37^th Parliament, 2^nd Session
(September 30, 2002 -     )

Edited Hansard • Number 085

Monday, April 7, 2003

GOVERNMENT ORDERS

Bill C-10 - An Act to amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals and firearms) and the Firearms Act

[Hansard – Pages 5193-5196]

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz (Yorkton—Melville, Canadian Alliance): Mr. Speaker, this afternoon I want to address the bill. We have raised various objections to the government even introducing this in the way that it has, but I want to go on to address some of the key and fundamental flaws and problems with this entire issue before us. First I want to give some reasons for why in Bill C-10A, which is an amendment to the original Bill C-68, introduced and passed with invoking closure back in 1995, there are serious flaws, with the government tinkering with this at this point. It is not nearly good enough and will not do anything to suddenly make this gun control.

    No matter what the government says, Bill C-68, which was passed in 1995, is not gun control. Let us remember that through this entire debate. It is not improving public safety in any measurable way. It is not reducing crime. It is not doing any of the things that the government claimed it would do for the cost to taxpayers, for the original $2 million. It has gone 500 times over cost, maybe even more according to the Auditor General, and it is not accomplishing what the government wants.

    The reason I want to deal with this is that, first of all, this bill, Bill C-10A, should be sent back to the Senate, the other place, as we often refer to it, for more sober second thought.

    Let us look at the history of this particular bill before us now, these amendments. The House of Commons really has the authority to split bills. The Senate does not have that authority. The question the government has to ask is this: If we do not follow our Constitution, which guides us, why do we even have a Constitution? That, to me, is something that we cannot override. I know that the government is asking us to vote on whether we can remove our privileges. We cannot vote to remove the privileges of members of the House of Commons. That is against all parliamentary practice. That should never be allowed and the government is getting away with it, claiming, as I just heard members say, that it is allowed, it is fine. Many people rise as individuals on questions of privilege because the government cannot vote to take away those privileges.

    The second point I would like to make with regard to why the bill should be sent back to the Senate is that the amendments to the Firearms Act contained in Bill C-10A are more than two years old and do not even come close to addressing all the problems, all the amendments, all the things that have been identified in the last two years as huge problems with the firearms registry. They do not do any of that.

    That is why the bill should be sent back. That is why the whole thing should be scrapped: because the problems with the Firearms Act are not addressed by Bill C-10A, the bill that is now before us which the government would like to push through. The government does not want to go through all the stages of the bill, because if it did, more and more problems would be highlighted. It does not want to send it back to the committee stage so witnesses can come forward and point out the huge problems with the Firearms Act.

    That is why the government wants us to ram it through right now. That is why it wants us to go against our privileges and go through the various stages of the bill. It does not want the bill to go back to committee to have the experts who know how the bill is unfolding come to that committee and say, “These amendments in Bill C-10A do not address the problems”. That is why this thing should be withdrawn, taken off the table and done away with.

    Let us look at what the Auditor General said on the cost of implementing the Canadian firearms program. Her report highlights some of the huge problems. Let us look at the error rate she identified. The Auditor General quoted various experts who have studied this and who say that the error rate is up to 90% on the registration certificates that are sent in; 90% of them contain errors.

    That is not addressed in this bill. This is the biggest garbage collection system in the nation, and the most expensive, and the bill does not address that. Why are we even dealing with the bill if it does not address the huge problems with that? All we have to do is look at the RCMP's Canadian firearms program report for the information that verifies what I just said.

    The government scrapped the whole verification process that was supposed to ensure that the information collected was accurate. It did it for the first million registration certificate applications but after that it was scrapped. We now have five million firearms in the registry with inaccurate information. The police cannot rely on it. It is garbage in garbage out. That is another problem that has not been addressed by Bill C-10A but there are many others.

    The privacy commissioner put out a report entitled “Review of the Personal Information Handling Practices of the Canadian Firearms Program”. He chastized the government for the huge problems it has caused and for the violation of the privacy rights of all Canadians. The government did not address any of that in Bill C-10A. Why are we dealing with that today if the bill is totally inadequate in addressing some of the concerns brought forward?

    I know my time is limited but I want to deal with as many issues as I can because they are all important.

    Bill C-10A does not include some of the most important amendments needed to track high risk persons. While the government is spending hundreds of millions of dollars tracking down law-abiding firearms owners, such as duck hunters, sport shooters, people who use firearms in a recreational and healthy way, it does not track true criminals.

    There are 131,000 people in this country who have been prohibited from owning firearms. The government has not even bothered to ask the police to see if those individuals have firearms. It does not enforce laws already on the books and now it has a totally ineffective gun registry.

    I listened to the justice minister as he answered my questions in question period. He said that the firearms registry was a huge success when in fact the licensing provisions in it have denied 9,000 people permission to buy a firearm. He did not mention the 131,000 people have been denied that privilege and nobody has even checked on them. They do not even have to report a change of address. However law-abiding gun owners have to report their change of address within one month or they could face up to two years in jail. None of these huge problems are addressed in the bill.

    As the Canadian Alliance has said all along, the bill goes after the wrong people in society. Why do we not go after the criminal in society rather than law-abiding people?

    Another problem with the bill is that the amendments to the Firearms Act do not address the amendments recommended and accepted by the justice minister in the Hession report. The justice minister made a huge issue of the fact that he would do an internal audit of the firearms registry. After the Auditor General released her report on December 3, 2002, he made a big deal about reviewing it and bringing forward proposals to make it work.

    Bill C-10A has been back and forth from the House of Commons to the Senate and none of the things that Mr. Hession identified are in the bill. Why are we even debating this today? The bill is old. The problems that have come forth in the firearms registry have not been addressed in it and yet the minister has claimed that somehow it will improve things.

    The amendments in Bill C-10A to the Firearms Act do not meet the requirements to implement the justice minister's action plan. The government announced recently that it wants to transfer the Canadian firearms program from the justice department to the Solicitor General's department. Is there anything in the bill in regard to that? No. The government is violating its own rules. There is no provision in government for this to happen.

    The section of Bill C-68 dealing with firearms defines the federal minister as the Minister of Justice. The Firearms Act is riddled with references to the federal minister and his authority under the act, the regulations, orders in council, safety course forms and even the appointment of the new commissioner of the firearms registry in Bill C-10A. All of this is in the bill but the government has announced that it will be transferred to the Solicitor General. Will it bring in another bill immediately following this one? Why not withdraw this and do things properly.

    The House of Commons voted five times on Bill C-68: at second reading, at report state, third reading and on two time allocation motions. The Standing Committee on Justice spent weeks studying and reporting to Bill C-68, many of which were rejected by the justice department, but a change to the definition of federal minister was never suggested or considered.

    The clear intent of the government was that the firearms program be administered by the justice department. If the government wants to transfer administration of the Firearms Act to another minister, it must be brought back before the House for a full debate of why the program will be better administered by the same people working under yet under another minister. All the government is doing is changing the name plates on the doors but it still requires an amendment in the House to do that.

    The sixth issue that I bring forward is that the amendments to the Firearms Act in Bill C-10A do not address the 250 amendments proposed to Bill C-68 in 1995 by the then Reform Party in the report stage debate. All of them were rejected by the government. In hindsight, the government should have accepted those. It still has not. It has not fixed what is broken.

    Today in my office we received 517 pages of briefing notes prepared for the Minister of Justice. Here are some of the quotes about Bill C-10 contained in them. I would like to read them.

    In the notes dated October 18, 2002, and provided to the minister in preparation for his meeting with the Quebec minister of justice, under the section entitled Bill C-10A, it states:

    My question for the justice minister or the Solicitor General is: Why is the minister now saying that he is going to transfer the gun registry to the Solicitor General? Why is this transfer not made in Bill C-10A?

    Another point in regard to what we found in these briefing notes reads:

    The question that needs to be answered is: Why has the minister changed his mind since he told the Senate this? Why is the government proposing now to consolidate the statutory authority under the Solicitor General? The government is changing its mind constantly and none of that is reflected in the bill.

    The e-mail goes on to state:

    The next question is:

    The question we have to ask is: Do we know how financially accountable the justice minister has been? The Auditor General has told us and I think that is quite clear. The justice minister still has not told us how much the gun registry has cost to date or how much it will cost to fully implement. His Plans and Priorities report tabled in the House was filled with 105 blanks; an unbelievable report that he has put forward. In many areas costs are totally unaccounted for.

    Why has the Justice Minister changed his mind since the end of October? How will the amendments in Bill C-10A make the Solicitor General any more accountable to Parliament than the justice minister?

    I would now like to go on to the second part of my intervention today. I have 14 questions that the justice minister must answer before Parliament and must give before Parliament before we proceed with the legislation. I will go through these in the next few minutes.

    The first question the justice minister should ask before we proceed with Bill C-10A is this. The poorly worded Firearms Act amendments proposed in Bill C-10A were first introduced in the House two years ago. Many things have changed in the last two years, including recommendations from Mr. Hession calling for even more amendments to streamline the gun registry operation. Why not just put all the amendments from the minister's upcoming action plan into one new bill and let the House debate them all at once? Why do it in this manner?

    The next question I would like to ask is this. The lawyers in the Library of Parliament and witnesses appearing before the justice committee exposed some serious ambiguity if the new definition of muzzle velocity and muzzle energy in Bill C-10A is implemented. The justice minister refused to consider a simple amendment to remove the confusion. Why will the minister not ask the Senate to pass this simple amendment when it reports its amendments to the cruelty to animals sections? Why did it not put that in before it reported this back to the House?

    The next question is this. Since Bill C-68 came into force in December 1998, the government has passed six amnesties for the tens of thousands of banned short-barrelled handguns covered by the amendments in Bill C-10A, proving once again that these banned firearms are not dangerous at all when in the hands of their licensed owners. Considering Mr. Hession's recommendations for more amendments to streamline handgun ownership and transportation, why does the government not just introduce a new bill so Parliament can debate all the amendments to Bill C-68 all at once?

    My fourth question that the justice minister should answer before we pass this is this. RCMP testing has confirmed that many air guns, pellet guns and even some BB guns exceed both the muzzle energy and muzzle velocity requirements in Bill C-10A and will have to be registered just as soon as Bill C-10A is proclaimed. How many millions of air guns, pellet guns and BB guns will now have to be registered and how much will it cost to register them? The justice minister should answer that question. He has avoided this at every opportunity he has had to answer it, and yet it is a key question.

    How many criminals will this create when this is passed? People who have purchased air guns, pellet guns and BB guns, which will now, with the new definition contained here, have to be registered, will not even have obtained a firearms licence, and cannot, if they are in possession of one of these firearms, with the way Bill C-68, the Firearms Act, is worded, and will become criminals.

    The fifth question I would like to ask is this. There may be as many as one million air gun and pellet gun owners. Has the government notified those people? What will the government do with them? Has it notified them that their guns will have to be registered and they have to get a licence? How will that all work? There may be as many as one million air gun and pellet gun owners in Canada. Not only do most of them not know that their pellet guns are about to become firearms that need to be registered, but they do not know how to do it or what the whole process is. How does the justice minister plan to deal with this huge problem?

    The next question is this. The way the Firearms Act is currently worded, it does not permit anyone to register a firearm that is currently unregistered unless they hold a valid firearms licence and sent a letter of intent to the justice minister before December 31. Owners of these air guns and pellet guns did not know before now that some of their guns needed to be registered. What amendments are needed in order to allow these newly minted gun owners to licence themselves and register their air guns? How is that going to happen?

    None of that is addressed in Bill C-10A. It is an extremely flawed bill and that is why the Canadian Alliance opposes it.

    Based upon the new definition of a firearm as contained in Bill C-10A, how many millions more will it cost taxpayers to licence all these air guns and pellet guns? How much will it cost? The justice minister should answer that.

    The RCMP testing has confirmed that many of the air guns, pellet guns and even some BB guns exceed the muzzle energy and muzzle velocity required in the new Bill C-10A. What has the government done to deal with the issue and to inform gun owners?

    What has the government done to deal with the issue, to inform gun owners?

    Mr. Speaker, I have a great deal more I need to relate on this. I hope at some point I will be able to do that. I would like to propose an amendment at this time. I move:

    The Speaker: The question therefore is on the amendment to the amendment.

    There will be a 10 minute question and comment period for the hon. member in a moment, but I am going to deliver a ruling on another matter.

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