Debates of May 6th, 2003

An Act to amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals and firearms) and the Firearms Act

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

I did say earlier to hon. members that it is very difficult for the Chair to hear over the shouting. I would appreciate very much that the hon. member addresses any comments through the Chair and that hon. members wait until there is a questions and comments period to let their comments be known to all Canadians, not just to the Chair and members in the House of Commons.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Madam Speaker, the underlying philosophy behind the Firearms Act is to prevent people who are a danger to themselves or others from getting access to firearms.

As for registration, it provides an essential link between a firearm and its rightful owner. Registration works to enhance accountability for one's firearms, for example by encouraging safe storage which helps reduce gun theft and accidents. We have seen that. The ability to trace firearms back to their owner also facilitates police investigations and helps crack down on illegal smuggling.

Information about firearms and their owners also facilitates the enforcement of prohibition orders. It allows police to take preventive action, such as removing firearms from situations of domestic violence, an absolutely critical function of this program.

The government recognizes the important role that firearms play particularly in rural Canada for hunting, predator control, wilderness protection, target shooting and other very legitimate purposes.

We recognize that the service that has been provided to firearms owners needs improvement. The bill we are debating today in fact contains measures that will contribute significantly to the firearms centre's efforts to provide better service. It is important that it have the opportunity to make these changes to improve its services.

While the firearms program is still in its infancy, we can already see clearly the benefits to enforcement agencies and the Canadian public. Over 1.9 million firearms owners are licensed. More than six million firearms are registered. Police agencies are accessing the online registry 2,000 times a day. The number of lost or missing firearms has declined very significantly. Fewer firearms are being used in crimes. Our firearms safety training is recognized internationally as a strong model for other countries to follow.

This program has an impact every day on the safety of Canadians. Let us not forget that the majority of Canadians strongly support gun control and continue to see it as a valuable investment in public safety.

What are Canadians on the front line saying about the program? Both the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police and the Canadian Police Association support the firearms program and its essential crime fighting tools. Recently for example, David Griffin of the Canadian Police Association stated:

We know that there has been a lot of attention on the issue of costs, but it is important to realize that with any public safety program, there is a cost to ensuring public safety.

He went on:

The licensing of all firearms owners and the registration of all firearms are important public safety features of this program that have required a significant investment to establish, however there are significant long term benefits to these measures.

Ottawa police chief Vince Bevan reiterated his support stressing that six inquests over the past decade, three of them in Ottawa, recommended licensing firearms owners and registering firearms. He said “If this legislation saves even one life, it will have proven its worth”.

Mike Niebudek, vice president of the Canadian Police Association, also made it clear:

Illegal guns start off as legal guns. Registration helps to prevent the transition from legal to illegal ownership and helps to identify where the transition to legal ownership occurs.

In fact, Canada is one of many western nations that are taking the steps toward firearms control. The licensing and registration components are fully in line with other countries, including Great Britain and Australia.

Victims of crime have noted that while prevention is not cheap, it is a sound investment. In the words of Steve Sullivan at the Canadian Resource Centre For Victims of Crime:

Politicians and media are screaming about the $1 billion spent on the registry in the last nine years, yet not one of them seems as concerned about the estimated $6 billion per year that we spend on gun deaths and injuries in Canada.

The Firearms Act is about enhancing public safety. It is about preventing firearm related deaths and accidents. Too many young people are injured and killed in preventable firearms incidents. That is why the public health sector has been steadfast in its support for the firearms program.

As Kathy Belton, a co-director of the Alberta Centre for Injury Control and Research, has said:

Guns kill more youth in the (15 to 24) age group than cancer, drowning and falls combined. The gun control program is still in its infancy, yet data suggests it has already caused a decline in gun deaths and crimes.

Time and again we have quotes from people, whether they are with the Canadian Police Association, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, people involved with victims of firearms' incidents and the public health sector, so many groups are saying that this is important legislation.

The government is working with members of the House and Canadians to make the gun control program more efficient and less costly. It is important work, necessary to enhance public safety. The legislation we are considering today would go a long way to help achieve this goal.

We have heard a bit today about the various costs of the program. We have heard a lot over the past number of months about that. However what we do not hear so much from the other side is the fact that the vast majority of the costs of the program are for the licensing program, which of course gun groups support. However our friends across the way do not want to recognize the fact that most of the costs of this program would be there anyway for the licensing which the gun groups support. They become all upset about the cost of this but ignore this vital fact.

I cannot understand why they want to ignore that. I cannot understand either why they want to ignore the fact that a clear majority of Canadians support registration. They support this program and its elements, including registration.

I realize that there are certain members who do not support it themselves obviously. I am sure there are ridings in which the majority of the people do not support this. However the polls again and again across the country clearly show that the majority of Canadians support it.

It is not surprising to me that we see the Alliance so captivated, so trapped in its own region and its own ideology, we might say, because of the fact that it espouses concerns and points of view that remain with a small proportion of Canadians.

It is interesting to me that the Alliance members have failed to recognize that as long as they take that approach, as long as they keep on the same wave length and maintain an approach that limits them to one part of the population, to one segment of the views of Canadians, there is no way they will move forward until they recognize that Canadians have a range of views on this. Until the Alliance really wants to listen to other points of view and respect other points of view, I do not see how they can expect to come to this side of the House. I do not know if they really do. I cannot imagine how they can expect that.

We all know that the Supreme Court of Canada upheld the Firearms Act in 2000. In fact, the court concluded that both licensing and registration were tightly linked to Parliament's goal of enhancing public safety by reducing the misuse of firearms and keeping firearms out of the hands of those who should not have them.

I recognize the fact that there have been problems with this program and it definitely needs improvement. As I look at different government programs within different government departments, it is not uncommon that I get frustrated. When I look at how departments operate sometimes I wonder how they can do some of the things we hear about. In the reports of the Auditor General, for example, we hear about things that outrage all of us and are very frustrating. We hear things throughout government in this case. Does that mean we cancel the program? Does that mean we should not have support for health care, for example, or other kinds of programs that the government provides? No, it does not mean that.

It means we have to do a better job of administering those programs. It means we have to find ways to make government work better overall. One of the things the bill would do is respond to that need to make government work better and government programs work better.

I see the need in so many other areas as do, I am sure, my colleagues throughout the House see the need to find improvements throughout government, throughout departments.

We know that 90% of the estimated 2.3 firearms' owners in the country have applied for a firearms licence. Three-quarters of licensed owners have registered their firearms. I do not own firearms but I have had some experience with them. I have enjoyed shooting at targets and so forth. When I was young I was once offered the chance to go hunting with a fellow from my native town of Windsor, Nova Scotia. The gentleman actually said that I should come rabbit hunting with him. At the time I was about 12 years old and the idea really appealed to me. Unfortunately, it never came to be. I would have enjoyed it very much.

My father-in-law is an avid hunter and, in fact, grew up hunting. He had the unfortunate situation that his father left the family when he was very young. He ended up having to support the rest of the family by having to work, and the way he did that was largely by hunting and feeding the family with whatever he could hunt.

I have great respect for the fact that hunting is an important part of our country. I come from a part of the country in Atlantic Canada in which most people live in rural areas. My riding is primarily suburban but it also contains rural parts. I am aware of the concerns about this program and I am aware of the need to improve it. There is no question that it needs to be improved but I am also aware of the benefits of the program, as I stated throughout my comments.

I am aware of the fact that there definitely is a need to improve many other government programs. I cannot see it as being a surprise or a shock to any of us to find that government programs need to be improved in order to work better. When there is talk of a new program being brought forward by government, I ask myself whether government will be able to administer it well. I guess we ourselves sometimes have to measure and examine whether a program is worthwhile.

However, when the chiefs of police and the Police Association of Canada are saying to us that they support this program--

[An hon. member]

No, police officers do not support it.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

My friend across the way is saying that they do not support it. We know very well that the Canadian Police Association, again and again, has indicated its support. As recently as this year it supported the bill. It supports the program and it wants us to maintain it.

In my comments earlier I quoted from several occasions when police officers and representatives of the chiefs of police and the Canadian Police Association have spoken strongly in favour of the bill. I do not know who my colleagues are listening to but it certainly is not the police association or the police across the country.

We know the program recognizes the important role that firearms play, especially in rural Canada, for hunting, predator control, wilderness protection, target shooting and other legitimate purposes.

One of the things I hear from people who hunt is not just that they like to go out and shoot things but that they enjoy being out in the woods. They enjoy not only the pursuit in looking for deer, rabbit or whatever it is they are hunting, but they enjoy being out, the exercise, the fresh air, sometimes the camaraderie of being out perhaps with their friend, with a son perhaps, or with someone else who they want to spend time with, and it is valuable to have that time in the woods and to have that time together.

There has been a lot of talk from the opposition members to the bill, a lot of suggestions that what the government is trying to do is to create a situation in which guns can be confiscated. I find it offensive that members across the way and others who are opposed to this bill, rather than stick to the real issues in the bill and what it deals with, try to create these bogeyman about the fact that the government supposedly will come and take all their guns, which is absolute nonsense, and they know that. They know that is absolute nonsense and yet they continue to spout this kind of stuff and try to foment upset across the country.

[An hon. member]

It has already happened.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

Okay. Once, twice and three strikes you are out, because that is what will happen now. I will have to name the members who are being very abusive of the Chair. May I say that or not?

We have only three minutes left before I put the question. Could we please allow the hon. member to finish?

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Madam Speaker, for a party that came here promising to improve decorum in the House, it is remarkable that it does not want to show me respect. I did not heckle or yell at those members when they were debating. I sat here and listened to their comments. Why do they not want to show any respect for anyone else's point of view?

I think we all have to listen. All of us can learn from listening to other points of view. I think the government and all members have to do that more often. We need to listen carefully to other points of view and consider them. I certainly do and I think my colleagues across the way ought to do that, but they are not interested in hearing other points of view.

They know that there has been a lot of debate on this issue. In fact, I wonder how many other issues over the past 10 years on which we have had as much discussion, as much consideration and as much debate in the House of Commons as we have had on this issue of firearms. When they say that there has been no discussion, no consideration or that they have not had enough of a chance to have their say, we are hearing the same arguments over and over.

What are they bringing to the discussion that is new? What new information are they offering to Canadians? What new policy are they offering Canadians? I suggest they are offering nothing, which is why Canadians reject them over and over and will keep doing so.

I think that in due course, and who knows when, Canadians will decide to change the government, which happens every once in a while, but I am convinced that unless there is a dramatic transformation in the Alliance Party, it will not be the party that forms the government whenever this government is replaced. It will be somebody else. Sooner or later we will be gone but there is no doubt in my mind that it will not be that party replacing us. Members of the Alliance Party have failed to comprehend the views and values of the broad range of Canadians. They have failed to open their minds to those points of views and concerns.

[An hon. member]

Have you ever been out west?

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

A gentleman asked if I had ever been out west. Yes, I have been out west. In fact, my mother was from Saskatchewan. My grandfather, who was a member of Parliament, was from Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan. I have respect for the views of the west. However we have to reach beyond our regions, beyond Atlantic Canada and beyond the west, and consider the views across the country.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

It being 5.58 p.m., pursuant to order made earlier today, it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the amendments tabled by the Senate to Bill C-10 now before the House.

The question is on the amendment to the amendment. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the amendment to the amendment?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

All those in favour of the amendment to the amendment will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

In my opinion the nays have it.

And more than five members having risen:

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

Call in the members.

(The House divided on the amendment to the amendment, which was negatived on the following division:)

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

I declare the amendment to the amendment lost.

The next question is on the amendment.

[Marlene Catterall, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Madam Speaker, I believe you would find consent in the House to apply the vote just taken to the amendment now before the House and apply the same vote in reverse to the motion to concur in the Senate amendment.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

Is it agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

(The House divided on the amendment, which was negatived on the following division:)

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

I declare the amendment lost.

The next question is on the motion.

(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

I declare the motion carried.

[Roger Gallaway, Liberal, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. With respect to the main motion, which I understood to be the third motion, I wish to be recorded as being present and voting against it.