Debates of Sept. 22nd, 1998

The House resumed consideration of the motion and of the amendment.

Supply

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

The hon. member for Wild Rose has about five minutes left in debate.

[Myron Thompson, Reform, Wild Rose, AB]

Mr. Speaker, in a letter of July 1997 the commissioner of the RCMP, Philip Murray, accused the officials in the Department of Justice of misrepresenting RCMP firearm stats by overstating the number of firearms involved in violent crime. Contents of this letter were uncovered by Reform through access to information. Other letters revealed that the former minister of justice and his colleagues used inaccurate firearms data produced by the Department of Justice to help justify Bill C-68. At the time the RCMP commissioner requested that these incorrect stats be removed from circulation.

The bottom line is that the policy and legislating decisions which resulted from these misleading stats are now interfering with justice and public safety.

By March 1998, $240 million was wasted on registering guns owned by more than five million law-abiding Canadians. That is diverting resources from programs which would do much more to improve public safety, such as putting more police on the streets.

If there was ever a case for the auditor general to step in, this is the one. The government has tried to grossly underestimate the cost, but it is estimated that by the year 2003 $1.2 billion will have been spent on gun registration.

With four provinces to date opting out of gun registration and the federal government hiring personnel to administer the system in these jurisdictions, this comedy of errors has to be brought to an end. It is becoming a real comedy of errors.

We are talking about $1.2 billion to register firearms. And I repeat, the registration of shotguns and rifles will not save a life. It just so happens that criminals do not care if the gun they use is registered. I have not been able to get that through the heads of government members.

Let us take the $1.2 billion and let us not say no to hepatitis C people, but help that gang out. I know some do not want to. I know that no one on the other side wants to because they all had to vote no. The magic leader said “You had better or else”, so the little sheep bleated and they jumped up and did what they were told once again.

Perhaps $1.2 billion could be put into cancer research. That would save lives. We know it and members opposite know it. But the registration of guns will not save lives. I hope someone on the other side will get up and give me an example of where the registration of one shotgun or one rifle will save the life of anyone.

Let me tell members about something that happened in Winnipeg yesterday. This was in the headlines. A local city teenager blew his head off with a rifle that he had stolen the previous day. When the owner of the gun called to report it stolen the police rushed to his house to arrest him. That is what we all feared when Bill C-68 came into existence.

I do not know if this has happened elsewhere in the country, but we know for sure there is a big outrage in Manitoba. This victim who had his gun stolen is looking at very serious jail time. He was a victim.

I looked at the Criminal Code for the last four or five years when I was in the justice area and I never found anything in the Criminal Code that was bad. I thought it was a good Criminal Code. It went after the criminals of the land. Why all of a sudden do we want to invent inclusions to the Criminal Code that go after law-abiding, taxpaying citizens, such as we see outside today, in a manner that is totally wasteful and unnecessary?

The member for Ottawa Centre said earlier today “Wake up and smell the coffee”. That is a brilliant statement. They are going to spend $1.2 billion, according to the auditor general's estimates, and it is not going to save a life. It is not going to make our streets safer. It is a bunch of nonsense.

Members opposite know it. Their constituents know it. Their leader knows it. But it shall be done because the dictator of Canada has spoken. The dictator of Canada has said to those members over there “Vote for this bill”. They will. They will continue to support the things that cause innocent victims to be arrested, such as the individual in Winnipeg. That is what is going to happen, but they cannot see it. I feel sorry for them.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

On questions and comments, we will proceed first with the hon. member for Regina—Qu'Appelle and then we will hear from the hon. member for Wentworth—Burlington.

Hon. members would make it a lot easier for the Chair if they indicated that they wanted to ask a question. Just give me the finger or a nod and if there are a lot of hon. members who would like to ask a question, then we will keep the questions and answers short.

[Lorne Nystrom, NDP, Qu'Appelle, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I would never give you the finger, I would give you a thumbs-up for a job well done.

This may surprise you, but I have a great deal of admiration for the grassroots instinct of my friend from Wild Rose, Alberta. Because of that I want to ask him this question.

We decided in our party to have a free vote on this issue, which will reflect the diversity of public opinion. Will the Reform Party be having a free vote on this issue later on this afternoon?

[Myron Thompson, Reform, Wild Rose, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I find that to be a strange question. Since 1993 we have always had free votes and we will continue to always have free votes.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh.

[Myron Thompson, Reform, Wild Rose, AB]

With respect to Bill C-68, the hon. member and my hon. noisy friends across the way will remember that when we voted there were some Reform members who voted for Bill C-68. We have free votes.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have a more simple question for the hon. member for Wild Rose.

He spoke at length about the high cost of gun registration. If gun registration cost only, say, $10 million or even $1 million, or if indeed gun registration cost nothing at all, would he then support it?

[Myron Thompson, Reform, Wild Rose, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I would support anything that would be voluntary. In fact, this hon. member can go out and ask all the criminals of the land if they care to register their guns and see if they step forward to do it.

The point is that registration will not solve the problem. They cannot get that through their heads. I would like one member to stand over there and give me one illustration of where registering guns will save a life.

[Shaughnessy Cohen, Liberal, Windsor—St. Clair, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I just wondered if the hon. member was familiar with the Alberta president of the National Firearms Association. Just in case he does not know who he is, his name is Mr. Lickacz, and he has an interesting statement on the Internet.

He says “Maybe not all Canadians are sheep. I find it astonishing that given the bitterness that the RFC”, the recreational firearms community, “has for the federal government with respect to the firearms situation here that this type of comment has not been seen before”.

I want to be clear that this is not something I am saying. I am simply quoting this person.

He says “I have been told by many firearms owners that they will shoot the first—cop on my doorstep that comes looking for my firearms”. I deleted an expletive, and a big one.

He says that these people are not the lunatic fringe. His personal opinion is that his home is his castle and whether the justice department agrees or not is irrelevant. It is his castle and he is not going to let anybody in.

He also went on to write a letter to the Minister of Justice, asking her to allow him and his little friends in Alberta to form a militia to drill and exercise. What is this? This guy is a member of the Reform Party, is he not?

[Myron Thompson, Reform, Wild Rose, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot say for sure. He could be a Liberal for all I know. I do not know the man.

There is no way in the world that any of us would support anybody breaking the law. No way in the world would we support that.

I hear a “ha” from over there. I would like the hon. member to stand up and prove me wrong.

I do not support anybody breaking the law. What I support are good laws. This is a bad law. Please look at it carefully. It is a bad law. Registration has not worked anywhere effectively.

[Steve Mahoney, Liberal, Mississauga West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Oxford. I heard the member for Wild Rose say, and this is pretty close to a quote, we will have to get the

Hansard

to check, that he would support anything if it was voluntary. I think that is what I heard him say.

Does that mean then that criminals are going to voluntarily register? On one hand they are saying that criminals will not register their guns. Obviously they will not. What the member said is that he would support the bill if it was voluntary. That is what I heard.

That is very interesting that we have principles and if you do not like them, we have other principles. The point is what I heard is that the general concept is something the member can agree. He just does not want it to be a forced situation. That is very interesting.

I wonder where the Reform Party went wrong when it decided not to support the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, the Canadian Police Association, the Canadian Association of Police Boards. You would have thought that these gentlemen and women would be lining up behind everything these groups had to say. Yet they will say that registering guns is a horrible violation which will not help the police in doing their job in fighting crime.

The three bodies I just mentioned would beg to differ. They say that registration will help police solve crimes where firearms are recovered. That seems like a reasonable idea. It will help identify the sources of firearms that are recovered. It will enable police to trace some of the 3,000 firearms that are lost or stolen every year back to their rightful owners. 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. The police are very concerned about that. It will help the police to determine what types and numbers of firearms they might encounter when they are responding to an emergency call.

Just talk to someone in the business of policing. They get a phone call. Quite often it can be late at night. There is a report of violence. There is a report of someone in distress and we are asking them to simply walk into that situation with no ability to access a database that might allow them to determine that the place they are going into happens to house a firearm or a number of firearms. Why would we restrict that information from the police? Why would the Reform Party restrict it? It is truly incredible.

I listened to the leader of the Reform Party earlier today saying that it was his mandate, or words similar to that, that he would fight against these unjust laws. What he is really saying is that he is the Leader of the Opposition and therefore he is going to oppose it, whether it is good legislation or not.

We see all these folks out on the front lawn of Parliament Hill. No one can deny there is a movement against registering firearms. They ask why would we support this. They call us sheep. They say we are simply going to do what we are told. Let me tell you who is telling us what to do. It is the Canadian people, with 78% of all Canadians approving of the legislation; 86% of people in the province of Ontario approve of the legislation; and 47% of firearm owners who are registered approve of the legislation. Why would they not?

What is the problem? It is absolutely mind boggling. We register our cars. We have to renew the license on a regular basis. We register things like our home ownership and our mortgage. We register our dogs, for goodness' sake. We register most things. We even register our children. Why in the world would we not want to have some idea? Granted, it will not solve all the problem. There is no question that criminals are not going to come forward and say “I am here at 11 division and I want to register six firearms that I use to rob banks”. We understand that. Why would we be opposed to registering weapons that could be dangerous? We need to have some confidence that they are being treated properly and that people are properly licensed.

In my view we have a real serious problem in this country. When I see the province of Ontario deciding that it is going to lower the age for hunting to 12 I get a little nervous. I understand about education, training and getting young people into a sport early to make sure they understand how to use guns properly. But I get a little nervous about the sense of responsibility, about the confidence, about the understanding and the calmness. I am not sure I want to be walking around in the woods this November in Parry Sound where I have a cottage. I am not sure I want to go out in the woods knowing there are 12 year olds with rifles. It is a little nerve racking knowing there are men and women. But to go down to the age of 12, I do not know where in the world those people are coming from or what they are thinking.

The thing I find most interesting is the lack of information. The people out front, and we will hear the speeches, and the people in the Reform Party fuel myth. I cannot use the word lie, it is not parliamentary. It is a myth when they say that this act is just about registration. We know—

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

Hon. members, we all know that we do not bring through the back door that which we cannot bring in through the front door. Let us not make connections which we do not even have to stretch.

[Steve Mahoney, Liberal, Mississauga West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I was not referring to any individual in this place. I am referring to the fact that there is misinformation. There are myths that are being propagated by members opposite to crowds which get them all emotional and excited about issues. If they would deal with the facts then we could have a calm discussion about the issue of gun control, registration and the costs involved. There will be setup costs and startup costs. There will be revenue that will offset those costs. But we never hear about that.

We hear that it will be expensive, that they are going to jack the price of registration up. Yet I have never heard anyone from the opposite side admit that for $10 we could register 10 guns. A buck a gun. Not a problem. No one is going to come back and ask us to pay $100 or $1,000. I have never heard anyone mention that once the gun is registered it is registered for life. Why would we not want to do that? They want to whip people up.

The one I love is that the police are going to be able to break down the door and come running in with their dogs and their guns drawn. It is absolute nonsense. They can investigate if they know there are weapons in the house. They must either have our permission or they must have a warrant issued properly in a court of law, giving them permission to be able to enter and investigate. They would do that if they thought there was potential for abuse or potential for crime.

I wish the Reform Party would stop all the misinformation, stop leading people in the wrong direction and simply understand that this is good for Canada, good for Canadians and good for the safety of all our communities.

[Jim Abbott, Reform, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Mr. Speaker, during the debate today the aspersions that have been thrown in this direction have been rather interesting.

I was elected fortunately in 1993 with 49% of the plurality. In 1997 I was elected with 62%. The difference of the 13% was the way the Liberals rammed Bill C-68 down the throats of all Canadians. I speak for the people of Kootenay—Columbia, and no member on that side of the House should misunderstand who I am standing up and speaking for.

This member has obviously not read the bill. He does not understand the bill. He talks about misinformation. His summation of the so-called facts of how he understands the facts clearly demonstrates that he does not understand. He just does not get it.

The bill is about Liberal social engineering. The bill is about an understanding that the Liberals have only from their own specific urban perspective. The bill is not going to make the streets of Toronto or the streets of Cranbrook any safer. The bill is doing everything to drive a wedge between honest, decent, law abiding citizens and the police forces and the government.

Let me ask the member a very simple question. How can we believe anything that the Liberal pack say when at the outset they gave us the bogus figure of $85 million or $87 million or $78 million, whatever that number was—

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

The hon. member for Mississauga West.

[Steve Mahoney, Liberal, Mississauga West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we can all flex our political muscles. In my riding 65% of the people voted Liberal in the last election. In the province of Ontario I think that was probably almost an average. The vast majority of the people in the province of Ontario, some 86%, support this.

The member does not understand that this is not a debate about the bill, this is a debate about the implementation and the regulations. We are not here debating whether there shall be a gun control law. That is a done deal. What we are talking about is how it is going to be implemented and how it is going to be set up. It is going to be set up in a way that will give the police some confidence in the database that will be available so they will know at least where the vast majority of the weapons are in this country when they are fighting crime and it will provide—

[Nelson Riis, NDP, Kamloops, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to my hon. friend from Mississauga West. I believe he is serious in his comments in terms of reflecting the views of his constituents.

I have a question for him regarding registration. The assumption is that if we have a decent registration system fewer people will get shot in our country as a result of that. That is presumably the bottom line.

I may have my figures out a point or two but the general thrust will be accurate. Every year in Canada about 1,450 people are shot one way or the other. That is the number of people who lose their lives as a result of firearms. Eleven hundred of those people commit suicide by firearms. Would these people likely not commit suicide using a firearm if it was registered? About 100 gangsters kill each other each year. If we have registration will gangsters not kill other gangsters?

About 100 people are shot in domestic disputes each year. If a someone wants to shoot his or her partner, would they likely not do that if the gun was registered?

About 100 people are killed in hunting accidents each year. If the gun was registered would these people likely not be shot in a hunting accident?

My serious question to my friend from Mississauga West is the following. When I look at those categories it seems to me that very little will change in those categories as a result of registration. Am I wrong?

[Steve Mahoney, Liberal, Mississauga West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would always be careful with the hon. member to make sure he is not reading from one of our throne speeches from days gone by as he did one time when we all got up and decided to go into a rant.

I am assuming those figures are accurate. The hon. member raised some interesting issues. I want to just deal with the one on suicide.

Generally speaking it would be my view that someone wanting to commit suicide would find a way and it would not necessarily matter if a gun were available. We just had a tragedy in the local community park where I live. Down the street where I walk my dog in morning a man who was accused of shooting his wife shot himself. I do not know that registration would prevent suicide. They may find some other way.

All their issues are not what this is about. This is about bringing some kind of order to registering guns and putting in place rules that all Canadians know about. They can be licensed and trained. It will help the police. It will not solve crime but it will go a long way toward assisting the police in doing their job.

[John Finlay, Liberal, Oxford, ON]

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.

[Mark Muise, Progressive Conservative, West Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, many of the people from West Nova in the riding I represent are hunters. They are law-abiding citizens. They are honest, hard working people who see hunting as many of us would see golfing or any recreational sport of that nature. There is absolutely no criminal intent on their part. There is no malice in what they use their guns for.

My question to the hon. member across the way is very simple. How would registration of long guns reduce the incidence of violent crime? I ask him to explain to me how that would happen. I am known as someone who thinks very rationally, who does not rant and rave about issues, but I would really like to understand how he sees it preventing violent crime.

[John Finlay, Liberal, Oxford, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I suppose I agree with my hon. colleague that registering a gun may not in and of itself prevent a crime. That is not what we are about. We are about the safe storage, use and control of firearms. That is what people—

[An hon. member]

It doesn't exist.

[John Finlay, Liberal, Oxford, ON]

Oh, it does exist. Yes, it exists. Two neighbourhood boys were visiting one another. They found the father's gun and were playing with it in the bathroom. One boy asked for the gun back and the young boy from next door said “No, no”, pointed it at him and shot him.

If that were a serious, law-abiding gun owner, the gun would have been locked up, would have had a trigger guard on it, the ammunition would be nowhere near the gun and the accident would not have occurred.