Madam Speaker, I will just take a few minutes to address my amendment here. It has to do with the subject of decriminalizing the offences that are now in the Criminal Code.
If we look at sections 91 and 92, we see that the penalties under indictment of both of those sections are absolutely draconian. Section 92 allows for an individual who knowingly refuses or neglects to register his or her firearm to be sentenced to a term of ten years. Under section 91 if they proceed by way of indictment they can be sentenced to imprisonment for a term of five years.
There has been a new section put into the act at committee stage, I think it is 107.1, which makes it a summary conviction offence. However, the police will have the authority to arrest anyone in possession of a firearm under any of those sections, even the most draconian, which is under section 92. They can arrest them. It is an indictable offence. They can charge them, fingerprint them, and then they can reduce or withdraw the charge afterwards, while that person's fingerprints are on file.
We see the same kind of thing occurring to a certain degree under section 85 of the Criminal Code, where they lay charges against individuals for using a firearm in the commission of an offence and then later withdraw those charges as a plea bargaining tool. I see the same kind of power and authority being granted through these sections.
Therefore, the purpose of our amendments is to eliminate the draconian measures and penalties that are included in this bill. I might bring to everyone's attention that the idea of sentencing someone or making them liable to a penalty of ten years for
deliberately neglecting to register their .22 or their shotgun is absolutely absurd and unacceptable.
We all remember Mr. Lortie, who went into the Quebec assembly and murdered three people. He served ten years. To equate that kind of an act and that kind of punishment with the failure to register a rifle or a shotgun is to me beyond comprehension and absurd.
These amendments are designed to decriminalize offences where there is no mens rea involved, no intent and no overt act to endanger anyone. It is simply that they have failed, whether deliberately or inadvertently, to fulfil an administrative act, which is to register. It should not be a criminal offence and there should be no means whereby the police can arrest the person under those circumstances and have that person face an indictable offence where the punishment is as much as ten years or five years, depending on whether it is under section 92 or 91 of this act.
Those are my comments on that.