Debates of March 13th, 1995

Firearms Act

[Mary Clancy, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

To hon. members opposite, if they want to get their poll done right maybe they should re-educate their attorney general. In Alberta 62 per cent said yes.

[Jim Silye, Reform, Calgary Centre, AB]

He is not here to defend himself.

[Mary Clancy, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

I can only pick on people who are not here. It is too easy to pick on those opposite. If hon. member's opposite would like to calm down and listen, I would be happy to conclude.

This is a very serious issue. This is a very important issue to the women of this country and to the children of this country. It is very interesting that we talk about guns and their different categories. We talk about automatic weapons, semi-automatic weapons and some of the particularly horrible instruments of mayhem I saw when I travelled with the Toronto police force some months ago.

The hon. member opposite says they defended this country in the second world war. Our guns were turned on an enemy in the second world war that was trying to subjugate an entire culture and an entire belief in democracy. I do not think we should be turning those same weapons on our fellow citizens, which we have been.

Let me get back to my original point, guns, automatic weapons, semi-automatic weapons, those awful instruments of mayhem. Many are going to be banned. Let no one misunderstand that for women in this country an ordinary shotgun in a gun case or hanging over the mantelpiece is an object to be feared. It is an object to worry about for oneself or for one's children, given the circumstances in far too many families.

Again, I am very proud to stand with this government and this minister on the whole issue of gun control. I stand here knowing this is a promise made to the people of Canada, important to the people of Canada. First and foremost, this is a promise that will be kept to the people of Canada.

[Jim Silye, Reform, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the issue of gun control has become one of the more emotionally charged debates to be addressed in this House.

As the member for Calgary Centre, I cannot believe how quickly such an important subject has digressed into the realm of us against them, between interest groups, spin doctors, media pundits, urban and rural ridings, men and women. We have lost sight of who we are trying to protect.

Not one person in the House enjoys picking up a newspaper and reading about a man, woman or child being shot by another person. No one enjoys walking the streets at night with a feeling of fear in their stomach. Emotionally we are all on the same wave length and so it is time to start thinking and acting rationally, not just emotionally and politically, as the justice minister said today in question period.

The purpose of the motion we are debating today is to split Bill C-68 in two. One bill would cover the Criminal Code amendments dealing with the use of firearms during the commission of a crime while the second bill would deal with the issue of a national firearms registration system. The rationale is

simple. The Minister of Justice has lumped these two separate issues together under the banner of crime control.

I do not believe criminals will register their guns and I believe the current firearms acquisition certificate system is adequate in the control of legitimate firearms owners. Therefore we should separate this bill. Even some members of the Liberal caucus support our motion.

At a town hall meeting on March 5 the hon. member for Lanark-Carleton stated he would like to see Bill C-68 split wherein the anti-crime and anti-smuggling components of the legislation would be dealt with separately from the issue of gun registration. They are two separate issues. I fully expect the Liberal member will vote in favour of our amendment.

I am prepared to support measures that genuinely reduce crime, but the burden of proof is on the Minister of Justice to prove gun registration will work. Therefore, before debate on this bill concludes I would simply ask some Liberal members to answer a few questions.

How will a firearms registration system truly protect society in light of the fact that other systems around the world have shown that it does not really make a difference? How will the government gauge the success of the program? How will the high costs be reconciled with making criminals out of innocent people?

I have some serious, common sense questions regarding who benefits from this program. The Minister of Justice has said registration will reduce crime and better equip the police to deal with crime in Canadian society by providing them with more information they often need to do their jobs.

Criminals will not register their weapons. I find it rather unlikely that policemen on the streets will approach a suspect's house any differently if the computer says the suspect does not own a gun. Caution will still be the rule.

I would like to take a moment to read part of a letter from two Calgary policemen:

On Saturday, November 26, 1994 my partner and I were dispatched to a noisy stereo complaint in northwest Calgary. After knocking on the door for an extended period of time, my partner and I were confronted by a man at the door with a loaded, sawed-off shotgun which he pointed at my partner's chest. The man was subdued, arrested and charged with four weapons related offences.

During our investigation we determined that the man was prohibited from owning or possessing any firearms until 1998 because of a weapons offence in 1992. The weapon he had in his possession was also a prohibited weapon.

Of all the four offences the man was charged with, only one, assault with a weapon, is an offence where police can take the criminal to jail. Pointing a weapon, possession of a prohibited weapon and pointing a prohibited weapon are minor offences in the Criminal Code, the criminal version of a speeding ticket.

How will registration possibly change what happened to us?

The man was legally prohibited from having a gun but he had one. Does a police officer have to get shot to make us realize that we have to get tough on these sorts of offenders?

According to the Department of Justice, in over half the cases in which possession charges are laid by police they are dropped once they get to court. That is the reality outside of planet Ottawa.

Addressing the inherent weaknesses of the Criminal Code and the charter of rights and freedoms should be our number one priority.

Handguns have been registered in Canada for 60 years. In spite of this, using the minister's own statistics, handgun crimes have been on the increase. There is no evidence to indicate that universal registration of shotguns and rifles will be any more effective.

Are we really worried about hunters, target shooters and collectors? Maybe the Liberals are but I cannot accept that these people are responsible for the violence on our streets. It is the criminals using illegally obtained weapons who are responsible for gun related crimes. They should be the target.

The Liberals like to use the logic that if you have to register your car you should register your gun. If you register your gun you will become more responsible, less inclined to have an accident and less likely to have your weapon fall into the hands of criminals.

When we look at vehicle registration, what effect does it have on preventing theft, promoting responsible use and reducing accidents? Does vehicle registration prevent drunk driving?

In Calgary a teenager was recently sentenced to six years for running down and killing a police officer with a registered stolen car. Is the owner of the stolen car responsible for the death of Constable Sonnenberg? Should car owners have to take more responsibility ensuring that their vehicles are stored safely? Should we apply the same legal impediments to car ownership that the minister wants to apply to gun ownership? Would this have saved Constable Sonnenberg? Of course not.

No matter what steps we take to prevent our property from being stolen, criminals find a way to get at it. No matter how much registration we have the simple truth is that people will continue to break the law. Let us start focusing our legislation on discouraging those who might and punishing those do.

Let us send a collective message to potential criminals that this country does not tolerate violence and violent offenders. From now on the punishment will match the crime.

Becoming a legal firearms owner in Canada today is by no means a cakewalk. Applicants must obtain a firearms acquisition certificate which is an extremely probing form containing questions about personal matters such as drug and alcohol abuse, job loss and divorce, to name a few. Applicants must then furnish the names of two people from the prescribed list of occupations and relationships who can verify the information in

the application. This is followed by a 28-day mandatory waiting period during which a firearms officer can conduct an investigation on applicants. Upon completion the applicants must then pass a course or test on the safe handling and use of firearms and the laws relating to them. The applicant is then photographed and his or her certificate is processed centrally by the chief provincial or territorial firearms officer. What more can you do?

In the time it takes one legal gun owner to go through this process, thousands of stolen or smuggled guns will change hands in the streets. That is the problem. If this government would take more time to identify the right problem, it would find 60 per cent of the solution.

The national debt is the problem. The deficit is a contributing factor. That is why we have to get to a zero deficit, not just 3 per cent of GDP. The lack of deterrence for the criminal misuse of firearms is the problem. Registration is not even a contributing factor.

The Liberals are identifying the wrong problem. The Minister of Justice stated in the House that last year an estimated 375,000 weapons were smuggled into Canada. In the same breath he went on to say last year approximately 3,800 firearms were lost or stolen by those who lawfully own them in Canada. In the years since 1974 a cumulative total of 65,000 firearms have been stolen or lost, not recovered.

There were 3,800 stolen or lost weapons as opposed to 375,000 smuggled guns, yet the main emphasis of our new gun control laws will be registration for legal gun owners. I believe that instead of throwing millions of dollars toward registration we should look at all possible ways to beef up our security at borders.

Let us do everything in our power to stop the 375,000 guns from finding their way into hands of criminals. Let us send a clear message to the people who bring them across the border that if they get caught, they will not just get a slap on the wrist or a fine, but a guarantee of time behind bars.

Currently we have mandatory sentences for firearms offences that are not enforced because they are plea bargained away. Therefore a mandatory sentence is utterly meaningless and useless. I can see the need for a crown prosecutor to have some latitude in handling a case. The flexibility that plea bargaining offers is intended to lead to a conviction. I realize it is necessary, but not the outright elimination of a mandatory sentence. It should be a reduced sentence.

A national firearms registry flies directly in the face of today's reality which is that the vast majority of people want less government regulation and intrusion in their lives, not more. A 10-year jail term for failure to register and the right to register a firearm and the right to search and seizure without a warrant are incomprehensible.

Are we headed for a police state if this bill passes in its present form? Is the minister not willing to separate the bill and debate the two separate issues? He knows full well that they are two separate issues. He knows that this party would support the amendments to the Criminal Code to make it tougher on crime. He knows he would get our support.

Why bother with this national registration issue with the same bill? Separate the two. Have the courage and conviction to have a true and honest debate. People are sick and tired of hearing about the rights of criminals. They want them caught. They want them off the streets. They want them punished and, above all, they want laws that will make people think twice about becoming criminals in the first place.

[Sarkis Assadourian, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, 128 years ago our founding fathers came together, gave this House power to enact laws, to ensure peace, order and good government in Canada.

Even President Clinton on his visit to this country on February 23 said Canada has shown to the world how to balance freedom with compassion and tradition with innovation. Canada set the example for the rest of the world on many occasions. This certainly is one of those occasions when we can say to the world that we set the standards and we make the examples for the rest to follow.

On October 25, 1993 the people of Canada voted for the Liberal Party. In the red book we made a promise to make our streets safe and offload the guns. Bill C-68 goes in that direction.

Public support for this bill has been enormous, 80 per cent to 85 per cent. Even in Alberta we are told 62 per cent of the population supports the bill. In my riding of Don Valley North, which I am proud to represent, 90 per cent of the population supports this bill.

In my riding I received only seven or eight representations opposing the bill. Out of those, one of them was a U.S. citizen complaining about the bill. When I asked him why he does not complain to U.S. senators, he said he lives here and has to complain to me.

Many of us receive many letters from various organizations and individuals regarding Bill C-68. I received maybe 200 letters from various parts of the country. One said in part: "It has come to my attention that someone has sent a number of misleading letters to various members of Parliament and some Reformers, including yourself".

These letters are on the subject of government policy proposals and gun controls. One says in part: "Many of these letters bear my name and address and are signed but were not written, signed or sent by me. My signature is false. I believe you have

received one of these letters as I have received correspondence from you on this topic. I hereby request that you remove me from your mailing list".

I am not saying that all the letters are forged but I am sure that 15 members received letters that are the same. They have not sent a letter to anybody but somehow someone took the liberty to send letters to members of Parliament so they can say they received 200, 300, 1,000 letters, and that is how they can make public opinion saying people oppose it. The fact is that people support this bill.

I want to raise the issue of rural and urban communities. In the last byelection in a riding in Quebec 62 per cent of the riding was rural and 38 per cent was urban. In that byelection nobody ever raised the issue of gun control. It is obvious that rural Canadians support the bill. They are happy with it and they want to go forward with it so we can build a new Canada, safe and sound for everybody.

On September 17, I invited members of Parliament in metro Toronto to attend meetings with the constable in charge of the gun depot in metro Toronto. He showed us 13,000 handguns, machine guns, AK-47s or M-16s, whatever the case may be. Some of them were legally owned, stolen from their owners so they could be used in crimes. They showed me replicas so similar it was hard to say which one was which.

Don Valley North is one of the few ridings in the country that has no gun shop. We would like to keep it that way.

Most people complain about the registration section of this bill. When this bill was presented last year I phoned the city of North York and asked how many dogs are registered there. The answer is 18,710. We asked the minister and members of this Parliament how many guns we have in the country. They tell us anywhere from 4 million to 15 million.

Four million to 15 million guns can do more harm to the country and its citizens than 18,000 dogs in North York. If we can register the dogs, the cats, the cars, why not the guns? I cannot understand. No one has been able to explain it to me. I am a reasonable person, more than the hon. member on the other side who shouts meaningless sentences. He should answer to Canadians why he opposes legislation when 80 per cent to 85 per cent of Canadians support it and want to go ahead with this bill.

Many guns used in a crime these days are stolen from rightful owners; as I said before, 3,800 guns. If legislation goes through the way it is, we will know exactly where the guns come from so we can follow up, trace them and hold the owner of a gun responsible.

It is my pleasure to support this bill to the best of my ability. I can assure the House, even my colleagues in the Reform Party, that the Don Valley North population supports this bill 100 per cent. We will make sure that by passing this bill Canada will be a safe place.

In the last two years Canada was rated the best country by the United Nations and we will make sure it continues to be one of the best and safest countries in the world.

[The Deputy Speaker]

It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 38, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Bourassa-The budget; the hon. member for The Battlefords-Meadow Lake-Low level flights; the hon. member for Kamloops-Royal Bank of Canada.

[Grant Hill, Reform, Macleod, AB]

Mr. Speaker, this debate has taken on quite a bit of emotion. I would like to approach it from the standpoint of the gun control advocates who I believe are intelligent, compassionate people, who truly believe that stricter control of firearms will make our streets safer. I believe also that the justice minister truly has those thoughts in mind. I do not think he has any nefarious reasons to be doing what he is doing.

We desire to split the bill into two components. One component Reformers would very quickly support. The other I do not think we would.

On the issue of registration I have looked beyond the borders of Canada to find out what registration did in countries where it was tried. This is the only mechanism I have to compare Canada with other countries. By the justice minister's own recollection there is no statistical basis for doing what we are doing. I looked beyond our shores. I am really addressing this to those who honestly believe registration will work.

New Zealand registered all firearms. Over quite a complex process it registered its firearms.

I went through the history of it. Back in World War I it had reason to be concerned about firearms coming into the country and it registered them. After registering firearms for many years it looked at registration and asked whether it achieved the purpose for which it was undertaken. I have heard the justice minister say that the reason its registration system failed was that it had a poor computer system.

That may be the reason but New Zealand said the registration was of limited value because compliance was poor. Moving from spot to spot was not reported so that even if a person had

registered the registration went astray. It was also found that it was only useful if the serial number were registered. Many weapons were not registered by serial number but by model number. Even if the law-abiding citizen took the time to do that it was a failure. It was found that many people never registered, did not comply. As well it was found that the cost was unjustified. It was much more expensive than expected. That is a very important issue in these days of financial restraint.

New Zealand abandoned its registration system and went to a system of licensing much like a pilot's licence. An individual who wanted a weapon had to be registered. It depended on the level of use whether or not the individual went for the high or lower level. There is a lesson to be learned by Canada from the experiences in New Zealand.

Second is the overall registration of firearms. I made a comment on national radio that Australia had tried registration of firearms. I got a blast from the consul's office saying that I said the wrong thing. It was wrong. It was not tried overall in Australia. It was only tried in various Australian states.

The state that closely resembles Canada is the state of Victoria. In 1984 Victoria decided that all firearms had to be registered. There were some massacres, some murders in Australia. Public opinion was inflamed just like it is in Canada today. Registration was to be the answer, according to Australian politicians.

In 1984 registration was to be phased in over a three-year period. The Australian police resolved that the spread of firearms should be contained. They actually had a very specific way to contain firearms. The initial statement made by the Australian police was that no home should have more than three firearms. Computerized registration would be the mechanism to justify that. If a home had just cause it could contain more than three firearms.

The resulting legislation did not include the three-firearm position. It was only registration of firearms. They moved off the three-firearm position into registration. The police still said they thought it would help.

Registration took place. Interestingly enough they found that it was very much more expensive than they had thought. Now we are getting into the more modern computer age which is very expensive. They found in terms of compliance that 58.9 per cent of the population complied but 41.1 per cent did not comply. Worse and most condemnatory of the process was that there was no effect whatever on criminal misuse of firearms. They had good statistics to follow it through. For the same three reasons New Zealand abandoned its firearm registration. Australia did the same.

I obtained the conclusions of the firearm registration officer through access to information. Generally they are not publicly available. The officer charged with the responsibility was asked whether he had done a good job. In summary he said: "I do not believe registration is the answer to the problem. I would therefore recommend that firearms registration be forthwith abolished and together with the firearms consultation committee a far-reaching, effective and proper system of education be introduced as a prerequisite to obtaining a shooter's licence". He went on to describe a system very much like that of New Zealand.

That country is not strange and foreign to Canada. It is a country that is parallel to Canada. It tried it and it flopped. What happened to the firearms officer when he presented the report? He was fired. The report was buried and the political masters carried on with registration and registration persists today.

I have a political message for members across the way. In New South Wales, Australia, a Labour government tried to put through very similar, draconian firearms legislation as we have in Canada today. This is the part that should change their minds. National opinion polls are 70 per cent for the government. They fought an election on the basis of the issue and the Labour government was ousted from New South Wales. Prime Minister Unsworth announced that he would not be standing for leadership of the parliamentary Labour party. "Guns cost me", he said. "Clearly as leader I must accept the major proportion of the blame for this defeat, particularly in terms of my decision on the gun issue".

What happens if a Canadian's lifestyle is taken away and turned into political activism? Members of the Liberal Party have no idea what it is doing when it does this to the lifestyle of Canadians. They may get individuals in urban areas to give them all kinds of support. However, when they find out that registration will be expensive, will affect only law-abiding individuals and will have no impact on criminal misuse, they will do what they did in New South Wales.

It is not necessary. It is absolutely incredibly stupid. I would simply say that we should split the bill. Let us have crime control but let us not have registration, or it is gonzo to the Liberals.

[Warren Allmand, Liberal, Notre-Dame-De-Grâce, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on behalf of my constituents to give my full support to Bill C-68. It is a bill to restrict the availability of guns and thereby reduce the number of crimes with guns.

It is an undeniable fact that where guns and ammunition are less available there are less crimes with guns. Where guns and ammunition are more difficult to obtain, there are less crimes with guns. It is not no crimes with guns but less crime with guns.

Nobody on this side has made the suggestion that strict gun control will eliminate all crime with guns. It is true that professional criminals and gangsters will always get their guns, but the overwhelming majority of crime with guns is not committed by professional gangsters. It is committed by ordinary people who under stress or with some other problem strike out at another person. If a gun is available they use it.

Mark Lepine, before he killed 13 young women at École polytechnique had no criminal record. He was not a criminal. However, because the gun laws were loose he was able to get a semi-automatic military assault rifle and kill 13 women. He was not a criminal.

Valery Fabrikant, who killed four professors at Concordia University in Montreal, had no criminal record before he committed that crime. However, because he was able through looseness in the gun laws to get a gun he killed four other people.

In the context of family violence, quarrels, tensions, abuse of liquor and drugs, some mentally unbalanced people who lose control will strike out and, if guns are easily available, they will use them. In the legislation we are trying to make sure they are not easily available and to make it much more strict in being sold to the public.

[An hon. member]

Oh, oh.

[Warren Allmand, Liberal, Notre-Dame-De-Grâce, QC]

The level of debate from the Reform Party is the kind of thing we are listening to now. I listened to the hon. member make his speech. I would appreciate the opportunity of having the same chance.

When we make it more difficult to obtain guns crimes by these people are reduced because of strict gun laws. They do not have strict gun laws in most states in the U.S. They have a much higher rate of crime with guns. Some cases are completely ridiculous to read about.

I remember reading recently about a case in a certain American city where two automobiles collided at an intersection. The drivers involved in the collision lost their cool and became angry. Both of them pulled guns from their glove compartments, got out of their cars and shot each other.

In Canada we would be just as angry and lose our cool just as quickly, but because we would not have guns in our glove compartments we would probably get out and punch each other out or hit each other in the nose. The same excessive damage would not be done because guns would not be as easily available to people in that state of mind.

Contrary to what many have said in opposition to the bill, it will not stop legitimate hunting by responsible hunters. Nor will it stop competitive shooting by responsible sportsmen. These allegations are scare tactics. Whenever we have a bill to strengthen our gun laws we hear the same old rhetoric by the gun lobby and those who blindly follow the gun lobby.

I have been through four gun bills in the House during my period in Parliament. Each time we have set about to make the gun laws more restrictive to protect the public by preventing crimes with guns, we have heard the same old myths put forward by the gun lobby.

It can be demonstrated that despite the rhetoric after each gun law has passed there has been an increase in hunting licences available to responsible hunters. This gun law will not stop responsible sportsmen, hunters and shooters who belong to gun clubs and are competitive shooters from practising their sports.

I ask my colleagues in the House not to be freaked out by members of the gun lobby. They are not as important as they believes they are. They are not as numerous as they believe they are. They do not have the power they think they have.

They have threatened many members in the House before against voting for the strengthening of gun laws. They have threatened them during election time and have failed. I have been threatened, as I say, four times by members of that lobby. They have had no effect on me whatsoever. They have also threatened colleagues of mine from rural areas and have no effect on them whatsoever. They should be disregarded. They talk nonsense for the most part.

[Jay Hill, Reform, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Tell that to the Tories.

[Warren Allmand, Liberal, Notre-Dame-De-Grâce, QC]

The Tories were defeated for many other reasons and not for their gun laws, let's face it. If you think they were defeated for their gun laws you are really dreaming in Technicolor.

[The Deputy Speaker]

I ask the member to address his remarks through the Chair.

[Warren Allmand, Liberal, Notre-Dame-De-Grâce, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Among the myths of the gun lobby is that when we attempt to ban or restrict guns only criminals will have guns. There is no class of persons born criminal and there is no class of persons born non-criminal. People do not have an identifying mark as criminal or non-criminal.

As I just said a few minutes ago, ordinary individuals in situations of stress, alcohol, drugs or whatever often strike out at other people and if guns are available they use them. It is not because they are professional criminals. As I say, the overwhelming number of murders in Canada committed with guns are not committed by professional criminals and gangsters but by ordinary people like Fabrikant and Lepine who did not commit any crime before in their past lives.

Another myth we hear over and over is that guns do not kill but people kill. Of course a gun is the most lethal type of means by which to kill another person. Yes, it is possible to kill someone with a baseball bat, but frankly I do not know anybody in this House who would rather have somebody chasing them

with a lethal weapon instead of a baseball bat. Of course it is possible to kill people with poison, a knife or a baseball bat, but a gun is manufactured to kill, to kill animals or to kill people. Guns should be controlled and this bill will give better control.

With respect to registration, previous speakers, especially those from the Reform Party, asked how it will protect society and why we are doing it. We have had registration in this country for many years. Restricted weapons, especially handguns, have been registered for a long period of time and it has been successful. The rate of crime with handguns in Canada has, for the most part, been much lower than the rate of crime with long guns because handguns have been much more strictly controlled.

With the registration of all weapons, including handguns and long guns, it will be easier to conduct criminal investigations. The police will know who have guns and who do not. It will be easier to trace weapons used in crime and the criminals who had access to those guns. It will be easier to take preventive measures against violence with guns. For example, in a family that has a history of family violence, the police will know whether the husband or another family member has a gun registered in their name and that gun could be taken away.

It is true as some who oppose this bill will say that not everyone will register their gun. However, a large number will. Such a measure will help the police to remove guns from dangerous situations, especially situations where there has been a record of family violence.

With respect to the ban on most handguns, that is, handguns that are not used for competitive shooting, handguns such as the Saturday night specials, the very small and very easy to conceal handguns, these have no purpose except for use in crime. If someone is actually taking part in competitive shooting, then the gun is registered; the person belongs to a gun club and that is permissible. The other types of handguns which are very small and are not used in competitive shooting will be banned under the legislation and they should be banned.

The bill provides for an increase in the penalties for the misuse of guns, for the smuggling of guns and for the illegal sale of guns and ammunition. I support that but I do not believe that increased penalties are the answer. Increased penalties deal with the situation after it has taken place. The crime has been committed. Someone is dead. They have found the criminal and they will give them a stiffer penalty.

What we are trying to do with this legislation is to prevent the crime from taking place in the first place. We are trying to make guns more difficult to obtain and to screen the applicants who want to own guns. Doing that will prevent the crimes from taking place. It is a preventive measure.

To rely simply on long, tough, hard penalties as is done in most of the United States does not work. They have absolutely no effect whatsoever. The crime rates with guns are much higher there than they are in Canada, especially in Louisiana, Texas, Florida, Alabama and Mississippi.

In conclusion, I assure the House that as chair of the standing committee on justice, despite my strong views in favour of this bill, I intend to be absolutely fair with all sides who take part in the discussion before the committee. I want to assure those who oppose the bill that they will be fairly treated. Those who wish to amend the bill will be fairly treated. Those who support the bill will be fairly treated.

When I act as chair of the committee the most important aspect is the tradition of Parliament of the rights of minorities to have their say. I want to assure all members of this House and the general public that as chair of the justice committee everyone will be given their full right to be heard.

[Daphne Jennings, Reform, Mission—Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to take part in the debate on Bill C-68. I hope the Minister of Justice is listening to the constructive suggestions which have been advanced in this debate. My colleagues on this side of the House have put forward ideas and suggestions which would make parts of this bill much better. However, we strongly oppose one part of the bill.

Today I want to address mainly the part on a national firearms registration system. I hope when we get into final debate on it that those on the government side who oppose the clauses that establish the regime of gun registration will stand with us to defeat those sections. If this were to happen it would be a great day for freedom in this Parliament and a great day for individual freedom in all parts of Canada.

I have spent most of my adult life in the teaching profession. One thing about teaching is that in order to explain something to others, it is essential to understand it yourself. For me, that means getting back to basics.

Therefore when I analyse legislation I ask myself: What is the problem the legislation is attempting to address or to cure? Once I am able to discern what the problem is, then I can go through the legislation clause by clause to see if the problem is being addressed correctly. This methodology seems to work most of the time. When it does not work, it usually is because I see the problem as advanced by the government in different terms than the government does and then can address it quite differently.

In splitting the bill, crime control I agree is what we need. When I look at Bill C-68 I am puzzled as to what exactly it is that the minister is trying to get at. What harm is he trying to cure? If we take the legislation as a whole there are stiffer penalties for those who commit crimes, anti-gun smuggling deterrents and then a gun registration system for rifles and shotguns. This for me is the meat of the bill.

If the harm or the problem is too many offences being committed with guns, then the first two parts of the legislation, stiffer penalties and anti-smuggling, make sense. I can see some room to make them better but I basically agree. But what about the registration system which this legislation imposes? What is that aimed at? Here again I must support splitting the bill.

Every time I review the remarks of the justice minister when he is trying to justify the system I wonder how he can relate one to the other. He tells us there are pretty scary statistics out there dealing with the use of guns. Every six days a woman is murdered by someone using a gun. Over 1,000 suicides per year are the result of gun usage.

After reciting these statistics we are always told these are the reasons we need gun control. but we are never told two things. First, how will the registration of rifles and shotguns reduce these numbers? Second, what percentage of these acts take place with guns that through this legislation would be required to be registered? Again, I must stress crime control and a national gun registration do not relate.

The justice minister knows very well that the registration system will not reduce the number of murders or suicides by firearms one bit. What he should know is that Canada is a large and diverse country, a country which in many ways starts at the borders of metropolitan Toronto. This country is not metropolitan Toronto.

The justice minister should read the legislation that is presently in place in relation to gun control. He will find that present laws in Canada are among the toughest in the world with respect to firearms. Here is what you have to do if you want to own a firearm in Canada:

Take an optional federal course and mandatory test to qualify for a firearms acquisition certificate. Submit to a thorough police examination of your social history, employment and psychological history when you apply for your FAC. Go through an interview process with police and provide solid references. Wait a mandatory 28 days before your FAC is approved and issued with a photograph.

If you want to hunt you must take a separate mandatory hunting course which also covers firearms handling and safety. Submit to another provincial written and practical test on firearms handling. Abide by strict federal laws that govern dozens of firearms handling and safety situations. They include: storing firearms and ammunition separately and under lock and key; rigid transportation standards; and tough guidelines for using firearms.

These rules are important but their effect has not yet ever been analysed. This was pointed out in the Auditor General's report of 1993. I believe the minister should wait to see how effective the controls put in place as recently as 1991 have been before he embarks on increased controls.

This registration system has many drawbacks and it is important that they be set out and discussed. It is expensive. The lowest estimate for its development and implementation is in the range of $80 million to $90 million. Oh yes, we are told that this money will be recovered from the gun owners who are required to register and we are also told the cost of registration will be quite reasonable to encourage those with guns to register. Which is it, Mr. Minister?

We are told one of the great pluses for this legislation is that it helps police. When they are answering a call at a dwelling place they will know whether there are firearms on site. We are told this will aid police and make it safer. Are we to conclude from this that the police will now enter homes where guns have been registered with their own guns drawn anticipating a gun battle? This will make our lives safer or the homes of our law-abiding citizens safer? I do not think so.

However, all these criticisms of the registration system pale into insignificance when one considers the potential for computer crime as it relates to the registry. This area is so serious, of proportions of such magnitude that we must look at it.

Weekly we are informed of some computer whiz-kid who has broken the code to allow access to highly classified material, government controlled or otherwise. Just a few weeks ago the police in Toronto uncovered a fake credit card ring. One reason given for the success of the criminal venture until it was closed down was the access to corporate computers which the alleged criminals had acquired.

We were told in the summer that authorities in the western world could not stop or prevent computers from being accessed by the criminal element. We are told that the police around the world sometimes do not even have the information as fast as the criminals do. We are very foolish if we think they will not access this information. Now we are going to establish a computer based program which will show the location of every firearm registered in Canada. What a gold mine for criminals and organized crime.

Break the code for this registration system and this will be the home shopping channel for criminals. Imagine establishing a system whereby the location of virtually every gun in Canada is

shown. Is there anything else we can do to make it easier for those who wish to steal guns?

What of the innocent people who register their guns? Are they sitting ducks-no pun intended-for criminals who break the code and enter the gun registration system? Why would we create such a monster if it is not going to do any good, if it is not going to reduce the number of crimes of violence, murders, attempted murders or suicides?

Create the shop at home channel for guns, rifles and shotguns. I do not think so. However, I am certain there is a part of our population that would not object if Rogers Cablevision carried this channel.

There are good parts in this bill which should be studied in committee and perhaps even made stronger. This is a very good reason to split Bill C-68.

First, I agree there should be a separate criminal offence for committing or attempting to commit a crime with a gun. The problem with it is as proposed is that it may very well be bargained away as part of a plea bargain for a guilty plea for some other charge.

Members of the justice committee should take a hard look at this. They should try to determine whether they can legislate that the offence not be subject to a plea bargain or find some other solution. A clear message must be sent to the criminal community in Canada that if criminals carry guns and commit crimes, they will be punished for the crime and for carrying the weapon.

I am also supportive of those parts of the bill which would attack the problem of gun smuggling in Canada. We live next to, arguably, one of the most violent nations on the face of the earth. It is vitally important that those who patrol our borders be given real powers to deal with those who would import guns illegally into Canada.

Again, this is something the justice committee should look at in detail. Should the people who patrol our borders be given powers to be more than revenue collectors? Should the provincial police or RCMP in particular provinces be required to maintain a presence at the borders? A true police presence at our borders would, to my way of thinking, reduce smuggling. I am not saying we should arm our customs agents, but they should be backed up by trained police.

There are other matters which must be looked at in this legislation, for example the position of those who wish to will their gun collections as part of their estate. I believe we should facilitate this. The requirement for those entering Canada to take part in marksmanship contests to obtain a temporary certificate should be looked at to see if it is realistic and workable.

Most of all, I urge members opposite, members from outside metropolitan Toronto as well as inside, to look at Canada and see it for what it is, a vast country where hunting and other outdoor activities are both a way of life to some and a recreation to others.

The registration system proposed in this bill as it sits will not accomplish the goal set for it. Therefore, when it comes time to vote for this bill, or that part on gun registration during clause by clause analysis, vote down those clauses that pertain to the registration system.

[Alex Shepherd, Liberal, Durham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in the debate on Bill C-68, an act respecting firearms and other weapons.

The riding of Durham has both a rural and an urban component. Being neither a gun owner or user myself, I have gone to the shooting clubs and have listened to the concerns of legal gun owners. I have taken both gun owners and those abused by guns to meet with the Minister of Justice.

I have studied the crime statistics of both the justice department and the gun lobby. I have spoken with our police chief, the local firearms registration officer, judges, police in the field, homicide detectives and finally, I visited Millhaven penitentiary and spoke with murderers in their cells who actually used guns in the commission of crime.

Tougher penalties for the use of firearms in the commission of a crime, tougher controls of cross-border smuggling and trafficking of firearms are all supported by the people of Durham, including legal gun owners.

Rather than looking at the strengths of the legislation I would like to focus on what I see as some weaknesses. Hopefully these matters will be addressed at the committee stage of the bill. I would like to address the matter of the registration of all firearms. As you know, Mr. Speaker, handguns in Canada have had to be registered since the 1940s. I note this has contributed little to the reduction of the use of handguns in the commission of crime.

Primarily the issue for me is one of cost benefit analysis. What are the costs? Who is going to pay? What are the benefits of the system? This revisits the very foundations of our democracy which is that government has entered into a contract with the people. This is Locke's Two Treaties on Government . In the 15th century Locke determined that a fundamental democracy was one where people consented to be governed based on an unwritten contract with their government, a contract that implied a basic consent of the people not only to be governed but also, most importantly, to be taxed.

People want to revisit their contract with government. They want to know how taxes are consensual. They want to be part of the process. They want to be included with regard to the taxes they pay and the programs they finance. Across the nation people are demanding more accountability from governments.

Taxpayers want to know how much programs are costing and specifically who is paying for them.

As you may know, Mr. Speaker, I intend to introduce a private member's bill early this spring, the subject of which will be a taxpayers' bill of rights. I note that if this legislation was in place, the current bill would have some additional and much needed information attached to it. Specifically the program would be costed fully during its implementation stage. It would detail the specific costs and would allocate them to the years during implementation. It would also show the anticipated revenues from registration charges to gun owners. Finally, the Auditor General would have certified the costing methods used as being reasonable.

The taxpayer is tired of discovering years after the implementation period of the waste of their money. I would like to quote from the Auditor General's report of 1993 concerning the previous gun registration system that is only a couple of years old: "We found several weaknesses in the methodology, which significantly reduce the extent to which the government, members of Parliament and the Canadian public can rely on the evaluation to be assured that the gun control program is effective".

I am afraid we are about to repeat the errors of the past. I note it has been stated that the proposed new registration system may cost $85 million. However, there is great confusion. The current registration system for handguns costs $60 million per year and includes only 560,000 handguns. There are a minimum of five to six million long guns in Canada.

I have a study here by Professor Gary Mauser at Simon Fraser University that states it could cost $82 per firearm, $496 million, or half a billion dollars. It has been suggested the first year be free to encourage registration. However the taxpayer knows that nothing is free. In studying budget projections, I can see no allocation of funding in the Department of Justice's budget for this program. We need a better fix on how much this program is going to cost.

The taxpayer has the right to know this now. Clearly we can no longer afford the luxury of introducing programs for which we do not know the cost. The taxpayer wants to see better fiscal responsibility and in some ways we have done that in the recent budget.

This leads me to the second part of my analysis, which is the study of the benefits of the system. Benefits would have to be clear and obvious. They would have to promote the common good. They would have to demonstrate that there was clear correlation between registration and the intended results.

At this point I found gun owners generally reasoned people. They have tried to understand why the registration system is thought to be needed and so important today. I would further like to point out that a democratic society is judged not on how it treats its majorities but rather how it treats its minorities.

It is clear to me that the opinions of the majority who do not know the facts are of questionable validity. Most surveys would indicate that the average person is more concerned about crime control than gun registration.

I further note that both gun owners and taxpayers generally are a minority in this debate. It is clear to me that without convincing a sizeable portion of their numbers of the effectiveness and affordability, the registration system will fail.

Here are the stated goals as I understand them of the registration system: that it will allow firearms removal from domestic violence situations; that it will afford law enforcement agents better information when approaching a household for investigation purposes; that it will lead to safer storage practices.

My time today will not let me deal with these issues at length, however the result is that it is totally unclear whether some of these objectives are not already available in the current law and are not being enforced or whether the objectives can be met at all with the registration system for long guns.

I can find no clear documentary evidence from the justice department that makes this case. If I cannot make this leap of faith, neither can long gun owners. This is the real danger of the legislation, that we are placing a sizeable group of people in the category of believing that the system is unwarranted. They see the imposition of fees as an unwarranted tax, the proceeds of which will be wasted on further bureaucracy with no tangible results.

I spoke earlier about the concerns of taxpayers. Needless to say gun owners are taxpayers. I said that they wanted to revisit their contract with government. Do we have examples of where people believe taxing systems exist without consent and how they have reacted? We have only to look at the dreaded goods and services tax, clearly a tax that lacked common consent.

A recent study by the accounting firm Peat Marwick concluded that over 50 per cent of taxpayers would avoid paying this tax if given the opportunity. Police officers in my riding have avoided giving minor speeding tickets because they believe that the three-price increase in one year is just an unwarranted form of taxation on the working class.

The conclusion is that we are developing a system of justice in Canada where people pick and choose the laws they are governed by. This is mainly because they do not feel that they consented to them in the first place.

I do not think this system of justice is sustainable. I believe that it will lead to chaos. Clearly our democracy must be one of inclusion rather than exclusion. Our society is becoming more complex and technical.

I would like to end my comments by quoting from one of our own political philosophers, Mr. George Grant. In his book Twilight of Justice he observed that one of the changes to a more technical society in Canada, that the need for control of humans in a technological society increases with the complexity of society. Technique causes the state to become totalitarian, to absorb the citizen's life completely.

Finally, the definition of liberal, which I am, is favouring individual liberty. I hope the committee will take the time to discuss some of these matters.

[Lee Morrison, Reform, Swift Current—Maple Creek—Assiniboia, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I have owned firearms off and on for more than half a century. I have been a reasonably good citizen but now in the eyes of the Minister of Justice and certainly in the eyes of the popular press, I have become a threat to society, a menace to peace, order and good government.

I am going to be subjected, if these laws that are now before us in Bill C-68 are all lumped together as one-the administrative bureaucracy and the criminal sanctions-of running the risk of being a common criminal. That, to my way of thinking, is neither just nor sane.

If I or anyone else chooses to inconvenience the bureaucracy by failing to comply with the purely administrative requirement, the result will be a criminal record and the penalty could far exceed that which some drunken hoodlums recently received for murdering a harmless old man in the province of Saskatchewan. This is absurd.

The justice minister says that he has actually separated the administrative from the criminal because we have these two sections in the one bill. That is smoke and mirrors if we are still talking about draconian criminal penalties for failure to observe an administrative law. That, in my humble opinion, does not give separation.

I own a few firearms even today but I hardly ever hunt. I do not belong to any shooting club. I do not belong to the NFA. If I lost my guns tomorrow it would not make a big difference to my lifestyle. However, I would be losing something a lot more important than hardware. I would be losing a big piece of my civil liberty.

The justice minister says that the right to own a particular type of property, firearms, is really just a privilege. I submit that Canada's top lawyer has an unbelievably feeble grasp of history and of the common law. Omission from the British North America Act or the charter of rights and freedoms does not mean that a right does not exist. Our legal system is based on British common law and on the sanctity of customary rights.

When Sir William Blackstone codified the common law he noted that every individual has certain absolute rights, including the right to personal security, personal liberty and the right to own and use property. Does that sound familiar? American revolutionaries did not invent those concepts. They merely enshrined in their constitution the rights which as Englishmen they already had.

Blackstone went on to list five auxiliary rights without which the absolute rights could not be protected and maintained. One of them was the right to own personal arms. When Americans passed their famous second amendment to the constitution, their right to bear arms, it was only a modest extension of a right which they had before the revolution.

In Great Britain there has been a steady chipping away at this right, starting in 1870 and accelerating after the first world war. It was supposedly because of the threat from Bolshevik or anarchist terrorists. However, just as in Canada today, public hysteria was fanned by the government and, just as in Canada, laws have become progressively more intrusive, complex and downright repressive. Today they have almost achieved the justice minister's ideal where only police, soldiers and the trusted elite of society have legal firearms. However, there is no shortage of firepower in the U.K.

A few months ago I talked with a Scottish gun dealer and he told me that Great Britain is awash with guns. You can buy one faster and more easily in a pub than from him, and cheaper because there is no tax.

What is accomplished as gun laws are made tougher and tougher? What affect does the hassle and the expensive bureaucracy have on crime? Very little.

I have reviewed firearms legislation and crime statistics from various states south of the border and from several other countries. Now I am going to bore the House with some of the dull facts that the justice department's social engineers cheerfully ignore.

Consider the prairie provinces. Since gun controls began in 1978, the annual homicide rate has averaged about 3.2 per 100,000 people, of which about one-third are committed with guns.

In the four border states of Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana and Idaho the rate was 2.7 per 100,000. That is 16 per cent less. Those are all wide open. The justice minister would probably say those are lawless states where you can own and carry almost anything short of a bazooka.

The District of Columbia, with the most stringent controls of any North American jurisdiction except Mexico has the unbelievably high murder rate of 80 per 100,000 per year, the highest

in the western world. How can there possibly be such problems where guns are strictly controlled?

Maybe it has something to do with cultural and economic forces. Maybe it has something to do with organized crime, drug dealing, racial tension, grinding miserable poverty and a collapsed public education system.

Gun control is an artificially induced smoke screen. It is a cynical ploy to distract the public from the real issues, not the least of which is the breakdown of our criminal justice system. The government helped create this highly emotional issue and now it is playing it for all it is worth. This issue has absolutely no relation to crime control and it is absurd that the justice minister has made the mixture. It is a lot easier to make scapegoats of decent citizens than it is to admit that our justice system is misdirected.

To give the devil his due, this bill does contain some good features actually aimed at criminals instead of ordinary citizens; the four-year minimum sentence for violent offences committed with a firearm, for example, although those receiving this penalty will still be eligible for parole.

In 1978, I told anyone who would listen that we had started down a long slow road to public disarmament, that future violent crimes would serve as excuses for more bureaucracy, that registration by serial number would follow and that the last step would be piecemeal confiscation of weapons, picking off gun owners one at a time. It is all coming true.

Half a million handguns are going to be effectively confiscated, no matter how the minister tries to sugar coat his proposal. Confiscation of registered long guns will begin, as it is already begun with handguns, through a process of natural evolution and will probably be spurred by some horrendous crime such as the Montreal massacre.

Public hysteria is a wonderful tool for government. Early in 1941, before Pearl Harbour, the Government of Canada confiscated the arms of Canadians of Japanese origin living on the west coast. Remember, we were not at war and these were Canadians, but their guns were taken away.

The political establishment was delighted and the tame establishment press bayed its approval, just as it is baying its approval for the proposals on the table in the House today.

This bill is a classic example of the theory of government which states that everything not compulsory shall be forbidden. It is a bit of statism, and a bit of statism, like a bit of cancer, is not good for you.

James Madison said it best: "There are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations".

[Rose-Marie Ur, Liberal, Lambton—Middlesex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I welcome this opportunity to take part in today's debate on second reading of Bill C-68, an act respecting firearms and other weapons.

Canada has had a long history in the monitoring and controlling of firearms. Canada has had laws restricting the possession and the use of firearms since 1877. These were a nationwide permit system for the carrying of small arms in effect in 1892. All handguns have had to be registered since 1934. In 1951 a centralized registry for restricted firearms was established under the control of the commissioner of the RCMP.

The classification system of prohibitive weapons and restricted weapons including all handguns and non-restricted long guns was introduced in 1968. This scheme was significantly enhanced by a number of amendments in 1977. The major addition was the creation of the firearms acquisition certificate, FAC, a screening system for those wishing to acquire any firearm including non-restricted hunting rifles and shotguns.

A new administrative regime involving local firearms officers and chief provincial firearms officers appointed by the provinces was also established. Currently the provinces administer the FAC system and most overall gun control. This regime was relatively untouched for over 11 years until the passage of Bill C-17 which received royal assent on December 5, 1991.

To my knowledge the last set of regulations pertaining to Bill C-17 came into force on January 1, 1994 and prescribed the criteria for competence in the safe handling and use of firearms. Barely a year after the implementation of Bill C-17's last set of regulations members are being asked to consider yet another firearms bill.

I propose to offer my comments on what I consider the positive aspects of Bill C-68. I will also offer my opinions on the parts of this bill which require more consideration by the justice committee and I will give my reasons as to why certain sections of this bill should be deleted in their entirety.

The most positive feature of this bill is its no nonsense approach to the criminal use of firearms. To that extent I applaud the proposals to create new offences for the criminal use of firearms, including the minimum four-year sentence for using a firearm in the commission of violent offences and the minimum mandatory sentence of one year for the use of a replica firearm, mandatory jail sentences for the possession of stolen firearms and stiff penalties for illegally importing and trafficking in firearms.

For years Canadians from all walks of life have been demanding stiffer mandatory sentencing provisions for the use of a firearm in the commission of violent offences. Bill C-68 addresses this concern. Mandatory sentencing provisions for the use of a firearm while committing one of the 10 key violent offences of attempted murder, manslaughter, negligence causing death, robbery, kidnapping, hostage taking, sexual assault, aggravated sexual assault, extortion and discharging a firearm within intent to cause harm will be increased from one to four years. Offenders convicted of these offences will also be prohibited from possessing a restricted weapon for life.

I am concerned that section 85 charges might continue to be plea bargained away notwithstanding an increase in minimum sentencing provisions. The justice department's own research shows that two-thirds of section 85 charges laid are either dismissed, stayed or withdrawn because of problems of evidence or plea bargaining.

Bill C-68 also creates a new prohibitive category consisting of certain calibre handguns with a barrel length of 105 millimetres or less. In effect this will result in the prohibition of 58 per cent of the handguns currently in existence in Canada. Like all other owners of prohibited firearms, individuals who possessed these handguns on or before February 14, 1995 will be able to buy and sell only among themselves. Owners of these handguns will be able to use the handguns for the purpose for which they were originally obtained, whether target shooting or collecting. They will be required to demonstrate every five years that their handguns continue to be so used.

These measures are a definite improvement over the action plan of November 30, 1994 which had contemplated a complete prohibition against any use or trade in these prohibited firearms. To his credit, the Minister of Justice has announced his willingness to have the justice committee consider whether handguns in the prohibited class that are used in recognized target shooting competitions should be exempted from the ban.

I am also grateful that the minister has asked the committee to examine the whole question of whether there might be a separate exemption provision for firearms that may have special significance to families as relics or heirlooms.

The minister has also suggested that the committee study the issue of whether technical amendments are necessary for historical re-enactments or heritage events using black powder reproduction firearms.

In each of these cases the Minister of Justice is to be commended for his flexibility. I am deeply disappointed, however, that the minister has remained steadfast in his insistence upon the establishment of a national registration system for all firearms, including non-restricted hunting rifles and shotguns.

Bill C-68 includes provisions for the initiation of universal firearms owner registration where the current FAC will be replaced with a graduated firearms possession certificate, FPC, starting in 1996. Although initially voluntary, by the year 2001 possession of any firearm without an FPC will result in a Criminal Code offence that would carry a sentence of up to five years, one year in excess of the mandatory term proposed for the offence of using a firearm while attempting to murder.

As the second half of the proposed universal registration system, the bill would require every Canadian to register his or her firearm individually. Each firearm is to be identified by make, model, manufacturer's serial number and other identifiers, and a special firearms registration card, FRC, is to be issued for each firearm registered.

We should not be surprised that law-abiding firearms owners are deeply resentful over this registration proposal, which can only be described as intrusive and cumbersome. As more and more makes and models of various types of firearms are either reclassified for regulation or banned outright, we cannot blame some firearms owners for suspecting that the real reason behind registration is a gradual confiscation of most firearms in Canada. Over half of the current legally owned handguns in Canada will be banned as a result of Bill C-68.

It should be obvious by now that criminals do not register their firearms. A universal firearms registry, even if it were fully subscribed to by all legal firearms owners, will not reduce criminal activity involving firearms, nor will it improve public safety. Neither law-abiding firearms owners nor other taxpayers deserve to be burdened with any expense or inconvenience that has no demonstrable effect on reducing crime or improving community safety.

Canadians want tougher measures to be taken to reduce crime. This bill addresses that through mandatory sentencing for the use of firearms in the commission of violent crime.

During the third week of November 1994, when Decima Research asked on behalf of Maclean's and CTV what the main reason for the increase in violent crimes is, the greatest number of responses, 40 per cent, said the justice system is too lenient. Only 5 per cent of the over 1,600 respondents said that a lack of tough gun controls was the cause.

Non-firearm owning Canadians are beginning to understand that additional gun controls will only serve to penalize responsible firearms owners unnecessarily and will not reduce crime. The minister insists that a new registration system is the support structure for the government's firearms control package.

I quote from a February 14 news release from the Department of Justice: "A universal registration system will help combat smuggling by monitoring the types and quantities of firearms coming into Canada". How can that be so when by definition smuggling involves evading the very authorities that would be doing the monitoring at Canadian borders?

If we are prepared to spend more money on gun control, let us spend it wisely. It has been suggested by the solicitor general of Ontario that a national task force on firearms smuggling be set up at key border points. I strongly support this proposal. A well co-ordinated task force involving all levels of police forces, additional customs officers and the support of all three levels of government would yield real results in the reduction of smuggled firearms into this country. That is where the real problem exists. It is not in the continued harassment of law-abiding firearms owners.

I sincerely hope the justice committee will insist upon an objective, dispassionate examination of the utility of a national registration system as set out in the bill. I hope that at the end of its study it would conclude that the current system requiring a firearms acquisition certificate is more than adequate and that if anything has to be done to curb the criminal use of firearms, the work has to be done at Canada's borders and in our court rooms.

[Leon Benoit, Reform, Vegreville, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased today to stand in the House to speak on the Reform motion to split Bill C-68. It reads:

That all the words after the word "that" be deleted and the following substituted therefor:

This House decline to give second reading to Bill C-68, an act respecting firearms and other weapons, because the principle of establishing a system for licensing and registration of all firearms and the principle of creating a variety of offences are two unrelated issues that should be addressed separately.

I concur with the motion and I encourage members opposite to support Reform in the motion to split the bill.

I will read an excerpt from a letter from a constituent, Mr. Ole Raasok of Irma, Alberta. He specifically asked me to mention his name and to read his letter if I had the opportunity. He wrote:

I was living in Norway when the Germans invaded our country in April 1940 and took control of government in June 1940 after Norway's capitulation.

In the fall of 1940 all gun owners were ordered to register their shotguns and rifles if they wished to hunt. As law-abiding citizens wanting to hunt, we were dumb enough to register our guns.

I am reading from a letter sent to me by a constituent who was raised in Norway and who experienced registration. I encourage all members opposite to listen carefully to what this gentleman has to say. I believe we should not make light of individuals who have had similar experiences. He continued:

The following year we received an order to deliver all of our guns to the police. There was no use in trying to hide them because the guns were already registered and the government had the numbers. The guns were never returned and no compensation was made for them. I believe this is the hon. justice minister's plan.

I became a lieutenant in the reserve army before I immigrated to Canada in 1951. In that capacity I had full command over 160 men who all had their own weapons in their homes. There was never any talk of registration or permits to transport or use guns. Statistics show that Norway has one of the lowest criminal use of firearms in the world.

I have read only part of the letter from my constituent. I have heard many members opposite say that any idea or any suggestion by Canadians that registration and tougher gun control would lead to confiscation is ridiculous.

Whether it is the intention of the government to move to confiscation after registration, I have no idea. I would tend to think not. However I believe it is healthy for people in a democracy to have a certain level of distrust for government.

My constituent has seen the effect of not having a healthy level of distrust. I ask hon. members opposite to understand that many Canadians have this concern. Some do not trust this government and others will not trust future governments. It is important to listen to these concerns and it is important in a democracy to have a certain level of distrust.

History has shown that Norway is a prime example that registration leads to confiscation. Is this what the minister has in mind for Canadians? This question is often asked of me in my constituency. It was not just every now and again but every day over the past 10 days. Every single day I had constituents ask me whether the minister had in mind confiscation after registration.

Earlier statements made by the minister suggested that he would prefer to have guns only in the hands of the police and the armed forces. The statement was made shortly after the House started sitting about a year ago.

I fully support the motion put forward by the hon. member for Yorkton-Melville because it will separate the so-called crime bill into two different parts. It is logical to split the bill because we are dealing with two different issues. On the one hand is the aspect of targeting crime and on the other hand is the anti-gun sentiment of the legislation which I do not support. The motion is necessary because it focuses on the real problem of crime.

We as members of the Reform Party support a crime bill. We support measures that would get tougher in dealing with the criminal use of firearms, including penalties for smuggling.

However we do not support targeting law-abiding Canadians simply because they own guns.

From day one Reformers stated that legitimate law-abiding gun owners were not the problem but rather that the problem stemmed from the criminal use of guns in the commission of crime. We need to ask why the minister has chosen to put these two parts of the issue together in the same bill. While I cannot answer the question for certain I believe it is a legitimate question. When we consider that Canada already has some of the toughest gun control laws in the world it is particularly an appropriate question.

To link tougher gun control to crime fighting might sound politically appealing, but there is no statistical evidence to support the legitimacy of the idea. If the minister could provide us with some evidence we would not oppose the original legislation. The reality is that he cannot provide the information because it does not exist.

Several constituents have come to me saying that they had written a letter to the Minister of Justice asking specifically for any evidence he might have to show that more gun control would do anything to help prevent crimes committed with guns and to show that a registration system would prevent even one death. So far none of the constituents have had an answer to their letters. That is a shame. It is a serious question and they are not getting the answer.

Another concern has been raised often in my constituency concerning the computer system that will be set up to accommodate the central registry. The concern of my constituents in this regard is about the central registry and a hacker accessing the system.

We know hackers are very capable. They have accessed military secrets in the United States. They can get the names and use them in two ways. First, they can be used to find the locations of large collections of guns so that they can be more easily stolen. Second, criminals could determine from the lists where easy targets for break and enter may exist, where they feel the guns are not there and therefore they are easy targets.

My constituents have many other questions over past weeks and indeed over the past year. However I will close by saying that I would like answers from the minister to the two areas of concern expressed by my constituents. I do not believe he can give an answer in terms of the motive behind the registry, not necessarily the minister's motive but the motive of future governments. Also there is the possibility of the computer system being broken into and guns being stolen or a break and enter taking place.

[The Deputy Speaker]

I am sorry but the member's time has expired.

[Paul Steckle, Liberal, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise in the House this evening to address a matter that has attracted a great deal of concern in my constituency of Huron-Bruce.

On November 30, 1994 the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada announced the government's action plan on firearms control. This was a series of proposals designed to generate comments and constructive criticism from Canadians so they might have an equal partnership in forming the bill before the House today.

The people of Huron-Bruce seized the opportunity to comment on the issue, causing my Parliament Hill and constituency offices to be flooded with thousands of calls, letters and visits.

Among the proposals was a mandatory minimum sentence of four years in prison in addition to a lifetime prohibition against possession of a restricted weapon when convicted of committing any one of or a combination of ten specific offences with a firearm. Among those offences, attempted murder, armed robbery and sexual assault with a weapon were included. Also included in the proposals were new Criminal Code offences with strict new penalties for illegal importing and trafficking firearms, enhanced border controls with improved inspections, and permit requirements for import, export and in transit shipments of firearms within Canada.

I take this opportunity to commend the minister for putting forth the aforementioned crime control measures. I would however like to draw attention to Bill C-68, an act respecting firearms and other weapons that is currently being debated in the House.

The act encompasses most of the original proposals released by the justice department, including a new mandatory registration system and a ban on a variety of specific handguns and replica weapons. As I have mentioned before, the proposals prompted a massive outcry in my constituency. In response I have spoken and met with many groups and individuals in an attempt to acquire an understanding of their views.

The process has allowed me to speak directly with my constituents, thus giving me a good understanding of their thoughts and views. As an avid hunter and sportsman I am pleased to recognize the government taking the initiative to punish individuals for the illegal use of firearms. However I am not able to support further restrictions being placed on the legitimate and safe gun owner.

Bill C-68 is a bill that resulted from many tragic events in recent Canadian history such as the massacre at Montreal's École polytechnique in 1989 and a recent drive-by shooting in Ottawa. The events have fuelled the fires of public demands for changes to the Criminal Code with respect to the illegal use of firearms.

The most recent package of gun control measures is known collectively as Bill C-17. The process of putting the legal aspects of the bill into place has only now just begun. Unless the new law is successfully implemented the changes contained in the legislation run the risk of becoming little more than symbolic gestures by the government to satisfy public opinion.

Good policy development and the delivery of adequate laws also include effective implementation and enforcement. There has not been enough time for the regulations contained in Bill C-17 to be fully realized. Thus the effectiveness of the regulations is also not fully understood. One can therefore reason that if this is true it is also too early to impose or evaluate the effectiveness of further controls such as a national registration system that would require more time and would place further stress on the already sparse financial resources of the nation's taxpayer.

There are clear constraints in public funding when it comes to our police forces that are already responsible for protecting our citizens under other provisions of the Criminal Code. It has been estimated by the justice department that implementation of a registration system could cost up to $85 million with an annual maintenance cost of $10 million, not considering annual increases.

Public safety will only be endangered if we dilute our resources. As a result we as members of Parliament must take care in allocating the limited funds we have in this area to ensure they are spent in the most effective and practical way possible.

It must be reiterated that gun control only plays a small role in our overall criminal justice system. Other aspects of the Criminal Code need to be fortified to effectively combat violent criminal activities.

As a legitimate gun owner I am already subjected to a large number of controls. By law, to purchase a firearm I must complete a firearm acquisition certificate course, pass a formal examination and submit to a thorough police examination of my social, employment and psychological history. I must also provide the police with character references that they can investigate to ensure I will use my firearms in a responsible manner. In addition, there is a mandatory 28-day waiting period before I receive my FAC with picture identification.

If I wish to hunt, I must first pass a mandatory hunting course which covers firearm handling and safety. I must then also submit to a provincially regulated test which further reiterates these points.

In addition to these regulations, the province of Ontario has strict ammunition purchasing regulations in effect. Once I have the gun and the legal ability to hunt, I must then adhere to stringent laws regarding separate storage of the firearm and the ammunition under lock and key, rigid transportation standards and tough guidelines for using firearms.

This clearly demonstrates how heavily the legitimate gun owners are already regulated. These regulations, like all gun control regulations, are very difficult to enforce. The police simply cannot search each household to see if these rules are being observed.

The UN estimates that firearm owners represent approximately 27 per cent of the Canadian population or seven million people owning up to 27 million firearms which is considerably more than what people are telling us in most of this debate.

Perhaps the government should concentrate its efforts on implementing innovative and cost effective methods of enforcing the laws currently in place. One such example could be a community based group of gun owners checking the homes of other gun owners in their area. This would alleviate the suspicions that many Canadians have of government intrusion in their daily lives and would assist in the enforcement of the safe storage aspects of Bill C-17.

Third, I would argue that crime control would be a more effective method of obtaining further public security. We must punish the criminal element and leave the law-abiding citizens alone. Firearms owners possess and use their firearms in a safe and responsible manner and do not contribute to crime or violent death and injury statistics.

In addition, the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics reports that in 1991 two-thirds of all accused murderers were known to have criminal records, the majority for previous violent offences, and were already prohibited from legally owning or acquiring a firearm.

To further illustrate my point of the small number of firearms involved in deaths in this country, I would offer the fact that in 1991 only one person out of every 400,000 Canadians died as a result of a fatal gun accident compared to one person out of every 14,000 who died as a result of a fall. I am suggesting that we have adequate controls in place but we are simply not enforcing them.

Under Bill C-17 all firearms are required to be trigger locked in a locked cabinet separate from the ammunition. An analysis of fatal gun accidents in the United States could not locate even one instance where a child victim or shooter discovered a locked gun, unlocked it and shot themselves or someone else. Studies also indicate that at least one-half of all accidental shootings involved the consumption of alcohol just prior to the incident. How will the registration system prevent this from occurring?

Canadians must bear the responsibility of using their firearms in a responsible manner. The Government of Canada should not be asked to shoulder this burden. We must congratulate firearms owners in this nation for their initiatives into the area of the safe handling of firearms, not condemn them for their efforts. In

Canada, while firearm ownership has increased, the accidental death rate has reduced by 80 per cent between 1986 and 1991.

In conclusion, people are demanding that we take action to further protect them from violent crime and other illegal activities present in certain areas of our society. The problem that the minister and indeed the entire government faces is the question of what response is most appropriate.

In his recent report, the Auditor General expressed concerns over the lack of evidence to justify the fact that the Canadian government passed more gun control legislation between 1977 and 1995 than in the entire preceding 50 years. The Auditor General also questioned the enforceability of the laws contained in Bill C-17. He also expressed anxiety over the lack of uniformity across the country regarding the FAC screening system.

These concerns are only a few expressed by the Auditor General and others concerned with this issue. I call upon the minister to consider the Auditor General's comments and the comments of all Canadians. Hunters and collectors compose a large part of our population and generate revenue for our economy each year through licensing fees, conservation efforts and the recreational hunting industry.

Canada's first explorers were from Europe, coureurs des bois who served the vital function of opening the new world to settlers. Hunting and responsible gun ownership is an intricate part of our rich heritage.

I suggest to the minister and to the House that firearms can co-exist with all Canadians in an allegorical guns and roses relationship respecting individual rights and privileges without further imposing unnecessary, cumbersome and expensive regulations on legitimate firearms owners and our nation's finances. The process must begin here with us.

[Jack Ramsay, Reform, Crowfoot, AB]

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.

[The Deputy Speaker]

According to the rules there is a six-minute extension of the debate because of the statement made earlier.

[Bernie Collins, Liberal, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Mr. Speaker, having served on the committee and being a member of the wildlife federation and coming from a rural riding of Saskatchewan, I am very concerned with the bill in its present form.

I support the minister with regard to the criminal element, the four-year mandatory sentence for the commission of a crime with a firearm. The use of a fake firearm in the commission of a crime and a one-year mandatory sentence I support wholeheartedly. Those actions that would take into consideration smuggling and other offences involving guns and other illegal activities I support wholeheartedly.

However, I have some strong reservations with regard to registration. If I am going to ask the citizens of Souris-Moose Mountain or any other area to spend $85 million, we have to consider what we are going to do for that cost.

I am prepared to register. I have owned guns all my life. I am a wildlife member and a firearms safety instructor. I was never impressed with the FAC formed some years ago. Now we have a four-page document. The government might as well have made it 30 pages and we could have had a light history of each of us as we own handguns.

In Saskatchewan most of the people who own handguns handle them safely, especially those who are members of handgun clubs. They have to adhere to all the rules and regulations.

As wildlife members we have to make sure that under Bill C-17 we store our guns and ammunition properly. We do have a responsibility to one another. As a hunter, in order for me to go on any other person's land I have to respect it. That is a privilege, not a right.

Many of us think it is a right and not very many farmers post their land because they expect that each of us going on that land does respect each other's property.

However, within the framework of the legislation as it comes forward, the reservations I have are that if we impose the opportunity for someone to enter into my home and check to see whether I have certain compliances, I would rather they do that with a search warrant.

Make no mistake. Legislation is not easy but it is all encompassing. Friends of mine have smaller barrelled guns that are virtually at the end of their time. They have spent great amounts of money on them and treasure them as relics. Those will now go to the criminal element because they will not register them or they will have to get rid of them.

If we are going to confiscate, compensate. People would accept that. When I was on the committee I did not say anything about handguns. I think we have to very careful of the direction we take in this regard.

I am very concerned. Rather than speaking to the media, this is the place where we should exercise our opportunity as members of this House on both sides to speak very clearly about how we feel.

I do not believe I would gain any points by going before the news media, trying to unravel where we are going. I credit the minister and the justice committee will review both the directions of my friends opposite and members on our side.

I will have the opportunity to vote against this bill. I cannot support it in its present form. However, that does not mean to say that I will not take a look at the changes that will come forward and address them to see if they meet the needs of the Canadians I represent.

I appreciate the opportunity to be frank and honest about a bill that I know the minister has great concern for, and great concern for all Canadians. Let us take a look at the changes and let us register our concern and our final judgment on it.

A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 38 deemed to have been moved.

[Osvaldo Nunez, Bloc, Bourassa, QC]

Mr. Speaker, on March 1, in a question to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, I objected to the $975 fee announced in the budget that will be charged to anyone who wishes to immigrate to Canada, in addition to the $500 they have to pay to have their file processed by immigration officers.

Canada is now one of the most expensive immigration countries. This unfair and unacceptable decision adds to the incredible increase in all fees connected with immigration and citizenship. By the same token, I want to condemn office closures and personnel cuts at the Department of Citizenship and Immigration and the drastic reduction in the number of IRB commissioners.

These exorbitant fees are the equivalent of several months or even a year's wages for immigrants from poor countries. Refugees could not even afford to pay $500, so how could they pay an additional $975? Most of them arrive in Canada without any money. Sometimes they lost everything they had in their country of origin. When they arrive here, they have to get winter clothes, food and accommodation for their families. This tax is cruel and inhumane.

With this measure, how can Canada claim to honour this country's humanitarian tradition with respect to displaced or persecuted persons, as specified in the Immigration Act? Furthermore, the vast majority of refugees throughout the world are women and children. This measure will make sponsorship and family reunification even more difficult.

I want to take this opportunity to condemn the treatment of refugees scheduled for deportation at the Malton detention centre near the airport in Toronto. Last Wednesday, a citizen of Uruguay who was to be deported had to be taken to hospital after he tried to commit suicide. I mentioned the case of twelve people of Hispanic origin who were ill treated.

I again want to ask the minister to investigate these allegations and to deal with those who are responsible for this very serious and unacceptable situation.