Debates of Oct. 27th, 2011

Ending the Long-gun Registry Act

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the member opposite the same kind of question I posed earlier. Since he freely admitted his guns are not registered, should his residence be broken into and it happens that a police officer discovers the break-in and chases after the criminals but has no idea that there are guns on the premise and is subsequently killed, what will he say to the family of that police officer?

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned in my speech, police officers enter every premise under the suspicion that there is a firearm present. They have to. Otherwise they would be taking unnecessary risks. They do not go in all guns ablazing, but at the same time they go in there in a defensive mode.

I have met with policing agencies. I had them come to my office when we were debating Bill C-391. I have talked to officers in my riding and they tell me time and time again that at the front line level they have to approach every situation as if that individual has a firearm whether it shows up in the computer database or not.

At the same time, we will make the investments to ensure, and we have already done this since we formed government in 2006, we make things better to help our police officers. We are working on the tackling violent crimes act. We are working on tackling auto theft and trafficking of property obtained by crime, ensuring we are getting that off the streets. We are creating a new offence of drive-by and reckless shootings. We are also standing united, without hesitation, on why the long gun registry should be scrapped for law-abiding citizens. We are going to put in place laws that help police officers get criminals off our streets and we are not going to make criminals of law-abiding citizens.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to continue a line of questioning that I have put to other members. Municipal jurisdictions always want to co-operate, as much as possible, and build relationships with Ottawa. However, in this case the province of Quebec has told the federal government that it sees value in retaining a gun registry for the province of Quebec.

By Ottawa saying no, that it cannot have access to that data bank, would the member then agree that Quebec is now going to have to re-establish its own data bank, thereby spending a lot more money than it would have had to as opposed to just getting a copy of the data bank from Ottawa? The biggest loser is likely to be the taxpayer.

Would the member agree with that assessment?

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Winnipeg North for stating the obvious. Every province has under the Constitution the right to register property. That is why cars are registered provincially. That is why land titles are held provincially. If the province of Quebec wants to register firearms, it can do that. That is within its constitutional jurisdiction.

However, the registry that was started and created by the Liberals, their legacy which we are going to destroy and which I am quite proud of, is a federal registry. This is an opportunity for us to respect the private rights of individuals and to destroy that information so it never gets out in the public again.

[Peter MacKay, Conservative, Minister of National Defence]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Selkirk—Interlake for all of the work he has done and the members of our party who have for many years tried to work with the police community and with victims to bring about what we believe is a more fair and just system.

I know that he, like many members of the party and many members involved in this debate, have spoken to front-line police officers and police chiefs. There is a bit of a misnomer that somehow the police have been crying for the continuation of this registry and that simply is not the case. I have spoken to people like Sergeant Duane Rutledge and Chief Chisholm in my home community of New Glasgow and they tell me that they approach every call, particularly where there may be violence, as if there will be a weapon involved. There is this idea that the registry is necessary, that it will provide fair warning, but police officers already approach every call as if there may be impending danger.

Could the member comment on that scenario?

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the Minister of National Defence for that great insight. As I said in my speech, police officers have to approach every situation, and they are trained to approach every situation, as if there is weapon present.

The one thing I did not get to in my speech is that the front-line police officers are wasting all sorts of time and valuable resources in administration on things like the gun registration, when we should be giving them the time to go out and investigate actual crimes.

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to rise today on behalf of my constituents of Fundy Royal to speak to what I think is a very important debate.

Because it took a long time to get to this point, I would like to thank a couple of people, one of whom is the member for Yorkton—Melville. The member led a long, detailed, very thorough fight for the rights of everyday hard-working, law-abiding citizens, the type of citizens who live in my riding of Fundy Royal. He is to be commended. As members of Parliament, we are dealing with the aftermath of this Liberal boondoggle that was created in the 1990s by individuals who, by all accounts, had an agenda. I recall the then minister of justice, Allan Rock, saying that he came to Ottawa with the firm belief that only police and the military should have firearms. That is truly an out-of-touch point of view. It gives us a perspective on the driving motivation behind the registry. Not only is it truly scary for our country, but it truly targets the wrong individuals.

I want to personally thank the member for Yorkton—Melville for standing up for my constituents as well as all Canadians during those days, finding out all the problems and attacking the cause of the many issues that were foisted upon law-abiding citizens. This is a culmination of that work.

I have a few questions that I think responsible parliamentarians have to answer when discussing any changes to the law. On the firearms registry, I have a few of questions. Who does it target? Does it work? Are taxpayers getting good value? I think those are some fundamental questions, and I will look at a few of those in my remarks.

Who does it target? As has been said by the previous speaker, as members of Parliament, whether we are in urban, suburban or rural areas, we know that the gun registry targets the law-abiding gun owner. It is the person who will send in the forms by email or hard copy or who will wait in lines.

When the registry was brought in, I remember seeing many of the law-abiding good people in my region lining up for hours at the McAllister Place Mall to go through the process of registering their firearms. Meanwhile, the Hells Angels, organized crime, gangs from the west coast to the east coast merely went about their business. I suppose some of them might have had a chuckle at the thought of all the law-abiding citizens in our country, many of them senior citizens, lining up to register their firearms, while they perhaps were about to go and buy a smuggled handgun out of the trunk of a car.

The registry was targeting the law-abiding citizen, not the bad guy. That is why, even then in the 1990s, right-thinking people knew that the registry would never work. It was predicted by the member for Yorkton—Melville, for example, that the registry would not work because, for that fundamental issue, it targeted the wrong people. How can we solve a crime problem if we do not target criminals? It has been the benefit of time, the passage of a decade and a half, that we have seen individuals who said all along that it would not work proven completely, 100%, right.

Although I have run on a platform of fighting against the registry in my political career, I would be the first to say that if I and my constituents thought this registry worked, if we thought it prevented crime, if we thought that it saved lives, we would have a different position. However we know, intuitively and with the benefit of the passage of time and the wonderful statistics that we have available to us, that the registry simply does not work because it targets the wrong people.

Does it work? The answer is a resounding no. We have seen this in some of the tragedies that have happened since the registry has been in place. The registry did nothing to prevent some of the crimes that took place.

I will move on to the final question. Even in light of the fact that it does nothing to prevent crime and it does not work, is it a good value? Are we at least paying very little for it? Is it not enough money to really be too upset about?

We know the Liberals have always been good with budgeting. That is one thing we will give them. We know at the time that the minister said the registry would cost net to the taxpayers about $2 million. Some people might have thought, since it was the Liberals saying this, let us go by a factor of ten and it might cost $20 million, or even a factor 100 and it might cost $200 million considering it was a Liberal estimate. In fact, we know, through the work of professors, from the work of the member of Yorkton—Melville in accumulating statistics and from the work of the auditor general, that the estimate for the cost of the registry rose to $2 billion. That is $2 billion for a registry that targets my constituents, law-abiding people and does not work.

How can we allow something like that to continue? The short answer is we cannot. That is why I am very pleased that we have a government now that is committed to doing the right thing in ending this abomination to the taxpayer.

In a previous Parliament we had a private member's bill, Bill C-391, that would get rid of the gun registry. Members on this side of the House supported that private member's bill. Interestingly enough, we heard a lot of members opposite, who used to go into their riding, maybe to their fish game clubs or sports shooting federation, say that they were against the registry, that they would fight against it and vote against it. Some members said all of those things, except when it actually counted. When it came time to vote on the bill, the members opposite, in just enough numbers, voted to defeat it.

It was there and then that I and my colleagues came to the realization that the only way to defeat the registry was to form a majority government. That is why I am very glad that on May 2, our government was elected with a clear mandate. It was a mandate to act to protect everyday law-abiding citizens. It was a mandate for safer streets and communities and to end the wasteful long gun registry.

Unlike my friend, I did register my firearms. One of them was very common in New Brunswick and coast to coast. It was an old .303 Lee Enfield rifle. It is one that our military has used for decades. In fact, in the north people continue to use them, but those rifles will be replaced now.

Since those rifles did not have a serial number that would be appropriate for the registry, I received in the mail an orange sticker that had a number on it with instructions from the Registrar of Firearms to affix the sticker to the old Lee Enfield rifle. I never did put it on the rifle, but I kept that sticker as a reminder of all the absurdities that came from the registry and the fact that it targeted the wrong people. I keep that as a reminder to stay dedicated, as we all have, and to keep moving forward in the right direction.

For our part, our government will continue in our battle against crime to target the cause of crime. In our view, that is the criminals. Canadians are with us on that. We will continue to fight for safer streets, safer communities and we will do that by targeting criminals. We are going to end the targeting of law-abiding citizens by ending the gun registry.

[Élaine Michaud, NDP, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleasantly surprised to have been given the floor.

We have heard a great deal of propaganda and political rhetoric on this matter from the other side of the House. But I believe that the worst thing I have heard so far is the idea of destroying all the information collected with the money of taxpayers from across the country in order to prevent the next government, when the Conservatives are inevitably defeated in four years, from handing the registry to the provinces, as several of them would like.

I do not understand how this argument can be used to justify this decision when provinces such as Quebec are calling for access to this information, which they helped pay for, in order to ensure the safety of the people, which is one of their provincial responsibilities.

I would like to know how an ideological decision, such as preventing future governments from reinstating the registry, could be a logical part of its discourse with the provinces.

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

Mr. Speaker, our Minister of Public Safety put it well. To understand why we would do that, one would need to understand about keeping one's word, keeping one's commitment and keeping one's solemn pledge to one's constituents. Many members across the way have flip-flopped on this issue, but the commitment that I and my party made in the last election was that we would end the registry. The registry is a collection of a bunch of useless information on law-abiding citizens' property that does nothing to prevent crime.

How can we say that we will end the registry and then introduce a bill that ends the registry, but then turn all that information over so someone else can continue on with it? That, in my view, would be a terrific act of bad faith. We have committed to ending the registry, and that is exactly what we will do.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot help but notice that a number of Conservative members speak with a great deal of passion on this issue, and I appreciate that. I suspect that some of them might have even built their entire political career on the gun registry issue. I must admit that I felt like I almost had to ask one of the pages to bring a box of Kleenex over to the member.

I suspect a huge vacuum will need to be filled. I am wondering what the next mission will be. Will the next mission be the NRA directive to amend the Constitution so that every man has the right to bear arms? One of my favourites would be to fight for universal health care across the country.

After Bill C-19 is disposed of, what will the member's next mission be going forward?

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

What a sad question, Mr. Speaker. I am glad for the members on this side of the House who came to Ottawa with a mission and a mandate. They came to Ottawa with the view that they wanted to change things, that they wanted to change some of the mess that the member's party left behind, including the $2 billion boondoggle.

We have no shortage of things that we want to continue to do for everyday, law-abiding Canadians, the people who we represent. I am saddened that the member does not have enthusiasm for any issue. We are enthused on this side. We are enthused about strengthening the Criminal Code so that we can protect our citizens and our communities. We are enthused about strengthening the economy, as we have done. Canada has a leading economy among the G8. We are enthused about ending this registry, which we are about to do. There is no shortage of things to be enthused about.

I hope that the enthusiasm we have on this side is contagious over there and the hon. member can grab on to an issue that he feels strongly about.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise in the House today because I believe that it is my fundamental duty to participate in this debate on behalf of my constituents who, like me, are concerned, shocked and upset by the very unfortunate legislative step that the Conservative government has taken by introducing its bill to dismantle the firearms registry as quickly as possible, and even going so far as to impose a gag order on this debate.

It is my duty to point out that I am also very disappointed that the government imposed a gag order this morning before the debate had even begun. This debate focuses on an issue that is at the heart of a broader debate on the type of society in which Canadians want to live. I am convinced that this bill, this ill-conceived plan to eliminate the firearms registry, will undermine Canada's public safety in the long term.

My constituents in Lac-Saint-Louis and the Montreal area feel very strongly about the issue of gun control. In the past 25 years, Montreal has experienced three massacres, all at post-secondary institutions. For those who are not familiar with the island of Montreal's urban geography, I will point out that these three tragedies occurred in a fairly small area of downtown Montreal: the École Polytechnique of the Université de Montréal, Concordia University and Dawson College are all located within several blocks of each other.

Furthermore, I believe that there are only about 10 streets between Dawson College—where I myself taught some 15 years ago—and Concordia University. The École Polytechnique is clearly a little further north on the other side of the mountain, but all of these institutions are located within a fairly small area.

This, at least for me and my party, is not about the integrity of gun owners. The vast majority of long gun owners who I know are sterling citizens. They are community volunteers. Many would give the shirt off their back. They believe in community and in a safe community. They believe in safe streets. Some are first responders and I am proud to know them. That gun owners are respectable, responsible citizens is reflected empirically in the fact that 90% of gun owners have registered their firearms. In other words, despite their sometimes annoyance and, in many cases, strong opposition to the requirement to register their firearms, they register them all the same. That speaks volumes for their character. They are lawful citizens who do their duty. Some gun owners even voted for me, despite our differences on this contentious issue, which speaks volumes about the open mindedness of voters in my riding of Lac-Saint-Louis.

Why does the gun registry work? It is because of gun owners themselves. It is because of their deep sense of responsibility. I believe that gun owners' inherent sense of responsibility is reinforced by the requirement to register their firearms. This sense of responsibility further translates into a heightened sense of the need for proper and safe storage of firearms. There is a logical connection, therefore, in my view, between the registration of any object and the proper care of that object. If vehicles were not registered, people would feel free to abandon their old jalopies in a field somewhere at the end of the car's useful life knowing that no one would come knocking on their door later on to say, “Hey, you left your car on the street there, taking up space. Please cart it away or you'll be fined”. I think the fact of registering makes people feel much more responsible for whatever the particular item is.

It is most unfortunate that, over the years, the government, or the Conservative caucus when in opposition, tried to reinforce the notion and create a feeling among gun owners that they should feel like criminals because they were being asked to register their firearms. The government was wrong in its ongoing attempts to convince gun owners that a society that has a requirement to register firearms is a society that sees them as criminals. Even though gun owners are lawful and responsible citizens, the government should, nonetheless, talk straight to them. The government should make clear the legal and constitutional truth about firearms and that there is no unfettered constitutional right in Canada to bear arms. As a matter of fact, in the case of R. v. Wiles, the court stated, “Possession and use of firearms is a heavily regulated privilege”. The operative phrase is, of course, “heavily regulated”.

We have heard from the other side of the House examples of and references to gun owners who are farmers and hunters, gun owners who live in rural areas. The image that is projected is of people who are responsible and use guns as a tool in their daily work, such as farmers and so on. Obviously, that image is correct in many cases, but the government seems to be focusing on that romantic image of gun owners to justify its legislation. As I say, this is reflective of many gun owners in Canada.

I would submit that the type of gun owner we have in Canada is changing. It is no longer necessarily farmers who are working to keep animals that should not be on their land or off their land.

Jeff Davis in the Edmonton Journal of October 25 wrote:

The consumer tastes of Canadian gun owners are fast changing, as shooters eschew vintage hunting rifles in favour of the latest "tacti-cool" military-style weapons - many of which appear in movies and popular video games, such as Call of Duty. As a new generation of young men become interested in shooting, but not hunting, retailers are trying to meet the growing demand for sleek firearms. Canadian authorities, meanwhile, facing the repeal of the long-gun registry by the federal government, are worried about the trend.

These non-restricted, because they are long guns essentially even though they are replicas of military-style weapons, military-style long guns are referred to as civilianized versions of military assault weapons. In some cases it is possible to modify what are essentially stylized long guns into a gun that is more dangerous and would meet the criteria for being classified as a restricted weapon.

It is entirely possible, and it has happened quite recently, that a long gun is allowed into Canada and it is allowed to be sold as a non-restricted weapon, only for the RCMP on second thought to say, “It is a little too dangerous. It can be modified. We will now classify it as a restricted weapon. We had better get hold of those copies that were previously sold as non-restricted weapons”.

To give an example, the Norinco Type 97 rifle was initially classified by the RCMP as a non-restricted weapon, and about 50 were sold in Canada. The RCMP firearms directorate later re-classified the Type 97 as a prohibited weapon. Letters were sent to 50 owners who already had them, asking them to turn the new guns in to their local police stations.

As a matter of basic logic, if these guns are not registered when they are first sold as non-restricted firearms, how would the RCMP send letters to the owners asking them to turn their guns in? In this case, we can see that the registry would be useful.

Rifles and shotguns were responsible for half the police officers killed in the line of duty over the past few years. We have been talking a lot about common sense and intuition. The previous speaker said that for him it was a matter of intuition. I can understand that. There are some common sense arguments in debates like this because we are not dealing with hard science, we are dealing with social science, research in social science studies, so indeed we have to at times resort to a kind of moral intuition.

Let us start with a recent study by Étienne Blais and Marie-Pier Gagné of the University of Montreal, who studied the data and looked at the enactment of Bill C-51 in 1977, requiring gun owners to obtain a firearm acquisition certificate. They looked at Bill C-68 in 1995, which set up the gun registry and so on. They found, in doing their analysis, that these pieces of legislation were responsible for a 5% to 10% decrease in homicides committed with a firearm, depending on the province.

Studies have also shown that those who live in a home with one firearm have a higher risk of being victims of homicide. The risk quite obviously goes up if safe storage requirements are not respected in the household.

The Conservatives would say, echoing the rhetoric of the National Rifle Association in the United States, that it is not guns that kill people; it is people who kill people, and that removing firearms would simply cause a one for one shift toward another means or another weapon of homicide. However, this argument has been rejected by solid research, namely by Philip Cook in his 1981 study entitled “The Effect of Gun Availability on Violent Crime Patterns”. He said:

A decision to kill is easier and safer to implement with a gun than with other commonly available weapons- there is less danger of effective victim resistance during the attack--

I think we can understand the logic behind that:

--and the killing can be accomplished more quickly and impersonally, with less sustained effort than is usually required with a knife or blunt object.

Let us remember another thing. Homicides committed with a firearm are not, as the Conservatives would have us believe, premeditated acts. They are often impulsive acts committed under the influence of alcohol. This makes the safe storage of firearms and measures like the registry, which are intended to encourage safe storage, all the more relevant, in my view. However, there is an issue that has not really been discussed in this debate to date, as far as I can tell, and that is the issue of firearms and suicide.

We just had a debate on suicide a couple of weeks ago, in which members weighed in with very earnest and well-motivated speeches. However, in this debate on the gun registry, we have not heard much about suicide, at least from the other side. Suicide accounts for nearly three-quarters of all firearm-related deaths in Canada. Last year a Quebec National Institute of Public Health study found that male suicide rates declined notably following the introduction of firearms legislation.

As a matter of common sense, removing the means of suicide will naturally affect the suicide rate and the means of suicide can vary according to country. For example, in China and India death by pesticide intake is more common. Subsequently, the development of strict controls on access to and storage of pesticides and industrial poisons has resulted in a reduction of suicide rates in those countries.

The government also likes to talk about how it stands up for victims, yet l'Association canadienne pour la prévention du suicide, l'Association des familles de personnes assassinées ou disparues, l'Association québécoise Plaidoyer-Victimes, and the Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime are all calling for the gun registry to remain in place.

This brings me to another point and it relates to a point I mentioned earlier. We can get into a battle of duelling studies, we understand that. We are in the realm of social science. Sometimes the same set of data yields very different conclusions. Just a couple of weeks ago an emergency medicine academic, Caillin Langmann, published a study. He looked at the major pieces of gun control legislation: the 1977 bill that required criminal record checks, the 1991 bill that imposed mandatory safety training and a 28-day waiting period for purchase, and the 1995 long gun registry legislation. What he came up with as a conclusion was that he failed to definitively demonstrate an association between firearms legislation and homicide between 1974 and 2008. I would mention that the study does not cover suicide.

Members on the other side will be saying, “We told you so”, there is a study that says that none of these pieces of legislation work. One of the pieces of legislation that did not work, according to this study, was the legislation requiring a firearms acquisition certificate or, in other words, licensing in order to be a firearms owner. By this logic, the government should not stop at getting rid of the registry. It should be getting rid of the licensing provisions in Canadian law as well, but we know it is not doing that. I believe that, with all due respect to my colleagues on the other side, they are cherry-picking the evidence in some ways.

There are some people in Canada at the moment, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and others, who would like to see gun licensing eliminated and would probably use a study like Mr. Langmann's to justify the cost-saving push to eliminate licensing, which, of course, must make farmers, hunters and law-abiding gun owners feel like criminals, according to the government's logic.

What strikes me the most about some of the arguments I have heard on the other side of the House is the statement that has been made often over the last few months that the gun registry has not saved one single life. That is quite a sweeping statement. Now we are in the realm of government omniscience and absolutism. I could never make a statement like that about pretty much any kind of phenomenon that cannot be measured scientifically.

How do we know it has not saved a life? For example, in the Dawson tragedy the police were able to use the registry to remove firearms from a potential copycat who might have committed the same crime after witnessing what Kimveer Gill did.

Would the government admit that it is at least possible that there is even a 1% chance that the gun registry may have saved at least one life? I believe the members opposite speak in good faith on this issue, and any member in good faith would have to admit that there is a possibility. Then the question becomes, how much is one life worth? Of course, the government does not want to go there because that opens up a whole other can of worms, which is why, I guess, the government makes categorical statements like, “The registry has never saved even one life”.

[Garry Breitkreuz, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Mr. Speaker, we heard a lot of things and I wish I could comment on every one. Maybe it has to come through a private conversation.

I wonder if the member is aware that in a four year period there were hundreds of breaches of the gun registry. By that, I mean the RCMP, by their own investigations, found that information was accessed and fell into the wrong hands almost 300 times. In fact, there were only about 80 instances where they were actually able to trace where that information went and charge the people. Therefore, when he asks the question, “Has it saved a life?”, he also has to ask the question, “Has it cost a life?”

I want to point this out. People have registered their firearms and then have had their houses broken into. They have no way of explaining how that information came into the hands of the criminals who broke into their houses. Those criminals did not do the ordinary thing of taking everything, but searched until they found very valuable firearms, so there is a clear violation of property rights here, as well as the question from the other side.

I have also heard the argument from the other side, and I hope I have time to ask this one. The point was made to not destroy the information. The Auditor General revealed the fact that about 90% of the registration information was flawed. The question I have is, what would it cost to fix the registry? Seven million guns are registered--

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Order, please. The hon. member for Lac-Saint-Louis.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have known the hon. member by reputation since before I was elected. I worked here as an assistant when the hon. member first arrived in 1993, I believe it was. I know that this has been an issue that he has been studying for a very long time. I respect his knowledge and experience with this issue.

There are two things I would say. The member seems to be implying that somehow there have been breaches of security at the Canadian firearms centre and that the database has been broken into. That is what I think he is referring to. If that is true, we have a bigger problem here with the security of government records in general.

In terms of imperfect information, no doubt there is imperfect information, but there is a dictum that I sort of live by in politics. I think it is one that is often associated with politicians of conservative persuasion: perfection is the enemy of the good. If one is always seeking perfection, the perfect database, the perfect proof that the registry works, we are not going to achieve the common good. I take the member's point, and it is something I will obviously reflect on, but those are my answers to his points.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, we are reminded by Dr. Leslie Tutty, who is with the University of Calgary faculty of social work, that long guns are the firearms most often used to kill women and children in domestic violence situations. She reminds us that the Alberta Court of Appeal has noted that gun control is a women's issue, that women represent a small percentage of gun owners, but that they account for a high percentage of victims of gun violence. She also points out that firearms resulting in the death of women from the use of long guns has substantially been reduced since the introduction of gun control and that while the registry may be inconvenient to the gun owners it is necessary to protect women's safety.

I wonder if the member could speak about why we balance off protection of women versus inconvenience of a gun owner.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am familiar with the point the hon. member is making. I recently read in the National Post that in the past 15 years homicides by rifle have dropped 50% and firearm homicides against women have dropped 30%.

Obviously, fewer homicides mean fewer men and women are killed. I am not familiar with all of the background on the issue as it relates to the rates of homicide for women.

The point at the core of the hon. member's question is whether annoyance should get in the way of doing what we have to do for whoever that benefits in society. In the case of firearms, it is women in many cases. I do not like going to the motor vehicle bureau to get the registration for my car and I know that the people who are stealing cars do not have a registration. It is the same logic that some of my colleagues across the way have used.

[Ray Boughen, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I listened intently to my colleague's speech. He mentioned a couple of issues I found rather startling.

The member said he was shocked by the legislation to ban registration of long guns and that the whole thing is ill-conceived. I ask the member why was he shocked and why is it ill-conceived?

There were hundreds of hours of debate. Committees were struck and there were presentations by different people across Canada. It is not something that was done secretly. It has been out there for over a year.

I have one other comment. The Calgary Sun states:

So don't believe, even for a second, that police use the registry 17,000 times a day looking for guns.

That's fiction.

We know from our own research and from talking with police chiefs across Canada that police officers attend at domestic disputes figuring there are guns there and they follow their own procedures.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, what I said, and I stand to be corrected, was that many of my constituents are shocked and greatly disappointed that the government has gone ahead with this.

Of course that is no surprise to me. I have been following the issue for many years. All members in the House knew that at the first opportunity the government would use its majority to get rid of the registry.

Therefore, it is not a shock to me. However, many citizens in my province who were used to having the registry as a tool for protecting public safety and who thought it was a permanent thing are greatly disappointed.

In terms of the idea that officers approach every situation with the idea in the back of their mind that there could be a firearm, this is a psychological cognitive issue. When I drive my car I know someone could cut me off at any time and I drive defensively. However, when I see in my rear-view mirror someone who is driving at 150 miles an hour zigzagging in and out of traffic it has a psychological impact on me whether I like it or not.

That raises an important issue as to what the cognitive impacts are of having greater certainty based on the information in the registry.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, could the member comment in terms of what the ongoing annual cost of the registry is now as well as how much it actually cost to put in place?

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, based on what I have read, my sense is that it costs about $4 million year.

However, one has to look at things comparatively. I am not trying to be partisan but we know the government is liberal when it comes to advertising its budgetary initiatives. We have all heard the ads on the radio stating how wonderful the recently passed budget is.

If we have a choice to make it would be less investment in government advertising and self-promotion and more investment in public security.

[Jay Aspin, Conservative, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette.

It is a privilege to contribute to the debate and speak in support of Bill C-19, the ending the long gun registry bill. It is a registry that has been wasteful and ineffective and should have been scrapped years ago. It has not prevented crime and has created criminals out of law-abiding farmers, hunters and sport shooters instead of tackling the real criminals.

I will speak to why it is crucial that we finally scrap the wasteful, ineffective long gun registry and will outline some of the important steps our government has taken to help Canadians be safer and deter criminals.

The government has delivered tougher sentences to deter serious and violent crimes, especially gun crimes, and keep dangerous people off our streets. It has provided our provincial and territorial partners with funding to put hundreds more front-line police officers on our streets. It has brought in new measures to fight organized crime, white-collar crime and human smuggling, and has made new investments in prevention to attack the root causes of crime to stop it before it happens.

We are doing what works. We are doing what makes sense, which most certainly includes firearms control. Canadians expect effective measures to prevent and deal with gun crimes. That is what we are committed to delivering. However, that does not mean wasting millions of hard-working taxpayers' dollars to maintain a system that does not work.

Hon. members who followed the committee hearings for Bill C-391 last year know that we heard highly credible testimony from a number of respected experienced police officers who told us that the information provided by the long gun registry was not reliable. Some of these officers have estimated there may be as many as one million long guns that have never been registered. Thousands more have not been registered properly because model or catalogue numbers were used instead of serial numbers, while others have been registered multiple times. The long gun registry is not removing the guesswork; it is adding to it. It does not help anyone. It does not contribute to public safety.

The long gun registry has been in place for over a decade and we have yet to hear of a single instance where it has even been given partial credit for preventing a crime. If that were happening Canadians would support it. All indications are that they do not, and that includes Canadians who live in rural areas. Canadians are spending millions of dollars to maintain the registry with virtually no evidence to indicate it has any effect whatsoever on reducing gun crimes. That is not a good record, nor is it a good investment. It is not making our streets safer.

Our government believes in effective gun control. It believes in measures that work to prevent crime and are worth the money we invest in them, such as the requirement to have a licence before people can buy an unrestricted firearm, i.e., a rifle or a shotgun. Before they can get a licence they have to pass the Canadian firearms safety course. Before they can get a licence to buy and own a rifle or shotgun they also need to pass a background check which involves a criminal record check to ensure the individual is not under a court order prohibiting him or her from possessing a firearm as well as determining whether allowing the individual to have a firearm would pose a threat to public safety.

The Government of Canada is now investing $7 million a year to make the screening process for people applying for a firearms licence even stronger with the very reasonable goal of preventing crime by working to keep firearms out of the hands of people who should not have them.

I want to emphasize to the House and to Canadians that Bill C-19 does not change these requirements. No one will be able to buy a firearm of any kind without passing the Canadian firearms safety course and a background check, as well as possessing a proper licence.

The bill will eliminate a law that places an unnecessary burden on law-abiding Canadians and on Canadian taxpayers. In doing so, it will free up resources for investment in anti-crime initiatives that will help make our streets safer.

We have to be honest with ourselves and face reality. The long gun registry is only effective and efficient at harassing law-abiding farmers and outdoors enthusiasts. It does not prevent crime because we know that criminals do not register guns. Illegal handguns are the primary problem. The problem is not the legally acquired shotguns and rifles found in the hands of our farmers, hunters and target shooters. The firearms involved in the majority of gun crimes are not purchased by farmers for the protection of their livestock, are not owned by your neighbour down the road who goes moose hunting every fall with his brother or the aspiring athlete hoping to shine for Canada in the next Olympic biathlon, yet these are the people the long gun registry affects.

We all want to reduce crime, especially gun crime. Therefore, I ask hon. members to support Bill C-19. Let us invest in programs that are effective and eliminate those that are mere window dressing that divert our attention and our resources away from the real problem. It is time to scrap the wasteful and ineffective long gun registry.

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Quebec National Assembly voted unanimously for conservation of the registry.

What does the member say to Quebec police officers who use this tool on a daily basis?

[Jay Aspin, Conservative, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I say to Quebec police officers what I have said to officers throughout Canada, that this registry does nothing to prevent crime.

As I said in my remarks, it is a wasteful resource. As a government, we are investing in resources that will help police officers not only in Quebec but across the country fight crime. The elimination of this particular registry will save millions, in fact billions, of dollars. We can use that resource in a meaningful way to fight crime and get the real criminals.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to respectfully ask my colleague the following: does he not believe that the amnesties the government has regularly granted to long gun owners could have encouraged several people to disobey the law and caused some confusion?