BILL C-68 – FIREARMS FIASCO

 

A PRESENTATION TO CIVITAS

Vancouver, BC

 

by Garry Breitkreuz, MP

for Yorkton-Melville, Saskatchewan

 

 

April 27, 2002

 

 

 

BILL C-68 – FIREARMS FIASCO

by Garry Breitkreuz, MP

 

I want to thank Civitas for inviting me to present this paper today on an issue that I have been working on since March 10, 1994.  Just a few days earlier, I had attended a rally in Preeceville, Saskatchewan – population about 600.  On a bitterly cold night, 1200 people filled the local arena to protest Bill C-17, a package of firearms regulations passed by Parliament in 1991 when Kim Campbell was Justice Minister.  That night, I promised those people to be their voice in Ottawa.  Since then, I have issued 200 news releases opposing the federal firearms fiasco.

 

 

BILL C-68 Ignored Senior Bureaucrat’s Advice

 

On March 12, 1994, four different newspapers quoted Justice Minister Allan Rock: “I came to Ottawa in November of last year with the firm belief that the only people in this country who should have guns are police officers and soldiers.” 

 

According to two separate sources inside the Justice Department, a very senior official then provided this advice to Allan Rock: “That dog is sleeping behind the stove, don’t kick it.”  Well, Allan Rock ignored this sage advice and kicked the living daylights out that dog with Bill C-68 and the Liberals have been stepping in dog doo-doo ever since.

 

Something very serious happened to Allan Rock between March 10th and March 12th. On March 10th, the Justice Minister appeared before the Standing Committee on Justice and in response to a question by Reform MP, Myron Thompson, Mr. Rock said: “But let me say this.  If I can refer back to the platform document, the Liberal Party sought election on a platform that contained specific proposals in relation to gun control, and we intend to implement them.  There’s not much in those proposals that involves legislation.  Mostly, it’s administration.”

 

He then proceeded to spend the ten months drafting a 137-page bill with seven pages that targeted the criminals that use firearms to commit crimes and 130 pages that targeted law-abiding citizens that use firearms for sport, hobbies and recreation. 

Bill C-68 was followed by another 132 pages of mind-numbing regulations and a blizzard of Orders-in-Council over the last few years – 16 of which the Minister failed to table in Parliament as required by the Firearms Act – breaking their own law in the process.

 

 

BILL C-68 is a Fiscal Fiasco

 

On February 16, 1995, Justice Minister Allan Rock made this promise in Parliament:  “We have provided our estimate of the cost of implementing universal registration over the next five years.  We say that it will cost $85 million.  We have also said that we will put before the parliamentary committee, on which all parties sit, details of those calculations showing our assumptions and how we arrived at those figures.  We encourage the members opposite to examine our estimates.  We are confident we will demonstrate that the figures are realistic and accurate.” [Hansard Page 9709]

 

On April 24, 1995, the Justice Minister appeared before the Standing Committee on Justice and tabled his now infamous “Financial Framework for Bill C-68”.

 

This document promised the public and Parliament that the Canadian Firearms Program would run a deficit of only $2.2 million over the first five years.  The actual deficit over the first five years was $321,761,005.

 

During the debate of Bill C-68 in the House of Commons, twenty Reform MPs advised the government to reconsider their financial projections based on estimates provided by Professor Gary Mauser that claimed the actual cost of implementing the Liberal gun registration scheme would cost at least a billion dollars. 

 

In reply, Allan Rock scoffed: “Let us not hear that the registration system will cost $100 per firearm. Let us not hear that it is a prelude to the confiscation by the government of hunting rifles and shotguns. Let us not contend that it will cost $1.5 billion to put in place.  That is the way to distort the discussion. That is the way to frighten people.” [Hansard Page 9709]

 

On November 21, 2001, the Deputy Comptroller General of the Treasury Board of Canada appeared before the Senate Committee on National Finance and provided the total amount spent on the gun registry as of that date:

“For previous years - if you care to jot this down - before the beginning of this fiscal year, it was $541,262,000. In the Main Estimates - that is, the Main Estimates for this year, 2001-02 - there was a planned additional $34,611,000. The amount in these Supplementary Estimates, as I have already explained, is $113,886,000. The total at this point is $689,760,000.  I trust, Mr. Chairman, that answers the senator's request.”

 

To which Senator Terry Stratton of Manitoba asked:

“The concern I have is that this is $689 million, which is virtually $600 million more than the minister promised it would be. How can someone be that incredibly wrong?”

 

The Treasury Board officials did not answer the Senator’s question – nor has anyone else in government for that matter.

 

On September 21,1995, Ontario Solicitor General, Bob Runciman, told the Senate Standing Committee, “In national terms, 85 million dollars would put another 1,000 customs agents on the border; 500 million dollars would put an extra 5,900 police officers on the street. The federal alternative is to use the money to register every shotgun and bolt-action .22 in Canada. No great brilliance is required to figure out which would have a greater impact on crime."

 

The fact is that the cost of the Liberal’s gun registration scheme will easily top a billion dollars by the time they have all the guns registered.  All Professor Mauser and opposition MPs can do is say we told you so. 

 

I just received information from the government on Wednesday of this week, that the estimate the cost of running the gun registry for this fiscal year (2002-2003) will be another $113.5 million.  Taxpayers shouldn’t hold their breath – the Justice Department has never met any of their budget projections yet.  Oh by the way, even if they’re right, that will bring the total cost of the gun registry to over $800 million dollars.

 

And, we haven’t even begun assessing the economic costs that Bill C-68 will inflict.  Suffice it to say, the economic impact and costs will far exceed the billion dollar out-of-pocket expenses the government has paid to implement the gun registry.

 

The government seems oblivious to their fatally flawed firearms fiasco.

 

 

BILL C-68 is Fatally Flawed

 

And I mean the word fatal when I say fatally flawed.

 

Mr. Abraham Zarpa of Nain, Labrador, was prohibited from owning firearms.  On December 1, 1999, this prohibition order was lifted under section 113 of the Criminal Code - a section that was amended by Bill C-68.  This section allows a prohibition order to be lifted by a “competent authority” if the person needs a firearm for sustenance or employment purposes.  The Chief Firearms Officer of the Province of Newfoundland opposed the lifting of the prohibition order because of previous violence and weapons offences committed by Mr. Zarpa.

 

The court order, permitted by section 113, required the RCMP to give Mr. Zarpa his firearms when he wanted to go hunting.  Mr. Zarpa was to return his firearms to the RCMP after each hunting trip.

 

On March 3, 2000, Mr. Zarpa went to the RCMP detachment and signed out his .223 calibre rifle from the RCMP.  On March 8, 2000, 15-year-old Martin Angnatok was murdered with this same firearm in Mr. Zarpa’s house, and Mr. Zarpa was charged with 2nd degree murder.  Despite a court-ordered publication ban, we obtained the facts of the case from the transcript of the Preliminary Hearing held in December of 2000.

 

Following the 3-day preliminary hearing, Mr. Zarpa was held over for trial on the murder charge.  On January 21, 2002, the court ordered a stay of proceedings.

 

Without the amendment for lifting a firearms prohibition passed in Bill C-68, 15-year-old Martin Angnatok may still have been alive today.  In the very least, the RCMP would not have been forced to hand over the murder weapon.

 

You know the famous line that all anti-gun types resort to when the logic of all their arguments is defeated?  “If it saves just one life.” 

 

Well, what would they say if they learned that Bill C-68 very likely cost one life?

 

 

BILL C-68 - Gun registration does mean confiscation

 

Now, I want to return to another promise that Justice Minister Allan Rock made in the House of Commons on February 16, 1995.  He said, “Let us not hear that it is a prelude to the confiscation by the government of hunting rifles and shotguns.”  If that’s true, then why did he use Bill C-68 to ban 555,200 REGISTERED handguns? 

 

Bill C-68 banned all .25 and .32 calibre handguns and all handguns with a barrel length105 mm or shorter  - 105 mm is a little over 4 inches long.  This includes .38 calibre revolvers that used to be carried by most police officers up until a few years ago.

 

They banned these firearms despite the complete lack of any statistics or evidence that these firearms represented any threat to public safety while in the hands of the registered owners.  It was enough for the Liberals to call them “Saturday Night Specials” and repeat it often enough so as to confuse the media and the public.

 

Of course, the only handguns of this type that the government knows exist are the ones that are registered in the RCMP’s 68-year-old Restricted Weapons Registration System.

 

Since December 1, 1998, when Bill C-68 came into force, the Liberals have passed five amnesties for the owners of these so-called short-barrelled handguns to dispose of them (after having destroyed both the value and the market for these guns by banning them).  These amnesties prove that even the government doesn’t think these so-called “Saturday Night Specials” are dangerous when in the hands of a licenced firearms owner.

 

The only well-documented success story for the 68-year-old gun registry is CONFISCATING PRIVATE PROPERTY WITHOUT COMPENSATION.

 

STEP 1 – Require all restricted firearms to be registered.

STEP 2 – Restrict the firearm without any evidence proving it’s dangerous.

STEP 3 – Prohibit the firearm without any evidence proving it’s dangerous.

STEP 4 – Confiscate the firearm without compensation.

 

So much for property rights in Canada, eh?

 

And if anyone was the least bit reassured by the Liberal’s promises, Deputy Prime Minister Herb Gray confirmed the true intentions of the Liberal government on November 15, 1997, when he was quoted in the Montreal Gazette following the signing of a small arms agreement with the Organization of American States: “This could be the start of a global movement that would spur the development of an instrument to ban firearms worldwide similar to our land-mines initiative.”

 

The Liberals have a proven track record when it comes to banning and confiscating registered guns.  This is another fact that the Liberals have successfully kept out of the mainstream media.

 

 

BILL C-68 Hits the Wrong Target

 

Now, let’s take a few minutes to challenge the logic of Liberal laws that target the law-abiding owners of firearms in Canada.

 

First of all, if gun owners represented a risk to themselves, their families and their communities, the first people to be aware of it would be insurance companies.

 

Ever wonder why you are never asked on any insurance application if you own a gun?

 

In 1995, I asked the Library of Parliament to check this out.  They contacted the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association and the Insurance Bureau of Canada and learned that insurance companies do not ask their applicants if they own a gun because firearms owners are "not an identifiable risk group".

 

This actuarial fact is also supported by RCMP and Statistics Canada data but is completely ignored by the Liberal government.

 

When Statistics Canada released their Crime Statistics for 1999, they reported on page two: "Police reported just over 291,000 incidents of violent crime in 1999."  The last paragraph on the same page stated: "In 1999, 4.1% of violent crimes involved a firearm."  Unfortunately, this 4.1% statistic was overstated because Statistics Canada defines “involved” not as “used” in the commission of the offence but only as “present” at the scene of the crime.  That’s why the RCMP statistics on firearms involved in crime are dramatically lower. 

 

In July 1997, the Commissioner of the RCMP wrote the Deputy Minister of Justice to complain about the department’s misrepresentation of RCMP statistics.  The Commissioner set the record straight: “Furthermore, the RCMP investigated 88,162 actual violent crimes during 1993, where only 73 of these offences, or 0.08%, involved the use of firearms.”  

 

The Library of Parliament Research Branch examined two different reports published by Statistics Canada on violent crime in 1999.  They determined that the “Presence of a Firearm in Violent Incidents” was 4.1%, but the “Use of a Firearm in Violent Incidents” was only 1.4% - three times lower than the figure normally reported by Statistics Canada and accepted and repeated by the media without any explanation.  Responsible firearm owners are clearly the wrong targets!

 

Firearms are used in 1.4% of violent crimes and gun registration cannot possibly lower that number.  What possible good can come from laying a piece of paper (a registration certificate) beside a firearm?  In fact, all the evidence of banning all handguns in Britain and massive confiscation and destruction of long guns in Australia has had the opposite effect.  In those countries, more gun control laws targeting responsible firearms owners has resulted in higher and higher rates of firearms crime.  Sadly, these governments have responded to this criminality by proposing even more onerous laws targeting law abiding gun owners.  Even more depressing is the fact that the Liberals seem to want to follow Britain and Australia down this wrong road.

 

Every year, Statistics Canada publishes homicide and robbery data that proves conclusively the wrong-headedness of the Liberal’s gun laws.

 

Here are some firearms facts from the Statistics Canada Homicide in Canada 2000 report released last November:

1. Of the 542 homicides in Canada in 2000, stabbing, beating and strangulation accounted for 58% and firearms for 34% (Page 7). Obviously, violent individuals are the problem and registering a person’s firearms doesn’t prevent someone from killing another person.

2. Of the 183 firearms homicides in 2000, 58% were committed with handguns (The law has required all handguns to be registered since 1934), 8% were committed with firearms that are completely prohibited (sawed-off rifles or shotguns and fully automatic firearms), and 31% were committed with a rifle or shotgun (Page 8). Obviously, 67 years of registering handguns demonstrates that registration is a fatal flop as a way to prevent the criminal use of firearms.  The statistical evidence also indicates that the total banning of guns doesn’t work any better.

3. Despite 67 years of mandatory handgun registration, the use of handguns in firearms homicides has been steadily increasing since 1974, from 26.9% to 58.5% in 2000.  Conversely, firearms homicides with rifles and shotguns that weren’t registered dropped steadily over the same 27-year period, from 63.6% to 30.6% (Table 6 – Page 9).  Makes a sane person wonder why the Liberals employ 1,800 staff and have wasted more than $700 million trying to register millions of rifles and shotguns, doesn’t it? 

4. Of 110 handgun homicides committed between 1997 and 2000, 69% of the handguns were not registered (Page 9) - this despite the fact that the law has required handguns to be registered since 1934.  Does the failure of gun registration as an effective government policy get any more obvious than this?

5. In 2000, 67% of persons accused of homicide had a Canadian criminal record, and 69% of these had previously been convicted of violent crimes.  At the same time, 52% of homicide victims also had a criminal record (Page 15).  Obviously, the Liberals have hit the wrong target by requiring completely innocent farmers, hunters and recreational shooters to register their firearms.  Obviously, criminals are the real targets – not duck hunters!

The government had a choice six years ago and it made the wrong one. 

Statistics Canada robbery statistics show only 1% of 21,279 robberies in the year 2000 were committed with long guns – 14% of these robberies were committed with handguns despite six decades of mandatory registration.  Once again, as a policy registration of guns has proven to be a failure. 

Another interesting statistic was that no one was injured in any of the 220 robberies committed with rifles and shotguns. 

In the face of all this real evidence, the Liberals were forced to fabricate statistics in a vain attempt to justify their bogus Bill C-68.  They are still trying.

 

 

BILL C-68 - Liberals Fabricating Facts

 

On April 10th of this year, during his speech on Bill C-15B, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice said this in the House of Commons:

 

“In 1998, 63% of all female domestic homicide victims were shot with ordinary rifles and shotguns. A further 21% were shot with sawed-off shotguns and rifles. In the home Uncle George's duck gun can have tragic consequences.”

 

Here was my reply in the House the next day:

 

“Before getting into any comments on the proposed amendments to Bill C-15B, I need to correct the misleading statistics presented in the House yesterday by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice. He claimed that the gun registry is somehow going to improve the fact that women are being killed with rifles and shotguns. The parliamentary secretary failed to explain how registering rifles and shotguns is going to stop these firearms from being used for criminal purposes. We have never received an answer to that although we have been asking for six years.

 

An article in the Toronto Sun on Tuesday of this week proves just how useless the 68-year-old handgun registry has been in preventing the criminal use of handguns. It states:  [quote] Police found an arsenal and a stash of drugs after raiding the home of a man captured breaking into his former common-law wife's house with a loaded gun. The man faces more than three dozen charges after he was arrested with a .380 calibre handgun at his estranged spouse's Bathurst St. and Eglinton Ave. home late Saturday night. Police said he subjected the woman to 11 years of terror. She and the couple's two children are now in hiding. In a search of the man's Brampton home Sunday, police seized five loaded firearms, including a Tec-9 machine pistol. He was under a life-time ban preventing him from owning firearms. [End quote]

 

Obviously the Minister of Justice and his parliamentary secretary should be more interested in directing the scarce police resources that are in place to make sure that firearms are removed from the hands of the 70,000 people who have been prohibited from owning guns. What are we doing instead? We are shuffling paper in the back room somewhere. What a waste of resources. If the Liberals are really serious about protecting the lives of women living in violent domestic situations, we need more police to vigorously enforce restraining orders and prohibition orders. The fact is that while the justice minister and his minions are droning on about the 4,000 firearms licences they have refused and revoked, the truth is they did not even follow up on these licence revocations to ensure that the guns were removed from people they determined to be potentially dangerous. All of a sudden we do not have enough resources to enforce that part of the law”

 

 

BILL C-68 Causing Breakdown in Trust with Police

 

In 1995, I warned Parliament that treating responsible citizens like criminal suspects would lead to a breakdown in trust between the people and police. 

 

At the Western Canadian Firearms Summit in Saskatoon on March 10th, 2001, Grant Obst, President of the Canadian Police Association, admitted to the crowd, “It bothers me that the public would not support me in my line of duty.  We’ve never been at odds with the public before.  This issue has done this.” 

 

Later I wrote Mr. Obst, reminding him that he had come face to face with a violation of one of Sir Robert Peel’s nine principles of policing.  Principle number three states that the police need to secure “the willing cooperation of the public in the task of securing observance of the laws.”

 

This is still the most serious consequence of Bill C-68.  The Liberals have placed a complex regulatory regime in the Criminal Code where it has no rightful place.

 

Three weeks ago, a serving RCMP officer called me from British Columbia with another disturbing development on this front.

 

During "Violence and Relationships" courses delivered recently in British Columbia, the RCMP instructor told police officers that there are 49,000 individuals from BC in the Restricted Weapons Registration System (RWRS) that do not hold a valid Firearms Acquisition Certificate (FAC) and that they had also failed to apply for Possession and Acquisition Licences (PAL) as required by the Criminal Code of Canada.  Despite being in unlawful possession of restricted and/or prohibited firearms, the RCMP officers were also told it was at the discretion of each officer whether or not to proceed with charges against these individuals.  If they encounter one of these 49,000 owners of these registered, restricted and/or prohibited weapons, they have been instructed that the preferred course of action is: (1) Seize the firearm(s), (2) Advise the person to get a PAL and they will give their firearms back.

 

The RCMP are finally admitting that non-compliance in the gun registry is widespread.  The fact that RCMP are told to basically ignore these Made-in-Ottawa criminals is further evidence that the police do not consider these true crimes.

 

This admission by the RCMP proves we now have two Criminal Codes in Canada – one for gun owners caught in Liberal red tape and one for real criminals who are a threat to public safety.

 

This is not a healthy development for the criminal justice system.  It used to be that once crimes were uncovered and enough evidence was gathered by the police the charges were laid, perpetrators arrested and brought before the courts.  Now, police officers are being told they may proceed with charges at their own discretion.  The Criminal Code never used to be discretionary, why is it now?

 

The Canadian Alliance and the Canadian Police Association opposes putting these administrative offences in the Criminal Code because they aren’t true crimes.  That having been said, if the Liberals think these regulatory offences are serious enough to be in the Criminal Code, then they should also think they’re serious enough to be vigorously enforced!

 

 

BILL C-68 is Creating a Police State Mentality

 

Unfortunately, we have a sad example of how some RCMP officers in Cranbrook, BC, think enforcement of firearms laws should be conducted.  It is known as the infamous Jim Buck case.

Here’s what happened. Mr. Buck pled guilty to charges resulting from a domestic dispute in October 1996. At the time, the court ruled that Mr. Buck was no threat to public safety and there was no need to prohibit Mr. Buck from owning firearms. In May 1999, RCMP showed up at Mr. Buck’s house with a search warrant and seized all his firearms. Evidently, the police had somehow concluded that the judge in the previous case had made a mistake when he hadn’t imposed a firearms prohibition order.

Judge Carlgren dismissed all charges against Mr. Buck and made the following damning statements about how the RCMP and the Crown prosecutors conducted themselves in this case:

 

I publicized this case because it vividly demonstrates how RCMP officers, aided and abetted by paranoid politicians, have twisted the Criminal Code into a tool to harass law-abiding, responsible firearm owners.  The judgement in this case should serve as a warning to everyone that a dangerous police-state mentality has been allowed to infect the common sense of RCMP officers whose motto is supposed to be ‘Maintain the Right’.

 

An equally sad footnote to the Jim Buck case is that their superiors did not reprimand the RCMP officers responsible for violating Mr. Buck’s rights – in fact, their actions were defended publicly by their Staff Sergeant. 

 

Another travesty is that every so-called Civil Liberties association in Canada not only failed to support Mr. Buck but also failed to comment on the case.

 

 

BILL C-68 Has Caused a Rift in Federal-Provincial Relations

 

Six provinces and two territories took the Federal Government all the way to the Supreme Court to challenge the constitutionality of the Firearms Act.

 

On August 29, 2001, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada reported on Page 11: There are 6 opt-in provinces that administer the Firearms Program themselves and 7 opt-out provinces and territories where the Federal Government administers the Program. The opt-in provinces are British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. At the time of our review, DOJ directly ran the Program in Newfoundland and the Yukon, while the RCMP ran the remaining opt-out jurisdictions in the Northwest Region under contract for DOJ (Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut).  In March 2001, the management of the Firearms Program in the Northwest Region was transferred from the RCMP to DOJ. All civilian employees were offered deployments from the RCMP to DOJ and RCMP members were offered secondments. Six provinces and territories (Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, the Yukon, Nunavut and the Northwest Territories) were combined to form the Northwest Region headed by the Federal Chief Firearms Officer (FCFO). The entire Northwest Region is now managed and administered by DOJ. As well, the CFO site in Newfoundland continues to be administered by DOJ.

 

Since the Privacy Commissioner reported last year, the Province of British Columbia opted out completely on March 31, 2002.  The Province of Ontario is only helping the Liberals implement firearms licencing component of C-68, and say they will have nothing to do with the firearms registration.

 

 

BILL C-68 has Gun Owners Openly Defying the Law

 

Never before have amendments to the Criminal Code of Canada resulted such public and open defiance of the law.  Here are a few examples from newspapers across the land:

 

The Prince George Free Press – January 7, 2001: “Phil Hewkin owns guns, has never committed a crime but is now considered a criminal because he refuses to licence his firearms.  “Come and get me.  I’m not going to hide.  I’m not going to bury my guns,” said Hewkin.” 

 

I checked with Mr. Hewkin last month.  The RCMP have still not paid him a visit even though he has been knowingly in possession of firearms contrary to Section 91 of the Criminal Code and subject to a maximum 10 years in jail.

 

Calgary Herald – December 12, 2000: “The Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte [Ontario] are refusing to comply with federal gun legislation.  Members of the Tyendinaga Mohawk Council voted to exempt its members from the licencing and registration provisions.”

 

Montreal Gazette – January 10, 2001:  “The deadline to apply for a gun licence has gone for most Canadians, but the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake says the federal Firearms Act does not apply to residents of their South Shore community.  It then referred to a council resolution passed in 1998: ‘The new firearms law would have no force and effect within Mohawk Territory.’”

 

Yellowknifer – July 6, 2001: “Are we going to have to live like this forever, just because Mr. Rock won’t believe us?” asked Salt River First Nation elder Frank Laviolette.  “We should take Mr. Rock into the bush and pile some meat beside him.  The bear will come, and the law will change.”

 

The Chronicle-Herald – April 4, 2001: As many as half of Nova Scotia’s off-reserve Mi’kmaq gun owners may be ignoring Canada’s new firearms law, says the head of a national aboriginal organization.”

 

The Edmonton Sun – April 13, 2001: “I don’t have anything registered or my firearms acquisition certificate as of yet,” said Athabasca Chipewyan Chief Archie Cyprien.  Indian Association of Alberta President Mel H. Buffalo said many aboriginals haven’t yet applied for the FAC because they are opposed to the idea on principle and the process is difficult, especially when the literature isn’t in their own languages.”

 

The Edmonton Sun – March 20, 2002: “We’re talking about a law that violates our fundamental treaty rights to hunt, to bear arms,” said Greg Ahenakew [Vice-Chief of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations].  “Treaty law is basic law, and it comes before the Firearms Act.  This is an unjust law, passed without our consent.”  The Assembly of First Nations…is mulling over throwing in with the FSIN in its bid to topple Ottawa’s costly and controversial Firearms Act.”

 

So far, the government has failed to respond to this open defiance of the Criminal Code of Canada. Putting a regulatory regime in the Criminal Code and criminalizing normally honest citizens for not getting a piece of paper has diminished respect for the Criminal Code amongst citizens who have to obey it and police officers who are required to enforce it.  This is not a healthy development for our criminal justice system.

 

 

BILL C-68 - Some Outrageous Things We Have Learned

 

Here are a few of the more outrageous things we have learned as a result of the 267 requests we have made under the Access to Information Act.  Without the Access to Information Act, the public, the media and Parliament would know very little about the Liberal’s Bill C-68 Firearms Fiasco. 

 

Even so, many hundreds of pages of documents have been denied to us because the government declared them to be Cabinet secrets.

 

Here are a few things we have learned that confirm that Bill C-68 is truly a firearms fiasco:

 

-         42% of the errors are in the description of the firearms.

 

 

BILL C-68 Mistakes Have Potential to Criminalize the Innocent

 

All of these errors, while they may seem laughable, have the potential of criminalizing innocent Canadians.  Here’s an example I raised in the House of Commons on February 19, 2002: Mr. Speaker, a few weeks ago three RCMP officers showed up at a home in Langley, B.C., at 10 o'clock at night and advised the owner that they were there to seize his firearms because he did not have a firearms licence.  The homeowner took his valid firearms licence out of his wallet and showed it to the three officers. The RCMP officers said that there must have been a mistake in their records and left. Maybe the Solicitor General would like to explain why harassing law-abiding gun owners is a higher priority for the RCMP than tracking down suspected terrorists.  Maybe the Justice Minister can explain why his super-duper, $700 million gun registry cannot even let RCMP officers identify gun owners with a valid firearms licence. Was not the whole point of setting up the registry in the first place to save police time and resources? Two ministers have fumbled the firearms file. Will this new minister be the third, or will he do the right thing and put an end to this firearms fiasco?

 

The Minister’s standard response to all our questions is like the one he gave us last Tuesday: “As we have said, the registration, licensing and mechanisms are working quite well. We are proud of it as a government.”

 

 

BILL C-68 - Some Revealing Things the Government Doesn’t Know

 

Additionally, here are some things the Dept. of Justice has told us they don’t know and often this tells us more about the Liberal’s true intentions than the things they admit to us in writing.

For the last seven years the Justice Department has refused to explain where millions of guns went between 1974 and 1994. 

In May of 1976, Liberal Justice Minister Ron Basford published a report that stated: “At the same time, there has been a steady increase in the number of firearms in Canada.  Estimates place the number at over ten million in 1974, with almost one-quarter million added to the stock every year.  Most of these firearms are long guns (rifles and shotguns).”

The Minister was no doubt referring to an extensive Statistics Canada survey that reported that in 1974, the Firearms Stock in Canada consisted of 11,186,000 firearms.

Using the Justice Minister’s 1974 estimates, I calculated: 10 million firearms + 6,500,000 (250,000/year x 26 years) = 16,500,000 firearms in Canada in 2001.  

This number of 16.5 million guns is also close to the number of firearms we estimate are in Canada based on the government’s import and export numbers since 1945.

Over the next eighteen years, despite the importation of 5 million firearms, the government lowered their estimates of the number of firearms in Canada from 10 or 11 million in 1974 to 7 million in 1994. 

Of course, now that the RCMP have finally admitted that they have identified 286 models of air guns as firearms that need to be registered, the number of guns in Canada just goes up by another million or two.

 

The government is basing the whole bogus gun registration exercise on a low-ball estimate of the number of firearms in Canada.  Only the Liberal government would ignore reality for the sake of achieving a purely politically motivated policy.

 

Here a few other things the government has admitted they don’t know:

 

·        The Dept. of Justice has no data on the number of violations of more than 70,000 firearms prohibition orders [Justice ATI File: A-2001-0299].

 

·        The Dept. of Justice has no data on the number of guns confiscated from more than 70,000 persons who are prohibited from owning firearms; or as a result of more than 4,000 refused and revoked firearms licences [Justice ATI File: A-2001-0251].

 

·        The Dept. of Justice has no data on the number of guns confiscated as a result of government decrees banning hundreds of different types of firearms [Justice ATI File: A-1999-0252 and RCMP File: 00-07687].

 

·        The Dept. of Justice has never checked with licenced firearms dealers to see who purchased these prohibited firearms; nor can they produce any evidence to show why these guns were so dangerous that they needed to be banned in the first place [Justice ATI File: A-1999-0252].

 

·        The Dept. of Justice is unable to produce any evidence to justify their onerous regulation of shooting clubs and ranges – regulations that are driving many gun clubs and ranges out of business.  The only evidence they had proved that shooting clubs and ranges were being operated safely both for participants and the surrounding population.

 

On three occasions in the last seven years, the government has admitted the total failure of the 67-year-old handgun registration system in the House.

 

1. In the Justice Minister’s response to Order Paper Question Q-138 on May 5, 1995, the government admitted specifically that:

GOVERNMENT EXCUSE #1: “No national data are available…”

 

2. In the Solicitor General’s response to Order Paper Question Q-1 on May 8, 1996, the government admitted specifically that:

GOVERNMENT EXCUSE #2: “The statistics requested…are not kept at this time and are therefore not available.”

 

3. In the Solicitor General’s response to Order Paper Question Q-84 on March 1, 1999, the government admitted specifically that:

 

 

 

 

 

GOVERNMENT EXCUSE #3: “The RCMP does not collect statistics in this format…”

 

 

Proof Bill C-68 is a Firearms Fiasco

 

Over the last eight years, I have provided documented proof:

 

 

On the basis of this evidence I hereby declare that Bill C-68, a Firearms Fiasco of titanic proportions, will undoubtedly suffer the same fate as the Titanic. 

 

On June 13, 1995, Preston Manning, then leader of the Reform Party told the House of Commons: “I therefore submit in conclusion that Bill C-68, if passed into law, will not be a good law.  It will be a bad law, a blight on the legislative record of the government, a law that fails the three great tests of constitutionality, of effectiveness and of democratic consent of the governed.  What should be the fate of a bad law?  It should be repealed, which is precisely what a Reform government will do when it eventually replaces this government.”  [Hansard page 13,739]

 

Bill C-68 is a blight on the government’s legislative record and this is why in the last two election campaigns our party’s position has not changed.  Bill C-68 is still a bad law that needs to be completely repealed and replaced.

 

Thank you very much.