Thank you, Chairman and colleagues, for your interest in the safety and security of our nation.
That is what this portfolio is charged with. Both I and the Prime Minister often say that the first responsibility of any government is the safety and the security of its citizens, and I can tell you that some 52,000 individuals report under this portfolio. As I travel the country and visit border agencies, corrections institutes, RCMP detachments, our CSIS operations, emergency preparedness places of operation, and the offices and support personnel backing up each one of those organizations, I can say with sincerity that the overwhelming majority of these 52,000 people really do have a sense that when they go to work every day or every night—and this is a seven-day-a-week, around-the-clock operation—that they have, in their own way, something important and viable to do related to the safety of our country and our citizens.
Having said that, I'm certainly open to any questions. I want to give members as much time as possible for questions.
We have 52,000 individuals and a budget, depending upon whether you add in the supplementary estimates, that comes in around the $6 billion mark. It's a significant investment in safety and security.
I understand there's a particular interest related to firearms today by some members.
First let me introduce John Brunet, who is the comptroller for public safety, and when you get down into the minutiae, this man does know it all and faithfully reports it, whether I like it or not. We have Mr. Peter Martin. He is the deputy commissioner of National Police Services. I've asked him to be here, having understood there is some interest in the Firearms Centre. With the RCMP recently taking over that task, he can certainly give updates and be very focused in terms of specific questions you may have to which I may not have answers. Also, we have Mr. Paul Gauvin. He is the deputy commissioner of corporate management and comptrollership, so you will also be able to ask questions more broadly related to the RCMP.
I want to just remind members, Mr. Chairman--and then I'll move directly to questions so that I give as much time as possible to my colleagues to give me questions or advice--when it comes to firearms there are some things to keep in mind. Under our system now, every person who possesses or acquires or wants to possess or acquire a firearm must be licensed, regardless of what the firearm is--restricted or unrestricted. Everyone who has a licence will be recorded in a national database. Information on everyone who has a licence is available to the police forces for their information and for their own security.
Any time somebody wants to assume, acquire, or possess either a firearm or ammunition, they have to produce that licence. That licence is not guaranteed to them for life. They can lose that licence if there is cause, if any firearms officer in any of the provinces thinks that licence should be revoked. Anybody applying for a licence has to go through an extensive background check. If you want to acquire a firearm, for instance, a handgun, that is on a restricted list, the process of licensing is even more extensive. Everybody wanting to acquire a firearm must take a safety course and must also take a course in the safe handling and the safe storage of firearms. Firearms must still be stored, locked, at the place of residence according to government regulations. If you have a restricted firearm, for instance, if you are a sports shooter and you have a handgun, your transportation is restricted in terms of where you can go with that firearm. You must go directly from your home to the gun club of which you must be a member.
Mr. Chairman, we want to focus our resources on the most effective ways of having effective gun control. The Auditor General, year after year, reported significant and in fact at times grotesque waste and inefficiency related to the firearms registry.
This is not an attack on any of the employees who work in those operations. They were dealt a hand and dealt a task that in some ways was impossible for them to maintain.
When it comes to unrestricted long guns, the millions and millions of guns that are out there—shotguns, duck-hunting guns, .22 rifles, .303 hunting rifles, owned primarily by farmers and sport shooters. There are literally millions and millions of them in Canada. The task of trying to record and register every one of those with every single registration number proved to be impossible. The Auditor General herself said the data was not reliable.
We want to direct the funds—our funds, our resources—to the most effective way of gun control. For that reason, we think the emphasis should be on registering every restricted firearm, every prohibited firearm, and every person who wants to own any type of firearm. But to try to match what was at one point to have been close to a billion dollars on a long gun registry of primarily farmers and sport shooters, which proved to be impossible, was not the most effective way to do this. The data was not reliable, said the Auditor General.
Mr. Chairman, we want to focus on reducing tragedies with firearms. We want to focus on those people who would be at risk in even having a firearm. We want to stop people from having firearms who shouldn't have them. There has been, unfortunately, on the expense side a focus on the area where we're having the least or almost no problem, and that is the farmers, the duck hunters, with these millions and millions of unrestricted firearms.
Just as an example, Mr. Chairman, in the year 2003 there were 549 homicides in Canada. Two of those were committed by somebody using an unrestricted long arm—two of them. So here we had the majority of our resources, hundreds of millions of dollars, being directed to half of 1% of the problem, when on the other hand we have a huge number of problems with handguns being used in crimes. That's an area where we have to increase our focus—gang activity and illegal smuggling of firearms.
I share these with you in closing, Mr. Chairman, to remind Canadians that we are very aggressive. In the days ahead, because of what we've learned through the tragedy at Dawson College and in other incidents, we want to and I think we can make our system even stronger and even better in having alert systems in place whereby we can see and perhaps stop somebody who should not be in possession of a firearm from doing something that is wrong.
We will continue to focus on that, on an enhanced registration process and enhanced activity related to smuggling of firearms. We have prevention programs into the millions and millions of dollars, which are going out into our communities right now for youth at risk, for gang activity. That's where we want our focus to be.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman and colleagues, for your attention to this. I'm open to any questions or advice you may have. Of course, this isn't limited just to firearms. Any questions at all under the area of public safety, I'll try my best to answer. If I don't have the information or can't get it to you today, I will get it to individuals as soon as possible.
