Mr. Speaker, of course I would like to see support for the amendment to split this bill. That is the way we should proceed.
I received some information with regard to the registration system recommended by the minister. The minister has said both inside and outside this House that it is going to be a simplified system, that it is going to place a tool in the hands of the law enforcement agencies to help them do their job and maintain a safer society. All the law-abiding gun owner will have to do is pick up a card at the post office or one of the stores in his or her community, fill in the make, model and serial number of their firearm and mail the card in.
Last week I visited three of the RCMP forensic laboratories and spoke with their technical experts on this matter. Either the information they have is not getting through to the minister or he is ignoring it. When I asked them about this concept of having the gun owner fill in a card and send it in, they laughed.
I also found out that these labs have what they call a standard collection of firearms, meaning they are one of a kind. No two firearms are the same in the collection. These standard collections are in every one of their labs across the country.
In this one lab the technicians had examined the long guns of which there were just under a thousand. They found that 20 per cent of those firearms did not have serial numbers and 1.7 per cent could not be identified.
I do not know how the justice minister is going to create a registration system when 20 per cent of a standard collection that is fairly representative of the firearms in this country do not have serial numbers. How are we going to register a firearm that does not have a serial number?
When I asked these questions the technicians' response was that they would have to be brought in. Brought in where? To the labs that do not as yet have but would have the technology to handle the thousands of firearms that would have to be brought in.
Already they are examining the feasibility of what form and what type of system ought to be used to place a serial number on a firearm. Certainly it is going to cost more than $10 a firearm. Certainly it is not going to impose a simple constraint on a gun owner to fill out a form. I ask the minister, how in the world can a serial number be written on a card if there is no serial number on the gun?
I was also told that many firearms in this country are over 100 years old. A firearm does not wear out. A firearm is usually maintained fairly well by the owner. Many of those firearms do not have the manufacturer's name, the calibre, or any identifying marks other than perhaps a model number or a serial number.
I was shown a firearm that had been imported from Russia. There are thousands of them in Canada, according to the information given to me. All it has on it is a serial number consisting of two Russian letters and three numbers. There is not the calibre, the make or any other identifying features on that firearm.
If we are going to develop a registration system which is truly going to be a workable and a valuable tool in the hands of our law enforcement agencies, we had better take a careful look at what we are going to do.
It is important, proper and wise that we consider the amendment before the House now. If the minister will consider splitting this bill, let us put our efforts together to devise a bill directed at the criminal use of firearms. If there are people who honestly and sincerely believe that universal registration will help, let us examine it before we go forward. Let us not hurry
into something that our technicians are telling us will not work and will certainly cost a lot more than $85 million to establish.
I ask the minister if he would consider these proposals. This kind of information is going to be laid, lock, stock and barrel, before the standing committee, through witness after witness we will bring forward, from either the RCMP or the city police forces from across this country which have to deal with the problem. They are now faced with a situation in which they have to give a legal opinion in court instead of a technical opinion. I will give the House an example.
If the minister goes forward and creates an offence for a person in possession of a handgun based upon its calibre, such as the .32 and the .25, that will create a serious problem. The reason for that is simple. Although the offence, the charge, the information in court will indicate that the individual is in violation of a section by virtue of the fact that they are in possession of a .32 calibre, all the defence counsel has to do is ask the technical witness about the calibre of the handgun?
Although marked on its side that it is a .32 calibre, the definition of calibre, according to these technicians, is not what is marked on the side, but by the size of the projectile it fires. The .32 calibre, according to them, fires a .30 calibre projectile.
I asked them what they would say on the witness stand when asked about the calibre. They said they would simply tell the court that it is designed as a .32, its markings are that of a .32, but it fires a .30 calibre projectile and they would let the judge decide. If they had respond yes or no to whether the firearm is .32 calibre, they said they would not respond. I asked them if they have ever considered a career in politics.
My point is that there are a host of technical difficulties. When it comes to placing the identifying features from a firearm on to a registration card that the police will be able to identify without question, if they come across an individual with a firearm in the back seat of a car or in the trunk of a car for example, they are not going to be able to positively identify that firearm.
All we have to do is look at the Terence Wade report in which he outlined the problems within the present handgun registration system. Approximately 30 per cent of the information contained in that system is simply useless.
I understand from some of the legal opinions I am hearing that soon the challenges in court will render the handgun registration system invalid within a court of law because it cannot be relied upon.
There are so many different types of firearms that we are going to have an extreme degree of difficulty registering them to the point at which the registration card issued can identify one specific firearm out of the 7 million to 20 million that exist in Canada today.
I point out difficulties that the registration system will have. It flies in the face of what the justice minister has said in terms of simplicity.
If it is going to be as simple as the justice minister has indicated, then it is not going to be worth the powder to blow it in the hands of the police officers as an enforcement tool.
Let us take a look at this. Let us go forward with the portion directed at the criminal use of firearms. Let us take a second look at the other part.