Madam Speaker, not only is it an honour for me to speak to the bill, I am enthusiastic and I would like to applaud something that is long overdue. The bill addresses the health and safety of Canadians. As Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health, health and safety are extremely important to me.
Guns threaten, guns injure, and guns kill. I understand that guns are an important component of life in many parts of Canada: for hunters who live in isolated parts of the country and for people who play some competitive sports. Guns are also very important to the tourism industry.
The bill is not intended to harm that group of people or to stop any sport or tourism or person who wants to hunt in any sporting way. The bill is something most responsible gun owners would support. The firearms act seeks to bring into line those people who by their irresponsible use of firearms create a bad name for law-abiding gun owners, which is why the bill is supported by 68 per cent of gun owners. Those who operate within the law and act responsibly in storing and using their guns see nothing to fear in the bill.
The Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics and the Department of Justice have compiled a lot of startling data on the issue of guns. I bring them to the attention of the House today because they are what frightens me about the whole issue. Firearms cause suicide. Some 1,100 suicides a year are committed with guns, which means that 78 per cent of firearm deaths are suicides. In 1990, 300 of the suicides were committed by 15 to 25-year-old youths. People who commit suicide with a gun have a 92 per cent success rate, compared with only 35 per cent if other means are used.
As a physician and a mother this is totally unacceptable to me. It is alarming and it is sad. I know as many health and social workers know that suicide attempts by young people are often only a cry for help by very desperate and frightened youth. As a physician I have treated many of those desperate and frightened youth who would not be alive today if they had access to guns.
Firearms not only decimate our youth but firearms create other household tragedies. Firearms victimize women. Over 40 per cent of women killed by their husbands each year are shot. Every six days a woman is shot to death in Canada in her own home by a legally owned gun.
In March 1992 the Department of Justice showed that 78.3 per cent of domestic homicides in Canada involving the use of firearms were by legally owned guns. I stress that they were legally owned guns. We know that domestic violence is endemic in society but firearms transform violence into murder. One fit of anger, one violent rage combined with access to a gun, can result in a dead woman.
These are not the only disturbing statistics about violence with firearms against women. In 1993, 75 per cent of female victims were killed in a private residence; 85 per cent of the guns used to kill women were specifically rifles and shotguns; and 82 per cent of the rifles and shotguns were legally owned at the time of the shooting.
Is this the type of society we want to maintain, where women and children are not safe in their own homes? Is this the freedom espoused by those who oppose the bill? Is there any freedom at the end of a gun? I would argue that there is not.
Deaths by firearms are preventable deaths. Injuries by firearms cost our public health care system millions of dollars a year. Over 1,000 firearm related deaths and injuries are treated in Canadian hospitals each year. The cost of this is estimated between $15 million to $30 million per year. Therefore in my book firearms present a major health hazard; in the book of anyone interested in public health and safety. Even if the value of human life lost is not very important to the members of the third party, I am sure that the cost to the health care system might make them think twice because it is enormous. I believe $30 million a year is enormous. They did not factor into their recent budget the cost of firearms related injuries to the health care system.
One of the things that alarms me about firearms is that at the moment we do not have any data on the number of firearms in this country. Anyone who knows anything about public health will know data gathering is extremely important in preventive measures in health. The epidemiology of any disease or any health hazard, whether it be a virus, a bacteria, a poor sewage system or a gun depends on the amount of data we have.
There are very limited data right now on guns. We do not know exactly how many guns are in Canada. The gun lobby says there are 22 million. The Department of Justices says there are six million. It profoundly disturbs me that we have no real figures to answer this question. We know how many bicycles, how many cars and how many dogs there are but we do not know how many firearms there are. This is completely unacceptable.
This act will give us the database we need to take the preventive health measures we need to make this a safe and healthy society. By mandatory registration we will take the guns out of the closets and put them where we can find out exactly how many there are.
When police are called to an incident in a home they will know if they are walking into a risk or not. When police try to go to homes where there is domestic violence they will know whether they have to remove a gun because the woman in that house is in danger. Guns are lethal weapons and so it makes sense to have them registered, traceable and retrievable by our police forces in the case of use or abuse.
Some of my constituents have questioned the potential costs of this registration. I can understand that in a time of fiscal control we do not want to incur costs to the government. However, the justice minister tells us it will cost $85 million over seven years to register these guns.
To the members of the third party, I do not believe $85 million over seven years is too much money to spend on saving lives and decreasing disability, especially when balanced against the savings to the health care system. I hope even the members of the third party can figure out the mathematics of that simple equation.
Another concern raised by my constituents was they would be restricted from using firearms in the film industry, a major industry in British Columbia. I am pleased to say they can rest assured this new bill will not prohibit that.
Some other members of my community are concerned because they will not be able to export their replica firearms or that the investment value of their antique firearms will be decreased. Article 22 of this bill provides for the transfer, that is the sale, barter or donation of firearms, to persons who hold licences to acquire and possess that particular class of firearm. Their collections will not be devalued or frozen because they can continue to trade and sell their firearms with people who have the same type of firearms.
More important, in a democracy we must follow the will of the people. The majority of Canadians, 86 per cent of all respondents to a recent Angus Reid poll, said they support strong gun control measures, 68 per cent of whom are firearm owners. Eighty-four per cent of respondents support a total ban on military weapons, 71 per cent of whom are gun owners. Seventy-one per cent of Canadians support a ban on handguns, 54 per cent of whom are gun owners. It is clear Canadians everywhere think gun control is very important.
People talk a lot about the right to bear firearms. Nowhere is this in the Canadian Constitution. The responsibility to store, register and use firearms reasonably and safely is incumbent upon anyone who feels it is their right to own a gun.
Peace, order and good government are what the Canadian Constitution is all about and what Canada stands for. With this bill we will ensure that we continue to have peace, order and good government and that a cause of death and disability will be removed.