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

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Mr. Speaker, for many years now law-abiding Canadians who use rifles and shotguns for legitimate reasons have spoken out against the wasteful and ineffective long gun registry created in the 1990s by the former Liberal government.

Last May, this government promised to end the long gun registry once and for all. In the Speech from the Throne we repeated this pledge to Canadians. Now with Bill C-19, I am proud to say we are honouring our commitments.

We are honouring our commitment to Canadians, and I am very proud to say that I will be honouring a personal pledge I made to my constituents in Wild Rose when I stand to vote in favour of scrapping the registry.

The long gun registry was ill-conceived from the outset. Under the guise of urban gun control, the Liberals long gun registry really only served to penalize ranchers and farmers who required and responsibly used firearms as a tool to do their jobs. As we all know, criminals do not register their guns.

It is important, first to see this bill in context. The proposed legislation builds on a long string of law and order initiatives that extends back over five years. During this time, we have created the mandatory minimum prison sentences for serious gun crimes. We have created a new broad-based offence to target drive-by and other intentional shootings. We have given the provinces and territories more resources for law enforcement. This is to name only a few initiatives.

Canadians gave us a strong mandate to keep our streets and our communities safe, and that is exactly what we have done. In June we reintroduced legislation to tackle the scourge of human smuggling. Last September we tabled the safe streets and communities act. That legislation has a range of initiatives designed to extend greater protection to the most vulnerable members of society, while further enhancing the ability of our justice system to hold criminals accountable for their actions. It increases offender accountability, ends house arrest for serious crimes, better protects society from violent and repeat young offenders, and increases penalties for serious drug crimes.

Bill C-19 as proposed fits in with our effective agenda of tackling crime.

First, it ends the discrimination against rural Canadians for their legitimate use of shotguns and rifles. In so doing, it will eliminate the element of the current gun control system that is the most wasteful and ineffective.

Second, it will retain the tools needed to allow us to focus our attention against real threats to public safety. In so doing, it will free up substantial resources that we can invest to further bolster crime prevention and law enforcement.

I want to highlight evidence that reinforces these arguments, but first let me briefly explain why the bill before us is so necessary and overdue. It is no secret that Canadian taxpayers have long protested the exorbitant cost of the long gun registry, and rightfully so. Indeed, the state broadcaster, the CBC, has estimated that the total cost of the long gun registry is in excess of $2 billion. This is a substantial sum of course and it is a sum that we could have invested much more efficiently and with much greater impact in either crime prevention efforts or law enforcement.

Still, if the long gun registry actually contributed to enhancing public safety, perhaps a case could be made to keep it. However, the fact is that it has never stopped a single crime or saved a single life. This is not about having a system that is better than nothing. As the chief of Abbotsford Police said in his testimony before the public safety committee, “a flawed system is worse than no system”.

Defenders of the registry like to make the case that police consult the registry frequently in order to determine if firearms are present in a residence in which they were called to or are investigating. The fact is that the registry data is called up automatically every time a police officer runs a search from his or her cruiser.

That is what accounts for the number and frequency of hits on the registry, not the fact that police officers are relying on the registry for their safety. Police officers are in fact trained to assume there is a firearm or some other weapon on hand whenever they respond to a complaint. Indeed, it would be foolish of them not to assume there was a firearm present.

Imagine the consequences if police officers fully trusted the long gun registry to confirm whether there was a firearm on the premises, only to find themselves facing down the barrel of an unregistered gun that they could not have detected by searching the registry. As we on this side of the House have said repeatedly, criminals do not register their guns.

On top of the waste and ineffectiveness, the long gun registry places an unfair burden on law-abiding citizens in rural communities, such as people who use rifles and shotguns to protect livestock or to provide food for their families. The ponds and woodlands of rural Canada are a long way from the Jane-Finch corridor. Making farmers and hunters register their long guns will not keep people in downtown Toronto any safer.

While there is no evidence to support the long gun registry, there is plenty to show the long gun registry is ineffective. I will take a few moments to break some time-honoured myths.

First, most violent gun crime in Canada does not involve long guns. Between 1975 and 2006, for example, Statistics Canada showed that the use of rifles or shotguns in homicides declined by 86%. In 2006 alone, three times as many victims were killed with a handgun than with rifles or shotguns. These statistics are no aberration. In 2009, out of the 179 firearms homicides, almost 60% of those crimes were committed with handguns.

Furthermore, where long guns were actually used in violent crime, the vast majority of the firearms were unregistered. Between 2005 and 2009, for example, police recovered 253 firearms that were used to commit a homicide. Of these, less than one-third, 31% in fact, were actually listed with the Canadian firearms registry.

All this means that law-abiding citizens are spending time and money to comply with the law, but at the same time, and this by now should come as no surprise to anyone, criminals who use long guns do not follow the rules of the registry. This goes to the heart of why the long gun registry has never worked.

People who are willing to use guns to commit crimes or engage in violent acts are not likely to be the first in line to register their guns. In fact, it is quite the contrary. The result is an ineffective system that discriminates for no good reason against legitimate long gun owners and does nothing to stem the tide of illegal firearms crossing the border.

With all this mind, I will recap the provisions of the new bill and how it would address these issues.

The most important component of Bill C-19, and the one that has been so long awaited, is the end of the registration for non-restricted firearms. This will relieve the disproportionate burden on rural Canadians and free up valuable resources to invest in crime prevention and enforcement.

At the same time, the bill would retain the gun licensing system, which this government believes is the most effective form of gun control. Licences would still be required to own any type of firearm and applicants would still need to undergo a background check and pass a firearms safety course.

Finally, the bill would address a very important piece of housekeeping. As one can imagine, the registry has demanded mountains of paperwork from law-abiding citizens. This has been a source of contention, and now with the imminent demise of the registry, it has also become a source of concern. Canadians are worried about what will happen with these records. Will they be taken over by another government organization?

We know that the NDP and the Liberals, if given the chance, would overturn the will of voters and resurrect the gun registry. I am pleased to say that Bill C-19 would require the complete and absolute destruction of all records related to the registration of non-restricted firearms contained within the firearms registry and under the control of the chief firearms officers. This would preserve the privacy of all registrants and would give long gun owners the peace of mind they deserve after so many years of exasperation.

The proposed legislation is long overdue. It promises to eliminate a wasteful and ineffective long gun registry that penalizes law-abiding citizens in rural Canada. It would do so without weakening our gun control programs.

The vast majority of constituents in my riding of Wild Rose have long sought the demise of the long gun registry. In fact, in a survey that I did recently, 97% of them showed their support for ending the long gun registry. I know that many members on the other side are loath to admit it, but they would have to admit, if they were being honest, that many of their constituents have long called for that as well.

I would ask that all members of this chamber join me in supporting Bill C-19 to end the wasteful, ineffective long gun registry once and for all.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, after consideration in committee, the House is now seized, at report stage, with consideration of government Bill C-19, that not only seeks to eliminate references to long guns, but also to destroy the data in this registry.

I would like to begin by highlighting the absolutely extraordinary work done by my colleagues from St. John's East, Surrey North and Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca on the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. These members have attempted to convince the government of the defects in this bill. There is, of course, a lot of politicking that goes on in this chamber, but politics is supposed to benefit someone—not necessarily us, but all Canadians, in general.

It is true that since the creation of the firearms registry—and I was not in politics of the time; I was hosting a call-in radio show—everyone has complained, and not just a little. People were not complaining about the registry per se, but rather about how much it costs and how poorly designed it was in the first place. The reason for the creation of the registry was clear. Perhaps this is not repeated frequently enough: there was a mass killing at the École Polytechnique where the now infamous Marc Lépine decided, just like that, to shoot at people for one single reason: they were women. That made people’s blood boil. It became a very personal matter in people’s eyes.

Nobody in this House, regardless of what side they are on, is saying that they want to put weapons in the hands of somebody who is going to go crazy and do what Marc Lépine did at that time.

The firearms registry was created after a lot of trials and tribulations and hemming and hawing. It was supposed to solve all of these problems. There were problems with the cost of the registry. There were also problems—and this is constantly alluded to on that side of the House—because very law abiding citizens had no desire whatsoever to use a firearm in any dangerous way; they were simply collectors, aboriginals or hunters. The debate then took another turn because people realized that the way the bill was drafted created a lot of problems. In fact, people who had no intention of doing anything illegal could be charged because they had an unregistered weapon in their possession. Basically, there were a lot of problems.

For years, the Conservative government promised at each election, and each year, that when it came into power, it would get rid of the firearms registry and in particular the long gun registry, in order to solve the problem faced by hunters.

What did the NDP team assigned to this bill do when it received Bill C-19? We looked at it in what I would call an intelligent and sensible way. We stated that we understood that the government had made certain promises and we wondered what could be done to try and meet everybody’s needs. In other words, we asked ourselves how we would alleviate the fear in the minds of hunters, collectors, and other groups, and remove the idea that they were common criminals. At the same time, we asked ourselves how we could protect the public.

This was of course considered in the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. The committee, as its name suggests, is responsible for the public’s safety. This is the perspective from which we considered Bill C-19.

The committee studied the bill, and now it is before the House at report stage. Colleagues from other parties presented amendments. For technical reasons, the NDP cannot present amendments in the House because it already did so in committee. The amendments had to be presented by other parties. Regardless of who presented the amendments, they were presented not to irritate Canadians or the Conservative government, but to help improve this bill.

That being said, every time an amendment was presented, it was flatly dismissed. The government never even tried to understand why the amendment was being presented. Since we began studying Bill C-19, associations of chiefs of police and various provincial ministers have said that they would like to maintain the information in the registry. I am not the one who said that; I am not an expert on the subject. They were the ones who explained what they do with the gun registry and the data, which are not perfect, of course.

All the same, as I have said since the beginning, no one can plead his own turpitude. The government itself imposed a moratorium on updating the data. That is why some data are not in the registry. It may not be completely up to date, but if it can save just one life, I think it would be worth the effort.

This government is so deeply ideological that it refuses to listen to reason. That is what makes me so sad about this debate. Since the beginning, I have tried to be as open as possible to the arguments on both sides, beyond the promises politicians sometimes make to the people. That is called leadership. We might have some of the same ideas as our constituents, but we have to take action when we know that something is illegal and that it will cause a problem.

The Quebec public safety minister asked that the data pertaining to Quebec be transferred. This is harmless and does not bother anyone. Quebec wants to maintain the registry and assume the costs. It would not cost the federal government one cent. It would cost even less than destroying the data. In fact, we have been told by information privacy experts that destroying the data will be quite the job. You do not just push a button and say it no longer exists.

Millions of pieces of data are used by our police forces. People who oppose the registry may be convinced to say they have never used it. People told us that they do not use the data, but, if it at least protects the public, it is worth it. We now know that some types of long guns will no longer be tracked after the data are destroyed and the long gun registry abolished. The minister opposite has made this the fight of her life, and whether she likes it or not, we will no longer know where these guns are. Do not bother showing me the proof of purchase because if someone decides to transfer their gun to someone else, or if I knock on my neighbour's door and tell him that I like his gun and want to buy it, there will be no record of it.

There are huge holes in this bill. The government refuses at all costs to listen to reason or to even try to ensure that all the holes will be plugged. This is all I want, and it is all that the NDP, the official opposition, wants.

We must bow to the inevitable. The Conservatives will put an end to the long gun registry but, for goodness' sake, let them plug the holes in the bill and listen to Quebec. Quebec is telling them that it wants to keep the long gun registry. It is not right to claim that the data and the registry are the same thing, and that we need only erase the data to abolish the registry.

The issue was that people were treated as criminals. By removing this criminalization we can solve the problem for those people who are waiting for the bill to pass. At the same time, we can ensure public safety.

The House resumed consideration of Bill C-19, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Firearms Act, as reported (without amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

Motions in Amendment

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise in the House today to express my support for Bill C-19, the ending the long gun registry act.

I would like to start off by commending my hon. colleague from Portage—Lisgar for all her good work on this file, and especially my hon. colleague from Yorkton—Melville, who has worked so hard on this file for so many years. I would also like to thank the Minister of Public Safety for introducing the legislation and moving us all a step closer to fulfilling one of our long-standing commitments to Canadians.

I am proud to be part of a government that actually follows through on its commitments to Canadians. Our government promised Canadians that we would waste no time in the 41st Parliament before introducing legislation that would repeal the wasteful long gun registry. Today we are delivering on that commitment to Canadians.

Our government is working hard to ensure the safety of our streets and communities. Law enforcement knows this, Canadians know this, and criminals know this. When it comes to the issue of gun crime, this is a government that believes in having effective measures to deal with the issue. We need to ensure that appropriate measures are in place to target those offenders who commit gun crimes and threaten our communities. At the same time we must ensure that millions of law-abiding Canadians are not being needlessly burdened.

As it exists today, the ineffective long gun registry unfairly equates law-abiding gun owners to common criminals. Simply put, the long gun registry targets rural Canadians, farmers and duck hunters as criminals.

Although I have never personally owned a gun, I grew up hunting small game and game birds with my father, brother and uncles. The first long gun I used was an old Cooey single shot .22. Pop guns and the odd rabbit and squirrel felt the impact of my limited prowess. Those were fun and carefree days, but I remember the very serious attention that my mentors instilled in me with regard to safe handling, safe storage and responsibility when handling firearms. The vast majority of gun owners today are the same kind of people and deserve to be treated with respect. I am standing here today as a member of a government that is standing up for these Canadians. It is unacceptable to treat these salt of the earth people as criminals, and we are going to take action. Bill C-19 would put an end to this ineffective and wasteful long gun registry once and for all.

Permit me to highlight the merits of the bill before the House.

This legislation would remove the need to register non-restricted firearms, such as shotguns and rifles. This is good news for farmers and hunters. These folks use long guns as a tool to earn their living, whether through hunting game or protecting their livestock. This is not to say that Bill C-19 would do away with gun control entirely as some would disingenuously suggest.

Let me re-emphasize that Bill C-19 would retain licensing requirements for all gun owners while doing away with the need for honest, law-abiding citizens to register their rifles or shotguns. All of the common-sense regulations regarding training, safe handling and storage would be unchanged.

Bill C-19 also includes a provision for the destruction of all records related to the registration of non-restricted firearms that are currently held in the Canadian firearms registry and under the control of the chief firearms officers. This provision would ensure that for the millions of Canadians who have registered their non-restricted firearms, their private information would not be distributed to other entities.

What we seem to have difficulty getting across to members across the floor is that the data is the registry and the registry is the data. We cannot eliminate the long gun registry without eliminating the data.

Let me be as clear as possible for those listening at home. The government will not allow for the creation of a long gun registry by the back door. This government has heard loud and clear from Canadians who own non-restricted firearms. They want the long gun registry eliminated. They want to ensure that their private information is not distributed to other entities.

Let me pause for a moment to address the issue of the registry data being destroyed. This has certainly been a subject, as I have mentioned, of much discussion in the media, in this House, and in coffee shops across the country. The Minister of Public Safety was very clear about this in his appearance at the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. I would like to repeat here what he said so plainly about that issue. He said:

The registry is the data; without the data there is no registry. So when our government and our party made the very clear commitment that we would scrap the long-gun registry, that we would end it, implicit in that, indeed explicit, is that we would be destroying the information that's been collected under the authority of that legislation. There's simply no other answer to that.

Let us move on from that discussion to refocus on the task at hand.

The fact is that law-abiding firearms owners across the country welcome this legislation. These owners understand that being held accountable for their actions by requiring them to take responsible measures to protect their fellow Canadians is reasonable. They also understand that being burdened with unnecessary registration and regulations is not reasonable.

Canadians from coast to coast to coast understand the need to ensure that our country has a system of gun control that is both effective and efficient. That is why our government has invested $7 million annually to strengthen the front-end screening of first-time firearms licence applicants, with a view to keeping firearms out of the hands of people who should not have them. We must ensure there are gun control measures to keep firearms out of the hands of those who threaten our safety and that of our communities.

Measures taken in the area of firearms control should enhance public safety on our streets and communities by preventing firearms from falling into the hands of offenders and setting tough consequences if they do. This is what Canadians expect and this is what our government is doing. Our government is determined to get tough on those who commit crimes, the individuals who use firearms for criminal purposes. That is the most important part of effective gun control.

In my city of Edmonton, as in many others, authorities have been dealing with disturbing levels of violence. The issue is not the availability of guns, and especially not long guns. The issues are more related to the people who are committing these violent acts. I would encourage all hon. members of the House to ask Canadians, particularly those in remote and rural areas of this country, how penalizing law-abiding Canadians on a farm or in the woods would help reduce gun crimes in our urban centres such as Toronto, Edmonton and Vancouver. Quite simply, it does not.

What members will hear overwhelmingly from Canadians is that now is the time for effective gun control. Now is the time to make sure our resources go toward effective programming that helps prevent crime and to stop penalizing honest, hard-working and law-abiding Canadians. Now is the time for all members of the House to listen to Canadians and eliminate this wasteful and ineffective long gun registry once and for all. That is exactly what our government will do.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to add my voice to this important debate on the ending of the Long-gun Registry Act. With this legislation we propose to finally remove a measure that has had no tangible benefit in keeping Canadians safe. Rather, it has added unnecessary paper work and placed an unfair burden on law-abiding citizens who have done nothing wrong besides have the audacity to own a rifle or a shotgun.

The long gun registry has played a divisive role in pitting rural Canadians against urban Canadians. It has been touted as a safety measure that protects police even as we hear from the police themselves that it is unreliable and inaccurate. It has been said to save lives. Yet no one has ever presented compelling evidence to that end. Rather, we have heard directly from Canadians and witnesses who have appeared before committee with two clear messages: it is a waste of taxpayers' money and it is ineffective.

Let us consider the cost of the registry.

The registry was put in place in 1995 with the promised price tag of around $120 million for start-up costs. Most of this was supposed to be covered by registration and licensing fees. However, in her 2002 report and the follow-up 2006 report, the then auditor general of Canada found that the costs were nowhere near that. She did a thorough review of the cost escalations in her review. She estimated that the cost of the Canadian firearms program was many hundreds of millions of dollars by 2005.

This is an affront to Canadian taxpayers. In a media story in 2003, the auditor general put it this way:

The issue here is not gun control and it's not even astronomical cost overruns. What's really inexcusable is that Parliament was in the dark.

Even more, in 2004, the CBC reported that the cost of the long gun registry was well in excess of $2 billion. Is it any surprise that these revelations were met with renewed calls to end the long gun registry? The answer, of course, is a resounding no.

Despite the attempts of long gun registry supporters to convince Canadians that the long gun registry is saving lives, there is simply no compelling data to back that claim up. It is clear to many millions of Canadians that the long gun registry is both wasteful and ineffective. It is for these reasons that our government has worked tirelessly since coming into power to end the long gun registry.

If we were to believe the naysayers, we might imagine that eliminating the long gun registry would lead to rampant gun crime and Wild West shootouts in the streets. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, we already have many tough and effective measures in place that are helping to prevent gun crime.

There are three key approaches to cracking down on violent crimes.

First of all, something that would not change with Bill C-19, is a strict licensing system that is already in place. To lawfully possess a firearm, every Canadian must be in possession of a valid firearms licence.

Anyone who wants to acquire a firearm must undergo a required Canadian firearms safety course. This is not a quick online quiz. Rather, it is a comprehensive 10 hour classroom course that gives students a working knowledge of the safe handling of firearms. It also ensures that they are familiar with the laws and procedures regarding firearm ownership.

As part of this licence application, every individual is also screened to ensure there is no reason to believe that the public would be in danger if that individual gained a licence. This includes checking the individual's criminal record to see if he or she has been prohibited by law to own a gun or poses any general danger to society.

These are reasonable measures that have been widely accepted by gun owners across the country. As noted, none of that would change with the legislation we are discussing today. In fact, we feel so strongly about the effectiveness of the gun licensing system that we have invested $7 million annually to improve the screening process for first-time firearms licensees. We believe that this is helping to keep firearms out of the hands of people who should not have them.

Our second area of focus in gun control is the work we have done to ensure that those who commit gun crimes face stiff sentences. We have passed legislation that sets out mandatory minimum prison sentences for serious gun crimes, as well as reverse bail provisions for serious offences. We have put in place laws that target drive-by shootings that demonstrate a reckless disregard for the safety of others. There is now a mandatory minimum sentence of 4 years in prison, up to a maximum of 14 years, for these crimes. That minimum sentence goes up five years if the individual committed the act on behalf of a criminal organization or used a restricted or prohibited handgun or automatic firearm in the progress of the crime. These are tough measures. They send a strong message that those who commit violent gun crimes will face severe consequences.

We have also taken decisive action to ensure that we have the appropriate level of police officers to enforce these tough laws. We have invested in significant funds in helping prevent crime through programs like the youth gang prevention fund and the national crime prevention strategy. We have invested quite a bit in my own city of Hamilton, Ontario, to ensure we keep youth from crime.

The third approach has been to strengthen our borders to stem the flood of illegally smuggled firearms from the United States. We know that the majority of firearms smuggled into Canada are coming across the 49th parallel. Our efforts to crack down on this illegal activity have taken many forms, including the deployment of the integrated border enforcement teams at strategic points along the border, as well as testing new and innovative cross-border policing models such as shiprider to combat illegal smuggling along our borders. Shiprider pilot projects, which involve specially trained and designated RCMP and U.S. Coast Guard officers jointly crewing marine vessels to enforce laws on both sides of the border, have proven to have a direct and measurable impact on cross-border criminality.

Given their success, the Prime Minister and the U.S. president have announced, in the context of a shared vision, that we would look to regularize shiprider operations, as well as leverage the shiprider concept to land-based operations. By working closely with our U.S. counterparts, we can better identify, interdict and prosecute those individuals who attempt to smuggle firearms into our country.

In light of what we know about the long gun registry, we are faced with two choices. We can continue with the status quo, pouring good money after bad into a long gun registry that is in effective and wasteful, or we can do what responsible parliamentarians should do, which is to consider the facts.

In summary, I believe there are three points we must all consider. First, the long gun registry has cost Canadian taxpayers an exorbitant amount of money, far more than they were originally told when it was put in place in 1995. Second, many police officers are telling us that the long gun registry is not reliable, full of errors and has done nothing to keep Canadians safe. Third, there is no statistic showing us that the long gun registry has had any impact in terms of saving lives or deterring individuals from committing violent gun-related crimes.

This is not a matter of partisan or personal views; it is a matter of common sense. The long gun registry has not worked since its inception in 1995. It is not working today and it will not work in the future. I ask all hon. members to stand up for law-abiding Canadians and vote to end the wasteful and ineffective long gun registry once and for all.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this is the second time that I have risen in this House to speak about this bill. Clearly, the first time was at second reading.

If I had to give my speech a title, I would call it “A Mistake that Will Haunt us for Years to Come”.

I believe that the decision to abolish the firearms registry is a mistake. I participated in committee hearings where we heard from a number of witnesses on both sides. I am now more convinced than ever that we are making the wrong decision.

In the 10 minutes that I have this morning, I would like to speak more specifically about certain amendments that others moved today in this House, some of which are practically identical to those I moved at committee on behalf of my party.

Before I begin, I would like to point out two things that I found a bit disturbing about the context in which the debate took place. I mentioned one of them earlier in my question to the hon. member for Yukon, and that is the fact that we learned, following the testimony of a number of committee witnesses and as a result of a question on the order paper, that some of these witnesses had been members of the minister's firearms advisory committee.

I do not know whether you agree, Mr. Speaker, but to me, an advisory committee is a group of people with a variety of opinions on a subject, some of whom may have technical expertise on the issue, which the government consults in an attempt to achieve consensus. An advisory committee is not a club of cronies that the government stacks with party supporters. I think that the minister's firearms advisory committee looks more like a bunch of cronies than a real advisory committee that tries to examine an issue thoroughly.

I thought transparency was lacking. When the witnesses appeared, we were given to believe that they had no ties to government, that they were independent. Naturally, we would have responded differently to their testimony had we known that they were operating hand in hand with the minister.

Then there is the RCMP's annual report on the Canadian firearms program. Quite a trend has been developing over the past few years. The report seems to have been published at inconvenient times for those who are against dismantling the gun registry. For example, the 2007 report was published at the end of August 2008, which is reasonable, but the 2008 report was given to the minister on October 9, 2009, and published after the vote at second reading of Bill C-391, a private member's bill sponsored by the member for Portage—Lisgar that sought to dismantle the gun registry. The 2009 report was published on October 14, and the 2010 report was just published on January 19, well after the committee's hearings on Bill C-19 and well after the vote at second reading held last fall.

I would like to talk about a couple of amendments that were presented today that mirror the amendments that I presented in the name of the Liberal Party at committee.

The first was an amendment to ensure that the data would be saved. The hon. member for Yukon neglected to mention that in the province of Quebec, no mandate was given to the Conservative government to destroy the data. To make the people of Quebec pay again for basically the same data would be a form of double taxation. The Conservative government would be guilty of double taxing the people of Quebec. The people of Quebec have already paid to create the database for the registry. If they wanted to maintain the service of that registry, they would have to pay again. That is not quite fair from a fiscal point of view.

Second, doing away with the database would not only violate the spirit of the Library and Archives of Canada Act but the letter of that act as well. That is why Bill C-19 would have to amend the Library and Archives of Canada Act in order to get rid of the data as soon as possible.

The Library and Archives of Canada Act is important for maintaining records that are critical for the functioning of a democracy. It is central to the idea of access to government information by the people of Canada. Bill C-19 would not require the government to obtain the opinion of the national archivist before rushing to destroy the data.

Suzanne Legault the Information Commissioner said the following at committee:

--destroying records on this scale without first obtaining the consent of the archivist, as required by section 12 of the Library and Archives of Canada Act, not only modifies the existing records management system, which seeks to ensure transparency and accountability in the disposal of such records, but in my view also seems contrary to the Federal Court's decision in Bronskill.

--In that case... Justice Noël stated that the Access to Information Act and the Library of Archives of Canada Act are inextricably linked, such that “Parliament considers access to information in Canada and document retention as essential components of citizens' right to government information”.

To destroy the data would be a very unfortunate thing.

In terms of the transfer of firearms in Canada, I agree that the bill would create a dangerous situation. It would essentially take away all supervision of the transfer of firearms, either by gun shop owners or by individuals trying to sell weapons by phone or over the Internet, whichever way they deemed desirable. For example, it would not be necessary for someone selling a weapon, and that could be over the Internet, to check whether the purchaser had a firearms acquisition certificate. This would be problematic.

The bill says that in the vendor's mind, he or she should be certain that the person buying the weapon has a firearms acquisition certificate. But that could mean anything. That would not necessarily lead someone to check. They could call the registrar to find out, if they wanted to go through the inconvenience. However, the registrar would not have to keep a record of that call. If there were a problem down the road, such as a crime, we would not be able to go to the registrar to help with the investigation.

My colleagues opposite will probably say that firearms owners are responsible citizens. I would agree with that statement. I said it in my speech at second reading. The people I know in my community who own firearms are the most sterling members of the community. They are volunteers. They are ideal citizens. This is not to impugn people who own firearms.

I would like to give the House an example of how we are leaving the process of transferring firearms wide open. The mayor of New York City asked his officials to investigate how firearms are transferred. In the United States, if people are transferring a firearm, through Craigslist for example, they have to check whether the prospective buyer has the right to own a firearm. The process is a little stricter than it would be under this law. It was found that in, I think, 62% of cases, people disposing of firearms through the Internet or any other way would not bother checking, even when the prospective buyer said, “Look, you really shouldn't sell it to me, I may not get through the check”.

[Ryan Leef, Conservative, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak again to Bill C-19, the ending the long gun registry act.

In my last speech on this bill, I talked about what role long guns play in Canadians' lives in both rural and urban settings, for women and for men. They are tools for hunting, tools for trapping, tools for farming, and tools for athletics. I talked about how they constitute a symbol of our past and indeed remain a necessary tool in present day life for so many Canadians. First nation, aboriginal and all law-abiding gun owners have been stigmatized and subjected to this onerous and misguided legislation for far too long.

Since the second reading of Bill C-19, the opposition has not lacked in emotion but has consistently fallen short on the facts. Here are the facts. The long gun registry does nothing to make Canadians safer. We were told the long gun registry would cost about $2 million, and the cost has ballooned to exceed $2 billion. The long gun registry targets law-abiding citizens because criminals are not registering guns, nor are they using these sorts of guns to commit crimes.

I would like to introduce members to what I call the seven myths of the opposition. If any of my hon. colleagues would like to count along with me, they would be more than welcome to do so.

Myth number one is that the long gun registry will help keep suicide rates down.

During committee, of which I was a member, we heard clear evidence from peer-reviewed studies which concluded that the discontinuation of the registration of non-restricted firearms is not likely to result in an increase in the aggregate suicide rate.

Myth number two is that the long gun registry will keep women safer.

During committee we heard peer-reviewed research which demonstrated that the discontinuation of the registration of non-restricted firearms will not result in an increase in homicide or spousal homicide rates through the utilization of long guns.

This only makes sense because the people registering long guns are not committing these crimes. These are men and women who are impeded by the red tape and the stigma of being long gun owners. They do their civic duty, despite the unnecessary and wasteful burden imposed, and register their firearms because their government tells them it is the law. Meanwhile, criminals do not do any of this and enjoy the freedom to operate outside of the law with all the rights and protections of the law. This does not make sense to people in my riding, and it does not make sense to me.

The opposition attempts to position the debate on long guns as men against women, and offender and victim. At committee we heard directly from women, women who hunt, women who trap, women who have represented our great nation in international shooting competitions. The opposition would like Canadians to believe it is only men who own guns, and this is simply not the case.

Myth number three is that guns will now be as easy to get as checking out a book at a library.

The opposition is ignoring the facts and misleading people who do not own long guns and who are not familiar with the process. I can tell Canadians, as can any long gun owner, that the requirements for licensing are not changing and include a Canadian firearms safety course, and for some, additional hunter safety and ethics development courses, and of course pre-screening security background checks.

Myth number four is that police support the registry and the elimination of the registry will put police in danger.

Here is what we heard from law enforcement officers:

I can tell you that the registration of long guns did not make my job as a conservation officer safer.

That was said by Donald Weltz at committee.

We also heard in committee that a survey conducted in April 2011 of 2,631 Edmonton city police concluded that 81% supported scrapping the long gun registry. We heard that the Auditor General found that the RCMP could not rely on the registry on account of the large number of errors and omissions. We heard numerous times that the police state they do not trust the information contained in the registry and they would not rely on that information to ensure their safety.

Myth number five is that the data should be saved and turned over to the provinces that wish to create their own registry.

The registry is the data. Our commitment to the Canadian people was clear that anything less would be disingenuous. The data was collected under federal law for a federal purpose and it will not be turned over to another jurisdiction.

The committee heard evidence that the RCMP had reported error rates between 43% and 90% in firearms applications and registry information. We also heard that a manual search conducted discovered that 4,438 stolen firearms had been successfully re-registered. With these errors, it would be irresponsible to the extreme to allow this unreliable, ineffective and grossly expensive system to be handed over to anyone.

Myth No. 6: Registering a long gun is no different from registering a car. What did we hear in committee on this assumption? Solomon Friedman accurately stated that unlike registering our car, failure to comply or errors in the application have criminal implications. People do not go to jail or receive a criminal record if they do not register their car.

Myth No. 7: Registering a firearm is simple, so what is the harm? Again, the harm is that any mistake has criminal implications, and the mistakes in the registry are staggering.

Furthermore, consider more testimony from Mr. Friedman:

I have two law degrees. I clerked at the Supreme Court of Canada, and I practise criminal law for a living. Even I at times find the provisions of the Firearms Act and the gun control portions of the Criminal Code convoluted, complex, and confusing.

If that is the case, how can we expect average Canadians to navigate this quagmire without error and how can we have criminal consequences as a result? How can we expect our law enforcement officers to interpret and apply complex and convoluted legislation with discretion and consistency if a criminal lawyer well-versed and studied on the subject matter finds it difficult at times?

I will highlight the conclusions of Gary Mauser, PhD, Professor Emeritus at the Institute for Canadian Urban Research Studies, Simon Fraser University, when he accurately pointed out that “responsible gun owners are less likely to” commit murder “than other Canadians”. He went on to say that the long gun had not demonstrated its value to the police and that “the data in the long-gun registry are of such poor quality that they should be destroyed”.

That is exactly what would happen.

Our government has made a clear commitment. Promise made, promise kept. We know we are on the right track. How do we know this? Two years ago, my hon. colleague, the member for Portage—Lisgar, introduced a private member's bill, Bill C-391. If that bill had passed, it would have ended the long gun registry but it was defeated in this House by a mere two votes. However, those were not free votes. Members turned their backs on their constituents for fear of reprisal from their party. Some stated publicly that they were in favour of scrapping the registry but were not willing to leave their party over it or be removed from it. The only reason the long gun registry has survived this long is that members picked their parties over their constituents. Canadians remembered that last May.

How else do we know we are on the course? Evidence in the committee, as I have already mentioned, was overwhelmingly in favour of getting rid of the long gun registry, and that was empirical evidence, not opinion evidence. Members from the opposition, the members for Thunder Bay—Rainy River and Thunder Bay—Superior North, voted in favour of Bill C-19 but were punished for it. They were punished for doing what their constituents wanted. I congratulate them for that decision. The member for Western Arctic abstained from the second reading vote. One can only hope that the member will remember his commitments to the great people of the Northwest Territories and that he chooses them and choose facts over the hysteria and hyperbole running rampant through the opposition benches.

Regardless, I can tell the citizens of Yukon, NWT and Nunavut that this member and the hon. member for Nunavut will be standing up for their rights and their use of long guns as daily tools to practise traditional, cultural and present day necessities of life by standing up and voting to end the wasteful and ineffective long gun registry once and for all.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to the report stage of the bill. The first amendment standing in my name would delete clause 1. One might wonder why I would want to delete clause 1 of a particular bill because it is the short title. We had a debate about this at committee stage. Clause 1 of the bill states, “This Act may be cited as the Ending the Long-gun Registry Act”. The intent of the government seems to be that it wants to end the long gun registry. Instead, it has proposed a bill that would do a heck of a lot more than end the long gun registry.

First, there is no such thing as a long gun registry. We have a registry of guns, which consists of various types of guns and rifles. There are prohibited weapons, restricted weapons and then there is everything else. Included in the everything else category are the ones that the Conservatives have been talking about for years and have done nothing to fix the problems and anomalies that occurred as a result of the failed implementation by the Liberal Party when it was in power. They just talked about the long gun registry as if it were a separate registry that was designed to make criminals out of law-abiding hunters and farmers, which seems to be the common phrase. That seemed to be the mantra. However, what we have is legislation that is reckless in its design.

I moved an amendment, which I could not move here because it was already moved in committee, to rename the bill the “risking public safety act”. That is what Bill C-19 would do. It would risk public safety by treating all non-registered, non-restricted and non-prohibited weapons the same. In that category is included semi-automatic rifles, assault rifles, sniper rifles, a whole variety of guns that are in very dangerous to public safety. Therefore, they would not be controlled at all.

Second, the bill would prohibit a recording of transfers in certain instances. If I have a shotgun and I sell it, the current legislation requires me to contact the registry to find out if the buyer has a licence that is valid. If the buyer shows me a licence, that would not be good enough. I would have to call and ask whether the buyer's licence is a valid and existing licence. In the interim, from when the licence was issued, the buyer may have been subject to a firearms prohibition for any number of reasons unknown to me, even if I am related to the buyer. The buyer could be my brother-in-law or my first cousin, but I may not know that he or she has a firearms prohibition for any number of reasons, whether it be trouble with the law because of having committed an offence or exhibiting signs of mental instability that I have been unable to detect because I know the buyer so well and he or she seems normal enough to me. Nevertheless, the buyer could be prohibited from having firearms and that licence might not be valid. The registry would inform me of that and I would not sell my rifle to that person.

The provision says that if I am going to sell my rifle, I may call the registry. However, and this is important, the legislation says that nobody at the other end is allowed to record that call, that the registry is not allowed to keep a record of me checking that out.

What is the purpose of that? It serves no purpose whatsoever. In fact, it makes the other provisions requiring an action by the a seller to check a licence unenforceable. That is what the Mounties say about it. The RCMP, which run the registry and which the government does not listen to in this regard, has said that this is tantamount to making the rules unenforceable. One of the consequences of that is it will lead to an underground market in rifles and shotguns and other non-restricted weapons.

By doing this, the government will be removing any requirement for gun shops, sporting goods stores, Canadian Tire stores, to keep a record of to whom they have sold rifles, shotguns or even ammunition. They used to have to do that. That provision lapsed when the gun registry was brought in because it was unnecessary because all guns had to be registered, so that was okay.

By removing the requirement for all non-restricted or non-prohibited guns to be registered, there will be no record. The government has not reinstituted the requirement for gun shops, sporting goods stores, Canadian Tire stores, which are entitled to sell guns in Canada, to do that anymore. We basically have a loosey-goosey system for the registration of guns or police knowledge of guns.

When we wonder why Canadian police chiefs are opposed to these changes, we just have to look at the comments they have made. They talk about the registry being an important investigative tool, that it helps them investigate crimes, that it helps them find the source of guns and trace guns. We have an international obligation to do that.

Something that has been misconstrued by government members and witnesses at committee and members throughout the House is the fact that 14,000 times a day the registry is consulted by police forces and individual public enforcement agencies across the country. If we put all these things together, we understand how important the gun registry is to police services.

A lot of talk was had both in committee and in the House, suggesting that this was really only incidental, that law enforcement was not consulting the registry, but rather consulting CPIC, which has registry information on it. That was the spin given on this. Any time a police officer checked a licence, automatically this picked over a check on the registry and that was part of the use of the registry. It turns out that is not true.

I have a copy of the last RCMP report dated November 2011, signed by previous RCMP commissioner, William Elliott. The report was not released until January. It was not made available to our committee and the House did not ask for it, but it was made available to the Minister of Public Safety. It was one of the last acts of William Elliott as commissioner of firearms. The report said that the 14,000 inquires in 2010 were made to the firearms registry, looking for information on firearms or on individuals.

That shows two things. First, it shows how useful this instrument is for police forces across the country. Second, it shows a bit of a pattern of a lack of full disclosure by the government and government members on this issue. The Conservatives do not want people to know the facts because they do not want the facts to get in the way of the argument that they have made time and time again.

This is of importance to a lot of Canadians, on both sides of the issue. In the government's zeal to kill the registry, it has done unintended things. There is the law of unintended consequences. Many of the unintended consequences have to do with the fact that the Conservatives are risking public safety by making things worse than they were before the registry came into effect. That is wrong. To call it the ending of the long gun registry act is inaccurate and inadequate. We think that should be deleted.

Speaker's Ruling

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

There are 10 motions in amendment standing on the notice paper for the report stage of Bill C-19. Motions Nos. 1 to 10 will be grouped for debate and voted upon according to the voting pattern available at the table.

I will now propose Motions Nos. 1 to 10 to the House.

The House proceeded to the consideration of Bill C-19, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Firearms Act, as reported (without amendment) from the committee.

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

First, let me wish you, and all honourable members, a happy new year. I am looking forward to working with all members of Parliament of all parties to address Canadians’ priorities to the benefit of all Canadians.

In response to the first question from my friend with regard to management of House business and ensuring things actually do make it to votes in the House, I understand that the opposition has adopted a posture where it intends to run up the score. We have had now 13 or 14 occasions where it has refused to come to any reasonable agreement on any length of debate, or on any limitation on the number of speakers. Every time we run up to the point where we are looking at over 50, 60, 75 or 80 speakers, it becomes apparent that its intention is simply to bring paralysis and gridlock to the House.

It is not surprising. The opposition looks to its friends in Europe and in the United States and that is what it sees. That is not our approach. Our approach is to ensure that we have an orderly, productive and hard-working House that actually delivers results, and we will continue to do that.

Of course, our government's top priority is, and remains, jobs and economic growth.

Of course, our government’s top priority remains jobs and economic growth. Tomorrow, we will start debating second reading of Bill S-5, the Financial System Review Act. This bill will maintain and improve the stability of Canada’s banking system, a system that has been named the world’s soundest banking system four years in a row by the World Economic Forum. This bill needs to be law by April, so it is important to have timely passage.

Bill C-11, the Copyright Modernization Act, will provide a boost to the digital and creative sectors, which employ Canadians in high-quality jobs. This is another bill that the opposition has opposed and has tried to delay. There have already been 75 speeches debating this bill.

In context, this has been the subject of 75 speeches already in the House and a vote on a motion that it never go to second reading. It is clear what the strategy is. The identical bill in the previous House went to committee after just a few hours. Obviously, the opposition is implementing its strategy of simply running up the score and forcing the government to impose time allocation in order to get anything through the House. That being said, we want to see it go through the House.

I will be calling Bill C-11 for further second reading debate on Wednesday and next Friday. I look forward to concluding the debate and moving the bill to committee, where bills are traditionally studied in detail.

I would be pleased and delighted if they would come to an agreement to limit debate. I have invited them to do that many times. They have never come forward with any proposal on the number of speakers they would like. I invite them once again to present that to us and to do it here in the House.

I am also pleased to advise the House that next week we will start the final stages of scrapping the ineffective and wasteful long gun registry once and for all. I will be calling report stage debate on Bill C-19, Ending the Long-Gun Registry Act, on Monday and Tuesday.

Finally, I wish to designate Thursday, February 9, as the second allotted day.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

It's not central to my point. I apologize.

But the issue here is that it was released after second reading debate on Bill C-19. It was released after this committee finished amending Bill C-19. The same thing happened when Parliament was debating Ms. Hoeppner's bill, Bill C-391. I just find it odd that the reports are coming out later and later and they seem to be timed in a political fashion.

I'd like you to give us a bit of background on why it was released so late when it obviously was prepared a long time before, because it had former Commissioner Elliott's signature appended to it.

Firearms Registry

[Denis Coderre, Liberal, Bourassa, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will take the word of the Minister of Public Security in Quebec City, who is from Beauce, over that of the tourist in chief from Beauce.

I now have a question for the Minister of Justice.

This is going before the courts, where millions of dollars will be spent. I would like to have the assurance of the Conservative government that if there is an injunction, or if the constitutionality of Bill C-19 is challenged, the Conservatives will preserve the information in the meantime. Or are they going to destroy it? Will they respect the court?

Government Priorities

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Mr. Speaker, last spring Canadians elected a government that is listening and keeping its promises.

Canadians told me they wanted a government that would make keeping their children and communities safe a priority. As promised, within the first 100 sitting days of Parliament, we will pass Bill C-10.

Farmers in my riding told me that they wanted the freedom to market their own wheat and barley. We are delivering by passing Bill C-18.

I regularly hear how wasteful the long gun registry is. I am very pleased that the government is passing Bill C-19 to end this discrimination against law-abiding citizens.

People across Canada have also told me of the need for increased transparency and accountability for first nations governance. I am proud that the government has introduced Bill C-27.

We have listened and we have acted.

Firearms Registry

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, more and more of the Conservatives are showing that they are just not fit to govern.

The member for Lethbridge offended victims of gun violence by mimicking a six-shooter pistol during a vote on the gun registry. Even worse, ministers are tripping over their own logic as they make policy up on the fly.

First the Minister of Public Safety says that Bill C-19 would not impact how gun sales are reported, until the RCMP steps in and says that is just not true.

Then the minister's parliamentary secretary claims, with a straight face, that income tax forms can track firearms just as well as the registry. In fact, the RCMP report on gun control says that the changes will lead to the proliferation of firearms and that private sales will take place without any records and that the rules would be unenforceable.

The government is just making stuff up as it goes along.

The fact is the Conservatives have destroyed our last safeguard against deadly firearms, and they did it on the back of a napkin. The RCMP knows it and victims know it. As the member for Lethbridge should know, that is nothing to celebrate.