Mr. Speaker, I rise today, as others have, to speak to Bill C-15B. The bill deals with two main items: animal rights and the issue of animal cruelty. It also deals with firearms. I would like to speak first to the section dealing with animals and animal cruelty.
My first question is, what does the bill change? If we were to take a look at the old Part XI which deals with wilful and forbidden acts to certain property, where it talks about cruelty to animals, it states:
Every one commits an offence who wilfully causes or, being the owner, wilfully permits to be caused unnecessary pain, suffering or injury to an animal or a bird.
It is straightforward and easy to understand. It is clear and concise. The government could have fixed this legislation by increasing the penalties for abuse to animals. It would have taken very little to fix this legislation. Rather than do that it has chosen to introduce a whole new section to the criminal code called cruelty to animals. This has a number of defects to it.
We have tried to improve this legislation with amendments as recent as today. My colleague from Selkirk--Interlake made a good amendment the other night. It was to protect primary producers, farmers and ranchers by amending clause 8 to read: “who wilfully or recklessly”. He added the words: “and in contravention of generally accepted industry standards”. He threw that in to protect farmers and ranchers. The government turned the amendment down. My question is, why?
As my colleague previously pointed out we see the government in the hands of so many special interest groups that it does not seem to be able to govern for the benefit of the general Canadian public. There is a total disconnect with rural Canada. It is obvious in so much of its legislation, which I will address in a few minutes.
The legislation is flawed right from the beginning. The first part states:
In this Part, ‘‘animal’’ means a vertebrate, other than a human being, and anyother animal that has the capacity to feel pain.”
I have asked this question before. It seems such a strange matter that I ask why we would define anything by its capacity to feel pain. In the old legislation it said that we commit an offence if we have injured or caused suffering to an animal or a bird. That is pretty straightforward. The definition has now been broadened to the point that we are not even sure what it means. It seems to me that the government should be aware of what an animal is. We do not need this definition. It does not contribute to clarity of the legislation.
The parliamentary secretary spoke yesterday and what I heard was not of comfort to me. I am not sure if he understands the implication of the legislation. He should. He is supposed to have been working on it. However, there are a number of things he said that concerned me.
First, he said that the clarity and certainty of the legislation is achieved. I would suggest that is hardly true. I have talked a bit about the definition being vague and hard to understand. Second, the old bill was far cleaner and clearer. There was no complicated understanding of it. It could have been left. It would have been clearer.
I find it interesting that once again the government has used that old liberal method of legislating which is that we use the extreme to justify the average. We have seen that in so much of its legislation over the years. I noticed the parliamentary secretary used a couple of examples of why the legislation was justified. One of them was that he wanted to defend against people tying animals to railway tracks. Then he used the famous urban myth of people putting poodles in the microwave oven and that we needed to stop people from doing that.
I have an objection that I have had for years. We take extreme examples and then make legislation that will deal with them and apply it to our entire culture. We have seen this so many times.
The parliamentary secretary also said that the government has stated repeatedly that what is lawful today would stay lawful. We have heard the former justice minister saying that as well. I find it interesting that once the legislation is passed it is not the government's decision whether what is lawful today would stay lawful. Judges would indeed decide this.
I have a quote from one of the animal rights activists and I will not even give her the publicity of using her name. She said:
My worry is that people think this is the means to the end, but this is just the beginning. It doesn’t matter what the legislation says if no one uses it, if no one takes it to court, if nobody tests it. The onus is on humane societies and other groups on the front lines to push this legislation to the limit, to test the parameters of this law and have the courage and the conviction to lay charges.
The intent to use this legislation as a tool to restrict the use of animals in things like research and agriculture seems clear. I find it frustrating as a former producer involved in agriculture that farmers have more reason to be responsible toward their animals than anyone else does. In 40 years of living in a small community, I can think of only one occasion on which it was necessary for officials to deal with animal abuse. It involved an elderly person who was not taking care of her cattle herd and the RM took care of the problem. It took the cattle away and fed them as they should have been.
This bill has a number of main legislative weaknesses which I would like to speak about for a few minutes. First, the definition of animal, as I have mentioned, is far too broad.
The second legislative weakness, as my colleague from Provencher mentioned, is it fails to maintain traditional defences, particularly the one of “legal justification, excuse and colour of right”, that currently exists under subsection 429(2). These must be retained to protect producers and people who are involved with normal animal husbandry as part of their lives.
Third, the bill fails to maintain animals as property. It moves them to the criminal code, which clearly does not need to happen. Canadian agriculture has always been based on the idea of ownership of animals. The government is changing the legal status of animals and it is directly affecting the farmer's position. The legal right to use animals for food production comes from the proprietary rights of farmers and producers to those animals.
This change will lead to a risk of prosecution for farmers. We already have a history of frivolous prosecutions as I think the member for Provencher just mentioned. Drs. Rapley and Wolf of the University of Western Ontario found out about this problem several years ago.
Again one of the animal fanatic groups writes in its literature “This elevation of animals in our moral and legal view is precedent setting and will have far reaching effects”. I find it interesting, as the member for Selkirk--Interlake said, that this lobby group is actively raising money for the government and for the Liberal Party in election campaigns. It makes one wonder for whom this legislation is written. It is certainly not for the Canadian public.
I would like to move on to the second half of the bill which deals with firearms legislation. We are all fairly familiar with Bill C-68 which has been an ongoing joke in parts of the country. It was passed with great fanfare and greater opposition several years ago. It was interesting that a bill that was to have cost $80 million has blossomed into something over $700 million officially. It has apparently has cost around $1 billion so far. It takes $100 million each year to keep this bureaucracy going.
I would to remind some of my colleagues that indeed that could pay for another two new Challenger jets for the cabinet if this was set aside. We have pleaded with the Liberals on the grounds that it could put more police officers on the frontlines. They do not seem interested in hearing that but they may certainly be interested in hearing that it could have two additional Challenger jets.
The government continues to tout its polling. We heard yesterday that the majority of people apparently support Bill C-68 but that in fact is not true. If people are told that something was free and then asked if they want it, they will usually say yes. On the issue of gun control, if we asked people if they knew that this was going to cost $1 billion, that it would continue to climb and would they support it, we would get a completely different answer, which is that most Canadians do not support it and have no interest in supporting it.
The bill and the amendments to it have been a complete failure. I find it interesting that the government now admits that it has 320,000 plus gun owners who have not yet registered. We do not know what the real number is. The government has always lowered those figures, so it is probably far more than that.
Even more interesting than that, since January of this year the government has lost 38,000 gun owners. It decided it was going to run this free registration of guns for people and sent notices to the people who had already registered. As it turned out, the 38,000 certificates that went out to gun owners were returned by the post office. Somehow those people are lost. That is just one example of how the legislation has been a complete failure.
As well, six provinces and two territories continue to oppose Bill C-68. I find it interesting that non-residents can be exempted from the Firearms Act but not Canadian citizens under the amendments. I guess the question is: what is equal protection and equal benefit under the law?
Fourth, aboriginal groups have just said that they will continue to ignore Bill C-68. The government obviously has no intention of holding them accountable.
I have a few statistics I found interesting because Statistics Canada keeps a very close watch on Canadians. I will read a couple of those dealing with the gun registration.
Of the 542 homicides in Canada in 2000, stabbing, beating and strangulation accounted for 58% of them and firearms for less than one third of them. It is fairly obvious that violent individuals are the problem more than are the guns.
Of the 183 firearms homicides in 2000: 58% were committed with handguns which is interesting because handguns have been registered since 1934 so obviously the registration is working very well; 8% were committed with firearms that are completely prohibited; and 31% were committed with a rifle or shotgun.
The 67 years of registering handguns demonstrates that registration is a complete flop. Despite 67 years of mandatory handgun registration, the use of handguns in firearms homicides has been increasing since 1974. Conversely, firearms homicides with rifles and shotguns that were not registered dropped steadily over the same 27 year period. It makes a sane person wonder why the government would commit 1,800 staff and waste more than $700 million trying to register these rifles and shotguns.
Of the 110 handgun homicides committed between 1997 and 2000, 69% of the guns were not even registered. This is despite the fact that the law has been in effect since 1934. Does the failure of gun registration as an effective government policy get any more obvious than this?
However there may be another suggestion. In 2000, 67% of persons accused of homicide had a criminal record and 69% of them had previously been convicted of violent crimes. At the same time, 52% of homicide victims also had criminal records. Obviously the government is hitting the wrong target by requiring innocent farmers, hunters and recreational shooters to register their firearms. Criminals are the real target, not duck hunters. The government made the wrong choice six years ago and it is making the wrong one again.
I will quote Ontario Solicitor General Bob Runciman who told the Senate standing committee in 1995 that in national terms $85 million, which was the initial estimate, would put 1,000 customs agents on the border, $500 million would put an extra 5,900 police officers on the street. The federal alternative is to use the money to register every shotgun and bolt action .22 in Canada. It takes no great brilliance to figure out which would have a greater impact on crime.
There are a dozen other problems with the legislation. I guess for years judges have complained that the firearms legislation is so poorly drafted that they cannot even understand it or make it enforceable.
I want to read one of the amendments in the bill and see if anyone here can figure out what it is talking about. Plain English might be a little better.
Subclause 10(3) says the following:
Section 2 of the Act is amended by adding the following after subsection (2):
(2.1) Sections 5, 9, 54 to 58, 67, 68 and 70 to 72 apply in respect of a carrier as if each reference in those sections to a chief firearms officer were a reference to the Registrar and for the purposes of applying section 6 in respect of a carrier, paragraph 113(3)(b) of the Criminal Code applies as if the reference in that section to a chief firearms officer were a reference to the Registrar.