Gurmant Grewal

[An Act to amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals and firearms) and the Firearms Act, May 6th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is correct. The government has given $380,000 to a lobby group which puts out anti-gun propaganda and those kinds of things, but it has cut $65,000 from the firearms safety training program.

How can the government justify cutting the money from the safety program? And that $65,000 was for only one province, Saskatchewan. We can explore and see how much money it has cut from other provinces. That does not make sense at all. The government is running amok. It does not have any clear idea of what it is doing.

[An Act to amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals and firearms) and the Firearms Act, May 6th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, it is disappointing that the hon. member will not trust or have faith in the Toronto police chief's statement. Julian Fantino said that the gun registry is not working. I am sorry to hear that the member would discredit that statement as well as those given by the Auditor General.

According to Statistics Canada's 2001 figures there were 171 firearm homicides in 2001; 64% were committed with handguns; 6% were committed with firearms that were completely prohibited; and 27% were committed with a rifle or shotgun. Will the member not believe Statistics Canada's figures?

Since 1991, handguns used in homicides steadily increased from 49% to 64%. That is the figure given by Statistics Canada, not by me. Unlike the member I do not cook the figures.

Between 1997 and 2000, 74% of the handguns recovered from the scenes of 143 homicides were not registered. All these figures come from Statistics Canada and I am sure the member will look into them. He can then read them, calculate them, and then argue in the House.

[An Act to amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals and firearms) and the Firearms Act, May 6th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the member's remarks contain a lot of rhetoric. I have given many facts and the source of the facts.

Would he not agree with the Toronto chief of police? Would he not agree with the Auditor General who said that she has never seen over-spending from $2 million to $1 billion? Is that not a fact?

How can the member deny that the government told this Parliament and Canadians that the whole system of implementing the gun registry would cost $2 million? What is the cost now? It is now 500 times more than the original projection by the government. It is up to $1 billion and still counting. Does the member not agree with those facts?

I gave a huge list of figures during my speech concerning the errors. I will not repeat them because there may be some other questions. The system is full of errors. It does not help police find guns. When police go into someone's residence, the police do not know if there are any guns that residence. The guns may not match the registration certificates. All these things were well articulated in my speech.

Backbench Liberals do not agree with their own government. They know that the government has seriously flawed this legislation. The government failed to accept legitimate amendments. There were 265 amendments to Bill C-68. The government tried to make Canadians believe that it would do it right so it introduced Bill C-15 in the last session. When the House recessed, the bill was in the Senate and was renumbered to Bill C-10. The Liberal dominated Senate split the bill without having the authority to do that.

The facts given during my speech were supported with sources. I am sure members of the House trust the police chiefs, the Auditor General and the research done by the hon. member for Yorkton--Melville who has spoken many times in the House on this issue.

I think I made a good case. I have given the facts to Canadians and I supported my facts with sources. Let anyone challenge those facts and then we will see.

[An Act to amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals and firearms) and the Firearms Act, May 6th, 2003]

Let me answer that. This means replacing it with a law that has the full support of all 10 provinces, the 3 territories, the firearms community and the aboriginal community. We must remember that six provinces and two territories proposed Bill C-68 in a constitutional challenge that went all the way to the Supreme Court. The western provinces are even refusing to prosecute firearms act offences. Is that not something? For years judges have complained that the legislation was so poorly drafted, at least major segments of the legislation, that it was unenforceable.

The bill would also amend the definition of a firearm in an attempt to ensure that millions of air guns and pellet rifles will no longer be considered firearms under the law. The wording is confusing and ambiguous, and the new definition may not achieve that objective. The justice minister refused to consider a simple amendment to remove that confusion and ambiguity.

In 1995 the justice minister ignored the 250 amendments proposed by the Reform Party at that time. It has become evident that the gun registry is nothing more than a fiasco; another billion dollar boondoggle.

The Auditor General says that the firearms program is the worst example of government overspending that anyone in her department has ever seen. This is a program that the government claimed was going to break even.

When unveiled in 1995, Canadians and the House were told that the gun registry would cost $119 million to implement, which would be offset by $117 million in fees. The difference between revenue and cost of just $2 million was said to be the cost of the program. That is what Canadians and this Parliament were made to believe.

Instead, by the end of this year the registry will have cost nearly $1 billion, 500 times more than the originally projected costs. Of course this is not the first time we have learned of Liberal overspending gone wild.

Who can forget the HRDC boondoggle when the government used job creation programs as a means to throw cash around like drunkards? More recently there was the Groupaction affair in which the government gave sponsorship funds to its Liberal friends in the name of national unity. This included $500,000 for non-existent or missing reports.

Since 1993 it has become clear that the Liberal government only admits to wrongdoing when confronted by the media reports or is caught by the Auditor General. However no one on the government side ever takes responsibility for his or her actions.

Where was the former finance minister, who is listening to the debate now, when he spent all those billions of dollars on the gun registry? I will tell everyone where he was. He was writing the cheques. So much for fiscal responsibility. How many other spending fiascos remain hidden?

The firearms registry was introduced with hollow claims that it would help the police do their jobs. Supposedly, it would provide firearms registration information to dispatched patrol officers, allowing them to know before entering a property whether or not the occupant has a firearm and how many guns are in the residence.

The registry was also purported to help curb the illegal gun trade by allowing the police to trace guns to their original owners and enforce the requirement that guns only be sold to licensed individuals. The justice minister gave $380,000 to a coalition of gun control to promote its anti-gun agenda while it cut $65,000 from the firearms safety training program. How can the justice minister justify that?

The police cannot rely on the billion dollar gun registry to do anything the Liberals promised. Police will not know where the guns are because there is no legal requirement for gun owners to store their registered firearms at their home address or tell the government where they are stored.

Police will not know where the guns are because between 500,000 and 1.3 million gun owners failed or refused to obtain a firearms licence and cannot register their guns without one.

Police will not know where the guns are because the government has lost track of at least 300,000 guns in the old handgun registration system.

Police will not know where the guns are because the government still has to register between 3.4 million and 12 million guns before the government imposed registration deadline.

Even if police do find the guns, there are so few identifying characteristics on the registration certificates that it is impossible to verify that it is the firearm registered in the system. For example, 4.5 million registration certificates have been issued without the owner's name. Can anyone imagine that? There are 3.2 million blank and unknown entries on gun registration certificates. Of the 3.2 million certificates that have already been issued, more than three-quarters of a million of them do not have serial numbers. How will the government keep track of those?

The bill would remove all of the RCMP's authority for the firearms registration system which it has been responsible for since 1934. All authority previously granted in law to the RCMP would now be transferred to a new government agency under the control of a new bureaucrat called the Canadian firearms commissioner.

We have one question. Why? If the RCMP bureaucracy cannot make the gun registry work after 59 years of experience, how will the new bureaucracy do any better? It is likely to further erode public and police confidence in the gun registry, a system so riddled with errors that it is of absolutely no value whatsoever to the police in their day to day law enforcement functions.

The bill would give the minister the power to exempt non-residents from the application of the Firearms Act, regulations and 14 sections of the Criminal Code of Canada. It exempts foreigners. Why does the justice minister trust foreigners with firearms more than he does Canadian citizens?

The bill would give any designated firearms officer any of the duties, powers and functions of the chief firearms officer. Do Canadians really want private eyes running around with all the powers of a CFO to investigate and harass law-abiding citizens?

How will we ever know if the private eye is using his powers as a firearms officer to investigate people for his other clients and for his personal gain? Even the Privacy Commissioner of Canada is investigating this issue.

Let us look at some statistics. Statistics Canada recently released homicide statistics for 2001. These numbers provide further evidence of the absolute futility of registering guns as a policy for reducing the number of murders. Of the 554 homicides in Canada in 2001, 31% were stabbed to death, another 31% were shot to death, and 22% were beaten to death.

Of the 171 firearm homicides in 2001, 64% were committed with handguns that the RCMP have been registering for the last 69 years, 6% were committed with firearms that are completely prohibited in Canada, and 27% were committed with a rifle or shotgun.

Since 1991 handgun use in homicides has steadily increased from 49.8% to 64.3% in 2001. Over the same period of time homicides committed with rifles and shotguns have steadily decreased from 38% to 26.9%. Between 1997 and 2001, 74% of handguns recovered from the scenes of 143 homicides were not registered weapons.

Toronto's recent wave of street murders, more than 40 since the beginning of 2001, is further evidence disproving the claim that the Liberal government's gun registry is making Canadians safer from crime. Nearly all of the Toronto murders have been committed with handguns and yet handguns have been the subject of registration in Canada since 1934.

Registration has done nothing to stem the use of handguns in murders. In the past 15 years the proportion of all firearm murders committed with handguns has nearly doubled in Canada, from just over one-third to nearly two-thirds.

Pistols are easily concealed, which makes them the weapon of choice for gang members and drug dealers, the two groups responsible for most of the Toronto shootings and even many of the shootings in British Columbia.

Smuggling from the United States is the source of most of the handguns used in Canadian murders, up to 90% according to the Ontario Provincial Police.

In December, when Toronto police chief, Julian Fantino, was asked about the escalation of firearm crimes in his city, he said “a law registering firearms has neither deterred these crimes nor helped us solve any of them”.

Even if a national registry could produce information useful in preventing crimes, or even just solving them, it would be at a loss to produce it on nine out of ten handguns used in Canadian murders since those guns would not have been registered in the first place.

While the licensing process for gun owners was initially turning down more potentially unfit owners than the old firearms acquisition certificate program, the Liberals' haste to boost the number of licensed owners caused them to forgo meaningful background checks on hundreds of thousands of applicants in late 2000 and early 2001. As a result, the rate of refusals for the new licensing scheme is half that of the old system.

How can the new program be making Canada safer if it is turning away only half as many risky owners as the old one? The registry is nothing more than a sinkhole for taxpayer money, to the extent that the gun registry is diverting resources and police officers from real security matters. It is more of a threat to Canadian safety than no registry at all.

It clearly is time for the government to consider shutting down the gun registry and redirecting the money and other resources to real crime-fighting measures.

Depending on who we talk to, there are anywhere from two to seven million firearms owners in the country, the vast majority of whom are law-abiding, tax paying and hardworking people. If a safer Canada is the goal, the solution is not to attack law-abiding Canadians.

We feel there is simply no reason to believe that spending exorbitant money is producing any significant results. The system has no government accountability or transparency. This is just another horrendous example of gross mismanagement and abuse of the government's dictatorial authority.

The regulations are not submitted along with the legislation as I have always said. The government is ruling, not governing, through the back door with regulations. The government failed to submit or table regulations along with the legislation.

For many years, many groups and individuals, including the government, have said they want a safer Canada, but they are not thinking outside the box. They are stuck in a rut and believe that the only way to accomplish this is through the firearms registry.

My Canadian Alliance colleagues and I believe this is the wrong approach. It is not working and it is a waste. We should put more police on the street to go after criminals rather than in offices. This law is simply a waste of money and a betrayal of the trust of Canadians.

[An Act to amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals and firearms) and the Firearms Act, May 6th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on behalf of the constituents of Surrey Central to participate in the debate on Bill C-10A. The bill seeks to amend the Firearms Act. Notably, the bill would stagger firearms licence renewals to avoid a surge of applications in five year cycles. It would simplify the requirements for licence renewals and it would create a commissioner to oversee the program.

We, the members of the official opposition, disagree with the passage of the bill.

The member for Yorkton—Melville has worked very hard and for a very long time on this issue. He has done an excellent job of researching the issue, educating Canadians and holding the government accountable.

This bill has been kicking around for over two years. First it was Bill C-15 which, at the insistence of the official opposition, was split into two parts. Bill C-15B included the firearms amendments, along with the amendments to the cruelty to animals section. It was in the Senate when the House prorogued. In this session it was re-numbered as Bill C-10 and sent to the Senate for debate. After six days of debate, in December the Senate decided to split Bill C-10 into two: Bill C-10A, an act to amend the Criminal Code, which includes the firearms section and the Firearms Act, and Bill C-10B, an act to amend the Criminal Code dealing with cruelty to animals.

Despite the fact that the Senate does not have the authority to do so, the Senate split this bill in two. Members of the House of Commons should not be required to waive their rights and privileges in order to allow the Senate to exceed its authority.

Why did the Senate divide Bill C-10? Because it could not comply with the government's demand that it ram through the entire bill before Christmas. But why exactly did the Liberal-dominated Senate take this drastic step? Because the government had an end of year deadline contained in the gun registry section. Failure to pass the gun registry portion of Bill C-10 by December 31 would result in yet higher costs for the registry, perhaps another $4 million a year. We missed the December deadline.

Bill C-10A has been appearing on and disappearing from the legislative agenda for some months now. I can only speculate that the government is leery about placing it before Parliament for debate, perhaps scared over the reception it will receive from the members of the Liberal caucus.

The 22 pages with 63 clauses of firearms amendments in Bill C-10A are a clear admission by the government that Bill C-68 was a failure. The then justice minister told us at a news conference, “The debate is over” on this issue, but if the debate really was over in 1998, why did the minister bring in 22 pages of amendments to the legislation?

After seven years, the waste of a billion dollars and still counting, and massive non-compliance, the government has finally admitted it made a mistake in 1995. There are many more things that need to be fixed in Bill C-68 other than these few tinkering amendments. The insurmountable problems with the gun registry will not be solved by these band-aid amendments.

The only cost effective solution is to scrap the gun registry altogether and replace it with something that will work.

[International Transfer of Offenders Act, May 5th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, while the intent or the spirit of the bill may be good, we find there are some contradictions, as pointed out by my colleague, or there are some vague ideas.

The hon. member mentioned reciprocity or repatriation of a Canadian citizen. I am a little concerned about that. I also am a little confused about a Canadian citizen versus a landed immigrant scenario.

Both the Liberal members who spoke on this bill talked about a Canadian citizen, but the Charter of Rights and Freedoms provides protection to Canadian citizens as well as landed immigrants.

I would like to know what happens to the spouse of a Canadian citizen who could be a landed immigrant? An example of that is the case of Professor Bhullar who is on a death sentence in India. What happens in a situation like this where the Charter of Rights and Freedoms applies to both the Canadian citizen as well as the spouse of the Canadian citizen or landed immigrant in that situation?

Could the hon. member clarify this issue for me?

[International Transfer of Offenders Act, May 5th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, let me be upfront and admit that I am still studying the bill. I have not done much indepth study of the bill but I would like to ask the member a few preliminary questions.

I know the hon. member is a lawyer and that she looks at it from the legal perspective. We know the sad story of Mr. Bill Sampson from South Surrey--White Rock who is in Saudi Arabia awaiting a death sentence.

What would be the implications of the bill in a situation where a death sentence was passed in another country? In Canada we do not have that kind of sentence. If the bill were passed what impact would it have on people like Mr. Sampson in Saudi Arabia?

I understand from the member's assertions during her debate that reciprocity of this agreement should be there. As we do not recognize some states, how will this work? She did not make that very clear. If a Canadian were in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao or in another jurisdiction what would happen in that situation if the bill were passed? She did not clarify that.

What about the magnitude of the crime? A Canadian citizen visiting or living abroad could commit a small crime or a serious violent crime. It could be, hypothetically, for operating in a terrorist organization. What would be the implication of the proposed act in such a serious situation where the other jurisdiction would not allow the citizen to leave the country and be punished in Canada?

Those are some of the questions on which I would like to learn something from the member and from a different perspective.

[Taxation, May 1st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the deadline for filing taxes has come and gone. The Liberal government's tax grab will rake in over $90 billion, almost $40 billion more than 1994, a 44% increase and results in a $20,000 tax bill for the average family.

Canadians carry the heaviest tax burden among the G-8 and must wait until June for tax freedom day.

Every Canadian feels the burden. Families have less money to spend, businesses struggle to survive and high taxes stifle economic productivity, but the Liberal motto is: Canadians were born to be taxed.

The tax and spend Liberal government blows our money on a billion dollar gun registry, advertising fiascos, GST fraud, corporate welfare and patronage. The Prime Minister just shrugs his shoulders when millions of dollars are stolen. That brings cold comfort to the taxpayer.

Here is a novel idea. Let Canadians keep more of their hard earned money. Let us raise the basic personal exemption, lower the overall tax burden and fire up the economy.

Why should Canadians pay for the government's incompetence, mismanagement, waste and fraud?

[Regulatory Reform, April 28th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, in the last quarter century Canadians have witnessed an unprecedented growth in red tape, with 100,000 new regulations. That is an average of 16 a day. It is estimated to cost businesses $103 billion, which they then pass on to consumers.

The government is paying lip service to regulatory reform with the external advisory committee on smart regulations but there is scant promise of a serious review of the many thousands of existing out-dated, ill-considered, overlapping regulations.

When will the government start cutting the red tape and allow businesses the freedom to prosper?

[Criminal Code, April 28th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on behalf of the residents of Surrey Central to participate in the debate on Bill C-32, an act to amend the Criminal Code and other acts.

I listened to the minister's speech very carefully. Some of the things the minister has proposed have been long overdue.

The bill would amend the Criminal Code to establish more serious offences for placing a trap that could harm someone; emphasize that the use of reasonable force on board an airplane to prevent the commission of an offence is permitted; comply with a court decision regarding weapons searches; and create an exception to the offence of intercepting private communications to protect computer systems. These are the various elements of the bill.

I am particularly pleased to see that the bill would create a Criminal Code offence of setting a deadly trap in a place used for a criminal purpose. This would protect first responders, like firefighters, police officers or other law enforcement officials, who respond to an incident by going there first and then falling into that trap.

The lives of these firefighters and police officers could be endangered by entering such a place in the performance of their duties. Therefore it is our responsibility to protect them.

The maximum sentence for this offence depends on the outcome of the situation. It is generally 10 years. If injury occurs, the maximum sentence is 14 years. If death occurs, the maximum sentence is life imprisonment.

Currently section 247 of the Criminal Code provides for the offence of setting a trap with a maximum sentence of just five years imprisonment.

The House will recall that in 2001 I introduced Motion No. 376 which called upon the government to amend the Criminal Code to expand the definition of first degree murder to include the death of a firefighter acting in the line of duty and to add language that addressed the death or injury of a firefighter engaged in combating a fire or an explosion that was deliberately set. We debated the motion in March of last year. I am very happy to see that the government is finally addressing this important issue through Bill C-32.

Everyone recognizes that firefighters play an important role in our Canadian society, protecting persons and property as they rescue their fellow citizens and extinguish fires. We acknowledge that firefighting is a hazardous occupation with the inherent risk of injury or death. Firefighting is four times as hazardous as any other occupation but commands the highest public trust and respect; more than any other profession.

The number of deaths and injuries sustained by firefighters continue to rise in Canada. When such casualties are the result of either deliberate action or carelessness on the part of members of the public, then a true tragedy occurs. It is saddening to know there were 13,724 arson fires in Canada last year. I was alarmed that over 30%, or one-third, of fires in my home community of Surrey were as a result of arson.

A high percentage of them contain booby traps. There have been arson fires in schools. There have been arson related fiery explosions in residential neighbourhoods. These fires are disturbing. Some are caused purely by mischief, but many more have been set with more sinister intentions of covering up illegal activities like marijuana grow ops, methamphetamine labs or other drugs or illegal trade organized crime related activities.

At other times firefighters respond to calls only to find the premises booby trapped with crossbows, propane canisters ready to explode, cutaway floorboards or other serious but intentional hazards. It has also been reported that the criminals, those monsters, will tie wires to the doors and when the doors are opened to the premises weapons will fire at the individual or some sort of explosion will take place. Even the electric power switches have been connected to such disastrous tools. These malicious devices are intended to kill or injure anyone who interferes with a drug operation, including firefighters, police officers and other law enforcement officers.

Firefighters in Surrey are especially at risk considering the growing number of marijuana growing operations that plague the city. The RCMP recently announced that there are 4,500 marijuana grow ops in the city of Surrey. That represents about 6% of the city's households. It is said that there is not one block in Surrey where one cannot find a marijuana grow op. Marijuana grow ops are probably a $6 billion industry in British Columbia.

In one neighbourhood there is a street with 12 houses, nine of them built in the last year and a half. Six of the 12 houses have been linked to illegal marijuana grow ops. These are not mom and pop operations. They are controlled by organized crime, often by gangs who are increasingly buying new homes to conceal their illicit crops.

B.C. Solicitor General Rich Coleman believes the problem stems from the way in which the Canadian judicial system treats marijuana cultivation and trafficking. While in neighbouring Washington State a first offence carries a minimum three month jail sentence, in British Columbia a person can be charged seven times and never see the inside of a jail cell. According to Mr. Coleman, in British Columbia 82% of people charged do not go to jail or even receive a serious fine. They receive a slap on the wrist and off they go. Sometimes the fines are so low and the value of the crop is so high, even from one plant sale, that they can pay the fine and the rest is profit. It is shameful.

In the 2001 B.C. yellow pages there are 508 advertisements for hydroponics equipment. For obvious reasons, I do not think it is because everyone is growing hydroponic orchids. There have even been TV ads selling hydroponic equipment. For what? Just for marijuana grow ops.

The glaring deficiencies within the Criminal Code of Canada fail to allow on duty firefighters the same provisions as on duty police officers, which places their lives at greater risk. Instances are becoming more prevalent where firefighters working in cooperation with law enforcement officers are used on the front lines to break down doors or other barriers to drug related operations and labs. In these cases the armed police officers are standing behind the firefighters who are the unarmed first line of defence out there on the front lines.

The situation is getting worse. These drug related incidents are regrettably on the rise. Realistically, the work environment of firefighters has been dramatically altered.

It is time that our law afforded protection under the Criminal Code for our firefighters who serve and protect communities in the line of duty. At least there should be some deterrent in place, not a motivation to commit a crime or such serious criminal activities. A deterrent is needed.

The Criminal Code needs to be strengthened by including criminal infractions, such as deliberately setting fires or causing some other kind of explosion or hazard that needlessly places the lives of firefighters at risk. It is imperative that legislative amendments be made as promptly as possible to afford protection to the men and women who place their lives at risk in the service of our communities.

My motion called on the government to amend subsection 231(4) of the Criminal Code dealing with first degree murder and section 433 dealing with the offence of arson to specify that a person is liable to a minimum of life imprisonment. I received many letters of support for my motion from firefighter groups both locally and nationally.

On behalf of its 17,000 Canadian members, the International Association of Fire Fighters repeatedly expressed its support for my motion and in fact, appreciation for my efforts on behalf of its members.

The Surrey Firefighters Association, on behalf of its 350 members in my riding, the professional firefighters of the city of Surrey, expressed its appreciation and support for the motion which was debated in the House. However, the Liberal members did not support it and of course it was not votable. I was not lucky to win a draw to make it votable.

The Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs has 1,000 members. Its executive committee unanimously supported that motion and applauded me for my efforts.

It is time our nation protected the protectors. I am pleased that the government is finally listening today.

Let me move on to consider some of the other amendments proposed in Bill C-32.

Bill C-32 proposes to amend the firearms search and seizure warrant provisions of the Criminal Code to bring the law into line with the recent Ontario Court of Appeal decision in R. v. Hurrell.

Section 117.04 of the Criminal Code sets out the procedure for a peace officer to apply for a warrant to search for and seize weapons, prohibited devices, ammunition, explosives or any licence, authorization or registration certificate for such items based on public safety concerns.

To obtain such a warrant the peace officer must satisfy a justice that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the person possesses these things and that it would not be desirable, in the interest of safety of course, to let the person continue to possess them.

In R. v. Hurrell, weapons searches under section 117.04(1) of the Criminal Code were ruled unconstitutional. The court found that the warrant application section did not include enough protection of individual rights since it was not clear that a peace officer had to have reasonable grounds to make an application for the warrant.

The court gave Parliament time to react to the decision. This amendment is the result of the time given to Parliament to deal with this issue.

The bill amends the Criminal Code to require that an officer must have reasonable grounds to believe that a person is in possession of a weapon and that it is not in the interest of the person to possess the weapon before a warrant may be issued.

The bill also provides for the civil enforcement of restitution orders. That is the third element of the bill. On occasion, offenders convicted of a crime are ordered to make restitution to their victims. Often this involves an order to pay a certain amount of money as compensation for the wrong committed or the injury suffered.

Currently, criminal restitution orders are only enforceable by a civil court action if the order is separate from the sentencing order. The amendment will allow civil enforcement of all restitution orders. It will thus make it easier to collect money owing under an order.

Bill C-32 also amends the Criminal Code to explicitly recognize that everyone on board any aircraft in Canadian airspace is justified in using reasonable force when he or she believes it is necessary to use force to prevent the commission of a criminal act that could endanger the safety of the aircraft or its passengers. We know that security issues are important.

Currently Canadian law recognizes this right, but it is not explicitly stated. The bill also clarifies that this justification also applies on board Canadian registered aircraft in flights outside Canadian airspace. The amendment will ensure the full effect of the Tokyo Convention On Offences and Certain Other Acts Committed on Board Aircraft.

Finally, Bill C-32 also contains amendments that may prove to be somewhat controversial due to perceived infringements on an individual's privacy.

Amendments to the Criminal Code and the Financial Administration Act would allow information technology managers in both government and the private sector to disclose the contents of private communications intercepted by intrusion detection systems, also called IDS, in certain circumstances.

The Criminal Code amendments allow for disclosure of intercepted private communications if the disclosure is necessary for the protection of a computer system and if the disclosure is made appropriately.

Intrusion detection is an essential part of information technology management intended to protect computers, networks and data and to ensure quality of service.

A number of systems or products exist to detect attacks on computer systems by hackers, viruses, worms, et cetera, and to alert human operators. We have all experienced that. Even in the House of Commons we have experienced that.

Some systems protect networks by identifying and intercepting suspicious electronic communications, including some that may be private communications. Those messages can be analyzed to determine if they contain a malicious program code, such as a computer virus that could attack a computer system and the data it contains.

Statistics confirm that cyber crime is growing and has a global reach that affects large corporate giants, government agencies, small companies and individuals at home. The amendments to the Criminal Code and the Financial Administration Act would allow information technology managers to protect their computer systems from electronic communications, such as these viruses that could harm them.

The Criminal Code amendment would create exceptions to the offences of intercepting a private communication and of disclosing its contents to ensure quality control in the communications industry.

The provisions of the bill relating to setting traps, use of force on an airplane and civil enforcement of restitution orders are all causes worthy of support.

The amendment regarding warrants for firearms searches is really nothing more than a response to the court decision. As a consequence, firearms owners should be more protected from an unreasonable search under this section.

The provisions regarding disclosure of private communications may prove to be controversial but the Criminal Code already provides for several exceptions where private communication can be intercepted and disclosed. The protection of computer systems is an important objective for government and businesses. Therefore incidental disclosure of private communications for this purpose may be tolerable.

If some of these measures had been taken a long time ago, particularly when I had my motion in the House which was debated last year, I believe some of these elements would have already been enshrined into law and many more firefighters and police officers would have been protected by now. However the government has taken too long to listen to Canadians and to incorporate these aspects into the law.

The safety and security of Canadians and their property is the stated objective of the Canadian Alliance policy. We recognize the rights of victims of crime and will introduce programs of financial restitution from the offender to the victim as a component of sentencing and parole. I believe some of the objectives of the elements of the bill I mentioned are consistent with what our policies have long called for. I wish the government had introduced these elements into law a long time ago.

I will support some of the components of the bill. I am sure the government will review some of the other elements, such as privacy, the inspection of firearms and other elements of the bill.