Mr. Jim Hawkes (Calgary West):

Mr. Speaker, I present today an additional over 40,000 signatures which petition the House to change the Young Offenders Act with an updated juvenile delinquents act.

It is in memory of Ryan Garrioch, a young man who was murdered in a school yard in Calgary. On this day I would particularly like to pay tribute to the parents who took a personal tragedy and have attempted to turn it into something that they believe will be of social benefit to Canada. That should be acknowledged in this Chamber on this last day.

Mr. Jim Hawkes (Calgary West) moved

that Bill C-417, an act to amend the Criminal Code (gun control), be read the second time and referred to a legislative committee in the Departmental envelope.

He said: Mr. Speaker, thank you and the members who are here this afternoon when we do not have to be here on a Friday. There are so many who are in support of this bill.

This is one of those bills that began with a telephone call about three months ago from someone who is a gun collector who informed me that due to a legal interpretation of an old law the situation had changed rather dramatically.

For many years under the existing law, people who purchased a restricted weapon would bring it to a fire arms registrar for examination and they would be given a temporary conveyance permit to take it home. That had gone on for years. All of a sudden there was an interpretation that the fire arms registrar could not give them the weapon to take back home. On the surface that may not seem like a problem but it is a problem and creates a somewhat unsafe situation.

This House spent many hours over a couple of years dealing with changes to the Criminal Code to make the gun situation in this country safer. We said in clear unequivocal terms that anyone who wished to possess a restricted weapon must provide safe storage for that weapon as part of the conditions of a permit. There could be examination of that safe storage and so on.

All of a sudden we have a change in legal interpretation that keeps those guns away from that safe storage. It has taken up to six months for permanent registration certificates to be issued. This puts responsibility on the part of the fire arms registrar in many situations in this country and in particular in rural situations where there is just not adequate storage available for the quantity of weapons that begin to pile up.

What I propose today is something I asked the House of Commons legal branch to draft that would give a permissive power to a fire arms registrar to allow someone to take that fire arm back to the safe storage when he or she already have a permit to own a restricted weapon which means they have safe storage.

It would not apply to people purchasing a weapon of this kind for the first time and it is not compulsory for the fire arms registrar tell someone to take it home. It is permissive and a person can fill out a form that would allow that gun to move from the fire arms registrar office to the owner's place when there is safe storage for the weapon.

I do not think it is worth the time of the House to have three hours of debate and a votable motion at the end of that time. I think the committee in its wisdom decided that this is not one of the items that should come to a vote.

It leaves the House in the position of deciding unanimously to make this change which we could do today through all stages and if the House was predisposed to do that. I have copies of some minor changes which have been recommended to me by the Department of Justice that would make the bill work just a little bit better as an amendment to the Criminal Code. Those are prepared. I have them in sufficient quantity for everybody in the House. If anyone would like them I would ask a page to come and make them available to them. There is no point in going through those changes unless we find out the will of the House. I think it might be in order to allow members who wish to speak to this to do so. Perhaps they could indicate whether they think it is a good idea for the House act. If we were to move it through all stages this afternoon, it could go to the Senate the first part of next week and pass through there relatively quickly as well. It is an administrative change that I think makes sense for everybody.

June 10, 1993

It simply wants to enable restricted weapons to be stored in a safer situation than the law allows currently and that was the will of the House historically and overwhelmingly so. This would just extend that principle.

I invite my colleagues to make comments and indicate whether there is a predisposition on the part of the House to do this unanimously and put it in place as quickly as possible to take that danger away. I thank the House for its attention.

Mr. Hawkes:

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I see no one else rising and I wonder if now might be the appropriate time to put the question as to whether or not we have unanimous consent to deal with this bill at all

stages.

If the answer to that question is yes then I think there would have to be a series of subsequent steps and I would like to be recognized again on another point of order.

Mr. Jim Hawkes (Calgary West) moved

for leave to introduce Bill C-446, an act to amend the Criminal Code (defamatory libel).

Mr. Hawkes:

Madam Speaker, this is my first attempt at a private member's bill that deals with something that arose in my life prior to politics.

It is a tendency of the media from time to time to be in such a hurry to be first with a story that they ignore the responsibility side of the freedom which our society provides them.

This bill would add to section 300 of the Criminal Code the provision that everyone who publishes defamatory libel that he knows is false or, and this is the addition, with a reckless disregard for its truth is guilty of an indictable offence.

All we are asking with this legislation is that reporters and journalists, those who publish, make an honest effort to determine whether what they are publishing is true.

We have a second section in this bill which states that if they have made a mistake and then make a very vigorous and sensible effort to correct it, not simply by putting the correction on the back page somewhere but by giving it prominence and making an effort to correct what they did to cause the damage in the first place, there can be a mitigation of sentence.

I draw this to the attention of the House. In particular I draw it to the attention of those who own and publish periodicals and other media. The time has come in society where a greater effort needs to be made to publish the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

June 8, 1993