Madam Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to rise today to discuss report stage of Bill C-68, an act respecting firearms and other weapons. This is perhaps the most controversial piece of legislation the House has seen since the implementation of the GST. It is also a piece of legislation which has caused a great deal of debate and at times heated discussion since this issue was first raised in the House.
I have learned there is little or no middle ground on the issue of gun control. It is an issue that Canadians either do or do not support. I surveyed my constituents of Edmonton-Strathcona twice to gauge their feelings on this issue. I did this through household surveys and received conflicting results. Some individuals suggested the first question was too broad and all encompassing and others felt the second question was too narrow. This is a problem in which each side is divided into black and white; there does not seem to be any shade of grey.
How do we resolve this conflict in order to vote according to the wishes of the majority of our constituents? I felt the best way to resolve the problem was to bring in an independent third party. In this case it was an independent pollster. This polling
firm's objective was to find out how my constituents truly felt on the issue of gun control. The results were as follows.
Just under 50 per cent of the respondents said they believed the government's proposed gun control legislation should not be passed without modification or amendment, while only 28 per cent said it should be passed. Over 55 per cent believed that the potential benefits of the proposed legislation would not justify the cost of the bureaucracy required to enforce it compared with 30 per cent on the yes side. An astonishing 70 per cent believed that the authorities would be granted too many powers concerning the issues of search, seizure and compensation, while less than 25 per cent felt that the new powers would be justified. Finally, almost 80 per cent of the constituents from Edmonton-Strathcona believed that criminals would not comply with the justice minister's proposed gun control legislation compared with only 11 per cent who said that criminals would.
It is also interesting that this government seems to be travelling down the same road as the previous Conservative government. There was an outcry of self-righteousness from the Liberals while they were in opposition over the Conservatives' use of time allocation to ram through legislation.
The Liberals had managed to make the most faithful individuals of our democratic process turn into pessimists. This Liberal government is trampling on Canadians' democratic rights by limiting the time in which we as parliamentarians can debate legislation put forward in this House.
The Mulroney government used time allocation 35 times to pass 200 bills. That is 17 per cent of the Mulroney government's bills, which is shamefully unacceptable, as was indicated by the other side.
Now let us look at the government's record, in which time allocation has been used an unprecedented 14 times on only 59 bills, including this one, Bill C-68. On this bill time allocation has been used not once, not twice, but three times. In other words, the government has used time allocation 24 per cent of the time, 7 per cent more than the Mulroney government. That is totally unacceptable to me and to the constituents of Edmonton-Strathcona and I believe to all Canadians.
The government must start to listen to the people and not the spin doctors, or else it as well will be able to hold its caucus meetings in a phone booth.
The people of Edmonton-Strathcona have spoken out on this issue, and the majority concur with the Reform Party's position that registration is not the means to an end in which the end is a decrease in crime. It is for this reason that the Reform Party has brought forward amendments to split the bill during second reading. We would have passed the crime control measures immediately, which would have allowed us more time to spend debating the merits and pitfalls of a full scale registration plan.
We as a caucus applaud the justice minister's endeavour to curtail the deliberate criminal misuse of firearms. He has done this through increased penalties for criminal misuse of firearms and through an increased effort to further enhance controls on illegal border crossings.
Unfortunately certain aspects of Bill C-68 will have a detrimental impact on the competitive sports shooting group. If we are to believe the majority of shooting organizations, they feel there is a real possibility of the loss of Canada's sports shooting structure. Prohibiting or restricting firearms that are commonly used in legal, legitimate, recreational circumstances such as casual target shooting or in formally organized competition does not prevent criminal acts. It only further restricts the rights and freedoms of law-abiding citizens.
As the Reform Party's critic for amateur sports, I feel obligated to speak directly to the specific sections of the bill that have the most direct effect on sports shooting organizations across Canada. We proposed amendments in committee that would have allowed those individuals who are members of the registered recognized shooting associations to be exempt from Bill C-68, and this was defeated. Our position is that we do not want to prohibit guns that are used specifically for competition and thereby prohibit those at the entry level from entering the sport.
Our reasoning is that you do not come into the world of competitive shooting with a $5,000 or $6,000 target pistol. You start off at the entry level with a very inexpensive firearm. You join a club and you take up shooting. Invariably these firearms tend to have barrel lengths of four inches or so and to be .32 calibre, which is what the Olympic shooters use.
It is a concern for me that the proud tradition that Canada has in competitive shooting may be lost. A perfect example was during the Commonwealth Games last year, an event that resulted in 43 medals for Canada. Twenty-two were shooting medals. That is over 50 per cent of Canada's total medals awarded. Under this bill, that number will decline dramatically.
Bill C-68 prohibits two-thirds of the pistols owned by law-abiding citizens. Many of these are collectors' items or are target pistols in current use in competitions such as the Olympics and Commonwealth Games. Some of these firearms may be grandfathered, but that is simply a delay.
The majority of my constituents feel that Bill C-68 is an ineffective and intrusive piece of legislation. What Canadians, both rural and urban, want is crime control, plain and simple.
Until these types of problems which I, the rest of the Reform caucus, the people of my constituency and the people of Canada have raised are dealt with, we as a party and I as an individual cannot support this bill.