CANADA

UNEDITED COPY – COPIE NON ÉDITÉE

Monday February 24, 2003

Le lundi 24 février 2003

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    The Chair: Mr. Minister, because time is running short. Many people want to ask more questions so I apologize but we do have to move on because Mr. Gallaway would like to ask a question.

    Mr. Roger Gallaway (Sarnia—Lambton, Lib.): Chair, Minister, I want to go back to the beginning. As you suggested, April 24, 1995, your predecessor arrived and said $85 million would be the cost. He said, and I'm quoting now,

    He also went on to attack the witness who he maintained had worked for the NRA and had set up a cost of a billion dollars. That witness was an academic from Simon Fraser. He was the last witness. The minister was at that time, after seven attorney generals had appeared before the committee and said they would never comply with the law. They would never cooperate. So I'd like to ask you, firstly, would you apologize so that half of the department, he said it would cost a billion dollars? Your department said $85 million. Would you apologize to him for the harm done to his academic career as a result of that attack. Secondly, would you apologize to those who accepted the policy based on the reasonable cost assumption and assertion made by your department?

    Mr. Martin Cauchon: When we had decided as a government to proceed with the gun control program back in 1995, we had to come forward of course as the member said, with some assessment, and of course, nobody had a crystal ball at that time. It was the very first time that in Canada such a program was put in place. We weren't really aware of the number of gun owners, the number of firearms as well that we have in Canada. to proceed with any forecast in terms of numbers was quite difficult at that time, and I believe, Mr. Chairman, that they've used the best numbers that they had, the best figures that they had as well in order to come forward with the number that they've used at that time.

    I think said that today, and then in retrospect when you look at the numbers, when you look at the additional requests that have been made, the addition that we've made to the program, it seems quite obvious that it was impossible to deliver the program for such an amount. But in all that, I have to tell you, Mr. Chairperson, all the people have been working and acting in good shape with the numbers and the figure they had at the time they took their decision.

    Mr. Roger Gallaway: I'm not saying they're appearing with the minister and department officials by the name of Jim Hayes, Richard Paisley [Mosely?] and Eric Weiser who still work in the department. Now they were here to bolster the minister, to give him credibility. You've brought two today. You've maintained that in retrospect, none of this could have been true. The problem, of course, we're all encountering is credibility. What has changed to make you more credible than your predecessor?

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    Mr. Martin Cauchon: The question is interesting. When you look at the past at the number of times we've used the supplementary estimates, it tells you that we've been adding a lot of components to the program from 1995 up until now. As a matter of fact, Mr. Chairperson, what we were doing from 1995, we were just building from scratch a very good fantastic gun control program that is in place and offer benefits to the in population. Now the registration system is in place, the licencing system is in place. Of course it's easier to forecast numbers in the future. So at this point in time, projection that we've made in our plan of action as well as based on reports that we've obtained from outside consultants. This model that has been developed, numbers are based on risk assessment as well. And as I've said, you have to look at all the components. One component being . I thank the member for his support.

    The Chair: Okay, thank you very much.

    And now we're going to go to Ms. Wasylycia-Leis for basically one question. Two minutes.

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