Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak on the Reform motion which refutes many of the fallacies about Bill C-68.
I say at the outset that if Bill C-68 would make our streets safer the Reform Party would support it. However, it is for the reason that Bill C-68 is going to make our streets less safe that we oppose it. I will get to the reason why.
Half of Bill C-68 is good. Half of it involves penalties for the criminal use of guns. We support that. We have been fighting for it for many years. Half of it, however, will make our streets less safe.
Point one is the registration of guns. In this country two-thirds of the people who are murdered are murdered with a weapon that is not a gun. One-third die of gunshot wounds. Of that one-third, which amounts roughly to 225 people, the number that die with a registered handgun is five.
The point I am trying to make is that the cost of gun registration is going to be hundreds of millions of dollars and the government's estimate is over $1 billion. That money has to come from somewhere. It is going to come in part from the pockets of the citizens of this country. But in large part it is going to come out of the functional arm of justice. That means if we are going to remove money from the RCMP, if we are going to remove money from the police forces we had better make sure that where we are putting it has better bang for the buck. But the reality is it will not.
We are going to have fewer RCMP officers hired, less equipment, fewer training opportunities for them and in short, if we are going to have fewer officers training, those officers are going to be less able to arrest criminals.
One Liberal member I spoke to during debate some years ago said if we can save five people, then we have saved five people. I said to him if it is going to cost $500 million or $1 billion to save five people, is that worth it. He said any price is worth it. Although we cannot put a price or a value on human life the reality is money does not grow on trees and the money is being taken away from the functional arm of justice and will make our streets less safe. That is the fundamental issue of why we do not support this bill.
The former minister of justice appeared before the committee and gave the reasons. One is that it will decrease murder. We have proven that it will not. The second reason is that the minister said it will decrease suicides. If a person is depressed and is going to kill themselves, do they go out and get a firearms acquisition certificate, take a course, wait six months to get a gun and blow their head off? No, they do not.
The facts are that gun registration will do nothing to decrease the suicide rate. Will it help the police? In a domestic dispute situation the police always go in with a view that a dangerous weapon is on hand. This is standard procedure.
The members across the way have said that the police support this. If that is the case why did 91% of the RCMP officers in Saskatchewan and 85% of the police officers in Alberta not support this? The men and women on the front lines of justice in this country know full well that the money is going to come out of their funds to fight crime. They know gun registration does not work.
Does this decrease accidental death? Accidental death with a firearm is a function of the use of that firearm. If a person has registered that firearm, leaves it loaded on his or her bed and the children come in to play with it and shoot themselves or someone else and someone dies, that is a tragedy of youth. It is a tragedy of people not using guns properly. Gun registration will do nothing for that.
Contrary to the member across the way who talks about all the good things that we have, implying that we do not have issues such as the firearms acquisition certificates, storage rules and regulations and trigger locks for handguns, we have those and the Reform Party supports those. We believe, as does the government, that these are going to make our streets safer and are effective.
However, our view is that we are simply not going to pursue or support a bill that is going to make our streets less safe. That is why we have been so vocal about this for so long.
If the government were truly interested in decreasing crime then it would hit crime where it counts. The problem in this country today is that we have rules and regulations on the boards that are simply not being implemented. Most of the criminal activity with the use of firearms is done by criminals using illegal firearms. When those people commit an offence with a firearm what happens? They often get the firearms offence plea bargained away or to run concurrently with the other offence. What message does that send to the criminals?
It tells the criminals to go ahead and use a firearm because all they will get is no penalty or a penalty that runs concurrently with their other sentence. This means that there is no penalty whatsoever for those people who use firearms in the commission of an offence. That is what our party has been fighting for so long.
What we all want to do is to ensure that criminals are not going to be using firearms. What we must do is enforce the law. If somebody is using a firearm in the commission of an offence then we should take that and run the sentence consecutively, not concurrently. We must stop plea bargaining away those sentences. If a criminal is guilty of pulling out a gun in the commission of a robbery then we should hit them with the book. We must make sure they pay the penalty so they know they will not get off scot free when using firearms.
We also have to do something about the egregious situation we have in the country concerning the trafficking of firearms between our country and the United States. The penalties for trafficking are there but they are not being applied. Trafficking is taking place, for example, on certain reserves in Quebec and the RCMP are sitting back and are being told, from what I understand, not to intervene. That is a serious problem because it ties the hands of our law enforcement officers when these offences are occurring in front of their eyes. Furthermore, it puts into jeopardy the lives and welfare of aboriginal people on those reserves and the people outside the reserves.
Good effective justice and good effective laws would ensure that the laws of this country are being applied in the courts and not merely pushed underneath the carpet. That is what we are in favour of. In that way we can hit the criminals and leave the law abiding citizens out of it.
It is a serious offence for law abiding citizens, who have never been a criminal in their lives, to transfer their guns to their children and loved ones. Some of these guns are very valuable to them but the government is violating their rights as property owners. We would not be in favour of just allowing guns to go to people who do not have to go through the proper criminal checks, firearms acquisition certificate application process that law abiding firearm owners have to pursue.
We support that but we oppose vehemently the government's violation of people's rights to merely take those guns away from them with no recourse whatsoever.
I would ask any member of the government to tell us how that is going to make our streets safer. If we look at history and what has been taking place in other countries where they have applied and implemented gun registration, it is proven that it does not work. In Australia it did not work.
As members across the way and the government have clearly said repeatedly, this may not make our streets safer. If it is not going to make our streets safer, if it is not going to save Canadian lives, if it is not going to increase the safety of people, if it is not going to improve the ability of the police to do their job, then why do it?
Why support something that is going to make our streets less safe and hamstring the ability of our police officers to do their job by tearing away the resources that they require to keep our streets safer?
The government needs to pursue the enforcement of the laws of this land when it comes to guns. It needs to scrap the idea of gun registration. It needs to apply the penalties for trafficking. It needs to work with us on effective measures to prevent crime and give the police the tools to do their job, as well as clean up our legal system and the judicial structure we have that hamstrings and ties the hands of our police officers in doing their job to keep our streets safer.