John Finlay

[Supply, September 22nd, 1998]

Oh, it does exist. Yes, it exists. Two neighbourhood boys were visiting one another. They found the father's gun and were playing with it in the bathroom. One boy asked for the gun back and the young boy from next door said “No, no”, pointed it at him and shot him.

If that were a serious, law-abiding gun owner, the gun would have been locked up, would have had a trigger guard on it, the ammunition would be nowhere near the gun and the accident would not have occurred.

[Supply, September 22nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I suppose I agree with my hon. colleague that registering a gun may not in and of itself prevent a crime. That is not what we are about. We are about the safe storage, use and control of firearms. That is what people—

[Supply, September 22nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the Reform Party motion on Bill C-68 with which we dealt in the last parliament. It is interesting that the Reform Party is using its first opposition day in the new fall session to debate an issue on which it fought and lost an election rather than using it for other important issues that Canadians are concerned with. Where is the vision? Vision means looking forward, not backward.

I agree that no one wishes to give you the finger, Mr. Speaker, but I have been trying to give some of my colleagues opposite the finger for a long time.

In reference to the opposition motion I find the language in it extreme. It smacks of the kind of advertising the National Firearms Association and others put out. It states:

That this House condemns the government for its refusal to replace Bill C-68, the Firearms Act, with legislation targeting the criminal misuse of firearms and revoke their firearm registration policy that, in the opinion of this House: (a) confiscates private property—

It does no such thing. It “contains unreasonable search and seizure provisions” As my friend from Mississauga West just said, that does not apply. It is not the way it is done. The words in the motion are full of extra meaning.

—(c) violates Treasury Board cost/benefit guidelines; (d) represents a waste of taxpayers dollars—

There is a lot of waste of taxpayer dollars here and there. I wonder what is the value of human life. My friend from Kamloops referred to domestic disputes and 100 hunting accidents. Two days after I was elected my friend, the former warden of Oxford county, died in a hunting accident. His wife wanted to throw all his guns down the well that afternoon.

It “is an affront to law-abiding firearms owners” to ask them to register a gun, to ask them to pay a small fee for that privilege. It “will exacerbate the illicit trafficking in firearms”. What nonsense. Of course it will not exacerbate it. It may help stop some of it but it will not exacerbate it.

Before the last election Reformers swarmed across southwestern Ontario telling our constituents, mine in particular, that voters had to send a clear message to the Liberal government about gun control and Bill C-68. Imagine their surprise when a clear message was delivered in Ontario regarding gun control. The message was that the people of Ontario support Bill C-68.

I am sure many Reformers were embarrassed that the only Reform MP to hold a seat in Ontario voted against gun control and that seat was won by a Liberal MP. I assure all hon. members that the Liberal member for Barrie—Simcoe—Bradford is serving her constituents with distinction in the House.

I do not deny this is an important issue for many of my constituents. Several of them have positions in the leadership of the anti-Bill C-68 lobby. When Bill C-68 was first proposed I received many postcards from gun owners who were opposed to measures included in the bill. After a lot of work in caucus and after voting in favour of this bill I received many letters and calls of support from the constituents of Oxford.

In that original bill there were some far-reaching things that had to be corrected. There were prohibitions on black powder use. There were prohibitions on re-enactment use. There were prohibitions on certain handguns that were used only for target shooting.

Many of those matters were corrected. The complaints that we find in this resolution were largely resolved. At the polls during the 1997 election most constituents indicated their support for this piece of legislation.

My re-election is an indication of the support Oxford has for this government and this legislation. The Reform candidate after finishing second in the 1993 finished third in Oxford in 1997. That is also an indication of the level of support Reform enjoys in my riding.

I would like to discuss the particulars of the bill and some of the questions that have been raised. It is true that criminals will be unlikely to register a firearm. Everyone can concede that point, but people must also concede that by that very fact criminals will identify themselves. The fact that a firearm is not registered will alert the police to the possibility that the firearm may have been stolen, illegally imported, illegally manufactured or bought on the black market.

The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, the Canadian Police Association, the Canadian Association of Police Boards and groups representing victims of crime support registration of all firearms for practical reasons, the same reasons that we register our cars, our bicycles, our birth, our citizenship and so on.

It will help police solve crimes where firearms are recovered. It will identify the source of firearms that are recovered. It will enable police to trace some 3,000 firearms lost or stolen every year back to their rightful owners and to return many of them.

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.

With these rules and regulations and the education of firearm owners regarding proper storage, it will certainly prevent a lot of people being killed by unloaded guns, the situations where the child in the home points an loaded gun at somebody but when father put it away it was unloaded. It does not hang above the mantle piece loaded but unloaded in everybody's opinion. When the loaded gun is pointed, people are killed.

Quite clearly, if a gun is registered the owner has the possession certificate and there is nothing to fear in the bill. It is only those who are in possession of illegal firearms, whether prohibited, stolen or unregistered, who need fear losing their firearms.

The motion put forward by the member for Saskatoon—Humboldt said that the bill allowed our police forces to confiscate private property. It does no such thing. I would anyway like to ask my friend from Saskatoon—Humboldt how an item that is illegal and illegally held can be considered private property. Will the Reform Party be saying next that police cannot seize drugs because they are the property of an individual?

I must also say how dismayed I was to hear the member for Yorkton—Melville ask us to follow the example of Miami, Florida, in dealing with crime. Perhaps this member would tell us how many gun related deaths there are every year in Miami or how much higher its crime rate per capita is to any city in Canada. Such a comparison is somewhat ridiculous and the Reform member would know it.

This is what we have come to expect from the Reform Party on this issue. This is a party that regularly encourages its membership to compare gun control measures to those of Nazi Germany, a party whose thinks the government's legitimate attempts to put forward measures supported by a majority of its citizens is bordering on Fascism.

This is a party that brags about using direct democracy to make voting decisions in the House. Yet only three Reform MPs had the courage and honesty to vote in favour of the bill after discovering their constituents supported Bill C-68. I applaud them, all three. Those members mentioned represented Calgary Centre, Edmonton Southwest and Vancouver North.

A majority of Canadians support the gun registry including those in British Columbia and Alberta where most Reformers are from. I guess the only way they could say that the public supported their measures would be to trump up questions on a survey.

I guess the deputy leader of the Reform Party certainly cannot vote for the motion. An Optima Research poll taken in that riding last year showed that 55% of respondents support the registration while only 28% oppose it.

I do not deny that this is an important issue for many of my constituents. I hope it will go forward after the vote this afternoon and we can get on with the many issues in which we can all get involved and do some good for Canada.

[Nunavut Act, June 2nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague from Saint-Jean and my colleague from South Shore. I have been in the House all afternoon and I hoped we would get around to talking about Nunavut and what it means to this country and to the people of Nunavut, and my two colleagues have done that.

I would like to put on the record one or two points about this Senate which seems to have consumed our friends from the Reform Party, that our need for reforming the Senate is somehow more important than our need for having our aboriginal people become part of this great nation, I mean a real part.

There is a senator from Nunavut, Senator Willie Adams, in the other place. He was appointed in 1977. He was not appointed by the present Prime Minister. There is a Yukon senator, Senator Lucier. What we will have to do is appoint another senator for the western Arctic, Northwest Territories, the territory that Mr. Adams represented all these years. With the split another senator is necessary.

I am reminded in this historic debate, as my colleague from South Shore has said, of a comment by a former colleague, Elijah Harper, the former member for Churchill. I remember him standing in his place at the other end of this Chamber and telling the then third party in the House that it just did not get it. My colleague from South Shore tried to put that across in gentle terms. I am not prepared to be quite so gentle. Quite clearly it does not understand.

The chief representative for that party on the standing committee, where we have done a lot of good work on this in my opinion, spoke for a minute and a half. Then like a trained dog he proposed the amendment, completely unknown to anyone else in the committee, his colleagues or anyone who worked with him. We have spent hours debating something that is secondary or tertiary or maybe quaternary instead of the important parts of the act.

One of the Reform speakers said to scrap the Indian Act. We have tried scrapping the Indian Act on more than one occasion. We tried to scrap it when the present Prime Minister was the minister of aboriginal affairs. We tried to scrap it two years ago. The aboriginal community do not want to scrap it.

One of the previous speakers spoke about ownership on the reserves and ownership of land. My colleague for South Shore and I visited villages, both aboriginal and Inuit in the northern part of Quebec. We also visited Iqaluit just two weeks ago.

I ask my hon. colleague whether in those villages that we visited he found a forward looking, positive attitude, a feeling that they were going to get somewhere with their rights as aboriginals, with their homes, health care and institutions. That is what this act is about.

I hope that every member of the House will allow Nunavut to come into being as a fully functioning member of the Canadian federation. I expect all worthy members who see the Canadian federation as first in the world, as I do, will support it.

[Nunavut Act, June 2nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I listened quite carefully to my hon. colleague from Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca. I am struck by a couplet of Pope: “A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring”. I am very disappointed in my colleague. I have always felt he is a man of honour and a man of some intellect, but he has talked a deal of nonsense this afternoon.

I am not sure how much he knows about the bill. I was in Nunavut two weeks ago today. The weather was a little colder than here. Eighty-five per cent are Inuit and speak Inuktitut, which will be the official language of Nunavut. There was a feeling of springtime, a feeling of confidence and a feeling of looking at new things. Nunavut will be proclaimed April 1, 1999 and the Inuit have been working some 20 years toward this point.

There was a referendum and a vote in 1982 in which they expressed their strong approval for continuing; the same again in 1992.

Does the member not realize there is a distinction or difference between aboriginals and reserves and what the act is going to provide in the eastern Arctic? Much of what he says is quite true. Being a member of the aboriginal affairs and northern development committee for the last two and a half years, I know they are true. I also know he does not appear to know what he is talking about with respect to Nunavut. I do not suppose he is going to admit that.

The report of the committee on aboriginal peoples made the comment about respect, recognition, sharing and responsibility. It is the Inuit themselves who want this act to be proclaimed and who want to govern themselves. They will be a public government so they will obviously be accountable and they will obviously be assimilated. I do not like the term, but as far as that goes they will be assimilated about as much as the people of British Columbia or Prince Edward Island have been assimilated into the Canadian mosaic. That is what this act does. That is what the department has been working toward. I would like the member to acknowledge that.

[The Environment, June 2nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of the Environment.

Canada's north continues to encounter problems with toxic waste. Can the Minister of the Environment tell the House what her department is doing to protect the health and well-being of our northern citizens, many of whom rely on a clean environment for their daily bread?

[Dr. Russell McDonald, May 25th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my good friend Dr. Russell McDonald of Oxford county on his being named an honorary director for life of the royal agricultural winter fair. Dr. McDonald, or Rusty as he is better known, has served as a member of the board of directors for the winter fair for the past 20 years. A veterinarian by profession, Rusty served on the board as a representative of the artificial insemination industry. He is one of the founders and a former general manager of the Western Ontario Breeders Association. His appointment as an honorary lifetime director recognizes his achievements and contribution to agricultural and to the royal over many years.

I am happy to say that I know Rusty and his wife Helen well. This honour is well deserved. I am sure the royal agricultural winter fair will benefit from his knowledge and experience for years to come. Well done, Rusty.

[National Forestry Week, May 6th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, this week Canadians are celebrating National Forestry Week.

For over 70 years National Forestry Week has reminded us that our forests are vital to Canada's economy and way of life. We should all take the time over the next few days to learn more about the important role played by forests in our economy and in our environment.

It is our responsibility to ensure that our forests are managed responsibly so that future generations can enjoy the many benefits our forests provide.

At this time I would like to salute all those who work to protect our forests, including those in Oxford County who work in conservation and forestry. Special mention should be made of those who maintain the Leslie M. Dixon Memorial Arboretum, the Brick Ponds Wetlands complex and the Oxford County forest.

[Maple Syrup, April 24th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the maple sap is flowing in many parts of this great country of ours.

Around the world one of the things Canada is known for is the delicious maple syrup produced here. The most recent edition of the Canada Catalogue, a publication sponsored by the Canadian Tourism Commission to help sell Canada globally, includes two pages of information on Jakeman's Maple Products of Beachville in Oxford county.

I want to assure Canadians and those around the world who eagerly await the syrup season each year that high quality maple syrup and other maple products like maple sugar leaves, maple pops, maple crisp and maple brittle are being produced in my riding and many other ridings throughout Ontario and Quebec.

I look forward to taste testing this year's vintage of Jakeman's fine maple syrup in its many forms as the year progresses.

[Glendale Collegiate, April 1st, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, Tillsonburg's Glendale Collegiate was recently profiled in the Globe and Mail .

Glendale, under the leadership of Principal Martin Wylie, is pursuing educational opportunities with local businesses. Using funding from the federal and provincial governments and corporate donors, Glendale has invested $200,000 in a makeover of its machine shop. This makeover allows high school and college students, as well as workers from corporate sponsors to retrain and to learn on state of the art computer assisted design machines.

Glendale has also used HRDC funding to set up a computer facility in the guidance department which provides high speed access to the Internet, not only for Glendale students but also for all of Tillsonburg's elementary school students through wireless links. Additional funding from private sources has been the result of a partnership between the school, the community and local businesses.

I congratulate all those in Tillsonburg, both at Glendale and in the community.