CONTENTS
Allotted Day--Sex Offender Registry
Mr. Garry Breitkreuz (Yorkton--Melville, Canadian Alliance): Madam Speaker, I would like to bring a completely different perspective to the discussion on the motion the official opposition has brought forward today for a national sex offender registry.
In November we received a report from a man who moved from Manitoba to a small town in Alberta. A short time after he moved he received a call from an official in the federal Department of Justice asking him if he had reported his change of address as it was a criminal offence not to do so. The man then moved to Calgary, where once again he received a call from the justice department official who asked if he had reported his change of address.
Was this a convicted sex offender who had a federal Department of Justice official tracking him across Canada? Not at all. Was this a dangerous repeat offender who had the federal government checking up on him? Not at all. This man was a law-abiding Canadian who had just applied for, passed a test for, paid for and was issued a firearms possession and acquisition licence.
According to regulations made by the governor in council, and it is really the justice minister, in accordance with section 117(a) of the Firearms Act it is a criminal offence for a firearms owner to move without telling the government within 30 days. The maximum penalty for violating this law is two years in jail.
The problem was that the man whom the government tracked from Manitoba to a small town in Alberta and then on to Calgary did not even own a gun. He just had a licence to acquire one. One would think that after spending $700 million on a gun registry the government might have known that from the information on this man's file.
Why is the government not so diligent about tracking the whereabouts of convicted sex offenders or dangerous repeat offenders? The actions of this overzealous Department of Justice bureaucrat prove that the government thinks it is more important to track a law-abiding citizen than it is to track convicted sex offenders. Hopefully the Privacy Commissioner of Canada will report to parliament on this horrendous breach of privacy.
Now to my key point: The Liberals have turned the justice system on its head. Instead of focusing on known criminals who are a real threat to society, they are spending hundreds of millions of dollars focusing on law-abiding citizens who, by issuing them a firearms licence, the government has declared are no threat to public safety.
As has been reported here today, the government's own research shows that 50% of child molesters reoffend 10 to 30 years after serving their sentence. Why is the government so reluctant to track the whereabouts of these individuals?
Unfortunately the privacy breaches for law-abiding citizens do not stop with mandatory reporting of addresses under threats of two years in jail. The RCMP has created a huge database in CPIC with private and personal information on 3,731,716 individuals as of November 3, 2001. The database is called the firearms interest police database. Last August the Privacy Commissioner of Canada reported that this database is full of garbage that has been loaded on those files without RCMP knowledge or consent.
Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Souris--Moose Mountain.
On pages 28 and 29 of his report, the privacy commissioner states:
|
As a result, in some cases, the database contains entries on individuals who should never have been flagged as they do not meet the ineligibility criteria under section 5 of the Firearms Act. A FIP hit sometimes directs the FO to unsubstantiated and derogatory information, unproven charges or allegations, hearsay, records that are older than 5 years, incidents and charges that have been cleared or acquitted, duplicate entries as well as information about witnesses, victims of crime and various other associated subjects. People are unaware that they are being flagged in FIP as possible risks to public safety. Also, inaccurate information on FIP or information that has already been the subject of a previous investigation and cleared, is used over and over. |
|
At this time, neither the RCMP nor DOJ has a framework or methodology in place to verify how many of the FIP records fall outside of the requirements of section 5 of the Firearms Act. |
That is the end of the quotation from the privacy commissioner. We ought to take careful note of what he has said.
The government has no compunction about violating the privacy rights of millions of law abiding Canadians but it is concerned about the privacy rights of a few thousand convicted sex offenders. Has the government completely lost its senses? It absolutely does not make sense. I introduced a private member's motion which read:
|
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should enact legislation to require convicted sex offenders and those prohibited from owning firearms to report any change of address to police. |
Hopefully after today the government will include this sensible provision in the new legislation implementing its national sex offender registry.
My sympathies go out to all young children who will be exposed to danger, injury and death if the government fails to act. As mentioned earlier today, it is absolutely crucial that police have the capability to track child molesters and to track them quickly.
Of children who are abducted for sexual purpose, of those victims who are murdered, 44% are dead within one hour of the abduction, 74% within three hours and 91% within 24 hours. This is an extremely important life and death discussion in which we are engaged.
A sex offender registry would assist police by identifying all the registered sex offenders living within a particular geographic area, something CPIC does not do. In excess of 75% of the time an offender lives within a two kilometre radius of where the incident occurs.
Almost a year ago on March 13, 2001, the House unanimously passed a Canadian Alliance motion which read:
|
That the government establish a national sex offender registry by January 30, 2002. |
That deadline has come and gone and no real action has been taken. While the government tracks law abiding gun owners, convicted sex offenders roam freely. It is time for the government to keep at least one of its promises, and let that one promise be to establish a national sex offender registry.
The government just argued that the system was not perfect and implied that it was working on it. Where are its priorities? Where is it spending its money? It is being spent tracking duck hunters and not dangerous sex offenders. It is not tracking terrorists or people who are in Canada illegally. We know there are 27,000 people whose addresses are not known to the government who have been ordered deported. Nothing is being done.
For the government to argue that it is working on it is a spurious argument at best because if we look at where it is putting the resources we see that almost $700 million has been spent trying to track firearms in the country. It refuses to do a cost benefit analysis of whether it is producing any results worthy of the hundreds of millions being spent on it.
What is the government's priority? Is it tracking sex offenders? No. A huge amount of money is being spent in an area that has little benefit. It is not registering criminals. Instead it is registering law abiding citizens. It has established a huge bureaucratic gun registry with little benefit and instead it should be establishing a registry of sex offenders.