Garry Breitkreuz

[Privilege, March 14th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the process involved in tabling this omnibus bill on justice strikes at the very heart of democracy in parliament, and the process that we have just seen is the very heart of the problem.

A notice went out stating that there was going to be a briefing session at 11.45 a.m. today, and it was to be held on the omnibus bill that was to be tabled by the justice minister. We know that the government has made it a practice to leak information but this is a blatant contempt of parliament, Mr. Speaker. The notice went out, and it did not say media only. There was not even any mention of them.

The problem I have is that my staff member went to this briefing expecting to be told what was in the bill. No briefing was given to us or even scheduled before the bill was tabled. My executive assistant went to the briefing but he was not allowed in. However, a Liberal staff member was seen to enter. A little while later a reporter asked me questions about the bill, so it was not a lockup.

I am really shocked and dismayed by the contempt that the Minister of Justice holds for us as members of parliament. I cannot do my job as an MP if the government withholds information from us and it is obvious that this is a deliberate attempt to withhold information from us. The Liberals are deliberately undermining the opposition's ability to do its job of holding them accountable. We know why the Liberals do this. They want the media to give a favourable report on what they do. They want to avoid criticism.

In regard to this lack of process that is directed at the opposition, I take this personally, Mr. Speaker, because contrary to what the House leader said, that these were just a couple of bills from last year, rumour has it that there were substantial amendments to the Firearms Act. The government wants to draw attention away from that disaster.

The justice minister should be held in contempt of parliament. That is my main point. Democracy cannot operate if there is not a free flow of information, and this issue strikes at the very heart of the way Canadians want this country to be governed.

Canadians want us to hold the government accountable. I have had to submit over 70 access to information requests to this point already to find out what has been going on in the justice department and in the administration of that particular piece of legislation known as Bill C-68.

A key part of our role is to respond to legislation in the media in a timely fashion, to use the minister's own words. A point of privilege was dismissed earlier this week because it was ruled that the government made announcements outside of parliament on major issues. However, we could at least attend those. Here we were restricted. We were not allowed to go.

Now the government has done something designed to deliberately undermine our ability to effectively criticize legislation. It was deliberate, so that we were not able to respond in a timely fashion, and the news reports have already gone out on this.

It is no secret that the firearms legislation is a disaster. This omnibus bill contains amendments to—

[Supply, March 13th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, the member makes a good point. When the Liberals choose to find an excuse for not doing something they will find it. They will blame other people. When they have ample opportunity to do something right, they do not.

In 1995 the government had a choice. Sadly for our children and the most vulnerable in our society they made the wrong one.

When the next election rolls around I hope that the women, the children, the elderly and all Canadians who care about making our lives safer will remember the bad choice the Liberals made when they opposed the sex offender registry.

The Liberals are good at sounding compassionate without really being compassionate. I will continue to tell Canadians the truth about what the Liberals do. It is always the opposite of what they say. Registering law-abiding citizens but not criminals may be the Liberal way but it is the wrong way.

I heard today about how the Liberals agree with this motion. Will they act on it? We will see. Their past record does not speak well for them. Everyone in Canada should know it should be the other way around but try to tell them that when they are playing politics with the safety of our children.

Just today the solicitor general said that the government was not just going to spend dollars to create new registries. What did it do? In the next two years it is going to create a registry of private property, namely firearms. It is going to cost a horrific amount of money and there will be no benefit to it.

Back in 1995 the government said that if it created a gun registry and it saved one life it was going to be worth it. It has already cost one life. It was so poorly drafted that it has already cost one life in Newfoundland. We do not hear the Liberals saying anything about it. Here we have the opportunity to save lives, to protect the most vulnerable in society and they talk the talk but they do not walk the walk.

The solicitor general said that politicians do not get involved in law enforcement. The police in this country would like to have what we are calling for today. If we talk to grassroots policemen they have no use for the gun registry. It is an absolute useless tool to them. Professional criminals do not use a registry that can link them to any crime. It is as simple as that.

I would like to conclude with this.

It seems that when real criminals become more difficult to find, arrest or prosecute, the government lawmakers, the courts and the police turn to increasing their control of law abiding citizens. That seems to be what is happening in Canada.

Let us go after the real criminal.

[Supply, March 13th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, the Saturday headline in the Globe and Mail said it all “Pedophile back in jail for the fourth time”.

Finally after four convictions one sex offender has been required by the courts to tell police where he lives after he has been released from jail. A sex offender registry for one pedophile. What about the thousands of sex offenders who are on the loose and the police do not know where they live?

Last week the Calgary Sun headline screamed “Attack Stuns Community; Cops Launch Manhunt for Pedophile”. The newspaper reported that the assault took place Sunday night when a male armed with a knife rang the doorbell and forced his way into the house after the 14 year old babysitter answered the door. The pedophile locked the babysitter in the bathroom and then proceeded to sexually assault two sisters, aged 6 and 7.

Outraged Calgary parent Carrie Kohan said “What happened Sunday was the last straw”. She organized a rally last Friday to demand tougher first time penalties for child abuse and a national registry.

Fortunately the police were able to arrest the sex offender in this case within a few days. How much faster would they have apprehended this sicko if they had a registry of sex offenders residing in the city of Calgary? Would a sex offender registry have prevented this attack? We will never know.

It is terrible that the government has lost touch with the priorities of the people when it comes to fighting crime. Instead of implementing a national sex offender registry for convicted criminals back in 1995, the government implemented a national firearms registry for law-abiding citizens.

The Liberals by their actions demonstrated quite clearly that protecting women and children was not one of their priorities. They talk the talk but they do not walk the walk. This speech will expose the government's complete lack of political judgment when it comes to understanding people's priorities. The Liberals give the impression they are compassionate but the opposite is true when we examine what they did.

Until today, the government opposed a sex offender registry that could help police prevent crime and protect the public. Instead it supported spending $600 million on a useless gun registry. The police asked for a DNA databank for all criminals which would operate just like the national fingerprint system. However, the government refused opting instead for a system that protected criminals more than it did victims.

While the government refused to give police real tools to use to investigate sexual crimes and violent offences, the government chose to blow hundreds of millions of dollars on a gun registry with a 90% error rate. Now in an admission of defeat, the government is laying off staff, tripling production of registration applications and halting all attempts to accurately verify and identify firearms. This is another broken Liberal promise.

Members may remember in 1995 when parliament was promised that the gun registry would help police trace firearms. Police cannot trace something the registration system does not accurately identify.

Why did the government refuse to implement a national sex offender registry? We will find the answer in a government document entitled, “Report to Federal, Provincial and Territorial Ministers on Information Systems on Sex Offenders Against Children and Other Vulnerable Groups”. It was prepared by a federal-provincial-territorial working group on high risk offenders in October 1998.

The minister's working group reached a number of conclusions and arguments but not proceeding with the sex offender registry. I will spend the next few minutes outlining these reasons and arguments and commenting on each one.

First, the minister's working group said that a separate sex offender registry would duplicate a part of what has already available through CPIC. The same argument is true of the gun registry but that did not stop the government. Obviously the government thinks law-abiding gun owners are more dangerous than convicted sex offenders.

Second, the minister's working group said that a separate sex offender registry would be expensive and difficult to administer. The government has spent $600 million on a gun registry and employs about 2,000 government workers. Would a sex offender registry for convicted criminals really have been more expensive and difficult to administer than the gun registry it uses to track law-abiding citizens?

Third, the minister's working group said that the sex offender registry raises serious privacy concerns. On February 16 this year the Privacy Commissioner of Canada wrote me a three page letter outlining the serious privacy concerns he had with the information being collected and how it is used in the gun registry. He said the RCMP's firearms interest police database of some three and a half million Canadians, which is only supposed to have the names potentially dangerous individuals, actually included the names of witnesses and victims of crime. RCMP sources tell us there is a 50% error rate in this database. Canadians will be wondering why the Liberals were more interested in protecting the privacy of convicted sex offenders than they are in protecting the privacy of witnesses and victims of crime and law-abiding gun owners.

Fourth, the minister's working group said the administration of a sex offender registry would be particularly difficult with regard to the verification of identity. This is somehow an insurmountable administrative problem when trying to create a sex offender registry. However when it comes to the gun registry, the Liberals came up with a simple solution, force every law-abiding gun owner to carry a photo ID card. Would the government please explain to victims of sexual assault why it forces law-abiding gun owners to carry a photo ID but a sex offender does not have to?

Fifth, the minister's working group said the information in a sex offender registry would be of limited value unless supported by a more comprehensive screening process. The government did not hesitate to implement a more comprehensive screening process for law-abiding firearms owners. It even asked about marital problems, common law relationships and financial difficulties. These people have not even broken a law. Could the government please explain to the victims of sexual assault why comprehensive screening of convicted sex offenders is off limits?

Sixth, the minister's working group said that the Canadian Police Information Centre, CPIC, is so effective that it really is a national registry of sex offenders. In the very next paragraph it states that CPIC does not provide “compulsory registration of current addresses of sexual offenders beyond the end of any sentence”.

Why does the government not force convicted sex offenders to tell police where they live? A law-abiding gun owner can go to jail for up to two years if he or she fails to report an address change. If the Liberals force law-abiding firearms owners in the country to report every time they move, why not convicted sex offenders? The only conclusion one can reach is that the Liberals obviously think a law-abiding firearms owner is more dangerous than a convicted sex offender.

Seventh, the minister's working group said even with compulsory registration of sex offenders compliance would be low and that it would drive sex offenders underground. Gun owners who do not comply face a criminal penalty of up to 10 years in jail. Why does the government threaten sex offenders with 10 years in jail to see if they will comply? The Liberals are already claiming an 80% compliance rate with gun owners.

Eighth, the minister's working group said that without fingerprinting identification it would never be possible to be certain of the identity of a registered sex offender. The group says verifying the identity of the sex offender is further complicated by the falsification of records, misspelled names, duplicate names and can lead to serious problems of misidentification.

This is an every day occurrence in the gun registry where totally innocent people are confused with someone who incorrectly entered the RCMP database. Firearms officers are forced to investigate totally innocent people to confirm their identity. The RCMP records are never corrected so it happens again and again. Totally innocent people are publicly humiliated and investigated over and over again. Heaven forbid the Liberals would ever put convicted sex offenders through such a process.

Meanwhile, as the Liberal government put millions of law-abiding gun owners through this bureaucratic nightmare and humiliating hell making them pay a fee for the privilege, the Liberals gave thousands and thousands of sex offenders a free hand. Unfortunately some of these hands ended up molesting our children.

[The Senate, February 28th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, a Senate seat has now become vacant in the province of Saskatchewan with the resignation of Eric Berntson. This represents a wonderful opportunity for the government to reach out to western Canada and show that it is committed to meaningful parliamentary reform.

The Senate was created to provide the checks and balances necessary for a democracy to work effectively. Areas of high population should not run roughshod over less populated regions, and for the Senate to be properly accountable it must be elected.

The separation movement in my riding would likely not have started if the government had not neglected the agricultural areas of our country.

Our next senator in Saskatchewan should be selected by the people of Saskatchewan. The problem is not Canada. It is the federal government and the fact that we no longer have an effective democracy. It is more like an elected dictatorship.

Will the Prime Minister, who claims to represent the interests of all Canadians, allow this seat to be held in trust until the provincial government passes legislation to elect its federal representatives in the Senate?

[Gun Control, February 26th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, insiders tell us the RCMP's budget for the Canadian firearms registry has been cut by 40%. Twenty verifiers already have been laid off. Scenarios of up to 100% layoffs have been discussed with staff and union officials. Meanwhile, the staff has been directed to triple output.

In the past two years the RCMP has issued only 550,000 firearms registration certificates and the current backlog is over 180,000.

There are between seven million and twenty million firearms left to register in the next two years. The registrar says that there is a 90% error rate in the applications received and that it will take until 2010 to register all the legally owned firearms in Canada.

Why is the solicitor general cutting the registry's budget and laying off staff? I wish it was because the Liberals were rethinking the billion dollars they will waste on this futile exercise and spending it on fighting real crime. Unfortunately the layoffs probably have more to do with the justice minister's privatization plans than common sense.

[Marine Liability Act, February 23rd, 2001]

Democracy.

[Agriculture, February 23rd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, this is the problem; all talk and no action. The agriculture minister's AIDA program has failed to help the majority of farm families.

Over two years ago he announced his meagre attempts to help.

He has given the impression to the media and our city cousins that he has done a lot to assist farmers, but barely 50% of the funds announced have reached farmers.

Yesterday Statistics Canada confirmed what everyone but the Liberals know. Cash receipts are down for the third year in a row for grain farmers and soaring input costs are pushing farmers further into the dirt. Why does the government not keep its promises?

[Agriculture, February 23rd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday about 3,000 farmers joined a rally in Winchester, Ontario, to get the Liberals finally to pay attention to the ongoing farm income crisis. They have been forced to take drastic action because the Liberal government refuses to pay attention.

The agriculture minister's delaying tactics and refusal to take any real action will force thousands more producers off the land. This hurts all Canadians. How many bankruptcies, how many suicides, how terrible does the disaster have to become before the agriculture minister wakes up and gets emergency funds into the hands of farmers?

[Government Of Canada, February 22nd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, this government should be ashamed. It should be ashamed because it continues to fuel the flames of western alienation.

This past Friday a meeting was held in my hometown of Yorkton, where over 300 people joined together to discuss the idea of western separation. At the meeting it was stated over and over again that Ottawa ignores the west, and people had plenty of examples to back up their statements: the lack of attention to the farm crisis; the unaccountability of our Prime Minister; the lack of democracy in the House of Commons and Senate. The list goes on.

Unfortunately the government refuses to address any of these issues, which only adds fuel to the fire. We have been telling the Liberal government about the dissatisfaction of westerners for years and we have been giving the government ample ways to deal with the problems, yet it refuses to listen.

The movement for western separation did not just pop up overnight. It is the result of years of Liberal neglect of western issues and a lack of democracy. Now the government wants to blame farmers for this movement. What the Liberals cannot seem to realize is that it is their fault this whole issue arose and it is really not Canada that—

[Privacy Commissioner, February 20th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, that is not true, according to the privacy commissioner. Most of these 3.5 million Canadians in the police database do not even know the police have a file on them. They do not even know that they could become targets of police action because of the incorrect information the minister has on them.

The privacy commissioner raises other concerns in his letter that information in the police database is irrelevant and exceeds the authority granted to the minister in the Firearms Act. Millions of Canadians have to abide by the Firearms Act. Why not the minister?