38^th Parliament, 1^st Session

Edited Hansard • Number 017

Thursday, October 28, 2004

Adjournment Proceedings

[Hansard Pages – 937-939]

Firearms Program

    Mr. Garry Breitkreuz (Yorkton—Melville, CPC): Mr. Speaker, on Tuesday, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Public Safety refused to say how much the firearms program would cost to fully implement and how much it would cost to maintain. Twenty-five times we have asked this same question and 25 times the government has failed to answer. That is two years of keeping Parliament in the dark, the very thing the Auditor General chastized the government for in her December 2002 report.

    I also asked the minister why she was pumping $120 million into a completely ineffective firearms program this year while more than 1,700 DNA cases were backlogged in the RCMP forensic laboratories. She also ducked that question. I asked her a more pointed question in committee yesterday but rather than answer the question she said that she would answer my question in writing.

    Tonight I am going to give the minister another chance to answer my question in Parliament.

    Our sources in the RCMP tell us that in the year 2000 the DNA case backlog in the RCMP forensic laboratory reached a low of 330 cases, but on October 2003 the backlog had risen to more than twice that, 683 cases. In the last year alone, this backlog has risen from 683 to 1,733 cases, doubling once again.

    The minister's new department is not improving public safety. She is letting criminal suspects roam free because she will not give the RCMP labs enough money to analyze DNA samples. The 2004-05 evidence recovery and biology services business plan called for increased investment by the RCMP in order to deal with the DNA backlog situation but its request was denied. Why?

    In July the RCMP issued a news release announcing the following, “On June 29, 2004 the DNA data bank recorded its 2,000th successful DNA match linking crime scenes to convicted offenders”.

    All parliamentarians need to know what percentage of the 1,733 backlog DNA cases in the RCMP forensic laboratories would result in a successful match with a convicted offender or, in other words, how many criminals are walking around free because of the lack of adequate funding for the RCMP labs by the Deputy Prime Minister and her government?

    Given the DNA data bank's fantastic success rate of matching convicted criminals to crime scenes and the gun registry's fantastic flop, it defies all logic to starve the RCMP forensic labs while the flop of a firearms program eats up $120 million a year.

    The minister has her priorities all wrong. She has dolled out hard-earned taxpayer dollars based on her party's political priorities, not public safety priorities. After nine years $1 billion has been wasted on the Liberal's firearms fiasco. One can just imagine what the police could have done with $1 billion to fight real crime and chase real criminals.

    Instead of tracking 310,000 criminals with outstanding Canada-wide and province-wide warrants, and instead of tracking 176,000 convicted criminals with firearms prohibition orders against them, and 37,000 dangerous persons with court restraining orders, the minister and the Liberal government have wasted $1 billion tracking and harassing 2,000,000 completely innocent hunters and recreational shooters.

    My question for the 26th time is: How much will it cost to fully implement the program?

    Hon. Roy Cullen (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, in the member's question in question period he talked about the DNA in the supplementary, but I am prepared to deal with the question around the firearms registry.

    The first question put forward by the hon. member concerns the licence renewal process that was approved by Parliament in 2003.

[Translation]

    The second question deals with the costs of the program reported to Parliament in October 2004. The hon. member knows that firearm licences must be renewed every five years.

[English]

    More than 50% of the 1.98 million firearms licences were issued within a 12 month period preceding the legislated deadline of December 31, 2000 that required firearm owners and users to be licensed under the Firearms Act.

    Bill C-10A, originally tabled in the House as Bill C-15 in 2001, received royal assent in May 2003. It amended the Firearms Act to provide measures for the effective administration of the firearms program. Included in the legislation was a provision to allow a one-time extension of some possession-only licences, to solve the peak in workload, every five years for licence renewals, thus allowing for a more even yearly distribution of licence renewals.

[Translation]

    Parliament passed this provision, and the evening out of the workload has been supported by stakeholders consulted on Bill C-10A in the fall of 2003. It also got the support of provincial firearm regulators, because this has created a stable operational environment while ensuring quality services and public security.

[English]

    Workload levelling is a much used and effective business practice that allows a more even distribution of work over an extended period. This eliminates increased costs and staff for processing an unusual peak in workload. Workload levelling also allows the program to continue to meet application processing standards thus ensuring firearm owners receive their renewal before their existing licence expires.

    The hon. member again has a question pertaining to the costs of the Canadian firearms program. Full program costing is reported in the Canada Firearms Centre's “Report On Plans and Priorities” and in its “Departmental Performance Report” which were tabled in Parliament in October 2004.

    As reported in the 2003-04 Canada Firearms Centre's “Departmental Performance Report”, the full federal cost of the firearms program of $934.4 million includes: the cost of information technology; the licensing of all firearm owners; the registration of all firearms; the indirect costs to other government departments; and transfer payments to the provinces.

    It is my pleasure to remind members of the House that the Canada Firearms Centre remains committed to providing Canadians with efficient and cost effective services. Workload levelling is but one of the many measures that has been taken to allow us to meet that commitment.

    Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: Mr. Speaker, I did not get any answer with regard to what I asked about the DNA registry, and that is regrettable. I hope I will get an answer some time.

    As the member opposite has just explained, this is really an example of how poorly thought out this entire program was. Right from the get-go the government was told that it was completely unworkable and that the costs would spiral out of control. The government claimed it could do it for a cost to taxpayers of $2 million. The Auditor General said that it went 500 times over budget and we are still paying about 60 times more per year than the total cost was supposed to be.

    What are we getting for that? Millions of guns are still unregistered. More than 400,000 firearms licence holders have not registered their gun. More than 300,000 registered handgun owners still have to re-register their handguns. Five million guns in the registry are still not verified. The police cannot even use the information.

    This has to be one of the biggest boondoggles the government has ever come up with. When will it finally back off? This latest thing is just more evidence.

    Hon. Roy Cullen: Mr. Speaker, I apologize for not having an answer on the DNA, but that was in the supplementary and perhaps I can get back to the member on that.

    With respect to firearms licensing, as it often is in life, people leave things to the last minute. Sometimes they do that because they are not very happy when they have to license a firearm. What we had was a peak load of registrations. On a five year renewal basis that would mean we would have a peak every five years. The firearms centre would have to staff up and then staff down, pay overtime, et cetera. This makes eminent sense and was adopted by this Parliament.

    I would like to talk about some of the good things that are happening with the firearms registry. For example, it has now registered roughly seven million firearms. That is a good number of registered firearms, but more important , there are about 20,000 inquiries on the firearms registry by police every week.

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LIBERAL REPORT STILL HIDING FUTURE COST OF THE GUN REGISTRY http://www.cssa-cila.org/garryb/publications/Article443.htm