may use this as a source of funding. In Quebec, when people register vehicles, the government collects an insurance premium that compensates motor vehicle accident victims. However, I think we started registering vehicles because they can hurt people.

People who had injured someone and who had probably been negligent tended to leave the scene if the car could not be traced. Thus, it became mandatory to display licences on automobiles.

At present, we have a somewhat ridiculous situation where duck hunters object to registering their guns that kill, but they get into a boat that has a registration number. When they hunt in the winter, they travel by registered snowmobile, but they absolutely do not want to register their rifles. What is more dangerous, a snowmobile or a rifle? Do they own the boat or the rifle?

In addition, I sometimes believe that the Conservatives are not as mean as they would have us believe. They recognize that these guns are not used solely for sport, as long guns are. However, handguns—guns that can be used with only one hand—should continue to be registered. And they have been since 1934, which allows us to compare our experience with that of our neighbours to the south.

Everyone knows that weapons circulate very freely in the U.S. Yet, those who commit crimes with weapons are for the most part punished very severely. What is the result? The homicide rate in the United States is three times higher than in Canada.

People will say that it is criminals who kill and so forth. At some point, I would like to have the definition of a criminal. The Conservatives talk about them as though they are people who have chosen to lead a criminal life. But they are not the only ones who kill.

People kill for all sorts of reasons. They kill out of passion, revenge or jealousy. Very often individuals who do not really have a criminal past are found guilty of murder. Some have a criminal past and others do not. Easy access to weapons, the availability of weapons, is an important factor in the increase in the homicide rate. The best evidence is that your chance of being a murder victim is three times higher in the United States. Unfortunately, women are five times more likely to be victims of murder in the United States, probably because of marital strife.

When we look at it, these numbers are rather substantial. Incarceration rates are six times higher in the United States and homicide rates are three times higher. Ask any educated, well-informed American who is not a member of the National Rifle Association why their homicide rate is so much higher than ours and they will tell you that it is due to the fact that firearms are so easy to acquire in that country.

I did not bring the statistics with me today, because I did not have a great deal of warning. However, I have been a part of this debate for quite some time and I often hear things that, in my opinion, prove the opposite of what they claim.

For instance, regarding the very high homicide rates in the United States, the Conservatives pointed out that, in nicer neighbourhoods, in comparable neighbourhoods, such as the Seattle suburbs and the Vancouver suburbs, the homicide rate is more or less the same. I agree and I am not surprised, because people who have similar levels of education are likely to have a similar sense of responsibility. But if we look at the United States as a whole, if comparable neighbourhoods with similar education levels have the same homicide rate, that means that in other areas of the United States, the homicide rate must be extremely high. Firearms are easily accessible in those places, too.

Based on the U.S. experience, everyone thinks there should be gun control. T what barrel length should be start controlling guns and at what length should we stop? People involved in crime want to use guns, but then some of the people who have a fascination with guns—something I have never really understood—are not criminals. Nonetheless, generally speaking, criminals have a fascination with guns for a criminal purpose. This includes all kinds of criminals, crooks for example. Criminals who have a fascination with guns want to perpetrate violence. The easier it is to get guns, the sooner they will start to use them. Those are the general conclusions we draw from the difference between us and the Americans.

I have always wondered why people would buy a rifle and saw off the barrel. The reason is simple: they want to hide it. It is easier to carry a rifle that is inconspicuous when one wants to rob a bank. That is why they saw off the barrel. By doing so, they are cutting off the difference in price between a handgun and a rifle.

Criminals were sawing off shotguns—so much so that a specific offence was created for this—because they were having a hard time getting revolvers. Revolvers and handguns were registered. Accordingly, the sale of these weapons was better controlled. It cost more to get them on the black market. And since hunting rifles were not controlled, a person could buy one, saw off the barrel and have a weapon that could be concealed until it was needed in a bank robbery. I fear we may end up back in that situation.

Then people bring up another statistic, which was actually used this afternoon to prove two opposing notions. Fewer than 2% of firearms related homicides in Canada are committed with registered firearms, which proves that the system does not work. That sounds strange to me, because I would tend to believe that it proves that the system does work. It proves that people who register their weapons are responsible. The primary purpose of the gun control program is to ensure that only responsible people have access to firearms and to encourage them to keep these items safely locked up, as they have been taught to do, and never to give in to the temptation to sell them to someone who does not have the right to buy them.

In the context of the gun control system, registration may not eliminate homicide altogether, but it is a vital tool to lower the homicide rate significantly.

There are cases where registration is essential to facilitating the application of the law, such as when a judge issues an order to surrender firearms. It is important for police officers to know which firearms to seize, which is easier when they are registered. The Montreal police brotherhood, which came to one of our press conferences, told us about a striking case. A woman was afraid of her husband, who had a lot of guns. She knew that he had guns, but she did not know how many. The marriage was going badly, and there was some danger of violence erupting, so they went to a judge. The judge issued an order to seize the firearms. As I recall, there were over 280 of them. The police did not leave until they had found all 280 registered weapons. As you can see, registration was vital in that case.

There are other cases where registration is useful.

These judges' orders are issued in cases where spousal abuse may be a concern and where someone has suicidal tendencies. The judge may issue an order. That is why all suicide prevention organizations are asking that the gun registry be maintained. If an order can be obtained, the authorities know what weapon to look for because the weapon is registered.

Of the 480 or so murders committed last year, two were committed with registered weapons by Kimveer Gill, in the Dawson College tragedy. Some claimed that the firearm registration system did not work because the weapon used was registered. The Dawson College tragedy could perhaps have been prevented. Just after this incident, another tragedy was averted and it received a great deal of publicity. It was obvious from his website that this individual should never have owned weapons. That was not known at first.

Some individuals found a site in Hudson and believing him to be dangerous, reported the author. The police looked into the matter and realized that the individual had registered firearms in his possession. The police went to court, obtained an order and retrieved the weapons. That is why I am proposing a reporting site.

In the case of Kimveer Gill, had this reporting site been operational and if, by chance, someone had seen Gill's site, the police could have determined if he had registered weapons. Thus the police could have retrieved the weapons and a tragedy would have been prevented. The registration of weapons can be useful.

This can produce results. It seems to me that the American experience, when compared to that of Canada and other countries, clearly shows that the fewer weapons are in circulation, the fewer homicides take place. The safest country in the world is Japan, where there is absolute gun control. Only police officers and registered hunters have the right to purchase firearms. The homicide rate is even lower than that of Canada.

This debate shows that there is some emotion attached to firearms, and that disturbs me. The rational attitude is obvious. People do not want the government to register things, but my goodness, so many things are registered. Cars, boats, bicycles, dogs and cats are all registered. What is so wrong about registering something that can kill?

Firearm registration is important because we do not want firearms to easily find their way into the hands of irresponsible people. Currently, when a person sells or gives a registered firearm to someone else, they must go to the registry office. We take care of our firearms and ensure that they are always under control.

I know that some people want to keep the provision that prohibits selling a firearm to someone without a permit. However, this is not verified. It can also happen through carelessness.

So this leaves the door open to organized crime. If a group member has a permit, he can purchase unregistered firearms and then supply his group. I will remind the House that there are no savings. What was expensive was the computer system.

We are keeping this computer system since the Conservatives want to keep it for handguns. A computer system that would register 30%, 40% or probably even 100% more transactions would be pretty much the same computer system. There are no savings, obviously. There was an amnesty, but no savings. This is why I think we should keep the gun registry.

[Garry Breitkreuz, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Mr. Speaker, a lot of statistics were cited and I wish I had time to go over each one.

The member made quite a point about police confiscating or getting a court order to remove 180 firearms from a residence. A key thing that the Liberals do, the Bloc does and some of the NDP members do is confuse registration and licensing. What we need and what the police would like is to have more resources to deal with this, but there is a difference between laying a piece of paper beside every gun in the country, which is gun registration, which is what we are dealing with in this legislation, and the licensing of every firearms owner.

The courts have made over 200,000 prohibition orders in this country but they are never enforced. Why? Because the police do not have the resources at this point to do it.

If the member were in government, which he is not, he would have to make the decision on the best way to spend our money: do we put $1 billion into a paper pushing exercise that does not affect the criminal, or do we put it into enforcing the laws of this country, such as prohibition orders? Why do we not have more police to check the people who are not supposed to own firearms? That to me seems logical.

I want to quote what a former provincial Liberal candidate had to say. By the way, Brian Ford was the Ottawa Police chief and he was upset. This is from the Ottawa Sun of May 17, 2006:

Ottawa's former top cop says he supported the gun registry because he didn't know the Liberals were lying to him. "I was assured by government -- it's on budget"—

The budget was $2 million and it has gone 500 times over budget. He publicly supported the registry as chairman of a Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police committee. He said, “They were lying to me. It bothers me. I was telling people what I believed was the truth”.

That is what we need to have come out. We do not need all this rhetoric, theorizing and explanation about how it might work.

I want to refute something else the member said, that gun control is working in some countries. England went to very strict gun controls recently to the point where it banned all handguns. Gun crime has increased. One cannot simply implement these laws and say that passing the law is going to work. We have effective laws in this country. People are not allowed to carry handguns. Let us start putting police on the street to—

[The Deputy Speaker, Bill Blaikie]

Order. The hon. member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin.

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

Mr. Speaker, we have to talk about distinct societies because I assure you that in Quebec, when a judge issues an order for someone to turn over their guns, someone makes sure it happens. The police officer in charge of the investigation ensures that the guns are turned over to him and, generally speaking, he checked beforehand in the gun registry whether the person owned rifles or handguns. That is why representatives of the Fraternité des policiers et policières de Montréal came to see us. They gave us the example of a case where a woman did not know how many guns her husband owned. The police checked the information in the registry, saw how many guns were registered, went to the individual's home and did not leave until they found all his guns.

I practised criminal law for years and I can assure you that when judges issue a condition on bail for firearms to be turned over, they talk to the police to find out how this order will be applied. Furthermore, the judges give a deadline and ask the police to file a report, at least to the crown prosecutor.

In my opinion—and you will surely agree—this is a very bad reason to amend legislation that can provide good results. It does not provide good results because, in some provinces, police officers do not have the means to see the work through.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I have a few questions that I would like to ask the member with regard to the support of police forces in Canada, and especially in Quebec, for the firearms registration system.

The member for Peterborough stated that he believes many police forces in western Canada do not support the system. I know for a fact that a Montrealer, Tony Cannavino, President of the Canadian Police Association, has indicated that his association supports registration. During his speech, the member forgot to mention Quebec support for firearms registration. Are there particular organizations that support this system or a system to prevent gun crimes in Quebec?

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for the question. He is right, I should have addressed this.

There is more or less unanimous consent in the sector. Of course, there are some exceptions, and one member mentioned them earlier. But, on the face of it, more than 95% of representatives from police forces are in favour of the registry, including everyone from the chiefs of police to simple constables. Tony Cannavino, president of the Canadian Police Association, wants to see the registry maintained.

Not only is there nearly unanimous consent among police officers, police forces and provincial ministers—which is important because criminal law is enforced at the provincial level—but there is also unanimous consent among people who take care of the victims, people who work on suicide prevention and among other care givers. Psychiatrists also tell us how important it can be.

Generally speaking, those who deal with the problems created by firearms agree almost unanimously that control is a positive thing and that it must be maintained.

[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.

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

Mr. Speaker, I think that is one of the positive effects of registration. When people register something, they feel responsible for it. They are more likely to follow the instructions they are given during their courses: keep guns locked up and keep ammunition in a separate location. Before letting their children use the gun or enrolling them in a course, registered gun owners will take precautions and so on. They will ensure that the firearm registered in their name is always in a safe place. They will take care of their firearm just as they take care of their car. They will not let other people use it. And when the time comes to get rid of the gun, people will transfer the registration so that they are no longer responsible for the it.

The people here are elected representatives, so they must be accountable. They do not need this kind of system to make them accountable. However, we have to think of people elsewhere, in general. They will take care of a registered item. They will not abandon it. They will not get rid of it without following the right process.

The government could easily improve the system so that it costs less. It could get gunsmiths involved. There are not very many of them in Canada, perhaps a few hundred at most. They know firearms. They could register their guns so that there would be fewer errors. They could even do it for free. It is not very complicated. They can describe the firearm. A buyer would have to go to the gunsmith, who would register the firearm under the new owner's name. The new owner might even turn out to be a hunting client, so it would be advantageous, and the firearm would be—

[The Deputy Speaker, Bill Blaikie]

Order, please. Resuming debate, the hon. member for Windsor—Tecumseh.

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

Mr. Speaker, I must admit that I am getting some encouragement from the Conservative Party member to make a good speech, but I think the member's definition of a good speech on this topic would be substantially different from my definition of a good speech on this topic.

I want to begin by acknowledging the passion that this issue has raised in this country, including yourself, Mr. Speaker, on a number of occasions. To some significant degree, it is unfortunate that this issue is at times so clouded by passion rather than by reason and fact.

To a significant degree, members of the Liberal administration need to take a good deal of responsibility for this because, quite frankly, of their mismanagement of the long gun registry in particular, and the manner in which they dealt with the registration of firearms in this country.

It is important that we look at the history of the registration of guns. If we go back, even at the turn of the century there was some requirement if people were carrying a gun to register it. However, the real registration system began in 1934 for, using various terminology, but what we would now refer to as restricted weapons as opposed to prohibited, those weapons that one could legally own and did not need to register, which, from 1934 on, were generally handguns.

The real controversy arose, and I say that objectively in terms of the history of the registration of guns in this country, after the massacre at the École Polytechnique in Quebec when we moved to require the registration of long guns. That was when the real passion arose in the country. To a significant degree, that anger against the long gun registry was generated by, in some cases, gross mismanagement in the system and the cost that went along with that system.

It is quite clear that we need to look at the facts. I do not want to be overly critical of the people who are opposed to the long gun registry because there are some of those within my own caucus. I want to acknowledge, perhaps at this point, that if this bill ever gets to a vote, although I have some doubts about that with the current administration, our party has decided, because of some long-standing opposition from some of our members and their constituents, that in our party this will be a free vote, not a whipped vote.

Those of us who are opposed to this bill and in support of the long gun registry will stand in this House and vote against this bill and vote in favour of retaining the registry. Those within my caucus who are opposed to this registry and in favour of this legislation will stand and vote accordingly. That decision has already been made and taken some time ago.

I am happy to say that a substantial majority of my caucus is opposed to the bill and in favour of maintaining the long gun registry. I want to be very clear about that because of the history that we are prepared to take that position because we do believe the long gun registry does have some validity in reducing injury as a result of the use of long gun weapons in this country and in reducing certain types of crimes.

Having said that, we are very clear that this needs to be managed well, whether it is a Liberal administration or the current Conservative administration. There are some problems with the system and Ms. Fraser, our Auditor General, made that very clear in her report in 2006.

In spite of the fact that the government has moved to transfer the registry to the RCMP, I am very concerned that it has not looked at some of the significant improvements that the registry requires. I say that not just with regard to the long gun registry, but with regard to the handgun registry as well. Some significant improvements are required and are necessary and we are capable of doing them but we are not seeing that from the government. Its approach has been to simply dismantle the long gun registry.

I will be critical again, although I do not want to be overly passionate about this, but I am angry at the government for the position it has taken. This bill was tabled in this House exactly one year ago today, on June 19, 2006. Since that time, the government has had the opportunity to bring the bill forward for debate and for votes. I would estimate roughly 100 days and maybe more than that. It has not done so and I think that is to its discredit for not having moved on this earlier. The debate is going on in the country, the passion is still there and we need to deal with it.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bill Blaikie]

I am sorry to interrupt the hon. member for Windsor—Tecumseh but it being 5:30 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's order paper.

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.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bill Blaikie]

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

[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.

[Stockwell Day, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I believe that if you were to check with members you would find unanimous consent for me to be allowed to enter into the speaking order at this time. I had to attend to a security matter previously and I believe you would find that to be true.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bill Blaikie]

The hon. Minister of Public Safety is seeking the unanimous consent of the House to speak. As the mover of the motion he is deemed to have already spoken but he was not able to speak. Is there unanimous consent?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[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.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, after listening to the Minister of Public Safety and his selective quotations, I had to rise.

First, the minister knows that the members on this side in the official opposition support mandatory minimums for gun related crimes because the research shows they work. That is why, before Parliament dissolved in the last session, our Liberal government introduced legislation to increase the mandatory minimums for gun related crimes.

When the minister speaks of the 5,000 hits to the gun registry per day and argues that it is all tied in with CPIC, he knows full well that if law enforcement officers are accessing the CPIC, they have an option of whether to go into the gun registry database. If they go into the gun registry database 5,000 times a day, they should know whether it is useful information or not. If they sit in their cars, investigate crimes and take the time to access the gun registry, the police officers know their business and have taken the time to do that. Although it is tied in with CPIC, the 5,000 hits are on the gun registry per day.

Second, the minister quoted a selection of police officers who do not support the gun registry. How about the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police and the Canadian Professional Police Association? Those are rank and file police officers. They support it.

[Stockwell Day, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I was trying to note everything the member was saying.

He quite rightly said that when police officers consult the CPIC system, they are not doing that primarily to consult the gun registry. They are using it for other reasons. All I am saying is that it is really not a totally truthful argument to say that 5,000 times a day police officers consult the CPIC system to get into the gun registry. They do not. The vast majority of the hits on the CPIC system are for other things. It just shows there is a link into the long gun registry.

It may be a minor point, but people strike fear in the hearts of Canadians by saying that 5,000 times a day police officers are looking at the gun registry. They are not. It is possibly a handful of times a day, but not 5,000 times a day, so it is a correction.

To say I selectively quoted police officers, I quoted representatives of vast associations. I would suggest for the member, if he did a poll of the associations that he quoted, he would find that the head of those associations had a certain point of view and the rank and file might see that drastically differently.

All I am saying is there is a vast difference of opinion among police officers on this point and they should not quote one or two officers as that being the monolithic position of all police officers. Most rank and file police officers do not support the hundreds of millions of dollars going into the long gun registry.

[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, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the fact is it was an impossible task to register the millions upon millions of long guns in the hands of farmers, hunters and sport shooters. Guns have been passed on from generation to generation. Some do not even have the serial numbers on them.

Because the member has asked, it is only fair that I use the quote from the Auditor General when she looked at that. She said, “The quality of the information is doubtful”. This is not very reassuring to a police officer pulling up to a home and thinking that he or she is going to be able to get exact, precise information about a certain type of long gun or not. However, what a police officer can know is that an individual has a licence to possess firearms. We can have this information without spending $1 billion trying to register every type of firearm. That is the disconcerting part.

I have quoted a police officer who says that the officers cannot trust the data. What they trust is their training and they approach every situation as if there is a firearm present.

[Susan Kadis, Liberal, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, why is the minister continually misleading Canadians, telling them that licensing is adequate when that will not register each gun? Police will not have that prior information, when approaching a potential crime scene, to know whether there are five, ten, twenty or forty long guns. Why is the minister continuing to put forth the notion to Canadians, which I believe is completely erroneous and incorrect, that they will be just as safe without registering every long gun?

[Stockwell Day, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Mr. Speaker, in the debate, even from the previous member who asked me a question related to quotations from various officers, I at no time suggested that he or anyone else was deliberately misleading people in this debate. He shared some quotes. I shared some others. Injecting this fact that anybody would deliberately try to mislead people when it comes to the use of firearms is detrimental to the debate.

I quoted the numbers, and I will quote them again. In 1998, at the time when this unfortunate journey began of trying the impossible task of registering millions upon millions of long guns, there were 51 deaths as a result of long guns. The year the long gun registry was to be put in place officially, that had dropped to 32, without the long gun registry. Then two years after the long gun registry was officially in place, from 2003 to 2005, deaths actually went up.

It would be specious of my to say the long gun registry caused those deaths. I do not think it did, but it certainly did not reduce crime. The way to reduce crime is taking valuable and precious resources, getting more money on the streets, getting more police officers on the streets going after gun smuggling and keeping youth out of gang activity. When that is put into place, we know one thing, that approach works. The Liberal attempt to register every long gun did not work.

[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?

[Stockwell Day, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot comment on intent or why people see the truth in different ways, if I can be as diplomatic as possible.

The fact of the matter is our justice minister tabled a bill which would require that somebody who has committed multiple offences with firearms should go to jail and there should be a mandatory jail term. The simple fact of the matter is, and the record can be checked, the majority of Liberals voted against that.

We think someone who has committed multiple offences with firearms should be going to jail. The Liberals do not. That is just a matter of fact.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think the introduction of this bill is a sad day for Canada.

We know why the Conservative government is introducing the bill. The Conservatives know it has no chance of being passed, but they are trying to deliver on a promise that they made, which is fair enough.

However, they know that the gun registry is supported by Canadians, maybe not in their political constituencies generally but by Canadians generally, who overwhelmingly support not only the handgun registry but the long gun registry, and I certainly do as well.

I listened with interest to the minister's comments. He quoted a member of a gang who said that the gun registry has not worked at all with respect to the acquisition of handguns. That might be true; I am not sure. However, by his own logic, then, he would be banning or dismembering the handgun registry, which does not make any sense at all.

We also know that the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, not a handful of police chiefs, voted on this particular matter and it supports the handgun registry and the long gun registry. The Canadian Professional Police Association, the association that represents the rank and file police officers across this country, voted and supports the gun registry.

So, for the minister to argue that there are one or two police officers across Canada who support this is nonsensical and absurd.

We have heard the figure of $1 billion to build the gun registry. It did cost a lot of money to build the gun registry. In fact, it cost too much to build the gun registry. That was as a result of a number of problems, organizational problems, policy influx problems, a whole host of systems development problems that emerged, which our Liberal government restructured and fixed, but at that point in time, the costs had been incurred.

However, I would remind members in this House, for those who have worked in the private sector, systems development budget overruns are not unique to the Government of Canada, believe me. In my experience in the private sector, I have seen many large systems development projects run way over budget. Does that justify it? Of course not.

However, there is another reality. There is a concept in economics and business called “sunk cost”. Sunk cost means if it cost that much, it may have cost more than it should have, but the money has been spent.

So now we are faced with a house, let us say, that costs more than it should have. Does that mean we burn it down? The question really at that point in time is: What is that house providing in terms of benefits and what is it costing?

The reality is that operating the gun registry today is costing in the vicinity of $15 million a year, which is a very manageable cost for the benefit that it delivers.

I come back to the issue that if 5,000 police officers and law enforcement officers access the gun registry daily, which is the case, they might do it through the window of CPIC but these are the actual hits on the gun registry itself.

I do not know how the members opposite, who have a respect for law enforcement officers, I think they do because they seem to present themselves that way, would ignore the support of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police and the Canadian Professional Police Association, and ignore the fact that 5,000 times a day law enforcement officers across this country access the gun registry, and that is a fact.

The other fact that I think the minister conveniently ignores, or in fact I think he misstated, perhaps he had not had the right information when he made his remarks, is that all forms of gun violence are down in Canada. While other types of murders have increased, murders with guns have declined, and I think that is partly the result of the gun registry. The mistake that is often made is to say that the gun registry is a panacea for crime, to deal with criminality.

Of course one cannot look at it that way. One has to look at the gun registry as a tool that is used by law enforcement officers. I am told it is very useful to them. I am told this on very good authority that it is very useful, especially for domestic violence calls when they want to know how many guns are registered in a home.

We all realize that police officers are not naïve people and if there are not guns registered they do not automatically assume that there may not be guns there. Unfortunately, there are some Canadians who have not registered their guns.

On that point it is only about 10%. We believe that 90% of Canadians have registered their guns, in contrast to the statistics that were quoted earlier. The police do know if the guns are registered and when they are going to a home where there is domestic violence they have to be very mindful of that. It is a useful tool for the police.

In fact, most countries in the world licence guns and register guns. Of course the government would be totally irresponsible if it eliminated gun licensing because that is something that is very valuable and results in guns being denied to many people who should not have guns.

Since the gun registry was put in place there have been approximately 16,000 firearms licences that have been refused or revoked.

Something else that the members opposite do not highlight or bring forward in a debate is that the Canadian firearms registry provides many affidavits that are used in the prosecution of firearms related crime. In fact, more than 5,000 of these affidavits have been used. This is a tool that is used by Crown prosecutors to convict people who are charged with gun related crimes.

For the member to say that people on this side do not support enforcement and conviction of criminals with firearms, this tells it right there. These affidavits are useful in convicting and putting people in jail.

The minister talked about how long guns are used. He used the expression that they were used by squirrel hunters and duck hunters. It sounds interesting, but the reality is that long guns are used in equal amounts in contrast to handguns for violent crimes.

In fact, if we look at the police officer deaths from firearms, I have a list and the number of police officer deaths from long guns is about the equivalent to the police officer deaths with handguns from 1996 to 2006. Long guns are used to commit murder and also by people to commit suicide.

The other aspect is to try to think of the long gun registry and the handgun registry as separate and distinct. I would like to read into the record from the Supreme Court of Canada. It said:

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

That has to do with the linkage especially between licensing and registration, the point that my colleague made earlier, that the two go hand in hand. There has to be both registration and licensing to make the system work and for it to be an effective tool for law enforcement.

We also know that if we look at the statistics and this was in 1995 I believe, the trend is very much the same. If we look at the percentage of firearms that are recovered at crime scenes, something in the vicinity of 47% are rifles and shotguns. Handguns comprise about 22%. So, to ignore long guns, we do at our peril.

These are rifles and shotguns. If these guns are not registered I shudder to think how the criminal world will adapt to that new reality and start sawing off more shotguns and using rifles indiscriminately to commit more crimes.

The part that I find particularly amazing is the fact that we have no difficulty licensing a car. In some areas we have no difficulty licensing pets. We do not have any problem with that but when it comes to registering a firearm, a lethal weapon, then some people get very upset and I am not quite sure why.

Gun ownership is a huge responsibility. It is a lethal weapon. We as Canadians have the right to know who owns the guns, who is licensed to own a gun, and are they responsible gun users.

There are crimes in the area that I represent, Etobicoke North. There is a sad history of gun related crime, drugs and gangs. Therefore, the argument often comes up that the guns that are used in those crimes, are all those guns registered? That is a fallacious argument. It does not have any merit whatsoever. It is like the equivalent of arguing that because we have police there should be no crime.

Of course we cannot eradicate criminality. We cannot eradicate gun related crime, but to deny police authorities a useful tool that they themselves are saying is a useful tool, and the capital costs have been managed away, at $15 million a year, if it saves one life it is worth keeping in place.

As I said earlier, the notion that the guns are not licensed or registered flies in the face of the data that everyone knows: some 90% of the owners are licensed and 90% of guns are registered.

I think we have to look at the gun registry as part of an overall scheme of dealing with criminality. In my riding of Etobicoke North we have taken advantage of the national crime prevention program to launch a number of crime prevention initiatives in Etobicoke North.

This program was introduced by our Liberal government. I am told that the program, like so many other programs that the Liberal government brought in, is being re-examined, repackaged, relabelled and rebranded. In fact, I am told the crime prevention program might be focused more on gun and gang related crime which frankly in my riding of Etobicoke North would not be a bad thing.

However, before we start changing the national crime prevention program, we should look at it very carefully because it has been quite useful in my riding, getting young people into activities other than drugs, gangs and violence. Has it eliminated drugs, gangs and violence in Etobicoke North? No, it has not, but to give up on effective tools like that, to give up on the gun registry, is a bogus argument and certainly something that I will not support. We know that most members of the House will not support the bill. It is sort of a masquerade going on in the House as the Conservative Party knows.

The idea is that we have to have a holistic approach. We have to look at crime prevention. We have to look at enforcement. We need more visible policing. In fact, I am very pleased that in Etobicoke North the police have taken action. They have used some of the tools that our Liberal government brought in, the anti-gang legislation, to arrest a whole range of people who are involved in drugs, gangs and violence.

It was our party, when we were in government, that introduced increases to mandatory minimums for gun related crimes. Notwithstanding what the minister said, and I know that he has tabled new legislation. This party will generally support any legislation that is reasonable. However, the reality is that young people do come out of prison, they have to be integrated back into society, and the idea that we can just lock them up and throw away the key just does not work.

We on this side support mandatory minimums and support increases in mandatory minimums for gun related crimes. In fact, that was the legislation that we tabled before the last election.

It was our party as well in the 2006 election that argued for a complete ban on handguns. The former prime minister, the member for LaSalle—Émard, came to my riding of Etobicoke North and we announced a complete ban on handguns which I think would have been useful.

Would it have solved the problem of gun related crime? How could anyone be so naïve, yet that is the argument we hear. It is the same argument, as I said, that there is no point in hiring police officers because there is still going to be crime. It is a totally bogus argument. I think that banning handguns would have been useful.

The minister said earlier that there is an effective ban on handguns today. Well, that is not the case because we know that many of the handguns that are used in crime in Toronto have been traced back to collectors.

[An hon. member]

That is false.

[An hon. member]

What a bunch of hooey.

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Order. If hon. members would like to ask the member for Etobicoke North a question or ask for clarification, they can do so when he has finished his speech, but for now we will let him continue with his remarks.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am surprised that the members opposite do not know this, but Toronto Chief of Police Bill Blair pointed this out very directly a couple of years ago when the policy came across handguns that had been stolen from collectors. In fact, they would go into their homes, they would find out where the guns are collected. The gun collectors, I am sure, are properly motivated. They want to own and collect guns. They probably secure them very well. They are all registered; they are all licensed, but these people find out where the handguns are and they go in with trucks and dynamite and they rob them. These handguns are used in murders in the city of Toronto.

By banning handguns completely, unfortunately we would affect legitimate collectors, but I think it is needed because these handguns are getting into the hands of criminals through robberies.

The other part of it is that we all know that 50% of the handguns that are used in crimes in Toronto come from the United States. That is why our government set up quite an elaborate system with the integrated border enforcement teams that involve law enforcement officers in Canada and the United States. They work on cross-border issues. They try to identify firearms and drugs that might be coming into Canada at an early stage. They use intelligence based policing. Those initiatives are paying off.

To actually go ahead like the Conservative government is doing to arm the border guards at a cost of $1 billion is such a draconian waste of money. It does not even come close and pales in significance to the gun registry in the cost and misuse of taxpayers' money. We know from evidence that we heard that arming the guards at the border will not act as a deterrent. We heard this from the RCMP themselves.

If there is someone sitting in Chicago thinking of running guns or drugs up to Canada, do members think that person is actually going to sit in a little room and worry about the border guards being armed in Canada, that the person had better be careful? Come on. Let us be realistic. Of course it will not be a deterrent.

In addition, the president of the Canada Border Services Agency told us at committee, quite rightly, that the protocol will be for the border officers not to use their firearms. That is a very appropriate protocol because we do not want border guards shooting up people at our borders where there are people waiting in line and a lot of innocent people standing around.

This is a total waste of money. I know it is the American way of doing things and that is what has intrigued the government opposite to move in this direction, but it is a total waste of taxpayers' money. That money could be much better used to fight crime, to hire police officers, to build up our integrated border enforcement teams and to put more money into crime prevention programs. That is what the money should be used for.

Certainly I will not be supporting this bill. No one in the House, apart from the Conservatives, will be supporting this bill and for very good reason. The gun registry is a useful tool for police. They have told Canadians that time and again. Canadians support the gun registry. They support the handgun registry and they support the long gun registry. I will be voting against this bill.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is amazing that the member for Etobicoke North was able to stand through that entire spin. He must have been dizzy from spinning his message the way he did. It is unbelievable that he could stand in this House and make some of the accusations that he made.

There is no question that we are all concerned about the security of our citizens and that we want to have safe and wholesome communities, but the long gun registry has unfairly penalized rural Canadians. People from urban centres do not understand rural lifestyle. They do not understand that farmers and hunters use their firearms as tools. The Métis community in my riding is seriously disadvantaged in hunting for food because of the long gun registry.

I am a farmer and I can tell the House that it is important to have a firearm handy, properly stored of course and kept safely away from children. A firearm is needed in case of predators and in case an animal needs to be disposed of humanely. It is really unfortunate that people in urban centres do not understand that issue.

The member was throwing all sorts of numbers and figures around, but can he actually show me one incident where the firearms registry has actually prevented a crime? He talked about the gun registry. Handguns are a problem in Toronto. We understand that. We have had mandatory registration of handguns going back over 70 years. Why are handgun crimes still being committed in our urban centres?

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Selkirk—Interlake misses the point completely.

The reality is that we would be naïve in the extreme to believe that because of a gun registry we would eliminate gun crime in Canada. That is what the member is proposing. That is absurd.

The reality is that police officers across Canada are telling us that it is an important tool. Who is the member for Selkirk—Interlake to say that he knows their work better than the police do? If they are accessing the gun registry 5,000 times a day, surely it is of some value to them.

[Rob Anders, Conservative, Calgary West, AB]

Mr. Accountant.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Is the member saying that police officers sit around at Tim Hortons and key in to the gun registry just for fun?

[Betty Hinton, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

I don't go to Tim Hortons either.

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

He is terrible.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Is that what the member is saying? Police officers access the gun registry 5,000 times a day--

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Order. There seems to be several members asking questions all at the same time, but we will do this one at a time and hopefully everybody will get a chance to ask their question.

The hon. member for Brant.

[Lloyd St. Amand, Liberal, Brant, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member opposite in his question asked about understanding and his perception was that my colleague the member for Etobicoke North lacked understanding on the issue. In my view the member for Etobicoke North certainly understands the issue.

What I do not understand is the logic, if it exists, or the rationale in the minds of gun owners regarding registering their guns. As I understand it, they have no difficulty becoming licensed operators of vehicles. They have no difficulty with the principle of registering however many vehicles they may own. These same individuals have no difficulty becoming licensed gun owners. But the logic ends there. They have difficulty seeing the wisdom of having each gun registered. I am wondering if there is in fact any logic or rationale in their viewpoint?

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Brant has raised a very good point.

We know the politics of this issue. We know that when Conservative members go to town hall meetings in rural Alberta people do not cheer for the retention of the gun registry. Those members have become mesmerized by their own spin. They actually believe that the gun registry is not needed. They actually believe it now because they have been to so many town hall meetings where the people have said that they do not want the gun registry and the Conservatives have developed this veneer of getting rid of it. They know the facts are completely different.

I had the great pleasure, distinction and honour to serve as the parliamentary secretary to the minister of public safety in the last Parliament. I happen to be apprised of the facts, and the facts are as I have recited them. I know when the members opposite go to their town hall meetings they do not hear these facts. They should get real about this issue.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I am certainly glad to get a chance to ask a question, but I think I will have a chance to speak later on, so I do not want to take away all my thunder.

It was an interesting comment that the hon. member made about the 16,000 licences that were not issued. Is the hon. member confused between certificates for the possession of specific firearms and the licences that will remain as part of the system? Which one of those was he referring to when he said “16,000 licences”? The ability for police to turn down licences will remain after the bill passes.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will apologize for the member in his place, because he obviously was not listening to what I was saying. I was trying to make the point by congratulating the government for at the very least keeping the licensing system in place. It was the licensing system that has revoked or not issued 16,000-odd licences to people who should not have firearms. I was trying to be nice to the Conservatives opposite.

The next time the member should listen more attentively to what is being said on this side of the House. If the licensing system was disbanded, it would be an absolute, complete and utter tragedy in Canada.

[Brian Fitzpatrick, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I want to make a quick comment. The Liberals say they are the friends of the police and they identify with the police, but remember that it was the Liberal Party that said to add one person to a group of eight people on a judicial council to review appointments of judges would undermine our judicial system, as if one police officer added to seven other people in a group would be a terrible thing that would undermine our system.

More important, the Auditor General said in her last report, and the public accounts committee studied this matter, that misappropriation of money by the Liberal government in the last Parliament is insulting to this institution. They broke the Constitution of Canada, and those are the Auditor General's words, the Public Administration Act and they broke the Treasury Board rules to funnel tens of millions of dollars in many years consecutively on this matter.

The member prides himself in being involved in the private sector, knowing numbers and finances. After the fact, after the money was spent, after all these deals were done without any authorization, the Liberal government handled this matter by inserting something in the public accounts estimates, which was described as a miscellaneous unrecorded liability. A miscellaneous unrecorded liability. It was stuck in some miscellaneous parts of the estimates which nobody could pick up. I have not found a single accountant in this country who knows what a miscellaneous unrecorded liability is, other than calling it creative accounting, deceptive accounting.

Could the member please explain to the House what these three simple words mean?

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, if in doubt, when the Conservatives cannot defend their own policies, they come back to the sponsorship scandal. We have heard that, and we are tired of this government--

[Brian Fitzpatrick, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

This is the gun registry.

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

It is the gun registry.

[An hon. member]

He is talking about the gun registry, Roy.

[An hon. member]

Roy, there was more than one scandal. Get your scandals straight.

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Order. I am having a great deal of difficulty hearing the hon. member. I would appreciate it if he could finish in the short time that he has left without so much noise.

[An hon. member]

There were so many scandals they are blurring.

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Order. Let us let the hon. member for Etobicoke North finish. Do you have anything else to say on this particular question? The hon. member for Etobicoke North.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have not even begun. However, regarding the accounting treatment, I think the member will have to go back and read the public accounts more carefully, because he certainly will not be getting any answers from me on that.

I must say though with regard to putting a police officer on a judicial council to help in the choosing of judges, frankly I was not quite as upset about that. That is why I support mandatory minimums for gun related crime and our party supports mandatory minimums for gun related crime, because that has been shown to work. Having the police as part of the selection process, I do not have huge difficulties with that myself.

I saw a case the other day. There were two young people racing down Mount Pleasant Avenue in Toronto. They killed a taxi driver. They were going about 140 miles an hour. Those two young people were put on house arrest. I think that is tragic. I think judges should use their discretion better than they do.

[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.

[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, Oxford, ON]

Mr. Speaker, first, the hon. member starts with the wrong premise. We are not scrapping the registration of firearms. What we are scrapping, and it is not a total scrapping, but it is the elimination of the registry of long guns.

We have been registering firearms in this country since 1934. We are talking about handguns. Handguns are our primary concern.

The member's whole premise on this thing is about something that is out there that I do not know has any basis in fact. Simply put, this would actually strengthen gun control, while at the same time eliminating the need for the registry for non-restricted firearms.

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety.

I sit on the justice committee but I also represent my constituents as an MP in my riding. I have had concerns from my constituents from day one on this issue that it unfairly targets law-abiding citizens and that it creates an unbelievable burden on seniors. I am speaking specifically about many of the seniors in my riding.

I have real life examples of women in my riding, widows over 80 years old, who are concerned and lose sleep at night because of the requirement that their long gun be registered, the old shotgun that used to belong to their husband and is now theirs. Are these the people we should be targeting?

On the one hand, we have the program that the Liberals invented, a scheme that was supposed to cost $2 million and ended up costing over $1 billion, targeting 80-year-old women.

On the other hand, I sit on the justice committee and the Liberal members have opposed our government's legislation that would actually crack down on criminals. I thought that was the idea, not to go after law-abiding people but to go after criminals.

Does the member have any comment as to why Liberal members on the justice committee would oppose our Bill C-10 that targets criminals and yet they continue to go after grandmothers?

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I suppose the easiest answer is no, I would not understand why they would want to target senior citizens who have had guns in their homes for years and years and not strengthen the Criminal Code with respect to penalties for those who commit crime.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, a lot of research out there has shown that when it comes to gun related violence, of the OECD member countries, of which Canada is a member, no country has a higher incidence than the U.S.

I know there are many things we can learn from our American friends to the south but certainly the issue of the gun culture that they have there is not one we would like to emulate in this country.

Study after study will show that in countries where there is tough gun registration and gun laws there is--

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Order. I have to cut-off the hon. member there to allow the hon. parliamentary secretary a chance to respond.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have sat through this debate and I guess it is fair to say that members opposite have not had direct involvement in the field.

I was involved in policing for 30 years. I have a son, a son-in-law and a nephew in policing. If I thought that the gun registry would save one life of a police officer, one of my family members, I would be the first to support it.

There is not a police officer who would trust the information in there when he or she makes a decision to approach a house. It is an ineffective system.

[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—

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Questions or comments? The hon. member for Miramichi.

[Charles Hubbard, Liberal, Miramichi, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the hon. member and probably have two questions for him.

First, in terms of our police in this country, is there any advantage to them to know, when they go to a home to arrest somebody or to deal with a domestic dispute, whether or not there are firearms at that location?

Second, I wonder if the hon. member could explain to the House what in fact this bill would do. We know that there are licences, in fact two types of licences: to acquire a firearm; and also to own one, to posses one. With that, is it the intention of the government to do away with the licensing of the owner, of the person who plans to acquire it?

Because in my experience, the major complaint in this country has been the need for a renewable licence. The average farmer or sportsman who has a rifle, or a long gun, probably only has to register that once in his lifetime and it is not an onerous problem to license a gun. However, to maintain a licence to own a gun over a period of time, there has been a fee involved. Does the hon. member and his government intend to do away with that five-year fee?

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

Mr. Speaker, the member first started out with: Is it not a good idea that police officers know if there are firearms at a residence and if a person has a licence to possess a firearm? It is yes to both those questions.

However, the important issue here is how the police officer is trained. A police officer is trained to approach every residence, when he or she receives a call, as if there were a firearm on the premise. It would be foolhardy, quite frankly, for the police officer to make any assumption otherwise.

I think it is very important that individuals be licensed to make sure that they know how to handle firearms and that they are the right kind of person; in other words, there is no criminality or mental condition that might preclude them from owning a firearm.

If the police officer approaching the residence has the name of a person and runs it, as I mentioned, in the CPIC system and it comes back that the individual is licensed to possess a firearm, it is reasonable to assume that there are firearms on the premises. Whether there is one or fifty is—

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Questions or comments? The hon. member for Tobique—Mactaquac.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad my colleague was able to articulate, much better than I have heard from the other side, the difference between licensing and registration. It just seems that the definition is a challenge for the other side of the House.

I recently conducted a survey in my riding. Of the 1,500 people who responded in my rural riding in New Brunswick, over 95% of the people did not see the value in the gun registry and want it gone. Further, police on the street have also indicated that this registration system really does nothing for them and it is not of any great value.

From a policing standpoint, I wonder if the hon. member has spoken with police officers in his riding and asked them whether this system provides value to them in their work.

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

Mr. Speaker, like the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety, I, too, am a former police officer and I, too, have a son who is currently a police officer.

If I thought for one minute that this registry, the long gun registry, the type of guns that families like mine for generations have enjoyed while they exercised, as far as I am concerned, their right in this country and their privilege to hunt and fish, would save a life, then I would be 110% for it.

My colleagues with whom I worked with previous to my retirement were police officers. I can say that they would have much preferred that $1 billion went toward better equipment and more officers than a registry that ran amok. Quite frankly, as I said, I would be 110% for this if I thought a long gun registry would save a life. It will not.

[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.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Mr. Speaker, a law is a good law only if it accomplishes what it sets out to do. If the gun registry would save lives, I do not think there is a police officer or a member of Parliament who would not say fine, let us do it, but quite frankly, it is the criminal misuse of illegal weapons that is the problem. These weapons are not, have not been and will not be registered, and they are the problem.

Why does the member opposite not recognize that? Why have she and her colleagues voted against every measure that has been taken in this House to protect the safety of citizens in regard to the use of illegal firearms?

[Susan Kadis, Liberal, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it was the Liberal government that brought in mandatory minimums for firearms. If the Conservative government took this seriously, it would dismantle the bill, but not the registry. It would take more seriously the words of the vast majority of police officers, not the minority, those words that the member says he takes seriously on so many other issues, but for some reason, selectively, not on the gun registry.

Conservative members have no credibility. On the one hand they say they want to strengthen the safety of Canadians, but on the other hand they want to dismantle the long gun portion of the gun registry. They cannot say one thing and do the other. It is inconsistent.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for her excellent comments today. Obviously she is very concerned about the safety of Canadians. That is really what should be at the heart of this debate.

The government has the intention of abandoning the gun registry in Canada and that is quite sad. I think it will be a disaster for safety and of course for issues of gun violence in our country.

Every indicator throughout the world, certainly in the OECD countries, has shown that the country that is the most violent of all is the United States, which has the weakest gun laws of any OECD member country.

A lot of members over there clap when people say to get rid of the gun registry. Quite frankly, I do not understand their love of guns. The passion they have for this gun culture is quite foreign me. Maybe I need to understand where they are coming from. Maybe that is the case. We need a dialogue.

However, that is a party that has zero members elected in the three largest cities in this country. It is the first time in the history of Canada that we have a government without a single elected member from Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver. It does nothing to reach out to those cities that have serious problems with guns in the streets.

It is baffling and quite mind-boggling as to why the government would not want to reach out to the cities and toughen the laws, not weaken the laws.

[Susan Kadis, Liberal, Thornhill, ON]

Yes, Mr. Speaker, that is exactly why I have been particularly disappointed and disturbed by the actions of the government. When one of its members had a petition which stated that 95% of his constituents did not support the gun registry staying intact, that clearly was not reflective of the vast majority of Canadians. It was a minority point of view. It clearly did not take into consideration the very serious situation that we have in our urban centres.

This is something that I will continue to speak out about. The fact of the matter is that there is no defence. There is no justification for changing and dismantling this portion of the gun registry. It is wrong in every sense. I am sure that we will defeat this. I am totally confident that we will defeat this, because it must be one of the worst pieces of legislation I have seen in the three years that I have been here.

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

Mr. Speaker, as the mother of an RCMP officer who is on the street tonight in his detachment, I can tell you that it would be a travesty for those police officers—

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. member for Kildonan—St. Paul would know to use the third person and not the second person when addressing—

[An hon. member]

She is telling you.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

Thank you.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As a member of Parliament and the mother of an RCMP officer who is on the streets tonight in his detachment, I talked to my son yesterday about this very thing. He and police officers on the street have told me that the gun registry needs to be shut down and that in regard to the cost overrun, the tally of over $1 billion, by the former government, those resources should be used for putting police resources on the street.

The long gun registry is only for the long guns that farmers, fishermen and everybody else use. As outlined in a study in 2005, out of 569 murders, two long guns were used. All the rest used were handguns. Handguns are already registered. Handguns are already licensed.

I think the member opposite and the Liberal members have lost a lot of credibility with police forces across Canada. Will she support this bill or not?

[Susan Kadis, Liberal, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in response to the hon. member, so are two killings okay? Is that okay? Does that justify killing the long gun portion of the registry? The government is satisfied with two killings? I am not getting the logic there whatsoever.

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

Mr. Speaker, for the hon. member for Thornhill, it was I who stood up a while ago and talked about the survey recently did in my riding. Yes, it was 95%. Maybe that is hard for the member for Thornhill to believe. People in the urban parts of the country, unfortunately, and it is not that they are not smart enough, have different issues than they have in rural Canada.

In my riding in this is a big problem. We have crime, but we do not have it to the same degree. We should not talk of duck hunters, farmers and whomever because there is a crime problem somewhere in the country.

The bottom line is there is a misunderstanding. There is life north, west and east of Highway 7. I know it is a common problem for that part of the world to recognize the rest of Canada. There are issues there. This is about trying to identify and prevent crimes, not just a knee-jerk reaction to a problem.

On that side of the House members say on the one hand that they want tougher crime bills, but their voting record tells the exact opposite. Why?

[Susan Kadis, Liberal, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, first, I hope all hon. members here are taking into consideration the greater good of all Canadians, not only in their riding. That needs to be said. We should not make it easier for people. We are asking for long guns to be registered. Is that too much to ask?

As far as the crime bills, we have supported some, those that made sense and could be effective and have proven effective. The government did not accept our amendments, which would have made them truly effective. Instead we have a government going for show, no go.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the research notes provided, and I do not have anything to table, say that the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police and the Canadian Professional Police Association both support the registry. Yet the member for Northumberland—Quinte West has said that in the training of police officers, they have to assume there is a gun. They always do that.

Maybe the member does not have an answer, I know I do not have an one, but if that is the case, why do these two associations support the registry and 5,000 references to the registry are made each and every day? There must be a reason.

[Susan Kadis, Liberal, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, because the government does not put as much emphasis on prevention as it should. It makes it more difficult, not easier. The reality is it should not give people the impression that licensing and registration are the same thing. We need both.

[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.

[Kevin Sorenson, Conservative, Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the chief government whip gave an excellent speech tonight. He talked about the myths and the facts. I want to tell a quick story.

This past weekend I had the opportunity to ask my daughter, who was celebrating her 15th birthday, what she wanted to do. She asked if we could go to the local rodeo. It makes a father awful proud when his child asks to go to a cultural event such as that.

That evening there was a 50/50 draw and a young man from Killam won it. He said to me, “I'll give you all of this money if you'll put it toward the fight against the firearms registry”. That shows the level and degree of passion for getting rid of this long gun registry. I told him that I could not take his money, but assured him that the government was taking some very specific measures to get rid of the long gun registry.

Some of the things we have talked about are investing in front line police officers, the $1 billion registry, mandatory minimum sentences and real measures that would help get the criminals off the street and fight crime.

Could the member, who has served the country and his riding so well over 13 or 14 years, elaborate on a few of the crime fighting measures we are putting in place, and how a long gun registry is simply not sufficient in the fight against crime and is a waste of Canadian taxpayer dollars?

[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.

[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, 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.

[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.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I want to very quickly reflect the views of my Yukon constituents who often have strong views. I have not heard much from them this year, but when it first came out they had very passionate views on this. There were a few in favour but many opposed and voiced it strongly.

I know Doug Craig gave eloquent dissertations on what the money could be more productively used for. Bill from Hot Springs Road was concerned about the imposition on his rights. Mr. Rogan, a gunsmith, has fought for years against the registry.

This is why I have spoken against the registry many times in meetings here in Ottawa. In Parliament I have voted against it unless it was on a confidence motion.

Also the first nations, many Yukon trappers, farmers, hunters and cabin dwellers consider it a part of their way of life. That is why I have consistently reflected these views in Parliament.

Does the member believe that the views of rural and first nations people are different from urban dwellers on this issue?

[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.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I remember in 1997 the Reform Party came in with a motion to repeal Bill C-68. I remember I voted to repeal Bill C-68 which is how I would vote again.

Why did the government wait until the end of June when the House is about to adjourn for the summer to bring the bill forward if it is that important? Why did the government not bring it forward last year to tell the people of the west that it supports them?

I remember that that same party, which was the Reform Party, the Alliance Party and now is the Conservative Party—not the progressive part as they took that away—but at that time they were bringing people to the Hill to lobby and to go after the Liberal government about the gun registry. The Conservatives have been in government now for a year and a half and the government brings in the bill when the House will be closing.

I would like to hear from the government, why if it is so important for the Conservatives they waited until now to bring the bill forward.

[Lynne Yelich, Conservative, Blackstrap, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I assume the member will support us and try to encourage other members to support the bill. It sounds like he is really for this bill.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Mr. Speaker, earlier this evening I heard the hon. member for Thornhill state that it was just a billion dollars or so and if that saved the life of one or two of our officers, the whole thing would be worth it.

As a former officer who has looked down the barrel of a gun I can assure members that that is an insult to the commitment, the integrity and the passion that these officers, men and women in uniform commit to this country.

This money, this billion dollars or so, would that not be better spent potentially to help in many ways, whether it is prevention, enforcement, deterrence and yet why has the Liberal opposition opposed every measure that we have taken in that vein?

[Lynne Yelich, Conservative, Blackstrap, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I think the answer is in what our public safety minister has done. He is putting more RCMP officers on the streets. Just imagine how much more we could do and how many deaths could have been prevented if we had invested in police officers or RCMP. The public safety minister has committed this to Canadians for their safety.

[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.

[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, certainly, the basis of my support in three elections was the failure of the previous Liberal government to understand the impact of the gun registry on hunters, trappers, subsistence users of wildlife across the country, whether they be aboriginal or non-aboriginal.

We could say why not just register them. It does not work like that. When people are part of that subsistence economy, they may borrow guns and use guns. It is a tradition and a lifestyle that has been upset and changed without careful attention to what it meant. I think that is the key and that is where the strong reaction comes from.

In the words of Charlie Snowshoe, an elder from Fort MacPherson who has run the game council there for many years, he is totally opposed to this. He said that it has taken the young people out of hunting. It is taking the tradition out of hunting and trapping. It is changing it and turning people away from a pastime which has been so valuable to them.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I would like the member to elaborate on how northerners feel differently.

I spoke strongly against the registry and explained how passionately many of my constituents feel about it, the northern trappers, hunters, fishermen and outfitters. They feel that it is a way of life. They do not consider a gun a weapon. They consider it a tool in their way of life.

They have learned from childhood that guns are there as part of their life. They use them safely and they see this as an unnecessary imposition and that this money could be spent to save some lives in the cities. From their perspective the money could be invested in health care or some other system that would have more effect on saving lives.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, the member is quite right. Everybody wants to stop accidents with guns, the kinds of things that happen without trained people, without safety as a paramount issue in the use of firearms.

I think that fits with the hunting and trapping tradition as well, where individuals go out in the bush by themselves with a gun and they have to survive. If by chance the gun does not work or the people run out of ammunition and they have to borrow some from someone else, that should not be a crime. There is that tradition. Interestingly enough, we have focused on gun control, but we--

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

Order. It is with regret I interrupt the hon. member for Western Arctic. I have been trying to give him signals. Resuming debate, the hon. member for Trinity—Spadina.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, “first mourn, then work for change”. That was the rallying cry 18 years ago and every year on December 6 tens of thousands of women and men all across this country say, “Yes, we will mourn, but we will work for change”.

In the Montreal massacre 18 years ago, an assault rifle was used. Every year, when we have the candlelight vigil, we make a commitment to ban violence and to reduce the gun culture.

An assault rifle is a long gun. It is a gun that is used to kill animals sometimes in rural Canada, but in a lot of other places, especially urban centres, assault rifles and long guns are used to kill people and a lot of those people are women.

I do not know if some members of Parliament were here 18 years ago, but for every year since, on December 6, we wear white ribbons. The white ribbons are from the families in Montreal who say they want to work for change. It is also a symbol, saying that we want to stop men's violence against women. I hope members of Parliament remember that moment.

We know that 88% of women killed with guns are killed with shotguns or rifles. We know that 50% of family homicides end in the suicide of the murderer, indicating that key to protecting women and children is licensing and screening, including the renewal.

Of the gun deaths in Canada, 80% are suicides, most by using rifles or shotguns that were readily available. Access to guns is the fifth highest risk factor in spousal homicide.

We have heard from different inquests in domestic violence that a lot of the women are killed because of the gun culture and because of passion, but also because of access to guns.

Perhaps, if more women were elected to the House of Commons, this debate would be somewhat different.

The long gun registry has been working. The gun registry is very mismanaged, but it is working. It is being used. Over two million gun owners are licensed and six million guns have been licensed. We now have police using this registration database 1,500 times per day and are reporting successful use of this tool in fighting an illegal gun trade.

It works. Why? We have seen statistics that say there were 525 fewer gun deaths, which include suicides, homicides and accidents in 2002 compared to 1989, the year I was just talking about. It is a 60% reduction. We are talking about 525 lives. We are talking about 40 fewer women per year being shot, compared to 15 years ago. Every year, 40 fewer women being shot. I want people to remember those lives.

There were 100 fewer murders every year with rifles and shotguns. Think of that number as we are debating this bill today. Think about those women. Think about those murders. In Quebec alone, there were 30 fewer gun related suicides each year among young people in 2000-01, a 50% drop from the average of 56 firearm suicides in this group in the nineties. Obviously, the gun registry is working. Yes, it is mismanaged, but does that mean we need to scrap it? No.

We need a better and improved system. We need better screening, tightening the screening, getting and requiring the gun clubs to provide information on individuals who are having problems, who may be slightly bordering on very dangerous behaviour. There should be at least two references and spousal notification when a spouse is getting a gun.

We definitely should be banning semi-automatic rifles. Because of the registry some who did not need their long guns gave them up because they had no use for them, which means that we are getting the guns out of places where people do not use them, so that there is less chance of accidents, less chance of guns being stolen.

The gun registry is like building a house. We have a foundation; the walls are in and the roof is in. Yes, there are some problems with it. Maybe it has a lousy coat of paint or ugly drapes, but we do not destroy the entire house. We have already spent a lot of money. For us to scrap it now would mean a gigantic waste of taxpayers' money that was already spent.

Sheila Fraser, the Auditor General, said in 2006 that there were problems in this registry. This bill was tabled on June 19, 2006, but nothing happened for an entire year. Why not talk to Canadians? That did not happen. It did not go to committee. If it is so important, why did it not go to committee? Why was there no debate?

Instead, the Conservative government decided to have an amnesty and said it would not charge any more. Each year that has happened $20 million is not being collected. The total for almost two years now is $40 million.

I heard tonight that perhaps we should take that money and invest it in young people, invest it in anti-crime initiatives. The Conservatives, during the election, said that they would provide $50 million in crime prevention programs. That did not happen, did it?

Even today in the House of Commons during question period we heard only $10 million being announced and we do not even know where we can find this $10 million because if we check the website for the National Crime Prevention Centre there are no clear guidelines. How do communities apply? I do not know.

The old program was mismanaged in terms of the anti-crime prevention programs, but we need to improve on that. Improve the gun registry, strengthen it, and manage it well. What we should not do is scrap it and have this bill passed because it would be very unfortunate. We know what the results would be: homicides, suicides, and accident rates would go up. Lives would be destroyed and most of those lives would belong to women.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened intently to what the hon. member had to say. She mentioned that the gun registry was like building a house. I suppose, but that house was about a thousand times over budget. The gun registry that was supposed to cost $2 million cost $2 billion. It is like starting out to build a house for $150,000 and accidentally going over budget and costing $150 million. Now we are thinking it might be a nice house except that it leaks and probably was built on a lousy foundation, so it is probably going to fall down, but let us keep spending money on it anyway because it might be a nice house some day.

That is garbage. The long gun registry does not work. The hon. member mentioned homicides, domestic assaults and so forth would go up. First of all, she cannot present any evidence in that regard. Second and more importantly, homicides happen by various means.

Would she propose that we start a parallel registry where perhaps we could ask chefs to register all their kitchen knives because as we know, stabbings kill people. So if we registered every knife and we knew where every knife was, we could probably put an end to stabbings because it is the same philosophy.

If we register every weapon imaginable, surely nobody could commit a crime. This whole philosophy is so flawed. Would she like to recommend to the House that we start a parallel registry to register kitchen knives?

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, two weeks ago I met with a mother whose son was shot and killed, not by a rifle but by a gun. If one were to talk with her about guns, she would say that guns, whether they be long guns or short guns, are bad.

In the old days, maybe in the 1950s, when kids got into fights they may have pulled knives on each other or fought with their hands but not many of them had guns. Today, even though the youth crime rate has gone down, we are seeing that the rate of kids using guns to shoot each other has gone up. We cannot compare knives to guns.

I will go back to the example I was using. If someone were to spend $150 million building a house, I cannot imagine that person would bulldoze it to the ground just because the roof was leaking. The person would spend a bit of money to repair the leaky roof. The member would not get a bulldozer and scrap the entire house. I cannot imagine anyone would do that to a house that is worth a bit of money.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for referencing the massacre that happened 18 years ago in Montreal, a very sad and tragic event. Violence against women is an almost daily event in our country. All of us as parliamentarians should speak up and voice our concerns about these horrendous and terrible crimes that are committed against women every day in our country and throughout the world.

I am obviously very concerned, coming from an urban city like Toronto, as she is, about violence and guns on our streets. I am certainly concerned about the constant use of guns.

I do not understand why there is this gun loving culture that exists with some members of the government. What is the importance of a gun? A gun cannot be compared to any other weapon. A gun has only one purpose and that is to kill. If the Conservatives can give me another rational reason or purpose for a gun--

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

It is with regret that I interrupt the hon. member. The hon. member for Trinity—Spadina has 30 seconds to respond.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I wish that the gun clubs, some of which are for profit, would have detailed screening and that the guns would be stored in the gun clubs rather than allowing people to take their guns home because many guns are stolen from residences, which is most unfortunate because many of the guns being used on the street are in fact stolen.

[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.

[Charles Hubbard, Liberal, Miramichi, NB]

Mr. Speaker, we have heard both sides of the issue this evening. I know the hon. member has certainly brought forward his own point of view and the point of view of his government. However, we know guns are not only associated with criminal activity causing deaths. We also have suicides and accidents.

Could the hon. member give us some statistics on the last 15 years of the changes, in terms of the number of deaths from firearms, from those three causes? Has there been a major reduction or not? Could he confirm that to the House?

[Kevin Sorenson, Conservative, Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, in my opinion I do not believe the registry has in one way helped solve crime. I do not think it has lowered the suicide rate. I think those who have chosen to end their lives will find a method to do it.

We have a long gun registry that costs $2 billion. I heard Liberals tonight say that if it only saves one life, that if it only saves a couple of lives. If we could take the billions of dollars for a failed gun registry and put it into places where we could see front line officers out on the street, if we could take that billions of dollars and make certain that there is more effective education to help fight crime, I think we would see crime lowered even more.

However, to take this idea that property of an individual is wrong, and not the person behind that property, the Liberals are going down the wrong road. They have already argued and talked about different violent, terrible events that have happened.

All I can say is we have had the long gun registry in place and it has not solved those crimes.

[Catherine Bell, NDP, Vancouver Island North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I heard a lot of the comments from my hon. colleagues tonight. I listened to my colleague for Trinity—Spadina talk about December 6 and how we got into this gun registry program in the first place. Every year on December 6, I too go out and honour the women who were murdered at École Polytechnique, and I remember them.

I also live in a rural riding. In my riding of Vancouver Island North, there are a lot of small communities and hunting, fishing and farming is a way of life. I come from a family where we had guns in our house. I have hunted myself. I have owned a gun, but not any more. I absolutely understand the changes in the bill and I will vote for them.

The hunters and people in my riding are concerned about the over expenditures in the gun registry over the many years, the millions of dollars that were wasted. They have asked me why the government has taken so long to bring it about. Why has it taken a year and a half to bring this out on the eve of the end of this session?

[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.

[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.

[Lui Temelkovski, Liberal, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I heard the hon. member for Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound talk about a number of issues in this bill.

First, what is somewhat of a surprise is the Conservatives cannot see that their image of being tough on crime in this bill will be very soft on crime. Second, maybe the member can respond to this. If he removes the m's for millions and the b's for billions, would he still have the registry or not?

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

Mr. Speaker, only the hon. member across the way and the rest of his crowd, cronies, as somebody said, who supported this gun law can answer the question about the billions. They should be ashamed of that. They deceived the Canadian public by saying it would cost $2 million, which was underestimated by $998 million and climbing. It blows me away that members can stand in the House—

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Code blue.

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

Could we have a little order, Mr. Speaker?

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

It is with pleasure that I ask all members to be attentive to the wisdom of their colleagues.

Just to let members know, I will, as best as I can, allow everyone who wants to speak a chance to ask a question, but we have to compress it.

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

It blows me away, Mr. Speaker, how some members can stand in their place and pretend, as they have, that they are tough on crime. Not very long ago they all stood over there and voted against some tough on crime issues. Yet they stand there and pretend. It would almost be laughable, if it were not such a serious issue.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a great pleasure to speak this late in the evening on this very important and critical issue.

Many times I get concerned by the rhetoric, especially on the slogans that are used: tough on crime; soft on crime. They are just slogans and add nothing to the real debate on crime and how to best manage this issue in our society.

Statistics show that tough gun laws and registration do in fact deal with reducing crime—

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

Earlier, when I had recognized the hon. member for Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, I asked the other members to be attentive. It seems that members on my right approved of this admonition. It is also good now that I recognize the hon. member for Davenport.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the question I was trying to pose to the hon. member as he spoke in the House was that these are just slogans. We are not adding to the debate.

Really, every statistic out there has shown that this particular registry does in fact save lives. Will the member not agree with those statistics?

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

Mr. Speaker, I know the hon. member very well. I had the pleasure of travelling with him on government business. He is a very smart individual.

I know it is not deliberate, but sometimes people in different parts of the country do not realize that things are different in other parts of the country. I need to point out, as I have with a number of members from his part of the world tonight, that there is life north of Highway 7.

For example, up our way we do not need sidewalks along our country roads, but they do in the city, so there are sidewalks in the cities. Up our way we do not have a very big crime problem, so we have a few officers to do the job. In the city there is a large crime problem, so they need to deal with it, but that does not mean they have to make the rest of the country suffer because of a problem in one area.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

Resuming debate. The hon. member for Kildonan—St. Paul has the floor for 20 minutes. However, only three of those minutes will be tonight.

[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--

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

It being 10:10 p.m., the House now stands adjourned until tomorrow at 2:00 p.m., pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).

(The House adjourned at 10:10 p.m.)