By Garry Breitkreuz, MP – January 15, 2001

To say the Liberal’s $585 million dollar gun registry (Bill C-68) is a mess is a gross understatement. It’s a disaster that is making a mockery of the original public safety objectives promised by Justice Minister Anne McLellan and her predecessor Allan Rock. Real criminals remain unaffected by the new laws. Just like 66 years of registering handguns hasn’t reduced the availability of or the criminal use of handguns, the registration of rifles and shotguns will produce similar results. This fatally-flawed legislation has created a two-tier criminal justice system – one for real criminals and one for citizens with no criminal intent; namely, those who have been caught in a mind-boggling maze of gun laws. This in turn has undermined both the police and public’s respect the Criminal Code of Canada, which was supposed to be reserved for serious crimes.

There are currently about half a million gun owners ignoring the law (even according to the government’s ridiculously low estimate of the number of gun owners in Canada). We have the Department of Justice violating their own legislation. We have police condoning lawbreaking (at least by the new Liberal definition of criminal activity). We have police ignoring groups and individuals that have admitted in public that they are not going to comply with the Firearms Act. We have police stating publicly that they are confused about how to enforce the laws. We have Conservation Officers in a number of provinces have said they will not be enforcing the new firearms regulations. It’s also clear that we now have two sets of criminal laws – one for Aboriginals and one for the rest of us. Chaos reigns supreme. No wonder Justice Minister Anne McLellan is ducking for cover.

In accordance with this Liberal legal legacy, on January 1, 2001, everyone in Canada who owns a firearm without a federal firearms licence became an instant criminal – even if they never knew they had to have a firearms licence or were confused by the government’s misleading advertisements. Police sources advise that Department of Justice bureaucrats are breaking the law by continuing to accept Possession Only firearms licence applications after the January 1, 2001 deadline. The Firearms Act clearly states that only the Chief Firearms Officer in every province can issue a firearms licence. Yet, the Department of Justice is issuing hundreds of thousands of "temporary licences" which overstep the legislative authority granted to the provincial CFOs and in violation of the public safety provisions written into section 5 of the Act. So much for the Minister’s promised "culture of safety"!

Additionally, many police forces are still accepting unwanted illegal firearms from "unlicenced gun owners" even though there is no amnesty for turning in rifles and shotguns. The Canadian Firearm Centre’s Background on Firearm Amnesties states, "Of course, if someone turns in an illegal firearm at any time outside an amnesty period, they are not protected from prosecution for possession offences." The police know these individuals are in illegal possession of a firearm and yet common sense - not the law - forces police to turn a blind eye to these criminal offences. Even the police do not consider these new Liberal "crimes" on the same par as real criminal acts. Too bad the Liberals didn't use a little of the common sense; that police are now using, when they drafted such a useless law.

Since the licencing deadline passed, any transfers of a firearm from someone without a valid firearms licence and lending an unregistered firearm are considered "trafficking" offences according to the Liberal’s flawed gun laws. As a way of circumventing the law, one provincial CFO is committing a criminal offence by counselling the illegal transfer of unregistered firearms to friends with licences until the real owner can obtain a firearms licence. Police are ignoring these criminal code offences even while the media continues to report them. Police are also looking the other way as unlicenced gun owners illegally transfer unwanted, unregistered firearms to museums and wildlife federations. The premature deadline has also caught legitimate firearm dealers with many firearms they can’t sell or return because they took firearms on consignment from unlicenced gun owners. Meanwhile, the Justice Minister’s officials announce their incompetence on national television by saying they never thought of it.

Others are flouting the law even more brazenly. On December 8, 2000, newspapers reported, "Members of the Tyendinaga Mohawk Council voted to exempt its members from the licencing and registration provisions. Council spokesman Greg Brant says placing long guns under federal control violates native treaty agreements that guaranteed the right to freely harvest game." On January 2, 2001, Bruce Hutton, Founding President of the Law-abiding Unregistered Firearms Association said on national television (CTV – Canada AM), "I refuse to buy a licence to have firearms that I have owned for 35 years…I have done nothing wrong." On January 6^th, the Quebec Mohawk communities of Kahnawake and Akwasasne announced, "The Mohawk Council has already stated that the [Firearms] Act will not be enforced in the community." How does the Justice Minister respond to this open defiance of the law? "What we will continue to do is work very closely with aboriginal communities," McLellan told the National Post.

Openly defying the Criminal Code of Canada and the failure of the police and the government to act on these public statements is a very serious development as it undermines one of the most serious statutes passed by our Parliament. Either these gun laws are serious enough to be enforced vigorously or they should be repealed. We have been telling the Liberals for the last five years that police on the street did not support Bill C-68. The government should have never have put police officers in this terrible situation. Clearly, Prime Minister Chretien avoided having to answer some embarrassing questions about this firearms fiasco by calling an early election.

Earlier this month, a number of newspapers reported that the Firearms Act allows Native children under the age of 12 to bear high-powered firearms without any formal training or adult supervision. An official in the Department of Justice admitted aboriginals get special treatment under the new laws to allow them to practice their "traditional way of life." In March of last year, a man in Nain, Newfoundland who was prohibited from owning firearms went to the RCMP, picked up his rifle that they had been storing for him, and has now been charged with killing a 15-year-old boy. The "aboriginal exemptions and adaptations" in Bill C-68 forced the RCMP to give a man his murder weapon. For years, the Minister and her minions, including a RCMP Assistant Commissioner, have defended their soon-to-be billion dollar boondoggle by saying, "If the gun registry saved just one life, it would be worth it." What do the Liberals and their supporters say now that they know their gun registry actually cost one life? There can’t be two sets of criminal laws in Canada – one for natives and one for non-natives. Sadly, all we can say over this young lad’s grave is: "We told the Liberals, but they didn’t listen."

At least one Liberal Cabinet Minister learned from the mistakes made by his colleagues in the Department of Justice. The National Post recently reported Environment Minister David Anderson’s lesson: "We have gun control at the present time in rural Canada, which does not appear to be a howling success in terms of everybody complying. It's an object lesson to us to try and make any legislation friendly, and make the objectives clear, and to enlist -- as opposed to oppose -- those who live on the land.'' Where was Mr. Anderson’s candour when Bill C-68 was being debated in 1995? Maybe Justice Minister Anne McLellan isn’t defending her government’s legislation because she finally realizes that the bureaucratic monster she has created and the hundreds of millions she has wasted, will do nothing to create the "culture of safety" she had promised.

But just think what could be done if we had used the hundreds of millions spent on C-68 to put more police on the street, to investigate real crime and to put real criminals in jail. And if saving lives were really the government’s goal then they could have bought, installed and operated 140 MRIs with the money wasted on the gun registry. Bill C-68 is a failure, even by the government’s own standards.