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 study of Bill C-68, an act respecting firearms and other weapons. We've had a long day, after starting early this morning and continuing all afternoon into the evening.

Tonight we have as witnesses a panel consisting of the Responsible Firearm Owners of Ontario, represented by Dr. Jules Sobrian, president. I understand the other witness listed, Cliff Dunford, the vice-president, is unable to attend because of illness.

[Translation]

The Regroupement pour une gestion efficace des armes à feu is represented by Gilbert Gour, Director, Gordon Prieur, counsel and member, Taylor Bucker, Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology of the Concordia University, in Montreal.

[English]

We'll proceed in the order in which I called the witness group; that is, Ontario first and Quebec second. We usually allocate fifteen minutes to each group to make its presentation. If you feel you can read your brief in fifteen minutes, you may do so. If you can't, I would ask you to summarize the brief or touch on the high points. We would file your full written brief in the record of the committee meeting by agreement with the members.

I will call first on Dr. Sobrian to make his opening remarks on behalf of the Responsible Firearm Owners of Ontario.

Dr. Jules Sobrian (President, Responsible Firearm Owners of Ontario): Thank you.

Honourable chairman and members of the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs, firearms have been owned and used since the first settlers landed on this continent. Our forefathers used firearms to feed their families and defend their homes. In two world wars Canadians were rushed into war with almost no shooting training and used their skill with firearms to keep our country free and to free the world from oppression.

We are the responsible firearm owners of Canada. We continue that tradition by hunting, target shooting and gun collecting. We do it safely for our own good and that of our communities. We are proud of our tradition and teach our children to respect firearms, not to fear them. Responsible Canadian firearm owners have no paramilitary aspirations.

We find ourselves confronted by a small group of well-placed and publicly financed people who have the eyes and ears of the media. They promote a false ideology, which feeds on personal fear of firearms, movie and television fiction, news sensationalism and ignorance of the gun laws of our country. One of their fallacies is that ready access to guns diminishes rather than increases personal safety. This originates from pseudo-scientific articles by Kellerman and his associates. The anti-gun editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, Jerome Kassirer, publishes these biased, result-oriented studies in an otherwise reputable medical magazine.

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Dr. Kellerman and his associates' methods have been discredited by both sociologists and the organization Doctors for Integrity in Research and Public Policy. In spite of this, our Minister of Justice and his colleagues continue to publicize these false but politically correct polemics to further their unjust and unreasonable cause. Bill C-68, which clearly implies that society must be protected by treating lawful gun owners as criminals, is an extension of this ideology.

The Coalition for Gun Control, with most of its funding coming from police sources, has spent the last five years distributing propaganda to national organizations claiming that the way to combat crime is by disarming us, the victims. To add insult to injury, the entire justice system is so concerned with the rights of the criminal that it has failed to keep our communities safe from known violent convicted felons.

I would like to point out that efforts to control crime by strict control of lawful gun ownership have been counter-productive worldwide. In the U.S., for example, it promotes lawlessness to the point where New York City recently has had to restore capital punishment. Decent citizens have abandoned downtown Washington, D.C., and Detroit, Michigan, to the criminal element. In Britain, in spite of the almost total ban on civilian ownership of guns, crime with firearms increased by 196% from 1981 to 1991. As a consequence, some British police now carry side-arms.

Halifax chief of police V.J. MacDonald, president of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, wrote on February 24, 1995: ``Without information about who owns guns, there is no effective gun control''.

Chief Inspector Colin Greenwood of the West Yorkshire Constabulary, England, wrote a very scholarly book entitled Firearms Control. It was the result of studies and research done at the University of Cambridge Institute of Criminology. In it, he comes to some conclusions that would seem rather startling to those who support gun control as a panacea for eliminating violence in our society: ``Half a century of strict controls on pistols has ended perversely, with a far greater use of this class of weapon in crime than ever before''.

The same situation exists in Canada. I quote:

Careful examination of all the evidence available suggests therefore that the legislation has failed to bring substantial numbers of firearms under control and it certainly cannot be claimed that strict controls have reduced the use of firearms in crime. On the basis of these facts it might be argued that firearms controls have had little effect and do not justify the amount of police time involved. Indeed it is possible to build up a sound case for abolishing or substantially reducing controls. One important aspect not covered in the statistics is the psychological effects of controls. It might be claimed that a tradition of restricted ownership of firearms has been built up and that controls have helped to establish a state of public opinion in which firearms are regarded as potentially dangerous items which should be restricted as far as possible to responsible people. Any such effects will clearly have been more effective amongst the law-abiding section of the community than they will against the criminal elements.

To continue with this process of attempting to deal with the criminal use of firearms by placing more restrictions on legitimate users is not likely to achieve anything. The great danger lies not in the ineffectiveness of such restrictions but in a belief that they will solve the problem. While this mistaken belief persists, the real problem will not receive the attention and action which it clearly and urgently requires.

Chief Inspector Greenwood is not a gun fancier but a policeman who was sent out to do a job.

James D. Wright was an anti-gun criminologist from the University of Massachusetts who was commissioned by President Carter to investigate the relationship between gun ownership and violent crime involving firearms. After a year of study, Mr. Wright reported to the president, ``a case for stricter gun control cannot be made''.

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Chief MacDonald goes on to state, ``Opponents of gun control argue that the registration of firearms will not reduce crime''. I would like to point out that in New Zealand, registration of rifles was scrapped in 1983, when the constabulary decided that ``it was of no value in crime control and diverted limited police resources from more valuable work''. Shotguns were never registered there.

In his next sentence, Chief MacDonald states:

In fact, it is the position of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police that cost-effective registration is a key component of the new proposed gun control legislation.

I must remind you that this key component was found by both Chief Inspector Greenwood and the New Zealand constabulary to have no value in crime control.

Chief MacDonald's argument against opponents of gun control who say that gun control will not reduce crime is that registration will control smuggling and reduce gun theft and the misuse of firearms. None of this can be proven. Responsible firearm owners do not buy stolen or smuggled guns. Buying stolen guns encourages the theft of guns - your guns included.

Smuggling can be controlled only by drying up the market for the product, and that means keeping the buyers of smuggled guns - namely criminals - in jail. Just as with the cigarette problem, if you eliminate the market the activity will disappear. If, as Chief MacDonald complains, customs inspectors are more concerned with tariffs than with reporting serial numbers of legal imports to the RCMP, then make that a part of their job description. Already, one set of forms for the description and serial numbers of guns is mailed to the RCMP from Customs. Where does it go? Make the civil servants do their jobs instead of making more expensive, useless laws.

Registration of cars neither deters theft nor assists in their recovery. Safe storage does not reduce theft. It just makes the burglar more ingenious, as in the recent example of a gun thief who brought his own oxy-acetylene torch to cut the lock out of a gun safe.

The only thing that safe storage does reduce is the exposure of children to firearms. In a house where there are no children, proper concealment is a great deal more effective than safe storage in the prevention of theft.

As for registration reducing the misuse of firearms, that does not make sense. Those driven by jealousy and rage will kill with or without a firearm. Cain did not need a firearm to kill Abel. What Bill C-68 will accomplish is that domestic homicides will be committed with registered firearms, which of course will favour the next step by the justice ministry, which is to ban all firearms.

No firearm law will ever reduce suicides. Anyone who makes this claim has either a vested interest in firearm laws or is a psychiatrist who has failed in the pursuit of his profession and would like to place the blame elsewhere. In my 32 years as a country general practitioner who has done a lot of psychotherapy, the first I ever heard of impulsive suicide was from the gun control lobby. Suicide is a carefully planned, anti-social act.

What the Association of Police Chiefs is really after is the billions of dollars the registration system will bring to police budgets. Both the justice minister and the chiefs of police falsely quote the number of gun owners in Canada as three million and the number of guns as five million. In 1992 a United Nations survey estimated gun owners to number seven million and firearms 28 million. At a current cost of $82 to register a single gun, the cost of registration will exceed $2 billion. The police refuse to allow any civilian organization to do the registration because they want the budget increases.

Ms Susan Eng, former chairperson of the Metropolitan Toronto Police Services Board, recently complained that the City of Toronto is subsidizing gun owners to the tune of $93 per firearm acquisition certificate. Licensing all the gun owners in this country at an actual cost of $143 each will cost $1 billion. This proposed system will cost in excess of $3 billion.

The gun owners will not pay for this, and neither will the taxpayers, when they find out the truth. Anyway, gun owners should not be expected to foot the bill for this useless love affair betweenMr. Allan Rock and the police élite.

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Tracing guns to their original owner will neither solve nor prevent crime. It is merely a make-work project on which the police have a fixation to impress the anti-gun public by charging the owner with improper storage. At the same time, it is an excuse to confiscate the remainder of the victims' guns.

In his presentation to this committee on April 24, 1995, the Minister of Justice said that Bill C-68 is the window of opportunity to build the kind of society we want to live in and have our children grow up in. What kind of society will this bill produce?

Besides long gun registration and the unreasonable banning of a variety of handguns and semi-automatic rifles, Bill C-68 erodes our entire concept of rights and personal freedoms. From clauses 99 to 101 inclusive, the bill allows a police officer to search your home without a warrant on suspicion of firearms or ammunition irregularities; obtain a warrant on suspicion, with no opportunity for the homeowner to defend his right before a judge; confiscate property once inside and not return it, even if the homeowner is not guilty of an offence; force the homeowner to cooperate against his own interests; remove the right to remain silent; presume the homeowner guilty until proven innocent; and assign guilt by association.

I cannot think of any Canadian who would knowingly want to live under such an unjust system. Lest we forget, there are those who fought and died in two world wars to prevent this.

Clause 110, on regulation, completes the unthinkable. Without consulting our elected representatives, the Governor in Council, acting in the same whimsical fashion as Mr. Rock and his associates, could place firearm licensing out of reach of Canadians, decide on the public need for firearms, regulate shooting clubs out of existence, and make rules to prohibit gun collecting, gun shows, etc. This would enable a government hostile to firearms to ban all civilian use and ownership of firearms within 15 minutes of this bill being signed into law. With no recourse to Parliament, this is the end of democracy in Canada.

The government needs to pay attention to the Auditor General and Statistics Canada. There is no need for more gun control legislation. Criminalizing gun ownership is so appalling that Bill C-68 must be scrapped. What we do need is a complete overhaul of the justice ministry. Those people who have wasted millions of our tax dollars to promote this bill should join the list of civil service cuts. The public perceives the police as out of control, with the Department of Justice aiding and abetting the ambitions of a large segment of the police élite by using Bill C-68 to create a police state under the guise of crime control.

The police must be directed to get on with the job of protecting the public instead of trying to victimize us. Since 70% of violent crimes are by repeat offenders, it is obvious that the judiciary and appeal system are ineffective in keeping dangerous offenders away from society. Mr. Rock said on television on April 25, 1995, that we did not want a society where people had to carry guns to protect themselves. The only way to accomplish this is to remove dangerous offenders from our streets and communities permanently and stop protecting young offenders from punishment.

Like the Canadian Medical Association, we support the goal of this legislation, but we are certain that the road chosen by the Minister of Justice will never get us there. Mr. Rock deliberately misled the House of Commons on January 15, 1995, when he said that the Canadian Medical Association supported universal registration. The gun control portions of this bill are unnecessary and the abuses of gun-owning Canadians under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms are immoral.

We have not been deceived by Mr. Rock's spurious, contrived, and insincere arguments against lawful firearm ownership. Responsible Canadians everywhere hope the members of this committee will have done a better job of listening than our justice minister has in the last 12 months.

We, the Responsible Firearms Owners of Ontario, thank you.

[Translation]

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Barnes): You may begin.

Mr. Gilbert Gour (Director, Regroupement pour une gestion efficace de la possessiond'armes à feu): Good evening.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Barnes): Good evening.

Mr. Gour: Bill C-68: a clear message against violence. That is the description one most often hears of Minister Allan Rock's bill, but is it accurate?

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Since the École Polytechnique incident, both the media and politicians have attempted to blame all of society's ills on those who own firearms. It was indeed simpler to find a scapegoat rather than take necessary action.

It was no easy task to explain to ordinary, uninitiated Canadians that the investigative work of the registrar of firearms had not been done properly, or that the Montreal Urban Community Police Services had committed several errors in the line of duty and that, finally, once they were on the scene, they were told at 5:31 p.m. and 16 seconds precisely not to go into the building, while the fact that Lépine had committed suicide three minutes earlier was still unknown to police.

Who knows how many innocent victims Marc Lépine would have shot down had he not decided himself to put an end to his maniacal killing spree? Marc Lépine never had to be concerned about the presence of police on the scene.

Moreover, try and explain to the population that it is and always will be impossible to foresee such an incident or to prevent it.

The fact is that that kind of insane homicidal behaviour is all the more disconcerting because it is and always will be unpredictable.

In the months that followed, some politicians acted quickly to capitalize on the collective outrage Marc Lépine's act had caused; they hoped that this would give them the high profile they needed to become prime minister.

That was the case of the previous government's Minister of Justice, a certain Kim Campbell. However, she forgot to take into account the long memory of the honest citizens she had just treated as common criminals by seizing without compensation the goods they had legally acquired.

Valérie Fabrikant provided even more ammunition to those who want to see firearms banned. They redoubled their efforts, stating that if Fabrikant had not had access to a gun, he could not have committed all those murders. They shouted from the roof tops that the Concordia massacre proved that C-17 had not gone far enough. Using the same events to support their position, Canadian gun owners' associations stated that the Concordia events proved that no piece of legislation aimed at controlling legal access to firearms could ever prevent a person whose mind is set on murder from committing that most reprehensible act.

In spite of all the rhetorical debate around the issue, no one pointed to the attitude of the Sûreté du Québec, who did nothing to impede Mr. Fabrikant's plans, although they had the legal means to do so.

The Sûreté du Québec could have seized the firearms owned by Valérie Fabrikant and his wife pursuant to sections 103 and 112(2), which authorize the seizure of weapons without a warrant when the police is convinced that there are reasonable grounds to believe that someone's safety is at stake. According to our information, the Sûreté du Québec had received several phone calls from Concordia authorities, but the police chose not to act.

After all these blunders, we understand why the chiefs of police of the Canadian and Quebec forces concerned decided to place the blame on legitimate firearm owners by stating before this Committee that the registration of firearms could have prevented the Sainte-Marie de Beauce tragedy. I am referring to the case of Mr. Clément Mercier, an undertaker who became deeply depressed at the death of one of his best friends whom he had to embalm and decided to shoot his daughter, Cyndy Faucher. He subsequently shot the region's police chief, an acquaintance of his, and finally committed suicide by hanging himself.

The perpetrator had already been prohibited from owning firearms after firing in the direction of his brother during a previous depressive episode, but for reasons which remain unknown to us, it seems someone had returned the firearms to the individual. Who made that decision? Was it a judge? Who gave him back his firearms? Could it have been a policeman?

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If he was still prohibited from having firearms in his possession, did he still have his firearms acquisition certificate in his possession? And finally, in what way would the registration of Clément Mercier's firearms have helped to prevent this tragedy? Why create new laws if those that are already in place are not respected? Why prolong this farce? And while this is going on, nothing will be put in place to try to eradicate the cause of this violence.

Bill C-68, a clear message against violence? No, it is nothing more than a smoke screen, just as Bill C-17 was before it.

[English]

Mr. Gordon Prieur (Member, Regroupement pour une gestion efficace de la possession d'armes à feu): We should have some gun control. We've had gun control in Canada since 1969. What we wonder is do we have gun control on people or on firearms?

The legislation, as it exists, is so complicated that crown attorneys and judges have difficulty in applying it right now. What we're suggesting to the committee is that it should be simplified and one of the simplifications should be to reconsider particularly areas concerning the decrees, particularly concerning the charter rights. As it stands now, if you pass this legislation as it stands - which you probably will - a policeman can enter your home and search without a warrant for whatever reason he wants. This isn't the way of the Canadian society. This isn't the way of Canada. This isn't the way of anywhere. Why should we differ from world societies?

Thank you.

Dr. H. Taylor Buckner (Associate Professor of Sociology, Concordia University, Montreal): I appear before you today as a sociologist who's followed the gun control debate for thirty years, since I was a police officer, as an expert in survey research - which I have practised and taught for 35 years - as a member of the Quebec Shooting Federation, as an instructor for the Canadian Firearms Safety Course given by the Quebec Wildlife Federation, and apparently as one of the 5,000 members of the Coalition for Gun Control. I'm going to confine my points to research I have actually done.

First, I suggested the study to the firearms control task force that resulted in the estimates of six million guns in Canada. I wrote them a letter. They went ahead and did the study without ever writing me back, but they found a cheap way to do it, which screwed it up - excuse my terminology.

According to estimates I have calculated from a survey we just completed in January, 1995, which was financed by provincial wildlife federations and shooting federations across Canada, the government study, on which all of the firearms legislation is based, is off by at least 24%, maybe more. It probably is. This will have some implications, I think, for the cost involved in this.

Universal firearms registration is justly controversial. Personally, I routinely send a list of all my firearms, registered and unregistered, to the Sûreté du Quebec so they will have it in my file in case my guns are stolen while I'm away or the guns and records are destroyed in a fire. But is registration good public policy?

For registration actually to reduce any of the firearms deaths, it would have to be, at the very least, relatively current and complete. For it to be useful for the enforcement of prohibition orders, it would have to be current, complete, accurate and completed to date.

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In the 1995 survey we decided to find out who registered their guns. We asked gun owners, ``If the government's proposal to register all firearms becomes law, do you plan on registering all, some, or none of your firearms?'' Overall, 71% of gun owners, with a margin of error of plus or minus 6%, said they would register all their guns. In other words, roughly two million firearms, belonging to over a quarter of firearms owners, will remain unregistered. Of course, over time, with great expenditure of funds and criminal prosecutions, more than 71% registration can undoubtedly be attained. There are other factors that could bring it down.

There are three things I'd like to mention. First, one of the problems with the estimation of the number of guns is that female firearm owners are reluctant to say that they have guns or that there are guns in their homes. That is a large part of the under-estimation we have in Canada. Of the small number of female owners of firearms we found in our survey, only 40% said they would register all their guns. Statistically, there is less than one chance in one hundred that this variation between the sexes was caused by sampling error.

Propensity to register also varies widely by regions in Canada, with 86% of Quebeckers and only 58% of prairie gun owners saying they would register all of their guns. There is less than one chance in 25 that the differences among regions in willingness to register were a result of sampling error.

The reasons for reluctance to register are easy to understand. Many farmers have an old Lee-Enfield worth about $60. They may be reluctant to pay $60 every five years for their firearm licence, plus whatever registration cost. Others, including perhaps some of the women in the sample, don't want anyone to know they have a firearm for self-protection. I've questioned some of the women who live by themselves in the rural area in which I live, and I think that's one of the motives. Others, of course, are concerned that their firearms will become prohibited, and while this is characterized as paranoia, the government prohibited a half million handguns at the same time as it introduced this bill, and said they wanted to prohibit rifles that are commonly used for hunting and sporting purposes. So some firearm owners have a bit of difficulty in believing assurances that this won't happen.

The black market in Canada seems to be able to replace any safely stored guns criminals can't steal. The argument has been made that before domestic conflict arises, the participants are law-abiding people who will register their guns so the police can seize them when the conflict arises. But husbands who kill their wives typically have criminal records and substance abuse problems and are experiencing economic difficulties. They have a history of violent disputes with their wives that have not been known to the police. It seems unlikely that many people in this situation will register their firearms, because as our table demonstrates, only 46% of persons in common-law unions - where the rate of uxoricide is eight times higher and the rate of slain husbands fifteen times higher than in registered unions - said they would register all their firearms. In other words, people in common-law marriages are very unlikely to register firearms.

Also, single people, who account for 45% of those accused of homicide, are significantly less likely than the average to say they will register all their guns. Thus the people most likely to misuse guns are those least likely to register. There is less than one chance in fifty that the differences in willingness to register by marital status was caused by sampling error.

As a former police officer, I cannot imagine a rational police officer placing any trust in a system that is likely to be ignored by the most dangerous elements in society.

Let's take as a registration goal an estimated eight million firearms in Canada. In any given year there are just over 4,000 misuses, just under 3,000 firearms lost or stolen, which would include illegal arms used in criminal acts - and of course some of these things are lost out of canoes - 1,100 suicides, just under 250 homicides, and about 60 fatal accidents. Taken together, this means one-twentieth of 1% of the firearms are misused and 99.95% of the firearms in Canada are of no interest to the legal system. Registering the 99.95% that are of no interest to find the .05% that are is like trying to find a needle in a haystack by registering every piece of hay.

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Over the past five years only 1% of applicants for FACs have been refused, according to the RCMP. People who are refused or are likely to be refused do not apply. If people have criminal records, mental instability or domestic conflict and they have a gun, perhaps inherited, perhaps bought before 1978, perhaps stolen, they're unlikely to apply for a possession licence because upon investigation it would be refused. Without a possession licence, they could not, under Bill C-68, register their guns. If the government is proposing to issue licences to all present owners without serious investigation, then many who are likely to misuse their guns will become licensed owners and registration will quickly come to be seen as a failure.

The police will be required to record and approve every transaction between firearms owners - clause 33 of Bill C-68 - whom they have already presumably investigated and approved. This will necessarily require a great deal of time and paperwork. There are only 56,774 police officers in Canada, who are fairly fully occupied. Investigating millions of Canadians, almost 100% of whom will prove to be law-abiding, may be a less efficient use of police resources than targeting those most likely to misuse firearms. Even if 95% of owners registered, an astounding and probably impossible figure, the guns most likely to be used for domestic and criminal homicides will be significantly under-represented in the system.

The notion that suicides and accidents will be reduced by registration depends on a convoluted and unproven chain of logic. First, the owner has to register. Then, because he has registered, he will be inspired to go out and purchase locks or a safe, which he would not have purchased had he not registered. Then, because he is registered, he consistently has to keep the firearms out of the hands of other people in his household who might misuse them, which he would not have done if he had not registered. One or two potential suicides may have to go find a plastic bag, a high place, or a car in the garage. One or two accidental deaths may be saved, but this is purely conjecture.

Most of the benefits that might be expected from registration have already been achieved by the firearms acquisition certificate system and the Canadian firearms safety course. The diversion of police resources into the registration system for marginal additional benefit may well mean there's less time for investigating and preventing problems. Overall, it is unreasonable to expect registration to produce any net saving of lives.

It's also unreasonable to expect any great number of crimes to be solved or weapons to be usefully traced because of registration. All but the most careless and dim-witted criminal thief will drill out the serial number on any gun they steal, making it untraceable. Instead, what we can expect is a host of technical charges against gun owners who have not followed this complex law to the letter. This is a law that even police officers I think are going to have a lot of trouble understanding.

In the last 20 years the firearms homicide, accident, and suicide rates have all declined and firearms use in crime is not increasing. There is no evidence that a registration system would, on balance, make Canadians any safer. There's a great deal of evidence from the mail you've received that the implementation of a registration system will profoundly alienate some members of Canadian society. Registration appears to me to be a lose-lose proposition.

Finally, I would like to quote the chairman of this committee on the subject of universal registration:

For the 10 million long guns in Canada, I believe a registration scheme would be unworkable and impractical in comparison with its potential benefits.

This is a quote from Warren Allmand, House of Commons Debates, April 8, 1976.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Barnes): We will now start with our ten-minute round of questioning.

[Translation]

We'll begin the questioning with Mr. Bellehumeur.

Mr. Bellehumeur (Berthier - Montcalm): Very well, thank you very much. I'll put my questions to you in turn.

My first question is addressed to Dr. Jules Sobrian.

I have read a few articles in the Globe and Mail, and elsewhere. Some of these articles quoted you or published your statements and I would like you to comment those statements, as they are quite important. I may thus gain a better understanding of your thinking and of your position and be better able to analyze the seriousness of your contribution to the study of this bill.

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The first quote is taken from the November 26 1994 edition, and I quote: ``Most Canadians think that to prevent war all they have to do is get down on their knees and touch the ground with their foreheads. If you want to prevent war, you must arm yourself for war. We have been unable until now to get the owners of firearms to agree on an identical calibre. However, if the seven million firearms owners could agree, we could change that''.

What did you mean by that, doctor?

[English]

Dr. Sobrian: What I meant is that in the past we could never get Canadians to stand up and be counted about anything. If five of us were going hunting, two would want to hunt groundhogs, one would want to hunt deer, one would want to hunt ducks, the other one would want to hunt moose. Canadians are very difficult. They're individualists and they're also peace-loving. So for years, whenever we were confronted with another episode of gun control what we got was that doesn't mean anything, they'll leave us alone from here, it's okay, let's not do anything about it, don't stand and be counted. As a consequence of this, the gun control program marches on and Canadians sit back and do nothing about it. What I am trying to do is encourage my people to stand up and be counted.

Does that explain it?

[Translation]

Mr. Bellehumeur: Why do you say that you must arm yourself for war to prevent war?

I'm going to quote other things you have said, because I really wonder whether, in the final analysis, the positions you put forward will really further your cause.

I think you are sincere in defending your position. But by saying things such as: ``Tighter gun control will in future guarantee the safety of criminals...'', do you really think you are helping your cause?

[English]

Dr. Sobrian: As far as I'm concerned, studies throughout the world have shown that whenever there's been more control of firearms on law-abiding people, the actions of criminals have flourished. Take New York City, Newark, New Jersey, or Detroit, Michigan. These are all places where very strict gun control has taken place - way stricter than in Canada - and look what has happened. In Washington, D.C., honest people have moved out of the city. The murder rate is 86.9 per 100,000. This is the effect of too much gun control.

So how can I do otherwise but say that if you have more gun control, you are really arming the criminal? It's a ratio. By disarming the honest people, the criminals then become better armed than the honest people.

You have to remember, in all the surveys ever done in prisons, the prisoners are always afraid to run across an armed householder. They don't expect to meet a policeman.

[Translation]

Mr. Bellehumeur: To say that this bill will be disarming honest people... I'd like to be able to follow your reasoning. I'm not saying that the bill cannot be approved through amendments. Quite the contrary, I think there are amendments to be made to it.

But on the principle of registration as such, I don't understand how there can be people in Canada who are against gun registration and who say that Bill C-68 will disarm honest citizens. I cannot understand that and I think that very few people can understand such an argument.

[English]

Dr. Sobrian: It's very simple. Allan Rock said at the beginning of this battle, back in April 1994, he would take all of our guns, all of our handguns, if he could afford to pay for them. We have seen a progression of gun control where more and more guns have been taken, have been banned, have been registered, have been prohibited. This is an ongoing thing. We are addressing Bill C-68 as one rung on the ladder to confiscation. Without registration, the Government of Canada cannot confiscate our guns because they don't know where they are.

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Is that too simple to understand, or too difficult to understand? I've made this point now for over a year. We cannot register our guns because if we do they'll be taken from us; and if they're taken from us, only the criminals will have guns. The next thing is you'll disarm the police.

[Translation]

Mr. Bellehumeur: I don't want to give this any more importance than it has, but in a press release dated October 22, 1994, you state that the Bloc Québécois is in favour of disarming Canada.

Can you explain what you meant by that?

[English]

Dr. Sobrian: I don't understand the reason why the Bloc Québécois is so terribly interested in Bill C-68 for Canada. In the next few months we expect the Bloc Québécois will be ruling their own country. Why are they interested in our country? We're not leaving. We're going to be here. Leave our country alone.

[Translation]

Mr. Bellehumeur: I am forced to agree with you on this point.

Here is my next question. I would like to know what links exist between the two following organizations: the Regroupement pour une gestion efficace de la possession d'armes à feu [Association for the Effective Management of Firearms Possession] and the Quebec Shooting Federation. Are they affiliated organizations?

Mr. Gour: The Quebec Shooting Federation is an association that promotes sport shooting and the safe handling of firearms for sporting purposes. The Regroupement pour une gestion efficace de la possession d'armes à feu is what the Americans call a think-tank. It is a group of sport shooters, instructors, lawyers, sociologists and psychologists who meet for long evening discussions of the law and its effects, as well as of various studies that have been carried out all over, in order to arrive at a position on what is being proposed at this time.

Mr. Bellehumeur: I have here a brief which the Quebec Shooting Federation and the Regroupement pour une gestion efficace de la possession d'armes à feu have tabled with the coroner, Ms David.

In this brief, you make recommendations about the storage of firearms. What you have to say is quite interesting. You say: ``In other words, it would be necessary to store all types of firearms in the following way'': ``They would have to be unloaded, equipped with a lock or a trigger guard, placed in a sturdy and locked container, and then stored and locked away in some secure place''.

Thus, you are in favour of certain safety measures, and you do perceive that there is a lack in that area, since you made such recommendations.

Mr. Gour: That is correct. As we said in the brief, if you took the trouble to read all of it, on the topic of safe storage, the only effect we can see would be on accidents involving children. Obviously, a firearm that is securely stored will not fall into inexperienced and unauthorized hands that can cause the kind of regrettable accident we hear about once or twice a year. However, where suicide is concerned, as I said in our brief and during my presentation, if I am inclined to commit suicide with my firearm, I will have no trouble using my key to... Oh, I see my answer does not satisfy you.

Mr. Bellehumeur: No, that's not it, I understand what you are saying. But if you don't have a firearm, you will have to find some other way of committing suicide.

Mr. Gour: No, that is not what I was saying. If I have the key to my safe in the first place, all of the trigger guards and other safety devices I might have put on my firearm will not prevent me from committing suicide with it, because I have everything I need to remove all of these mechanisms. The only impact safe storage will have is on fatal accidents and non-fatal accidents involving children.

[English]

Mr. Ramsay (Crowfoot): I'd like to thank these gentlemen for their presentations. I have to admit, I enjoyed your presentations - surprising, perhaps, to some, and not to others.

I guess the part of this bill that reveals the spirit of it is proposed section 110. We're supposed to be talking about and this bill is supposed to be providing for the health and safety of society.

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Yet what does the government do in clause 110? They encroach upon an area that's traditionally been the jurisdiction of the provinces - to establish and set up regulations for shooting clubs and shooting ranges, the maintenance of the records and so on, as well as the operation of gun shows. There is no health or safety problem in these areas. Why is the federal government moving into these areas? Why? If there is a health and safety problem, that's one thing, but to spend taxpayers' money to move into an area that's already working well....

When I look at the spirit of this bill as outlined and depicted by clause 110, I see a falsity contained within this bill. I watch the witnesses come forward and I see an extremity of expression. That may be on both sides.

Certainly in the area where it has been estimated that the 1,400 deaths create a societal deficit of some $6 billion, if you do simple division that means for every death caused by a firearm it's costing $4.25 million. Now, if we use that figure and multiply that $4.25 million by the number of people who died that year, we would have close to $800 billion lost due to deaths - sudden deaths, accidental deaths and so on. I understand that in some deaths a person dies of a heart attack or dies a natural death in a hospital, and there's no police investigation and no cost incurred along those lines.

I'd like any of you to comment on, first of all, the incursion into provincial jurisdiction by clause 110 of the bill. I'd also particularly like Dr. Sobrian to comment on the rationale that would develop a formula resulting in the conclusion that each of the 1,400 deaths is costing society $4,250,000.

Dr. Sobrian: It really is totally beyond me. There is never that much police investigation. A lot of the people who die don't make that much money in their lifetimes, so it's hard to see where the figure comes from. I'm probably the wrong person to answer this. You need some sort of a sociologist.

Dr. Buckner: There's a history of this sort of estimate that's been floating around. There are about fifteen articles on this sort of estimate in which people say you can't put a value on human life. They then proceed to do so.

One of the great difficulties in it is how you value the life of the average homicide victim. When you consider that half of the homicide victims themselves have criminal records, it may well be that there is essentially no cost for society, in that society would be spending on them for the rest of their lives rather than their producing for society.

With suicide victims, how do you calculate continual treatment for depression as a cost or a benefit for society?

There are all sorts of difficulties in making these calculations. I must admit that I just laughed when I saw that $6 billion. I think he also said in that same presentation that gun control works everywhere it's been tried - at least that's what was reported in the newspaper. And I'm just sitting here saying we're in fantasyland.

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Dr. Sobrian: That entire article is nonsense.

Mr. Ramsay: Would you gentlemen like to make a comment on that?

Mr. Prieur: On clause 110, it's not a surprise that the federal government delegates to the provinces. As a matter of fact, it's a course of action for the federal government to delegate to the provinces in a decentralizing role. The unfortunate part is that they don't finance the provinces as well as they should. As a matter of fact, in the province of Quebec the federal government delegates to the Quebec provincial police force; their funds come from Quebec and from Ottawa. As a matter of fact, there is no common computer link between Ottawa and Quebec. That is another problem.

The impression we continuously get from the provincial authorities is that there again the federal authorities make the legislation, then they dump it on their doorstep, and we take care of it after. That's the impression they give us. Whether they'll come and say that here, I don't know, but behind the cameras that's what they tell us.

Mr. Ramsay: I think it was Dr. Sobrian who indicated a convolution or confusion in the existing gun control legislation. Judge Demetrick from Alberta rendered a decision on a firearms case. In that decision he declared that ``the definition of a firearm in the Criminal Code is so convoluted as to be legal fiction and twice removed from reality''. Other judges have made similar comments about the convoluted nature of the existing gun control legislation.

Would you share with the committee your reasons for making not as harsh an assessment of the present gun control legislation, but nevertheless you did allude to it? Would you share your concerns with the committee?

Dr. Sobrian: I personally did not make that statement. Somebody else here might have, but I didn't.

Mr. Ramsay: I'm sorry. I quoted a judge from Alberta who made that statement, but I thought in your presentation you had referred to the confusion within the present gun control legislation. Had you not?

Dr. Buckner: I think I did. We were just trying to work at a new survey of police officers, which we're having some difficulty getting off the ground, and the Vancouver police, after having looked at our questionnaire, came back and said one of our officers who has a law degree wasn't familiar with those sections of the Criminal Code from 84 to 110. Basically, a police officer who sees a weapon now or in the new law, unless he is a forensic expert, will not know whether it's a legal or an illegal weapon, whether it's registered or not. If it's registered, it could be any of five different categories of grandfathered weapons, so it's legal in one person's hands but not legal in another. This is a nightmare.

I used to be a police officer. The first thing you do when you go into a situation is disarm everyone. Then you can sort it out. But under these rules, I don't see how a police officer has any guide to his behaviour. With the best will in the world, it seems to me that most police officers will not be able to follow this.

I spent quite a while reading Bill C-68. I'm used to reading this sort of stuff, and it's mind-boggling. How you're going to get a working police officer, who after all does not enforce this section of the code every day, to be up on what this means - I can't imagine how they'll do it.

Ms Torsney (Burlington): To you, Mr. Buckner, where were you a police officer?

Dr. Buckner: I was a police officer in Oakland, California.

Ms Torsney: In Oakland, California.

To you, Mr. Sobrian, you mentioned that throughout the world we know that effective gun control does not work, and yet you only mentioned Newark, New Jersey, New York City, and Washington, D.C. In fact, wouldn't those examples point to the very reason for a national program and not a state, provincial, or city program?

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Dr. Sobrian: Madam, you are quite mistaken.

Ms Torsney: Am I?

Dr. Sobrian: Yes.

Ms Torsney: You only mentioned three cities, or it doesn't need a national program?

Dr. Sobrian: There are other states in the United States besides these particular ones.

Ms Torsney: You mentioned only three, sir.

Dr. Sobrian: Yes, I mentioned the three that have strict gun control. They all have terrible homicide and robbery rates as a consequence of the gun control. When they started off putting the control in, the rates were not appreciably more than in the other states. But as the gun controls went in and got worse and worse, the rates kept escalating.

Ms Torsney: And it has nothing to do with racial or poverty issues or gross inequities?

Dr. Sobrian: Of course it does. The point is that if you pursue gun control instead of going after what the real problem is, you are not going to help the matter. I thought I made that point in my presentation. The true problem will never be sought after if you keep looking after the wrong thing.

Ms Torsney: Dr. Sobrian, do you think people should arm themselves for self-protection?

Dr. Sobrian: Yes and no. I think the presence of a firearm without purposely arming yourself for self-protection offers that protection.

Ms Torsney: Would you advise somebody who doesn't have a gun to go out and purchase one?

Dr. Sobrian: I would.

Ms Torsney: Wow!

You also mention in your brief that we should be proud of our tradition and teach our children to respect firearms. At what age should we be teaching children about firearms?

Dr. Sobrian: As a parent, as soon as you think your child is old enough to appreciate various aspects of firearms use and ownership you start teaching them.

Ms Torsney: What age would that be in your family?

Dr. Sobrian: I will give you an example. My daughter, at two years old, went groundhog hunting with me. She'd ride on my shoulders. I'd put the ear protectors on her and I'd put ear protectors on me and I'd shoot a groundhog offhand. We'd walk up, I'd show her the groundhog and show her what the bullet did.

Ms Torsney: At what age would you allow her to start shooting that gun?

Dr. Sobrian: She didn't really want to start shooting until she was eleven.

Ms Torsney: Dr. Sobrian, the Responsible Firearm Owners of Ontario have issued a bumper sticker - is that correct?

Dr. Sobrian: It says ``Register my firearms? No way.''

Ms Torsney: Are you actually advocating civil disobedience?

Dr. Sobrian: We are promoting not registering firearms.

Ms Torsney: Even though that would be the law of the country that democratically elected people would -

Dr. Sobrian: If and when.... I'm sorry to interrupt you; go ahead and finish your question.

Ms Torsney: - choose to pass. We're duly elected by the people of Canada. If we vote on this and we pass a law, you think they should disobey that law.

Dr. Sobrian: I didn't say that. If you look at the bumper sticker, you will see it's made out of plastic. It's not a paper bumper sticker; it's a peel-off bumper sticker. It costs three times as much as the paper ones. If it becomes law, we can peel them off and we can reconcile ourselves to the fact that our members of Parliament have done something crazy and we're going to have to live with it.

Ms Torsney: In fact, you will help communicate to all of your members the new provisions of the bill and ensure that they comply with the legislation.

Dr. Sobrian: Indeed we will, madam. Just remember that we are responsible firearm owners.

Ms Torsney: Well, I wonder, because I've spoken with some gun owners out west - and you're not from out west - and a lot of them talk about having loaded .45s beside their beds for self-protection. Do you recommend that?

Dr. Sobrian: If I put anything beside my bed for protection, it'll be a shotgun, not a .45.

Ms Torsney: So you would recommend that people -

Dr. Sobrian: I happen to be one of the best pistol shooters this country has ever had, and I wouldn't depend on a handgun to protect my life.

Ms Torsney: Okay. I believe you represented yourself as a psychologist or a psychotherapist.

Dr. Sobrian: I'm a general practitioner. I do a lot of psychotherapy.

Ms Torsney: How do we predict those people who will crack - those people who are law-abiding citizens and then suddenly decide to use their guns against their spouses or their neighbours?

Dr. Sobrian: We have a problem here, and it's called professional ethics.

A lot of family doctors - and I speak about doctors who honestly practise their profession, I'm not talking about traffic cops - have an idea of which way the wind is going to blow. But we are not allowed to reveal any of this information because of professional ethics. Now, it is possible I could be criticized for saying this, but I'm going to say it anyway.

I really do feel that some compromise has to be made here with the profession so that we can be relieved of the responsibility of breaching professional ethics, so these people could be better controlled or better protected, or so their families could be better protected.

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Ms Torsney: So do you think doctors should be asked to fill in a form suggesting whether or not someone should have a gun?

Dr. Sobrian: I think the Government of Canada should approach the ethics committee of the Canadian Medical Association and sit down with them and work this out right away, before you do Bill C-68 or anything else, because I think this will save lives. This will save a lot of lives. Bill C-68 won't save a single life, I guarantee that.

Ms Torsney: I know you have some references to Russia, which of course I would argue is a completely different situation, but you say the current vicious crime wave with guns here proves that we could be next. Do you think that if we had more guns in Canada there would be a reduction in the crime rate?

Dr. Sobrian: We have lots of guns in Canada now.

Ms Torsney: But would you advocate having more guns in Canada to reduce the crime rate?

Dr. Sobrian: No, not really. If I may add something here, you brought up the business about Russia. If I might be so bold as to give you an example here, while Bill Clinton has been telling everybody how much he's trying to promote gun control in the States, they've been shipping shotguns by the thousands to Russia to arm the Russians to protect themselves. Meanwhile, he's made a deal with the Russians to exchange 50,000 shotguns for Makarov nine-millimetre cheap pistols, thousands and thousands of them. This is all really on the quiet. So this thing's just a bunch of hypocrisy.

Ms Torsney: Great. I'm sorry, but this isn't relevant to the Canadian laws. That's the United States and Russia. I'm not sure how it's relevant to Canada.

Dr. Sobrian: How is it relevant to Canada? Well, the fact is, you see, Canada's also been shipping guns to Russia for people to protect themselves. So when you think about it, there's an optimum situation where people need guns to protect themselves.

Ms Torsney: Right.

Dr. Sobrian: If you take all the guns away, as they did in Russia and left the people completely at the mercy of the police and the criminals, there comes a time when that has to change. That's the point I'm trying to make. Right now, our country and the United States are trying to correct that even at the expense of the United States importing all these cheap Russian Makarov pistols into the States when they're trying to discourage cheap pistols on the streets.

Ms Torsney: To each of you, are any of you practical shooters?

A witness: Yes.

A witness: I'm not.

Dr. Sobrian: Yes, I am.

Ms Torsney: You're practical shooters, the people who do defensive training and shoot at targets that are shaped like people?

Dr. Buckner: Some of the targets are torso-shaped, but I learned to shoot a pistol as a police officer, and as far as I'm concerned, a practical pistol is the most challenging and realistic way to keep these skills current.

Ms Torsney: So would you advocate a lot of Canadians taking up this sport?

Dr. Buckner: I think we have a problem here of amplification. I'm saying I enjoy keeping up my discipline. I also enjoy swimming. That doesn't mean that everybody in Canada has to swim.

Ms Torsney: I was just asking a question, sir. Are you still an American or are you a Canadian?

Dr. Buckner: I'm an American citizen and I've only been here for 28 years, mais j'habite au Québec.

Ms Torsney: Great. You are a gun collector as well.

Dr. Buckner: That is correct.

Ms Torsney: Is your research funded by the Langley symposium? Is that correct?

Dr. Buckner: The particular survey I am quoting here was funded by the people who were at a meeting at the Langley symposium, which consists of the provincial wildlife associations and the provincial shooting associations. Professor Mauser collected $1,000 from one, $5,000 from another, to put together the $25,000 we needed to buy this survey, which was done by a commercial research house.

Ms Torsney: Which one?

Dr. Buckner: Canadian Facts.

Ms Torsney: Are those some of the same organizations that have corresponded with American organizations and told them not to come up to hunt in Canada once this legislation is passed?

Dr. Buckner: I would seriously think not, but for me to answer that would require knowledge of the correspondence of people all the way across Canada - and there is a myriad of organizations.

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Ms Torsney: Dr. Buckner, do you agree with the National Rifle Association in the United States?

Dr. Buckner: Do I what?

Ms Torsney: Do you agree with the platform and tactics of the National Rifle Association?

Dr. Buckner: Wait. That's sort of like asking if you agree literally with the entire Bible.

The National Rifle Association has promoted school safety programs with Eddie Eagle - you know, move away and don't touch when you see a gun. They've promoted firearms laws that have in fact been very effective and that have reduced the access of criminal elements to the firearms.

Ms Torsney: Has the NRA done anything you disagree with?

Dr. Buckner: They've also supported some things that are impossible and totally out of the question in a Canadian context. We're a different country with a different history. Anybody thinking that somehow the nasties from the United States are leaking into Canada is not cognizant of Canadian and American histories and the differences.

Ms Torsney: Perhaps you should talk to Dr. Sobrian, then.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Barnes): Your time is up.

[Translation]

Mr. Bellehumeur: I would like to address a question to Mr. Prieur this time. Although you spoke only very briefly, I found your comments with respect to entry or search of some interest.

You say that is not the way things work in Canada; that a policeman simply cannot search an individual's premises without just cause. You seem to say that the legislation will authorize unreasonable search without a warrant.

Have you or your organization checked to see whether the Criminal Code gives police similar powers in other areas? I'm referring to things like drugs, or knives that have already been used to commit a crime and that sort of thing.

Just looking at the way this legislation has been drafted with respect to search without warrant, I see that the wording here is exactly the same as that found in provisions dealing with food and drugs, narcotics, and so forth. So this is certainly not a new concept.

Mr. Prieur: In terms of firearms legislation, it is a new concept. But you're absolutely right to point out that as far as food and drugs are concerned, and the Criminal Code in general, this is not something new.

However, I would ask that you try to see this in a slightly different context for a moment,Mr. Bellehumeur. The people who will be affected by this are not necessarily criminals. They may well be ordinary firearms owners. They could be hunters, people who take part in shooting competitions or firearms collectors. And that is precisely the problem with this legislation. You are actually targeting two different types of people: criminals, on the one hand, and citizens who are ordinary firearms owners, on the other.

My clients are proud to say that they have been the subject of the greatest number of investigations here in Canada, and I know that for a fact because as a prosecutor, I have had policemen conduct the investigations for me.

In order to obtain a firearm, you must be able to meet certain criteria: you must have an FAC, obtain a license, have taken a course, and so on. My clients are probably the cleanest in Canada, and yet people are pointing a finger at them. I think they are particularly upset because they are targeted by a section of this legislation that treats them as though they were offenders.

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You are absolutely right to say that this is not something new. In fact, section 8 of the Charter deals with unreasonable search and seizure.

But that applies to someone who has committed an offence. In this case, whether you have committed an offence or not, I have the right to go to your home, Mr. Bellehumeur, whether or not you possess a firearm, and ask you whether I can see that firearm and whether I can come into your house and look around.

Mr. Bellehumeur: If I understood you correctly, you said you were a prosecutor.

Mr. Prieur: Yes.

Mr. Bellehumeur: What section are you referring to when you say that?

Mr. Prieur: If you look at the wording of the legislation, you will see that it says: ``Reasonable grounds to believe'' What does the phrase ``reasonable grounds to believe'' really mean?

Mr. Bellehumeur: If you're a prosecutor, Mr. Prieur, you certainly must know what is meant by ``reasonable grounds to believe''.

Mr. Prieur: Let me give you an example, Mr. Bellehumeur. I may not have a firearm in my home, but all of a sudden, someone - like my neighbour for instance - gets it into his head thatI have a firearm. So he calls 911 and says: ``I saw my neighbour with a firearm''.

Mr. Bellehumeur: The example you've given would be for search with a warrant, not without warrant. Because when a search without warrant is involved, certain criteria must be met. I think you should look at the clause as a whole.

Mr. Prieur: You know as well as I do, Mr. Bellehumeur, that in real life, things happen fast. Sometimes, whether there's warrant or not, a situation can evolve quite quickly.

Mr. Bellehumeur: Yes, but the Supreme Court also looks at these issues. Every once in a while, it calls us back to order.

Mr. Prieur: By the time you appear before the Supreme Court, Mr. Bellehumeur, some 15 years have gone by. There have been quite a few arrests and committals in that period.

Mr. Bellehumeur: Are my five minutes already up?

[English]

Mr. Gallaway (Sarnia - Lambton): Dr. Sobrian, how many members do you have in your organization?

Dr. Sobrian: That's top secret, but I'll try to answer it. In my database there are 2,042 members. In each riding database those members are expanded and I don't know how many there are in each riding database. So there might might be thousands and there might be more thousands.I don't want to know; I'm not supposed to know.

Mr. Gallaway: All right. Now, you've stated the public perceives the police as out of control, with the justice ministry aiding and abetting the ambitions of a large segment of the police élite by using Bill C-68 to create a police state under the guise of crime control. Do you really believe that?

Dr. Sobrian: Yes.

Mr. Gallaway: All right. I wonder if you would expand on it for me.

Dr. Sobrian: Okay. Earlier this year, actually last month, in Vankleek Hill, Ontario, there was a raid done by the RCMP on Marstar Trading International Inc. It's a fellow who has had a gun business in his house for the last 35 years. They raided his house looking for customs documents - 12 RCMP officers dressed in combat fatigues, totally in black with heavy black glasses so they couldn't be identified, black helmets, and a helicopter overhead with two floodlights with a machine-gun. These officers, all armed with machine-guns and a battering ram, entered this man's house, leaned him and his wife against a wall and searched them. They tore up everything in the house. They ripped the cushions open in the living room. No matter what he said and asked for, there was no relief in sight. Six hours later they left. Everybody is in absolute abject terror because you've had machine-guns pointed at you for six hours by a man with a finger on the trigger. You can't identify anybody. You're told to shut up, we don't do things this way.

Now, this doesn't happen in Canada? They found nothing. This man has not been breaking the law. I spoke to Bob Crozier, who is the inspector for businesses in Ontario for the last 10 years. I was at a rally someplace in Oshawa last Sunday, and Bob Crozier said to me that he didn't think this country would ever come to this. He is an OPP inspector. The police think the police are out of control. I'm not just reflecting my opinion. I am repeating the words a retired inspector just told me a week ago.

Mr. Gallaway: Based on this one experience in Ontario - I'm not saying it didn't happen, but I must confess I hadn't heard of this - which we know very little about, that's evidence then that the police are out control, generally speaking? That's a pretty sweeping statement you've made.

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Dr. Sobrian: There is a little more to this than that. We have seen cases repeatedly in the last little while. We've seen the Guy Paul Morin case, we've seen the David Milgaard case, we've seen the Donald Marshall case. We read about these cases every day, where police arrest people falsely, concoct evidence to convict them, and these people go to jail for years. Finally, through the mercy of somebody, they get out and get a little bit of justice, they get a few hundred thousand dollars. That's supposed to be all right? What kind of a country are we living in?

Mr. Gallaway: You're saying that the judiciary should be infallible.

Dr. Sobrian: No, I'm saying the police should not be arresting people falsely; they should be doing their jobs. I've asked for that in my brief.

Mr. Gallaway: What do you say when someone is acquitted in court, that the police have not done their job?

Dr. Sobrian: Ten years later?

Mr. Gallaway: No. Every day of the week people are acquitted in court. I'm asking if this is evidence of a police conspiracy.

Dr. Sobrian: That's the way the police are supposed to do their job - to do it to the best of their ability and get people into court. But when you hear of innocent people being convicted, it worries honest, ordinary citizens, because we are out there waiting to be the next victim.

Mr. Gallaway: Using your line of logic, anyone who has been charged, who has appeared in court and been acquitted, has been in some way abused by the police. Is that not correct?

Dr. Sobrian: Yes, usually.

Mr. Gallaway: All right. So every day of the week, if you were to go to any provincial court here in Ottawa or in any community in this province where there are provincial courts, when people are acquitted, that's police abuse?

Dr. Sobrian: That's police abuse.

Mr. Gallaway: All right. I want to know what your basis is for this.

You also said, on the bottom of page 4 of your brief, that ``The gun control portions of this bill are unnecessary and the abuses of gun-owning Canadians under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms are immoral''. If you feel that's immoral, I respect that. Do you feel that it is illegal?

Dr. Sobrian: Which part?

Mr. Gallaway: I'm talking about the gun control portions.

Dr. Sobrian: If it becomes the law, it's legal.

Mr. Gallaway: No, it is not necessarily, under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It may offend those portions of the charter. The Supreme Court could declare that -

Dr. Sobrian: Then we'll have to go to the Supreme Court, and this could take years.

Mr. Gallaway: All right. Do your members, these people you represent, feel that it's illegal?

Dr. Sobrian: They feel it is illegal, yes.

Mr. Gallaway: Okay. You also said that Bill C-68 won't save a single life.

Dr. Sobrian: Correct.

Mr. Gallaway: All right. Last week, or recently, we had a group here representing public health units and that profession in this country. They disagreed with you. I would like to ask both you and Dr. Buckner whether these people are misinterpreting. They certainly recited a number of studies to us that led them to the conclusion that this registration system was necessary, as did a number of police organizations. I'll deal only with the public health professionals. How are their studies less valid than yours?

Dr. Buckner: I think if you look at the range of studies that have been done, there are 20 or 30 that have been reviewed and that have been summarized in the academic literature. I think one of the problems with assessing whether a registration scheme would work is that, to the best of my knowledge, no one has ever studied a registration scheme by itself as to whether or not it would work.

Also, one of the problems with the term ``gun control'' is that it is at a very high level of semantic abstraction. It means different things to different people. A lot of people say they're in favour of gun control and they have a particular idea of how it's going to control guns.

Emergency and public health officials see the results of gun accidents right up front, just as psychiatrists see the results of psychiatric breakdowns and things like that. They tend to figure that some sort of solution to this thing is possible, and usually it tends to be a simple solution like banning guns, or registering them, or keeping them out of the hands of people. But I think if you all have learned anything in the course of these hearings, it's that there is a complexity to these matters.I think, as a working rule, any simple solution is going to be wrong. I mean, there is no effective way of actually removing firearms from the hands of people who will misuse them.

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The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Barnes): We've gone over the time, if you'd like to wrap up your thought.

Mr. Gallaway: Thank you.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Barnes): I just want to verify something you said, Dr. Sobrian. You referred to an incident in a small town. I just want to make sure of this, for my own notes. That was the incident that involved an international arms dealer - there was a Quonset hut, where there were arms stored in it?

Dr. Sobrian: Marstar, yes.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Barnes): Okay, I just wanted to clarify that.

Mr. Thompson.

Mr. Thompson (Wild Rose): I have a quote from the infamous book, the red ink, page 84:

To strengthen gun control, a Liberal government will, among other measures, counter the illegal importation of banned and restricted firearms into Canada and prohibit anyone convicted of an indictable drug-related offence, a stalking offence, or any violent offence from owning or possessing a gun.

End of statements regarding guns in the red book. I often wonder how well they would have done if they had campaigned on registration.

A 117-page document has been developed to implement the promise of the red book. I certainly can't quarrel with what was said in here, because I believe that to be the thing to do. Let's get after the criminals. This particular document has, I believe, six pages addressing the criminals, and the rest deals with the law-abiding people of this land. I'm trying to get the connection. I don't get it.

Dr. Buckner, registration works in other countries. This is what we've heard. You said that's a laughable statement. No, you didn't say it, it's been heard around the Hill. Could you relate to us, in your surveys and in your learned opinion, where registration has worked and where it has failed?

Dr. Buckner: I just don't know of any study that would show it has worked. I don't know of any study that shows it has failed. I know that some countries have dropped it simply because they think it has failed. Looking over these things specifically for registration is a rare step, because its foolishness and its ineffectiveness is so clear before you start that most governments wouldn't dream of doing it. Registering that many things to control that few is like losing a contact lens in a room like this and starting to walk a pattern around the room, covering every square inch of the room, rather than looking at where you dropped it.

The way to control firearms violence is to focus in on the people who are most likely to commit it. We know who these people are. In most cases they have criminal records. You're going to miss a few people who don't have criminal records, who misuse firearms for criminal things, but you're going to miss them with registration too, because until they've got a criminal record, the registration is not going to tap them either. You can, with the same effort, focus in on a specific crime problem. When there is a break and enter, the police don't search the entire city; they search the area around where the break and enter took place. It's the same thing with firearms control.

Mr. Thompson: Banning restricted firearms to Canada, we'd cheer that. Nobody wants these brought in. We could stop them from coming in if they were restricted. Making it impossible for a violent offender to own a gun, that makes sense. All of those statements make sense, but I'm trying to make some sense out of the other 117 pages, where it's going to do any good with regard to crime.

Dr. Buckner: I think there's a philosophical difference. There are some people who see a Canada of the future in which basically there are no guns, or an absolute minimum number of guns, and many of their things are designed to basically make it so bureaucratically difficult, so tedious to own a gun that many people will give up their firearms. There are other people who actually use firearms, who find this approach an attack on their lifestyle.

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The universes of discourse are very, very different. I think, in fact, the whole notion of saving lives from suicides and accidents is nothing but a stalking-horse for this. I've never heard anyone who is proposing these things suggest, aside from this convoluted chain of logic, how a registration system is going to save any lives. But I can imagine now the duck hunter who has to get up an hour earlier in the morning because he's going to go down to the United States and he has to drive 50 miles to find an open border crossing at 4 a.m. to file the export papers for his shotgun so he can go shoot ducks right across the border and then, when he comes back, turn the paper back in.

I can imagine going trap shooting with my wife, letting her use my gun, and then suddenly having to run home to put the turkey in the oven, but forgetting and having the registration card in a box in the car, at which point she, even though she has a licence, is in the possession of a firearm without a permit.

I can imagine hundreds of these little things where people have forgotten something or something like this, or the police sometimes use one offence when they want to hold somebody for something else. I can imagine situations in which the police will use a firearms offence to hold somebody for something else.

It seems to me what you're going to find mostly is that very few criminals or people who are involved in a serious criminal act will actually be prosecuted under this. They may get a few more years in their prison sentences, and I'm not sure what that's going to do to our prisons. But it's going to be so phenomenally difficult for your everyday firearm owner just to know the rules that they won't be able to help but be in violation of this law.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Barnes): Wrap up your thought, please. You can finish your thought, but you're a couple of minutes over.

Dr. Buckner: I'm a professor, we talk for an hour.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Barnes): We do things a little faster around here.

Mr. Lee, please.

Mr. Lee (Scarborough - Rouge River): I have three quick points.

In your written brief, Dr. Sobrian, very clearly set out on page 3, you state that the bill would allow a police officer to search your home without a warrant on suspicion of firearms or ammunition irregularities.

I've read this bill a number of times, especially these sections, because they may in fact need some fine-tuning before the bill goes back to the House. Clause 101 says very clearly that ``A police officer may not enter a dwelling-house except with the consent of the occupant or under a warrant.''

I don't understand why you would say this here in a public forum when the bill seems to me to be so clear. A policeman simply cannot go into a home without a warrant, on suspicion.

Dr. Sobrian: Clause 99 says ``believes on reasonable grounds''.

Mr. Lee: You might want to complete the sentence.

Dr. Sobrian: It continues: ``there is a firearm, prohibited weapon, restricted weapon, prohibited device, ammunition or prohibited ammunition or a record in relation to any of these things and may'', he believes -

Mr. Lee: In a place, not in a home. Your statement refers to a dwelling-place, a home.

Dr. Sobrian: Right.

Mr. Lee: Do you want to clarify that for the record? Maybe you've misread. Maybe I'm being too hard on you. You may wish to clarify in reading later, but as I read the bill it's very clear that a policeman may not go into a dwelling-house without a warrant or without the consent of the owner. You can have another look at it later.

Dr. Buckner: Isn't the owner's refusal justification for getting a warrant? The owner's refusal alone is justification for the warrant.

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Mr. Lee: Dr. Sobrian has said a policeman can go in without a warrant, and that is not a fact. Does anyone disagree with me?

Dr. Sobrian: I said he can go in on suspicion.

Mr. Lee: This is not accurate.

Dr. Sobrian: Let's say I'm not at home and a policeman comes to my house and asks to come in to look for some ammunition irregularity. My wife is intimidated by the presence of a policeman and lets him go in.

Mr. Lee: Therefore, Dr. Sobrian, she has given consent. What you say in your brief is either uninformed or misleading. I'm willing to accept that it is on the uninformed side.

I'd like to touch on another area. On page 4 of your brief, about the fifth line, you say the law would ``presume a homeowner guilty until proven innocent''. I don't read that anywhere in the bill. It simply isn't there. I read my charter. I think the ground rules are clear. Would you try to explain to me where that sentiment comes from?

Dr. Sobrian: The police officer can go in and take anything out of the home. He can take it away and he does not have to return it. It says nothing about his returning it.

Mr. Lee: Okay, I do hear you there, but we're talking about guilt or innocence in relation to a criminal offence.

Dr. Sobrian: When you start seizing people's stuff -

Mr. Lee: You say there's a presumption that the homeowner is guilty until proven innocent. Now you've just gone off to talk about some search and seizure issues. I want to know if you believe your statement is accurate.

Dr. Sobrian: I believe it's accurate.

Mr. Lee: Well, would you please refer me to the section that would presume a homeowner to be guilty of a criminal offence until proven innocent? I'm sorry; I just don't see it in the statute.

Dr. Sobrian: Well, maybe you and I see it differently. When a police officer comes into my house and starts to seize my stuff and take it away at his discretion, he is treating me as if I am guilty.

Mr. Lee: Treating you as guilty, but this section says there's a presumption that the homeowner is guilty, presumably of an offence.

Law enforcement officials seize evidence all the time before guilt is proven in a court of law. They need the evidence for the judicial proceedings. It doesn't mean the parties are guilty.

You said here they presume the homeowner to be guilty. I say that's inflammatory and it's dead wrong. If you choose to interpret the bill that way, that's your business. I'm sorry; I can't. I can't. And it's regrettable that you do, in my view.

Dr. Sobrian: Well, I think the thing that is regrettable is clauses 99 to 301.

Mr. Lee: I accept they may need some fine-tuning here and possibly some amendment, but I'm not prepared to accept what you've put in your brief as accurate.

Dr. Sobrian: This is how I see it.

Dr. Buckner: Section 107 in the revised Criminal Code may be the source of this difficulty, where a person makes a statement that he doesn't even know is untrue and that is not admissible or material.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Barnes): We're over time, Dr. Buckner. Will you pay attention to my gavel, please? Thank you very much.

[Translation]

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Barnes): Have you any other questions, Mr. Bellehumeur?

Mr. Bellehumeur: Yes, I do. How many members are there in the Fédération québécoise de tir and the Regroupement? Who do these two organizations represent?

Mr. Gour: The Fédération québécoise de tir represents approximately 30,000 sport shooters.

Mr. Bellehumeur: In Quebec?

Mr. Gour: Yes, about 30,000.

Mr. Bellehumeur: Are they actual members or would anyone who has a firearm belong...

Mr. Gour: Yes, any person who has a firearm and who is currently a member of a shooting club.

Mr. Bellehumeur: But do you have actual membership cards? Do people take an interest in the representations you make?

Mr. Gour: Yes, absolutely.

Mr. Bellehumeur: Do you have a clear mandate from your members to make these representations?

Mr. Gour: Yes, absolutely. The Regroupement pour une gestion efficace de possession d'armes à feu is a think-tank, as I explained earlier. It is made up of about 12 or 13 people, although there are no actual members. All we do is review legislation and regulations and their impact on ordinary citizens and firearms owners.

Mr. Bellehumeur: I want you to know it's not because I think you make good flogging boys that I'm asking you more questions than I have the others; the fact is you seem to be sincere in making your case and your comments are well structured and well presented. We are dealing here with a piece of legislation that was tabled by a minister who has made a firm commitment and who seem determined to go ahead with it.

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Would you not consider taking a close look at the legislation and perhaps suggesting some amendments?

Mr. Gour: Well, if you look at the brief we sent to the Committee, the three...

Mr. Bellehumeur: Do you not understand French.

Mr. Gour: Oh, yes. In the first three pages of the brief, we have presented a simplified version of our recommendations. It reads as follows:

``Recommendations and amendments: repeal: ``registration of firearms''; repeal: ``prohibition of 550,239 handguns all across Canada''; repeal: ``prohibition of 21 types of long firearms, including military and paramilitary-type guns'', that are already restricted weapons; repeal: ``seizure of and compensation for 17 types of firearms'', know as restricted firearms including crossbows; repeal: ``control of ammunition'' and repeal: the provisions of Bill C-67 intended to repeal the provision authorizing the Attorney general to designate competitions or individuals for use of a large-capacity magazine, and to issue certificates to persons who are to be authorized to own such magazines, and finally replace - and here I believe we will do what the legislation is intended to do - the current provision so that anyone using an edged weapon, blunt instrument or firearm when committing a crime will automatically be given a minimum two-year firm and non-negotiable prison term.

In so doing, we are not targeting individuals, as mentioned by Mr. Buckner earlier andMr. Prieur, who has been the subject of a whole series of investigations - unless the idea is to ensure that those investigations will automatically not be valid. If someone has been investigated and a police force determines that that person is a responsible person and can possess a firearm, that should be guarantee enough that this individual is capable of owning a firearm. On the other hand, what we must target are those who use firearms for violent and criminal purposes.

In my own case, since I've been shooting - and I have fired about 130,000 shots - not once have I ever hit flesh or drawn blood; I have fired at nothing but cardboard and paper. As a result, I don't in any way see myself as posing a threat to society.

So, why not focus on the people who do represent a threat to society? If you read the Journal de Montréal - which is a very popular newspaper in Quebec, and particularly in the Montreal area - you will know that most people who commit crimes using firearms are repeat offenders. What is the percentage of people who had never before committed a crime? That being the case, do you now think that rather than investing more than a billion dollars to implement this legislation, it might be more to the point to use that money to focus on the real problem?

Mr. Bellehumeur: I believe our facts differ in that respect, but you are proposing - mind you, I have not read your brief in its entirety, although the Bloc critic will certainly do that at some point... However, you have made some suggestions, proposing for instance that certain categories of firearms not be registered. Would you say you go even further in your proposed amendments with respect to the matter Mr. Prieur touched on earlier, such as seizure without warrant and that sort of thing?

Mr. Gour: Yes, absolutely.

Mr. Bellehumeur: You certainly touched a sensitive cord with me, in terms of my understanding of the legislation, when you talked about the fact that some individuals who are not criminals will be treated as such.

Mr. Prieur: It's important to point out that legislation is already in place. I want to be certain that you fully understand our position. We want there to be effective firearms control. We consider this to be an important issue for Canada. As i said at the beginning of my presentation, we are different from the United States. We have a different background, and we don't either think or talk the same way they do in the U.S. The other important to raise is that we have always shown full respect for the law here. There is no doubt in our mind that the Liberals will pass legislation to control firearms. They are intent on doing that. So we certainly have no illusions in that respect; they will pass that legislation and I am 100% sure that my 30,000 clients will fully comply with the terms of that legislation. They will certainly complain and criticize it. They will do whatever they can to protest, but they will comply with it anyway, because they are your neighbours. They live in the city and in the countryside. They are your neighbours, your uncles, your aunts - just ordinary people.

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They will comply with the law. But at the same time, they will criticize it, and rightly so: they are not gangsters. This is an important point. You grant them the right to own a firearm, by giving them an acquisition certificate, but then you tell them they have the right to own this particular firearm, but not another type. They can own a shotgun, but not a revolver. What's the difference?

That's the kind of question they are asking. They have taken a thorough look at your legislation, but they still don't understand.

[English]

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Barnes): Before we go to Mr. St. Denis for five minutes, I just want to clarify for Mr. Gour that I think the clause you're referring to that was in Bill C-17 is actually not in Bill C-68. I've double-checked that with my researcher, Mr. Bartlett. Maybe we'll want to check that out a little later.

[Translation]

Mr. Gour: Which one?

[English]

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Barnes): It was an answer you were raising with my friend here,Mr. Bellehumeur.

Mr. William Bartlett (Committee Researcher): The clause that would have allowed the shooting competitors to be in possession of large-capacity magazines was in Bill C-17. It is no longer in Bill C-68.

Mr. Gour: The thing is, I think you...

[Translation]

Initial information published with respect to Bill C-68 contain the following statement: ``to repeal the provision authorizing the Attorney general to designate competitions or the use of large capacity magazines and to issue certificates to persons who may be licensed to own such magazines''. That statement appeared in the initial documents released by Mr. Rock on Bill C-68. I have the actual document with me, and I can show it to you, if you wish.

[English]

Mr. Bartlett: You may be referring to the exemption offered for short-barrelled and .32 and .25 -

[Translation]

Mr. Gour: This is a document that was released by the government. I will show it to you, if you like.

[English]

Mr. Bartlett: Then the other one is not there. It was in Bill C-17; it is not in Bill C-68.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Barnes): Unfortunately, your brief has not yet been translated into English, so for all of us here, I wanted to clarify that point. I believe that is the situation that -

[Translation]

Mr. Gour: This is a paper that was released by the government itself. I will show it to you.

[English]

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Barnes): You might want to file it.

Mr. St. Denis, please.

Mr. St. Denis (Algoma): Thank you, gentlemen, for being here tonight.

I have a rural riding in northern Ontario. I have heard, and I'm attempting to understand as deeply as possible, the concerns of the community of legal gun owners in my riding. I'm just going to go through a list of some of the concerns that have been raised with me about registration. I'd ask you to concentrate on that list, because I'm going to ask each group separately what is the number one concern with respect to registration - not that you have but that your constituency might have. Then I'll have a follow-up question to that.

I'm not saying these are all necessarily legitimate concerns, but they're concerns people have, based on the level of knowledge they might have, in some cases. These concerns are in no particular order.

Some fear that registration will lead to confiscation. Some fear it will be a substantial cost to them as individuals. Some feel it will be a substantial cost to the country. Some feel the system will be cumbersome, awkward, lots of red tape and a nuisance. Some feel it makes criminals out of otherwise law-abiding citizens. Some question the effectiveness of this in terms of fighting crime. Some worry about the security of the information system that would evolve through this. Some see this as a tax grab. Some see this as the loss of personal protection. Some see it as having an impact on tourism, others as keeping young people from becoming hunters and target shooters. And there may be more.

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Could the Quebec delegation please pick one that is of main concern?

Mr. Prieur: One that seems to come up all the time is the question of confiscation, simply because -

Mr. St. Denis: We'll leave it at that for the moment. We have only five minutes, so I want to ask the Ontario group what would be the number one concern to their constituents.

Dr. Sobrian: Our number one concern is also confiscation. Our number two concern is loss of police protection while the police are busy registering guns.

Mr. St. Denis: Okay. Let's deal with the number one concern, because there is agreement on that.

Back to the Quebec delegation, what would it take for the government to provide assurances to you that it would not lead to the mass confiscation of long guns, etc.? What would it take?

Mr. Prieur: Their faith has been very diminished since Bill C-17. Bill C-17 was the first occasion on which firearms were actually confiscated in Canada in a large way. The general public sees it as a prelude to more confiscation. No matter what you tell them, whether it's that you have a sound government and they wouldn't do that, they're all law-abiding people so why would they do that, registration is simply a form of providing for more information for the police. And it's to their advantage in a way.

The simple fact of the matter is that Bill C-17 precluded this bill. If it weren't for Bill C-17, it may be different. But that -

Mr. St. Denis: It was a loss of faith in the system.

Mr. Prieur: Yes.

Mr. St. Denis: Do you have anything to add to that?

Dr. Buckner: My reaction is that strategically if I were going to try to pass the registration system, and I don't want to give the government advice, I would not, at the same time as I was announcing the registration system, announce that I was also going to seize 560,000 handguns and convert them to prohibited weapons - they first said that you couldn't sell them at all, etc., and then they backed down - and that as soon as it goes through we're going to seize two rifles, which we can't seize now because they're commonly used for hunting and sporting purposes.

If you want to sabotage your own project, you could hardly do any better than the November 29 announcement. Anybody who doesn't think the government wants to seize firearms can't read.

Mr. Thompson: On a point of order, out of the goodness of our hearts twice earlier today we allowed two Liberal members -

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Barnes): I would like to deal with it.

Mr. Thompson: We would like to request that Garry Breitkreuz have an opportunity to question.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Barnes): We have a situation in which we're one minute before the end of our time for the schedule, and we've had a long day today. I have on my list one Liberal member who hasn't questioned, and I have one member from the Reform Party, who has not signed in for tonight's meeting but who has sat through this meeting. With discussion and unanimous consent I will add the Reform Party member to our list for a five-minute question period, but if you consent I will first go with the committee member who is not registered and therefore go out of order.

Some hon. members: Agreed.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Barnes): Mr. MacLellan and then Mr. Breitkreuz.

Mr. MacLellan (Cape Breton - The Sydneys): Dr. Sobrian, you mentioned the concern about a police state and you talked about the Donald Marshall case. Then in your brief on page 4, the last paragraph, you talk about the Canadian Medical Association supporting this legislation. You say that Mr. Rock deliberately misled the House of Commons on January 15 when he said that the Canadian Medical Association supported universal registration. What basis do you have for making that allegation?

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Dr. Sobrian: I read Hansard on January 15, and he made quite a convoluted statement, starting with the support of registration and finishing by saying the Canadian Medical Association supported it. In fact, the Canadian Medical Association had just left him in the hall and told him they didn't support it, that they supported the objectives of his brief.

Mr. MacLellan: You were there when they told him that?

Dr. Sobrian: Dr. Acker told me that the night afterwards. I called him to find out what was going on, because I had spoken to him before. The agreement was that they would not say any such thing. He said they didn't say any such thing. They sent me a fax to the contrary and then Dr. Landry put it in a subsequent issue of the CMA news, which I have here, saying they did not support registration. I have it right here:

Dr. Léo-Paul Landry, the CMA Secretary General, responds: ``CMA has never expressed any support for the federal government's proposed firearms control legislation. What the association has endorsed are the objectives of the draft bill. There is a difference. As the CMA Board of Directors stated clearly, the CMA cannot support any legislation which it has not had the opportunity to review.''

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Barnes): The CMA will be a witness, so we'll ask them when they're here.

Mr. MacLellan: Yes, I think you're really attributing quite a serious allegation. At this point, January 15, of course we didn't even have the bill in effect.

Mr. Buckner, I want to mention too that in your brief, second-last paragraph, you say in the last 20 years the firearms homicide, accident, and suicide rates have all declined and firearms use in crime is not increasing. Wouldn't you say that it's because of firearms control that these statistics have moved in that direction?

Dr. Buckner: I think the reduction in firearms robbery rates probably has been influenced by Bill C-51, which passed in 1978. That is found in a number of countries, that the robbery rates go down, the burglary rates go up. I think, however, the fall in suicide rate with firearms and the fall in the homicide rate and in accidents each have a different cause.

The fall in the accident rate is following a 60-year-long curve, which I suspect largely comes from more accurate reporting. People used to call many, many suicides accidents back in the 1920s and 1930s. Now I think people are being more honest. I think a large part of the decline in accidents simply comes from more honest reporting, and I think the increase in suicides, which started in the mid-1960s, probably partially was reclassification of accidents as well as coroners' reorganization in a number of provinces in which they forced them to be honest about the cause of death.

As for homicides, they are principally driven by the proportion of the population in the 15-to-30 age group, which produces half of all homicides. After the baby boom crested in that age group in 1975, the homicide rate fell both in Canada and in the United States over the next 15 years, quite independent of whether or not there was gun control. In fact, the rate fell slightly more in the United States until about 1969, when in the United States a different phenomenon took over.

I suspect we are going to see an increase in the homicide rates starting next year and moving on until about 2005, as the baby boom echo reaches the 15-to-30 age group.

Mr. MacLellan: That's the first time I've heard that hypothesis.

I have just one more thing relating to targeting lawful gun owners as opposed to criminals. I think when you apply laws, it's absolutely fundamental that the laws have to be applied to everyone. You don't know who the criminals are going to be until the laws are broken. You need the laws first. You can't say that you're targeting, because laws have to be universal.

I want either one of you to perhaps expand on that.

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Mr. Prieur: I understand your point. The only point I'd like to make to you on that level is that there is a difference. The criminal doesn't usually bother to go out and get a permit before. Maybe on occasion there have been and there are instances - unfortunately the worst ones, such as Marc Lépine and Valery Fabrikant - when I can be proved wrong. But generally I think you'll concede to me that people don't go out to get permits for firearms and then commit crimes.

I do concede to you, on the other hand, that you should have the laws on the books. As I said earlier, Canada is a country of laws. We have an established culture of having peace and order in Canada, and there should be legislation on gun control. I'm not denying that.

What I have a problem with is the extent to which you want to control them and on what and who. I find, and my group finds also, that the legislation as it exists now, not even with Bill C-68, is far too complicated for the average citizen to comprehend. I think a large part should be to simplify the legislation for these people, who are your constituents. They are people who don't necessarily have law degrees and would like to own a rifle. They are hunters. There's nothing wrong with going hunting, but do you have to have a law degree to get a rifle?

Ms Torsney: On a point of order, Dr. Sobrian has made some serious allegations about the Minister of Justice, saying he said specific things in the House on January 15. The House wasn't sitting on January 15. January 15 was a Sunday, and with the exception of the rail strike, we don't sit on Sundays.

Perhaps the minister may have inferred something in the House that wasn't appropriate, but I have a problem with you preparing a brief.... You have implied on television to people across the country tonight that in fact he made a statement on a day we don't sit. Would you like to correct that? Or perhaps you meant last year, which would be a Saturday, when the House again wasn't sitting.

Dr. Sobrian: Well, I have to apologize if I made a mistake on that, but I have the copy of Hansard at home that I took it out of.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Barnes): I just note, Dr. Sobrian, that this bill wasn't introduced until February sometime.

We'll move on to our final five minutes of questions. Please commence.

Mr. Breitkreuz (Yorkton - Melville): Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to ask some questions.

Maybe it's somewhat humorous that I tried to jump through all the hoops and hurdles to be a legitimate member of this committee. I hope our registration system works better than that, because there was only one person involved.

Dr. Buckner, I feel that if your testimony is correct, your testimony alone would be sufficient reason to scrap this bill. Yet it hasn't been discussed tonight. I don't know why.

What do you think it would take to comply with all of these regulations in here? Do you think the fact that criminal penalties of up to ten years are imposed on people is one of the reasons we have the problem with all of this as far as compliance is concerned? The justice minister is trying to make sure people will comply.

I think there's a whole area here that has not been addressed. I'd really like you to comment on what you think it would take for people to comply with this.

Dr. Buckner: I think complexity is a problem, as has been said. I teach the firearms safety course, as do a number of other people. Even after taking this ten-hour course, a lot of people have difficulty remembering all the rules that are legally there for safe storage, even. It has simply reached a level of complexity.

If I were going to say one thing about this whole legislation thing, aside from the fact that I don't think it's necessary, I would say it's the stick approach, rather than any sort of carrot-and-stick approach, that people find so offensive. It is the assumption that the only way to get through to firearms owners that they should store their guns safely is to beat them over the head with criminal penalties.

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In Quebec we did a survey, and the Coalition for Gun Control did a survey. They found out that only about one-third of gun owners knew the rules properly. We took a poll among people teaching the course, who agree the public couldn't follow all the rules. Even the people who were taking the course couldn't. It's just too complicated.

The government never advertises these things. If they would simply go out and tell people rather than assuming they're going to do evil and hitting them over the head, I think it would go a lot further.

It is the unremitting hostility the bill demonstrates towards legitimate firearms owner that has gotten people's backs up. If the registration were to pay for something gun owners would use.... Car registration pays for highways. Maybe if gun registration were to pay for upgrading shooting clubs so people don't breathe lead, if it put in an insurance scheme.... As part of the registration scheme, you could insure every gun in Canada for 12¢ each at the average value of a gun. None of this was even thought of. The entire program hits the gun owners over the head and forces them to comply.

Mr. Breitkreuz: My last question ties in with some of the other questions that have been asked recently. Is consent obtained by intimidation truly consent?

You talked about the complexity of these laws. A police officer shows up at a home and through intimidation.... Because these things are so complex, there are so many people today who don't even realize they're not complying with the law. Simply intimidating and explaining a few things may be enough to gain access to a home where the person really didn't want to consent.

Dr. Buckner: In my experience, police officers often use deception to gain entrance to homes.I used to do it all the time. But I would turn this over Mr. Prieur.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Barnes): That was the American police force you worked for at the time?

Dr. Buckner: Yes.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Barnes): I just wanted to clarify that.

Dr. Buckner: I wrote my doctoral thesis on that police force.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Barnes): Thank you.

Mr. Prieur: My main concern is it's not a question of consent as much as the police officers probably are as much in the dark as the homeowner. This is unfair for the police officer also. He arrives on the scene with a very complex piece of legal legislation. He's trying to cope with that. Can he go in, can he not go in? It's only later down the line he'll find out in front of a judge. It's not fair for that police officer, either.

Most police officers across Canada don't want to touch this legislation at all. In our province, for example, the QPF are the masters of this legislation, and probably correctly so, because they're the only ones, to a certain extent, who understand it. The only other real masters of this legislation are the courts, and they're grappling with it.

I'm always thinking of an event that occurred in my discussions with a crown prosecutor in a rural area. He said it very simply. I asked him what he thought about this new Bill C-17. He said it was fairly irrelevant. When I asked him why, he replied that, simply put, if he's going to charge a guy with homicide, the gun's secondary; he's charging him with homicide. The legislation is useless to him.

Mr. Breitkreuz: I'd like to thank you very much for your presentation. You have added considerably to the discussion we are having here. I appreciate it very much.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Barnes): Before we adjourn for the evening, I'd like to remind the committee we're here at 9 o'clock tomorrow morning, not 9:30.

Thank you for your testimony tonight.

Dr. Sobrian, we'll be certain to put your point to the CMA when they're here.

The meeting is adjourned to the call of the chair.