Debates of Sept. 22nd, 1998

Supply

[Keith Martin, Reform, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to what the hon. government member was saying. The hon. member said that the bill was not about decreasing crime and then went on to tell a tragic story about an accidental death.

I will repeat what my hon. colleague mentioned. How would gun registration actually decrease accidental deaths? Is the member aware of something called opportunity cost? If money is taken from

a and put into b

, in this case money from the functional arm of justice being put into gun registration where it is proven to have less effect than leaving it with the RCMP right now, how does he account for his government's desire to pull hundreds of millions of dollars out of the functional arm of justice and put it into gun registration which is proven not to make our streets safer?

[John Finlay, Liberal, Oxford, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we do not have gun registration now. How have we proven anything by that statement?

[Jay Hill, Reform, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Yes, we do. We have had it since 1934.

[John Finlay, Liberal, Oxford, ON]

Of course not. Most democratic countries in this world have gun control rules or gun registration. Many of them—

[Jay Hill, Reform, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

They are not as onerous as ours and they have less crime.

[John Finlay, Liberal, Oxford, ON]

Boy, oh boy. We do not have less crime but we are the best place in the world to live. There is a real objection, is it not? It is a perfectly good conclusion.

[Myron Thompson, Reform, Wild Rose, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I heard the hon. member mention that we have to register cars, this, that and one thing or another. I want to talk about gun collectors. Does the hon. member realize that he does not have to register a car? He can buy all the cars he wants and take them to his home. They can sit there and they are his. He cannot take them on the road, though. Then he would have to register them. But he does not have to register to have a collection of cars.

If I am a gun collector what is wrong with me just owning guns? I am not going to use them, so should I have to have a registration?

[John Finlay, Liberal, Oxford, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is quite right. It is not owning the car, it is using it. It is the same thing with guns.

We said that if gun owners want to own a prohibited weapon, then they can disarm it. If they have a collection they can disarm all the guns. But no, they would not go for that. They do not want that. The gun is not real then. I think black powder and a ball will kill you just as fast—

[Keith Martin, Reform, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

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.

[John Bryden, Liberal, Wentworth—Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca reminds me that the first dead person I saw was a suicide victim with a shotgun. The technique was put the shotgun in the mouth and pull the trigger and the head was completely blown off. I was 17 at the time.

Subsequently I became a police reporter, a journalist, and I saw a lot of murders and suicides in the course of that part of my career. One of the things I learned about suicides is that there are two things that often operate. One is that the suicides generally do not want to hurt themselves. They do not like to use knives and other methods that actually may do them injury or may lead to a fairly slow death. What they prefer is something that is instantaneous and something also that will answer their impulses.

Often suicides are not planned over a long period. If they get very depressed suddenly they will try to take their own lives. In the presence of a firearm in a household where there is a person who is known to be subject to these violent depressions who might be a potential suicide, registration would be very important in this instance. I would have thought that the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, in the light of his profession, would appreciate that. I was very surprised that he said the opposite because gun registration surely would save the lives of some suicides.

[Keith Martin, Reform, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad the hon. member mentioned that because, as an emergency room physician, I have seen a lot of people kill themselves, the vast majority of whom did not use guns. Let us take the issue at hand.

All of us in this House would love to prevent suicides. I am glad the hon. member mentioned the issue that suicide can be impulsive. It can also be a part of an ongoing major depression and the person can be ruminating about this for a long time.

However, if somebody was going to be suicidal and they wanted to get a gun to kill themselves, in order to do that today without gun registration, it would take them six to nine months before they even get a gun because they have to go through a firearms acquisition certificate, they have to take a course, they have to go and buy the gun.

So if somebody was going to kill themselves, they would not go through that. They would find many other ways of killing themselves, which most people do.

The hon. member mentioned somebody killing themselves because a gun was available in the house. How would gun registration actually prevent that from happening? Indeed it would not because we already—

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

The hon. member for Fundy—Royal.

[John Herron, Progressive Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I compliment the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca for his speech. I thought it was a very thoughtful presentation.

I would like to highlight something he pointed out in his comments, that is, the necessity for us to have severe minimum penalties for any kind of criminal use with respect to a firearm.

Individuals such as myself and the member I believe as well are not against gun control. This has become a very black and white debate, whether someone is for gun control or against it.

We want to be very prudent with respect to gun control and require that there be a clear acquisition certificate, that weapons and ammunition be stored under lock and key in separate places, that hunter safety courses be taken. The kind of initiatives that were part of the previous legislation actually accomplished that.

I ask the hon. member whether in his estimation would he believe that this piece of legislation, Bill C-68, is more about politics than crime prevention. Is it not more about taxation than deterring the criminal use of firearms?

[Keith Martin, Reform, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. friend from the Conservative Party. He is right on.

Unfortunately I think this bill, as my friend mentioned, is a political bill meant to pit urban versus rural voters. It is meant to seduce the urban votership onto the side of the government by the government looking like it is the big defender of the public good.

The facts are that everybody in this House wants to make our streets as safe as possible. We are in favour of the firearms acquisition certificate, the courses, the rules and regulations, the criminal checks that do our best to ensure that people who should not have access to guns do not have them, as opposed to the situation in the United States which we completely abhor and which the Reform Party opposes greatly.

The last point I want to make is on suicide. If we are truly interested in decreasing suicides, we can take the money from gun registration and put it into health care where it should be to treat people with depression.

[Jay Hill, Reform, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to rise today to address the motion put forward by my colleague concerning gun registration, specifically Bill C-68 which was about to be enacted in a couple of short weeks. It actually will not be fully put into place until December 1. That is what we have been told in the last few days.

I recognize that 10 minutes is a very short time to address such an important issue. When I say important issue, I really want to target the majority of my comments today specifically to my riding and more generally to the difference in how this issue is viewed by people residing in urban centres and by rural people.

Regarding the whole issue of “gun control” as my colleague from the fifth party just mentioned, the reality is that we who are questioning Bill C-68 are not talking about no gun control. It is not a question of gun control versus no gun control. We already have some of the most stringent gun control legislation and laws in the western world in place in Canada. My colleague from Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca talked about that very eloquently.

What I want to do in the short time I have is to try to educate some of our urban brethren as to what really constitutes the difference on how this issue is viewed by rural residents in Canada and those in the more urban centres, specifically some of the vast urban centres and the crime problems in places like Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal.

I noticed that in the debate today a number of members of parliament in representing their views have used specific instances on both sides of the argument. I want to talk very briefly about one tragic incident that happened in my riding. The hon. member for Hamilton—Wentworth who just spoke from the government side used a very tragic instance from his recollection where an individual used a firearm.

I have one on the other side of this issue. I would like to quote from the text of the Vancouver

Province

newspaper that carried the account of this tragic incident on August 17, 1997, just a little over a year ago.

Her husband died a hero—that much Angela Kitchen knows.

But the sudden nature of Ray Kitchen's death and the random way fate struck didn't make any sense to her yesterday.

One minute, the Fort Nelson father was stopping for a swim with his daughter and her friend on a hot day. The next minute, hearing the cries of a mauled woman trying to protect her son from a rampaging black bear, Kitchen was throwing himself into a situation that, as an outdoorsman, he knew could mean death.

The bear tore him apart. He died, as did the woman he ran to help.

“Someone mentioned that he died a hero. I'm really proud of him for that”, a tearful Angela Kitchen said yesterday. “It's just so hard”.

The savage attack Thursday night also left the woman's son and a 28 year old Calgary man injured.

It occurred as Patti Reed McConnell, 37, and her two children, Kelly, 13, and Kristin, 7, were out walking at Liard Hot Springs Provincial Park, 310 kilometres northwest of Fort Nelson. The family were on their way to Alaska from their home in Paris, Texas to start a new life in a land McConnell had fallen in love with.

It goes on to describe the incident in more detail.

More deaths were averted in this tragic incident. How were they averted? Because one individual at that scene had a firearm. It happened to be an American tourist that was stopping in this location, Liard Hot Springs. I am very familiar with this area. When I do my summer tour of my riding, and the riding goes all the way to the Yukon, I travel up the Alaska highway. I stop and talk to the lodge owners along the way. Most MPs on both sides of the House visit their ridings during the summer and they converse with their constituents.

I have often stopped at this hot springs. This was not the first incident of a bear attack or of bear sightings at this hot springs. At this hot springs there is a boardwalk of some 100 yards in length which carries people from the parking lot to the hot springs itself where people bathe.

What happened when this bear attacked those people? Someone had to run back along the boardwalk and find someone who happened to have a firearm in their recreational vehicle. I am not sure whether it was a motorhome or a fifth wheel trailer. An American tourist happened to have a firearm which was stored separately as the storage laws require. They rummaged around and got the ammunition out. This was an elderly gentleman who fortunately gave it to a younger person and said “Take my firearm and go and save some people”. This person rushed back down the walkway and shot the bear with one shot. Unfortunately for Patti Reed McConnell and for Ray Kitchen, my constituent from Fort Nelson, it was too late.

The point I am trying to make is that there is a vast world of difference between ridings such as mine, Prince George—Peace River, and this whole issue of gun control, gun registration and gun storage because what we are relating this to is the people in Toronto who do not understand guns. They do not ever want to understand guns. They do not want to own a gun. They do not understand why anyone would want to own a gun because they have never been in situations like McConnell's and Kitchen's. They have never been placed in those situations.

I was born and raised in Fort St. John in northeastern British Columbia and was a hunter as a young lad. I was raised with and had a strong respect for firearms and know how to handle them, and I can say that I do not understand people like that either. Therein lies the problem. The people in the big urban centres do not understand this issue from the point of view of rural residents. To me that is the fundamental issue.

Reform members throughout this debate, going right back to the time when we were first here, first elected in any numbers back in the fall of 1993, have tried to bring what we believe is some common sense to this issue. We have tried to represent not just the people who have legitimate concerns about safety and the illegal use of firearms in the cities of Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary for that matter, but also to represent the very legitimate concerns of law-abiding firearms owners in the rural areas of our country, people who already fervently believe that we have enough gun legislation in this country.

In fact many would argue that we had enough under the old Bill C-17, Kim Campbell's gun legislation that ranges back to the time of the Progressive Conservative government. They would argue that we did not need parts of that legislation or it should not be applied the same in Toronto as it is at Liard Hot Springs in northeastern British Columbia.

Let us take a look at this motion. “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”. I will stop there and not go on to read the rest of it. The rest has certainly been adequately covered by many of my colleagues. Targeting the criminal misuse of firearms.

I want to read again into the record what I said when I introduced a private members' bill to show what Reformers have been actively endeavouring to do since we came to the House. On December 5, 1994, almost four years ago, when I introduced Private Member's Bill C-293 I said:

Today it is my pleasure to introduce the bill to the House. It will increase the minimum mandatory sentence for the use of a gun in the commission of a crime to five years.

Canadians are demanding stiffer sentences for the criminal misuse of firearms but the recently proposed four-year mandatory sentence of the justice minister is only restricted to 10 offences and is not consecutive.

He is merely introducing a minimum sentence of four years for these crimes, and with parole it may be less. Although the tougher sentences in his reaction plan are a step in the right direction, the bill would go even further. It would make the minimum five-year sentence consecutive to any other sentence and would apply to any accomplices who had access to the firearm during the crime or attempted crime whether or not the gun was fired.

Canadians want deterrents and I believe the bill would provide some.

That is concrete action that the Reform Party and indeed many members in a number of parties would like to see. Let us get tough on the criminals who misuse firearms and leave law-abiding firearms owners alone because they are already respecting the law.

[John Bryden, Liberal, Wentworth—Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the sincerity with which the member made his remarks but in making his remarks he betrayed some of the lack of understanding of the west with respect to Ontario and central Canada.

There is wilderness in central Canada. I am one who for many years has canoed and camped in the wilderness, oftentimes in Algonquin Park which is only a few hours north of Toronto. Tens of thousands of people use Algonquin Park and the area around Muskoka. There have been two fatal bear attacks in the last 10 years in Algonquin Park.

This very weekend I was surrounded by wolves on an island as I camped with my son. At my cottage in the summer, I killed a three foot rattlesnake. My cottage just happens to be in the range of the only poisonous snake in Canada.

To use the member's logic, everyone who goes to Algonquin Park, everyone who goes to Muskoka, and there are thousands and thousands of them coming from Toronto, Hamilton, Waterloo and Cambridge, should go with a firearm every time they get in a canoe. We in Ontario do not feel that is acceptable. It is not necessary.

Surely the member opposite will admit that an attack by a wild animal, whether it is a cougar or a grizzly bear, is indeed a very, very rare eventuality and we do not have to go armed into the wilderness every time we want to go away for the weekend.

[Jay Hill, Reform, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, first I would like to know how the individual across the way who posed the question killed the three foot rattlesnake. With a shovel? I am not sure.

[An hon. member]

An axe.

[Jay Hill, Reform, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

With an axe. He is a very brave individual.

The reality is that many lives would be saved. Earlier on in the debate individuals across the way were talking about how it does not matter how much it costs if we just save one life. I heard that statement across the way. It does not matter how much it costs as long as we save one life. What I was talking about was saving lives as well. Not every individual should probably carry a firearm in every situation. However, the reality is that people who travel outdoors and know how to responsibly use firearms because they have been trained or have been raised with firearms should carry firearms to protect themselves. There would be less incidents like the one I referred to.

[John Harvard, Liberal, Charleswood—Assiniboine, MB]

Mr. Speaker, there is probably a fundamental difference and fundamental disagreement between the hon. member and me on gun control.

The hon. member has tried to use personal tragedy to score some political points. He refers to an incident at Liard River Hot Springs, which I gather is in his riding. It was a terrible tragedy. He implied that somehow or another gun registration would contribute to an incident that had already occurred at a time when gun registration was not in place. Also the hon. member implied that safe storage would somehow play into the incident. He is trying to confuse the viewers of this House of Commons session.

Bill C-68 insofar as registration is concerned is not invoked. It is not in place yet and will not be on a compulsory basis until 2003. I do not understand how non-registration would have somehow prevented this terrible incident in Liard River Hot Springs.

If somehow or other the hon. member could share this information maybe we would be all better off, but as far as I am concerned I do not think gun registration is relevant insofar as this incident is concerned.

[Jay Hill, Reform, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will certainly share with him my thoughts in that regard and he will be better off.

The reality is that legislation like Bill C-68 and its forerunners are step by step and incrementally discourage gun ownership in Canada today. That is what it amounts to.

It is the same as any other law passed in this place that make it more and more onerous on private citizens to own certain property. The more laws and the more difficult we make it for people to own something, obviously there will be less and less people who own it.

This legislation, as its forerunners, goes even further than that. The government can arbitrarily decide that certain makes, models and types of firearms are suddenly on the prohibited list. No one on that side has ever adequately explained how that does not constitute confiscation of private property. That is exactly what it is. At least the people in rural Canada and the people of Prince George—Peace River know that is exactly what it is.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough East, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise with some considerable interest in this issue as it is a matter of great interest to Canadians and to my constituents.

The motion deals with two issues: Bill C-68 which was passed in the last parliament and the proclamation of the attendant regulations scheduled for October 1 and now postponed to December 1.

The principles behind Bill C-68 were quite eloquently stated by the president for the Coalition for Gun Control. They are the significant costs of not acting now in terms of victimization, years of life lost and economic impact. The remedy is understood, available, feasible and at a reasonable cost. Guns, crime, injury and death is a problem which will likely escalate if not addressed now. Finally the longer the proliferation of unregistered guns continues, the more difficult it will be to contain. In other words, gun registration addresses current problems and it invests in the future.

The single most important motivation behind the bill is public safety and the safety of police officers. I frankly have trouble understanding the position of the members of the Reform Party. Are they in fact against public safety? Do they wish to put the lives of police officers at risk? Do they prefer to see what we see in the United States of America?

I will direct their minds to certain rates. There are 30 times more firearms in the United States than in Canada. There are an estimated 7.4 million firearms in Canada. There are 222 million firearms in the United States of which 76 million are handguns. There is a much higher portion of homicides in the United States that involve firearms. On average there is 65% of homicides in the U.S. compared to 32% in Canada. Firearm homicides are 8.1 times higher in the United Stated than in Canada. Handgun homicides are 15.3 times higher. In the face of such startling statistics the government cannot simply stand by, ring its hands and do nothing.

I have trouble believing that the hon. member who proposed the motion wishes to go in that direction. This is a piece of legislation which is broadly supported by the Canadian public and the constituents in my riding.

I would draw the hon. member's attention to a recent Angus Reid poll in which 82% of Canadians approved the universal registration of shotguns and rifles. Contrary to the thesis of the member previous to me, interestingly there was 72% support in rural communities.

In addition, to give statistical response to the member's previous statement that this was really people in Toronto who do not know what they are talking about, may I suggest to him that he refer to the analysis done which says that in populations of one million the firearm homicide rate is 422 per 100,000. For communities less than 100,000 it is 427. For other homicides it is 768. In communities of less than 100,000 it is 804. Virtually identical rates for cities in excess of one million and for cities and communities of less than 100,000. There is no urban or rural divide on this issue. This is broadly supported by all Canadians.

The Reform Party and their kissing cousins, the reformatories in Queen's Park, are not responding to the public demands for public safety. Last week the reformatories proclaimed legislation enabling 12 year olds to be licensed. One has to wonder what they are thinking about by putting guns in the hands of children. In my community destroyed it absolutely destroyed their credibility on their big issue of getting tough on crime.

Canada has not been nor, if this legislator has any say about it, will ever be a country in which the right to bear arms is a constitutional, legal or moral mandate. The philosophy of Bill C-68 is sound and enjoys wide public support among many segments of the community, including those most likely to be victims, namely police officers and women.

Turning now to the regulations, I am curious to know if the mover actually has read the regulations or read the original regulations which I have in my hand. If he did, he would know that the government has moved miles in responding to quite a number of legitimate regulatory issues. This set of firearm regulations is a substantial change from that which was originally presented to us on the committee. I congratulate the government, as I do not often do, on its willingness to be flexible and not impose unduly bureaucratic regulations on Canadians.

Representations were made to the committee by manufacturers and changes were made; by the entertainment industry and changes were made; by shooting clubs and changes were made.

At the end of the day when the regulations were presented for a vote the only opposition on the committee came from those who fundamentally do not believe in Bill C-68. This gun control bill will never satisfy everyone no matter how reasonable, measured or balanced the regulations might be.

Turning now to the motion, the first issue is the confiscation of private property. If the mover thought about that for more than five seconds, he would realize that a proper registration system gives security of ownership and enhances value. Far from confiscating, it does the exact opposite and legitimizes the owning of firearms.

Certainly property registration does wonders for land titles and land values as it does for motor vehicles and other forms of property. Why would it not be true with firearms?

The second point is that it contains unreasonable search and seizure. With the proclamation of the law, the police will know if the occupant is licensed to own arms and what they might expect to find behind that door. If I were a police officer responding to a call I would sure like to know.

If individuals choose not to obey this law on some misguided point of philosophy, they derogate from the rule of law. This is not the advice the hon. member should be giving to Canadians. I urge him to rethink his position.

The third point is that it violates Treasury Board guidelines. These are conclusions rather than arguments and need no comment. Given the more casual approach to public safety, I would not expect him to say otherwise.

The fourth point is that it is an affront to law-abiding firearm owners. As of October 1, now December 1, all owners of firearms are law abiding, but in the days following those dates they put themselves beyond and outside the rule of law. Until April 30, 1999 I am a law-abiding, taxpaying citizen, but if I do not file my return I cease to be a law-abiding, taxpaying citizen. So also will it be for those who fail to register their guns.

The fifth point is that it will exacerbate the trafficking of firearms. This is indeed a strange argument. Licensing will enhance property values, facilitate the processing of insurance claims and legitimize the owner. If anything, trade in illicit firearms will be carried on at the fringes. After a number of years those without proper licensing and registration will be marginalized and unable to acquire, dispose or trade. The police will know who they are, what they are doing, and will not have to unduly intrude into the lives of law-abiding gun owners that this motion purports to defend.

This motion deserves strong rebuke from the House as it defeats itself.

[Lee Morrison, Reform, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Mr. Speaker, the suggestion that weapons control or the registration of firearms will actually enhance their value is one of the funniest things I have ever heard said in the House.

As we speak, firearms dealers in the northern tier states are scooping up enormous quantities of Canadian owned firearms at bargain basement prices because people want to get rid of them before the regulations come fully into effect. People in this country have collections of heritage weapons. In my riding, for example, one of the most popular collectors items would be a carbine that was brought to the west by the Northwest Mounted Police when when made their march west. Those things are being sold off into the United States at 50 cents on the dollar because people just do not want the hassle. It is all about hassle.

The member talks about protecting police officers. I wish he would have gone outside and talked with the five serving and retired police officers who spoke at the rally and who think that the whole thing is nonsense. No police officer worth his salt would approach a dwelling in which a domestic violence has been reported without taking due precaution. He is not going to look at a computer to see if there are weapons in that house. If he did, he would probably receive a reprimand from his chief. The last thing I—

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

The hon. member for Scarborough East.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough East, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have trouble explaining this issue to my hon. friend because he simply does not understand.

This is the issue. I could have a pile of firearms in my home and feel it will be too much hassle to get rid of them so I dump them at 50 cents on the dollar or whatever. I recommend that my hon. colleague speak to those who think that way because they are being absolutely foolish. They are blowing out an inventory which they should not. All they have to do is register. It is a fairly simple system. Suddenly they will have preserved their asset at 100 cents on the dollar. I cannot understand why anyone would discount their assets on that basis.

On his second point about police officers looking into a computer, I do not know how many times the hon. member has been in police officer's car but there are computers in the car. They punch up the name of the person, see whether there are guns, whether the individual is a registered firearm user, and then appropriately approach the residence. This seems to be fairly fundamental. If I were a police officer, I would like to know what was behind that door.