Keith Martin

[Tobacco Exports, April 25th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, we have learned that a trade mission to the Far East last year led by the Governor General and the agriculture and international trade ministers also included representatives from the Tobacco Industry Marketing Board and was designed in part to promote the sale of Canadian tobacco products in that market.

Will the minister of agriculture confirm that he believes the Canadian government has no problem promoting the export of tobacco?

[Health Care, April 4th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, because of the void that we have, private companies are now having to offer to people on waiting lists to get their medical services done in the United States. Canadians are forced to pay for private insurance to have this done.

Will the minister amend the Canada Health Act to enable the provinces to get their health care financing under control?

[Health Care, April 4th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the minister cannot tell me, an emergency room physician, that I do not know what is happening to sick people in this country.

You cannot tell me that people who are waiting 48 hours to get into an ICU are not suffering. They are suffering. Go into the hospitals and find out. I will take you by the hand and show you.

[Health Care, April 4th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, once and for all I want to end this fallacy. We in the Reform Party in no way, shape or form are in favour of an American style health care system. We will fight against it every time.

The Canada Health Act faces a grim future. It is supposed to guarantee reasonable access yet in British Columbia a person in severe pain has to wait 13 months for a hip transplant.

Will the Minister of Health review the act to provide a working definition of reasonable access?

[Fisheries, April 4th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, for the last 15 years warnings have trumpeted the fact that the west coast fishery was heading into trouble. Therefore, it came as no surprise that the Fraser report concluded the Department of Fisheries and Oceans was completely out of touch with the reality of what happened to the salmon stocks returning for spawning. That fact had been backed up by numerous task forces in the past and continues to this day.

I implore the minister to go back to the generalist format for the DFO officers, to listen to the DFO officers who are working in the trenches, not necessarily the bureaucracy, to enforce the

law equally for all people who are fishing, to ensure that we have a sustainable fishery on the west coast for future generations, and to ensure that what happened on the east coast does not happen on the west coast.

The writing is on the wall. Let us not ignore it.

[Budget Implementation Act, 1995, April 3rd, 1995]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak today on Bill C-76.

A lot of misinformation has gone on recently with respect to the budget. I would like to correct some of those statements.

The budget is going to sound the death knell for many things we hold dear to our hearts as Canadians, in particular the social programs of the country we have spent so many years and decades forming. These social programs have set us apart from countries like the United States; set us apart from countries that do not take care of those who are underprivileged in society as we in Canada have done much to the envy of people in other countries.

Contrary to what many people believe, the budget poses the single greatest threat to those social programs. It is not something we should be proud of, but rather ashamed of. I will explain why.

The big ogre in all of these talks about budget and finances is not the deficit. The big ogre in this is the debt, that huge expanding volume, almost impossible for us to comprehend, now at about $560 billion and three years from now will be about $660 billion.

Where will we get the money to pay even the interest on this? I will show the House. Imagine what we spend every year to be a pie. That pie would be circular and would represent $160 billion. Of that pie, $40 billion goes to pay the interest on the debt. The $120 billion remaining goes to pay for government programs and social programs.

Three years from now with an added $100 billion to the debt we will see interest rates on the debt at $50 billion, not $40 billion. That will force our country to decrease its spending on government programs and social programs from $120 billion to $102 billion.

I ask the people of the country to ask themselves where we will get the money to pay for those social programs if we will have $18 billion less to deal with. There are two options. Either we have increased growth in the economy, which should occur to some extent, or raise taxes. The latter is not an option but will be something the government and provincial governments will be forced to do to pay for the programs we have come to enjoy. If we do not we will have to decrease services in important areas like health care and education. These are very important programs we have come to enjoy.

I will give some real time examples of the first option, one very close to my heart. Here are some facts about health care in British Columbia. Prince George, a city in northern British Columbia which actually serves one-half of the province, has lost 80 per cent of its orthopedic surgeons. That leaves one left to serve one-half of the province. It has lost 50 per cent of its obstetricians and gynecologists and its only neurosurgeon, among other specialists.

Why have these people left in the last year and a half? Not because they want to get more money but rather they found it intolerable to work under the fiscal restraints imposed on them not only by the province but by the federal government. There is dual culpability in this situation. It is not held by one arm of the government or the other.

The reason is twofold. We have increasing demand for health care services and more expensive technologies and we have less money to pay for them. We also have an expanding and aging population. As we look into the future, if we look at the demographics of the population in the country, we can see that situation will not change for the better but rather for the worse. Those demands will increase.

Some tragic situations have occurred in northern British Columbia. People have to be flown out of that hospital. Doctors working there have to find spots in Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver for people to be treated, people sometimes with life threatening injuries, people whose injuries are being treated too late for them to get the adequate treatment required to survive and to come back to functional normality. In a rich country like ours that is an embarrassment and a crying shame. All we need to do is speak to those people to see what happens.

What happens in northern British Columbia is not isolated. This also happens in Victoria. A colleague called me and said he has a 40-year old patient. She is getting vertigo, which means the room spins. They think she has a tumour in her brain stem, part of her brain. She will wait two months to get her CAT-scan and her MRI scan is booked on the 12th of never.

Madam Speaker, if you were that lady, what would you think? What a tragedy to have that happen in our country. If she had enough money she would go to the United States and get these services done in a matter of two or three weeks. That is a two-tier system; a health care system which we have right now, contrary to what government members say.

On one hand the government says it will take money away from Canadians under the guise of cutting, that is remove $8.4 billion from provincial transfer payments, and it will bring down the federal deficit. That is simply not true. All the government is doing is putting the onus back on to the taxpayers and the provinces. It is not fair.

I suggest a constructive alternative solution. It requires a change in philosophy, an openness of mind and a desire to change things for the future. It is a leap of faith which would provide a better health care system for all Canadians.

Let the federal government take it upon itself to define the essential health care services and ensure all Canadians, regardless of income, are covered. Nobody in this party wants to see anybody have any part of their essential health care services withheld because they cannot pay for them. That is something we are fighting against and it is something we will continue to fight against in the future. We want to ensure that every Canadian is covered by these essential services. However, we cannot go on expecting public health care to pay for everything in existence. It simply cannot do that. Therefore let us define those services and ensure they are covered across the country.

Let us give the provinces the power to raise money to pay for their health care services. That would entail amending the Canada Health Act. It would not destroy it, it would amend it.

There are many good aspects to the Canada Health Act the Reform Party wants to preserve.

However, the government cannot on one hand take money away from the provinces and on the other hand tell them they cannot raise funds. That is not fair. Let us enable them to raise funds. That would perhaps provide for a two-tier system in which there is a private system and a public system.

We must understand the federal government can take the responsibility and say to the provinces that if they have a private health care system only private moneys would be exchanged. Not a penny of taxpayers dollars would go into that private system. It is a fallacy to assume we in this party want to have taxpayers money going into a private system.

It would enable the public system to have decreased waiting lists and it would also provide more money for the public system. Some would choose to use the private system. The bottom line is that people on the public system would receive their essential health care services in a more timely, more expeditious and more efficient fashion.

This is an unequal system but we have an unequal system now. Is it not better to have an unequal system which provides better health care for all Canadians than to have the present system which will worsen as time goes on? The Canadian public, when it understands that, would agree. We in this party would support the government if it would take the initiative and do that. To stick its head in the sand and say nothing is wrong is completely untrue.

The provincial government in British Columbia was forced to implement a stop gap measure of $18 million just to lower the MRI waiting list and the waiting list for coronary artery bypass grafting. Those lists have 700 or 800 names. If a person is waiting for open heart surgery, I am sure they would find it extremely disconcerting to find out they have to wait five months. Senator Keon mentioned the waiting list for non-emergency heart surgery in Ottawa is now five months. That is a travesty.

[Crimes Against Humanity, April 3rd, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure today to speak on the motion of my esteemed colleague from Don Valley North. The motion is to recognize April 20 to 27 as a week to remember man's inhumanity to man and to recognize that genocide and violence must be condemned and not forgotten.

Since the close of the cold war, people have expected that the world, liberated from nuclear threat, would be more peaceful. In fact, we expected a peace dividend that could strengthen our own economy and which could be used to bridge the huge chasm that exists between those of this world who have and those who have not. However, as the years have shown, the reality has been much different.

With the collapse of the U.S.S.R., ethnic tensions long suppressed have been unleashed. The rise of the nation states to fight over dwindling and finite resources, the exploding world population especially in developing countries and environmental degradation have all combined to unleash an orgy of violence and bloodshed which affects millions of people every year.

More recently, Rwanda has seen half a million people killed within two months. Burundi has seen 100,000 people killed in one month. In Angola 1,000 people are killed per day. The situation in the former Yugoslavia which blew up and killed so many thousands is yet a tinderbox and can explode at any time. These are the more obvious examples.

There are many more hidden, dirty little conflicts that occurred in the world to which the western world was oblivious, such as the Kurds in northern Iraq. In Sudan for years people have been killed. There was killing in East Timor and Sierra Leone. The list goes on and on. It is an embarrassment to the world community.

If there is one thing the world has demonstrated in the face of this carnage, it is its impotence to deal with these situations and in fact, the precursors of these situations, even when the writing has been on the wall for so many years. The response of the international community has been a succession of collective sighs, groans and handwriting. The world does not get involved and when it does, it is too late for the thousands upon thousands of civilians who were killed.

It is important to realize that it is not those who have arms who bear the brunt in these conflicts; it is the innocent men, women and children who are slaughtered indiscriminately and are defenceless. Once we do get involved, it is costly both in terms of our dollars and in terms of our people who we put in harm's way.

Furthermore, the groundwork for future carnage has been laid, for in these civil conflicts hatreds will be branded into the psyches of generations to come. Children are told by their parents to hate Muslims, to hate Jews, to hate Chechens, to hate Tutsis, to hate Hindus, Tamils, Croats, and the list goes on. They in turn tell their children who tell their children and the cycle repeats itself with deadly efficiency. Memories are long for these carnages and hatred dies a difficult death.

There were in fact over 120 conflicts in the world. In the future we can see the pots boiling over in Burundi, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and even in Kenya. Some only with extreme restraint have prevented this from occurring, such as in Tibet. The people there deserve a lot of credit.

If there is not a radical change in the way foreign policy occurs in this world, there will be an increasing number of these conflicts. In fact, peaceful nations will exist as a sea among a river of blood and turmoil.

Why should we get involved? Apart from the obvious humanitarian aspects, perhaps the easiest way to describe it to the people of our country and other countries is to preserve our basic self-interests. What occurs half a world away will wind up on our doorstep. Borders are porous and people migrate. They migrate from areas that have not to those that have, from areas in conflict to those which are peaceful, from areas which are resource depleted to areas which are rich in resources.

People will come here in droves and our current economic situation is ill equipped to deal with it. Furthermore, it will affect our societal and economic situations so that we will not be able to help our own people and we will not be able to help those in have-not areas.

We must have a plan. In short, what we must do is prevent the conflict before it happens. To prevent the problem we must understand it. I think it is wise for us to distil the problem down to its simplest form. We must simplify it down to its common denominator, which is the individual.

All individuals must have their basic needs met. These include food, shelter, water, medical care. I would also add safe, effective birth control, education, good governance and a fair judicial system. When a person has all of these it is very difficult to incite someone to commit violence against other people.

Therefore the world community must recognize the precursors of conflict and have a system to address them. Set up a list of transgressions by offending groups such as genocide, gross transgressions of human rights, the abuse of a country's economy, overt military spending, subjugating a people and trampling on their democratic rights. All of these have to be considered. With this list there should be another list of the consequences that the international community can mete out to these individuals.

Despite all that has been said before, the United Nations is probably the best bet today. Diplomatic initiatives must be put forward: sanctions where necessary, along with decreasing non-humanitarian aid or eliminating it to those belligerents, using the IFI as an economic lever to force belligerents apart so that they have to solve their problems. Rather than solving them at the end of an assault rifle, solve them at the diplomatic table.

I would also add a word of caution. We make a fundamental mistake in diplomacy. We ordinarily assume that those we are dealing with across the table actually represent the best interests of the people. That is not always the case. History has borne that out. Not all people have the best interests of all of their civilians at heart; rather they often have the best interests of their specific tribe, and I use that in the broadest sense, at heart. It is important for us to realize that and to understand it when we go into these discussions.

The world is looking for a leader to do this. It is looking for a middle power, one with an impeccable reputation, one with no history of imperialism or materialism, one with a proven track record and one that is widely respected. I would submit that that country is Canada. We can organize the middle powers to set up a system to influence the world body to prevent these conflicts from occurring, to set up those systems that I have just described of transgressions and penalties that need to be elucidated in no uncertain terms to the international body.

The ultimate power to do this would be the United Nations. I have a few simple suggestions. Expand the security council to be the G-24; decisions on votes need a two-thirds majority; eliminate the power of veto; and, to help with the financial crisis, if you do not pay you do not vote, if you do not vote you do not have any power.

These are some suggestions I have that we can put to the international community to help the United Nations deal with these problems.

International aid must also be revamped to help people to help themselves in a sustainable fashion that is culturally sensitive. We must focus on the basic needs to enable people to provide for themselves if they are not going to go ahead and try to commit atrocities on other individuals and provoke the conflicts that have plagued us throughout our history for so long.

I would also decrease government to government aid and increase the influence of NGOs. This would be in keeping with today's restricted budgets and the necessary cuts that must come from all aspects of government, including ODA.

Having said all this I will close. Every year we commemorate the Holocaust and World War II and say never again. The reality is that never again occurs again and again and again. This is a tragedy from Angola to Burundi, to Cambodia, to Tibet, to the former Yugoslavia. These tragedies have occurred and frightened all of us.

Mankind has continually demonstrated efficiency in committing atrocities against his fellow man with impugnity. The world has said nothing. We have learned nothing.

I hope as we approach the new millennium that Canada can take it into its heart to realize that part of its grand destiny is to take a leadership role on the world stage to link those parts of the international community and construct a forceful, powerful, peaceful bulwark against those individuals and groups that wish to stir up conflict and stir up animosity.

I hope we will support this motion on man's inhumanity to his fellow man. Also I hope we understand this is not a matter of choice but a matter of necessity.

[Hate Propaganda, March 31st, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, it is a great pleasure for me to support the bill of my friend and colleague from across the way on this very important and much ignored aspect of the late 20th century.

Freedom of speech is something which we in our country have held in the highest regard. It is a pillar of a truly democratic society and, as such, sets us apart from the restrictive, abusive and undemocratic societies that we have seen about us in the past, such as those in Nazi Germany and in China. We have seen repression where freedom of speech has not been recognized. In fact, not having freedom of speech has enabled the few to stifle the many.

However, like most rules we have in this world they are inviolable. They too are subject to perversions, but when common sense and logic are applied to them they bear no resemblance whatsoever to what was the intended rule. Freedom of speech is no different.

We live in a world today which our forefathers could not have imagined and which those individuals who constructed the aspects of freedom of speech as being a pillar of democracy could not have imagined. They could not have thought or dreamed of the challenges which we face today. As such, they could not imagine the ways in which people could use free speech as a shield or as protection to blatantly incite hatred, violence and prejudice against other individuals. They could not have imagined this because they could not have imagined something like Internet.

I will give the House some examples of what has occurred on Internet recently. In my region of Vancouver Island, in the city of Victoria, something called a deathnet has occurred. Specifically, it caters to teenagers and children. It is a program on how to commit suicide. It tells them how to do it with plastic bags, glue, knives, ropes and chemicals.

We have lauded the aspects of freedom of speech and freedom of choice. As adults we presumably have the experience and the knowledge to make informed choices. However, where this falls apart is when we are dealing with children. All of us in the House will recognize that one of the aspects of children is that they do not have the maturity, the knowledge and the experience to make informed choices. Where the Internet differs from the magazine racks in our local corner stores is that in the corner store children do not have a choice to make because the material is too high. They are also monitored by the individuals who work in the stores. That is not so with Internet.

Internet is basically a free-for-all. One of the sectors of our society that is the most literate in computers is youth. Many youths are more facile with computers than many individuals in the House, myself in particular.

We also have hate mongering by the KKK and other groups whose main intent has been to put forth abusive, hateful, spiteful information on the deathnet for no good cause whatsoever.

This cannot continue. That is why my colleague who is a physician and a very concerned person has put forward this initiative. He has experience in these matters as a pediatrician. He knows full well the dangers of allowing very impressionable children to be subjected to this type of information. As I have said before, adults are a different matter altogether. They have choice but that does not necessarily apply to children.

There are laws which apply to the wire media, the print media. There are rules and regulations which apply to hate mongering, child pornography and such. There is no logical reason that these reasonable rules cannot also be applied to the Internet. There have been concerns that no, it is not possible to do this because there are too many access points and there are too many people logged on.

This country has proven to be a world leader in so many areas. We can continue to do so by taking that leadership role on the Internet. We can show the world we are not prepared to have hate mongering within our country.

It is interesting to note that the United States Congress and Senate also have a bill relating to the proliferation of this type of information on the Internet. It is a worthwhile endeavour. Perhaps through my colleague's initiative we as a country can work with our neighbours to the south to push for this worthy cause.

Just because it is difficult does not mean to say it is impossible. A few other concerns exist on the Internet. I am sure they will rise in the course of the prolonged discussions which will come out of this initiative. They also involve personal privacy and security of information.

Many of us in this House are aware that a number of recent cases have come up of people's security and personal information which are protected under the law but violated through the Internet. Cyberspace is a free for all. Freedoms are good but when they are abused against the common good, it is intolerable and unacceptable to Canadian society.

I will close by giving my wholehearted support to my colleague for this initiative. It is worthwhile. We should not buy the argument that freedom of speech is something that is inviolable. Like all rules, it can be subject to exceptions.

The main reason for doing this is not so much for the adults because of the freedoms we have but primarily for the children. It is impossible, no matter how hard we try, to prevent children from logging on and seeing the stuff.

For their betterment and for the betterment of Canadian society, I hope this House will take it upon itself to support the initiative of my colleague.

[Peacekeeping, March 29th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the House for allowing us to continue the debate this evening.

I would like to express my profound gratitude to the Canadian men and women who serve in our armed forces. They have received a lot of criticism of late, much of it unjustified. They have for many decades conducted themselves professionally, effectively and with bravery. Lest we forget, they have done us all proud. Some from the PPCLI come from my riding of Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca, and I am deeply gratified to those people specifically.

The views I am going to express are those of my own. They are not held by my caucus. Although there is much on which we agree, on the bottom line of whether we should pull out of Bosnia and Hercegovina and Croatia we disagree. I do not think we should and I will give the following explanation.

Let us first understand what our troops are doing there. For over three years under UNPROFOR they have enabled the

UNHCR to provide aid for those people who have nothing. Currently over six million people receive aid that would not have got to them had it not been for the troops of UNPROFOR and for those people who work with the UNHCR.

They diffuse situations on a daily basis which could blow up and cause death. They liaise between belligerents. They involve themselves in prisoner exchanges and their mere presence has prevented hundreds of thousands of people from being killed. Anybody who would like to disagree, who would allow this to occur, I would ask them to put themselves in the shoes of someone living in Srebrenica, Gorazde or Bihac and ask what they would like the international community to do if they were there.

If we were to move out, our other allies would leave and we can be certain there would be carnage, torture and mass killings on a scale which we have not yet seen. It would be an orgy of blood letting. We would see this courtesy of CNN.

Furthermore, we would see an expanded conflict. Not for a minute should we delude ourselves that the Croats will not to start to fight with the Krajina-Serbs. Let us not delude ourselves that the Bosnian Muslims and the Bosnian Serbs will not attack each other. Let us not delude ourselves that the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia would not get involved with the Krajina-Serbs or that Bosnia would not start to attack other people.

Then what will happen, because of our responsibilities under NATO, is we would be dragged into that. We would be dragged into an enlarged conflict which would cost us in terms of men and women and also in terms of dollars. That is exactly what will happen if we pull out and allow this to occur. There is no contingency plan for a pull out right now.

Therefore I propose, with my colleagues, that we put pressure on the belligerents to start keeping the Sarajevo airport open. Let us ensure our peacekeepers will be there to conduct and provide aid through the UNHCR. Let us also work with the United States to put pressure on the EU and the OSCE to find a regional solution to this problem because that is where it lies.

The former Yugoslavia has been called the shame of the west. We have not done what was required through preventive diplomacy to prevent this tragedy. It should be a lesson for those countries that will blow up in the future.

I do not think there will be a diplomatic solution to this problem. That is a tragedy. What will happen is the belligerents, the Serbs, the Croats and the Muslims, will fight it out and then diplomacy will occur. There is no way they want to solve this other than at the end of an assault rifle.

My primary concern is for the civilians who bear the brunt of these civil conflicts time and time again. We must provide a safe zone for those individuals and allow an area that will be protected with force by international troops so that civilians who choose to go there will be protected and have their basic needs met. Tragically what is going to happen is that the belligerents are going to fight. Rather than us actually being those troops, we should work now to remove our troops and have EU troops take our place.

[Firearms Act, March 28th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, it is a privilege today to speak on Bill C-68. One of the goals of any civic minded parliamentarian and law maker is to produce laws and regulations which make our country a safer place while respecting the rights and privileges of its citizenship to engage in peaceful, law-abiding activity.

Never would we in this party uphold the right of anyone to engage in activities which would cause harm to innocent civilians. That is why we fully support bills which address criminal behaviour and activity. Bill C-68 deals with part III of the Criminal Code, often referred to as gun control laws.

One can see when looking at this bill that there are two distinct parts to it, one that will almost universally be applauded by people in the House, the other that will be very divisive and by and large by the majority of people in our caucus will be opposed. It will be opposed for very clear thinking, logical and civic minded reasons.

Let us ask ourselves some fundamental questions. Are all guns and their uses criminal? The answer is no. Therefore it is up to us to figure out and deal with what is criminal and what is not.

God bless us in Canada that we do not have the gun culture of the United States. Our culture is personified by tough gun control laws that force people who wish to acquire a firearm to jump through some very complicated and multiple hoops in order to acquire a firearms acquisition certificate. These hoops include waiting periods, personal checks, taking a course and strict storage requirements to which there is absolutely no parallel in the United States. That is just to get a rifle.

If a person wishes to acquire a handgun, the rules are even more stringent. They require a trigger lock for the handgun and they force the person to be a member of a gun club; rules and regulations we heartily support.

It is a delusion that we can acquire a weapon, stick it underneath our pillow and use it whenever we wish. Perhaps that is what occurs south of the border, but thankfully it does not occur here. Our situation bears absolutely no resemblance to that of the United States. The failure to pass half of this bill will never remotely bring us close in any way, shape or form to what occurs south of the border.

Furthermore, there is absolutely no desire whatsoever, especially among legitimate gun owners, to be anything like the United States where guns of all kinds are widely available to anyone who wishes to possess one. This is an environment I abhor as does as any other law-abiding citizen. The responsible environment in Canada is the one that legitimate gun owners happily find themselves in.

Let us look at the criminal use of firearms which should really be the end point of any thoughtful gun control regulations. Between 1961 and 1990, 63 per cent of all homicides were committed by an object other than a firearm. The object of choice was a knife. Illegal handguns, which would not be addressed by the registration aspect of this bill, were responsible for 13 per cent of the homicides. Legally owned handguns were used in less than 1 per cent of the cases. Last year, of the 720-odd homicides in Canada, five were committed with illegally owned handguns.

Criminals using firearms to commit offences are not legal gun owners but rather those who acquire firearms through different measures.

Criminals do not go to the police department and say: "Constable, I have this illegal weapon that I would like to register", or "I would like to acquire a firearms acquisition certificate". These people cannot get an FAC through the current regulations. Rather they get their weapons illegally through smuggling across the border from the United States or from those people who have acquired guns in that manner.

Therefore, the Reform Party supports completely the justice minister's endeavours to increase penalties for smuggling, theft and for using a firearm in committing a criminal offence with a four-year minimum sentence.

As an aside, I would strongly recommend to the Minister of Justice that with this sentence goes certain stipulations. First, that there be no plea bargaining whatsoever. Second, that parole be not applied to this aspect of sentencing and that the sentences run consecutively not concurrently.

If the government does this, it will send a strong message to those individuals who are committing offences with firearms. Currently most weapon offences are plea bargained away in order to get an expeditious conviction on another offence, such as a break and enter, which ensures that there is virtually no penalty whatsoever to the criminal who chooses to maliciously pick up a firearm and commit an offence. He or she knows no effective penalty is going to be applied to them. Thus, we completely support direct measures to address the criminal use of firearms.

We do not support punitive actions taken against legal gun owners. These individuals jump through hoops to get firearms acquisition certificates, take courses, join clubs, et cetera, and have proven not to be the element in our society that commits criminal offences. As I have proven before, these are not the individuals who do this.

Some people have said that having a firearms acquisition certificate, increasing the penalties that we already have and having gun registration in particular, is somehow going to decrease the rate of suicide. The fact of the matter is that between the time that strict gun control measures were brought in to the time before that, the rate of suicide per capita has not changed. Furthermore, the number of individuals who use firearms in committing an offence has not changed at all.

Another aspect that is very fundamental to this case and perhaps one of the most potent reasons why not to vote in favour of gun registration is the cost. People have not given this enough thought. The cost is anywhere between $80 million and $500 million, as has been claimed, and will be passed on to the consumer to some extent. However, not all of it will. That leaves the ultimate payer in all of this, the taxpayer, who is already taxed to death.

This means that money is going to be pulled away from other functional aspects of the justice department. I cannot emphasize this enough. We are going to be taking money away from police officers which should have gone for training and equipment. Police officers are already hamstrung because of lack of finances in part. Think about it. The government is cutting the effective arm of our justice system, the arm that protects us, to do what? To invest in something that has proven not to work.

We are going to see fewer arrests for those committing offences such as rape, murder, attempted murder, assault and break and enter. All of this is going to decrease the power of the police forces to deal with this. Is this an effective use of the taxpayers' money? I think not.

We will not support any measure that has proven not to decrease the rate of crime, as has been proven in Australia. It enacted gun registration and it has proven to be a failure. The police forces there are asking the politicians to revoke it.

Furthermore, contrary to what is being said here by members of the government, these measures are not supported by the rank and file police officers. That is very important to recognize. Of all people, those who are in the field should know best.

In closing, we support the bill. We support that it will be divided into two sections. The part that we support is the effective measures to reduce crime. The part that we do not support is the aspect of gun registration and the punitive actions against law-abiding gun owners.