House of Commons Hansard #44 of the 37th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was program.
Geoff Regan LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons
Mr. Speaker, in accordance with Standing Order 32(2) I have the honour to table, in both official languages, on behalf of the Minister of Industry, the annual reports of Genome Canada for 2000-01 and 2001-02.
James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement and Northeastern Quebec AgreementRoutine Proceedings
Kenora—Rainy River Ontario
Liberal
Bob Nault LiberalMinister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
Mr. Speaker, under the provisions of Standing Order 32(2) I have the honour to table, in both official languages, copies of the 1998-99 and 1999-2000 annual reports on the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, and on the Northeastern Quebec Agreement.
Bob Nault LiberalMinister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
Mr. Speaker, also under the same provisions, I have the honour to table, in both official languages, copies of the 2000, 2001 and 2002 annual reports of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation.
International Labour ConferenceRoutine Proceedings
Bramalea—Gore—Malton—Springdale Ontario
Liberal
Gurbax Malhi LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Labour
Mr. Speaker, in accordance with the International Labour Organization's constitution to bring recently adopted conventions and recommendations to the attention of competent authorities, I am pleased to submit two copies, in both official languages, of the Canadian position with respect to convention 184 and recommendation 192 adopted at the 89th session of the International Labour Conference, June 21, 2001, in Geneva.
Geoff Regan LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons
Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8) I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the government's response to six petitions.
Martin Cauchon LiberalMinister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada
Mr. Speaker, in 1978 when the government of the day first introduced modern firearms control legislation, the goal was to establish a program that improved public safety and saved lives.
Almost 25 years later, our goal remains the same. The Government of Canada believes that the firearms program contributes to public safety by keeping guns and ammunition out of the wrong hands, by deterring their misuse, and by controlling specific types of firearms.
We know, however, that there were many obstacles along the road to success, and that this road is not an easy one to travel.
In the first five years of the program, the basic requirements were constantly changing due to political and administrative needs. This made it extremely difficult to project costs and revenues.
Let me be clear. The government has always endeavoured to report the costs of the firearms program with diligence. Departmental costs have always been reported through approved Treasury Board framework guidelines. The department has reported many times to Parliament on the program, including appearances before the finance committee in the other place and the House Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights.
However, the Auditor General stated, and I agree, that we need to do better. We have to get the administration of this important public safety program back on track and do it in a cost-effective manner that Canadians can support.
Last week I announced interim cost cutting measures, including an immediate freeze on major spending for the firearms program. I also announced that I am reviewing the administration of the program with a view to finding cost efficiencies. Until that review is complete, the program will be run at minimum levels.
I have already indicated that there are some limited funds left in the firearms program. We are looking within existing justice operational appropriations to manage any shortfall in program resources until my review is complete.
I will report back to the House with an accounting of how we manage any shortfalls. I will be open. I will be transparent.
We will ensure that this approach does not infringe in any way upon the department's other programs. Furthermore, this approach will have no impact on agreements with the provinces and agencies.
Let me be very clear on the last two points. First, before I make a presentation in connection with the supplementary estimates next March, I will review the administration of this program.
Second, the government remains committed to the principles of the firearms program. We are aiming to improve the administration of the program. The principles of the program and our commitment to them remain unchanged. I have said that we will fix it, and we will fix it.
I understand the concerns expressed in the Auditor General's report and in the House. I have made a commitment to the House to carefully examine the costs and the administration of the program, to make improvements and to be transparent in my efforts to do these things. I am fulfilling my commitments. We will be building a better Canadian firearms program.
The deadline for the public to register their firearms remains December 31, 2002. I recently announced a grace period for those who have applied for but have not received their registration by this date, to ensure that those who have taken steps to comply with the deadline are not prosecuted.
The policy is sound. It reflects the values of Canadians.
Garry Breitkreuz Canadian Alliance Yorkton—Melville, SK
Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the minister's statement. I wonder why he even bothered to make the statement, because he did not say anything new. There was nothing of substance that merits taking time in the House to make this statement. He is saying the same old nonsense we have heard for a long time. He continues to defend a program that Parliament now refuses to fund.
We were hoping that the minister would finally accept responsibility for the fiasco and announce his resignation for the biggest cost overrun the Auditor General has seen in any government program. We were also hoping that the minister was going to announce this morning that he was scrapping the gun registry because it already has wasted almost $1 billion. For that billion dollars, he will only have registered one-third of the guns in Canada. Is he going to waste another billion or two or three before he admits the program is a dismal failure? How much is it going to be? We cannot get that response.
If he is not going to resign or scrap the gun registry, at least he could have announced this morning a general amnesty to allow all firearms owners the time they need to fully comply with the law. Because his own bureaucracy cannot get the paperwork done, he has put in place a six month moratorium or amnesty for owners to get their papers, all because his bureaucrats need more time to process the firearms licences and registration certificates. Does he really want to drive millions of gun owners and guns underground?
The Liberals issued a general amnesty in 1978, and the Conservatives also did it in 1992. What possible excuse can the minister have for sticking to a completely arbitrary political deadline of December 31 of this year?
The minister's own user group on firearms tells the minister that the way his program is designed is driving firearms into the black market, the exact opposite of what the public and Parliament were promised. Is the minister listening to his own user group? Has he even met with the group yet?
Poorly drafted legislation and an up to 90% error rate in the system are making it impossible for police to know who owns guns or where they are stored. That is the very thing the minister promised the police that the gun registry would do.
The three justice ministers who have been in charge of this file have so infuriated provincial and territorial governments that eight of them have opted out of the administration of the gun registry, and the western provinces refuse to enforce the Firearms Act. This is criminal law that the provinces do not want to have any part of, which ought to indicate to Canadians that there is a serious problem here.
This week the Nunavut Court of Justice suspended firearms registration requirements for the Nunavut Inuit because of lack of service, poor communication and low compliance. I remind the minister that he is responsible for ensuring that all Canadians are treated equally before and under the law. If they no longer have to comply with it, what about the rest of us?
Firearms ProgramRoutine Proceedings
An hon. member
Are you still advocating that they don't register?
Garry Breitkreuz Canadian Alliance Yorkton—Melville, SK
All those people blathering over there better listen carefully. The minister's gun registry is such a boondoggle that the minister does not even keep track of the current addresses of 131,000 persons prohibited from owning firearms and he has no provision to check if their guns have been removed from their possession or to ensure that they have not acquired more guns illegally. Instead of keeping track of 131,000 convicted criminals, he is going to try to keep track of two million law abiding gun owners. Is there any sense in that?
He has his priorities backwards, because he thinks it is easier to track two million law abiding and honest people than 131,000 convicted criminals. That is the only explanation I can imagine.
Now the minister claims that thousands of convicted sex offenders have privacy rights. Where is the minister's concern about the privacy rights of two million completely innocent firearms owners whom he forces to report their changes of address or go to jail for up to two years?
What the minister should have said today is that the gun registry is such a mess that it is impossible to fix, that he is going to do the right thing and kill it, scrap it and abolish it.
Richard Marceau Bloc Charlesbourg—Jacques-Cartier, QC
Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to respond to the Minister of Justice.
It seems strange that the Minister of Justice took more than a week to react to the Auditor General's report criticizing the veritable administrative fiasco of the Canadian Firearms Program. Worse yet, it took the release of this report to get a reaction out of the government.
There are two possibilities: either the government knew and did not do anything, or it did not know, which is also worrisome because that means it does not even have control over the administrative machinery.
It took the specific intervention of the Auditor General to uncover the magnitude of the administrative mess, because the Liberal government, true to form, took an amazingly lax approach to the management of this program.
Because of this government's chronic lack of transparency, as highlighted in the Auditor General's report to Parliament, the costs of managing this program mushroomed. No one in the government had the moral decency to sound the alarm before the Auditor General did.
The costs of the program, originally estimated at $2 million, will soar to $1 billion by 2004-05, showing the government's incompetence and inability when it comes to managing public funds.
The fine words of the minister this morning do not assign blame or even admit responsibility, far from it. It is totally disgusting to see the minister downplaying the situation on the pretext that the challenge of firearm registration was such a great one. At best, this is evidence of the lack of concern and lack of awareness of the government, and of the present Minister of Justice, and his predecessors.
It is unacceptable that, despite the budgetary control exercised by Parliament, the government has succeeded in camouflaging the real costs of the program. Even some Liberal members have expressed their outrage at the government's mismanagement and called for the head of the Minister of Industry and former Minister of Justice.
Something along these lines is necessary, but it must be admitted that it was far beyond the administrative capacities of the ministers responsible. The hundreds of millions of dollars sunk into this program represent nothing more and nothing less than a huge government exercise in wasting public funds, the hard earned dollars of the taxpayers of Quebec and Canada.
As hon. members are aware, when this program was created, there was an atmosphere of austerity in Canada. Deep cuts in federal government program budgets, and in transfer payments to the provinces in particular, created some very precarious situations for the budgets of other levels of government.
In such a difficult economic situation, the taxpayers, who were bearing the brunt of these major sacrifices, were entitled to expect that the dollars saved would be properly administered. But no. Thanks to a cumbersome and incompetent government, the costs of one program were able to go through the roof without any control.
The Minister of Industry, formerly the Minister of Justice, was out of his depth and did nothing. Worse yet, the member for LaSalle—Émard, who kept a tight hand on the purse strings at the time, since he was Minister of Finance, did not sound the alarm either. And imagine that some people already see him in the Prime Minister's chair—unbelievable.
Through their incompetence, the Liberals gave the opponents of gun control plenty of heavy ammunition to use against it. This fiasco left two victims in its wake: the taxpayers' wallets and the very principle of firearms control.
More than ever before, we need to keep a close eye on this arrogant and incompetent government. That is why the people of Quebec have sent two new representatives of the Bloc Quebecois to this House.
Bill Blaikie NDP Winnipeg—Transcona, MB
Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Justice said that he wanted to be transparent and he was. He certainly has done a great deal for transparency this morning by so transparently engaging in an act of damage control with respect to the cost overruns associated with the gun registry.
I will begin by just going over the minister's statement. The minister says that the Government of Canada believes that the firearms program contributes to public safety by keeping guns and ammunition out of the wrong hands, by deterring their misuse and by controlling specific types of firearms. These are worthy goals and the NDP supports those goals of the firearms control program.
However that does not mean that we have to be lax when it comes to our job as parliamentarians in holding the government to account for how it administers particular programs. I must also say that the statement is very unclear as to what the government associates the cost overruns with.
The statement goes on to say, “throughout the first five years of the program”. Which program? Is the minister referring to the first 5 years of the 25 years that he referred to in the first paragraph of his statement from 1978 to 1983, or is he specifically referring to the first 5 years of the gun registry program which we are now in the middle of? It is not clear what he is referring to here.
The cost overruns, as I understand them, are associated with the registration aspect of the overall gun control program, and yet the minister hides that fact in his statement by never actually mentioning the registration program in his statement. The overruns are associated with the registry, not with the firearms control program that began in 1978, at least that is how I understand the situation. I regret that the minister decided to avoid the issue of the specific cost overruns associated with the registry itself.
The minister went on to say that departmental costs have always been reported through approved Treasury Board framework guidelines and that the department has reported many times to Parliament. Nevertheless, the Auditor General has said, and he agrees, that we must do better. The Auditor General did not just say that we should do better. The Auditor General said that the government did not do it at all, that it kept Parliament in the dark.
Therefore to suggest that somehow there is just a little degree of improvement that is required on the part of the government with respect to how it has reported to Parliament on the gun registry program is ridiculous and certainly not an example of due diligence in terms of reading the Auditor General's report.
If we were to read the Auditor General's report we would see that she is very hard on the government and does not just say that it needs to do better, like it was being tapped on the wrist. The government was given a great big wallop and told to fundamentally revamp how it reports the cost of this program to Parliament.
The minister should be faulted for a statement which so transparently seeks to minimize the way in which the government has mismanaged this program.
When the minister talked about seeking efficiency in terms of costs for this program, I want to warn him that we in the NDP will not stand for the privatization of the gun registry. If this is what he has in mind when he talks about cost efficiencies, then he will not have the support of the NDP.
Bill Blaikie NDP Winnipeg—Transcona, MB
Mr. Speaker, I heard a member say that it was already happening. I know it is already happening. I have been on record before as the NDP justice critic against the privatization of the gun registry, but this would certainly be a violation of what the government committed itself to when it began this registry program in terms of confidentiality. I am sure that gun owners have no desire to have the list of who owns long guns in this country contracted out to some fly by night friend of the Liberals. They will probably give it to Groupaction for all we know, if they have not done so already. This is just ridiculous.
I hope the minister will not consider privatization as a way of reducing the cost. There must be a way to do this properly through sound public management. That is what we--
Gerald Keddy Progressive Conservative South Shore, NS
Mr. Speaker, the government stood in the House this morning and repeatedly said that this issue was about gun control. Do we not wish it was so? It is absolutely a deception to say that this issue is about gun control.
The Auditor General herself said, “the issue here is not gun control”. Excuse me, the issue here is not gun control. It is not even the astronomical cost overruns, although those are serious. What is really inexcusable is that Parliament was kept in the dark. If we were take that a step further, Canadians were kept in the dark. Victims of family violence were kept in the dark. Victims of assault with a firearm were kept in the dark. Women, who are being threatened because peace bonds are not being enforced, were kept in the dark. This is absolutely about waste, inefficiency, deceit and deception deliberately imposed by the government.
The minister, if he wants to have a career in politics, has an opportunity to do something about it but he just stood in the House and told us that he would not, that he will allow it to continue.
We started out with an estimate of $117 million for the cost of a long gun registry. The net cost to run the program was supposed to be $2 million a year, for a total cost of $119 million. This is unprecedented deception on the part of the government.
Let us review the administration. There has been no ministerial responsibility and that was proven again this morning. Where is the responsibility on the shoulders of the member for Etobicoke Centre, from the member for Edmonton West, from the member for Outremont, from the member for LaSalle—Émard, from the member from Shawinigan? Does Shawinigan sound familiar? It should sound familiar.
What have we accomplished? We have had cost overruns hidden in the supplementary estimates. We have had a refusal to follow procedure in Parliament. Very little has been accomplished other than wasting a billion dollars. What would that billion dollars have done to protect women in this country?
This is not about long gun registration. Most parliamentarians support reasonable, responsible gun control. What saves lives is the safe handling and safe storage of guns. We have a gun registry in place and homicides have gone up 19%. Members should listen to the facts. The government has not done its job. It has lied to Canadians. It has lied to victims of violence. The government cannot do that. It is not acceptable.
The government has not done the job that it set out to do. It is time to scrap the long gun registry, to walk away from it and do the parts of gun control that work: training, safe handling, safe storage and making sure people are screened before they have access to a firearm.
There are millions of safe firearm owners out there and those are the people the government is targeting. It is not targeting the criminals. It is not targeting Mom Boucher who has a registered firearm. That makes me sleep better at night and makes me feel a lot better about the gun registry.
The government has not done the job that it started to do. Government members should be embarrassed to stand in this place and try to tell members of Parliament, and the Canadian public that we represent, that they somehow have been transparent in the application of their duties, because they have not been.
Paddy Torsney Liberal Burlington, ON
Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present the final report of the Special Committee on Non-Medical Use of Drugs.
On behalf of all the members of the committee let me thank them for their hard work and thank all the witnesses who gave us the benefit of their ideas, their passion and their interest.
The report is a very solid work plan for the government to move forward and make meaningful changes to our laws, to our system of education, prevention and treatment, and to invest in research.
The committee thanks everyone in this administration for their assistance in this process.
Bonnie Brown Liberal Oakville, ON
Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to present, in both official languages, the first report of the Standing Committee on Health.
Pursuant to its order of reference dated Wednesday, October 9, 2002, the health committee has considered Bill C-13, an act respecting assisted human reproduction. The committee agreed on Tuesday, December 10, 2002, to report it with amendment.
I wish to thank the members, the witnesses and the staff who assisted us through these deliberations.
Bernard Patry Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the third report of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade entitled, “Partners in North America: Advancing Canada’s Relations withthe United States and Mexico”.
This report is the result of Canada-wide consultations and meetings with leaders and opinion makers in Mexico and the United States.
Pursuant to Standing Order 109, the committee requests that the government table a comprehensive response to the report within 150 days.
John Williams Canadian Alliance St. Albert, AB
Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the sixth report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts on Chapter 6 (Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency—Economic Development), of the December 2001 report of the Auditor General of Canada.
I also have the honour to present the seventh report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts on Chapter 8 (Canada Customs and Revenue Agency—Managing the Risks of Non-Compliance for Commercial Shipments Entering Canada of the December 2001 report of the Auditor General of Canada.
In addition, I have the honour to present the eighth report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts on Chapter 8 (Other Audit Observations—Health Canada and Public Works and Government Services Canada), of the April 2002 report of the Auditor General of Canada.
Pursuant to Standing Order 109, the committee requests that the government table a comprehensive response to these three reports.
Joe Comuzzi Liberal Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON
Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the first report of the Standing Committee on Transport.
The report I am presenting before the House today has the unanimous consent of all committee members. I wish to thank all members from both sides of the House for their diligence and hard work in preparing this report, in such a short period of time, which is of so much interest to every traveller in Canada during this period.
The recommendation in the report states:
That the Standing Committee on Transport urges the Government to implement an immediate and substantial reduction of the Air Travellers Security Charge.
This report meets all the criteria of the principles of user pay that has been adopted. The committee has established beyond a reasonable doubt that there is more than enough money in the treasury that has been collected already to pay for this. The committee urges the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice to immediately adopt the substance of this report and give the travelling public in Canada a break over the holiday period.
James Moore Canadian Alliance Port Moody—Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC
Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. As the chair of the transport committee mentioned, this resolution was passed unanimously in committee. There has been some conversation and if the House would give its consent I would move that the report just tabled be concurred in.
Committees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings
The Speaker
Does the hon. member have the unanimous consent of the House to propose the motion?