Dan Harris

[Goverment Spending, February 27th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, we learned yesterday that the Prime Minister personally approved a whopping $22,000 to wine and dine European bureaucrats. Posh receptions, free wine, nothing is too good for the Prime Minister's friends, yet at the same time he is telling Canadians to tighten their belts and he is telling seniors that their retirement just costs too much.

How can the Prime Minister justify blowing thousands on his friends while telling Canadians to tighten their belts?

[Employment, February 17th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, the government has not created jobs in Toronto, and the numbers back that up.

People in my riding know and live it every single day. Higher prices and fewer good jobs mean more struggles for Toronto families, but the government is too busy being a cheerleader for Rob Ford to notice.

Why will the government not finally be a cheerleader for Toronto families? Why will it not introduce a jobs plan to get families back to work, create good jobs and secure the economic recovery?

[Employment, February 17th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, we learned today that rising inflation and higher gas prices are pinching family pocketbooks even further.

In Toronto a dismal job market means families just cannot keep up. The city has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. Those who do find work get stuck with low wage, part-time jobs that just do not support families. Yet all the government has to offer them is a failed jobs plan.

When will the government finally wake up and help Toronto families?

[Ending The Long-Gun Registry Act, February 15th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I would be very interested in hearing my colleague's take on the information provided to the House last week by the member for Yukon. He stated that the RCMP had told the committee investigating this bill that over 4,400 stolen firearms were re-registered through the registry.

Does the member think that might have been an avenue where the gun registry could actually seek find and catch criminals, and whether stolen firearms could be returned to their lawful owners? What kind of impact could that potentially have on Canadians' safety?

[Ending the Long-Gun Registry Act, February 13th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for the question.

There is no doubt that, in an urban riding, the firearms issue is an important one, and so is public safety. The fact that the police will have one less tool at their disposal worries me, because I already think that the police are not given all the tools they need to do their job.

Certain incidents have occurred in my riding: people have stolen weapons from other people. This happened before the registry was created. As a result, the police did not have all the information on all the stolen weapons. It did not have enough information to find the weapons and to bring the thieves to justice. That is what we now have thanks to the registry, and what we will lose when the Conservatives scrap it.

[Ending the Long-Gun Registry Act, February 13th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I did address the issue of criminals registering their firearms. A manual search found that over 4,400 stolen firearms were re-registered. They did come back and register those firearms. Whether that is criminals, or law-abiding citizens who accidentally got a stolen firearm through various sales, the question is why has none of that been tracked back? Why has there not been any legwork done there? What is the police doing with that information?

The government has had stewardship of this registry for six years and it has sat on its thumbs. It does not agree with the law, so therefore it chose to let it go by the wayside. That is not how the government is supposed to work. We are supposed to be here to uphold the laws of the land. The government has not been doing that because it disagrees with the law. Now, six years later, it is finally, potentially, going to be getting rid of the law. However, up until now it should have been upholding the law and it has not. That is shameful.

[Ending the Long-Gun Registry Act, February 13th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I will follow-up on my hon. colleague's point. It behooves us that we would take tools away from police officers rather than give them more to fight crime and keep Canadians safe.

If the government is so adamant about the ineffectiveness of the gun registry, why has it been hiding a report that shows the public safety value of the long gun registry for two years in a row? It is not enough that the Conservatives are going to destroy a tool that police use thousands of times a day and all the data along with it, but they have also been holding back crucial information from the committee that has been examining the bill.

A lot of talk was had both in committee and in the House suggesting that law enforcement was not consulting the registry, but rather consulting CPIC, which has registry information on it. That is where the spin was given.

The RCMP report dated November 2011, which was signed by previous RCMP Commissioner William Elliott, was not released until last month. It was not made available to the committee examining the bill and the House did not ask for it. However, it was made available to the Minister of Public Safety.

The report outlines just how often police officers refer to the registry for inquiries. This raises at least two issues. First, does the report show how useful the instrument is for police forces across the country? Second, why is the government not disclosing important information, a part of a larger pattern?

It would seem that the Conservatives do not want people to know the facts because they do not want the facts to get in the way of the baseless arguments they keep making time and time again. This is yet another example of the government choosing ideology over fact.

Destroying the existing information in the registry will not bring back the money spent to set it up. Why is the government going to have a billion dollar bonfire with the data Canadian taxpayers have already paid for, especially when provinces and police forces are telling us that it does have public safety value?

Let us consider some facts. Approximately 1.9 million Canadians are licensed firearm owners. The number of registered non-restricted firearms in Canada as of September 2011 was 7,137,386. As of September 2011, the Canadian firearms registry was accessed an average of 17,402 times per day. That does not sound ineffective or wasteful to me.

In one survey, 92% of general duty police officers said they used the Canadian firearms information system and 74% said that query results had proven beneficial during major operations. We know that 15 officers serving on the government benches make up part of that 8% minority of general duty officers who disagree and the 26% who do not think it is very useful.

A study conducted by the Institut national de santé publique du Québec estimates that 2,100 lives have been saved since that legislation came into force. One-third of women killed by their spouses are killed by a firearm. Nearly nine out of 10 of these women, or 88%, were killed by a long gun, or a legal, registered hunting rifle. Since the registry was created, firearms-related domestic homicides have decreased by 50%. Make no mistake about this: it works.

Furthermore, rifles and shotguns are the guns most often used in suicides, particularly those involving youth. These types of suicides had decreased 64% in the last nine years, from over 300 in 1995 to 121 in 2005, suicides that were prevented as we were not able to find any evidence of substitution with other methods. Experts in the field of suicide will certainly back up that often when people's first attempts are thwarted they do not look for an alternative.

Lastly, long guns were used in the killing of 10 of the 13 police officers killed in the last 10 years.

Rather than getting tough on crime, the Conservatives are taking away precautions that have proven to keep our communities safe. If the Conservatives want to state that the registry is a waste of money and exaggerate the costs, they should at least get their facts straight. We recognize that while there were significant cost overruns in the initial phase of the registry setup, as highlighted by the Auditor General's 2006 report that revealed that the costs of the Canadian firearms program hit $946 million by 2005, by 2010 the cost of the registry had stabilized to about $4 million of the total $76.5 million annually spent on the Canadian firearms program.

Let us also not forget that registration is a one time only procedure. It is free and never expires unless registrants transfer their firearms to new owners. Registrations or transfers are done over the phone or online in a matter of minutes. In fact, 97% of firearms transfers are completed within 30 days. If only Service Canada could say the same about processing claims for EI.

In a quote from the 2010 RCMP evaluation of the Canadian firearms program, it states:

Canadians are receiving value for their tax dollars from the CFP. Overall...[it] is cost-effective in reducing firearms-related crime and promoting public safety through universal licensing of firearms owners and registration of firearms in Canada.

As my colleague for St. John's East pointed out a few days ago, there is no such thing as specifically a long gun registry. We have a registry of guns, which consists of various types of guns and rifles. There are prohibited weapons, restricted weapons and then all other types. Swept up in the all other types are the guns that the Conservatives have been referring to for years. They talk about the long gun registry as if it were a separate registry that makes law-abiding hunters and farmers feel like criminals.

I can honestly say that in my family there has been a great deal of debate over the years about the registry. My family likes to camp and we own a property together. Many of my family members are hunters and anglers. We have had a great many difficult discussions about the registry and disagreements, frankly, between my point of view and often many of theirs. However, not once has any of them thought that they were being treated like a criminal because they had to register their firearms.

Rather than working on fixing the problems and the anomalies that occurred as a result of the failed implementation by the Liberal Party, the Conservatives want to scrap a program that has been a crucial policing tool for provinces and communities.

The Conservatives like to go on ad nauseam that the registry does nothing to catch criminals, prevent gun violence or keep our communities safe. On the contrary, implementing Bill C-19 would risk public safety by treating all non-registered, non-restricted and non-prohibited weapons the same. We are talking about semi-automatic rifles, assault rifles, sniper rifles, guns that are very dangerous and can threaten our public safety. Gun shops, sporting goods stores, Canadian Tires and so on were required to keep a record of to whom they sold rifles, shotguns and even ammunition. That provision lapsed when the gun registry was brought in because it was deemed unnecessary since all guns had to then be registered. By removing the requirement for all non-restricted or non-prohibited guns to be registered, there will be no record. The government has not reinstituted the requirement for gun shops, sporting goods stores and the like to keep records of their sales.

I will close by blowing some holes in the argument that the registry cannot help catch criminals. Last week in the House the member for Yukon said that the committee heard evidence that the RCMP had heard that a manual search conducted discovered that 4,438 stolen firearms were successfully re-registered. Talk about being asleep at the switch. That is practically aiding and abetting criminals and legitimizing their activities.

What I would like to know is how many of those re-registered stolen firearms were found, confiscated, how many criminal investigations this triggered, how many convictions ensued and how many of these weapons ended up back in the hands of their law-abiding owners? More important, why did the government only find out during committee hearings on the bill and not before that?

That is why I say the Conservatives are asleep at the switch. They have such an ideological hatred of this law that they cannot see the good that could come of it.

[Employment, February 13th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the fact is that Toronto has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. Torontonians cannot get through to Service Canada because of your cuts.

The labour force is shrinking because people are losing hope. Those who do find a job wind up with low wage work that keeps them in poverty. Yet all the government has to offer is faulty job numbers and even more cutbacks.

When will the government get serious about helping Toronto and putting people back to work instead of sending millions of dollars to companies that abandon Canada?

[Employment, February 13th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, a new study has found that the number of working people in Toronto who cannot make ends meet is skyrocketing. We are talking about families with jobs who still struggle to pay the rent and buy groceries. Why? Because the only jobs available are low wage and part-time. They cannot support a family. This is the legacy of the failed Conservative jobs plan.

Why is the government ignoring Toronto families? When will it finally introduce a jobs plan that will work?

[Public Transit, February 7th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, in cities like Toronto, Canadians face long commutes stuck in traffic and smog. Across Canada urban mayors are asking for better public transit, but the government refuses to act. Investing in public transit would create jobs, reduce harmful emissions and save billions in lost economic productivity.

Why is the government ignoring this growing crisis? When will it finally give cities like Toronto the help they need?