Bill C-19 (Historical)

Ending the Long-gun Registry Act

An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Firearms Act

This enactment amends the Criminal Code and the Firearms Act to remove the requirement to register firearms that are neither prohibited nor restricted. It also provides for the destruction of existing records, held in the Canadian Firearms Registry and under the control of chief firearms officers, that relate to the registration of such firearms.

Ending the Long-Gun Registry Act

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

Order, please. If I could tell the hon. member, his earpiece is beside the microphone and it is causing a lot of feedback.

The hon. member for Edmonton--St. Albert.

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

I apologize, Mr. Speaker, and I apologize to members of the House.

The registry represents legislators' and governments' overestimation of their ability to solve and prevent human frailties. There are some things that governments cannot do. Tragedies, such as the one at École Polytechnique, or the one a decade later at Dawson College, are those types of events that no amount of registration, law or legislative registry would necessarily prevent.

The long gun registry was founded on an incorrect premise. The premise is quite simple, and we have heard about it today from members on this side of the House: criminals would register their guns. We know that that is a faulty premise. They would not. These are individuals who are involved in gun violence and tragic circumstances, who flaunt society's norms. They flaunt society's values, and they certainly flaunt society's laws. They are not the type to register their firearms.

Licensing is of course quite different from registration. Nothing in Bill C-19, or its predecessor legislation, the private member's bill in the last Parliament that was sponsored by the member for Portage--Lisgar and almost passed, would affect the licensing mechanism. Licensing is important because it deals with the individual. It is the individual who is going to have ownership of that firearm, or the ammunition to use the firearm. That person is going to have to satisfy the authorities that he or she is competent and has taken the requisite firearms safety course. Criminal record checks are done. If they come back negative, then the individual is entitled to a licence. The licensing mechanism has value. The registration mechanism has no value.

I have heard members on the other side of the House frequently say we register vehicles and our dogs, but we are not going to register our firearms. What they ignore is a clear line of constitutional demarcation between the federal government's responsibility and the responsibility of the provinces with respect to property and civil rights. As we know, property and civil rights were specifically given to the provinces under the British North America Act and now the Constitution Act. Dog and cat licensing has been further delegated to the municipalities. The federal government can only have a registry if there is some valid criminal purpose. We do have registries. We have a sex offender registry. We have a DNA databank. These are registries that have a valid criminal purpose.

I submit to all members of the House that valid criminal purpose is absent in the long gun registry. There is no criminal purpose. Therefore, if a registry of long guns were to be maintained it would have to be maintained by the provinces under their provincial jurisdiction, under section 92 of British North American Act.

As some members know, I sit on the public safety committee. I sat on it in the last Parliament. We heard evidence from both sides of this debate. There are people who truly believe that this registry has merit. We heard from groups, police officers and experts on both sides of this debate. I submit that there is no evidence that this registry has ever prevented a single crime or that it has ever saved a single life. In fact, the evidence is quite the opposite. Proponents of the long gun registry sometimes cite the Mayerthorpe tragedy to somehow support their contention that the long gun registry has merit. I find that perplexing. On that day in March 2005, four members of the RCMP tragically died at the hands of James Roszko, a madman who flaunted all of society's laws. Tragically, he murdered four brave Mounties before taking his own life.

Proponents of the long gun registry cite the fact that there were two accomplices who were subsequently convicted of aiding and abetting that offence, admittedly through registration. They see that somehow as a success. It is not. It is a failure. Four Mounties died.

Police officers cannot and do not rely on the long gun registry in their every day service. We heard of a situation in, I think, 2006 in Laval, Quebec, where a police officer responding to a domestic incident did a long gun registry search, which came back negative. As a result she did not call for backup and went in to deal with the disturbance and was shot. It was to her own peril that the police officer relied on the defective and inaccurate information in the registry.

There is no evidence that a single life has been saved or a single crime stopped by this ill-conceived concept brought in by a previous government.

I live in the city of Edmonton, which held the sad and tragic distinction last year of having 47 murders, the most in Canada. However, not a single one was committed with a long gun. The weapon of choice in Edmonton is the knife, and more victims were stabbed than by any other mode of homicide. In my city there is no correlation between violent crime and long guns.

The last day before our Christmas break there was a tragic incident in southern Alberta, a triple homicide followed by a suicide at Claresholm near the city of Lethbridge. A fourth individual was seriously injured. There were three murders, one attempted murder and a suicide. We found out that the weapons used in that incident were registered.

When murders occur, whether or not the guns involved are registered, society and legislatures and this type of registration mechanism are ill-equipped and cannot prevent these types of tragedies. Individuals use registered weapons to cause tragic incidents. In a city like Edmonton, knives and hand guns are the predominant weapon for homicides.

Therefore, the registry does not prevent crime. Those who believe otherwise are well-intentioned but their feelings and their theories are not borne out by the evidence. It is time that we put this registration mechanism to bed and reallocate the resources toward real law enforcement and to real purpose and activities that can prevent crime.

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to express my outrage at my colleague's comments. The reason the registry is not reliable is that this government deliberately neglected it. Amnesty after amnesty, criticism after criticism—it is no wonder the registry is full of holes.

Here is a useful analogy: if I repeatedly neglected to pay my electricity bill and my phone bill month after month, I would be in the dark, I would be cold, and I would have no way to contact my electricity company to ask them to turn the power back on. That is obvious.

Now that they have deliberately created a crisis, how can my colleagues opposite continue to support a bill to dismantle the registry that they spent the last six years undermining?

I cannot believe it. How can my colleague continue to support that position?

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I disagree with the premise of the member's intervention.

It is not because of an amnesty that the long gun registry is ineffective, but because the registry was based on a false premise. The premise was that criminals and those predisposed to gun crime would register their weapons. They do not and therefore the data in the data bank are faulty and unreliable.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I was interested in my colleague's constitutional analysis and his analysis of the division of powers.

In particular he stated that the purpose of the registry seemed to conflict with the exclusive jurisdiction of the provinces in that it infringed on property rights, which would imply that somehow the long gun registry was non-constitutional in that it offended the Constitution Act.

I would be quite interested to hear him explain the legal challenges that have been made to the validity of the Constitution Act. Certainly there is well-financed lobby.

If this is in fact within the exclusive constitutional jurisdiction of the provinces, why is this legislation going so far as to interfere with the admittedly legitimate exercise of power of the provinces when we hear from provinces that they want to maintain the records to enact their own?

I find it a little troubling that we hear this is a matter of provincial jurisdiction, yet an element of the legislation infringes upon that jurisdiction.

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Mr. Speaker, with respect to the constitutional jurisdiction, as the hon. member no doubt will be aware, there was a constitutional challenge led largely by my home province, the Province of Alberta, arguing as I have that the registry was in fact ultra vires because of a division of powers. That argument was not successful, because the courts ruled that it attempted to have a valid criminal purpose. “Attempted to” are the key words.

I think the evidence is borne out, if members listened to my and previous speakers' interventions, that it does not prevent crime and does not save lives. Therefore, the fact that it was an attempt at a valid criminal purpose does not make for a valid criminal result. For that reason, this registry has to be put to bed.

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice]

Mr. Speaker, with respect to the possession and acquisition licensing program, I understand that firearms will still require a licence. I wonder what the member feels about how that system works to protect the public.

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Mr. Speaker, as I said in my comments, I support the licensing mechanism because it deals with the individual.

The registry deals with the gun, the property. There is no correlation between safety and crime prevention and the gun. There is safety and crime prevention with respect to the person who uses the gun. To get a valid licence, people must pass criminal records checks and must have taken a firearms safety course and demonstrated they are capable of using that firearm safely.

I support the licensing mechanisms, which are unaltered by Bill C-19.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot say I take any pleasure in rising to speak at report stage on Bill C-19, because I believe this bill represents the triumph of ideology and wedge politics over evidence and public safety.

Over the last 30 years, Canada has introduced numerous measures to tighten firearms control and has produced a system that has served us well, the twin system of licensing owners and registration of weapons. Why did we come to this system?

There are three main reasons that we have slowly but surely tightened our control over firearms in this country. Certainly there were spectacular tragedies, like those at École Polytechnique in Montreal, which caused us to pay the due attention we should have paid much earlier to this crisis. My colleague from Beauharnois—Salaberry talked in very personal terms about some of the suffering that was caused to students and their families in Montreal. Those victims and families worked very hard to get the government to set up this gun registry to try to prevent situations like this one in the future.

There were two other factors that were also at play. One of those was the very frequent use of firearms in domestic violence, which I will come back to in a second. The other was the very frequent use of firearms in suicides, particularly youth suicides. What is significant about firearms and suicides is that firearms are final. If people take pills and then change their mind, they can call an ambulance. If someone slashes his or her wrists, there is a chance. When a firearm is used to commit suicide, it is over.

These three things together cause us as a society to say we can and must do better in the control of firearms.

What evidence do we have of the effectiveness of this registry? In the short time I have, I want to talk about three pieces of very important evidence. The other side likes to say there is no evidence, and I will come back to talk about what I think they are doing in misusing information.

My first piece of evidence is the very strong support of police for the gun registry. We all know that long guns have killed about 80% of the officers killed on duty in this country. However, I do not think that fact is what has caused police organizations to support the bill. We also know they access the system about 14,000 times a day. The other side tries to discredit that by saying it is automatic and that it does not provide good information. From my personal experience as a police board member, I know police do not do things that waste their time; they are too busy. So if they are accessing the registry there is a good reason to do so. Police believe it to be a very useful tool. This was found in the RCMP evaluation of the Canadian firearms program in February 2010.

Also, almost without exception, police leaders and police associations support the gun registry, including the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, the Canadian Police Association, the Canadian Association of Police Boards. I sit on the public safety committee where I am the vice-chair. What the government tried to do on that committee was to find individual police officers and individual researchers who would say they did not support the registry, when the overwhelming evidence was that police organizations, police leaders and those who work in the field of criminal justice find it to be effective.

The second piece of evidence we have comes from domestic violence. One in three women in this country killed by their husbands is shot, and 88% of them are shot with legally owned registered rifles and shotguns. Over the past five years, courts have ordered the revocation of 9,950 permits to own firearms. This has allowed police to go to those residences and pick up the firearms. While the other side said there was no evidence of the registry preventing deaths, I believe there are strong indications that many deaths were prevented by the seizure of arms from the 9,950 people the courts had determined were unstable and therefore should not have firearms in their possession. If this bill passes, the police will no longer be able to go with confidence to residences and pick up all the firearms there, only those the people wish to tell the police officer about.

As for the results, there are good statistics in this area. Gun-related spousal homicides are down 50% since the introduction of the registry. This is an undeniable fact. The use of long guns in suicide has also decreased by 69% since the introduction of the registry, with no evidence of a substitution of other methods. As I mentioned, the problem with guns and suicide is the finality of it. The Institut national de santé public du Québec estimates that 2,100 lives have been saved since the implementation of the registry. An excellent example of sophistry is the claim that we cannot prove a connection between those two. However, we can prove a correlation between the two and we must rely on these kinds of correlations.

Sure there have been concerns about the registry. There was definitely mismanagement of its implementation by the Liberals, long delays and huge cost overruns. When the Conservatives on the other side cite their cost figures, that is like water under the bridge. This is money that was, yes, wasted by the Liberal government, but it has already been spent and cannot be recovered.

There have been some other concerns about rural residents and first nations, and I certainly heard from them in my riding, especially about the criminalization of a first offence for failure to register a firearm. On this side of the House, we argued that could easily be fixed, and we suggested amendments to do that.

There have been concerns about the accuracy of a firearms registry. Again, on the other side, the members like to select their evidence and choose an earlier time before most of those problems with data entry were corrected. We have had more recent reports showing that most of the data which is entered is very correct. There is a very small 1% to 2% error rate. There are holes in the registry, as my hon. friend from Beauport—Limoilou said, because of the amnesties that had been granted, which created some doubt among Canadians about whether they were required to comply with this legislation. Most recent, that amnesty has been extended to 2013.

In 2010 the NDP introduced amendments to address those kinds of concerns. Four of those were put forward on this side of the House.

The first of those was decriminalizing the first-time failure to register. This would make a one-time failure to register a non-criminal ticket. However, a persistent refusal to register firearms would have remained a criminal offence. That is a good compromise, and in talking with people in my riding, they felt that would have solved their problem.

Second, the NDP suggested amendments in 2010 that would have placed a permanent ban in legislation on having a charge for registration. Therefore, we would take away a fee. I heard from first nations in my riding that the registration fees were a barrier for those who were involved in subsistence hunting. Taking away that fee, as we proposed in 2010, would have solved that problem.

A third problem was there were, apparently, releases of private information for the registry. We proposed amending the legislation so information could only be released for use in law enforcement or in court cases.

Finally, we proposed an amendment which said that we would add a legal guarantee of aboriginal treaty rights to the gun registry.

Instead of taking those compromises and trying to work with the opposition, the government proceeded with the complete abolition of the gun registry and added on, in this new version, the destruction of the data.

As the Conservatives have a majority in the House and are determined to proceed, we have been forced, at report stage, to suggest amendments to fix the worst parts of the bill as it stands. I see five things that need to be changed before the bill proceeds.

First, the bill fails to require owners to check for a valid licence before transferring a firearm. The other side likes to talk about criminals not registering their guns, but the bill, as it stands, would open a major door for criminals acquiring firearms because the seller of firearms would not have to check for a valid licence before transferring that weapon. Therefore, even if the government were right and the registry was not much of a deterrent to prevent criminals getting guns, now it would throw the doors wide open for criminals to purchase guns.

The second thing that needs to be fixed is this. Before the institution of the registry, businesses were required to keep records of the sale of non-restricted firearms. There is nothing in the bill that puts that requirement back. Yes, many responsible businesses will keep records, but many which might not be so responsible will not keep those records.

The third thing that needs to be fixed is we would no longer be tracking the loss, theft or destruction of non-prohibited and non-restricted weapons.

The fourth is that destroying the data would mean that there are some court cases in progress and some future court cases which might come forward where convictions could be obtained if they had data from the gun registry. That data would be destroyed and those people would walk free.

Finally, the bill would treat all non-prohibited, non-restricted weapons the same, meaning the Ruger Mini-14, which was used in Montreal in 1989 and in the Norway shootings, would now become an unregulated weapon in our country.

I believe the real agenda here is delivery by the government on a wedge issue promise, one which delivered great fundraising to the Conservatives and had a great deal of success in dividing the country. However, the arguments on the other side really depend on the selective use of information. I know the government likes to say that the police caucus on its side does not support the gun registry. It would surprise if opponents of the gun registry or police had run for another party. The government self-selected that caucus because of its opposition.

As I said earlier, we have seen arguments with select witnesses, select evidence and select research to support a hard-line position, which the government had already decided on before it came to debate in the House. Therefore, we are back to where we started, and that is the triumph of ideology and divisive politics over evidence and good public policy to keep Canadians safe.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Mr. Speaker, what is the member's knowledge of rifles is? Has he ever shot a rifle? Has he ever belonged to a gun club? Has he ever owned a rifle? Does he have a family member who has one? Has he ever gone hunting? Has he gone to a first nations community where residents rely on hunting for sustenance? What kind of involvement does he have with weapons?

I would be interested to know because it seems to me that often people who have a personal interest in this, especially relating to hunting and fishing activities and having to rely on them for sustenance, have a more accurate depiction of what actually takes place with the gun registry and the realities of it.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I genuinely thank the member for his questions because the answer to all of them, except belonging to a gun club, is yes. My father and grandfather were hunters. I went pheasant and duck hunting with them when I was young. I have never belonged to a gun club. I have fired a rifle. I have gone hunting with my first nations friends. Again, I think that was an attempt to be a bit selective.

What I also rely on is my experience of 20 years working in the academic criminal justice system and the real research that has been done on the gun registry, my personal experience as a member of a police board and a member of a municipal council with the police force, which strongly supports the gun registry.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague is from the neighbouring riding of Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, nearly as beautiful as Saanich—Gulf Islands.

I do not know if he saw today's Victoria Times Colonist. Further evidence of the support for our local police forces in southern Vancouver Island is from a story today in the Times Colonist about the quick action, led by police Sergeant Dean Jantzen in Saanich, leading to an arrest based on the theft of many long guns. Sergeant Jantzen stated, “Access to the long-gun registry has been critical to advancing the speed of this investigation”.

I draw that to his attention and ask for further comments.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will not start a debate with the hon. member from the neighbouring riding about whose riding is more beautiful because that will take all of our time. What she has to say certainly confirms my experience, as I said, as a police board member and then as a city councillor, where I very often heard from police forces that they used the gun registry for very good effect.

The other side also tends to neglect its use in solving crimes and getting convictions. That is the story the member is talking about today, that it helped police conduct an investigation, it will help get a conviction in court and it is an important tool for future crime prevention and, as the other side likes to say, keep criminals off the streets.

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Mr. Speaker, in response to our colleague from Alberta, I would say that we have talked a great deal about long guns for hunting. Unfortunately, long guns also include semi-automatic weapons with 40-round magazines. If the member from Alberta ever wants to go hunting, he should let us know. We will make sure that there is no one else around. A hunter who needs a 40-round semi-automatic weapon is a problem.

That is the main problem with the long gun registry. Guns that are in no way connected to hunting or even protecting farmland are legalized.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I believe the hon. member is quite right. One of the big holes that I pointed to in my speech is this treatment of not just hunting weapons, but all non-restricted and non-prohibited weapons, which includes sawed-off shotguns, which are manufactured as short-barrelled shotguns, and the Ruger Mini-14. It includes many very dangerous weapons that have nothing to do with hunting or sports shooting.

He is quite right and I really hope that at report stage we might at least be able to convince the government that there needs to be an acceptance of the NDP's amendment to ensure these kinds of guns are not freely available on our streets.