Garry Breitkreuz

[Firearms Registry, February 5th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has already broken his promise that he made on national television only last night.

He said one of the most important democratic reforms is to give MPs more power to represent their constituents, but now he announces there will not be a free vote on the gun registry. The Prime Minister's words and his actions just do not line up.

An Ipsos-Reid poll this week tells us that only 43% of Canadians support the gun registry. Will the Prime Minister allow a free vote on the firearms fiasco or will he not?

[Privilege, February 3rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of privilege. On October 31, 2003, the minister of justice tabled his department's performance report for the period ending March 31, 2003.

There are a number of factual errors in the section of the minister's report on the Canadian firearms program. These errors have misled the House and impeded my ability to function as a member of Parliament.

This is the first opportunity I have to bring this matter to the attention of the Speaker as Parliament has not been sitting since November 7, 2003.

While some of the so-called facts in the minister's report may be debatable, the errors I will itemize for the Speaker today are not. I will be providing the Speaker with copies of our supporting documentation.

On May 16, 2003, in response to Order Paper Question No. 194, the government stated that the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade had spent $45,000 since May 2001 on the firearms program. The minister's performance report erroneously reported that the Department of Foreign Affairs had spent nothing. The Speaker will know that foreign affairs issues import and export permits for hundreds of thousands of firearms annually. I do not think anyone in government believes that this is done for nothing or for a mere $45,000. That is the first example of an error.

In response to the same Order Paper Question No. 194 on May 16, Treasury Board stated, “The 2002-03 Departmental Performance report for the Department of Justice will report Firearms Program expenditures accordingly”. The justice minister's performance report provided no such costs for Treasury Board.

I followed up Treasury Board's broken promise to Parliament with an Access to Information Act request. On December 31, 2003, Treasury Board had the nerve to say that it had no records of what it had spent during its eight years of aiding and abetting the billion dollar boondoggle. Now members cannot even believe the government's response to our Order Paper questions.

The first paragraph of the minister's performance report on the Canadian firearms program states:

The attention to the Program sparked by the December 2002 Auditor General's Report emphasized concern about both costs and reporting, while confirming that the program continues to be supported by the majority of Canadians.

If the Speaker reviews chapter 10 of the Auditor General's December 2002 report to Parliament, he will find no such statement confirming that the program continues to be supported by the majority of Canadians. That is an incorrect statement.

The first paragraph also states:

In addition, initiatives were undertaken to address the complexities of the compliance requirements and ensure successful completion of firearms registration by the deadline of December 31, 2002.

This statement is misleading because it leaves the false impression that the firearms registration phase of the program was actually successfully completed.

How could firearms registration be successfully completed, as the minister states in his performance report, when on October 23, 2003, William V. Baker, Commissioner of Firearms, testifying before the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, stated, “We've had over 1 million long guns registered since January 1, the original deadline”.

Further statistics and information obtained by my office through the Access to Information Act, prove that the gun registration is still far from completed. However, none of this information was provided in either the departmental estimates or the minister's performance report on the firearms program.

For example, the total number of valid firearms license holders that still have not registered a gun is 414,283. How can it be said it is completed when there are that many gun owners who have not even registered a firearm?

The total number of gun owners that still have to re-register or dispose of their handguns is 318,846.

The government estimates of the total number of firearms that still have to be registered is 1.1 million. The total number of hand guns that still have to be re-registered is 625,829.

The CFC also admitted that it did not collect statistics on the 288,000 guns brought into Canada by foreign visitors. Non-compliance is now so bad that the CFC has developed a national compliance strategy and program. If the government hides these important facts from Parliament, it should make everyone wonder what else it is hiding.

In the fourth paragraph of the report it states,“The Minister of Justice accepted the Auditor General's recommendation to improve reporting to Parliament”.

The truth is the government still refuses to provide the major additional costs recommended by the Auditor General in paragraph 10.29 of the Auditor General's December 2002 report to Parliament. The Speaker can find this fact in the government's response to Order Paper Question No. 202 in Hansard for May 26, 2003.

We have also identified a number of other departments that have incurred direct and indirect costs implementing the Firearms Act and regulations that were not included in the minister's performance report as recommended in the Auditor General's report.

I could go on, Mr. Speaker, and I have documented many other examples of factual errors. I have given you five in the minister's report to Parliament that are enough to prove our case.

On page 225 of Joseph Maingot's Parliamentary Privilege in Canada, he describes contempt as an offence against the authority or dignity of the House.

On page 119 of Erskine May's 21st edition, it states:

The Commons may treat the making of a deliberately misleading statement as a contempt.

The 22nd edition of Erskine May, on page 63, describes ministerial responsibility and states:

--it is of paramount importance that ministers give accurate and truthful information to Parliament, correcting any inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity. Ministers who knowingly mislead Parliament will be expected to offer their resignation to the Prime Minister...

On February 2, 2002, the Speaker ruled a question of privilege to be prima facie even though the minister of justice who made misleading statements in the House said that he had no intention of misleading the House. The Speaker felt that it was in the best interests of the House to have a committee look into the matter.

To perform the fundamental functions, the House has always insisted on accurate and truthful information. That is why the making of erroneous and misleading statements in the House may be treated as contempt.

On October 31, 2003, the justice minister tabled a report that was factually wrong in a number of ways and clearly misled the House. I have here a much longer list and evidence of how the report was factually wrong and I can give this to the Speaker as he wishes. This continual cover up and contempt of Parliament has to stop. We are getting fed up.

I am prepared to move the appropriate motion should the Speaker rule that the matter is a prima facie case of privilege.

[Justice, November 7th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, what a totally irrelevant answer. My question was about domestic violence and getting at the root causes of it, and the minister did not answer.

The justice minister's performance report tabled in the House last week documented an additional $47 million in indirect costs for the gun registry, never before reported to the House.

However, the report did not answer the one question everyone has been asking for the last 11 months. How much will it cost to fully implement the registry and how much will it cost to maintain it?

[Justice, November 7th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, on February 16, 1995, the justice minister promised the House that “Registration will assist us to deal with the scourge of domestic violence”.

This week, Statistics Canada reports that family homicides have increased by 28% in the last three years, and domestic homicides with registered guns have almost doubled in the last year.

How many lives would have been saved if the government had spent $1 billion addressing the root causes of domestic violence?

[Petitions, November 5th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the second group of petitions comes mainly from Saskatchewan and again contain hundreds of names.

The petitioners point out that Parliament voted in 1999 to preserve the traditional definition of marriage. Because of recent court decisions that have redefined it, they are calling upon Parliament to immediately hold a renewed debate on the definition of marriage and to reaffirm as it did in 1999 its commitment to take all necessary steps to preserve marriage as the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others.

[Petitions, November 5th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I have quite a large number of petitions to present today and I have put them into two groups.

The first group of petitions comes mainly from Alberta and British Columbia and contains hundreds of names.

The petitioners draw the attention of the House to private member's Motion No. M-83 and request that the Standing Committee on Health fully examine, study, and report to Parliament on whether or not abortions are medically necessary for the purpose of maintaining health, preventing disease, or diagnosing or treating an injury, illness, or disability in accordance with the Canada Health Act, and on the health risks for women undergoing abortions compared to women carrying their babies to full term.

[Question No. 248, October 28th, 2003]

With respect to the following statements from page two of the Government of Canada Regulatory Policy published by the Privy Council Office “to ensure that use of the government’s regulatory powers results in the greatest net benefit to society,” and “the government will weigh the benefits of alternatives to regulation, and of alternative regulations, against their cost, and focus resources where they can do the most good”: ( a ) what are all the benefits of gun ownership in Canada; ( b ) what are all the direct and indirect costs of regulating firearms ownership in Canada; and ( c ) what were the benefits and costs for each of the alternatives to regulating firearms ownership weighed by the government?

[Criminal Code, October 23rd, 2003]

Madam Speaker, this is a gross miscarriage of justice. DNA analysis prevents crime. It helps solve crime and it puts real criminals in jail.

As all hon. members know, I am familiar with that useless $1 billion gun registry. It does not prevent crime, does not solve crime and completely ignores real criminals. If we were to put just a fraction of that money into the DNA lab we would accomplish something.

I ask those who are listening, do they believe the hon. parliamentary secretary or do they believe an expert who works in Regina and knows exactly what is going on there? He knows what he is talking about. He is an expert in that field.

I would like to conclude by reading a section of an October 17 column by Doug Beazley in the Edmonton Sun . He summed up this whole Liberal mess this way:

One thing we do know: money can fix this.

Hepworth estimates another $5 million a year could beat the backlog down--chickenfeed compared to the $1 billion our federal government has squandered on a gun registry which has yet to save a single life.

What a warped sense of priorities. What a bloody waste.

[Criminal Code, October 23rd, 2003]

Madam Speaker, on October 8, I asked the Solicitor General to explain why registering firearms is a higher priority than uncovering DNA evidence that would put real criminals behind bars.

I am here tonight once again because the Solicitor General failed to answer the question. I am also here tonight to provide evidence that refutes the minister's claim that the Liberals are doing a good job at the forensic labs and on gun control.

I did not have to go very far to find this evidence that the Solicitor General either does not know what he is talking about or is being fed a line by the RCMP under his command. It appears in a letter to the editor from retired RCMP Staff Sergeant and forensics expert Mr. Dave Hepworth. He has over 30 years' experience in the RCMP labs, including a stint as the laboratory section head.

On October 18, Mr. Hepworth responded to two letters, one from the Solicitor General published in the Regina Leader-Post on October 11, and one from the RCMP assistant commissioner in charge of the forensic labs.

Mr. Hepworth wrote:

In an Oct. 17 letter in the Leader-Post, the RCMP assistant commissioner in charge of forensic lab services reported 615 DNA cases in active analysis, 30 cases open and ready to be entered into analysis, and 38 cases unopened. This equates to a total of 683 DNA cases in backlog across Canada. By any measurement, this is a huge backlog that has resulted in average response times of 55 days for urgent cases--those involving suspected serial offenders such as rapists or murderers.

He went on to say:

Internally, the RCMP has a corporate diary date of 15 days on urgent cases, but so far this year has only met that diary date in approximately 26 per cent of the cases submitted as urgent. From the standpoint of both a forensic scientist and citizen of Canada I find this unacceptable.

Timely DNA analysis used in conjunction with the national DNA databank is not only capable of solving crime; it has a great potential for preventing crime.

In his letter, the solicitor general points out that Regina is to become “our national centre of scientific expertise on firearms,” but does he know the state of that facility?

At present, there is approximately one-half the number of firearms specialists there were five years ago. Case backlogs within the firearms discipline have reached the 400 zone and response times have grown from approximately two weeks to four months. Currently there are only three people in training and within the next few years a large percentage of the senior specialists are due to retire.

Recently, it was announced that firearms examination services would no longer be provided to provincial wildlife enforcement officers anywhere in Canada. Why? The answer is simple: “insufficient resources”. This means that with hunting season at hand, withdrawal of firearms section services has, in effect, declared open season on poaching. I would simply ask the question, “does this sound like our national centre of scientific expertise on firearms?” It sounds more like a system in crisis!

That is a very long quote, Madam Speaker, but you get the idea, and this man is an expert.

Just yesterday, in a column that appeared in the Winnipeg Free Press , Mr. Hepworth wrote:

I urge each and every one of you to ask your MP this simple question. If you had a tool that could prevent crime and needless suffering, save the taxpayers money and solve crimes, why wouldn't you use it?

As Canadians, we deserve an answer to that question. After all, our government was willing to spend $1 billion on a gun registry; a system that has yet to provide evidence it has saved a single life. We have the tools to make a difference. We only need the motivation and vision to use them.

The Solicitor General will not answer our questions. Will he answer Mr. Hepworth's questions? He makes the very good point that we have resources, and we have seen within the last little while $10 million--

[Canadian Wheat Board, October 23rd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, through access to information, a reporter was able to gain access to CSIS files. He received information on the Palestinian Islamic jihad fundraising activities, yet at the same time Canadians cannot find out about the Canadian Wheat Board activities. It is exempt from access to information.

We cannot get an explanation as to why farmers received less for their wheat last year than the going world price. Why are the activities of the Canadian Wheat Board more secretive than our spy agency?