Garry Breitkreuz

[An Act to amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals and firearms) and the Firearms Act, April 7th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the answer, of course, is that it is not addressed in the bill. We now have provinces that have taken a close look at this in the last few years. Eight provinces and territories do not want to have anything to do with it. There are only two provinces left, Quebec and Prince Edward Island, that are trying to co-operate with the federal government in implementing the firearms registry. That is a huge problem for the government.

It begs the question: If there are this many provinces and territories that do not want to have anything to do with the firearms registry, why on God's green earth is the government still plowing ahead with the proposed legislation? Do these provinces and territories not care about public safety? Do they not want to put in place laws that are going to be helpful to the people of this country? If there are that many people objecting to this and there is a criminal law that exempts certain segments of the population, that criminal law ought to be scrapped. That should be self-evident. Why are we continuing to go ahead with something like this?

These amendments do not address some of the huge problems that we see in the bill.

In fact, we have the government saying, “Canadians still support us”, but there now are polls being done that indicate the complete opposite.

The other day the government claimed that Canadians support it. An Environics poll said that 53% of Canadians supported the firearms registry. I was asked to go on national television to respond to that poll. Before I would go on, I said I wanted to see the questions asked in this poll that showed Canadians wanted the firearms registry. At first, they refused to even let me see those questions, but I demanded it, saying that before I would go on and face a Liberal MP I wanted to know what those questions were all about.

Had I known I would be asked this question, I would have had them in front of me. I discovered in reviewing those questions that in fact the government had asked a whole series of questions like the following. “Do you support safe storage of firearms?” “Do you support the gun registry?” That was mixed in there. “Do you support safety courses that firearms owners should be asked to take?” They were asked if they supported a whole bunch of things, all in one question. If I were faced with that I would have to answer yes, and I know what a huge boondoggle the firearms fiasco is. Yet the government then appeals to that particular question as huge support for the gun registry when in fact that is not what the question was really about. Then it went on to a second question that again mixed up several things and the government says, “This is support for our firearms registry”.

There is not public support for the firearms registry once the public knows what it is. The government calls this a gun control bill. When the public discovers that it has nothing to do with gun control, that it is merely a gun registry, that it is merely laying a piece of paper beside every firearm in the country, they do not support it any longer. When the public is asked the question in a poll, “do you support gun control?”, in essence, we all do, but the firearms registry is not gun control.

As the hon. member just asked me about, that is why the provinces and territories said, “Get rid of this and give us more money to put police on the street”. We could put up to 12,000 police on the streets of this country and that would improve public safety. It has been demonstrated by other governments that this actually works in reducing crime. That is at the heart of the question. What is cost effective? What really works to reduce crime?

The previous finance minister, the member for LaSalle—Émard, approved the spending for this entire program without giving us a cost benefit analysis. In fact, he violated the government's own guidelines. The Treasury Board guidelines mandate that before a big new program like this we should have a cost benefit analysis: Is it going to improve public safety and is it going to be cost effective in doing that? That is why the provinces and territories are saying, “Scrap this program. We need effective measures to reduce crime and improve public safety”.

I could go on and on. The bill shows the lack of consultation on the part of the government. It rammed ahead a piece of legislation that is now seriously flawed. The bottom line is that these amendments do not correct the huge deficiencies in Bill C-68. They do not make it gun control.

That is why the Canadian Alliance is going to oppose this. It is just a waste of taxpayers' hard-earned money.

[An Act to amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals and firearms) and the Firearms Act, April 7th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, this afternoon I want to address the bill. We have raised various objections to the government even introducing this in the way that it has, but I want to go on to address some of the key and fundamental flaws and problems with this entire issue before us. First I want to give some reasons for why in Bill C-10A, which is an amendment to the original Bill C-68, introduced and passed with invoking closure back in 1995, there are serious flaws, with the government tinkering with this at this point. It is not nearly good enough and will not do anything to suddenly make this gun control.

No matter what the government says, Bill C-68, which was passed in 1995, is not gun control. Let us remember that through this entire debate. It is not improving public safety in any measurable way. It is not reducing crime. It is not doing any of the things that the government claimed it would do for the cost to taxpayers, for the original $2 million. It has gone 500 times over cost, maybe even more according to the Auditor General, and it is not accomplishing what the government wants.

The reason I want to deal with this is that, first of all, this bill, Bill C-10A, should be sent back to the Senate, the other place, as we often refer to it, for more sober second thought.

Let us look at the history of this particular bill before us now, these amendments. The House of Commons really has the authority to split bills. The Senate does not have that authority. The question the government has to ask is this: If we do not follow our Constitution, which guides us, why do we even have a Constitution? That, to me, is something that we cannot override. I know that the government is asking us to vote on whether we can remove our privileges. We cannot vote to remove the privileges of members of the House of Commons. That is against all parliamentary practice. That should never be allowed and the government is getting away with it, claiming, as I just heard members say, that it is allowed, it is fine. Many people rise as individuals on questions of privilege because the government cannot vote to take away those privileges.

The second point I would like to make with regard to why the bill should be sent back to the Senate is that the amendments to the Firearms Act contained in Bill C-10A are more than two years old and do not even come close to addressing all the problems, all the amendments, all the things that have been identified in the last two years as huge problems with the firearms registry. They do not do any of that.

That is why the bill should be sent back. That is why the whole thing should be scrapped: because the problems with the Firearms Act are not addressed by Bill C-10A, the bill that is now before us which the government would like to push through. The government does not want to go through all the stages of the bill, because if it did, more and more problems would be highlighted. It does not want to send it back to the committee stage so witnesses can come forward and point out the huge problems with the Firearms Act.

That is why the government wants us to ram it through right now. That is why it wants us to go against our privileges and go through the various stages of the bill. It does not want the bill to go back to committee to have the experts who know how the bill is unfolding come to that committee and say, “These amendments in Bill C-10A do not address the problems”. That is why this thing should be withdrawn, taken off the table and done away with.

Let us look at what the Auditor General said on the cost of implementing the Canadian firearms program. Her report highlights some of the huge problems. Let us look at the error rate she identified. The Auditor General quoted various experts who have studied this and who say that the error rate is up to 90% on the registration certificates that are sent in; 90% of them contain errors.

That is not addressed in this bill. This is the biggest garbage collection system in the nation, and the most expensive, and the bill does not address that. Why are we even dealing with the bill if it does not address the huge problems with that? All we have to do is look at the RCMP's Canadian firearms program report for the information that verifies what I just said.

The government scrapped the whole verification process that was supposed to ensure that the information collected was accurate. It did it for the first million registration certificate applications but after that it was scrapped. We now have five million firearms in the registry with inaccurate information. The police cannot rely on it. It is garbage in garbage out. That is another problem that has not been addressed by Bill C-10A but there are many others.

The privacy commissioner put out a report entitled “Review of the Personal Information Handling Practices of the Canadian Firearms Program”. He chastized the government for the huge problems it has caused and for the violation of the privacy rights of all Canadians. The government did not address any of that in Bill C-10A. Why are we dealing with that today if the bill is totally inadequate in addressing some of the concerns brought forward?

I know my time is limited but I want to deal with as many issues as I can because they are all important.

Bill C-10A does not include some of the most important amendments needed to track high risk persons. While the government is spending hundreds of millions of dollars tracking down law-abiding firearms owners, such as duck hunters, sport shooters, people who use firearms in a recreational and healthy way, it does not track true criminals.

There are 131,000 people in this country who have been prohibited from owning firearms. The government has not even bothered to ask the police to see if those individuals have firearms. It does not enforce laws already on the books and now it has a totally ineffective gun registry.

I listened to the justice minister as he answered my questions in question period. He said that the firearms registry was a huge success when in fact the licensing provisions in it have denied 9,000 people permission to buy a firearm. He did not mention the 131,000 people have been denied that privilege and nobody has even checked on them. They do not even have to report a change of address. However law-abiding gun owners have to report their change of address within one month or they could face up to two years in jail. None of these huge problems are addressed in the bill.

As the Canadian Alliance has said all along, the bill goes after the wrong people in society. Why do we not go after the criminal in society rather than law-abiding people?

Another problem with the bill is that the amendments to the Firearms Act do not address the amendments recommended and accepted by the justice minister in the Hession report. The justice minister made a huge issue of the fact that he would do an internal audit of the firearms registry. After the Auditor General released her report on December 3, 2002, he made a big deal about reviewing it and bringing forward proposals to make it work.

Bill C-10A has been back and forth from the House of Commons to the Senate and none of the things that Mr. Hession identified are in the bill. Why are we even debating this today? The bill is old. The problems that have come forth in the firearms registry have not been addressed in it and yet the minister has claimed that somehow it will improve things.

The amendments in Bill C-10A to the Firearms Act do not meet the requirements to implement the justice minister's action plan. The government announced recently that it wants to transfer the Canadian firearms program from the justice department to the Solicitor General's department. Is there anything in the bill in regard to that? No. The government is violating its own rules. There is no provision in government for this to happen.

The section of Bill C-68 dealing with firearms defines the federal minister as the Minister of Justice. The Firearms Act is riddled with references to the federal minister and his authority under the act, the regulations, orders in council, safety course forms and even the appointment of the new commissioner of the firearms registry in Bill C-10A. All of this is in the bill but the government has announced that it will be transferred to the Solicitor General. Will it bring in another bill immediately following this one? Why not withdraw this and do things properly.

The House of Commons voted five times on Bill C-68: at second reading, at report state, third reading and on two time allocation motions. The Standing Committee on Justice spent weeks studying and reporting to Bill C-68, many of which were rejected by the justice department, but a change to the definition of federal minister was never suggested or considered.

The clear intent of the government was that the firearms program be administered by the justice department. If the government wants to transfer administration of the Firearms Act to another minister, it must be brought back before the House for a full debate of why the program will be better administered by the same people working under yet under another minister. All the government is doing is changing the name plates on the doors but it still requires an amendment in the House to do that.

The sixth issue that I bring forward is that the amendments to the Firearms Act in Bill C-10A do not address the 250 amendments proposed to Bill C-68 in 1995 by the then Reform Party in the report stage debate. All of them were rejected by the government. In hindsight, the government should have accepted those. It still has not. It has not fixed what is broken.

Today in my office we received 517 pages of briefing notes prepared for the Minister of Justice. Here are some of the quotes about Bill C-10 contained in them. I would like to read them.

In the notes dated October 18, 2002, and provided to the minister in preparation for his meeting with the Quebec minister of justice, under the section entitled Bill C-10A, it states:

The legislation will consolidate the operation of the Program at the federal level under a Commissioner of Firearms, incorporate the firearms registry under the Minister of Justice and enable Canada to meet international obligations under the United Nations Protocol and the OAS Firearms Convention.

My question for the justice minister or the Solicitor General is: Why is the minister now saying that he is going to transfer the gun registry to the Solicitor General? Why is this transfer not made in Bill C-10A?

Another point in regard to what we found in these briefing notes reads:

In the “approved” copy of the Justice Minister's 'opening remarks' concerning the amendments in Bill C-10 to the Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs dated October 24, 2002 it states: “We are consolidating the statutory authority for all administration under a Canadian Firearms Commissioner who will report directly to the Minister of Justice”.

The question that needs to be answered is: Why has the minister changed his mind since he told the Senate this? Why is the government proposing now to consolidate the statutory authority under the Solicitor General? The government is changing its mind constantly and none of that is reflected in the bill.

The e-mail goes on to state:

In the “revised 02-10-23” version of the “questions and answers C-10 amendments on firearms”, question #6 states: “Why have a Firearms Commissioner and how will this change the RCMP's involvement in the program?”

The next question is:

Consolidating administrative authority for all operations under a Canadian Firearms Commissioner would ensure more direct accountability to the Justice Minister, who will remain responsible to Parliament for the program. This would in turn enhance financial accountability.

The question we have to ask is: Do we know how financially accountable the justice minister has been? The Auditor General has told us and I think that is quite clear. The justice minister still has not told us how much the gun registry has cost to date or how much it will cost to fully implement. His Plans and Priorities report tabled in the House was filled with 105 blanks; an unbelievable report that he has put forward. In many areas costs are totally unaccounted for.

Why has the Justice Minister changed his mind since the end of October? How will the amendments in Bill C-10A make the Solicitor General any more accountable to Parliament than the justice minister?

I would now like to go on to the second part of my intervention today. I have 14 questions that the justice minister must answer before Parliament and must give before Parliament before we proceed with the legislation. I will go through these in the next few minutes.

The first question the justice minister should ask before we proceed with Bill C-10A is this. The poorly worded Firearms Act amendments proposed in Bill C-10A were first introduced in the House two years ago. Many things have changed in the last two years, including recommendations from Mr. Hession calling for even more amendments to streamline the gun registry operation. Why not just put all the amendments from the minister's upcoming action plan into one new bill and let the House debate them all at once? Why do it in this manner?

The next question I would like to ask is this. The lawyers in the Library of Parliament and witnesses appearing before the justice committee exposed some serious ambiguity if the new definition of muzzle velocity and muzzle energy in Bill C-10A is implemented. The justice minister refused to consider a simple amendment to remove the confusion. Why will the minister not ask the Senate to pass this simple amendment when it reports its amendments to the cruelty to animals sections? Why did it not put that in before it reported this back to the House?

The next question is this. Since Bill C-68 came into force in December 1998, the government has passed six amnesties for the tens of thousands of banned short-barrelled handguns covered by the amendments in Bill C-10A, proving once again that these banned firearms are not dangerous at all when in the hands of their licensed owners. Considering Mr. Hession's recommendations for more amendments to streamline handgun ownership and transportation, why does the government not just introduce a new bill so Parliament can debate all the amendments to Bill C-68 all at once?

My fourth question that the justice minister should answer before we pass this is this. RCMP testing has confirmed that many air guns, pellet guns and even some BB guns exceed both the muzzle energy and muzzle velocity requirements in Bill C-10A and will have to be registered just as soon as Bill C-10A is proclaimed. How many millions of air guns, pellet guns and BB guns will now have to be registered and how much will it cost to register them? The justice minister should answer that question. He has avoided this at every opportunity he has had to answer it, and yet it is a key question.

How many criminals will this create when this is passed? People who have purchased air guns, pellet guns and BB guns, which will now, with the new definition contained here, have to be registered, will not even have obtained a firearms licence, and cannot, if they are in possession of one of these firearms, with the way Bill C-68, the Firearms Act, is worded, and will become criminals.

The fifth question I would like to ask is this. There may be as many as one million air gun and pellet gun owners. Has the government notified those people? What will the government do with them? Has it notified them that their guns will have to be registered and they have to get a licence? How will that all work? There may be as many as one million air gun and pellet gun owners in Canada. Not only do most of them not know that their pellet guns are about to become firearms that need to be registered, but they do not know how to do it or what the whole process is. How does the justice minister plan to deal with this huge problem?

The next question is this. The way the Firearms Act is currently worded, it does not permit anyone to register a firearm that is currently unregistered unless they hold a valid firearms licence and sent a letter of intent to the justice minister before December 31. Owners of these air guns and pellet guns did not know before now that some of their guns needed to be registered. What amendments are needed in order to allow these newly minted gun owners to licence themselves and register their air guns? How is that going to happen?

None of that is addressed in Bill C-10A. It is an extremely flawed bill and that is why the Canadian Alliance opposes it.

Based upon the new definition of a firearm as contained in Bill C-10A, how many millions more will it cost taxpayers to licence all these air guns and pellet guns? How much will it cost? The justice minister should answer that.

The RCMP testing has confirmed that many of the air guns, pellet guns and even some BB guns exceed the muzzle energy and muzzle velocity required in the new Bill C-10A. What has the government done to deal with the issue and to inform gun owners?

What has the government done to deal with the issue, to inform gun owners?

Mr. Speaker, I have a great deal more I need to relate on this. I hope at some point I will be able to do that. I would like to propose an amendment at this time. I move:

That the amendment be amended by inserting after the words “by the Senate” in the last line of the first paragraph of the amendment the words “goes beyond the authority of the Senate and”.

[An Act to amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals and firearms) and the Firearms Act, April 7th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member as well and draw attention to something that she said. I appreciated her remarks very much. She has drawn attention to one of the key problems that exists in the government bringing forth the bill in the manner in which it did.

In the motion, the government says that it does not want to have this particular bill handled in a way that would represent some kind of a precedent. I believe that the precedent has already been set.

If we look at the Speaker's ruling that was rendered a few moments ago, he alluded to the fact that this has already been done before, so we can do it again. The government says it does not want it to be a precedent, but it is already becoming a precedent by the way it is handling it. I would like the hon. members comments on that.

I would also like her to answer this question, is it not the reason that the government is violating privileges in this way because it does not want to face the fact that there is huge mismanagement in this area, and if the House were to go through the proper procedures of this it would highlight the fact that this bill has been poorly dealt with, poorly enacted, poorly drafted, and that the government does not want to follow these procedures as it properly should?

[An Act to amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals and firearms) and the Firearms Act, April 7th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I believe before we can move forward there should be some kind of a ruling on that, but I have another completely separate point of order that I would like to raise in regard to this.

If we go to today's Notice Paper, there is some wording in the motion that we are debating today that is causing me concern. The motion from today's Order Paper reads, and I would like to quote:

That this House, while disapproving of any infraction of its privileges or rights by the other House, in this case waives its claim to insist upon such rights and privileges, but the waiver of said rights and privileges is not to be drawn into a precedent;--

That motion raises two questions that I believe have to be answered before we proceed. Number one, is it possible to waive privileges? Second, if it is, should not the privileges we are waiving be clearly stated in the motion?

I was not able to find any Canadian parliamentary references to this point, but there were two in the Australian parliament that I would like to refer to because they had to deal with this particular issue, and, as you know, Mr. Speaker, they share a common heritage in regard to parliamentary tradition.

Odgers' Australian Senate Practice , Tenth Edition , under a section titled “Waiver of Privilege”, on page 69 states, and I will quote:

From time to time suggestions are made of a House or its members “waiving their privilege”, for example, by allowing the examination of particular parliamentary procedures by a court in a particular case. Such suggestions are misconceived. It is not possible--

And I emphasize this:

It is not possible for either a House or a member to waive, in whole or in part, any parliamentary immunity. The immunities of the Houses are established by law and a House or a member cannot change that law any more than they can change any other law. This was clearly indicated by a case in the Senate in 1985. A petition by solicitors requesting that the Senate “waive its privilege” in relation to evidence given before a Senate committee was not acceded to, principally on the ground that the Senate does not have the power to waive an immunity established by law.

Odgers' Australian Senate Practice , Sixth Edition , under a section titled “Waiving of Privilege”, on page 1037 states, and I quote again:

On 24 September 1952, a member of the House of Representatives asked the Speaker (Hon. A.G. Cameron) if it was possible for a Member of the House to waive Parliamentary privilege. The following day the Speaker replied as follows:

And I will continue with the quotation:

Each member enjoys an individual privilege which guarantees him certain powers and immunities needful to perform his functions as one of that collective body which is this House. But the privilege becomes a collective privilege in relation to anything said or done in this House in the discharge of his duties and functions. One of the oldest privileges of Parliament and the one most obvious to us all is the privilege of free speech within the chamber. Once something has been said in this House it becomes the collective property of the House, although the responsibility for saying it rests on the member. A member is always at liberty to retract or qualify something said here, but he cannot divest his statement, once having uttered it, of the privileges of the House. Nor can he, by a subsequent statement made under the same privilege, waive, cancel, impair, or destroy the privilege protecting his original statement.

I understand that similar wording has been used in the House, in 1997, but the motion also said and I quote:

--but the waiver of said rights and privileges is not to be drawn into a precedent;--

Mr. Speaker, you can read my lips: I do not believe that the government can waive the privileges of any member of this House at any time. The government cannot violate the privileges of any member, not even once.

I would like clarification on the two points I have raised. Is it possible to waive privileges? And if it is, should not the privileges we are waiving be clearly stated in the motion?

I look forward to your ruling on this, Mr. Speaker.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2003, April 2nd, 2003]

I hear them complaining about my comments on this.

This is an ethical issue. Why should our children and grandchildren be saddled with this huge debt, having to pay that for generations to come? Why do we have to support the government's habit of wasting money on a gun registry, on wasting money on all kinds of slush fund programs and not paying down the debt? That is unforgiveable.

The government should seriously look at the trust that has been placed in it by Canadians. It has to take that seriously and start doing the right thing. That would be to pay down the debt.

One of the things that has really come to the fore lately is that there will be a great leadership change within the Liberal Party. The leaders that are coming forward now have been the ones that have been signing the cheques, that have been part of the mess that has been created in this country. For us to suddenly think that this is somehow going to change if there is a change in leadership is again misleading Canadians.

We should remind Canadians that this firearms registry, which has become a symbol of what is wrong with this country, was funded by a finance minister who now wants to become Prime Minister. I warn Canadians that we have to start to make substantial changes in this country or we will continue to slide downhill.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2003, April 2nd, 2003]

This backward budget really reflects the backward Liberal promises that it contains.

The government projected another $2 billion on Kyoto. It is probably the same as the gun registry. Where is that money going? What are we going to get for it? Has a cost benefit analysis been done? No. We have asked for a cost benefit analysis. The minister who is now replying to me was one of those people who should have done the cost benefit analysis on the gun registry before she handed it over to the next justice minister and before he handed it over to the Solicitor General. That cost benefit analysis should be done.

Are taxpayers getting value for their money? Absolutely not, because that study which I have asked for has never been relayed to Parliament. In fact when the Auditor General brought her report out on December 3 last year, she clearly said that Parliament has been kept in the dark. That is one of the ways it has been kept in the dark . Where is the cost benefit analysis? It has never been given to Parliament. We do not know if there are any benefits at all and whether they are cost effective in saving lives and reducing crime. But I digress.

The Canadian Alliance also believes, and I really want to underline this one, that the child care options should be given to parents and not to bureaucrats. Every parent in this country deserves the opportunity to choose the kind of child care he or she wants. By limiting their choices the government is doing a disservice to parents.

One program which I think has become a symbol of what is wrong with government in this country is the whole gun registry program, or as the Liberals like to paint it, gun control. I challenge Canadians to scratch below the surface on issues. If they scratched below the surface on this issue, they would realize that the gun registry has nothing to do with gun control, yet the government is asking for more and more money. The projected cost by the end of next year that the government admits to is $1.07 billion. It is unbelievable.

Last week the government released a report on priorities and spending on the gun registry program. The government filled in a few of the blanks in this report, but there were 105 blanks where it did not know what the costs were.

It is unforgiveable that a government would table its spending priorities and leave all of those blanks. I call it shooting blanks. In effect the government is keeping Parliament in the dark. It is firing a bunch of missiles across here, asking Canadians to believe this is gun control when in fact it is not.

What could the government do with $1 billion? I was listening to my colleague a few minutes ago talking about how many MRIs could be bought. MRIs in our medical clinics would really help preserve people's lives and help improve the health of this country. That is not being provided.

The government could get 238 MRIs fully installed, staffed and running for that kind of money. If those MRIs were spread out across the country we would have something that is cost effective. That is why a cost benefit analysis is so important and needs to be done. It has not been done.

When former Bill C-68 was introduced the government was spending $16 million a year on cancer research. Think of the number of lives that could be saved if $1 billion was put into cancer research. That is why a cost benefit analysis is needed.

The Liberals will always come up with the mantra that if it saves one life, it is worth it. How many lives are being lost because of the misplaced spending priorities of the government? It is unforgiveable that it would go down this road and not examine what could be better done with that money.

The Liberals are great at creating impressions. I believe this is what the budget was all about. I believe that the gun registry was simply creating an impression. Why? To get votes. The Liberals were playing politics with taxpayers' hard-earned money, creating impressions that they are somehow improving public safety, creating the impression in the budget that somehow they are improving the lot of Canadians.

If Canadians scratched below the surface, and I challenge them to do that, they would find that the opposite was true, that the Liberals are taking the hard-earned money away from Canadians and putting it into funds that really do not accomplish anything in a material way.

My colleague talked about the amount of money that is collected through gasoline taxes, almost $5 billion a year. The government talks about its infrastructure project. If we actually scratched below the surface on that, we would see it is just a helter-skelter spending of money here, there and everywhere with no focused direction in getting our products to market and ensuring that it is helping the Canadian economy. If that was the government's purpose it would use that $5 billion to improve the highways in this country, to put in place those things in our transportation system that will be effective and truly help Canadians.

I have to touch on one other thing. It is unforgiveable and borders on a crime for the government to not pay down the debt when we have the opportunity to do so.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2003, April 2nd, 2003]

It would be the gun registry but we will get there in a minute.

There is a lot more of a surplus than the government would have us believe. Surplus is a nice word for overtaxation. If we used that surplus to lower the taxes, we could create a lot of jobs in this country. There would be an incentive again to invest. Companies would have more. Canadians would have more money in their pockets to spend. They could buy goods and services in their local communities rather than send the money to Ottawa where it just gets lost in a big black hole.

That kind of tax reduction is desperately needed. It would help the poorest in this country. If we raised the personal tax exemption that would have a huge impact on helping poor people in this country.

The budget announced $17.4 billion in new spending initiatives over three years, but the tax cuts were only $2.3 billion. The Liberals talked about all the tax cuts and they were almost insignificant compared to the huge increases in spending.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2003, April 2nd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to briefly address the budget implementation bill.

One of the concerns the people in my riding of Yorkton--Melville have is that the budget really has turned the surplus into a slush fund. There are a whole bunch of different programs funded by the government. There is no direction. The Liberals are buying a few votes here, buying a few votes there and creating the impression that they are doing something wonderful for society, but when it comes right down to it and we look very carefully at it, there is really no substance to it.

I will deal in a few minutes with one of those slush fund projects that really is a symbol of what is wrong in this country.

[Question No. 159, March 31st, 2003]

With respect to the following statement in paragraph 10.29 of the Auditor General's 2002 Report to Parliament, “Further, in its Regulatory Impact Analysis Statements the Department of Justice did not provide Parliament with an estimate of all the major additional costs that would be incurred. This disclosure was required by the government's regulatory policy. The costs incurred by the provincial and territorial agencies in enforcing the legislation were not reported. In addition, costs that were incurred by firearms owners, firearms clubs, manufacturers, sellers, and importers and exporters of firearms, in their efforts to comply with the legislation were not reported.”, what is the total amount for each of these unreported costs since 1995?

[Firearms Program, March 31st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, last Tuesday the justice minister tried to keep Parliament in the dark again when he told the House that the firearms program would cost $113 million next year.

On Thursday, the justice minister's report on plans and priorities tabled in the House said the expenditures for the next fiscal year could actually be as high as $128 million.

Why did the minister give the House the lower number? Did he not know what was in his own report?