Madam Speaker, there are some aspects of Bill C-68 which have some potential for support, although not many.
The main unsupportable area is registration of rifles and shotguns. There are a number of reasons this is absolutely unsupportable. The previous member spoke of the possibility of the standing committee determining the need for this. The citizens of Canada determine these needs.
One of the objections to registration is the cost versus the alleged benefits. The cost is reported by the Minister of Justice as being in the neighbourhood of $85 million. I am polling my constituents on this and in order not to be misleading I am using that figure. That figure is a fabrication by the Minister of Justice and the Justice Department. The reality is it will cost not less-this is done through different methods-than $500 million. The cost could run as high as $1 billion or beyond.
The rationale for this is if we take the current known cost of registering a handgun and apply it to the low number the Minister of Justice estimates for rifles and shotguns, it comes to almost half a million dollars. There are probably far more firearms out there than the minister is letting on.
Another issue raised by many owners of firearms, sports enthusiasts and competitive shooters is future confiscation. The minute this is raised we start getting the minister and many of the members opposite suggesting it is paranoia on the part of firearms owners.
It is not paranoia if there is justification for it based on past practice. There is past practice. Bill C-17 introduced by the previous government took away many firearms that law-abiding citizens purchased legally and essentially said. That government said: "Sorry, we changed our mind. Those are now illegal. Turn them over. No compensation".
This proposed bill also bans certain firearms legally purchased by Canadians and the Liberals are saying: "Sorry, we changed our mind". There is validity in the fears these people have. In the future we could be faced with confiscation of all semi-automatic rifles and shotguns. There are things like the Beretta 12-gauge, very expensive, very popular for skeet and trap shooting. There are semi-automatic hunting rifles. They are very legitimate firearms, functionally identical to many of the firearms banned. Then we could be looking at high calibre rifles as well with the rationale that a 30.06 is good enough, one does not need anything else.
Then we have the security risk aspect. We have already had cases in which criminals have been able to get into RCMP computer files and find out who has weapons and where they keep them. The last thing people who own firearms want to do is provide a more complete list for criminals to access.
Then we have the proposed banning under the current legislation of .25 and .32 calibre firearms and those with barrel lengths under 4.14 inches. At least we have the minister's new version of banning.
This suggests these calibres were innocuous to start with and should never have been banned. First he was going to ban them and grandfather them. One could not use them. One could not sell them or trade them. Then he backed down and said: "These weapons are okay. You can use them. You can sell them to somebody who already has a firearm in that category. You can take them to the range. You can do everything with them you did before". If that is true, why is there the ban in the first place? There is a lot out there to make people suspicious.
What we are doing with this legislation is making criminals of law-abiding citizens. We are bringing out new regulations harder to comply with and then we are saying: "If you break these regulations, you will be a criminal". What about the real criminals?
We should be looking at the areas of the bill that can perhaps be strengthened to really mean something. That is why we are suggesting the splitting of the bill, so we can work with the things that have some potential of doing some good in society.
The registration of rifles and shotguns is not going to prevent one single criminal misuse of a firearm. Crooks do not rob banks with 30.06 hunting rifles. As far as any question of an argument or a fight that breaks out at a party or whatever, the victim will feel very comfortable knowing they were shot with a registered rifle instead of an unregistered one. That argument does not carry.
We need to look at penalties for those who criminally misuse firearms. We are talking about sentencing, the length of the sentence, the concept of plea bargaining and consecutive sentences.
The current legislation proposed does not have any teeth in it because it matters not what kind of sentence comes out if most of those are plea bargained away and also if they are served concurrently with the other main sentence. There is absolutely no teeth to that.
We need lengthy sentences for criminal misuse of firearms, for using a firearm in the commission of a crime. We need to remove the possibility of plea bargaining from sentences and they need to be served consecutively, not concurrently. We also need to deal with smuggling strongly. We need to make strong examples of people who smuggle firearms or people who use firearms for any criminal activity.
The bottom line is this legislation should deal with the criminal misuse of firearms, not the use by legitimate, law-abiding citizens. Let us not make them criminals as well.