Jim Silye

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act, 1995, March 28th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, Reform Party members will also oppose this bill, except for those members who wish to vote otherwise.

[National Defence, March 27th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, here is a quotation from Anne-Marie Doyle: "It was no secret that Robert Fowler and I have been close colleagues and friends for 27 or 28 years".

It is no problem, except that it should disqualify her for the job. Will the minister do her a favour and not have a situation where a friend has to judge a friend?

[National Defence, March 27th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the defence minister's staff regularly failed to inform him of important facts until it was too late. The case of Anne-Marie Doyle is another example.

With his answers today regarding the public inquiry into the Somalia fiasco, is the minister confirming that Anne-Marie Doyle will remain as one of the three commissioners?

[Mp Pension Plan, March 27th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, in honour of Oscar night I present the top 10 Liberal excuses for keeping the fat cat pension for life plan.

(10) Hey, come on, we work weekends.

(9) The Deputy Prime Minister is going to need it when she resigns for not keeping her campaign promise to scrap the GST.

(8) If it were not for this plan Liberal members would not be of such high quality, like the member for Halifax, Nova Scotia.

(7) It is the only long term financial commitment the government can make.

(6) How else will they afford health care in their golden years?

(5) You do not expect them to rely on the Canada pension plan, do you?

(4) After they retire they will have to pay for their own trips.

(3) There is not room for all of them in the Senate, is there?

(2) If you think about it, their pensions are small when you compare them with the national debt of $550 billion.

(1) The Prime Minister will need the money for a place to stay when the leader of the Reform Party moves into 24 Sussex Drive.

[Rail Strike, March 24th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, you are fully aware of the infamous Liberals copy Reform awards. Today we have the first instalment of the Bloc copy Reform awards.

We congratulate the member for Longueuil who had the courage and conviction to break party ranks and vote with the Reform Party and the government to end the multibillion dollar railway strike that hurts all Canadians from sea to sea, including Quebecers. As for the rest of the official opposition, they are living back in the times of the steam locomotive and conjure up

the image of nothing more than cows standing on the tracks blocking the train.

We compliment the member's courage and wisdom. The political consequences of his actions will likely be re-election, unlike what his leader and his colleagues say. Putting the interest of all of Canada before self-serving political goals is what is needed this week.

It is unfortunate that the Liberals did not copy Reform ideas and suggestions two weeks ago on this issue when they had a chance to prevent this strike from happening in the first place. The Reformers saw the train coming down the track, why did the government not?

[Translation]

[Canada Student Financial Assistance Act, March 21st, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, Reformers vote against the amendment.

[Supply, March 21st, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, most Reform Party members will vote against this motion, except those members who would like to vote otherwise.

[The Budget, March 14th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I found the speech of the hon. member for Sherbrooke extremely interesting, especially considering the member ran for the leadership of a party which took the hole the prior Liberal government dug $170 billion deep and proceeded to dig it even deeper to the tune of $420 billion.

I find it interesting how he would, in his first opportunity, attack a Liberal budget. In opposition people tend to attack government budgets. We did the same thing. There are some things about this budget that are worth while commenting on, such as the $9 billion in cuts the government has proposed which the opposition has been urging for over two years. It is soft, it is too slow, but that is another story.

I have three specific questions for the hon. member for Sherbrooke. When he was part of the Conservative government why did it or could it not reduce the deficit? What does he think currently is the biggest problem in this country, the debt, the interest costs to service the debt or the deficit? Does he agree or disagree with the Reform Party solution of a zero deficit in three years, working toward a balanced budget and protecting the taxpayers from increases by government with a taxpayers' protection act?

[Firearms Act, March 13th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the issue of gun control has become one of the more emotionally charged debates to be addressed in this House.

As the member for Calgary Centre, I cannot believe how quickly such an important subject has digressed into the realm of us against them, between interest groups, spin doctors, media pundits, urban and rural ridings, men and women. We have lost sight of who we are trying to protect.

Not one person in the House enjoys picking up a newspaper and reading about a man, woman or child being shot by another person. No one enjoys walking the streets at night with a feeling of fear in their stomach. Emotionally we are all on the same wave length and so it is time to start thinking and acting rationally, not just emotionally and politically, as the justice minister said today in question period.

The purpose of the motion we are debating today is to split Bill C-68 in two. One bill would cover the Criminal Code amendments dealing with the use of firearms during the commission of a crime while the second bill would deal with the issue of a national firearms registration system. The rationale is

simple. The Minister of Justice has lumped these two separate issues together under the banner of crime control.

I do not believe criminals will register their guns and I believe the current firearms acquisition certificate system is adequate in the control of legitimate firearms owners. Therefore we should separate this bill. Even some members of the Liberal caucus support our motion.

At a town hall meeting on March 5 the hon. member for Lanark-Carleton stated he would like to see Bill C-68 split wherein the anti-crime and anti-smuggling components of the legislation would be dealt with separately from the issue of gun registration. They are two separate issues. I fully expect the Liberal member will vote in favour of our amendment.

I am prepared to support measures that genuinely reduce crime, but the burden of proof is on the Minister of Justice to prove gun registration will work. Therefore, before debate on this bill concludes I would simply ask some Liberal members to answer a few questions.

How will a firearms registration system truly protect society in light of the fact that other systems around the world have shown that it does not really make a difference? How will the government gauge the success of the program? How will the high costs be reconciled with making criminals out of innocent people?

I have some serious, common sense questions regarding who benefits from this program. The Minister of Justice has said registration will reduce crime and better equip the police to deal with crime in Canadian society by providing them with more information they often need to do their jobs.

Criminals will not register their weapons. I find it rather unlikely that policemen on the streets will approach a suspect's house any differently if the computer says the suspect does not own a gun. Caution will still be the rule.

I would like to take a moment to read part of a letter from two Calgary policemen:

On Saturday, November 26, 1994 my partner and I were dispatched to a noisy stereo complaint in northwest Calgary. After knocking on the door for an extended period of time, my partner and I were confronted by a man at the door with a loaded, sawed-off shotgun which he pointed at my partner's chest. The man was subdued, arrested and charged with four weapons related offences.

During our investigation we determined that the man was prohibited from owning or possessing any firearms until 1998 because of a weapons offence in 1992. The weapon he had in his possession was also a prohibited weapon.

Of all the four offences the man was charged with, only one, assault with a weapon, is an offence where police can take the criminal to jail. Pointing a weapon, possession of a prohibited weapon and pointing a prohibited weapon are minor offences in the Criminal Code, the criminal version of a speeding ticket.

How will registration possibly change what happened to us?

The man was legally prohibited from having a gun but he had one. Does a police officer have to get shot to make us realize that we have to get tough on these sorts of offenders?

According to the Department of Justice, in over half the cases in which possession charges are laid by police they are dropped once they get to court. That is the reality outside of planet Ottawa.

Addressing the inherent weaknesses of the Criminal Code and the charter of rights and freedoms should be our number one priority.

Handguns have been registered in Canada for 60 years. In spite of this, using the minister's own statistics, handgun crimes have been on the increase. There is no evidence to indicate that universal registration of shotguns and rifles will be any more effective.

Are we really worried about hunters, target shooters and collectors? Maybe the Liberals are but I cannot accept that these people are responsible for the violence on our streets. It is the criminals using illegally obtained weapons who are responsible for gun related crimes. They should be the target.

The Liberals like to use the logic that if you have to register your car you should register your gun. If you register your gun you will become more responsible, less inclined to have an accident and less likely to have your weapon fall into the hands of criminals.

When we look at vehicle registration, what effect does it have on preventing theft, promoting responsible use and reducing accidents? Does vehicle registration prevent drunk driving?

In Calgary a teenager was recently sentenced to six years for running down and killing a police officer with a registered stolen car. Is the owner of the stolen car responsible for the death of Constable Sonnenberg? Should car owners have to take more responsibility ensuring that their vehicles are stored safely? Should we apply the same legal impediments to car ownership that the minister wants to apply to gun ownership? Would this have saved Constable Sonnenberg? Of course not.

No matter what steps we take to prevent our property from being stolen, criminals find a way to get at it. No matter how much registration we have the simple truth is that people will continue to break the law. Let us start focusing our legislation on discouraging those who might and punishing those do.

Let us send a collective message to potential criminals that this country does not tolerate violence and violent offenders. From now on the punishment will match the crime.

Becoming a legal firearms owner in Canada today is by no means a cakewalk. Applicants must obtain a firearms acquisition certificate which is an extremely probing form containing questions about personal matters such as drug and alcohol abuse, job loss and divorce, to name a few. Applicants must then furnish the names of two people from the prescribed list of occupations and relationships who can verify the information in

the application. This is followed by a 28-day mandatory waiting period during which a firearms officer can conduct an investigation on applicants. Upon completion the applicants must then pass a course or test on the safe handling and use of firearms and the laws relating to them. The applicant is then photographed and his or her certificate is processed centrally by the chief provincial or territorial firearms officer. What more can you do?

In the time it takes one legal gun owner to go through this process, thousands of stolen or smuggled guns will change hands in the streets. That is the problem. If this government would take more time to identify the right problem, it would find 60 per cent of the solution.

The national debt is the problem. The deficit is a contributing factor. That is why we have to get to a zero deficit, not just 3 per cent of GDP. The lack of deterrence for the criminal misuse of firearms is the problem. Registration is not even a contributing factor.

The Liberals are identifying the wrong problem. The Minister of Justice stated in the House that last year an estimated 375,000 weapons were smuggled into Canada. In the same breath he went on to say last year approximately 3,800 firearms were lost or stolen by those who lawfully own them in Canada. In the years since 1974 a cumulative total of 65,000 firearms have been stolen or lost, not recovered.

There were 3,800 stolen or lost weapons as opposed to 375,000 smuggled guns, yet the main emphasis of our new gun control laws will be registration for legal gun owners. I believe that instead of throwing millions of dollars toward registration we should look at all possible ways to beef up our security at borders.

Let us do everything in our power to stop the 375,000 guns from finding their way into hands of criminals. Let us send a clear message to the people who bring them across the border that if they get caught, they will not just get a slap on the wrist or a fine, but a guarantee of time behind bars.

Currently we have mandatory sentences for firearms offences that are not enforced because they are plea bargained away. Therefore a mandatory sentence is utterly meaningless and useless. I can see the need for a crown prosecutor to have some latitude in handling a case. The flexibility that plea bargaining offers is intended to lead to a conviction. I realize it is necessary, but not the outright elimination of a mandatory sentence. It should be a reduced sentence.

A national firearms registry flies directly in the face of today's reality which is that the vast majority of people want less government regulation and intrusion in their lives, not more. A 10-year jail term for failure to register and the right to register a firearm and the right to search and seizure without a warrant are incomprehensible.

Are we headed for a police state if this bill passes in its present form? Is the minister not willing to separate the bill and debate the two separate issues? He knows full well that they are two separate issues. He knows that this party would support the amendments to the Criminal Code to make it tougher on crime. He knows he would get our support.

Why bother with this national registration issue with the same bill? Separate the two. Have the courage and conviction to have a true and honest debate. People are sick and tired of hearing about the rights of criminals. They want them caught. They want them off the streets. They want them punished and, above all, they want laws that will make people think twice about becoming criminals in the first place.

[Firearms Act, March 13th, 1995]

He is not here to defend himself.