Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the Reform Party motion on Bill C-68 with which we dealt in the last parliament. It is interesting that the Reform Party is using its first opposition day in the new fall session to debate an issue on which it fought and lost an election rather than using it for other important issues that Canadians are concerned with. Where is the vision? Vision means looking forward, not backward.
I agree that no one wishes to give you the finger, Mr. Speaker, but I have been trying to give some of my colleagues opposite the finger for a long time.
In reference to the opposition motion I find the language in it extreme. It smacks of the kind of advertising the National Firearms Association and others put out. It states:
That this House condemns the government for its refusal to replace Bill C-68, the Firearms Act, with legislation targeting the criminal misuse of firearms and revoke their firearm registration policy that, in the opinion of this House: (a) confiscates private property—
It does no such thing. It “contains unreasonable search and seizure provisions” As my friend from Mississauga West just said, that does not apply. It is not the way it is done. The words in the motion are full of extra meaning.
—(c) violates Treasury Board cost/benefit guidelines; (d) represents a waste of taxpayers dollars—
There is a lot of waste of taxpayer dollars here and there. I wonder what is the value of human life. My friend from Kamloops referred to domestic disputes and 100 hunting accidents. Two days after I was elected my friend, the former warden of Oxford county, died in a hunting accident. His wife wanted to throw all his guns down the well that afternoon.
It “is an affront to law-abiding firearms owners” to ask them to register a gun, to ask them to pay a small fee for that privilege. It “will exacerbate the illicit trafficking in firearms”. What nonsense. Of course it will not exacerbate it. It may help stop some of it but it will not exacerbate it.
Before the last election Reformers swarmed across southwestern Ontario telling our constituents, mine in particular, that voters had to send a clear message to the Liberal government about gun control and Bill C-68. Imagine their surprise when a clear message was delivered in Ontario regarding gun control. The message was that the people of Ontario support Bill C-68.
I am sure many Reformers were embarrassed that the only Reform MP to hold a seat in Ontario voted against gun control and that seat was won by a Liberal MP. I assure all hon. members that the Liberal member for Barrie—Simcoe—Bradford is serving her constituents with distinction in the House.
I do not deny this is an important issue for many of my constituents. Several of them have positions in the leadership of the anti-Bill C-68 lobby. When Bill C-68 was first proposed I received many postcards from gun owners who were opposed to measures included in the bill. After a lot of work in caucus and after voting in favour of this bill I received many letters and calls of support from the constituents of Oxford.
In that original bill there were some far-reaching things that had to be corrected. There were prohibitions on black powder use. There were prohibitions on re-enactment use. There were prohibitions on certain handguns that were used only for target shooting.
Many of those matters were corrected. The complaints that we find in this resolution were largely resolved. At the polls during the 1997 election most constituents indicated their support for this piece of legislation.
My re-election is an indication of the support Oxford has for this government and this legislation. The Reform candidate after finishing second in the 1993 finished third in Oxford in 1997. That is also an indication of the level of support Reform enjoys in my riding.
I would like to discuss the particulars of the bill and some of the questions that have been raised. It is true that criminals will be unlikely to register a firearm. Everyone can concede that point, but people must also concede that by that very fact criminals will identify themselves. The fact that a firearm is not registered will alert the police to the possibility that the firearm may have been stolen, illegally imported, illegally manufactured or bought on the black market.
The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, the Canadian Police Association, the Canadian Association of Police Boards and groups representing victims of crime support registration of all firearms for practical reasons, the same reasons that we register our cars, our bicycles, our birth, our citizenship and so on.
It will help police solve crimes where firearms are recovered. It will identify the source of firearms that are recovered. It will enable police to trace some 3,000 firearms lost or stolen every year back to their rightful owners and to return many of them.
It will enable police to determine whether firearms have been skimmed from commercial shipments. It will allow information on safe storage and handling regulations to be directed specifically to firearm owners.
With these rules and regulations and the education of firearm owners regarding proper storage, it will certainly prevent a lot of people being killed by unloaded guns, the situations where the child in the home points an loaded gun at somebody but when father put it away it was unloaded. It does not hang above the mantle piece loaded but unloaded in everybody's opinion. When the loaded gun is pointed, people are killed.
Quite clearly, if a gun is registered the owner has the possession certificate and there is nothing to fear in the bill. It is only those who are in possession of illegal firearms, whether prohibited, stolen or unregistered, who need fear losing their firearms.
The motion put forward by the member for Saskatoon—Humboldt said that the bill allowed our police forces to confiscate private property. It does no such thing. I would anyway like to ask my friend from Saskatoon—Humboldt how an item that is illegal and illegally held can be considered private property. Will the Reform Party be saying next that police cannot seize drugs because they are the property of an individual?
I must also say how dismayed I was to hear the member for Yorkton—Melville ask us to follow the example of Miami, Florida, in dealing with crime. Perhaps this member would tell us how many gun related deaths there are every year in Miami or how much higher its crime rate per capita is to any city in Canada. Such a comparison is somewhat ridiculous and the Reform member would know it.
This is what we have come to expect from the Reform Party on this issue. This is a party that regularly encourages its membership to compare gun control measures to those of Nazi Germany, a party whose thinks the government's legitimate attempts to put forward measures supported by a majority of its citizens is bordering on Fascism.
This is a party that brags about using direct democracy to make voting decisions in the House. Yet only three Reform MPs had the courage and honesty to vote in favour of the bill after discovering their constituents supported Bill C-68. I applaud them, all three. Those members mentioned represented Calgary Centre, Edmonton Southwest and Vancouver North.
A majority of Canadians support the gun registry including those in British Columbia and Alberta where most Reformers are from. I guess the only way they could say that the public supported their measures would be to trump up questions on a survey.
I guess the deputy leader of the Reform Party certainly cannot vote for the motion. An Optima Research poll taken in that riding last year showed that 55% of respondents support the registration while only 28% oppose it.
I do not deny that this is an important issue for many of my constituents. I hope it will go forward after the vote this afternoon and we can get on with the many issues in which we can all get involved and do some good for Canada.