Steve Mahoney

[Supply, September 22nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I would always be careful with the hon. member to make sure he is not reading from one of our throne speeches from days gone by as he did one time when we all got up and decided to go into a rant.

I am assuming those figures are accurate. The hon. member raised some interesting issues. I want to just deal with the one on suicide.

Generally speaking it would be my view that someone wanting to commit suicide would find a way and it would not necessarily matter if a gun were available. We just had a tragedy in the local community park where I live. Down the street where I walk my dog in morning a man who was accused of shooting his wife shot himself. I do not know that registration would prevent suicide. They may find some other way.

All their issues are not what this is about. This is about bringing some kind of order to registering guns and putting in place rules that all Canadians know about. They can be licensed and trained. It will help the police. It will not solve crime but it will go a long way toward assisting the police in doing their job.

[Supply, September 22nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, we can all flex our political muscles. In my riding 65% of the people voted Liberal in the last election. In the province of Ontario I think that was probably almost an average. The vast majority of the people in the province of Ontario, some 86%, support this.

The member does not understand that this is not a debate about the bill, this is a debate about the implementation and the regulations. We are not here debating whether there shall be a gun control law. That is a done deal. What we are talking about is how it is going to be implemented and how it is going to be set up. It is going to be set up in a way that will give the police some confidence in the database that will be available so they will know at least where the vast majority of the weapons are in this country when they are fighting crime and it will provide—

[Supply, September 22nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I was not referring to any individual in this place. I am referring to the fact that there is misinformation. There are myths that are being propagated by members opposite to crowds which get them all emotional and excited about issues. If they would deal with the facts then we could have a calm discussion about the issue of gun control, registration and the costs involved. There will be setup costs and startup costs. There will be revenue that will offset those costs. But we never hear about that.

We hear that it will be expensive, that they are going to jack the price of registration up. Yet I have never heard anyone from the opposite side admit that for $10 we could register 10 guns. A buck a gun. Not a problem. No one is going to come back and ask us to pay $100 or $1,000. I have never heard anyone mention that once the gun is registered it is registered for life. Why would we not want to do that? They want to whip people up.

The one I love is that the police are going to be able to break down the door and come running in with their dogs and their guns drawn. It is absolute nonsense. They can investigate if they know there are weapons in the house. They must either have our permission or they must have a warrant issued properly in a court of law, giving them permission to be able to enter and investigate. They would do that if they thought there was potential for abuse or potential for crime.

I wish the Reform Party would stop all the misinformation, stop leading people in the wrong direction and simply understand that this is good for Canada, good for Canadians and good for the safety of all our communities.

[Supply, September 22nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Oxford. I heard the member for Wild Rose say, and this is pretty close to a quote, we will have to get the

Hansard

to check, that he would support anything if it was voluntary. I think that is what I heard him say.

Does that mean then that criminals are going to voluntarily register? On one hand they are saying that criminals will not register their guns. Obviously they will not. What the member said is that he would support the bill if it was voluntary. That is what I heard.

That is very interesting that we have principles and if you do not like them, we have other principles. The point is what I heard is that the general concept is something the member can agree. He just does not want it to be a forced situation. That is very interesting.

I wonder where the Reform Party went wrong when it decided not to support the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, the Canadian Police Association, the Canadian Association of Police Boards. You would have thought that these gentlemen and women would be lining up behind everything these groups had to say. Yet they will say that registering guns is a horrible violation which will not help the police in doing their job in fighting crime.

The three bodies I just mentioned would beg to differ. They say that registration will help police solve crimes where firearms are recovered. That seems like a reasonable idea. It will help identify the sources of firearms that are recovered. It will enable police to trace some of the 3,000 firearms that are lost or stolen every year back to their rightful owners. It will enable police to determine whether firearms have been skimmed from commercial shipments. It will allow information on safe storage and handling regulations to be directed specifically to firearm owners. The police are very concerned about that. It will help the police to determine what types and numbers of firearms they might encounter when they are responding to an emergency call.

Just talk to someone in the business of policing. They get a phone call. Quite often it can be late at night. There is a report of violence. There is a report of someone in distress and we are asking them to simply walk into that situation with no ability to access a database that might allow them to determine that the place they are going into happens to house a firearm or a number of firearms. Why would we restrict that information from the police? Why would the Reform Party restrict it? It is truly incredible.

I listened to the leader of the Reform Party earlier today saying that it was his mandate, or words similar to that, that he would fight against these unjust laws. What he is really saying is that he is the Leader of the Opposition and therefore he is going to oppose it, whether it is good legislation or not.

We see all these folks out on the front lawn of Parliament Hill. No one can deny there is a movement against registering firearms. They ask why would we support this. They call us sheep. They say we are simply going to do what we are told. Let me tell you who is telling us what to do. It is the Canadian people, with 78% of all Canadians approving of the legislation; 86% of people in the province of Ontario approve of the legislation; and 47% of firearm owners who are registered approve of the legislation. Why would they not?

What is the problem? It is absolutely mind boggling. We register our cars. We have to renew the license on a regular basis. We register things like our home ownership and our mortgage. We register our dogs, for goodness' sake. We register most things. We even register our children. Why in the world would we not want to have some idea? Granted, it will not solve all the problem. There is no question that criminals are not going to come forward and say “I am here at 11 division and I want to register six firearms that I use to rob banks”. We understand that. Why would we be opposed to registering weapons that could be dangerous? We need to have some confidence that they are being treated properly and that people are properly licensed.

In my view we have a real serious problem in this country. When I see the province of Ontario deciding that it is going to lower the age for hunting to 12 I get a little nervous. I understand about education, training and getting young people into a sport early to make sure they understand how to use guns properly. But I get a little nervous about the sense of responsibility, about the confidence, about the understanding and the calmness. I am not sure I want to be walking around in the woods this November in Parry Sound where I have a cottage. I am not sure I want to go out in the woods knowing there are 12 year olds with rifles. It is a little nerve racking knowing there are men and women. But to go down to the age of 12, I do not know where in the world those people are coming from or what they are thinking.

The thing I find most interesting is the lack of information. The people out front, and we will hear the speeches, and the people in the Reform Party fuel myth. I cannot use the word lie, it is not parliamentary. It is a myth when they say that this act is just about registration. We know—

[Summer Recess, September 21st, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, many years ago in school we used to report to the class on what we did during the summer break. Frankly, my summer was not half as interesting as the Reform Party's, so I thought I would report on its summer.

Reform's summer to remember began with their leader's disastrous Asian vacation. The member for Calgary Southwest infuriated Canadians by becoming the first leader of the opposition to go overseas and criticize our economy in front of foreign investors.

Then, while some Reformers were recanting their previous attacks on the MP pension plan, others began discussing what most Canadians have known for some time, that Reform has no chance of forming government with its current leader. What about the so-called united alternative? Reform MPs are not united. Canadians do not see them as being much of an alternative.

The summer was not all bad. They managed to recruit a high profile Quebec separatist to their cause. I guess this means the marriage between—

[The Senate, June 12th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday parliament welcomed its newest left winger, the hon. “big M” Frank Mahovlich.

Over an illustrious career, Frank Mahovlich scored 626 goals, was selected to nine all-star teams and was on 6 Stanley Cup winners. He has been a hockey hero in the two historic hotbeds of the Canadian game: Toronto and Montreal.

He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1981, Canada's Sports Hall of Fame in 1990 and received the Order of Canada in 1994.

He has the kind of talent we need here in Ottawa: someone who knows how to stick handle, how to win in the corners and how to finish the play.

Indeed, we would put our “big M” up against the official opposition's “little M”, Preston Manning, any day of the week.

[The Reform Party, June 10th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, at a time when the Reform Party is telling us that Canadians are flocking to join its so-called united alternative campaign, a CTV Gallup public opinion poll tells us otherwise. The poll shows that support for Reform has now fallen behind support for the Conservatives. Only 12% of Canadians support the Reform Party, while 15% would vote for the leaderless Tories. In my own province of Ontario where Reformers keep claiming to be making inroads, support for their party is at a paltry 8%.

What can they do to reverse their situation? Perhaps they can stop alienating Canadians and back away from the redneck extremist positions they take on most public policy issues. Or, they could simply get rid of their leader and try to boost their support by convincing the hon. member for Saint John to lead the united alternative campaign.

[Supply, June 9th, 1998]

My apologies, Wild Rose. He is wild, I must say.

I am happy to talk about this because it is such a simple issue. Although maybe it is not. If it was, maybe they would understand it. The reality is that I am not willing to stand here and take this member's challenge. His challenge is for me to prove that this will save one life. Does that require a death? Does it require that kind of activity?

The common sense of this is so clear. We have hundreds of thousands of weapons that are not registered and, in many cases, not cared for in this country and nobody should be adverse to registering them. No one should object to this. As I said before, we register our vehicles. We register ourselves. We register most of our animals, at least the four-legged kind.

I do not understand where these people come from when they say we should not register guns. We absolutely must follow through with this. It is a commitment to the people of Canada and the people of Canada spoke in the last election on this issue very clearly.

[Supply, June 9th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I feel I have accomplished something in a day if I can get the member from White Rose a little agitated.

[Supply, June 9th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, in answer to the hon. member for Saint John, I believe that we probably do need some assistance in the form of policing. I know we do in Peel. In fact, the region of Peel police force recently took over the policing of Pearson International Airport. It has to find the money to hire an entire division, 101 officers, in the region of Peel. They will be contracted out to run the policing system at Pearson, a facility that I am sure members use.

The member's question was about gun control. I think the Canadian people have spoken very clearly on that issue. We do not want to see what we tragically see every day in the news in the United States of America.

My goodness, we register our dogs in this country. We register our cars. We register our boats. Why in the world would anyone object to registering a weapon like a gun that could kill if it fell into the wrong hands?