Madam Speaker, I will talk for a minute about why I joined the Reform Party. Obviously my colleagues and I supported other political parties in the past. What caused us to join the Reform Party?
We recognized a long time ago that we needed to change the system. I do not think Prime Minister Trudeau ever made a more accurate and truthful statement than when he said that MPs are nobodies. I think no MPs in this House should know that and feel that more than the backbench MPs on the opposite bench. They are nobodies. When they stand up to speak out and vote against the government on a bill, they are chastised, reprimanded and punished for representing their constituents. That is what we are here for; we are here to change the system.
The Conservatives under Prime Minister Mulroney wanted to get the GST through this House. What did they do? They cracked the whip and got their backbench MPs, even though their constituents solidly told them they did not support the GST, to vote in favour of it. Where are the Conservatives now? I do not see them around this House. That is where these people are going to be after the next election as a result of the kind of activities they have engaged in over the last few days. There is no change in sight.
I would like at this juncture to take a minute and commend those Liberal MPs who had the courage, the fortitude and the tenacity to stand up and vote against this bill even though they knew they were going to be punished for doing so. They were being true to their constituents. They were representing their constituents which is what they were elected to do. In the face of adversity they were prepared to do it and I commend them for it. We may have differing views and different philosophies but by and large I can admire people who are prepared to stand up for their constituents.
Reformers will be in every Liberal riding at the next election. We will remind the constituents how the Liberals treated parliamentary democracy in this session, what they did to ram through these government bills and how they abused their power and position.
It has been said that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This goes back to the heart of why we need to change the system. We need to take some of the power away from cabinet and away from the Prime Minister and distribute it among the MPs. We would then have the opportunity to see real democracy in action and not the executive kind of authoritarian democracy we have had in Canada, these democratic dictatorships we have had over the last 30 or 40 years.
In speaking to the bill itself, it is an established rule that justice should not only be done but should be seen to have been done. In other words the law must not only be just but it must be seen to be just. Can this be said about Bill C-68 and the agenda behind it? I do not think so.
Gun control is a controversial subject. It is clear that real and serious disagreements exist in Canada over it. I am aware and I acknowledge that the opinion polls show a majority of Canadians tentatively support the government's position at the present time. I would caution my colleagues opposite that the more and more people find out about it, the less supportive they are.
I also caution that in the words of Thomas Jefferson, great initiatives should not rest on slender majorities. If a majority supports something but does not feel very strongly about it and a minority opposes it very strongly, it undermines the rule of law to ram it through.
There is something else that undermines the rule of law even more directly and that is when governments say one thing and do another. It erodes the very foundation of our society if governments misrepresent. That is why I want to ask my colleagues opposite to do a little soul searching on this bill. I want them to look at themselves in the mirror and ask this question: Is this legislation a prelude to confiscating citizens' firearms entirely? I do not expect them to concede that in this House.
Let me point out a couple of quotations that worry me. First, when this whole business began the Minister of Justice said openly that in his view only agents of the state, police and soldiers, should have weapons. He has since stopped saying it, but has he stopped believing it? His assistant, Darryl Davies, recently said that hunting is a barbaric and murderous activity and should be banned in Canada. He also said nobody in a civilized country needs a gun. This is a high level official working in the minister's office.
The minister has not to my knowledge repudiated either of these remarks. Can we believe the assurances that hunters and hunting are not targeted by this bill with these kinds of statements made by such senior people in the minister's office?
Other prominent gun control advocates including former Metropolitan Toronto Police Services Board chair Susan Eng have made it quite clear: "Gun registration will start the process of stigmatizing gun use, just like drinking and driving. In their hearts, gun owners know this and this is what makes them so mad". We know what Ms. Eng is up to here and we know what
the real agenda is behind the legislation when we hear these kinds of statements.
Manitoba Liberal leader Lynda Haverstock said in May 1994: "I think what we should be doing is ensuring there is less and less and less availability to having guns", which she justified on the grounds that "sometimes our overall responsibilities have to override individual rights".
I know my colleagues opposite and my colleagues on this side of the Chamber have very serious differences about the bill as it now stands. The sweeping powers it gives the police worry us. The security of the universal system of registration worries us. The severe penalties for infringing this law in a society where murderers are free to go out on the street a short time after they are convicted strike us as unbalanced. The implied assault on the way of life of millions of Canadians troubles us.
What worries me most at this moment is that this entire bill is a massive fraud. I am concerned that all the pious assurances that confiscation is not contemplated are just a smokescreen behind which the legislation permitting confiscation can be put in place. Then the very people who say no private citizen should own guns will act on that belief.
Perhaps my colleagues opposite have not given this much thought. Perhaps they have accepted the smooth assurances of the Minister of Justice. I hope they will take the time to consider before voting on this whether the real agenda is outright confiscation at some time in the future. If it is, then I challenge them to either put it on the table openly right now and let us debate it, or put it aside and put the legislation aside that will make it possible.
This bill is bad enough as it is. What we really wonder is why the Minister of Justice is so determined to pass it when it is well established that there is no correlation between rates of violence and gun crime and laws respecting firearms ownership.
What is the real purpose of the bill? If it is a prelude to confiscation then it is extremely dangerous to the credibility of our government and to the notion of the rule of law in Canada if the government does not come forward and is clean with people right now telling them that is what is on its mind.
I hope my colleagues opposite will not vote to pass such a bill. I can assure them if they do, we will be there at the next election to remind their constituents how they voted today on closure, how they voted last Thursday morning on closure and how they voted on this very, very important piece of legislation, Bill C-68.