Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Oxford.
I wanted to thank the Conservative Party for bringing forward this resolution, but let me say at the outset that this is about one thing and one thing only. It is about gun control and the issues that arise out of gun control.
It is curious that the finance minister tabled a budget for $180 billion, but that is not the subject of the party's discussion. We potentially are facing a pretty significant decision with respect to going to Iraq and that is also not part of the resolution. It is a curious set of priorities on the part of the fifth party.
The Auditor General has done us quite a service by being quite candid about the costs that are associated with the registry. However she has been quite candid as well in saying that the benefits of the registry are not in. She certainly is able to articulate the costs, as are other members, because the numbers are there. It is a somewhat more difficult task to talk about the benefits but I would like to take my time to see whether I can articulate some of the social safety benefits that derive from this system of registration.
In my view the program enhances public safety by controlling access to firearms and ammunition. The underlying philosophy is one frankly that enjoys wide support in the House, namely that the idea is to prevent people who are a danger to themselves and to others from getting access to firearms. I would state at the outset that this is not about “jailing law-abiding citizens”.
With extensive and continuous background checks on applicants and licence holders, about 9,000 firearms licences already have been refused or revoked by public safety officials. That is over 70 times greater than the revocations from potentially dangerous individuals before December 1, 1998, compared to the previous five years under the old regime. That is a pretty significant benefit, I would submit.
Licences have been refused and revoked based upon a history of violent behaviour, domestic violence, mental illness and criminal activities. The program has received something in the order of 26,000 calls on its notification lines from people expressing public safety concerns. Again, I would submit that is a fairly significant benefit.
There are now more than 1.9 million licensed individuals in the firearms database which is a compliance rate of something in the order of 90%. As for the registration, it provides a link between a firearm and the rightful owner. Registration works to enhance accountability for one's firearms, for example, encouraging safe storage, reduced gun thefts, accidents, et cetera, which again is a benefit to public safety.
The vice president of the Canadian Police Association says that illegal guns start out as legal guns. During the 1980s, on average every year Canada lost about 1,400 citizens to gun related deaths. In the late 1990s that declined to about 1,000 per year on a larger population base. That is a happy benefit. I would be hesitant, if I were on the other side, to dismiss that as just a mere coincidence.
Information about firearms and other owners also facilitates an enforcement of prohibition and allows police officers to take preventive action, such as removing firearms from situations where they know there is a chance of domestic violence.
When we do a cost benefit analysis, how do we do it in a meaningful way? When Quebec spent $125 million this summer on a meningitis scare, over 85 cases of meningitis, what was the cost benefit on that? When New Brunswick proposes twinning the highway and spending $400 million on approximately 43 deaths between 1996 and the year 2000, how do we do a cost benefit analysis on that? It is said that the average homicide costs something in the order of $500,000 per investigation. How do we do a cost benefit analysis on that? This is a very difficult area. It does not quite line up in a nice clear silo, where we can say that this is the money spent and these are the benefits derived from it.
There are about six million firearms currently registered and accounted for. The majority of these are rifles and shotguns, which were difficult for authorities to trace under the old program. Police agencies across Canada now have access to information on firearms and their owners throughout the Canadian firearms registry online system, CFRO. This information helps police evaluate potential threats to public safety and remove firearms from a location as a preventative measure, which is again, I submit, a benefit.
Already law enforcement agencies are making use of this very valuable tool in responding to incidents such as domestic violence situations. The police access this system 2,000 times per day. Clearly if it were a useless system the police would not make use of it. I submit that access 2,000 times a day by police agencies across the country is again a benefit.
While it may take some time to see the full effects of this investment in public policy, and I am perfectly candid in admitting that, there are already some encouraging trends in crime statistics. Overall, Canada's homicide rate is at its lowest since 1967, and homicide committed with rifles and shotguns is steadily decreasing. The rate of robberies committed with a firearm has also declined by 62% since 1991 after consistently dropping over the past decade. I submit again: a benefit. I cannot make the direct correlation between the imposition of this kind of legislation and these results, but these are the results.
The number of lost or missing firearms has declined by 68% from 1998 to 2001, and the number of stolen firearms has also decreased by 35%, which is again, I would submit, a benefit.
The rate of suicide deaths involving firearms has steadily been decreasing. In 1999 the percentage of suicides involving a firearm was down by 19% from a high of 43.7% in 1970, again, I would submit, a benefit.
Let us compare that to our colleagues in the United States: rate of accidental deaths from firearms, 2.6 times higher in the United States; rate of suicides with firearms, 2.7 times higher; rate of total firearm deaths, something in the order of 3.2 times higher in the United States; rate of murders with firearms, 6.5 times higher; rate of murders with handguns, 8 times higher than it is in Canada; and the rates of murders without guns are almost equal, at 1.6 times higher in the United States. There is an interesting correlation there: that in all instances numbers of deaths from firearms are much higher in the United States than in Canada. Yet when we eliminate a gun from the equation, the figure for murder without guns is almost even. That is a curious sort of figure when we try to argue this point.
Provisions in the Criminal Code and Firearms Act establish increased controls over firearms imports and exports and impose penalties for smuggling and trafficking. The national weapons police enforcement support team, NWEST, was also created as part of the firearms program. It is a unit of highly trained and experienced individuals who work in a support role with local law enforcement to assist with anti-trafficking and anti-smuggling efforts. The team also helps the police community in dealing with issues of violence and firearms. Again I would submit, a benefit, and again I would say how do we correlate that cost with that benefit. Over the past year the support team has provided over 2,000 police files dealing with weapons, playing a key role in improving public safety in Canada and proving highly successful in helping police fight firearms related crime.
I submit that all of the foregoing is a benefit and that the legislation in fact enjoys wide support among the Canadian public and particularly among law enforcement agencies such as the chiefs of police and the police association.