Lee Morrison

[Special Import Measures Act, September 25th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I note that we are vastly outnumbered by the people in the gallery. That is shameful. Perhaps a quorum call would get a few Liberals out of bed.

[Supply, September 22nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the suggestion that weapons control or the registration of firearms will actually enhance their value is one of the funniest things I have ever heard said in the House.

As we speak, firearms dealers in the northern tier states are scooping up enormous quantities of Canadian owned firearms at bargain basement prices because people want to get rid of them before the regulations come fully into effect. People in this country have collections of heritage weapons. In my riding, for example, one of the most popular collectors items would be a carbine that was brought to the west by the Northwest Mounted Police when when made their march west. Those things are being sold off into the United States at 50 cents on the dollar because people just do not want the hassle. It is all about hassle.

The member talks about protecting police officers. I wish he would have gone outside and talked with the five serving and retired police officers who spoke at the rally and who think that the whole thing is nonsense. No police officer worth his salt would approach a dwelling in which a domestic violence has been reported without taking due precaution. He is not going to look at a computer to see if there are weapons in that house. If he did, he would probably receive a reprimand from his chief. The last thing I—

[Supply, September 22nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, there is a very definite parallel. I think there is also a parallel between this and the snipers I see standing on the roof of the Langevin building today to defend themselves against a bunch of Canadian farmers. If the member does not think they are there, he should go out and take a look.

[Supply, September 22nd, 1998]

You bet.

The object of this supposedly is to make it safe for police. Any police officer who is not demented is going to approach a house with domestic violence in progress as though there were arms in that house. If he does not, he will probably end up dead at some point. They do not need and they will not rely upon a computer record to tell them they should be careful, that there are arms there.

The police officers treat every domestic incident as a potentially violent situation. So this is just nonsense that is being discussed here.

With respect to special interest groups, there is a very clear definition of special interest groups. Special interest groups are these bloodsucking institutions that get federal funding. I have not heard of those people out front, those ordinary real Canadians whose freedoms are being endangered by these cryptofascists, who are being abused, who are being threatened, tell me that they are getting federal funding. If they are getting federal funding, I would like to see the cancelled cheques.

[Supply, September 22nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I will start at the top. The hon. member asked so many questions that I have already forgotten the first couple.

This question of knowing whether or not there are firearms in the house is ridiculous. I have discussed this with a lot of frontline police officers. I dare say the hon. member has not.

[Supply, September 22nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, as we are speaking, there are some 20,000 protesters in front of Parliament, including about 1,000 Quebeckers.

These people are opposed to the registration of hunting weapons but, more importantly, they are opposed to searches without warrant and to the confiscation of private property without compensation. These people are farmers, lumberjacks, trappers, and so on. They are people who live in the country, people whom the hon. member does not like.

But not all of them are from the north. There are also urban dwellers who realize that Bill C-68 is a threat to everyone. These people believe in democracy and in civil rights. They fully understand the risk involved in giving the government the power to send police officers to our homes for the most trivial reasons, and they are getting worried.

Unfortunately, these people are not represented by any Quebec member. For example, three years ago, a coalition of seven Quebec groups representing several hundreds of thousands of people opposed to Bill C-68 sought the support of Liberal, Conservative and Bloc members, but was turned down. In the end, it was a Reform member who became the spokesperson for these Quebeckers before the Standing Committee on Justice, in Ottawa.

Bill C-68 is based on unfounded biases, on the fallacious arguments of some bureaucrats, and on mass hysteria. This is a pretty weak basis for an act.

It is a sad fact that only a small minority of Canadians have an inkling of what Bill C-68 contains. This is not surprising when one considers its length of 137 pages and its complexity.

The government's reluctance to release copies for public distribution is also a factor. I have had to have my own copies printed for interested constituents. The justice department's reluctance to let the public see this awful document is supposed to be an economy measure but there is no lack of funding for distribution of departmental propaganda or puff pieces for the Canadian firearms centre. My constituency office is full of that stuff.

The provisions for arbitrary infringements or abrogations of civil rights and liberties which date back to 1689 have nothing to do with crime control and everything to do with the regulation of property which is a matter of provincial jurisdiction. Four provinces, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, and two territories have tested the legitimacy of Bill C-68 in court and are still waiting after a whole year for a decision.

Oddly enough, Quebec, the champion of provincial rights, remains on the sideline. The PQ government refuses to defend Quebec's right to conduct its own business. This is strange. Perhaps the members sitting to my left could explain this situation.

In case anyone here has forgotten what the House passed in June 1995 and for the benefit of new Liberal backbenchers who probably have not read the bill, I wish to draw attention to some of the most noxious bits. I hope that new members will note the section numbers so that they can look it up themselves in case they do not believe me.

Section 102. Police will be able to search premises without warrants on the flimsiest pretext. They will be empowered to open any container, require any person to produce records, enter any computer system and confiscate firearms or any other thing. These things can be done without any evidence that a crime has been, is being, or will be committed. Oh Canada.

Section 103. A custodian of premises being searched must co-operate with the inspectors or risk being charged under section 111 with an indictable offence carrying a penalty of up to two years in prison. In other words self-incrimination is now a requirement under Canadian law.

Section 104. A warrant may be obtained to search a private home if an inspector believes on reasonable grounds, whatever that means, that the home contains a prohibited firearm or more than 10 other firearms and that entry is necessary for the enforcement of the act or the regulations and that there are reasonable grounds for believing that entry will be refused. Catch 22.

Section 117 provides the Minister of Justice with almost unlimited power to regulate firearms by order in council. Under section 108 those orders in council will become law within 30 days of being laid before parliament regardless of whether or not they are approved by parliament or even debated. Under section 119 even that slight bow to parliamentary democracy may be avoided if in the opinion of the minister these are immaterial, insubstantial or urgent.

A few years ago the former justice minister described his dream of a Canada where only police and the military would possess arms. During debates in the House he altered his position perhaps because it dawned on him that he had succinctly described a police state.

Now, thanks to events at last year's APEC summit in Vancouver, we know that the government has extended those police and military privileges to armed foreign thugs on Canadian soil. Was this indicative of philosophical kinship, a shared contempt for those damn peasants who do not know their place, who are not capable of making decisions and who do not share the prime ministerial vision of Canada?

I have several times quoted James Madison in the House with regard to the loss of freedom. I shall close by doing it one more time. “There are more instances of the abridgements of freedom of people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” Words to live by.

[Supply, September 22nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I am very glad to hear that the minister's heart is pure. I feel better already.

She has gone to great lengths to tell us that there is nothing to fear in the legislation. I believe that she believes that. However, if she would look around the country she would find that even under existing legislation let alone the draconian stuff that is being proposed here, ordinary citizens are being harassed and guns are being confiscated without compensation.

The hon. parliamentary secretary thinks this is a joke. I wonder if Darrell McKnight, head of the computer department at the University of New Brunswick, would think it was a joke. His home was invaded by not one but three police officers searching for a firearm which he had duly registered and had bought in good faith. It was a legally owned weapon. By order in council the previous justice minister had declared this was no longer a legal weapon. The police came when he was not at home. They terrorized his teenage daughter, telling her she could go out and stand in the snow bank while they took the house apart. This is in Canada. So please spare me this stuff about it is not a danger to us. It is. It always has been and it always will be.

[Supply, September 22nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I wanted to address the hon. member with a bit of historical information about the debates on this bill back in 1994-95. There were in fact great efforts made to make the bill better, make it acceptable to all concerned. There were some 200 amendments proposed both by opposition members and by members on the government side. The government stonewalled almost all of them. There was no consideration given to them. There was no compromise, a sort of take no prisoners attitude.

I would ask the member if he feels that the total rejection of more than 200 amendments really represents an effort to govern or if it is merely an effort to steamroll.

[Supply, September 22nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. parliamentary secretary made reference to the American system. I presume she does not realize that there is no monolithic, all-encompassing legal system in the United States governing firearms.

The District of Columbia for example has the most stringent firearms regulations in all of the western world, much more stringent than anything she and her government are proposing in this bill. It also has the highest rate of firearms homicides in the western world. It is 80 per 100,000 if anyone can believe it. This is in a strictly regulated environment.

In the wide open state of North Dakota where anyone over the age of 14 can possess and use unsupervised almost any type of firearm, the homicide rate per 100,000 is roughly equal to that of Japan, 1.5.

I wonder if she is even aware of these circumstances. Has she done any sort of study of gun control legislation as it pertains to the United States and around the world? I wonder how she would explain these anomalies which seem to indicate there are factors more important than mere possession of firearms or registration of firearms in firearms homicides.

[Petitions, September 21st, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, over the course of the summer recess I received seven petitions bearing 883 signatures in total. The petitions come from the constituencies of Battlefords—Lloydminster, Regina—Qu'Appelle, Prince Albert, Churchill River and my own constituency of Cypress Hills—Grasslands. The seven petitions are similar in form and content. Therefore I will refer to only one of them.

The petitioners point out that there is no evidence that the registration of firearms will have any impeding effect on crime in this country. The petitioners point out that Bill C-68 would put an unnecessary burden on peace officers. The petitioners state that the search and seizure provisions of Bill C-68 would constitute a breach of traditional civil liberties.

Therefore, the petitioners humbly pray and call upon parliament to repeal Bill C-68 and all associated regulations with respect to firearms or ammunition and pass new legislation designed to severely penalize the criminal use of any weapon.

This brings to 3,989 the number of signatures that I have received on petitions of this nature in the last few months.