moved that Bill C-68, an act respecting firearms and other weapons, be read the third time and passed.
Mr. Speaker, this morning we embark on the final stage of a process begun over a year ago by which members of this House of Commons have studied and debated questions dealing not only with the regulation of firearms but questions that in a broader sense touch upon the kind of country we want for ourselves and for our children.
It is little wonder that the debate about firearms has at times been spirited, often clamorous, and sometimes divisive. There are many voices that want so much to be heard: the farmers, the ranchers, who must be permitted to continue to use their firearms as the tools of their trade; the hunters and the target shooters, whose choice of sport demands our respect; the outfitters and the townsfolk whose livelihood depends on the success of the hunting season; the sustenance hunter, who feeds a family with a firearm; the police, who like all law-abiding Canadians want the means to deter, to detect and to punish those who would use guns in crime; and Canadians everywhere, who want the government to preserve the civil character of our society and strengthen the values that have always set us apart as a nation, Canadians who have watched the American experience with sadness and who want our national government to chart a different course for our future.
I sincerely believe Bill C-68 now before the House has fashioned an instrument that will ensure a future in which we can preserve those unique Canadian values while respecting the legitimate interests to which I referred while also dealing effectively with the use of guns in crime.
The government believes that the primary objective of regulating firearms should be to ensure that Canada remains a peaceful and civilized country. Canadians firmly intend to safeguard and strengthen the exceptional civility which has always been their hallmark. Our policies attest to this government's commitment to this objective.
The components of Bill C-68 that we will be focussing on today are as follows: firstly, strict measures to counter the criminal use of firearms; secondly, specific penalties to punish those engaged in the smuggling of firearms; and thirdly, broad measures to define what constitutes the lawful use of firearms in a manner that poses no threat to public safety.
In the case of each component, universal firearms registration is a fundamental requirement for achieving the stated objectives.
The government has been consistent throughout in its defence of Bill C-68 with respect to the core principles of the legislation. We have made changes to reflect our response to constructive criticism when it has arisen and to respond to well founded concerns.
May I today express the gratitude I feel toward members of the Liberal caucus who have through their efforts reflected concerns in their communities and have caused us to make many constructive changes to this proposed legislation. May I also acknowledge the hard work done by every member of the justice committee of the House of Commons. Colleagues from all parties in their painstaking work examined clause by clause every aspect of this bill and brought their own scrutiny to bear. I am very grateful for and admire the work they did.
We have made many changes along the way. We have created a new Firearms Act to take the process of regulation out of the Criminal Code to respond to the concerns of firearms owners. We have changed the rules with respect to the use and disposition of those firearms that are prohibited either as handguns or otherwise so they can be traded within the class of existing owners.
We have phased in the process of licensing and registration over eight years to minimize inconvenience for firearms owners. We have changed the nature and effect of the penalty for the first time a person inadvertently fails to register a firearm under the scheme. That will only become compulsory in 2003.
We have changed the inspection powers to respond to those who saw room for abuse. We have provided for relics and heirlooms to be passed down from generation to generation and kept in families for their sentimental or historical value.
The core principles of this legislation have remained constant: stiff criminal penalties for those who would use guns in crime; the longest mandatory minimum penitentiary terms in the Criminal Code for those who use guns in any one of 10 listed serious crimes; cracking down on smuggling by reinvigorating our efforts at the border, by investing in means to reduce smuggled firearms coming into this country; taking handguns out of circulation that have no place in legitimate sports and target shooting; providing for renewable licences for those who own firearms; and the mandatory universal registration of all firearms. We have done this so that as a nation we might have some meaningful control over guns while respecting the legitimate uses of firearms for traditional purposes.
It is the registration of firearms which has attracted the most intense controversy. Many criticisms have been levelled, unfortunately too often without foundation in fact. It is said that before we proceed with such a measure the government must satisfy a heavy onus of proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that mandatory universal registration will reduce the crime rate, that we must establish how many lives will be saved by such a measure.
I reject that false premise. I say it applies no more to this proposal than to any other. The government has by the evidence it has proffered to the committee, to the Commons and to the public, met any reasonable standard of proof required to justify legislation which would regulate the conduct of human affairs.
We tender the evidence of the chiefs of police. We rely upon the views and the opinions of the Canadian Police Association. We put forward the convictions of the Canadian Association of Police Boards. We stand with the victims of violence who have lost family members to crime. We stand with the physicians in the emergency rooms of this nation, with the trauma doctors, with suicide therapists, all of whom contend with one voice that mandatory universal registration of all firearms is nothing more than common sense in the regulation of property in this country.
There are those who attack the concept of mandatory universal registration by trafficking in fictions, and those fictions must be addressed. It is said that registration means nothing because criminals will not register to which I respond: That is the very point. Criminals will not register and by that act will identify themselves. When universal mandatory registration is fully in place as a seamless system for the registration of firearms, the criminals will be identified by exception.
I refer to an anecdote described to me by my colleague, the hon. member for Waterloo. He spoke last week in his riding about an incident where police entered a place on a raid because they had reasonable grounds to believe there was criminal activity going on inside. They found long arms and they were unable to tell whether those long arms were possessed unlawfully or whether they were lawfully in the possession of the people who were arrested. With registration the authorities will have the means to determine just that.
I call to mind the jury in the inquest into the death of Jonathon Yeo who was implicated in the shooting death of Nina de Villiers, the young woman whose life was tragically taken in her youth by crime. At inquest the jury heard months of testimony about those events. Among its many recommendations for strengthening the system to prevent such tragedies in the future, that jury recommended the mandatory registration of all firearms including rifles and shotguns.
While they are trafficking in fictions, those who oppose registration contend this is an effort to solve an urban concern about crime on the backs of the rural part of Canada. I point out that time after time it has been shown that the fatality and injury rates from firearms are significantly higher in rural areas in this country than they are in the cities.
The majority of the people in this country, when they die by firearms, die at the hands of someone they know. Preponderantly firearms are used as the weapon of choice when there is death in the context of domestic violence. On average a woman is shot to death every six days in this country, almost always in her home, almost always by someone she knows, almost always with a legally owned rifle or shotgun.
What has that to do with registration? The police tell us that with a mandatory system of universal registration in place over time they will have the means to enforce court prohibition orders made against people who have shown a propensity for violence. Lives will be saved if those guns are collected in that kind of situation.
Those who would oppose this system traffic in fictions by pretending that the cost is an impediment. They throw around numbers like $1.5 billion to establish the system, $100 or $300 per rifle to register. They are trafficking in fictions.
Someone on the west coast did a study for the Fraser Institute pretending that the cost of registration would be $1.5 billion because the cost to register a handgun under the existing system is on average $82. Factoring in the present antiquated system and individual police inquiries about the background of the applicant, it works out to $82 per handgun on average.
That person has taken that number and applied it directly to the six or seven million long arms in the inventory existing in Canada today. However, he has overlooked the fact that in the registration of the existing inventory of long arms we are going
to ask only that the owners mail in a card to identify themselves and their firearms. There will be a simple CPIC check to ensure that there is no order prohibiting the owner from having firearms and then he or she will be licensed and registered. This will cost nothing like the $82 which this man pretends is going to be the cost of registration in Canada. This is trafficking in fictions and not meeting the point on the merits.
It is also said by those who oppose registration that the system has been tried in New Zealand, Australia and elsewhere and has been found not to work. That is not so.
In New Zealand the registration system was established in 1920. It was carried out through handwritten cards. It was abandoned in the early 1980s when the volume overwhelmed the system. In any event, New Zealand does not sit on the border of the world's most gun preoccupied country. It does not have to deal with the challenges we face in Canada. The system in New Zealand was rejected for reasons that have nothing to do with the merits of the argument in Canada.
As for Australia, five of the eight states and territories have mandatory registration of long arms now. In 1990 a national committee on violence recommended it be extended to the whole of the country. Those are the facts. It is time we stopped trafficking in fictions.
Testimony before the House justice committee established that in those European countries where mandatory registration of all firearms is in place, the accident, injury and death rate from firearms is lower compared to countries where that is not the policy.
As to confiscation, those who oppose registration allege that it is the first step to confiscation. To them I respond that in 1940 the government of this country introduced mandatory registration of rifles and shotguns as part of the war effort. There was compliance and no confiscation. To those persons I say that in 1977 when the present system of firearms acquisition certificates was introduced, the voices again were raised that confiscation would be the inevitable result, but there was no confiscation. This is the position of the people who have run out of real arguments against gun control. They are trafficking in fictions.
I would like to spend just a moment on those who have made themselves conspicuous in this House by their opposition to this bill. I speak of course about members of the third party. I bear in mind as I do so that the third party came into this House 18 months ago as the party of the people insisting that the positions its members took, the policies they supported and the views they expressed would reflect the values and views of Canadians in general.
I well recall the days sitting in this place when hon. members of the third party would rise in question period to put questions that were inspired by members of the public. They wanted so much to reflect the views of Canadians in the work they did in this House of Commons.
Some of the members of the third party have stuck to those principles and are going to stick with them. They are going to vote for this bill because they know the majority of the people in their riding support it. To those members I offer my congratulations for their consistency in their principles.
However, the third party, the party of the people, the party of law and order, the leader of this third party and the majority of its members have said they will vote against this bill and against what the majority of Canadians want. As recently as two weeks ago a poll showed that 74 per cent of the people in British Columbia, 58 per cent of the people in Alberta, and 72 per cent of the people in Ontario support registration. Two weeks ago an Angus Reid poll demonstrated consistently that the people of Canada want Parliament to pass the legislation.