EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Monday, May 8, 1995

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[English]

The Chair: I'd like to call the meeting to order. We are continuing our examination of Bill C-68, An Act respecting firearms and other weapons.

We're pleased to have with us this morning a panel made up, first, of the Responsible Firearms Owners of Alberta: David Nelson, president; Terry Ursacki, a member of the delegation; and George Duffy, a member of the delegation. As well, we have the Saskatchewan Responsible Firearms Owners Inc.: Zena Putnam, the communications director, and John Hardy, the legal counsel. We have from the Council for Responsible Firearms Ownership Manitoba Inc. Larry Tardiff, president, and Larry Schultz, director at large.

Ladies and gentlemen, we will ask you to address the committee in turn, first Alberta, then Saskatchewan and then Manitoba. We have your briefs and if you can read your brief in fifteen minutes or less, that's great. If not, then you may want to address the highlights and we'll make sure the brief is fully printed. But I looked at your briefs; they're not that long, so probably you could read them.

After you've all read your briefs, then we will proceed to questioning by the committee in the usual way.

Mr. Nelson, as president of the Alberta group, I'd ask you to lead off.

Mr. Ramsay (Crowfoot): Do we have copies of the briefs? I have not received them.

The Chair: I have.

Mr. Thompson (Wild Rose): I just got mine this morning. It just came in.

The Chair: I have the brief by the Alberta group and also by the Saskatchewan group and also the Manitoba group and the British Columbia group...which is later, and the Yukon group and Nova Scotia.

Mr. Gallaway (Sarnia - Lambton): I would like a copy too.

The Chair: It seems that the messenger service wasn't delivering all these briefs. I'd ask the clerk to deliver the briefs to the members who didn't get them.

Mr. Ursacki, I apologize. Your name was wrongly spelled on my list. I had you down as ``Ursack'' and it's ``Ursacki''.

Mr. Terry Ursacki (Member, Responsible Firearms Owners of Alberta): Yes, thank you. I would have brought it to your attention.

The Chair: Anyway, I apologize.

Mr. Nelson.

Mr. Dave Nelson (President, Responsible Firearms Owners of Alberta): Thank you,Mr. Chairman. We'll start with our spokesman, George Duffy, with the beginning of our brief.

Mr. George Duffy (Spokesperson, Responsible Firearms Owners of Alberta): Good morning, Mr. Chairman, hon. committee members, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. I am the spokesperson for the Responsible Firearms Owners of Alberta.

I would like to give you a little background first on who I am and where we started from. I was born on the Port au Port peninsula on the island of Newfoundland. I was born into a very large family. I was educated, went to school, and was raised in that area. My mother was of Acadian-French extraction and my dad was of Irish extraction. Both people have known oppression.

In 1969 I decided I did not want to fish any more and I joined the Canadian Armed Forces. I ended up in the First Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, where I served until 1980. In 1980 I joined the Logistics Corps. I am still a serving member of the Canadian Armed Forces, at the rank of sergeant.

I want to make a point here. I in no way represent the Canadian Armed Forces or their views. I am the spokesperson for the Responsible Firearms Owners of Alberta.

I have used firearms to feed my family, to collect them, to shoot them competitively. I want to start by reiterating that our organization wants to see Bill C-68 killed in its entirety. If this is accomplished, we would be willing to work with the Government of Canada on improving our criminal justice system as it pertains to the use of any weapon in the commission of a crime.

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In March of last year, after studying gun control legislation for approximately the last twenty years, and having opposed Bill C-51, the 1978 legislation, Bill C-17, the 1990 legislation, and now Bill C-68, the 1995 legislation, I decided that this time I would become much more actively involved in opposing this legislation. Consequently, a rally was planned for March 28, 1994, in Wainwright, Alberta. This rally was so successful at uniting the recreational firearms community of Canada that it helped to set the template and procedure for every other rally that happened in Canada.

We oppose Bill C-68 in its entirety because of registration, the search-and-seizure provisions, the Orders in Council, confiscation without compensation, and a future fault designation of good-gun, bad-gun scenarios.

We believe this bill will totally destroy a culture, a tradition, and a way of life for a large segment of the population of Alberta. These traditions are steeped in a very colourful, historical and factual way of life, a way of life that we believe has been fought for and protected by such documents as the Magna Carta, Blackstone's law, and the BNA Act. We believe this bill is a direct attack on this way of life.

Why is the Government of Canada directing this legislation totally, except for six provisions, at the law-abiding, responsible firearms owners? We believe they have some type of hidden agenda. We would like to see the Government of Canada sit down with the recreational firearms community and other agencies, and we would help to hammer out a gun-control bill that would be the envy of all nations.

At this time I would like to take the opportunity to speak about V-E Day. This is the 50th anniversary of it, and we'd like to commend our veterans and the men and women who fought and died to protect the very freedoms we are here with today.

Mr. Nelson: I'm the president of Responsible Firearms Owners of Alberta, a fourth-generation farmer, rancher, and hunter. I live in the Metiskow area.

We have a real, grave concern about what Bill C-68 will do to the wildlife and environment of Alberta. Because of higher taxes and the more stringent controls of Bill C-17 in Alberta last year, we dropped 9,000 hunters. Alberta hunters, wildlife organizations, firearm organizations, and farmers and ranchers have become excellent wildlife managers. With the loss of hunters, there will be an over-abundance of wildlife such as coyotes, wolves, deer, antelope, elk, and rodents such as gophers. As these populations grow, we have problems with diseases such as mange and lungworm. This will also impose great costs on farmers such as myself, because of the loss of grain to geese and ducks, the loss of hay supply to deer, elk, and so on, the loss of stock to coyotes and wolves - I personally have lost stock - and the loss of pasture to gophers. If hunters and farmers are regulated out of their firearms in the future, Canadian taxpayers will have to fund government culls of these animals.

Mr. Ursacki: I'm an associate professor at the University of Calgary, and my principal firearms interests are collecting and handgun target shooting. Specifically, I participate in IPSC competition. That's the International Practical Shooting Confederation style of handgun target shooting. I would like to emphasize, however, that I am here as a private citizen and in no way represent any official position of my employer.

You have no doubt already heard much about the negative impact of this bill on firearms owners. However, there are also very sound reasons why even non-gun owners should oppose it. Quite apart from its severe erosion of basic civil rights, it will be not only ineffective and costly but also counter-productive, and may actually reduce public safety.

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There can be absolutely no doubt that the costs of this bill's registration system will dramatically outweigh any possible benefits. Even a complete, reliable database on firearms owned by law-abiding Canadians would have no appreciable effect on crime. It will not take guns away from those who use them on their spouses, because such people will not register them. Ninety percent of those who commit domestic homicides with guns have criminal records, are substance-abusers, or suffer from psychological problems. Do these sound like people who will rush out to register?

It will not prevent smuggling, because most smuggled guns are never registered in Canada.

It will not help enforce safe storage laws, because the probability of a gun being stolen, used in a crime, and then traced back to its original owner is too low to have any deterrent effect on careless behaviour.

It will not help solve many crimes by allowing tracing of ownership, since very few criminals leave their guns lying around for the police to find, even if they are stupid enough to use one registered to them in the first place, and it is not necessary to return recovered firearms to their owners; they can keep their own records for that purpose.

There are, in any case, unassailable reasons for concluding that the database will be neither complete nor reliable. No one can seriously doubt that non-compliance with the registration system will be a very high ratio. While firearms owners, like all Canadians, tend to be law-abiding to a fault, and the majority will do all they can to comply, a substantial number will not.

Non-compliers will be concentrated among the following groups. First is those who feel the probability of registration leading to confiscation is high in their personal case because they should never have been allowed to own a gun in the first place. This group would include those involved in criminal activities, substance abuse, spousal abuse, and so on.

Second is those who feel, correctly, that the probability of registration leading to confiscation is high in their personal case because of the nature of the firearms they own, such as semi-automatic rifles.

Third is those who simply don't hear about the legislation. It may be difficult for people in Ottawa to believe, but many people simply don't read newspapers or watch the news much, if at all. I'm still frequently approached by people who don't even realize they are violating the last legislation, even though it was enacted some three years ago.

Fourth is those who fear the cost will escalate as fees are eventually charged on an annual per-gun basis to both cover costs and in a deliberate effort to squeeze out gun ownership.

Fifth is those who oppose such intrusions into their personal lives as a matter of principle, and who consider non-compliance to be much the same as refusing to wear a seat-belt - technically illegal but not a real crime, because no one is hurt, and the regulation concerns something that's none of the government's business anyway.

Sixth is those who believe, rightly or wrongly, a registration system is simply the first step toward widespread confiscation, a fear that's not entirely irrational, given that it has already has been used by both this government and the previous one for exactly that purpose.

Compliance with past calls for selective registration has been in the 10% to 25% range. Even if it is considerably higher in a general call for registration, it is difficult to imagine it being more than 50% to 75% at the very most. Most people in the firearms community believe it would be substantially less than that.

The records on even the guns that do get registered are unlikely to be accurate. The only way the cost estimates could be reduced to $85 million was by proposing a mail-in registration process, yet even the current registration for handguns, which involves individual scrutiny by trained firearms registrars, results in a high rate of garbled records because of the difficulty of clearly identifying firearms.

I might mention here that just this January I purchased a replica of a muzzle-loading flintlock pistol. When it was called up on the system there were four - count them, four - records of registration, all different and none correct.

When millions of firearms owners try to do this classification, the potential for error will multiply several-fold. Model numbers and dates will be confused with serial numbers and guns made of parts from various manufacturers will be assigned to different brands, etc. With records in such a shambles, it will not be possible to identify whether or not a gun is legal, in many cases, even when it is supposedly in the registry. This unreliability will severely undermine the possibility of getting convictions for weapons offences.

As these defects become clear, the government will have no choice but to shift to a more costly and time-consuming procedure in a vain attempt to improve accuracy. It is thus clear that the bill will be dramatically more costly than the estimates presented so far and that none of the claimed benefits will materialize. I will go further, however. This bill would have several pernicious effects by increasing the supply of firearms flowing into the illegal market and by strongly encouraging criminals to use more dangerous weapons.

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There are at least two ways in which this bill will increase the flow of firearms into the hands of those who should not have them: leakage from non-complying owners and increases in theft resulting from leakage of information from the registration system because of intrusion by hackers and others.

The impact of non-compliance on the supply of firearms to the illegal market will be dramatic. Even if most firearms' owners register, many, particularly those with large numbers of firearms, will not register all their guns. This will create a huge pool of guns that must be hidden and whose loss or theft cannot be reported; even more importantly, they will not be able to be sold through legal channels. Even if owners, in all good conscience, attempt to dispose of them with care, the fact that no permits will be involved in such undocumented transactions leaves room for honest errors of judgment.

How big a problem might this be? You decide. If there are 10 million unregistered long guns at present, which many people believe is not an unreasonable estimate, even if two-thirds of them get registered, this would still leave over 3 million unregistered. In an average year about 3,000 guns are reported lost or stolen and unrecovered in Canada. Thus, if even one-tenth of 1% or 1 in 1,000 of those unregistered guns fell into the wrong hands this year, it would double the supply currently going to the criminal market through theft. This percentage might well be much higher, since there will be a strong incentive for low-value guns to remain outside the system because of licence fees that might exceed their value, for example. These will be worth much more to people who shouldn't have them than they will be on the legal market, where their value will be sharply reduced by the cost of registration.

The supply that reaches the market through outright theft will almost certainly increase as a result of this bill. The registration data will be an irresistible challenge for hackers seeking to sell shopping lists to professional thieves. It is not difficult to imagine just one such security breach resulting in 20 or 30 major thefts of 50 to 100 firearms each. One such breach alone could thus easily double the supply currently reaching the criminal market through theft.

Are you prepared to bet the lives of the owners whose homes will be invaded to perpetrate these thefts, let alone those who will subsequently fall victim to armed robberies or worse, that such security breaches will not occur?

To the extent this bill is successful in its goal of restricting the availability of the handguns it prohibits, it will also encourage criminals to trade up to weapons with greater power in cartridge capacity. Many of the handguns this bill proposes to ban under Criminal Code subsection 84(1) are among the least powerful and the lowest capacity in number of rounds carried. Anything that restricts the availability of .25 and .32 calibre handguns will only encourage criminals to use a .44 magnum revolver, a 9 millimetre semi-automatic, or an even more powerful unregistered shotgun.

Moreover, because the bans are based on barrel length rather than overall dimensions, they will encourage criminals to trade up from five- or six-shot revolvers to higher-capacity semi-automatics. For example, a Browning 9 millimetre semi-automatic is smaller in all three dimensions than a large-frame Smith and Wesson revolver, yet the former will be legal and the latter prohibited.

An even more extreme example is the proposed ban on replicas. I would much rather have someone rob me with a replica gun than a real one, but this bill provides robbers with a strong incentive to get a real one. Not only will the penalty be the same for using a real or imitation firearm under new Criminal Code subsection 85(2), but real ones will be easier to get if replicas can no longer be imported.

Ladies and gentlemen, I could go on at great length, but I would rather we devoted the time to your specific questions. In conclusion, just let me repeat that Bill C-68 must be scrapped, and not only in the interests of gun owners; the preservation of public safety demands no less. Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much. Now we'll hear from the Saskatchewan Responsible Firearms Owners Inc., either Ms Putnam or Mr. Hardy; it's your choice.

Ms Zena Putnam (Communications Director, Saskatchewan Responsible Firearms Owners Inc.): I will begin and my colleague will follow.

The Chair: Very good.

Ms Putnam: Members of the committee, I am a communications director for SRFO, Saskatchewan Responsible Firearms Owners. I am a Saskatchewan hunter and safety and Canadian firearms safety instructor. I am a competitive shooter and I am a hunter.

Saskatchewan Firearms Owners Incorporated represents not only all disciplines of firearms owners but also extremely concerned non-firearms owners in Saskatchewan. We the citizens of Saskatchewan are offended and incensed by the proposed legislation tabled as Bill C-68, the Firearms Act.

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Today, May 8, 1995 marks the 50th anniversary of the victory over tyranny in Europe, a victory that was aided by hundreds of thousands of Canadian men and women who fought, bled, lost limbs and died to ensure their children and all future Canadians would live in a free and democratic society. With the tabling and passage at second reading of Bill C-68, we as responsible law-abiding, taxpaying firearm and non-firearm owners have spent and are spending thousands of our own dollars, as well as thousands of all taxpayer dollars, so you can sit in judgment and make us come to Ottawa to defend our right to retain that hard- and long-fought-for freedom. No other group of Canadians has been told over and over again that even after testing and police inquiries, because of the recreational activities they enjoy, they will be treated as stupid and irresponsible, and because they are so untrustworthy, criminal laws must be in place governing their activities so they will behave correctly.

We have part III of the Criminal Code, which already has harsh provisions to make law-abiding, responsible citizens criminals if we do not correctly apply for, license, purchase, care for, handle, use, store and transport our very expensive personal, private property. Yet when criminals break these same laws, the charges against them are almost always plea-bargained away and sentences are minimal. We have more than enough laws. What we do not have in this country is an effective justice system to enforce those laws. What we do not have is a justice system that consistently uses the tools it already has.

You the members of this committee are members of Parliament who have your jobs by virtue of the promises you made to your constituents. First and foremost of these promises was the one where you stated you would represent your constituents and follow their wishes in matters of personal interest. You are our employees. Yet as a group you are ignoring our wishes and our needs. The employee is dictating to the employer. The leader of your group, Chrétien, has very clearly demonstrated how high his regard is for his employer. You are our employees and you can be fired.

In Saskatchewan we, your employers, have deemed Bill C-68, the Firearms Act, to be unacceptable and intolerable, and we are not amused, Mr. Lee. It is legislation that blatantly disregards the democratic process and would start Canada on the decline to a police state, fortunately without the support of the police, in most disciplines.

This ill-thought-out, unworkable, expensive, and bad legislation must be dealt with. We your Saskatchewan employers instruct you to put this legislation exactly where it belongs - in the rubbish.

My colleague Mr. John Hardy will outline specific objections to the Firearms Act.

Mr. John Hardy (Legal Counsel, Saskatchewan Responsible Firearms Owners): Ladies and gentlemen of the committee, I'm the legal counsel for Saskatchewan Responsible Firearms Owners. I am also a firearms owner myself. I'm a collector, a target shooter, and I own a partial interest in a gun shop, so I am personally aware of all the laws and regulations relating to both commercial and private use of and dealings with firearms in Canada.

My colleague Zena Putnam has, in plain and simple terms, described the overall opinion of our members of this bill. SRFO considers it to be a futile exercise that is not only a waste of time and money better invested elsewhere but is also deeply offensive to legal firearms owners. In fact, in our view, all Canadian citizens should be disturbed by its implications.

My intention now is to outline the provisions we find especially offensive.

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We have submitted a written brief, which contains most of the points we wish to make. I will not be following the brief directly, but it is available to the members of the committee to refer to.

Our colleagues from Alberta and Manitoba have also submitted briefs, and our colleague Professor Ursacki has outlined to the committee here this morning, in excellent detail, the objections to the registration system and the reasons why this entire proposed legislation will likely be ineffective in increasing public safety. SRFO wholeheartedly endorses those comments. I don't propose to duplicate his comments now.

Bill C-68 does include a few clauses that enact stiff penalties for violent crimes and for smuggling. These provisions do at least target actual violence with firearms. However, we have serious doubts whether the bill taken as a whole is either necessary or desirable to achieve the federal government's goals.

The justification given for Bill C-68 is of course that the measures it contains are needed to deal with a number of public safety concerns and that it is a response to the use of firearms in violent crimes, domestic violence, suicides, and fatal accidents. It's also supposed to reduce firearms smuggling.

The problem we have with the bill is that the entire bill seems to be based on a fundamentally flawed concept. The concept underlying this bill is that firearms are horribly dangerous, lethal things that nobody in their right mind should want to own or use and that anybody who does wish to own or use firearms is therefore clearly mentally unstable and needs to be carefully watched. That's really the bottom line in this legislation. It is aimed at legal firearms owners.

Legal firearms owners must be certified by their local police as people who are suitable to own firearms in Canada. There are only three groups of people who are allowed to own firearms in Canada at present: the military, the police, and those private citizens who are permitted by the police to own firearms.

To be a legal firearms owner, such as our members, a person must have a clean criminal record, take safety courses, pass exams, apply for licences, follow strict rules for the use, protection, care, and so forth of their firearms. Nevertheless, the government obviously believes these citizens, because they wish to possess firearms, cannot be trusted and must be closely watched by the government to ensure they are obeying the law.

Unfortunately, the only way the government can watch someone that closely is if the government tramples that individual's personal liberties and freedoms into the mud. In our view that is precisely what Bill C-68 is designed to do to legal firearms owners. Furthermore, if it passes, it will provide future precedents for similar actions to be taken against other groups of Canadian citizens.

The specific provisions we find offensive in this bill - that is, the provisions we find particularly offensive over and above our general concerns about the registration concept as a whole - are, to begin with, clauses 98, 99, and 101, which deal with police, as they are referred to in the bill, inspections of firearms owners' premises.

Basically what this legislation is designed to do is to put a reverse onus upon legal firearms owners. Firearms owners must prove that they are innocent and are not breaking any laws, by allowing police to enter their private dwellings and to conduct warrantless, or virtually warrantless, searches.

In a free country a citizen is free to do anything he or she wishes to do unless that act has been specifically prohibited. A basic assumption is that unless citizens are found to be engaging in activities that are specifically prohibited, they should be left alone by the government to get on with their lives as they see fit.

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A fundamental key to this individual liberty is the right of privacy. Even in England, which does not have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms such as ours and operates under the English common law, this has been described by the House of Lords as a fundamental right.

As far back as 1605, in a case called Semayne's case, the English House of Lords made that famous statement that an Englishman's home is his castle. The exact phrasing continues as something to the nature that an Englishman's home is his castle; not only a fortress for his defence in time of trouble, but also a place of refuge.

A citizen's home and the privacy of his home are a fundamental part of his individual right of privacy. Home is that person's personal space. It is the place where they can go to be away from the cares of the world, including the watchful eyes of the state.

To quote a prominent former Liberal politician, ``The state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation''. Mr. Trudeau might have gone on to add, ``The agents of the state have no place in the homes of the nation''.

Now in 1995, the Minister of Justice, Mr. Rock, would add ``unless those citizens happen to be legal firearms owners, in which case the police should be free to barge in and take the place apart any time they wish'' - because that is what clauses 98, 99 and 101 of this bill say the police can do. Apparently individuals suspected of being law-abiding owners of legal firearms no longer have any right to privacy in their own homes, or any right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.

Clause 101 does say that while the police can enter any place at any time and take it apart, under clauses 98 and 99, without a warrant, they cannot enter a dwelling-place without consent. But subclause 101(2) then goes on to say the police can get a warrant to enter and search a dwelling place merely by showing the justice that they have reasonable grounds to believe there are firearms, ammunition, or a record of firearms or ammunition in that dwelling-place, that they wish to inspect it for that reason, and that the owner won't let them in. So we're right back to, yes, the police do have to have a warrant to search your home under this bill, but all they have to do to get that warrant is show that you're a legal firearms owner.

The basic rule in Canada at the moment was enunciated by the Supreme Court in 1984 in the case of Hunter and Southam, that, first of all, a warrantless search of any place is prima facie unreasonable unless there are overriding exigent circumstances, and a simple desire of the police to inspect to see if laws are being obeyed is not an exigent circumstance in Canada.

For any search, the balance point between an individual's right of privacy and the state's concern for public safety is where there is solid evidence to give reasonable grounds to believe a crime has been committed. Mere suggestion or possibility that a crime may have been committed is not sufficient to allow police to get a search warrant to search a house, at present, and mere curiosity is not enough.

Under this legislation, the police may search at any time, simply to see if the law is being obeyed.

Under clause 100, another fundamental right of the individual goes down the tubes; that is, the right to silence, the right against self-incrimination. This is a long-standing right in common-law countries. It dates back to the 17th and 18th centuries. The basis for the right of silence is a concern that otherwise agents of the state may use torture against citizens. If an accused person has no right to remain silent, no right to refuse to assist the police in - I am speaking figuratively now - putting the noose around his neck, the police or the courts may not force that individual to speak or testify anyway. The reason is that otherwise the temptation is very great, and it was very great, to obtain confessions from people by beating it out of them.

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Not everybody agrees this is a wonderful right for people to have in Canada, even though it is one now entrenched in our Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

I found this very interesting. About a year ago I was reading an article in The Globe and Mail about the annual meeting of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. They were being addressed by the deputy commissioner of the RCMP. He was discussing the effect the charter had had upon policing in Canada. He noted that in many ways the entrenched charter rights, particularly the right against self-incrimination and the right of silence, made the job of the police much more difficult. It was his opinion that if the right to silence were abolished, the job of the police would be much easier.

Of course, he's perfectly correct. On the other hand, in a democracy there are other concerns that must be addressed besides the ease and simplicity with which the police can do their job. The basic rights and liberties of citizens, and safeguarding those rights, are among those overriding concerns.

Under this legislation, clause 100, while the police are conducting these search and rummage inspections at people's houses, any individual found on the premises is required to offer all assistance. Any refusal or failure to do so, under clause 107, is good for up to two years in jail.

Suppose I'm a suspected drug trafficker. The police, while searching my house, ask me where the heroin is. I reply that I think I'll call my lawyer about it, that I really don't feel like talking to them that day. That's perfectly okay.

On the other hand, suppose these same police officers are in under one of these inspection warrants, searching my house. They ask me where the .22 rifle is. I say I really don't feel like talking to them that day, that maybe I'll call my lawyer and first check with him what my rights are. The way this bill stands, I've just committed another criminal offence if I refuse to offer assistance. Personally, I find that rather disturbing.

It's also worth noting that under the search and seizure provisions themselves, the police may open any container that may contain firearms ammunition or records. A matchbox will hold a .22 shell, which is ammunition. Basically, anything larger than a matchbox is fair game to be stirred through and taken apart.

Apart from the search and seizure concerns and the loss of the right against self-incrimination, the legislation also provides for some rather interesting variations in prohibition orders. Under the legislation as it now stands, the police, if they have reason to believe a particular individual is a danger to public safety, may apply to court for a prohibition order taking away that individual's firearms or right to own firearms. SRFO fully supports this view in this legislation. We think it's a thoroughly good thing.

Also, under current legislation an individual who is convicted of a violent offence may, and if the offence is serious enough shall, have a prohibition order placed against them. The new legislation takes this one step further. Under the sections relating to prohibition orders, the concept of a proactive prohibition order is now introduced. Under this new provision the police may also apply for a prohibition order not simply against the person who's committed a crime but also against anybody cohabiting with or associated with that individual.

What is an ``associate''? It's basically somebody you know. If I'm in a business such as a laundry business and my partner gets into a fight with his wife and beats her up and is convicted of assault, he may have a prohibition order placed against him. Under this legislation, because I'm in a business with him or associated with him, or maybe I'm just a friend of his, I may also have a prohibition order placed against me. A law-abiding firearms owner with a spotless personal record can be stripped of his or her property just for being a relative, business associate or simply a friend of a convicted criminal.

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In rural Saskatchewan, if one person in a town were convicted of a violent offence, under this legislation everybody in town could be prohibited from owning firearms.

This is generally referred to as ``guilt by association''. It is generally not considered an appropriate manner of controlling citizens in a free and democratic society.

In the interest of time, I'm going to touch on only one other concern, and it is that under both the proactive prohibition order and generally this law also provides for wholesale confiscation of private property. One of the most glaring examples of this is the change contained in the prohibition order segment. The way the legislation now stands, if a person is prohibited from owning firearms, the court is obliged to give that person a reasonable opportunity to turn the firearms in or otherwise lawfully dispose of them. So even if I lose my right to own firearms, I can still sell them and keep the money.

Under the new legislation, proposed section 115, a person who is prohibited from owning firearms, unless the court can be persuaded otherwise, automatically forfeits all firearms and other related assets to the Crown. If I have a collection of $50,000 worth of firearms and I have a prohibition order put against me by association because I know a criminal, the Crown takes the lot.

This is part and parcel of the other property loss rights we see in the Order in Council in the banning of the February 14 handgun categories and so on. This is all taking property away without compensation.

The basic assumption underlying this legislation appears to be that legal firearms owners are guilty until they prove themselves innocent over and over again. It creates two classes of citizens in the country: legal firearms owners - that is, people the government knows own firearms - who have jumped through the hoops to acquire those firearms, and individuals who, as far as the government is aware, do not own firearms. The second group have the full panoply of rights we all currently enjoy, and the first group, the legal firearms owners, will have them significantly abridged.

For non-firearms owners a major concern is that this is all being done in the name of public safety but in a situation where there is no overriding national emergency that can be pointed to to justify these abridgements of rights. It creates a very dangerous precedent. If the federal government can do this today to legal firearms owners in the name of public safety, it can do it tomorrow to any other group in the name of public safety as well.

Thank you very much.

The Chair: Thank you. Now we will turn to the Manitoba association, Mr. Tardiff.

Mr. Larry Tardiff (President, Council of Responsible Firearms Owners of Manitoba Inc.): Unlike the other members of our panel, since I am my own employer, I guess I'm here representing him too.

We appear before you today because of a genuine concern we, as responsible firearms owners of Manitoba, have about reducing violent crime in this country, particularly violent crime that is committed with firearms. The government's answer to our concern has been to propose a universal registration system and to trample over the civil rights of law-abiding firearms owners.

Firearms owners share the same desire as non-firearm-owning Canadians. We are upset about crime. We want violent criminals off the streets. But we soundly reject government proposals that infringe on our civil rights and do nothing to alleviate the problem. We clearly recognize that legislative and administrative infringements on our liberties are designed to convenience government rather than to solve or curb violent crime.

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The perception of most gun prohibitionists, including the Hon. Allan Rock, is that there is a distinct correlation between gun control and the rate of violent crime - the fewer the guns, the less the violence. This view is not only overly optimistic, but completely incorrect. Gun control has proved to be a grievous failure. A means of disarming honest citizens without limiting the firepower available to those who prey on the law-abiding public and attempting to use the legal system to punish the firearm rather than the person misusing the firearm are clearly doomed to fail.

Anti-gun politicians fail to heed such warnings and further exacerbate the problem by wasting tax dollars and pursuing nonsensical gun-control measures. Gun law, gun bans, registration, gun and ammunition taxes, and the litany of restrictive measures only divert the attention of the Canadian people from true crime solutions. The inescapable fact is criminals don't obey laws; criminals are on the streets because of a failed justice system.

The history of effort, energy, and resources squandered in attempts to impose gun restrictions is a tragic epithet for the victims of crime, victims of parole boards, victims of early release, and victims of the disorder of today's criminal justice system. Criminals do not respect the Canadian justice system. They do not fear retribution from society. Therefore they have no incentive to be law-abiding citizens. Violent criminals are particularly insolent. In short, citizens are fearful while criminals are fearless.

Somewhere along the way the Liberal government has lost sight of the fact that the government's most important task is to protect the lives, the liberty and the property of its citizens. Today the protection of the law-abiding and the innocent figure little in the halls of justice, which seem far more concerned with protecting the criminal defendants. Not that those protections are trivial - indeed, protection against an abusive government is critical to the well-being of a free people - but the imbalance today between the rights of the law-abiding and the accused and convicted is enormous.

Nowhere is the imbalance seen more clearly than in the provisions of Bill C-68, which provides for a jail sentence of up to ten years for an honest man who fails to register a firearm, while providing for only a four-year additional sentence for one who commits a serious offence with a stolen firearm - the ultimate irony being that the criminal can plea-bargain away the additional four years.

The law is supposed to be fair. We have enough criminals in this country without having our government making criminals out of our citizens. Yet Bill C-68 does just that. First of all the Liberal government makes criminals out of every firearm owner in this country. Then it sells those people a licence to commit the crime.

The Canadian people expect their political leaders will exercise high moral standards in their personal and professional lives, therefore acting as good role models. Surely by passing a law that first makes criminals out of a large portion of the population and then sells these desperate criminals a licence to commit the heinous crime of retaining ownership of their own property our leaders fail in this trust.

The crime statistics of the gun-control proponents are superficial. Gun control is not about crime control; it is about controlling law-abiding people. These individuals are forgetting that gun ownership doesn't cause crime, criminals do. Whether a firearm has a long barrel or a short barrel, is of a specific calibre or fires multiple or single rounds, its capacity for good or evil rests solely with the user. No gun ban has ever kept guns out of the hands of criminals. Controlling crime by legislating against a firearm on its above-noted characteristics is a false issue. The perception that there are good guns and evil guns not only defies reason but detracts energies from the real issue: stopping crime.

Those individuals who have never used a firearm and fear their use by the criminal element in our society believe the most direct route to violent crime prevention is through strict gun registration laws, which will affect all firearms, restricted or otherwise. The response of such individuals identifies a desire for action on crime - any action. The truth, however, is that the gun-control proposals now before the House of Commons are a cruel hoax, a diversion and a threat to civil liberties.

The government is seeking a political solution but makes it appear as if it has the issue of violent crime under control. Our presentation clearly identifies that this is a fallacy and that the international community agrees with our recommendation. Those few élite who drone on about gun control are being drowned out by the angry voices of voters who are rebelling against the Liberal government's unacceptable policy. Politicians should take note of what the people are telling them and take note of recent events in the Manitoba elections.

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Overzealous gun control regulations do not work. For this reason the council and its 38 affiliates and 16,000 members believe that Bill C-68 is so flawed it must be withdrawn. The solution to violent crime reduction must be based on the problem itself. Controlling firearm ownership, as well as the availability of guns outside the system, is clearly an effective way of managing violent crime.

Give Canadians an honest solution to violent crime, not a solution based on political expediency. Attack the source of the problem and not merely the instrument used in committing the offences. The prevention of suicides, accidents, and crimes of violence depends upon a balanced approach, which our submission to the justice committee contains.

Thank you.

My colleague would like to summarize our proposal.

The Chair: Very good.

Mr. Schultz, please.

Mr. Larry Schultz (Director at Large, Council for Responsible Firearms Ownership Manitoba Inc.): Thank you.

Canadian gun prohibitionists credit gun control with reducing the percentage of homicides committed with a firearm, but crime statistics clearly indicate that overall homicides have not been reduced.

Is a society in which people are killed with knives and clubs and other weapons better than a society in which an equal number of people are killed with firearms? The savage bludgeoning deaths of a Montreal couple by adolescents a few weeks ago emphasize the point that violent crime reduction must relate to people and not to firearms.

Respect for the law is the bottom line and the Minister of Justice has failed to accomplish this.

Stricter firearms control in Canada is not based on crime reduction. It is clear that special-interest groups are the driving force behind the complete registration of all Canadian firearms. It is equally clear by their agenda that they believe the use of firearms in society is unacceptable.

Professor H.T. Buckner, of Concordia University in Montreal, has clearly identified that it is crime control and not firearm control that is important to people. When pollsters ask, usually after a dramatic firearms-related crime, if more laws are required, of course the majority of the respondents say yes. What they mean is that they feel something should be done to curb violent crime, but they have no strong opinions about how to accomplish this.

When Professor Buckner surveyed Concordia University students in 1994, he found them overwhelmingly uninformed about firearms laws. In fact, he found that they would sign a petition asking Parliament to enact laws that already exist.

Despite the dramatic difference in firearms control between the U.S. and Canada, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics show that the violent crime rate between 1962 and 1992 was higher in Canada. Given the extensive financial resources spent on crime control over those 30 years and given our stricter firearms laws, why is our violent crime rate not well below that of the U.S.?

The answer is clear. Currently there are no effective deterrents to keep the criminal element in our society from committing violent acts. Violations of the existing firearms laws virtually never appear on charges in our courts; therefore they do not act as a deterrent to criminal behaviour. This has resulted in Canada's violent crime increasing by 359% between 1962 and 1990. During that same period in Canada, property crimes increased by 209%. The Canadian public is largely ignorant of this, and nobody in the justice or penal system is trying to correct this. After all, ignorance of the real situation keeps the heat off those involved.

In 1976 the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police identified that the remedy for violent crimes is based upon more prompt and certain imposition of punishment. The government at that time refused to listen, and the result almost 20 years later is that we have a rampaging, violent crime rate.

Part of the solution to violent crime reduction clearly relates to the implementation of the existing laws. Stop letting the violent offenders out of jail early. We must re-establish the deterrent intent of punishment.

A comprehensive strategy proven to reduce firearms-related crime effectively is contained within the presentation to the justice committee. The cornerstone of this strategy is based upon effective crime prevention, in New Zealand and in Switzerland, as well as proposed legislation from Canadians who have extensive experience in law enforcement. International experience clearly identifies with people control, not firearm control.

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The registration of firearms owners, not firearms, has proven to reduce violent crime in New Zealand. A.G. McCallum, the firearm coordinator for New Zealand, will tell you that controlling the firearm owner as opposed to the firearm works. Ten years after they abolished legislation almost identical to what we are here reviewing, they now have effective legislation that has proven to control violent crime.

The Swiss address the problem of reducing firearm-related deaths through education and training rather than pretending to resolve the issue by satisfying the political agenda of the anti-gun lobby.

In his August 1, 1994 letter to Allan Rock, Professor Buckner clearly identifies that the problem that must be confronted is the availability of firearms outside the system. The FAC-holding firearms owner is not the major part of the problems associated with violent crime. It is the illegal possession of firearms that must be addressed to reduce violent crime.

Professor Buckner, a former police officer, has identified two additions to the Criminal Code that would discourage criminal use of firearms. The first is to impose short but mandatory sentences for theft or smuggling of a firearm. This will encourage everyone in the criminal justice system to enforce this law and thus benefit public security while deterring criminal possession of firearms.

The second would be to require of the owner the reported theft or disappearance of non-restricted firearms. This is now required of owners of restricted firearms. The compliance rate for such a law would be near 100%, because the owner would have to report the loss in order to collect on their insurance and to get their firearms back. This way a few thousand potentially problematic firearms would be on the police computers instead of 6 million to 20 million non-problematic ones.

The implementation of these two laws along with the registration of all firearms owners would establish a real solution to reducing violent crime at minimal public cost.

Despite Mr. Rock's claim that introducing firearms registration will not cost the taxpayers anything, a Department of Justice report indicates it currently costs between $50 and $85 to produce one restricted firearms registration certificate. The government's own Wade report indicates that registration of between 6 million and 20 million firearms cannot be done on a cost-effective basis with the existing technology.

The only way to upgrade the system to accommodate universal registration is through an extensive form of cost recovery. This has to be done through unspecified user fees. Responsible firearms owners will be expected to foot the bill for the upgrading of an unreliable system to an unproven one.

Mr. Rock claims registration forms will be available at post offices to facilitate owners registering their firearms. This will only compound current problems. Almost daily, firearms owners bring forth inaccuracies in the current registration system. This is in spite of the fact that handguns have been registered in Canada for almost sixty years. If police are making numerous registration errors, how does Mr. Rock expect the firearms owners to do any better?

The Liberal government's proposed legislation makes human error an indictable offence. The same clerical errors the police have been making for sixty years with handgun registration will now put a firearm owner in jail. How dare the government threaten to impose a criminal record on Canadians who unknowingly write down an incorrect number or letter in the serial number of a firearm they will be required to register?

In order to encourage registration, the initial fees to the firearm owner to register their property will be low. After this, the owner will face additional fees to transfer, re-register or possess their firearms. Similar fees will likely be applied to ammunition.

The situation in Canada will quickly develop into a situation similar to that in Great Britain since 1988. They have seen an increase in the firearms bureaucracy as well as annual fees for possession of all types of firearms.

Once again, overzealous firearms control regulations do not work. That is the reason the council and its 38 affiliates believe Bill C-68 is so flawed it must be withdrawn.

The solution to violent crime must be based upon the root cause. Canadians want an honest and effective solution to violent crime, not a politically expedient one. We must attack the source of the problem, not the tools used to commit the offence.

The prevention of suicides, accidents, crime and violence depends upon a balanced approach, and this is what our submission contains.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

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Now we'll proceed to the rounds of questioning. According to our rules, the first round is one of ten minutes to each of the three political parties who are members of the committee, and then we will proceed to five-minute rounds, alternating between the government and the opposition.

Madam Venne.

[Translation]

Mrs. Venne (Saint-Hubert): Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

My first question is to Mrs. Zena Putnam. During a radio interview, last December, in Cross Country Checkup, a CBC program, you made the following statement:

[English]

I am already restricted. I have to keep my handgun with a trigger lock, which makes it inoperative. If I was going to use it for anything, if someone came to burgle my home or rape me, there would be no way on God's earth that I would ever use that firearm to defend myself, because I couldn't get at it. It would be useless.

[Translation]

After such a statement, I would like to know whether you are suggesting to the general public, to all individuals, to get a weapon for self defence.

[English]

Ms Putnam: The question was, in the full context of that interview, what purpose my handgun would be to me. Under the current legislation, the safe storage laws are these. All restricted firearms, which are handguns, must be locked, locked and locked, which means my firearm must have a trigger lock. It must be inoperative. It must be placed in a locked box. It must be placed in a locked room. The ammunition must be placed somewhere other than where that firearm is.

The question that had been asked during the interview was of what use is my firearm. In order for me to use it as any kind of a defence, first I would have to enter the locked room. I would have to unlock the locked box. I would have to remove the trigger lock. Then I would have to get the ammunition from another place and put it in the firearm. There was no context of arming or anything else. That was not the question that was asked.

The Chair: I understand that what Madame Venne is asking you today is whether you agree with that principle or not, because some people do. I don't know if you want to answer. You're not obliged to answer. She was asking whether you believe people should have arms for self-defence.

Ms Putnam: I find that out of context with what the quote had asked. Whatever I believe is my opinion. I'm not going to tell anybody how to fill out their income tax or raise their children either.

The Chair: Madame Venne.

[Translation]

Mrs. Venne: I understand that Ms Putnam does not want to answer the question, so that we are left to draw our own conclusions.

My next question is addressed to Mr. Terry Ursacki.

On the 26 of September 1991, during the Bill C-17 hearings, you said that you used firearms in competitions and, at the time, you characterized them as fully automatic weapons.

Mr. Ursacki: Yes.

Mrs. Venne: I would like to know the type of competitions you take part in? Where do they take place? Is it an olympic type competition? Out of curiosity, are you still competing?

Mr. Ursacki: Not any more because you are only allowed five shots per magazine, and that is not enough.

[English]

At the time we were doing this competition it basically consisted of knocking down metallic targets. There are pistol competitions where, within a limited period of time, one knocks down metallic disks at a certain distance. This was a similar type of competition, using fully automatic firearms. Again, within a limited period of time one simply attempted to knock down these metallic targets.

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[Translation]

Mrs. Venne: In your brief, you describe yourselves as responsible firearms owners from Alberta. You say that you represent half a million Albertans. Since you only have 4,000 members, can you tell me how you can represent half a million Albertans?

Mr. Ursacki: Mr. Duffy told me yesterday that he would prefer to answer your question himself.

Mrs. Venne: Alright.

The Chair: Mr. Duffy.

[English]

Mr. Duffy: The firearms-owning population of the province of Alberta is 39% to 40%. The population of the province of Alberta is 2.2 million to 2.5 million. That works out to about 550,000 Albertans owning firearms. So you have the highest percentage in Canada population-wise.

We have 4,000 paid members but we represent all firearms owners within the province of Alberta. Whether they're members or not, we represent them. We're the only provincial body within the province of Alberta that represents firearms owners - just firearms. The Alberta Fish and Game Association represents our hunters, but we represent only firearms owners. We're interested only in the firearms legislation.

So we take them. Whether they're paid-up members or not, we represent their interests.

[Translation]

Mrs. Venne: Thank you. That will be all for this round. Unfortunately I came in late. I'll catch up during the second round.

The Chair: Very well.

[English]

The Chair: Mr. Ramsay.

Mr. Ramsay: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'd like to thank our guests for their presentations.

I want to touch briefly on clause 19 of the firearms section of Bill C-68. Clause 19 clearly indicates that an individual:

may be authorized to possess a particular restricted firearm or handgun at a place other than the place at which it is authorized to be possessed if the individual requires the particular restricted firearm or handgun

a) to protect the life of that individual or of other individuals;

I am interested in this because of some of the statements that have been attributed to the justice minister wherein he has stated that the protection of life is not a justifiable reason for owning a firearm. I just want it on the record that even though those remarks have been attributed to the justice minister, the bill his department has created provides for that very thing under paragraph 19(a).

There are really three areas I would like to ask our guests and witnesses about. I may have to come back as a result of time allocation, but I would like to look at the cost of registration; I would like to look at what Mr. Ursacki has referred to as the ineffectiveness of it; and I of course want to deal with the question of smuggling. No one has touched on that to any great extent.

Perhaps we could deal with the ineffectiveness first. I visited four of the forsenic laboratories of the RCMP well in advance of the committee hearings. I wanted to talk to the forensic scientists who attended court on a regular basis to see if there were any technical challenges this bill would create.

At that time the justice minister had also indicated there would be a mail-in registration system. During my tour with these forensic scientists I was inquiring into the effectiveness, or ineffectiveness, of a mail-in registration system, bearing in mind the fact that Terence Wade had submitted a report showing the problems handgun registration contains: probably one out of every three searches of the system is useless because of the incorrect information contained within the system.

We had two forensic scientists appear as witnesses before the committee. One was Sergeant Veitch from the Regina RCMP laboratory and the other was Mr. Finn Nielsen, a forensic scientist from Ontario. When they were asked whether or not they would be confident in issuing a registration certificate for a firearm based solely upon the information provided in writing as submitted through the mails, without inspecting the firearm, they both indicated they would not be confident in doing so.

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In view of that, and your own information, I would like you to elaborate a little more, Dr. Ursacki, about the ineffectiveness you see contained within the mail-in system.

Mr. Ursacki: There are a number of important issues here. They were covered when I was watching the program of the hearings earlier. I think these issues were mentioned.

Of course, one is there are a great many firearms not having any serial numbers, particularly older sporting firearms, those that make it very difficult for people to come up with the right information. Some of them also lack model numbers, and so on.

Perhaps a better example, though, might be the many firearms that have been imported that were originally military firearms. I'm speaking here specifically of a large number of bolt-action rifles of the type that were used up to World War II. In this case, there are very often many serial numbers on the firearm, and I can see problems.

For example, someone finds the most obvious serial number. Often a person might have two or three rifles of the same type. That person takes the bolt out in order to make it inoperable and puts the bolt in another rifle. Perhaps they had reduced the serial number off the bolt when they sent in their registration form. So the person goes out with one rifle and one set of permits thinking that's the one they have, and in fact it's a totally different firearm.

There are also many issues just with reading serial numbers. I can refer to a specific personal example. A couple of years ago I purchased a model 1895 Russian Nagant gas-seal revolver. I have a particular interest in Russian firearms. The serial number was incorrectly recorded even by the registrar who had recorded this previously because the first character in the serial number was a Russian ``D'', but a Russian ``D'', when poorly struck, looks like a ``4''. So they had recorded this serial number as ``4'' instead of a Russian ``D''. For these kinds of reasons, there will be a great deal of difficulty getting accurate serial numbers, as well as the fact that serial numbers are duplicated on many firearms. People will use dates, for example, as serial numbers.

One registrar actually told me he did a check of the registration system and found a very large number of firearms currently registered under the model number of a particular common sporting firearm. That number was vastly in excess of the number of firearms that could actually have been registered under that.

Given the fact that we have a great deal of difficulty with the existing system, the problems of firearms without a serial number or where the serial number can easily be mistaken, that would be a major issue.

Mr. Ramsay: The information I received from the forensic scientists I spoke to, and in part confirmed by our two witnesses, first of all, was there must be an inspection of the firearm so the information that's conveyed from the firearm into the system has been verified to maintain the integrity of the system.

In addition to that, they advised me that not everyone can do this, because of some of the problems you mentioned. So it requires a qualified, trained individual - trained in firearms identification - in order to ensure the identifying features are transferred from an inspection of the firearm into the system.

Do you have any comments about that?

Mr. Ursacki: In fact I do.

At the time of the last legislation, a number of firearms that did not previously require registration did become restricted, hence requiring registration. At that time I brought in one semi-automatic rifle not previously requiring registration and four converted automatic firearms. It was over a year after I brought in those converted autos for registration that I received them back because they had had to be sent to Edmonton, where an expert of the type you're referring to was able to examine them, determine that they had in fact been properly converted and send them back.

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This was in a province where the cooperation among firearm authorities is, relatively speaking, reasonably good and where the number of firearms involved, converted autos, was a very small class. Even in this case those few thousand firearms at most created a backlog that took a year to clear up. I did without my firearms for a year before I got them back. If we were then to shift to a system of having a million or several million submitted to those same authorities for that type of determination...I'm a young man, but I'm not sure I would live long enough to see them again.

Mr. Ramsay: When they testified before the committee, both Deputy Commissioner Bergman and Sergeant Veitch indicated that through their computer enhancement program they will be able to identify errors within a mail-in system. I recognize that, but I also recognize the fact that if an error is made in recording the serial number, if a ``7'' is recorded as a ``9'' or whatever, then it's also impossible for that to be recognized. In fact when I requested information of this nature - I made five requests of their standard collection - I asked them if within their information they would provide those firearms that contained the same serial number. That was one of the areas on which they have not provided information because of the difficulty.

Sergeant Veitch indicated that if two firearms ended up in the system with the same serial number, they would be able to recognize that. But they have not been able to recognize that up to now, to the point where I have yet to receive any information about that.

So I wonder if you would care to comment on this area as well.

Mr. Ursacki: I think you might actually end up with a fair number of such cases, particularly with military firearms. For example, one firearm may have been produced in a number of countries. When firearms undergo a renovation or upgrading inspection at an armoury, it's quite common that they're stamped again with a number.

For example, you made a rifle in Germany and then those rifles were sent to Paraguay and Brazil and so on. Then each one of those countries restamped that a number of times as their armouries inspected them.

You could end up with quite a lot of firearms with similar numbers. The problem with that would be....

I don't doubt that eventually you could probably clear it up by having firearms brought in for inspection, called back and forth and so on, but then that is going to raise the cost and delays associated with this system substantially.

The cost, of course, is a clear element, but once you have this kind of delay introduced in the system with a large number of records being incorrect when they're sent in, then that's going to delay the registration process and result in the kind of delays I was referring to with respect to my converted autos.

Mr. Ramsay: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The Chair: Mr. Bodnar, you have ten minutes.

Mr. Bodnar (Saskatoon - Dundurn): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

In hearing the comments that have been made today, and in particular some of the comments dealing with V-E Day, and trying to hide behind the preservation of democratic rights, I'd like to inform you that as late as yesterday I talked to veterans. This was in Saskatoon at the Saskatchewan Place Air Show, where veterans are supporting this legislation. They're supporting us. One cannot claim that the veterans are opposed to it. I'm not saying all veterans, but I'm saying veterans do support us in our legislation.

On the whole question of plea-bargaining and the problems that have come to the courts, this is talking to the wrong group. In particular, the Saskatchewan group should be talking to Mr. Mitchell about the dropping of charges, not to this particular group. Mr. Mitchell is in charge of the administration of justice in Saskatchewan, not the federal Minister of Justice.

When we have comments about human error and unknowingly making an error and this resulting in a criminal record, that's outright false. Clause 102 of the proposed legislation says it must be knowingly made, not unknowingly, as has been represented today. It must be knowingly made.

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On this particular matter, Mr. Hardy, I in particular appreciate the articulate way in which you have dealt with aspects of the legislation. I can tell you I have great respect for your ability to analyse clauses of the bill.

I take it that some of my questions may be addressed to you and maybe I'll indicate them to you. But first I would like to ask if the gun laws.... I know all of you are generally saying the gun laws will not work to preserve life at all. But let's assume we could show that gun legislation would preserve some lives. Let's just assume that; take that as a given. Would you support this legislation? If we can show that this gun legislation will preserve and save lives, will you support this legislation?Mr. Duffy?

Mr. Duffy: Show us proof.

Mr. Bodnar: I'm asking if we can show it; let's take that as a given. Would you support this legislation?

Mr. Duffy: Well, there's never been any in the past. There's never been any proof that gun control legislation has saved any lives. So why should we believe this time that it will?

Mr. Bodnar: Again, I'm asking you to take that as maybe we could show it, take that as a given. Would you support legislation if we could show it will save lives?

Mr. Duffy: Mr. Bonder -

Mr. Bodnar: Bodnar; Bonder is the astronaut.

Mr. Duffy: My apologies. Sometimes my Newfoundland accent comes out a little.

I have a study right here that was done by the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics. From 1988 to 1991 it showed that 94.9% of all violent crime caused in Canada was done without firearms. So is it going to become more socially acceptable for people to kill each other with baseball bats and knives than it is with guns?

We're saying we want to see the eradication of all violence in Canada -

Mr. Bodnar: I agree.

Mr. Duffy: - not just with firearms, totally.

Mr. Bodnar: Right.

On the question of SRFO, being from Saskatchewan, I have access to different newspapers. In an ad in the rural paper The Western Producer, SRFO says first that Bill C-68 will grant police the right to enter any place in Canada without search warrant. That's any place. The same was indicated in a copy of the Outlook newspaper, which I have here as well. It was identical to this. Why would SRFO indicate that the bill grants police the right to enter any place when Mr. Hardy today indicates that a warrant is necessary for the entry of a residence or dwelling-house?

Mr. Hardy: Well, first clause 99 says the police may enter any place for inspection. Now, clause 101 says the police may not enter a dwelling-place without consent. If they don't have consent, then they do require a warrant. However, this is not.... A warrant is traditionally understood in Canada.... For example, somewhere in the 400 sections a warrant -

Mr. Bodnar: But that's not what the article says.

Mr. Hardy: That's correct. To a certain extent that is a misquote.

There is one way, however, by which the clauses of this bill could be strung together to allow the police to enter a home without a warrant. Again I'm referring to clauses 100 and 107, taken in conjunction with 301.

Under clause 101 police may not enter a dwelling-place without consent. However, under clause 100 the owner or person in charge of the place that is inspected.... It says every person in the place shall afford every assistance.

Under clause 107, failure to give assistance is a criminal offence. I do not find it too difficult to envisage, given past history in a number of cases, some ingenious police officer and crown prosecutor stringing the sections together to say that refusal to give consent is a failure to give assistance under proposed section 100.

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So you'll find yourself in a situation where, yes, the police may have to get a warrant to come into the house if you don't give your consent, but if you refuse consent, you may be charged with failure to assist.

Mr. Bodnar: All right. I'll get back to you on the search one as well, Mr. Hardy.

I would like to follow up one matter with SRFO, and I don't care which one of you answers it. It is an article in the Outlook paper of April 10, 1995, which says it's the details of the proposed gun law outlined by SRFO. In that particular article it indicates that I - making specific reference to me - have now publicly stated that in response to pressure from Mr. Chrétien and the general public I will vote in favour of the bill. I would like to know where SFRO gets this information, because it's absolutely and outright false that I have ever said that I was pressured by Mr. Chrétien, or byMr. Rock, or by any member of the Liberal party.

Ms Putnam: We didn't write the article. It was a personal source. Mr. Darrell Yousay informed us that you had spoken to him.

Mr. Bodnar: Who is Darrell Yousay?

Ms Putnam: This is obviously not a discussion point.

Mr. Bodnar: I would like to clear this up, because a false statement has to be cleared up.

Mr. Hardy: Okay, I will clarify that, Mr. Bodnar. Darrell Yousay is a director of SRFO. He is one of your constituents and he was having a discussion with you.

Mr. Bodnar: All right.

Mr. Hardy: He advised us afterwards that you had indicated to him that you were under a great deal of pressure to vote for the bill.

Mr. Bodnar: I'll talk to him about this, then.

The last aspect, Mr. Hardy, is on search. Do you perhaps see abuse of these proposed sections by police? For example, a police officer may want to search your residence for heroin but has no grounds for getting into that house to search for heroin, so he'll say, well, I know John Hardy and he collects guns; I'll get into the house under the pretext of guns and then I'll make my search for whatever else I can find, and under the act I can get into his databank if he has a computer and I'll check out his income statements and maybe see if he's been filing good returns, etc. Do you see a possibility for abuse, perhaps by an overzealous police officer?

Mr. Hardy: Yes. I could certainly see cases where the firearms inspector might just happen to be assisted by off-duty or detached drug section officers, for example. Again, I've seen this recently in a case where police were investigating a break-in and it was actually a safe-storage issue. They found a couple of guns without trigger-locks in the house and since they were in plain view, using the plain-view doctrine they then seized these as evidence and laid charges under that particular sector.

It certainly wouldn't be too hard to see where police, if they found that someone they suspected, for example, of being a drug trafficker were a firearms owner, would go in and search the house from top to bottom under the Firearms Act, and gee, you just happened to find the heroin and wasn't it lucky that the drug officer, for example, was along that day and was able to identify it so you knew what to do with it.

I have seen one case of similar abuse with the inspection provisions that are already in place for genuine gun collectors under the regulations. Similarly to that current regulation, this legislation specifies the time of day in which an officer can carry out an inspection, but it doesn't specify how often it can happen. I had a client who had annoyed his local RCMP detachment on another matter and all at once they decided they were going to carry out safe-storage inspections on his genuine gun collection on a regular basis. He eventually resolved it, so he didn't have to go to court. I believe he complained to his MLA instead and the situation corrected itself.

Mr. Bodnar: Thank you very much.

.1100

[Translation]

The Chair: Mrs. Venne, you're allowed five minutes.

Mrs. Venne: Mr. Chairman, I would like to address my question to the representatives of the Manitoba Association, since their brief contains the following sentence: "Canadian gun prohibitionists credit gun control with reducing the percentage of homicides committed with firearms, but crime statistics clearly identify that overall homicides have not been reduced", and the sentence continues like that. It's on page 1 of the brief.

I would like to know how you can state such a thing when the most recent statistics, published in Juristat, show the contrary. In 1993, the number of homicides fell by 14% as compared to 1992.

Therefore, I would like to know how you can make such statements, and if you intend to apologize every time you publish something that is not quite true.

[English]

The Chair: Does anybody from the Manitoba delegation want to answer the question?

Mr. Tardiff: I'm sorry, I'm not quite clear on what Mrs. Venne is asking. Is the question why our statistics are different from yours? Is the question why we may have made a mistake or is the question whether we'll continue to do our best?

The answer to the third question is yes.

The answer to why our numbers are different from yours is, obviously, that we've been working on different information. Our information at the time we wrote our brief was that we couldn't get 1993 statistics; we've used the 1992 and earlier statistics. Bill C-17 came into effect in 1991, so we had one year of statistics to work with. Obviously those numbers are there.

[Translation]

Mrs. Venne: Yet, everybody can access the same statistics, and Juristat is regularly published. If you wish, we'll give you the information so that you can become a subscriber to that publication. I think it's in your interest, so that in the future, when you publish statistics, you can use complete ones.

I don't have any more questions for the time being, Mr. Chairman. I will return later.

[English]

The Chair: All right.

Mr. Gallaway, five minutes.

Mr. Gallaway: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It's Monday morning and I know what it feels like. I know that you've come a long distance, so thank you for coming.

Mr. Duffy, you talked about your family's life in Newfoundland, how you'd known oppression. You referred to the Magna Carta, the BNA, and you also referred to a hidden agenda. Do you believe you need guns to protect yourself from oppression, oppression of government or oppression of others?

Mr. Duffy: I believe in the political process and the democratic process that we have in Canada. I believe in it and I've defended it for the last 26 years. I was taught as a small child in a family that the democratic process was the most important thing we have in our country. I believe in it totally, and that's the only thing I believe in.

Mr. Gallaway: All right. Now, as a spokesperson for the responsible gun owners of Alberta, there is a group in western Canada - and I'm not certain but I think it's called Albertans Aiming for Truth. Your group, the Responsible Firearms Owners of Alberta, has endorsed these ads.

I'll read to you part of the first paragraph of one of these. This ad says:

Every day more law-abiding citizens are making a conscious, moral decision not to register their firearms.

It goes on to say:

With the passage of this law right here in Canada they will become unapprehended criminals subject to arrest and prosecution. Mass enforcement may not be a priority, but recent world history clearly shows sweeping powers, including search and seizure, confiscation of property, and arrest and detention

- and this, I think, is the important part -

are often targeted against persons or groups, usually political or ethnic minorities, who are ``out of favour'' with the existing government.

Do you think the intent of this bill is to target certain ethnic or minority groups in this country?

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Mr. Duffy: Mr. Gallaway, we've had examples of it in Canada - even in our own country. My mother was Acadian French. We all know what they did to the Acadian French. My dad was of Irish extraction, and we all know what they did to the Irish.

I want to make reference to a note here. On December 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked the United States Pacific fleet station at Pearl Harbour. The RCMP immediately seized 1,200 fishing boats owned by Japanese-Canadian citizens. Early in 1942 the government ordered confiscation of approximately 1,500 motor vehicles owned by Japanese-Canadians. Together with 1,200 fishing boats, they were sold at public auction.

In 1919, during the strike in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canadian citizens were shot by authorities, Mr. Gallaway.

Has it happened in Canada? Yes, and it's happened in other countries - even countries such as the United States. What about Kent State?

Do we have some concerns about where this bill is going? Yes, we do. We have real concerns about where the bill is going, because it is attacking law-abiding, responsible firearms owners. Except for six provisions in there, show me in this bill where all this is going.

I am going to be a criminal if I do not register my firearms. I take exception to what was said here today, that police will not arrest us if we make a mistake on a registration form. That is incorrect; they will. Make no doubt about it, they will.

I live in Wainwright, Alberta. I hunt in the northern forests of Whitecourt. It's approximately four hours away. If I am caught with an honest mistake on my registration form - you're going to hear this from everyone who owns a firearm, that they made an honest mistake - you know what? They're going to impound my truck, all my equipment, and throw me in jail until they figure out that it was an honest mistake. Do you think that's correct for a law-abiding, taxpaying citizen of Canada? I don't think so.

Mr. Gallaway: Do you think the police -

The Chair: Last question.

Mr. Gallaway: All right, I won't ask that question, then.

Let me refer to the Alberta safety code, which gives a fire protection officer the right to enter and inspect. If a person refuses that entry, on a first offence the fine can be up to $15,000 and/or six months' imprisonment. Is your group going to lobby to repeal that act?

Mr. Duffy: That is the provincial firearms officer.

Mr. Gallaway: No, it's fire protection.

Mr. Duffy: Fire protection.

Mr. Gallaway: This is a safety code, building code. Are you going to lobby Mr. Klein to repeal that act?

Mr. Duffy: I don't know anything about it.

Mr. Gallaway: It's interesting that a group that's so concerned about civil rights isn't aware of this fact. It's been in effect in Alberta for many years.

Mr. Duffy: No doubt it has. There are other provisions, Mr. Gallaway, that are also in effect in Canada and we don't know anything about them. We're not going to dig up every provision to find out whether or not it affects what we're doing. We're worried about firearms legislation at this point.

The Chair: Mr. Thompson.

Mr. Thompson: In the Manitoba presentation you refer to a 1976 brief by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, who were not supportive of registration whatsoever, or any kinds of laws that they felt would deter this kind of violent crime. That was their stand in 1976.

This last week we had both the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police and the commissioners of the RCMP make presentations, and both are supportive of this particular bill. I made a statement that I have talked to a number of policemen all across Canada so I could have a conversation on an individual basis with a grassroots policeman - and not just in Wild Rose - and I have yet to find one who would be willing to support it.

I see in your statement you say:

Media reports and our personal communications with police on the streets indicate little support for Mr. Rock's position on registration. A number of police officers have complained that they are under direct orders from their superiors not to give their personal opinions about Allan Rock's proposals.

I've heard the same thing: I'll tell you how I feel, but don't give my name.

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How is it, and is it true in every province, that police on the streets and in the cars would want to refrain from using their names? Is this true in your province, as far as you can tell, or am I imagining this and making believe so my Liberal friends can jump all over me?

Mr. Tardiff: I can't speak for the other provinces, but the day before I left to come to Ottawa, I received a call from a police officer. This would be a local town cop, not an RCMP officer. He was from a small southern Manitoba town. I don't even want to use the name of the town, because he asked me to be very discreet and the town is so small it wouldn't be hard to figure out who he is.

He said he and three other members on the force and his chief were quite disturbed withMr. Rock's bill and they were really somewhat concerned about speaking out about anything at all, because the town fathers in this particular case were a little perturbed with their stand. They did, however, offer whatever help they could, and we've asked them if they could do an informal survey of their brethren. To date we have no results on that.

Mr. Thompson: Do any other provinces want to respond?

Mr. Nelson: I talked to a police officer in Edmonton about six months ago. He came to a show we were working at. We had a petition and memberships on the table. He would not sign the petition and would not buy a membership, but he gave me a donation and said ``We support you, but I do not want to have the ramifications from up above of being a member of your organization''.

Mr. Duffy: Mr. Thompson, I talked to an RCMP police officer - a fairly high-ranking one - and he said the commissioner of the RCMP supports this, but they have never come down to the rank and file of the RCMP and asked them what they feel about this bill. He said ``We have some contention with this, because we have some input into this and we have not been asked''. He said he personally and many of his officers do not support this bill, because they're being told this is going to be a mail-in system with no input from police. He said you cannot register an item in Canada that carries a Criminal Code offence without it being checked through by a police agency. It is impossible.

Ms Putnam: In Saskatchewan the police forces of Saskatoon, Regina, Prince Albert, Estevan, Moose Jaw and all major centres have been surveyed and are 99.6% against Bill C-68. Our conservation officers surveyed themselves and are 100% against Bill C-68. Our corrections officers in all our correctional institutions surveyed themselves and are 100% against Bill C-68.

Our RCMPs in the rank and file have told us that because of orders from above, there will be no comment made. The chiefs of police are political appointees. They get their paycheques from the government. Of course they're going to be in favour of Bill C-68.

Mr. Thompson: This is my last question. I think a ``yes'' or ``no'' will probably do it.

When you hear comments like what you have just talked about, when you hear these things are happening, and then when you see a government in power punish people because they vote the wishes of their constituents - when you tie all that together - is that the biggest fear you have in your provinces concerning this legislation: civil liberties?

Ms Putnam: Yes.

The Chair: Would anybody else like to answer this question?

Some witnesses: Yes.

Mr. Thompson: Thank you.

The Chair: Ms Phinney.

Ms Phinney (Hamilton Mountain): One of the reasons I'm on the committee is that as a non-lawyer, I want to make sure the bills that come from the justice department are understood by rank-and-file Canadians.

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If we look at proposed section 111, which is prohibition, I think we'll see where something can be greatly misunderstood if it isn't clearly written. I think it was Mr. Hardy who made the statement about prohibition, that if one person in a small town in Saskatchewan were convicted of a violent offence, everyone in the town would be prohibited from owning firearms. I think that's an example of gross misinterpretation of what is in the bill.

Proposed paragraph 111(1)(b), which is what's important here, is another example of something I have a problem with. Not enough words are defined in this bill. What is ``an associate''? I think this is an example where that should be defined very clearly so it can't be interpreted the way you people have interpreted the bill.

Because I'm not an expert on this, Mr. Chairman, can we ask our research staff to explain proposed paragraph 111(1)(b) and exactly what that is intended to be?

Mr. Bartlett, could you explain that?

The Chair: This is with respect to the associates, a matter raised by Mr. Hardy.

Mr. William Bartlett (Committee Researcher): There is no definition of ``associate'' in the proposed section, but the key part of the section is where it reads:

the person against whom the order is sought would or might have access to any such thing that is in the possession of the person against whom the order is sought.

In the case of both a cohabitant and an associate the important thing is whether or not the person against whom the prohibition order has already been made would have access to the firearms of the cohabitant or the associate.

The Chair: When we go into clause-by-clause we're going to want an opportunity to examine our experts. I allow it when we're examining other people simply to clarify questions.

Ms Phinney: I just wanted to clarify that I think they have greatly misinterpreted it. Perhaps there's a legitimate reason why they have; perhaps it's not clear.

I'll go on to my first question. While talking with gun owners in my riding I've heard concerns about clause 112. I think you also have concerns about that; about the powers of the justice minister. What changes would you like to see in that clause? How would you change it? Would you give him absolutely no powers, or would you say if he does make any changes it would have to go before the cabinet within three days, or it would have to go to Parliament, or...?

Mr. Duffy: Madam Phinney, this bill - and we've already stated this - is unacceptable.

Ms Phinney: Yes, but could you just answer that question?

Mr. Duffy: No, we're not ready to.

Ms Phinney: All right.

We'd like your help to change the bill to make it more helpful to you people. That's why you're here.

Mr. Duffy: Yes, but -

Ms Putnam: It's unacceptable.

Ms Phinney: Okay, thank you.

You've stated that the ban on handguns with a barrel length under 105 mm and .32- and .25-calibre handguns is too broad a definition. How would you change the definition so that, for instance, target-shooting guns are not covered but pocket pistols and Saturday night specials are covered?

Mr. Ursacki: I can elaborate on why that is a poorer way of doing things; however, I think we all are solidly in agreement that no type of handgun should be banned. We adamantly and categorically reject - completely, totally, absolutely - any idea that there are good guns and bad guns.

About why in particular that's especially broad, as I think has been mentioned by previous witnesses, there are many different types of .25- and .32-calibre guns; for example, particularly .32-calibre guns. Years ago when I was a child, for example, my father had a boxed set of heavily engraved silver-inlaid presentation pistols. They were .32 rim-fire calibre, certainly not the type of thing that would be used in a typical hold-up.

So I think that's an issue, and I think in particular this will have some negative effects in that -

A voice: [Inaudible]

Mr. Ursacki: I certainly hope I will never be shot, but if someone was going to shoot me, I'd much rather they shot me with a .25 or a .32 than with anything else. Those are the least powerful guns around, generally speaking. There are some variations in the calibres, but most of those calibres are very low-powered. If criminals have guns, I'd rather they have those than anything else.

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About the size, as was mentioned earlier, because you're basing the prohibitions on barrel length you're going to end up with people shifting to other types of guns that in fact maybe you'd rather they not have. It's particularly hard on revolvers. Revolvers measure the barrel length without the chamber.

So these are particular problems.

The Chair: Madam Venne.

[Translation]

Mrs. Venne: I would like to ask each representative of the Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba groups to tell me what they are going to do to help their members comply with the law once it's passed.

Judging by the name of your organization which is made of responsible firearms owners, it's certainly your duty to inform your members so that they can remain responsible citizens once the bill is passed. What does each group intend to do to ensure that the law will be complied with?

[English]

Mr. Duffy: Mrs. Venne, I have obtained the Newfoundland and Alberta hunter education courses, and I have 26 years of working with firearms, using firearms from almost every nation. I have jumped through every hoop my government has asked me to jump through. I have had one speeding ticket in my life. I am not going to jump through any more hoops.

As you know, I cannot go out there and actively tell my membership not to comply. They will probably do as they feel. They're all individuals.

Most of our members are in the same boat as I am. They have jumped through all the hoops they are going to jump through, I suspect.

[Translation]

Mrs. Venne: So, what you are saying is that you do not intend to inform your members. It's still one of your duties.

Mr. Ursacki: If you'd let me answer this question, I'd like to say that we're facing a crisis. When faced with a crisis, there is no time to plan for the long term. It's absolutely necessary that this bill be withdrawn and I hope that we'll never have the problem you just mentioned.

Mrs. Venne: You must certainly be thinking about it. The odds are that this bill will be passed and you will then have a duty to inform your members. This is why I asked each group what they were going to do. You answered me. Do the other two groups want to tell me what they intend to do to get people to comply with the law when it's passed?

[English]

Mr. Tardiff: First of all, in a partial answer to the question you asked about statistics, we used three studies. I'd be glad to leave you the names of those after the proceedings, as we've already passed your question on statistics.

On the other question, about compliance, the council is not a police organization. It is not up to us to ensure our members comply. That is up to the police and the government.

[Translation]

Mrs. Venne: No, no! I'm talking about informing them.

[English]

Mr. Tardiff: As responsible firearms owners and as responsible Canadians, we intend to obey whatever laws are passed. That will be the advice the directors of the council will be giving to their members. But it is not up to us to make them comply. It is up to the government and the police.

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[Translation]

Mrs. Venne: I am not asking you to make your members comply with the law. I'm just asking what you intend to do to inform them. You are going to be well informed because you already know the bill. You know how it will be passed.

[English]

Mr. Tardiff: I'm sorry, Mrs. Venne, I disagree with you. That information is information that belongs to all Canadian taxpayers, and it is up to the government to inform people what the laws are and what they are to comply with. It is not up to me to do it.

[Translation]

Mrs. Venne: You are telling them that the bill is not good and, when it's passed, you are not going to give them any more information. That's what you intend to do.

[English]

Mr. Tardiff: That's not what I said, Mrs. Venne.

[Translation]

Mrs. Venne: You are saying that you don't have a duty to inform your members.

[English]

Mr. Tardiff: What I said was I would not take the government's responsibility and do their job. It's the government's responsibility to disseminate that information.

I work in investments. If I give my clients bad information and bad advice, I can get myself in serious trouble. Investments are an area in which I have a considerable amount of expertise. I am not an expert in the law and it is not up to me to give legal advice.

Mr. Hardy: Speaking for Saskatchewan, first, we're somewhat upset to hear it addressed as ``once the act is passed''. Our understanding is it will still go through committee for at least one more vote and then to Senate hearings before that point. However, if it does go through all those proceedings and becomes law, we agree with Manitoba that it is the primary duty of the government to inform Canadians of the changes to the law.

Now, that having been said, out of self-preservation for our members we do, whenever possible, educate our members on the current state of the law and on changes to it. That's one of the purposes for which we originally formed our group. In speaking to people at rallies and gun shows throughout Saskatchewan for the past year, we have taken current legislation along with us, and when people had specific questions we were able to show them particularly the regulations in question so they could check them and see what was said.

A lot of people, for example, still don't know what particular guns were restricted or prohibited last time around and if what they're using is legal or not. I expect we will be continuing with this educational approach for our members in the future. But it is not our primary duty to do so. It is the duty of the government to do so. What we find we are doing is filling in the gaps where the government has failed to inform the public adequately.

The Chair: Mr. Lee.

Mr. Lee (Scarborough - Rouge River): I think it was Mr. Nelson earlier in the presentations...one or two of you have at least obliquely made reference to this issue of the proposed registration requirements being an attack on a way of life. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it was Mr. Nelson who broached those subjects most directly.

I wonder if you could articulate that a little better. I see that registration is what it says it is; the gun gets registered and it stays registered for the rest of its life, however long that is. But I don't see how that system would affect a way of life.

Also, you've made reference to the possibility that populations of gophers and coyotes and deer and other animals would increase. How would registration cause those populations to go out of control?

Mr. Nelson: Maybe you didn't hear all I said. Last year in Alberta we dropped 9,000 hunters. That means we have 9,000 fewer people going out and taking game. The government has paid me for loss of feed supplies because of the overpopulation of deer now. The government has paid me for lost calves that coyotes have killed.

To get back to why it's going to involve our next generation, the next generation will not be able to afford to hunt. I can hardly afford to hunt. I have to pay for safety courses and I have to pay to lock up my guns. I'll have to pay $60 for an FPC. I'll probably have to pay $100 in five years to register my gun. How is the next generation of Nelsons going to be able to afford to hunt? They won't be able to. My younger brother can't afford to hunt.

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Mr. Lee: I was hoping you would be able to articulate why it is that registration itself would be the cause of this.

The causes you've just mentioned, in fairness, pre-exist the registration requirement. The drop in the number of hunters occurred last year, not next year. The registration of a firearm happens once. The licensing of a firearm owner happens every five years.

I want to focus on the registration system for the firearms. What is it about the registration of firearms that will cause another 9,000...? Something is already happening in relation to the number of hunters.

Mr. Nelson: Registration is going to cost me money I cannot afford. I cannot afford to be in Ottawa right now. I've been spending the last year and a half fighting this bill. I am a farmer, and we just cannot afford any more government taxes.

Mr. Lee: In fairness, the costs of registration have been predicted at anything from $10 to $30 or $40. Surely you're not suggesting this would be unaffordable to you.

Mr. Nelson: What does it cost to register a handgun in Canada right now, Mr. Lee?

Mr. Lee: They're already registered.

Mr. Nelson: How much does it cost to register a handgun in Canada right now?

Mr. Lee: I don't know.

Mr. Nelson: It costs $83.50.

How much does it cost to register a handgun in Quebec? It costs $103.50.

I've registered handguns. I have eleven handguns and I registered them. When I bought them they were registered. Now you're telling me I cannot pass nine of them on to anybody. I can sell them to somebody else who may have one that looks the same or acts the same, but I cannot pass it on to the next generation.

Mr. Lee: I'm asking you about the registration system.

I want you to know that when I deal with this legislation, I'm operating on a projected registration cost that's less than $50, and not the $83 you cling to. You may wish to propagate that. It's not what I'm looking at as a legislator and it's not what my colleagues in the House of Commons are looking at. We can only deal with realities around this table, and I'm signalling to you that the reality my colleagues and I are dealing with is a registration cost of less than $50. In fact, the initial phases of registration will be $10 and $20.

Mr. Ursacki: Could I just briefly address that question? I think that comes back to the point we were discussing with Mr. Ramsay. It seems clear that there is will be a lot of problems with mail-in registration. If mail-in registration does not work and one has to go to an inspection-based system, the costs will be much higher. As we all know, there seems to be almost an iron law that government things always cost more.

You may agree or disagree with this, but I think the reason this would negatively affect the number of people involved in shooting sports in the future is that the costs will exceed the figures you're giving, because we will have to go to an inspection-based system.

Then, in order to cover these costs, as there are fewer and fewer people to spread the costs, the fees will end up going up, being charged annually and so on, and in fact used as a specific deterrent to squeeze out firearms ownership, because the government, specifically Mr. Rock, has already basically said the fewer guns there are the better.

Mr. Lee: I hear your predictions and they're well worth noting.

The Chair: Mr. Breitkreuz.

Mr. Breitkreuz (Yorkton - Melville): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

It's interesting for me to sit here and observe the process we're going through. I thought this was going to be a free and open process, but as I observe what's going on today, we don't have an unbiased committee interviewing witnesses to discover what they think about this. Many of the questions allowed are irrelevant.

The Chair: Mr. Breitkreuz, I've found that everybody who comes to this committee has a political point of view, and that's their right.

Please proceed. You can be as biased as you wish.

Mr. Breitkreuz: What I'm trying to say, Mr. Chairman, is we should be getting down to discussing the underlying philosophy and intent of this bill. We're getting on to questions that are hypothetical: what if this, what if that, what would you do if this happened, and all that kind of thing.

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I really feel it's incumbent upon us to discuss the actual impact this bill will have on Canada, on Canadians, and how they feel about it. Some of the information they are getting causes them a lot of concern. I believe it's not just western provinces; it is also a lot of people in eastern Canada who have similar concerns.

I would like to ask you all a question, and just briefly tell me.... With the information that's gone out to the provinces of Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba...we've often heard that women support this bill. Is that correct?

Ms Putnam: No.

Mr. Breitkreuz: Do all the women of Saskatchewan support this bill?

Ms Putnam: Absolutely not.

I am also an adult educator. I educate people on social assistance. I educate people on unemployment. Most of them are women. All my students, especially women, are terrified of the possibilities of what this bill will do to our personal rights and freedoms. We now cannot defend ourselves in any way, shape or form about anything. We have very few rights.

The women I teach are lacking in skills because they are female. Personal property rights are now going to be taken away. Now there are going to be illegal search-and-seizures of unprecedented scope in a democratic country.

The women shooters I shoot with and the women hunters I hunt with do not agree with Bill C-68. I cannot speak for the entire population of females, but the women I associate with are against Bill C-68. The more they are educated - given that the government has not chosen to educate the public and we've had to form these groups so that the public can be educated - and the more they learn, the unhappier they are.

Mr. Breitkreuz: Thank you.

What about the other provinces?

Mr. Duffy: In Alberta, from our rallies, town hall meetings and educational meetings, where we've been teaching our people about the bill and the implementation of it, we get quite a few women. We pass on to them - because this is what's coming from Mr. Rock - that this bill is going to save women's lives. They laugh. It's a joke to them. They say in no way, shape or form is it going to help them.

Again, I don't speak for the population of women in Alberta. We speak for the ones who are at our town hall meetings, who belong to our organization, and any female, whether she's a member or not, who owns a firearm in the province of Alberta.

Mr. Breitkreuz: Thank you.

Mr. Ursacki: If I might just add one particular group that has a lot of concern about this issue.... Women very often outlive men, particularly their husbands. Many of their husbands have been lifelong firearms collectors and have ended up with very substantial, very valuable collections, worth tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars. I'm aware of quite a few women who are gravely concerned - either their husband is not expected to live long or has recently passed away - about the effect of this bill, that essentially it wipes out the value of the investment their husbands have built up. They expected that to be a nest egg that could be liquidated through auction upon their death.

Mr. Schultz: We had a petition put together with roughly 2,000 signatures of different women opposing this bill.

My wife is also a competitive shooter, or was a competitive shooter until recently. If she was in favour of this bill, I'm sure she wouldn't have let me come here. She's definitely against it.

Mr. Breitkreuz: Thank you very much. I believe there are many misconceptions about who supports and who does not support Bill C-68.

Do you believe non-gun owners should be concerned about this legislation and some of the things it will do?

Mr. Nelson: Absolutely.

Ms Putnam: Non-gun owners in our province are already very concerned. As firearms owners we are already registered. The police know where we are. They know what firearms we own.

If a spouse decides to separate and is annoyed with the other party, he or she may phone the police station and say I think he or she has a gun. The police can go in and rip the house apart. They don't even own a firearm. This is a very scary thing.

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Mr. Duffy: In Alberta, when the organization first started, most of our calls and most of our literature were exchanged between firearms owners. But right now we're finding a large number of calls coming into our office from, and a lot of paraphernalia moving back and forth among, people who don't own firearms at all. They're very concerned. What they're concerned about is the provisions we told you about in this bill, such as search and seizure, confiscation without compensation, Orders in Council to do business. Stuff like this has non-firearms owners very upset.

Mr. Thompson: I have a point of order, Mr. Chairman. Just as a note I would like the committee to know that I had the honour of tabling the petition that the Manitoba constituency started.

The Chair: That's not a point of order.

Mr. Thompson: It's a point of information.

The Chair: Yes. That's usually not permitted, but it's on the record now.

Mr. Iftody.

Mr. Iftody (Provencher): Thank you.

I have many questions I'd like to ask, but we have only five minutes, and I would appreciate brief answers so I can get in as many questions as possible.

I'm very concerned about discussion of civil liberties and the attempt, as you say, by the state to intrude on those in some ways. I want to get to that. I'm also concerned about this body making representations that I feel in some way could reflect the veterans of this country. Are you saying here today that your position reflects those of the legions and the veterans in Canada?

Mr. Duffy: I want to say this. I have relatives who have fought in two world wars and in Korea, and I have relatives who have served in United Nations peacekeeping operations. None of them, including the ones who are buried in Europe today, would support this bill in any way, shape, or form.

Mr. Iftody: Thank you.

My next question is about one of the places I'm really confused about, the national polling; the poll results. I have a copy here of a number of polls that seemingly demonstrate again and again and again that the overwhelming majority of Canadians support some form of registration. I would think and I would expect, based on my understanding of the good people of Alberta, and particularly the people of Calgary - I've visited that city many times, and they're wonderful, lovely people - that in that centre, in that city, I would find of anywhere in Canada the strongest opposition to these kinds of measures and the greatest willingness to protect the civil liberties of Canadians.

Yet I'm astounded by the national polls and the poll taken by Mr. Klein, and more recently the poll taken by the member from Calgary, Stephen Harper, which compelled him to stand up in the House - after I stood and voted not with my government - and say, ``I support Mr. Rock's registration on behalf of the people of Calgary, whom I represent''. Quite frankly, I was shocked by his intervention, and remain shocked. I was wondering if somebody from Calgary could perhaps explain what is going on here and perhaps settle that.

Mr. Ursacki: First let me just say I am not only from Calgary, I am from Mr. Harper's riding, and I can say I was also shocked, but not surprised, by his vote. On the general issue of these polls, I think it is very clear that most Canadians do not know anything whatsoever about either our existing firearms laws or this bill. It's 124 pages, and it takes a very dedicated person to get through this.

Mr. Iftody: So are you saying Mr. Harper didn't inform...or misled his constituents?

Mr. Ursacki: No. Please, if you'll allow me to continue, I think in general people don't know anything about it, but it sounds like a superficially good idea, and that's why they favour it; that's why you get polls, which give no information to people, finding large majorities in favour of it.

About Mr. Harper specifically, I've known him for a number of years, and I can tell you his position has always been strongly anti-gun. I've specifically talked to him about this issue many times. He is an anti-gun person, and as a result he set up a poll that would give the result he wanted to have.

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Mr. Iftody: So you're telling this committee that Mr. Harper misled his constituents because of a biased poll?

Mr. Ursacki: I would say it may be somewhat strong to say he deliberately misled them. I think his position is anti-gun -

Mr. Iftody: And you're saying he's -

The Chair: Mr. Iftody, we like to get both the questions and answers on the official record. So when you ask a question, allow the witness to answer fully. Then I would hope the witness would allow you fully to -

Mr. Iftody: Thank you.

The Chair: Mr. Ursacki, complete your answer to Mr. Iftody, and if he has a further question he can ask it.

Mr. Ursacki: I do not want to cast aspersions on Mr. Harper's character. He has an anti-gun position; therefore it is not surprising, if he is setting up a poll, that he would ask the question in such a way that it would be likely to obtain a result that would enable him to vote according to his own preferences.

Mr. Iftody: I too am concerned about civil liberties. I was born and raised in the rural area, like this gentleman from Newfoundland and the chap from Calgary. I live in the rural area, in the bush, as Mr. Tardiff knows, in Bird River. It's in a very remote area. I'm concerned about some of the provisions of the bill as well.

I believe you mentioned earlier that you were very angry and concerned that a police officer would take your truck and confiscate this and that because of some misinformation on one of the items in the registration. I'm very concerned about that as well. I think that is very heavy-handed and quite unusual.

Let me tell you something. I met with some gun owners in my riding on Friday and was informed by them that if I went hunting and fishing in my backyard on Friday without a fishing licence, the natural resources department in Manitoba would take my truck, my fishing rod, and everything in my truck. If there were a ski-doo or a motorcycle in my truck, it would take that too.

I don't have people in my riding pounding on my door, concerned about fishing licences and what the natural resources department might do to them. How can you explain that sort of cognitive dissonance here in terms of your objections to that and what's currently going on in Manitoba under these laws?

Mr. Duffy: Our problem with this legislation is.... If I go hunting in Alberta without a hunting licence and I kill a deer, I am charged under provincial legislation, which is not a criminal offence. But if I get caught with a firearm that is not registered, I'm charged under the Criminal Code of Canada. That's quite a big difference.

Mr. Iftody: Please, Mr. Chair, just a small...and I promise I'll quit after this.

The Chair: You certainly will. You're over your time anyway. Be very brief, Mr. Iftody, because what I do for you I have to do for everybody and I tend to be firm with everybody. I can't make exceptions for members here and there, and you've exceeded your time.

We will allow the witnesses to complete the answer to your question, but I ask you not to keep on. If it's simply for clarifying so they can answer properly -

Mr. Iftody: It's just yes or no.

The Chair: Okay.

Mr. Iftody: I'd like to ask Mr. Tardiff this. You said to me over lunch one time, Mr. Tardiff, that you would campaign for me if we were successful in taking these provision out of the Criminal Code. Is your principal concern that we remove this from the Criminal Code? Either one of you can answer.

Mr. Tardiff: I think what I really said over lunch was that I would be pleased to help someone who would help me and that I had some very grave concerns about this legislation. At the time we received the bill and we had our lunch, I hadn't had time to study it totally. That was even previous to my meeting with Mr. Gallaway. After further reflection, I see very little good in this, and I would prefer to see it scrapped. Let's get a clean sheet of paper and start over. We can do much better; let's do better.

[Translation]

The Chair: Mrs. Venne.

Mrs. Venne: I pass my turn, Mr. Chairman.

[English]

The Chair: To begin with, there was some suggestion earlier, in answer to questions from either Mr. Ramsay or Mr. Thompson, about the position of the police. We had both the Canadian Police Association and the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police here the other day.

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In answer to a question here this morning somebody - I can't recall who - said the chiefs were politically appointed by their various cities and so on; therefore we couldn't accept what they said because they were sort of controlled.

We had the Canadian Police Association before us. The Canadian Police Association represents the front-line policemen. They had a convention here and they debated the issue. By a majority of about 80% the front-line policemen supported this. True, 20% more or less voted against it.

Despite the fact that all of you this morning identified policemen here and there who were opposed to the legislation, are you suggesting that the Canadian Police Association - by the way, policemen stood up and opposed the legislation because they had the courage of their convictions at the convention and they lost the vote. Here you have a democratic national police association. Are you suggesting that the policemen who voted at that convention were being intellectually dishonest, that they were being kowtowed to, or manipulated? Are you suggesting their vote was not a true democratic vote of front-line policemen across this country? We are not talking about chiefs appointed here. Mr. Jessop told us how he was elected year after year by his constables on the beat.

Mr. Ursacki: Perhaps if I could briefly allude to that question, I am not aware of exactly the procedure by which the participants in that congress were selected. However, I doubt very much that all the police officers in Canada were there. I presume they were therefore delegates.

The Chair: The people who were there were elected by the police officers throughout the country.

Mr. Ursacki: That's what I mean. They were delegates selected by -

The Chair: They were not selected, I understand, from the top. They were elected people.

Mr. Ursacki: Sorry, we're splitting hairs -

The Chair: No, no, it's very important, because you did suggest the chiefs were appointed from the top. I understand these people were elected from the bottom.

Mr. Ursacki: I wasn't implying that they were selected from the top. I meant, to use your terminology, they were elected. I doubt very much they were elected on the basis of their views on gun control. Therefore, I do not think one can necessarily conclude that because the delegates voted 80% in favour, that is the same as 80% of the rank-and-file police officers voting in favour of that.

The Chair: That could be said, sir, about almost anything. Very few of us are single-issue candidates in elections.

Mr. Ursacki: That's true.

The Chair: We're subject to being defeated. If the police in a certain area feel very strongly on gun control and their representative betrays their view in Ottawa at a convention, they can boot them out the next time, just as you can boot out your local member of Parliament.

Mr. Ursacki: That's certainly true, and in both cases we'll have to watch the results. I think you might be surprised at how influential that issue will be.

The Chair: That's fine. There was a suggestion here that this overwhelming vote of the Canadian Police Association didn't represent policemen. I must tell you I'm from Montreal and I have yet to meet a policeman - there may be some - who has opposed the legislation.

Mr. Duffy: Can I make a statement here?

The Chair: Sure, Mr. Duffy, go ahead.

Mr. Duffy: When the vote was taken in the Edmonton police department, out of a force of almost 1,200 police officers, only 500-odd showed up for the vote. Our question is, where were the rest of them?

The Chair: That may be. That's like all elections.

Mr. Duffy: I'm not saying that. Mr. Jessop, who made the comment yesterday - we were watching it on television, because it showed all week long on CPAC - made a statement that he would like the search and seizure provisions because they would give him the right to go into a house and search it - ``ransack'' it, I think he said.

The Chair: One could question how well you people represent your members. For example, somebody asked a question earlier where you had 6,000 members, but you pretend to represent all the gun owners in Alberta. One could turn the same questions to you.

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To what extent did you interview all the gun owners in Alberta? How do you claim to represent all of them? The police may not have obtained a 100% turnout for their election, but to the extent that associations are run democratically, from what I heard from Mr. Jessop the other day, the Canadian Police Association is a pretty democratic organization and they didn't get 100%. He admits they had a strong, vociferous opposition, by the way, of policemen who stood up for the same things you did and opposed it, but they lost the vote.

Ms Putnam: Sir, given that I made the comment, I would like to reply.

The Chair: All right.

Ms Putnam: I make no aspersions other than what I know of, and that is in Saskatchewan.

The Chair: By the way, we know in Saskatchewan the police association -

Ms Putnam: Exactly.

The Chair: But no problem.

Ms Putnam: Yes, but the unfortunate part was that when the president went to this Canadian police officers' meeting, he went against what his members asked him to do. When he came back home he was informed, and his opinion has been changed. Now he is actually representing his policemen.

The Chair: But Ms Putnam, we know that in Saskatchewan...and you're correct that there were police associations that were in the minority at the national convention...and that gentleman, who, if he voted differently, has to answer to.... But there was some suggestion here that unlike gun owners, policemen are being less than honest, are being manipulative -

Ms Putnam: Policemen are gun owners, sir. We have two directors -

The Chair: Excuse me. The thing is that they voted over 80% at their convention here in Ottawa a few weeks ago to support this legislation. I'm asking you what grounds you have to attack their decision...any more than I would have to attack any of your associations, which I wouldn't do. When you come here saying you're representing...I could go at you and ask how many people were at the meeting, how many people were informed, etc., but I'm not doing that. I think to question the police...by an overwhelming decision in the association - I'm not talking about the chiefs, who voted to support the legislation....

I have other questions, but I have to respect my own time limits. - Mr. Ramsay.

Mr. Ramsay: Just to follow up on what the chairman has been saying, I would not have any difficulty with what the police chiefs have said and with what the representatives of the Canadian Police Association decided at their convention. I would have no difficulty with that if there weren't the inconsistency that's coming from the grass-roots law-enforcement officers across this country.

I heard many people at the grass-roots level. I was at a meeting in Ontario just a week ago and a police sergeant from Metro Toronto walked up to me and gave me his card. He's asking for a vote, a secret ballot, of his members. This is all across the country.

I haven't run into a grass-roots peace officer who has supported Bill C-68. So there is an inconsistency. Whenever I see an inconsistency, I would sure like to get to the bottom of it...or at least it raises questions. Without casting aspersions on the police chiefs or whomever, I think it's necessary when an inconsistency like this arises, particularly when it involves the police officer who's going to knock on the door or going to stop the car in the middle of the night, that their opinion not be cast aside simply because their police chiefs or their association has voted in a certain way in Ottawa.

I wanted to cover a couple more areas, and I see that really what I want to do is cover some of the points raised from members across the way.

When we talk about jumping through the hoops...three young girls from Camrose have won gold, silver and bronze medals in the biathlon. They start at an early age, with their parents spending a lot of money buying equipment and nursing them through, getting them interested in the sport and participating with them. They and the coach are telling us that if this bill goes through, if the hoops become more stringent, as apparently they will under this bill, we're going to see parents directing the interests of their children into other areas. We're not going to have that volume of individuals involved in the biathlon, where they're skiing and shooting and so on. An enormous amount of discipline is generated with these young people. They're simply going to spend their money elsewhere.

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Also the registration...and Mr. Bodnar has left. But there's no question that if a registration certificate is issued that does not match the rifle and a peace officer inspects it, then that firearm is not registered. Technically or any other way, it is not registered. That is an offence under clause 91 that carries a maximum penalty of five years. And you'd better believe it's an offence. The peace officer has no alternative but to do something about it.

I was a peace officer for fourteen years. When I came across something like that, would I ignore it? I don't think so. They're placing an awful lot of emphasis on this legislation. In this round I'm not going to be able to deal with the cost or the smuggling, which I'd like to do. But if anyone would like to comment on these points I've made, please put it on the record.

Mr. Ursacki: It's important to recognize that even in these cases where the registration was not accurate, and even if in the end a person found with such a firearm ended up being acquitted, the mere fact of being charged and going through that legal process is enough to bankrupt many people.

I know someone who recently ended up in a case in which he was acquitted. Essentially he was charged, mostly because he's one of those people who are a little bit annoying to the police department. So they particularly took a disliking to him. It cost him over $20,000. Eventually he was acquitted, but even if you end up being acquitted on these charges, it can kill you in the end.

Mr. Duffy: I was one of the people who brought up way of life. When you get back to biathlon...I want to put in something here, and I think it was Mr. Lee who asked it earlier: how would this affect the way of life? It's going to have a great effect on our way of life. The reason is that children are going to cease to participate in this type of activity because for no reason it's going to get too regulatory. Children are going to say, I'm going to play golf; I'm going to play football. Is that what the government wants?

That's what we're looking at. We're saying this is what the government wants. The government does not want our children to become involved in responsible firearm use. They want our children to give this up. If they do, within twenty years there won't be any firearms ownership in Canada, because our children will just have given it up.

Mr. Bodnar: Mr. Chairman, a true point of order.

The Chair: I hope so.

Mr. Bodnar: For Mr. Ramsay's benefit, I am here and I had not left.

The Chair: That is a point of order.

I go to Mr. MacLellan for five minutes.

Mr. MacLellan (Cape Breton - The Sydneys): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Ursacki, you mentioned that you didn't think any handguns should be banned. Is that right?

Mr. Ursacki: That's right.

Mr. MacLellan: Does that include Saturday night specials?

Mr. Ursacki: That includes all types of firearms. I can see no reason whatsoever why any type of handgun should be banned. The reason for that is simple. I believe all persons have an innate inalienable right to do whatever they want, as long as they're not harming anyone else. And there's no particular reason why any handgun is any more dangerous than any other. In fact, the types you are attempting to prohibit, which you call ``Saturday night specials'', are very often those that are the less powerful and less likely to cause harm.

Mr. MacLellan: Do you consider that a compliment or a benefit that you be hit by a bullet from a less powerful gun? Is that your idea of good luck?

Mr. Ursacki: No. As I said, I think that is a total misinterpretation of what I've said.

Mr. MacLellan: It's exactly what you said earlier.

Mr. Ursacki: I prefaced those comments by saying that I, as a firearms owner who is knowledgeable about the capabilities of all types of firearms - I don't want to overextend my knowledge, but I'm well acquainted with the possible negative effects of being injured by a firearm - I certainly hope and pray that never happens to me. But if someone were to shoot me, I'd rather they shot me with a .25 than with a .44 Magnum.

Mr. MacLellan: I must say you're a good sport.

Mr. Ursacki: Would you prefer otherwise, sir?

Mr. MacLellan: No. My hope is that Canadians aren't shot at all. I may be old-fashioned -

Mr. Ursacki: That's certainly my hope as well. I think there is not one person in this room who would disagree with that comment.

Mr. MacLellan: I also want to know what lawful gun owners would do with Saturday night specials.

Ms Putnam: Could you please define Saturday night specials?

Mr. MacLellan: No, you tell me what you do. You know darn well what they are.

Ms Putnam: No, I don't know what you mean.

Mr. MacLellan: Oh, yes you do.

Ms Putnam: What is a Saturday night special?

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Mr. MacLellan: Well, I'll tell you, there's no trouble, because in the United States they can quote you exactly what a Saturday night special is and the fact that in many of the large cities they cause over 50% to 60% of the deaths by firearms.

Ms Putnam: Also, sir, there is a prohibition, and there has been since 1970, in New York and Washington State, against all handguns; yet handguns now cause most of the deaths. In Montana, where everybody is allowed to be armed, there are fewer deaths. In any jurisdiction where prolific firearms laws and gun controls are at the fore, where government insists upon designating what people shall and shall not own, there is a problem. When people are allowed, by virtue of their freedom and democratic rights, to enjoy activities and when people treat each other with respect and are -

Mr. MacLellan: Look, spare me. You have to realize that -

Ms Putnam: What is a Saturday night special to you?

Mr. MacLellan: You have to realize other people have rights, too.

Ms Putnam: Yes.

Mr. MacLellan: Not just gun owners; other people have rights.

Ms Putnam: Everybody does.

Mr. MacLellan: The fact is in the United States, in Washington, there is no problem with going into Maryland and Virginia to buy a firearm. That's a very easy thing to do.

I just want to go back to my original question, if I can. Does that also apply, Mr. Ursacki, to a person who has a pellet gun and converts that to a firearm? That's been done many times. Do you think it should be legal?

Mr. Ursacki: Sorry, what is your question?

Mr. MacLellan: Do you think the person who has a pellet gun should be able to convert that to a handgun?

Mr. Ursacki: If the person has the permit to do such a thing. In other words -

Mr. MacLellan: No, no, we are not -

Mr. Ursacki: If a person is qualified to own a firearm, to me it matters very little whether that firearm is a rifle, pistol, shotgun, a pellet gun to be converted to a gun, or whatever. If they're qualified to own a gun and they've been police screened, have taken safety courses and so on, I can't see what difference it makes.

Mr. MacLellan: What about armour-piercing ammunition and night scopes? Do you know what those are, Ms Putnam?

Ms Putnam: They are illegal and we follow the law.

Mr. MacLellan: I hope you do.

Mr. Ursacki: I think there's a great deal of misleading publicity about so-called armour-piercing bullets and so on, but such things do exist. They were produced during the war. I think there are very few people who've had much interest in such things other than cartridge collectors. I do know people who don't even own guns but who collect large numbers of cartridges. For example, a .30-06 cartridge is manufactured and they might have one in their collection. I can't see any particular reason why one would use it for target practice or something like that, but as part of a cartridge collection, I don't see any particular reason...there's no evidence that cartridge collectors have ever abused that. Nevertheless it's already prohibited. So I think the question is moot.

You have another part to your question, which was...?

Mr. MacLellan: I am out of time.

[Translation]

The Chair: Ms. Venne.

Mrs. Venne: I would like to ask our witnesses if they are aware of the events that recently took place in Quebec. I imagine they have had such things in their own province, but it is more striking when it happens at home.

This past weekend, yet again, in Saint-Irénée, which is not far from Quebec City, it appears that a man shot his son. No charge has in fact yet been laid, but in any case, the child died from a bullet in the head.

In Sainte-Marie-de Beauce, a father killed his 10-year-old daughter by shooting her through the door of a cupboard in which she had hidden. He then hanged himself.

This sort of thing has happened a lot recently. Don't you think that if we had fewer guns in circulation, and I'm talking here of hunting weapons, and people were more aware and acknowledged first and foremost as we have to acknowledge, that guns are made to kill. Do you not think that the fact of registering weapons would make people more aware of the weapons they have and such happenings even just one like these could be perhaps avoided?

It would be really fantastic.

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[English]

Mr. Duffy: To adjust the statistics of Canada, 94.9% of violent crime in Canada is caused by non-firearms. Right in your city last year, in Montreal, there was a man who killed his wife and two daughters with a baseball bat, just before we met with the justice minister.

[Translation]

Mrs. Venne: [Inaudible]

[English]

Mr. Duffy: Are we addressing violence or are we just addressing the use of guns? Are we addressing weapons? Anything could be used as a weapon.

[Translation]

Mrs. Venne: [Inaudible]

[English]

Mr. Duffy: We believe in the responsible use of firearms.

The Chair: Excuse me. Once again, we're interrupting each other. Madame Venne, it is not productive for both people to speak at the same time.

Mr. Duffy: I agree, Mr. Chairman.

Our problem is that special-interest groups, politicians, and the media keep portraying responsible firearms ownership and responsible use as violence. For example, on CBC the other night they showed gun control, this meeting, and right after they showed a drive-by shooting that happened last year in Montreal. Why did they not show Myriam Bédard standing on a podium taking two gold medals for Canada? This is part of our problem. It's people who are sitting right here at this table who are part of the problem.

[Translation]

Mrs. Venne: In closing, I would like to say that, unfortunately, the witness is really trivializing events by comparing a baseball bat with a firearm. Obviously I oppose violence of all kinds, regardless of how it is committed.

That's it! That's all I wanted to say, Mr. Chairman.

[English]

Mr. Gallaway: I have a brief question for Mr. Ursacki. I want to clarify my impression of what was said. I take it you are opposed to any form of control of weapons. Is that correct?

Mr. Ursacki: No, absolutely not.

Mr. Gallaway: All right. You appeared before this committee in 1991 and made reference to the fact that an article you had written had appeared in Machine-Gun News, on the use of automatic weapons. Do you think, for example, machine-guns should in some way be controlled, in terms of ownership, or do you think they should be freely available in society?

Mr. Ursacki: Any person who is going to own a firearm should be subjected to police screening and should be subjected to training programs to ensure that person knows what he or she is doing with the type of firearm he or she intends to acquire. But I think any type of prohibition of a specific type of firearm is worthless. It will have no effect on crime.

Mr. Gallaway: I have one question for Ms Putnam. Recently we had a group representing public health groups from across Canada, the public health authorities of Canada. They endorsed this legislation. Why do you think they are endorsing it? In your opinion, are they representing a special interest or are they misinformed, or are they misleading us?

Ms Putnam: Sir, you'd have to ask them why they're endorsing it. I know why I am not. I do not know why they are.

Mr. Gallaway: All right, that's fair.

Mr. Schultz, you made reference to special-interest groups. Do you think the public health groups of Canada - their umbrella organization - the Canadian Police Association, and the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police are in fact special-interest groups, or could we reverse it and suggest that you are a special-interest group?

Mr. Schultz: Actually, probably both apply. We are a special-interest group. We are interested in this bill for our members; that's why we're here. We are representing members of our organization, as they were representing members of their organization. Yes, they have their own goals for coming here, as do we.

Mr. Gallaway: Thank you. That's quite a fair answer.

Mr. Breitkreuz: This is known as enabling legislation. It makes provision for many Orders in Council that the minister can pass. I'm not sure if you've studied the bill in depth, to realize there is much he can do that this legislation enables him to do.

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Do you believe this registration system being proposed here will discourage legal gun ownership because of all the things that are probably still going to come down? I talked to a senior RCMP officer and he told me this isn't the half of the concerns he has. He said because of the enabling legislation we have here, there is so much that can happen behind the scenes, which will discourage legal gun ownership, and there will be a lot of problems. Do you think it will be a problem that will really affect Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba? That causes a lot of concern for the people there.

Mr. Tardiff: Sir, the legislation seems to follow a lot of different types of international experience. If we look at the FAC system, which was borrowed from the British, and we look at the British experience, then the answer to your question has to be yes. Britain's bureaucracy and firearms legislation have discouraged and pretty much destroyed shooting sports in Britain. I don't have the numbers to hand, but I can certainly find them for you. Private firearms ownership in Britain has declined drastically, while violent crime has continued to escalate.

Mr. Breitkreuz: It'll have a huge effect on our life on the prairies.

Mr. Bodnar: Mr. Hardy was going to comment on that as well, I believe.

Mr. Hardy: The concern about the Orders in Council is a major part of it. We note, for example, that the provisions on what can be prohibited or restricted are changed. Basically, after this legislation has passed, a prohibited weapon is whatever cabinet decides is a prohibited weapon, and the only limitation is that cabinet has to believe it's not reasonable for use in Canada for hunting and sporting purposes.

If, a couple of years down the line, cabinet decides handguns as a whole are a problem in the country, cabinet would simply have to pass an Order in Council saying it's not reasonable for anybody to hunt or target-shoot with a handgun in Canada and therefore all handguns are banned. That is effective immediately: legal ownership of handguns is ended in Canada, or hunting rifles or shotguns or whatever. No scrutiny is provided for that, even minimal review on thirty days' tabling in Parliament; the whole shooting match is over.

We also see regulations in here on everything from gun shows to what a gun club or a gun range is, presumably how it can be constructed, who can shoot at it, what activities, and so on. One concern many of our gun clubs have, and the best information we have at the moment, is that the only standards for gun ranges are the ones used by the Department of National Defence, which, bearing in mind their use of heavy weapons, specifies a couple of kilometres of clear range down-range. If they apply this to civilian gun clubs, they could basically put us all out of business.

Mr. Ramsay: How much time do we have left?

The Chair: One minute.

Mr. Ramsay: Well, it doesn't give me enough time to get into the cost of smuggling.

I would just like to say this about the polls. We hear an awful lot about the polls, yet at the same time the people who should be most sensitive about the polls are the politicians, because it indicates where they should be if they're going to represent their people. In spite of the polls, the Government of Alberta is against this legislation, the Government of Saskatchewan is against it, the Government of Manitoba is against it, and of course the two territorial governments are against it. I just received a fax from an individual out in B.C. and apparently the Government of B.C. is taking the same position that eight of their MPs here, our NDP colleagues, have taken in opposition to this bill. I think we have to be very careful about the polls.

On what has been said about Stephen Harper's poll in Calgary, I was on a program with him and Don Newman and he said very clearly that he has some very serious concerns about this bill. He was not able to get those concerns to his people in a survey. Even witnesses who have appeared before this committee do not know the full ramifications of this bill. When we ask them about it, they say, we're interested only in the point we are making. I think we have to be very careful if we are going to base our support for or against this bill on what the people happen to know or do not know about the bill.

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So if you wish to make a comment about the polls that have been taken so far, I'd like to see that on the record.

Ms Putnam: I'd like to clear the record first on a point of order. The support given by the CPA was qualified support, as stated in their press release, sir.

The Chair: It's understood they approved of the registration system.

Ms Putnam: Qualified.

The Chair: No, no, they answered questions. They approved of the registration system. They had certain concerns, as Mr. Bodnar does, about the inspection provisions and other provisions, but they approved of the bill in general.

That's why I was surprised when Mr. Lee, I think, asked questions on whether you would like some kind of an amendment. You said you weren't interested in an amendment. You wanted the bill junked altogether. Many of these groups approved, generally.

Mr. Ramsay: A point of order.

The Chair: I'm just answering. We'll take your time.

Mr. Ramsay: The point is that the CPA was very clear. Their presentation is here. There are a number of areas they have great concern about, and if those areas aren't cleared up then they're prepared to support the bill only if those areas are dealt with. I won't go into those areas, but that is the -

The Chair: Well, you admit, Jack, they supported the bill.

Mr. Ramsay: Only based on whether or not those conditions are met, including whether the registration system is going to pull front-line police officers off the street to administer it.

The Chair: Exactly. They want the system fully paid for by the gun owners.

Mr. Ramsay: If they're not prepared to do that, then they're not prepared to support the bill.

The Chair: Yes, right; but they supported the bill. Read the testimony.

Mr. Ursacki: Since the issue was raised again about Mr. Harper's poll, I want to make it very clear, since the exchange was a bit heated, perhaps, that this was not intended as any kind of attack on Mr. Harper's character or anything. In fact, there are many respects in which I support his views on other issues. But on this one I think there is a disagreement. He is not a strong supporter of the firearms community, and I think that may have been an element in the way his poll was constructed.

Mr. Duffy: I want to make one comment as well, Mr. Chairman. I talked to Mr. MacLellan and Mr. Harper on polls they had done, and I told Mr. Harper I supported him on the way he voted, because if a lot of other people in the House had voted the way their constituents wanted them to vote, the bill wouldn't have made it through second reading.

The Chair: I have a few final questions. I want to deal with that, because while I don't believe polls should be the one and only way of dealing with legislation, they should be an important factor. It was suggested, I think, by Ms Putnam and also Mr. Schultz, that those of us who support this legislation are perhaps not obeying our employers, i.e., the taxpayers and the citizens. All I can tell you is if I were to base my vote entirely on what is told to me in the greater region of Montreal.... Both I and Madam Venne tabled a petition here of 500,000 names, half a million, not only asking that handguns be banned altogether....

I must tell you, talking about the legion - I was at the legion yesterday, my own local legion - all those veterans said, we saw you on television, Mr. Allmand, with respect to this gun control bill; get it through as quickly as possible. These were ex-navy people, ex-air force, ex-infantry. I didn't meet any who suggested....

So I don't doubt what you're hearing out west, because I haven't been out west or in rural Ontario or wherever, but all I can tell you is that many of us, I think, are obeying what our constituents are saying on this. While it shouldn't be the only criterion, Mr. Duffy and others.... One of you said this - maybe it was Mr. Ursacki. You said the people who speak that way aren't really informed.

Are you suggesting, therefore, that the thousands of people who are opposing the bill are better informed? In other words, your constituents, the ones you're representing, are well informed, but the people who oppose the bill are badly informed? I think one of you quoted a man from my constituency, Dr. Buckner - he lives in my constituency - that he's informed, but the people at the university and the former president of the university are badly informed. In other words, the only ones who are well informed are your constituents and the people who tell us they want the bill passed are badly informed?

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Mr. Ursacki: If one considers the general public as a whole and one considers firearms owners as a whole, I think there is very little doubt that, on average, the firearms owners are more informed about both the current laws and this proposed law than the general public is as a whole.

That is not to say there are not specific individuals in the general public who may be very well informed or to say there are not firearms owners who are not well informed. But just in order to stay out of jail, the average firearms owner needs to know a reasonable amount about the law, at least as it stands, and there are many Canadians who, if they were fully informed about how the law is currently, would feel there is not very much more that's really necessary.

The Chair: By the way, many of those polls were basically on the entire registration system. Yes, you're probably right that, as for knowledge of firearms, the firearms owners are better informed. But wouldn't you also admit they have a greater interest in opposing this legislation because they are firearms owners?

Mr. Ursacki: They certainly do have an interest in that. I think what you're getting at, though, is a very dangerous issue. You should not dismiss a person's arguments simply because they happen to be in favour of that person's interests. You need to look at the facts of the matter, you need to look at statistics, and you need to look at the logic of the arguments and not rely on ad hominem judgments of ``Oh, those people are gun owners; they're all a bunch of fanatics and nuts; it's in their interest to argue against the bill, so that's why they're doing it and we should disregard their issues''. I'm not suggesting you are doing that personally, sir, but I think it's a danger that many people are falling into and it needs to be carefully avoided.

The Chair: I would agree with you there. That's why I was a bit concerned that in some of the testimony this morning the argument was that those who opposed the bill did know what they were talking about and those who supported the bill did not know. I don't think we should use those kinds of arguments either way. There are intelligent, well-informed people on both sides. They have different philosophies, let's say, or different ways of life.

Mr. Ursacki: I can say, however, that working at a university is not a terribly receptive environment for being a firearms owner. There are a lot of people in the university community who may not even know I'm a firearms owner and when they find out I am, think that's a little unusual. In my social circle, it's not a very common type of thing to do. But even in that unreceptive community, without exception, every person I have discussed this issue with, every person to whom I have shown the bill and allowed to form his or her own judgment on the basis of the bill or even on the government's own presentation of the bill has said, you know, I don't like guns, but I have a lot of concerns about this bill too.

The Chair: I haven't heard, before this committee, anybody branding gun owners as - and I wrote this down earlier - crazy people. I haven't heard that before this committee; but maybe it has taken place outside of the committee. I think I've heard from all sides that people respect legitimate firearms owners and do not want to take away all their guns.

Mr. Ursacki: I certainly appreciate that, sir. However, one often gets that impression when one sees members, both of this committee and of the committee I appeared before in 1991, laugh at us.

The Chair: I don't think anybody laughed at you this morning.

Ms Putnam: Sir, may I make one final comment?

The Chair: Yes.

Ms Putnam: About information, many Canadians believe we are like the United States and you can run downtown, buy a firearm, and carry a gun in your purse. Mr. Rock alludes to this, and some of the committee members have been alluding to this.

In Canada, the law is very specific on how you legally acquire, legally transport, store, and keep your firearm. We have range officers at every shooting range I have ever been on. I am a firearm safety instructor and I know what every firearm owner has to do. The large majority of Canadians do not know that. Yes, illegally, you can get anything you want on the street in less than fifteen minutes. But a legal, law-abiding, responsible firearm owner has to go through a great deal to acquire a firearm; and the majority of the Canadian public does not know that. They think we operate under the American auspices of firearm ownership. It would be well worth the government's time, money and effort - and I would be very happy to have my tax-paying dollar used by the government - to inform the Canadian public of the actual laws that exist now, which are more than adequate and should be enforced.

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The Chair: On that, I guess we come from different areas. I find in my area a lot of people do know about the laws. They don't know every detail, but they certainly know you can't go down to the local hardware store and buy a gun without an FAC. They know you have to be screened in some way. Most of the people know the general outlines of the law.

Mr. Nelson: I would like to make a comment on this information.

On Thursday of this past week I phoned the hotline of the Department of Justice and received a fax of what the bill includes. This is available to anybody in the country. But in this it does not say anything about the fact that the government can search your home without a warrant. It can confiscate your property without paying for it, presume you guilty until proven innocent, assign guilt by association, force you to cooperate with police, and remove your right to remain silent.

I think the government is withholding a lot of information when they don't have that in the thing they're faxing out across the country.

The Chair: Thank you for bringing that to our attention. We'll look into that. I have found there's been some misinformation on both sides.

We've reached the hour of adjournment. You've had a long morning, from 9:30 to 12:30.

Mr. Duffy: Can I make one point very quickly?

The Chair: All right.

Mr. Duffy: I was the one who mentioned the veterans. I was talking specifically about my family and not about veterans in general. Veterans in general are a cross-section of the Canadian public. Like everybody else, they have opinions.

The Chair: I think that's correct.

I want to thank you for being here this morning and giving us your views. We're trying to get as wide a range of opinions as possible. Today we're dedicating the day to organizations like your own. It'll go on all afternoon.

The meeting is adjourned.