Joe Comartin

[Coptic Christians in Egypt, October 27th, 2011]

Mr. Chair, I rise this evening to speak to this issue because of a particular relationship that I have. St. Mary & St. Moses, one of the few Coptic Orthodox churches in southwestern Ontario is in my riding, .

As a country we have a moral responsibility to the rest of the world to speak out on occasions like this and to take what action we are capable of taking. In addition, it is important to realize the added responsibility we have for this particular community.

We have heard some figures this evening. There are approximately 60,000 to 65,000 Egyptians living in Canada as citizens or permanent residents. The vast majority of them, some 50,000, are Christian Coptic Orthodox members. I know from speaking to them, particularly the conversations I had as the demonstrations were taking place in Egypt to bring down the Mubarak regime, the fear and in some cases even the terror that was being felt.

I remember having a telephone conversation in the lobby right outside the chamber with one of the leaders of the community in Windsor. He was certainly aware of the systemic discrimination the Coptic Christians have suffered in Egypt for a good number of years. He was aware of the violence, discrimination and bigotry that had been demonstrated by individual members of the community against his community. He said to me, “It is amazing what is happening. We are going into that square as a collective community, Muslim and Christian, hand in hand, arms around each other, to build the strength that we need to bring down the dictator and to begin democracy in our country”. His words were very eloquent; I am not doing justice to him. He continued, “We are doing this to achieve religious freedom and democratic freedom, human rights freedom for all Egyptians, but in particular for the Coptic Christians”. They have a long history of discrimination.

Then we saw the violence. I have seen a lot of violence over the years, but I was shocked. It reminded me of Tiananmen Square when the tanks rolled in and literally rolled over those students. We saw the same thing happening, the targets in this case mostly being Christian Coptics. Several of them were chased down and run over by military vehicles. I am a lawyer by background and I do not want to draw an absolute conclusion of guilt here, but it is hard to draw any other but that those were intentional acts against innocent protestors.

Canada has a leading role to play in this because of the credibility that we still have in the international arena, in spite of some of the things the government has done. We are well known as a country that not only tolerates, but in fact celebrates the diversity of our people, whether that is religious diversity, language diversity, or whatever. We know we can live together in harmony and peace. We know we can be a beacon for that harmony and peace for the rest of the world.

Because we have that unique stature, it goes with a responsibility to speak out and to do whatever we can when we see this kind of, not to use too strong a term, criminal behaviour that amounts to crimes against humanity.

We need that independent inquiry. It is an absolute must. We must do whatever we can as a country, through the United Nations, through other independent international organizations, to be sure that the transition government in Egypt puts that in place in a meaningful way, with a meaningful mandate, dealt with by independent judicial figures, whether they come from Egypt or elsewhere in the world, and that those people who carried out that most recent attack against innocent people are brought to justice and dealt with in accordance with the law.

The other thing we have to look at is our relationship with Egypt, government to government. We have to tell Egypt very clearly that our foreign aid, our willingness to provide assistance in this transition period as it is building its democracy, as the government, whatever it turns out to be over these next number of months, depends on it allowing for that freedom of religion. Hopefully, those elections will be conducted freely and fairly. It would be great to see the government change its position and allow independent observers in. It is hard to imagine that there will be an acceptance, either by the people of Egypt or the international community, if it does not allow that. However, at the end of the day, when those elections are over and the Egyptians are working on their constitution, we have to say that we are there to help, but that we will not provide that help unless there is freedom of religion, unless the discrimination against the Coptic community ceases.

It is not the first time, and I know there have been several other members of the House this evening who have mentioned this, that we have seen this type of thing happen, that a dictator is brought down, that a brutal regime comes to an end. However, what we see so often is a period of chaos. Again, I know that is not happening in all parts of Egypt, but it is happening in some parts of it and it is happening sporadically. When that happens, the type of massacre that occurred on October 9 happens. We have to tell the Egyptian government, and in particular the military in Egypt, that this is not acceptable. The Egyptians have the ability to impose order. They have the ability to protect Coptic community. Because they have the ability to do so, they have a corresponding responsibility.

We are proud as a nation for the work that we did at the United Nations in developing the principle of the responsibility to protect. However, that is a responsibility, a guiding principle that all governments must abide by, that they do not have a right in a systematic way to discriminate against any part of their population, that they do not have a right, either by direct means or indirect means, to exercise violence against their community or minority communities on whatever basis they might be discriminating.

We have to be very clear that we will not tolerate any lesser standard. This is not imposing our standards on the Egyptian people. This is an international human rights standard to which that all countries must live. Egypt is a member of the UN. It has already signed on to the human rights declaration. That declaration includes the responsibility to allow freedom of religion, whatever that religion is, within their boundaries.

It is quite clear that we have a role to play, we have a responsibility to those people who have come from Egypt, the Coptic Christians in particular, to do our utmost. There are very clear things that we should be doing, both at the UN and directly with the Egyptian transition government. We must do that forcefully, we must do it honestly and we must be consistent in it. It is the only way we will be able to shine the light on that kind of discrimination. Once we shine the light on it, there is a very good opportunity to end it once and for all.

[Ending the Long-gun Registry Act, October 27th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, what the government is doing is clearly inexcusable. It is not just all the money that it is spending on the military but also what it is doing with our prisons. Putting people in prison is not going to help us prevent crime. The Conservatives—it is not us—are prepared to spend billions of dollars on prisons but that does not really do anything to protect people and society.

[Ending the Long-gun Registry Act, October 27th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, it is a question of enforcement of the registry. The police forces in that area knew that Roszko had weapons and that he was not supposed to have weapons. One of the weapons that was found and used to ultimately convict the two members who aided and abetted him had a registered weapon. They found it at the site and were ultimately able to track him. That was on the investigative side.

The reality is that had they charged Roszko for breaching the long gun registry, they could have convicted him of that because they had very clear evidence that he had weapons. That may very well have prevented the incident from ever happening.

[Ending the Long-gun Registry Act, October 27th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from the east coast is absolutely right. There is no logical, reasonable explanation whatsoever as to why we would get rid of all this data.

From a purely partisan standpoint, I understand their fear, because they know very well that after the next federal election, the likelihood is that they are not going to be on that side of the House and we are. If the database still existed at that point, it would be a lot easier to reinstate it, so that as a government, the NDP could provide a sense of security and guarantee, as much as it could, that it would do the utmost to protect our citizens from violent crimes. The only rational reason they would want to get rid of it would be that they are afraid of the outcome of the next federal election.

[Ending the Long-gun Registry Act, October 27th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, the member is pointing to selective evidence in that committee. When I questioned the people who came before it and gave that kind of evidence--not with regard to Mayerthorpe, which I will come to in a minute, but with regard to its not being effective--repeatedly it was quite clear that they never used the system.

I remember one officer from a community in the west that I will not identify. I was shocked at the police officer's ignorance of the system. He did not have any idea of what the system was like. He had not used it in 10 years. A bunch of training has been done by the RCMP over the last two to three years, and as police officers were trained on how to use the system properly, it was being used much more. Every time the trainers went into a city to do the training, police officers would take the training and the usage of the registry would go up dramatically and effectively.

Coming back to Mayerthorpe, the reality is that we would never have caught those two associates had it not been for the long gun registry. It is true. The investigators were completely stymied until they were able, through the registry, to identify the owner of one of those guns. The two people who were then subsequently accused of aiding and abetting in those murders were primarily convicted because of it. That is the reality.

I have one final point. The police knew Roszko had guns. Had they been enforcing that, the crime might never have happened.

[Ending the Long-gun Registry Act, October 27th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, when I was in the midst of my address to the House before we broke for question period, I was discussing the costs of the ongoing operation of the gun registry and saying that after all the years I have spent on this file and all of the information we have received, I was quite prepared to rely on the credibility of the RCMP and the figure its officials gave us, which was $4 million for the ongoing cost of the operation of the long gun registry. The handgun registry, the prohibited weapons registry and the licensing are of course additional costs above and beyond that, but that was the figure the RCMP gave us, and I accepted that figure.

While I am talking about the RCMP, I want to raise another issue: the effectiveness of the long gun registry. Quite frankly, I was disturbed today when I was listening to members from the government side claiming that it was totally ineffective, in particular the member who said that he was a former RCMP officer and that he believed the same thing.

That brought back to my mind the use of the long gun registry in the Mayerthorpe incident, an incident that stands as a historical tragedy in this country. We had not lost four RCMP officers in one event at any time in our history. While conducting military operations in the 1800s, the RCMP lost more officers in one battle, but this was the first time in the history of the country in over 140 years that we had four RCMP officers murdered in one event.

The perpetrator of that crime killed himself in the same incident, but we knew that he could not have committed the crime without assistance from at least one other person and perhaps more. It took the better part of a year and a half before officers were able to identify those two other men who had assisted him. They broke that case. The investigation was finally successful because they were able to use the long gun registry and were able to identify the owners of one of the guns used in those murders.

There is no recognition on the part of the government and the Conservative members of that fact. That is one example of our police forces across the country using the long gun registry in an investigation to identify culprits, bring them to trial, and ultimately achieve convictions and sentences.

Conservatives refuse to acknowledge that, and that is a scandal if one believes, as I do, in the important role that the RCMP has played historically in our country and the crucial role that our police officers play in protecting us.

That is what this registry is about. It is about protecting our police officers. It is about protecting our society as a whole. Is it perfect? Believe me, I know the failures of the system, but it is a tool that can be used and is used repeatedly by our police officers.

Conservatives stand in the House on a regular basis and accuse members of the opposition of making up facts and creating an atmosphere that is totally away from reality, but the reality is that the vast majority of police officers in this country support the use of the gun registry once they are trained in using it.

In the last round, when we were fighting the private member's bill on the same topic, out of hundreds of police chiefs, only three could be identified by the Conservative Party and their cohorts as being opposed to the registry. All the other police chiefs in this country were in favour of keeping it, because they knew--not believed, but knew--that it protected their officers.

Is it perfect? No, it is not perfect. Would it prevent every single police officer from facing a gun attack? No, it would not; it would be absolutely naive to think so. However, that is the standard that the Conservatives have set: if it does not work every single time, then we should get rid of it.

If it saves 10% of the lives of police officers, it is worth keeping. If it saves one life, is it not worth keeping? Is $4 million a year not worth spending, if we save one police officer's life? It is my absolute belief that it saves a lot more lives than that.

When the Conservatives stand up in the House and when they go across the country to talk to people, they never talk about Mayerthorpe--never. They refuse to talk about police chiefs, other than every so often, as we saw with some of the proponents of the private members' bills, denigrating our police chiefs and accusing them of conflict of interest. Such accusations are imaginary at best and perhaps paranoid at worst. They are grossly unfair to the role our police chiefs play in protecting our society and protecting their own officers. Quite frankly, those accusations made against our police chiefs were shameful.

With regard to the cost of dismantling the registry, I want to repeat that the Conservatives do not have any idea of what it would cost to dismantle it.

When we look at the reality, we see that the Province of Quebec has now come forward to say very clearly that it will take it on. If the federal government will not take on the responsibility it has to protect members of society in Quebec, the Province of Quebec has said that it will do it. The Province of Ontario is giving serious consideration to doing the same thing. I believe that in B.C. our party, the NDP, is thinking the same thing. After the next election we hope the NDP will be in government and will take on the responsibility if the bill passes.

If that happens in all three cases in those three provinces, it would represent more than 75% of the population of this country. The governments representing them are saying they want to keep the registry. They know it works. They know it protects their citizens.

I want to touch on facts, not emotion. In the period of time the registry has been in place, these are facts: there was a 30% reduction in domestic violence involving long guns, roughly a 10% to 15% reduction in suicides by long guns, and a more than 10% reduction in the number of accidents from long guns, whose victims were mostly children under the age of 14.

That is why the medical associations have come out so strongly in favour of supporting the registry: it is because they saw that guns owned by people who should never have owned a gun were being taken out of circulation over the years. These people were not the regular hunters or farmers who use them responsibly, but people who did not handle them properly, did not store them properly or did not transport them properly. I suppose only the divine knows why they bought the guns in the first place. When we heard of the accident, the suicide or the violent crime, very many of those times it involved a gun that had not been properly stored or taken care of by someone who should never have owned a gun.

I have great sympathy for the argument the Conservatives make with regard to responsible actions by long gun owners. The vast majority of them are law-abiding citizens, as they say so often. When I talk to them, a majority say that they understand why the registry is here. They say it is because of those other people, the people who did not handle guns properly and put this country in a mess.

At the end of the day, if we are serious about performing our fundamental responsibility as members of Parliament to protect our citizens, this bill should be voted down.

[Business of the House, October 27th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, the government House leader did not answer my question as to when he will move a motion for time allocation.

Can I conclude from what the government House leader said that we will only get one day of debate on the seat redistribution bill? That sounds like that is what he will do, move to the reform of the Senate bill after one day of debate on the seat redistribution bill. I would ask him to confirm that.

[Business of the House, October 27th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I have the pleasure to ask the Thursday question. However, I am less pleased to see the government once again showing its undemocratic tendency by using the Standing Orders to restrict debate here in the House.

Mr. Speaker, the rules are here to guide all of us. They have to be used judiciously and that is not what is happening.

This will be the fifth time in 38 sitting days that a time allocation motion has been imposed. That is coming close to setting the same record that the Liberals set, which was heavily criticized by the current Prime Minister when he was sitting on this side of the House. The Conservatives are well ahead of the record that was set by the Liberals back in 2002. They will match it over the next few weeks at the rate they are going.

Perhaps the government House leader could tell the House exactly what formula he is using to determine what is enough debate, because we heard that from him and the Minister of Public Safety yesterday and again this morning.

We have had extreme limitations imposed on the ability to start the debate on this side of the House before it is cut off by a time allocation motion from the government. I could go through those, but I will not use up the time today.

We did not even have the opportunity to commence debate on the bill that is before the House today. Before our justice and public safety critic could stand on his feet, the government moved a time allocation motion. That is the kind of abuse we are seeing. We have not had a lot of debate on the bill, which has new provisions with regard to destroying records. We had two hours of debate on the long gun registry in the last Parliament, but it was a different bill because those provisions were not in it.

I ask the government House leader, how soon will he be moving a motion for time allocation on Bill C-20, which was tabled today? How much time will we be given? We on this side of the House want to know what the government considers a reasonable amount of time for debate. Perhaps I should put it this way: how little debate does the government think is reasonable before it slams the door shut and does not allow us meaningful democratic debate in this country?

[Ending the Long-gun Registry Act, October 27th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I have been involved with this file since I became the justice critic for my party in 2003, a little over eight and a half years ago. It is the one file that I can point to where there is very much misinformation, and I have to say that almost all of it is coming from the Conservative side of this chamber.

Any number of other countries have taken the same route that we have. Over a period of time, we have moved from total non-regulation of firearms to significant incursions into the right to own a firearm and how a firearm could be used. It has been a progression.

Today, if the bill becomes law, we wil be going through a regressive stage. It would be a regressive stage for this country and a regressive stage in the international arena.

I will start my comments today by describing how irresponsible this move by the government is on the international stage.

We have signed an international treaty through the United Nations that requires us, starting in 2012, to report annually all of the small firearms in the country. If the bill becomes law, we would have absolutely no way to meet that requirement. We have also signed an agreement with the Organization of American States that binds us, again, to issue a report each year on the number of small arms in the country. In both cases, this is an attempt by the international community, and I think a reasoned and progressive attempt, to bring the trade in small arms weaponry under control.

We see what happens when it gets out of control. We do not have to go off the continent; we simply have to look at the massacres occurring in Mexico at the current time. Weaponry is being smuggled in from the United States and, in one case, transferred by a government agency.

We are seeing regular massacres, but these weapons could be controlled. The United States has come online with the agreement and signed it, and so has Mexico. We are going to see some reasonable attempt to control the use of small arms on this continent because of these treaties.

However, we would not be part of that if the bill becomes law. Again, it is grossly irresponsible. I have yet to hear anything from the government as to how it is going to deal with this problem. The government not only would not keep the records, but it would totally destroy the records. There is absolutely no way we would be able to meet the international requirements that I assume we signed in good faith.

I will go on to what the member for Portage—Lisgar terms the “myths” that have grown up around the gun registry.

It is false to attribute the figure of $2 billion entirely to the registration of long guns in this country. That is grossly overinflated. In 2006-07 the Auditor General had a figure of $900 million to develop not only the long gun registry but the registry of handguns and prohibited weapons and the licensing of individuals for the right to own a gun. It was a package. At that time the cost was around $900 million.

By 2010, that figure was moving toward about $1.2 billion.

The $2 billion figure actually comes from one of the proponents of this legislation from the Conservative side. He has, in effect, made up numbers, making some gross assumptions on police expenses for using the system. It is a fallacious type of analysis in terms of any meaningful economic analysis of the use of the system. That is where the figure comes from, and again, it is grossly fallacious in terms of what it has actually cost.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety said we cannot believe any figures, but I am prepared to believe the $4 million figure on what it is costing now on an annual basis. That figure came initially out of a report from the Auditor General. It was confirmed repeatedly in annual reports from the RCMP.

The parliamentary secretary sat in the same hearings I did over the last 18 months. She heard the RCMP officials give that figure on a repeated basis. She never was able to challenge them with regard to that $4 million figure, nor has anyone else. Officials know how the system works. They know how much it is costing, which is $4 million annually for the registration of long guns in this country. That is the current figure. That is all we are going to save if we get rid of the long gun registry, $4 million. The $4 million figure is from the RCMP, and it is valid. No one could challenge the RCMP on it at committee.

One of the costs the Conservatives never talk about is how much it is going to cost to destroy the records.

I spent a fair amount of time working with the people who work in the registry. They described to me what they are going to have to do. One of the costs in that $1.2 billion figure over the years occurred when we merged the two systems. We used to have one system of registration of handguns and prohibited weapons and another separate system for the long gun registry. We eventually merged them around 2005. As we were doing that, we created a single system. That is where some of the problems were: when we did that, we identified a number of dates of registration and other information, such as addresses, that were not correct. That situation has been progressively corrected over the last five years.

We merged those two. To now take them apart is going to require an estimated two to five persons per year for a two-year period, and it will cost millions of dollars, because we cannot just destroy the whole system, because doing so would destroy the registration of handguns and prohibited weapons. It would have to be done on an individual registration basis, and it is going to take that long and cost that much.

[Ending the Long-gun Registry Act, October 27th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, what we are faced with today is really interesting. Back on October 1, 2002, the current Prime Minister made this statement with regard to the Liberal government of the day. He stated:

The government has used closure and time allocation more frequently than any previous government.

The interesting thing about that is that, at that point, October 1, 2002, there were 212 sitting days in the 37th Parliament and the Liberal government of the day had moved time allocation nine times over 212 days. The current Conservative government has now moved time allocation for the fifth time in 35 days.

Is the House leader trying to match the record set by the previous Liberal government or is he willing to look at his practice and say that it is wrong for democracy and give us more time for debate?