Debates of May 6th, 2003

Order in Council Appointments

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to table, in both official languages, a number of order in council appointments made recently by the government.

Mr. Speaker, while I am on my feet, I move:

That the House do now proceed to orders of the day.

[The Speaker]

Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Speaker]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Speaker]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Speaker]

In my opinion the yeas have it.

And more than five members having risen:

[The Speaker]

Call in the members.

And the bells having rung:

[John Reynolds, Canadian Alliance, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The motion to proceed to orders of the day is out of order because the motion is attempting to bypass routine proceedings without just cause and the opposition, knowing that it is against the rules to do so, did not expect the government to do this and did not have time to raise the point of order before the motion was moved.

There was a ruling on this very matter on April 13, 1987--

[The Speaker]

I sympathize perhaps with what the hon. member is trying to do but the point of order should have been raised before the question was put to the House if there were some procedural objection.

[An hon. member]

How can you raise a point of order on a--

[The Speaker]

The hon. member is asking how you can do it. When the motion was moved by the minister, someone should have risen on a point of order to make the objection before the Chair put the question to the House and called for the vote.

We are now called in for a vote on a motion that has been put. Had it been procedurally irregular, the challenge should have been made, in my view, prior to the question being put to the House, which is the normal practice on motions as hon. members know.

Accordingly, the question is on the motion.

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

[The Speaker]

I declare the motion carried.

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

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

moved:

That in relation to Bill C-10, an act to amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals and firearms) and the Firearms Act, not more than one further sitting day shall be allotted to the stage of consideration of Senate amendments to the bill and, fifteen minutes before the expiry of the time provided for government business on the allotted day of the consideration of the said stage of the said bill, any proceedings before the House shall be interrupted, if required for the purpose of this order, and in turn turn every question necessary for the disposal of the said stage of the bill shall be put forthwith and successively without further debate or amendment.

[The Speaker]

Pursuant to Standing Order 67.1 there will now be a 30 minute question period.

[Stephen Harper, Canadian Alliance, Leader of the Opposition]

Mr. Speaker, we have yet another Liberal closure motion but it does give me an opportunity to question the government a little bit indepth about the firearms registry, boondoggle.

The House will recall that we were sold this bill of goods that it would cost $2 million. This party warned that it would cost much more. The member for Yorkton—Melville did heroic work for years providing evidence that this would cost hundreds of millions of dollars. The government denied this systematically and covered it up, but it has now been revealed that we are up to about $1 billion in expenditures on this with absolutely no end in sight.

We have been putting a series of questions to the government for months. I would appreciate if, after all these months with this new bill, it could finally answer these questions today. How much will it cost to complete this firearm registry, when will it be completed, and how much will it cost to maintain?

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Solicitor General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to outline the costs for the hon. member because he has been talking about what his colleague from Yorkton—Melville has been doing in terms of outlining the costs. The motion today is about getting Bill C-10A through the House, which will in fact reduce the costs.

Let me the outline the worst year of costs for the Canadian firearms centre. The opposition alleges that all the costs are with the registry. I will outline those figures in detail for the year 2000-01: public administration was $10,670,000; communication and public affairs was $34,820,000; firearms registration, the area the opposition is always talking about, was $40,362,000; program delivery was $114,216,000; and the national weapons enforcement support team, which does all the good work in terms of finding illegal weapons and which is part of the purpose for the program in the first place, was $296,000. That totals $200,364,000. Those are the real facts and that was the worst year of costs.

We want to ensure that we pass Bill C-10A to create some efficiencies in the system and save money for Canadians.

[Stephen Harper, Canadian Alliance, Calgary Southwest, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the only way we will save costs on this program is to scrap this registry and put the money into public safety.

The minister should be ashamed of himself for coming here with a whole bunch of costs and not being able to answer my questions on what this will cost and when it will be finished, but this is typical of the government. I am hardly surprised because this reflects its entire criminal justice agenda. It has nothing to do with public safety. Instead, it is just wasting money and being soft on crime.

We have Bill C-23 which frankly should be renamed the sex offender protection act because the only people in the country it protects are sex offenders. We have Bill C-20 that has loopholes for child pornography. I could go on and on. Under its watch the government has allowed convicts the right to vote.

Can the government explain why it is so soft on criminals and is never prepared to take real action on crime?

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, the leader of the official opposition is implying that this system does not make streets safer. Let me provide a couple of examples.

A public safety warrant was executed after an individual threatened several employees of local businesses and a school principal. As the individual lived directly across from the school, there was concern that he would follow through with his threats. The search warrant allowed police to find a number of shotguns and rifles unsafely stored in a closet in the individual's home. All the firearms were seized and the individual was subsequently prohibited from owning firearms and the guns that were found in his home were disposed of. That is making safer streets and the members in the official opposition do not want to admit that.

Let me explain what this bill would really do. If the opposition were to let us pass Bill C-10A we could save money. I will name a few of the possible effects that it would have. It would simplify the requirements for licence renewals, which members opposite should want; it would stagger firearm licence renewals to avoid a surge of applications in five year cycles; it would increase the use of the Internet for applications and the issuance of documents, which is making great efficiencies; it would establish a pre-application process for temporary importation of non-resident visitors; and it would streamline the transfer process of firearms from one owner to another. That is helping to create efficiencies within the system.

[Garry Breitkreuz, Canadian Alliance, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Mr. Speaker, it is pretty obvious the minister is not answering our questions.

I have a question for him. RCMP testing has confirmed that many air guns, pellet guns, and even some BB guns exceed both the muzzle energy and muzzle velocity requirements in Bill C-10A and would have to be registered as soon as Bill C-10A is proclaimed. This would drive up the costs, contrary to what the minister has just said. There may be as many as one million air gun owners, and two or three million pellet guns and BB guns in Canada.

Would the minister tell us how much it will cost to register all of these guns?

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Justice went before the estimates committee and outlined some of those costs. Maybe the member should have listened more closely at that point in time. However, the best way to look at what the costs to the system would be is to look at the history. I outlined to his leader a moment ago what the costs were in 2000-01. As we can see from those figures, the costs that the member opposite talks about most of the time are greatly exaggerated.

The fact of the matter is, regarding his question on Bill C-10A, this proposal would make it possible for us to create better efficiencies in the system and that is what members opposite should be wanting us to do.

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

Mr. Speaker, the bill before the House today is a bill that was divided by the Senate. I have known the minister for a long while and I thought he had some progressive views about parliamentary reform. By accepting this bill that was divided by the Senate, the House is accepting the fact that the Senate, even though it is not elected, not democratic, and not accountable, has the power to divide a legislative bill. I do not think that is proper.

Would the minister reconsider his position because by accepting this bill in the House he is accepting a decision that the Senate made to divide the bill.

This bill was introduced last October. It went to the Senate in November and the Senate divided the bill into the firearms part and the cruelty to animals part. Today we have the firearms part back in the House. By accepting that, we are accepting the fact that the Senate has the right in a democratic society to divide legislation. I think that is dead wrong. It is not elected, not accountable, and not democratic, and it is thwarting the will of the people of Canada. I want the minister to respond to that because I used to think he was a pretty democratic guy.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Absolutely, Mr. Speaker, I am a very democratic individual, as are all my colleagues on this side of the House. We believe in democracy and debate. In fact, the point of the issue on this, as we talk about democracy, is that debate is democracy. There was a total of 15 days of debate on this bill in the House. That is over 36 hours. There were five days of debate in the other place. That is a lot of debate on the issue.

In terms of splitting the bill, previous Speakers have ruled that it is fine, it does not impede democracy. From my previous experience, going before both House of Commons and Senate committees as a farm leader, the Senate often raises good questions in debate but in a much more non-partisan sense. In fact, it does not get into the politics of the thing and exaggerates issues, as has the official opposition. Sometimes we can even have better debate in the Senate than we can here. That may seem strange but that is true, and it cuts both ways. There has been a lot of debate on this issue.