Jack Harris

[Public Safety, February 7th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the Maher Arar torture affair and the Afghan detainee debacle taught us the dangers of courting Canadian complicity in the use of torture. However, instead of moving forward, the government is moving Canada backward.

The public safety minister has directed CSIS to use information that has been extracted through torture. As long as there is a market for information derived from torture, torture will exist.

Why is the government getting Canada into the torture business?

[Ending the Long-Gun Registry Act, February 6th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, throughout the day, we have heard a lot about the so-called strong mandate of the government to get rid of the long gun registry. Of course, the Conservatives only have a small majority in the House, but 65% of Canadians, I understand, want to keep the long gun registry. They believe it performs a valuable public service.

Does the member agree with that statement? Or does he agree with the member for Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry who very excitedly, a few minutes ago, was saying that people want to get rid of the registry and that they elected them and so the government should get rid of it? Or should the Conservatives listen to the will and the voices of lots of Canadians other than those who continue to write them letters and cheer them on?

[Ending the Long-Gun Registry Act, February 6th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the short answer is many guns. The gun that was used in the polytechnique massacre for example would no longer be required to be registered. The gun used in the Dawson College shooting in Montreal would not be required to be registered. Sniper rifles would not be required to be registered.

There is a whole series of them. Sawed-off shotguns that are manufactured as sawed-off shotguns, in other words not cut off, would not be required to be registered. There is a whole host of problems that are created by this bill, some of which the government knew about and others which it did not.

[Ending the Long-Gun Registry Act, February 6th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his question because it is one that has been used by the government side.

The report of the Commissioner of Firearms dated November clarifies that point and indicates that the queries may be both automated and manual but that these are queries to the firearms registry itself and not just checking on a licence.

There may well be certain errors in any database but work has been done on that, too. The error rate is very small as it stands right now. In handing that over to someone to build a database from, obviously eliminating the errors, would be part of the building of that database.

I do not think it is irresponsible at all. In fact, I think it is reckless and irresponsible to destroy that information when we have a government that wants to make use of it to protect its citizens and to uphold its citizens' desire to have a comprehensive gun control program in its province.

[Ending the Long-Gun Registry Act, February 6th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, another important aspect of this is the risking of public safety. By going further and failing to allow other governments to make use of information, which was collected at public expense, in the interest of public safety, the government is clearly risking public safety, in this case of Quebeckers, and we think that is wrong.

The government has not listened to anybody on this issue. It is making a big to-do about listening to victims and that it is the only government that has ever listened to victims. We had the victims of the polytechnique massacre before our committee and they were not listened to. We had victims of domestic violence and they were not listened to. We have had spokespersons on behalf of victims whose family members were murdered and they were not listened to. The Government of Quebec was not listened to.

There is a tremendous amount of hypocrisy going on here. I hope Canadians take note of that and are aware that this hullabaloo about listening to victims only happens when it suits the government to use it for its own purpose.

[Ending the Long-Gun Registry Act, February 6th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to the report stage of the bill. The first amendment standing in my name would delete clause 1. One might wonder why I would want to delete clause 1 of a particular bill because it is the short title. We had a debate about this at committee stage. Clause 1 of the bill states, “This Act may be cited as the Ending the Long-gun Registry Act”. The intent of the government seems to be that it wants to end the long gun registry. Instead, it has proposed a bill that would do a heck of a lot more than end the long gun registry.

First, there is no such thing as 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 there is everything else. Included in the everything else category are the ones that the Conservatives have been talking about for years and have done nothing to fix the problems and anomalies that occurred as a result of the failed implementation by the Liberal Party when it was in power. They just talked about the long gun registry as if it were a separate registry that was designed to make criminals out of law-abiding hunters and farmers, which seems to be the common phrase. That seemed to be the mantra. However, what we have is legislation that is reckless in its design.

I moved an amendment, which I could not move here because it was already moved in committee, to rename the bill the “risking public safety act”. That is what Bill C-19 would do. It would risk public safety by treating all non-registered, non-restricted and non-prohibited weapons the same. In that category is included semi-automatic rifles, assault rifles, sniper rifles, a whole variety of guns that are in very dangerous to public safety. Therefore, they would not be controlled at all.

Second, the bill would prohibit a recording of transfers in certain instances. If I have a shotgun and I sell it, the current legislation requires me to contact the registry to find out if the buyer has a licence that is valid. If the buyer shows me a licence, that would not be good enough. I would have to call and ask whether the buyer's licence is a valid and existing licence. In the interim, from when the licence was issued, the buyer may have been subject to a firearms prohibition for any number of reasons unknown to me, even if I am related to the buyer. The buyer could be my brother-in-law or my first cousin, but I may not know that he or she has a firearms prohibition for any number of reasons, whether it be trouble with the law because of having committed an offence or exhibiting signs of mental instability that I have been unable to detect because I know the buyer so well and he or she seems normal enough to me. Nevertheless, the buyer could be prohibited from having firearms and that licence might not be valid. The registry would inform me of that and I would not sell my rifle to that person.

The provision says that if I am going to sell my rifle, I may call the registry. However, and this is important, the legislation says that nobody at the other end is allowed to record that call, that the registry is not allowed to keep a record of me checking that out.

What is the purpose of that? It serves no purpose whatsoever. In fact, it makes the other provisions requiring an action by the a seller to check a licence unenforceable. That is what the Mounties say about it. The RCMP, which run the registry and which the government does not listen to in this regard, has said that this is tantamount to making the rules unenforceable. One of the consequences of that is it will lead to an underground market in rifles and shotguns and other non-restricted weapons.

By doing this, the government will be removing any requirement for gun shops, sporting goods stores, Canadian Tire stores, to keep a record of to whom they have sold rifles, shotguns or even ammunition. They used to have to do that. That provision lapsed when the gun registry was brought in because it was unnecessary because all guns had to be registered, so that was okay.

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, Canadian Tire stores, which are entitled to sell guns in Canada, to do that anymore. We basically have a loosey-goosey system for the registration of guns or police knowledge of guns.

When we wonder why Canadian police chiefs are opposed to these changes, we just have to look at the comments they have made. They talk about the registry being an important investigative tool, that it helps them investigate crimes, that it helps them find the source of guns and trace guns. We have an international obligation to do that.

Something that has been misconstrued by government members and witnesses at committee and members throughout the House is the fact that 14,000 times a day the registry is consulted by police forces and individual public enforcement agencies across the country. If we put all these things together, we understand how important the gun registry is to police services.

A lot of talk was had both in committee and in the House, suggesting that this was really only incidental, that law enforcement was not consulting the registry, but rather consulting CPIC, which has registry information on it. That was the spin given on this. Any time a police officer checked a licence, automatically this picked over a check on the registry and that was part of the use of the registry. It turns out that is not true.

I have a copy of the last RCMP report dated November 2011, signed by previous RCMP commissioner, William Elliott. The report was not released until January. It was not made available to our committee and the House did not ask for it, but it was made available to the Minister of Public Safety. It was one of the last acts of William Elliott as commissioner of firearms. The report said that the 14,000 inquires in 2010 were made to the firearms registry, looking for information on firearms or on individuals.

That shows two things. First, it shows how useful this instrument is for police forces across the country. Second, it shows a bit of a pattern of a lack of full disclosure by the government and government members on this issue. The Conservatives do not want people to know the facts because they do not want the facts to get in the way of the argument that they have made time and time again.

This is of importance to a lot of Canadians, on both sides of the issue. In the government's zeal to kill the registry, it has done unintended things. There is the law of unintended consequences. Many of the unintended consequences have to do with the fact that the Conservatives are risking public safety by making things worse than they were before the registry came into effect. That is wrong. To call it the ending of the long gun registry act is inaccurate and inadequate. We think that should be deleted.

[Ending the Long-Gun Registry Act, February 6th, 2012]

moved:

Motion No. 8

That Bill C-19 be amended by deleting Clause 24.

Motion No. 9

That Bill C-19 be amended by deleting Clause 28.

[Ending the Long-Gun Registry Act, February 6th, 2012]

moved:

Motion No. 6

That Bill C-19 be amended by deleting Clause 19.

[Ending the Long-Gun Registry Act, February 6th, 2012]

moved:

Motion No. 1

That Bill C-19 be amended by deleting Clause 1

[Business of Supply, February 2nd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, when people talk about the old age security system and the incomes of people, I just want to put on the record and ask the member to comment on the fact that a study done recently on the Atlantic provinces showed that in Newfoundland and Labrador 65% of the seniors relied on old age security or the GIS as their sole source of income.

Now the Conservatives are claiming that they will not hurt them. However, even if they do not hurt them, they will hurt their families, their children and their grandchildren, the young people in this country who may need to rely on this. So, they are invoking fear in the minds of people.

We were wondering whether the Conservatives were going to come clean but they kind of let the cat out of the bag today. They were given six or seven opportunities to tell us whether they would raise the age to 66 or 67 and they said that they would not touch existing seniors. So, the answer is clear and obvious that they will in fact raise the age for OAS to 66, 67 or 68, we do not even know. That is the unknown. However, we do have an answer. They are going to do it. We just do not know who they will do it to, which does invoke fear in the minds of the people in this country.