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Thank you, Chairman and colleagues, for your interest in the safety and security of our nation.
That is what this portfolio is charged with. Both I and the Prime Minister often say that the first responsibility of any government is the safety and the security of its citizens, and I can tell you that some 52,000 individuals report under this portfolio. As I travel the country and visit border agencies, corrections institutes, RCMP detachments, our CSIS operations, emergency preparedness places of operation, and the offices and support personnel backing up each one of those organizations, I can say with sincerity that the overwhelming majority of these 52,000 people really do have a sense that when they go to work every day or every night—and this is a seven-day-a-week, around-the-clock operation—that they have, in their own way, something important and viable to do related to the safety of our country and our citizens.
Having said that, I'm certainly open to any questions. I want to give members as much time as possible for questions.
We have 52,000 individuals and a budget, depending upon whether you add in the supplementary estimates, that comes in around the $6 billion mark. It's a significant investment in safety and security.
I understand there's a particular interest related to firearms today by some members.
First let me introduce John Brunet, who is the comptroller for public safety, and when you get down into the minutiae, this man does know it all and faithfully reports it, whether I like it or not. We have Mr. Peter Martin. He is the deputy commissioner of National Police Services. I've asked him to be here, having understood there is some interest in the Firearms Centre. With the RCMP recently taking over that task, he can certainly give updates and be very focused in terms of specific questions you may have to which I may not have answers. Also, we have Mr. Paul Gauvin. He is the deputy commissioner of corporate management and comptrollership, so you will also be able to ask questions more broadly related to the RCMP.
I want to just remind members, Mr. Chairman--and then I'll move directly to questions so that I give as much time as possible to my colleagues to give me questions or advice--when it comes to firearms there are some things to keep in mind. Under our system now, every person who possesses or acquires or wants to possess or acquire a firearm must be licensed, regardless of what the firearm is--restricted or unrestricted. Everyone who has a licence will be recorded in a national database. Information on everyone who has a licence is available to the police forces for their information and for their own security.
Any time somebody wants to assume, acquire, or possess either a firearm or ammunition, they have to produce that licence. That licence is not guaranteed to them for life. They can lose that licence if there is cause, if any firearms officer in any of the provinces thinks that licence should be revoked. Anybody applying for a licence has to go through an extensive background check. If you want to acquire a firearm, for instance, a handgun, that is on a restricted list, the process of licensing is even more extensive. Everybody wanting to acquire a firearm must take a safety course and must also take a course in the safe handling and the safe storage of firearms. Firearms must still be stored, locked, at the place of residence according to government regulations. If you have a restricted firearm, for instance, if you are a sports shooter and you have a handgun, your transportation is restricted in terms of where you can go with that firearm. You must go directly from your home to the gun club of which you must be a member.
Mr. Chairman, we want to focus our resources on the most effective ways of having effective gun control. The Auditor General, year after year, reported significant and in fact at times grotesque waste and inefficiency related to the firearms registry.
This is not an attack on any of the employees who work in those operations. They were dealt a hand and dealt a task that in some ways was impossible for them to maintain.
When it comes to unrestricted long guns, the millions and millions of guns that are out there—shotguns, duck-hunting guns, .22 rifles, .303 hunting rifles, owned primarily by farmers and sport shooters. There are literally millions and millions of them in Canada. The task of trying to record and register every one of those with every single registration number proved to be impossible. The Auditor General herself said the data was not reliable.
We want to direct the funds—our funds, our resources—to the most effective way of gun control. For that reason, we think the emphasis should be on registering every restricted firearm, every prohibited firearm, and every person who wants to own any type of firearm. But to try to match what was at one point to have been close to a billion dollars on a long gun registry of primarily farmers and sport shooters, which proved to be impossible, was not the most effective way to do this. The data was not reliable, said the Auditor General.
Mr. Chairman, we want to focus on reducing tragedies with firearms. We want to focus on those people who would be at risk in even having a firearm. We want to stop people from having firearms who shouldn't have them. There has been, unfortunately, on the expense side a focus on the area where we're having the least or almost no problem, and that is the farmers, the duck hunters, with these millions and millions of unrestricted firearms.
Just as an example, Mr. Chairman, in the year 2003 there were 549 homicides in Canada. Two of those were committed by somebody using an unrestricted long arm—two of them. So here we had the majority of our resources, hundreds of millions of dollars, being directed to half of 1% of the problem, when on the other hand we have a huge number of problems with handguns being used in crimes. That's an area where we have to increase our focus—gang activity and illegal smuggling of firearms.
I share these with you in closing, Mr. Chairman, to remind Canadians that we are very aggressive. In the days ahead, because of what we've learned through the tragedy at Dawson College and in other incidents, we want to and I think we can make our system even stronger and even better in having alert systems in place whereby we can see and perhaps stop somebody who should not be in possession of a firearm from doing something that is wrong.
We will continue to focus on that, on an enhanced registration process and enhanced activity related to smuggling of firearms. We have prevention programs into the millions and millions of dollars, which are going out into our communities right now for youth at risk, for gang activity. That's where we want our focus to be.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman and colleagues, for your attention to this. I'm open to any questions or advice you may have. Of course, this isn't limited just to firearms. Any questions at all under the area of public safety, I'll try my best to answer. If I don't have the information or can't get it to you today, I will get it to individuals as soon as possible.
Thank you, Mr. Minister and other witnesses, for appearing before the committee today.
I'm going to start with the words of Hayder Kadhim, who was injured during the Dawson shooting. He said that the idea of abandoning a gun registry is senseless. Let me just follow up with a couple of items I want to discuss.
I don't disagree, Minister, that there were problems in the past. I sat on the public accounts committee in the previous Parliament and had the Auditor General before our committee, talking about those past problems. The reality is that the program is working today.
And here are a few other realities. All types of gun deaths, whether homicides, suicides, or accidents, have declined since the registry was brought into force. Death rates involving handguns and long guns are down. The police support the registry. On average, more than 5,000 queries are made daily. Almost 16,000 firearm licences have been refused or revoked since the Firearms Act came into force. More than 5,000 affidavits have been provided by the Canadian firearms registry to support the prosecution of firearms-related crimes in court proceedings across this country.
When we take a look at the cost today, the reality is that the cost of registering weapons is only $15.7 million a year. On the idea that long guns don't play a role, let me just quote the president of the Canadian Professional Police Association, who said on May 16, “Our last six or seven police officers were killed with long guns.”
The reality is that they do represent a risk, so when we have had the success that we have had with this program, I'm trying to understand why the focus would not be on eliminating irritants, on making the program more efficient. Why the interest or why the unceasing push to try to kill this program? Is it ideologically driven? What's the reason why you want to see this program killed when it has been such a success?
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When we talk about killing the program, I think it's really important for our citizens not to think we are killing the gun registry or that we are killing the licensing requirements. In fact, we are not. We're making the program stronger.
One aspect of the program has proven to be incredibly expensive, to the point of incredible waste—I'm just referring to the Auditor General's findings—and it has not been successful in its goal. The goal of registering every duck hunter's gun, every farmer's shotgun, every gopher gun across the country, has been unsuccessful. With the number of mistakes that have been made, the impossibility of trying to get registration numbers, and the impossibility of trying to get the correct calibres of millions and millions of long arms, it has been an exercise in futility. That narrow aspect of the gun registry has proven not to be successful.
When you talk about a crime committed with a firearm, in the instances when a long gun was used, if the system itself had been working properly—not the registration system, but the actual system—there's a strong possibility that disaster could have been avoided. One case in point would be the tragic killing of a police officer last year in the province of Quebec. In that particular case, as the officer was approaching the door, the person inside shot through the door with a registered high-powered rifle and killed her. The bullet pierced her armour protection.
Upon investigation, what was very frustrating and agonizing was the fact that this person had committed crimes for which that long gun should have been removed. As a matter of fact, he had a prohibition order. He had been ordered not to own, not to be in the possession of, a firearm. Subsequent to that, he appealed. He went before a judge and he asked if he could please have that firearm because he liked to hunt, and if he could just have it during the hunting season. The judge allowed a criminal who had been prohibited from having a firearm to get his gun back.
This is why I'm talking about limiting the possibility of the wrong people getting firearms. One of our proposals is that if you have had that type of conviction, that is it. You can't go before a judge. We will word it in such a way that a judge is not able to give a dangerous person back his long gun.
That's why we say that hundreds of millions of dollars were used—probably well intended—to go into an area where there is comparatively so little criminal activity. As one of our proposals on the table in the House of Commons, we have said that crimes with guns should have a mandatory sentence with them, yet we can't get the Liberal Party to support us on that.
An hon. member: That's not true.
Hon. Stockwell Day: Well, I'm afraid, gentlemen, that three of the four people on this committee did not even vote to support that. Why not?
I thank the members for being here today.
I fail to understand the reasoning of my friends opposite when they talk about firearms. There's some sort of view that if you register a gun, it won't be used, and that's exactly wrong, and that's why the system didn't work and can't work.
I would like to look at some other areas, although related to firearms. There is $101 million in the budget, going forward, for arming border guards, and I know that a member opposite, who is not here, called border guards “wimps” because they walked off the job when they were threatened by people coming from south of the border with firearms.
I'm wondering if you could give us an update on where we are on arming the border guards.
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You're quite right in talking about the amount that's being directed towards arming our border officers. Right now, the applications have gone out for those within the operation who want to become trainers themselves. We'll be using the RCMP to do the initial training. The RCMP will then train the trainers, and they will work through the system.
By the way, there were 324 people within the CBSA component who actually applied to become trainers, which was, I thought, a very healthy response. Obviously, there won't be 324 trainers--there will be a lot fewer than that--but they'll be able to pick from that group. Their estimation is that the first officers will be trained and ready to serve by July or August of this coming year. There will be up to 300 available and ready to be on site. Following that, there will be training at the rate of about 800 per year, and then if you allow for natural attrition to take place, it will probably net out to something between 625 and 650 per year after that.
There have been different speculations in terms of how long it will take to get everybody trained, and the process itself could be completed--about 4,800 officers--in about six years. But right now it's projected that the funding component, and this is an expensive thing to do, will be coming forward by so much per year for 10 years.
Looking at the experience in other jurisdictions.... When the United States started their training , if we look at how long it took them, we're about on the same timelines. So 300 by July or August, and those will be apportioned to the areas where the greatest need is, and then it will be at the rate of about 800 or so per year, and then you have to allow for some attrition.
In terms of the supplementary estimates, I'll go through it quickly, because there may be some specific ones.
In terms of the RCMP itself, under vote 61, operating expenditures, excluding those for registration activities and functions: $38,000,000.
In terms of vote 62--again, this is the Canada Firearms Centre--operating expenses for registration activities and functions: $10,000,000.
Looking at the Canadian Border Service Agencies, vote number 10a, this would authorize the transfer of $373,500 from Citizenship and Immigration and $689,995 from National Defence. There are contributions to employee benefits under CSIS of $35,266,000.
For the Correctional Services, under Penitentiary Service and National Parole Service, there will be another transfer of $39,040.
I think those are the main ones in front of me right now, Mr. Chairman.
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This has been quite a journey in terms of addressing something the American Congress put in place; this wasn't from their administration. As members around the committee table will know, about four years ago there was a law passed that everybody going into the United States, by a certain time period, would have to have a passport. That included Americans returning to the United States. The timelines originally on the table suggested that by January 1 of 2007, all people flying in or coming in by ship or boat were going to have to have a passport and that by January 1, 2008, everybody coming in at a land border was going to have to have a passport.
We were very concerned. We've done a number of studies on this. Not only do we think this will discourage travel from Canada into the United States, but we are even more concerned that this will dampen the desire of people wanting to come from the United States into Canada. Americans appear to be more averse to getting passports than Canadians. Just over 20% of Americans have passports and almost 40% of Canadians. There's also the cost that goes with that.
From the time Prime Minister Harper first met with President Bush and his Mexican counterpart at the Cancun meeting, this was the first item on the agenda. As far as the Prime Minister is concerned, this will have a very negative effect on our economy. It's not just the economy, strictly speaking, but even the social economy: the number of people who travel across the border for family reasons, friendship reasons; sports teams, hockey teams, soccer teams. There's a host of things we believe will be unanticipated consequences of that legislation.
We've made achievements. We have an agreement from the Americans that alternative documents will be acceptable. We're just defining what those will be. We've also been successful in having the implementation date pushed back; so far, it's about a year and a half.
I just want to say to members here, and any Canadians who are listening, that by January 8 of this year, 2007, if you are flying into the United States or you're coming in by ship, you have to have a passport. With respect to ferry traffic at the normal points, they'll let you in with two pieces of ID. So if you're flying or coming in by ship, get your passport. With the land ports, you have about another year and a half. We're working on alternatives there.
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Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to say this about a kind of throwaway remark you made, but I think it needs to be addressed.
You asked why the Liberals are not supporting mandatory minimums. I have to say this is a misrepresentation of the historical record, and indeed of the contemporary record. There are more mandatory minimums for gun-related crimes in the Criminal Code, some 20, than for any other crime except murder. Those mandatory minimums were introduced by the Liberal government some 10 years ago when the opposition, your party in its predecessor form, actually opposed them.
In November 2005, following a meeting of federal-provincial-territorial ministers of justice, as the Minister of Justice at the time, upon the unanimous recommendation of those ministers, I introduced a comprehensive legislative package that included targeted mandatory minimums in the matters of smuggling, trafficking, and use of a loaded weapon in a public place.
The issue, therefore, is not having mandatory minimums or not. The issue is why your government has introduced a range of mandatory minimums of such scope and excess, including mandatory minimums, for some, of 10 years, when, number one, all the evidence has shown that such mandatory minimums neither are a deterrent nor are effective; when the very evidence relied upon by the Minister of Justice to support them—that is to say, evidence from the states of Massachusetts, Michigan, and New York, as examples—demonstrated the exact opposite of what the minister claimed; when they have a disproportionate impact on aboriginal people; and when experts have concluded that such mandatory minimums are wrong-headed as a matter of policy and suspect as a matter of law.
It is not a question that we did not support mandatory minimums. We supported those we felt were effective as a matter of policy and not suspect as a matter of law. To turn it the other way around, why is your government introducing such mandatory minimums when the evidence demonstrates otherwise?
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No, I have to finish. You had your time, with respect, and I listened carefully.
With respect to , which introduced a number of measures that we think—and this is a debate—will serve to reduce crime with firearms, three of the four Liberals present chose not to support it, and that's certainly their right. That's why I say, when we want to put a focus on crime with firearms, I find it curious that they give the appearance of wanting to have a focus on something else.
Now, on the anecdotal side—and anecdotal evidence has to be taken as such, and for security reasons I can only give some information here—our policing forces have told me that in one very densely populated area of our country, and I'd prefer not to say which, both their human and their listening-in intelligence on things that go on shows, from the street, that when we tabled Bill C-10 there was considerable discussion among those who choose criminal activity, and especially those who operate in the area of trafficking in firearms, that we were getting tough, that mandatory jail was probably going to be the result if they were apprehended, and that they were going to move their focus of business.
Now, I don't know what they're going into. I hope it's legal business—I doubt it is—but we're hearing anecdotally that just tabling and moving this legislation through is having an impact on the street. We hope that's true, and time will tell.
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If I can just carry on a little further with regard to how you intend to improve your accountability specifically in regard to some of the problems identified in the O'Connor commission, I can recall my question to the commissioner when he sat before this committee and indicated that you were going through some internal policy changes and procedures.
My observations, with all due respect to you and to the commissioner, would be the following. And again it's because I care so much about the reputation of police forces. They must ensure, to the best of their ability, to always be above the type of criticisms that O'Connor has identified.
I related to the commissioner, looking at other similar agencies not only within Canada but externally with a view to best practices--and I guess I'm going to be very specific here--wouldn't it be a good idea, as part of that process when you're developing those processes and changes in policy, that you access the opinion of sister agencies in Canada? I would specifically suggest, because of the realities of Canada, that one of those agencies be the Sûreté du Québec and one other large agency in Canada.
That's a suggestion, and I'm asking, Deputy Commissioner, for your opinion on just such an idea.
I am going to turn first to the RCMP representative, although I will tell you right away that I really liked your explanations about the progressive use of force, the police force principle of intervention, before using firearms.
I want to ask you a specific question. On page 427 of the estimates—I thought that when I was given this PDF version, I had the same pagination as you, but let’s say it’s the first page of point 25—, there is mention of the Canadian Firearms Centre and operating expenditures for registration activities and functions. We see that last year you asked for $14.550 million and that next year you’re asking for $14.654 million.
I know, Mr. Martin, that we have to get rid of long gun registration, and therefore you’re not including expenses for long gun registration. So, if you register fewer arms and you expect to register even fewer, why are you asking for $104,000 more to register firearms?
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The decision on the registration of long guns has not been passed yet, so at the present time we still have to maintain the long gun registry, although there is an amnesty in place. However, if the legislation does not go through, we are still going to have to pick that up and make sure the information is up to date.
Mr. Ménard, when you were talking earlier about the $14.6 million, those are the operating expenses for the registration activities. Long guns, restricted weapons, and prohibited weapons are included. When you go down the complete list of expenditures to support the registry, the $83.6 million has now been reduced by $13 million; a $10 million reduction was undertaken when the registry was moved over to the RCMP, and we have since identified another $3 million.
The way we're doing that is there is a large benefit in putting this over to the force. At the outset the registry was composed with a very high-level hierarchy. The lead person was at a deputy minister one level; there were a number of EX-2s and two EX-3s, so there was a large management structure. We have taken that away. It's now at the DG level. The most senior position in the Canada Firearms Centre is now an EX-3. We have also integrated with the RCMP infrastructure. As an example, there was a self-standing human resource activity, a finance activity, and a CIO--chief information officer--at the registry; all of that infrastructure is inside the RCMP as well, so the registry is now served by the RCMP's HR component, their finance component, and their technology component.
There are a large number of consultants there. The Canadian firearms system that's used to drive the database is a program that was written by consultants. We have taken on those duties and responsibilities.
That's how we've been able to save the money, and the budget right now is down to $70 million for the registry.