Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet

[Petitions, November 14th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, today, I am very pleased to present a petition signed by nearly 2,000 people—it is too heavy for me to lift—including a number of residents of a first nation village, people from various cities and elected officials.

As you can see, these people come from a variety of backgrounds, but they all firmly believe in a very important project: Wapikoni Mobile. This program, which produces movies and music, gives hope to aboriginal youth and sometimes literally saves their lives, is itself in danger.

The program's main source of funding—the $490,000 that it receives from the federal government and that ensures the survival of the mobile studio—was eliminated without warning.

Yet, in the seven years that the program has been in place, Wapikoni Mobile has proven its worth. Young participants have won 49 national and international awards, which is an average of seven awards per year.

How many projects can boast such an accomplishment?

Wapikoni Mobile must survive. That is what the nearly 2,000 people who signed this petition are asking the Department of Human Resources and Skills Development.

[Royal Canadian Mounted Police, November 14th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, we are hearing more and more stories like that of Catherine Galliford, an RCMP corporal in British Columbia who was sexually harassed in the workplace for 20 years. How is this zero tolerance?

Corporal Galliford has been off work for the past four years as a result of the harassment she endured.

Will the government commit to dedicating all the resources necessary to supporting Corporal Galliford and other victims of sexual harassment in the workplace?

[Food Banks, November 3rd, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, in my beautiful riding of Hochelaga, people working at food banks—Cuisine collective Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, Bouffe-Action de Rosemont, Chic Resto Pop, CAP St-Barnabé, Maisons Adrianna and Centre NAHA—devote themselves body and soul to helping feed their neighbours. There are also community gardens and fresh fruit and vegetable cupboards at HLM Boyce-Viau, HLM La Pépinière, Jardins Guybourg, Petit marché de l'Est and Marché solidaire Frontenac.

Despite all the hard work, there is not enough healthy and affordable food, especially in winter. In poor neighbourhoods, food is less readily available, of poorer quality and more expensive. Convenience stores abound. There are four food deserts in Hochelaga.

In a rich country like Canada, why is the health of so many adults, children and seniors compromised because they do not have access to healthy and affordable food while the owners of banks and big oil companies make billions of dollars in profit? Something is not right.

[Persons with Disabilities, November 1st, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, there is no doubt that it is difficult to live with a disability, physical or intellectual. It seriously compromises a person's ability to make a living. Canada has signed the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. This government must fulfill its commitment and take real action to help persons with disabilities.

The government has clear responsibilities towards all Canadians. What does it intend to do to discharge those responsibilities?

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to respectfully ask my colleague the following: does he not believe that the amnesties the government has regularly granted to long gun owners could have encouraged several people to disobey the law and caused some confusion?

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

Mr. Speaker, it is true that having a registry will not completely wipe out crime. I am very aware of that.

Moreover, the crimes were committed with weapons that were registered. I know that. However, do we really know how many crimes were prevented as a result of the registry? We know which crimes were committed with registered firearms, but what we do not know is how many were prevented as a result of the firearms being registered.

I am now going to read out another quote. Sue O'Sullivan, the Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime stated that the majority of groups representing victims want to keep the registry. That is also telling. She said:

Our position on this matter is clear—Canada must do all it can to prevent further tragedies from happening, including using the tools we have to help keep communities safe, like the long-gun registry.

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

Mr. Speaker, that is quite accurate.

Moreover, in Canada, only three police chiefs disapprove of the registry. The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police is totally in favour of the registry and does not want to see it scrapped. So what my colleague said, and what my other colleagues also intimated, is exactly what we just heard: police officers are against the abolition of the long gun registry. That says a great deal.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his question. There are a lot of crimes committed with shotguns, long guns. There is talk of removing these weapons from the firearms registry. Imagine a police officer who responds to a call from a family—a husband and wife—and he has information from the registry. Neither party is a criminal. And yet, if the police officer knows, based on information from the registry, that there are firearms in the house, long guns, he can respond differently and protect the lives of the people in the house as well as his own life.

Moreover, many people have said that having a registry really improved things. For example, I would like to quote Pamela Harrison, provincial coordinator for the Transition House Association of Nova Scotia, an organization that provides emergency services to women who are victims of violence and abuse:

The long-gun registry has made a significant difference in the safety of women in Canada since its inception in 1995. The rate of spousal homicide by gun has gone down 69 per cent and we attribute most of that to the impact of the gun registry.

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

Mr. Speaker, I know that the law is not perfect and that there are ways to change it. Before we can change it, however, we have to keep it. We must not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Suppose there are changes that could be made when it comes to the north, for example. In order to be able to make those changes, we have to have this law on the books. If we vote with the Conservatives and abolish it, there is no way to improve it.

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

Right, I will slow down.

A single murder investigation costs about a half-million dollars. In addition to that there are the costs of hospitalization, long-term care and imprisonment, which could continue to grow, so we are talking about millions and even billions of dollars, and of course that is not counting another very significant cost, the psychological cost to the families of the victims and the victims themselves.

The Conservatives also want to destroy all of the information accumulated for the long gun registry. Police associations, which query the registry an average of 17,000 times a day, are completely against it, as is my province, Quebec. If the registry were unfortunately to disappear, at least the provinces could use the information, not information from all the provinces, but from their own, to protect the people there, because the federal government seems to be refusing to do it.

The murders at the École Polytechnique in Montreal in 1989 that I referred to earlier prompted a lot of people to think about ways to at least try to prevent that kind of tragedy, as much as possible. Out of that came the firearms registry. Do we really want to move backward? Do we want to tell the families of Anastasia De Sousa, Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault, Annie Turcotte, Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz—pardon me, Barbara—and all the other victims that their deaths were ultimately for nothing? Do we want to take risks with people’s lives? My answer is clear: no. The way we can really protect lives is by strengthening gun control. In my opinion, even one life is worth it.