Canada undermined global climate negotiations in Durban in December, negotiated in bad faith, and immediately announced intent to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol when the Environment Minister touched down on Canadian soil. Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver kicked off the New Year with an assault on environmentalists and First Nations as “radicals.”  The Prime Minister attacked environmental groups for accepting foreign funding, even as he courted Communist Party controlled state operations from China as investors in the oil sands.  One Parliamentary Secretary said anyone opposed to pipelines and tankers was “against Canada.”  When asked to withdraw the remark as un-parliamentary, she refused.

The legislative juggernaut, C-38, repealed the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, replacing a coherent piece of legislation with a discretionary formula for confusion, conflict and court cases.  The gutting of the Fisheries Act raised the ire of four former federal Ministers of Fisheries.  Environment Minister Peter Kent insulted the four former ministers, suggesting they had not read the Act.  Mulroney era Minister Tom Siddon showed up to testify before the sub-committee on Finance and in short order made it clear he may be the only Minister who has read the act.  While Fisheries Minister Keith Ashfield tried to claim the new Fisheries Act will improve habitat protection, the assault to habitat is real, underscored by the subsequent lay-off notices to all DFO habitat officers in British Columbia. The National Round Table on the Environment and Economy is scrapped.  The Species at Risk Act and Navigable Waters Protection Act amended to allow the National Energy Board to assume jurisdiction of endangered species or navigable waters are in the way of any pipeline.

Basic science and monitoring is being savaged with the end of funding to the Canadian Foundation of Climate and Atmospheric Science, elimination of the Adaptation research group within Environment Canada, the cuts to ozone monitoring, the closure of the Polar Arctic and Environmental Laboratory (PEARL) in Eureka, the sale of the 58 lakes in the globally unique Experimental Lakes Area near Kenora, Ontario, the elimination of the marine contaminants programme within DFO, the loss of scientists in Natural Resources Canada to study ice cores data (and the hope to find a university with a large fridge willing to take the 80,000 year ice core record Canada’s government no longer wants), the end of monitoring smoke stack emissions, cut backs in the Canada Oil and Gas research group in Halifax, and cuts at NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada) resulting in the closing of the Yukon Research Lab at Yukon College in Whitehorse.

The thin end of the wedge of privatization has hit National Parks – first Jasper and then the hot springs at Banff, while cuts to ecological staff in the parks compelled former Deputy Minister Jacques Gerin to call on Harper to stop gutting National Parks.

It is a blitzkrieg of bad news as cut-backs and programme cancellation hit the core areas of federal responsibility to protect nature.  The multi-faceted assault has the effect of blinding media and the public to the largest threat.  In 2012, Canada still has no plan to address the threat of climate change.

While Stephen Harper has succeeded in dramatically reducing the Canadian media coverage of climate science through the muzzling of government scientists, the atmosphere does not seem to have gotten the memo.  Around the world, the force and frequency of severe weather events has woken up even the mainstream US media.  Fires, floods, tornadoes, heat waves are wreaking havoc on agriculture and running up the bills to the insurance industry.  The culprit for much of this year’s strange weather phenomenon is the rapidly warming Arctic.  As the Arctic warms the differential in temperature between the Arctic and the Equator becomes less pronounced. That causes the jet stream to lose its straight and fast course. (Francis, Vavrus study, Rutgers/Univ of Wisconsin). Slowing down, it has allowed large low pressure systems and high pressure systems to sit for far longer periods than normal in one place —  causing flooding in the low pressure zones and heat waves and fires in the high zones.

Loss of agriculture, losses to floods and fires also cost the economy, as well as human lives. Despite the Prime Minister’s attempts to destroy the collection of data, the evidence of the climate crisis is all around us.  We are sabotaging our children’s future – but what does it matter as long as the bitumen flows?

Elizabeth May is the Member of Parliament for Saanich-Gulf Islands and Leader of the Green Party of Canada.

First published in the Hill Times.

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The archives of the Government of Canada are full of information from regimes that are no longer being used. The information is available for research. I really find it troubling that this key point is so hard to communicate.

Guy Lauzon: Mr. Speaker, we know that the truth of the matter is the data is totally ineffective. Police officers have told me. These are the police officers who put my signs on their lawns and on other people’s lawns. They tell me the information is totally incorrect. It is not reliable.

Why would one want to keep information that is totally useless, wasteful and way too costly?

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Speaking more generally to the bill, I remember where the bill came from. We all recall the killings at École Polytechnique and the great demand by Canadians from coast to coast that we act to take greater steps to control the use of weapons in crimes of violence.

One of the witnesses before the committee back in November of last year, Nathalie Provost, was one of those who had been shot at École Polytechnique. I wish to quote from some of her evidence:

I was injured on December 6, 1989, at the École Polytechnique by a shot with a semi-automatic rifle while other more seriously wounded students died around me. Long guns are dangerous, as I know only too well.

If we pass this bill, we will abandon a lot of work done by many Canadians who were friends and families of the victims, but more so, those across the country who recognized the risk and realized we should take action.

That is not to say that the long gun registry has been perfect. It is not to say that it was implemented in ways that made all Canadians confident in the system. I believe there would have been, had there been an occasion for compromise, an opportunity for those who had legitimate concerns to see changes made to this bill.

Here, I recognize that for members of the Conservative party, and for two members of the New Democratic Party who chose as a matter of conscience to vote with the Conservatives on this bill, there are aspects of the way the long gun registry has been created that create concern. For members of the Green Party, I have heard from a lot of people in rural areas who would like to see the legislation changed. However, the circumstances were such that we were forced to be for or against the bill, with no compromise. There was no room for us to see how we could maintain a registry so that we would know where semi-automatic weapons were, and know which guns were used by snipers, and know if they were sawed-off shotguns, so that we would know where these arms were and that if they were legal weapons in Canada that had to be registered, we could maintain that registry.

I am afraid that in the haste to kill the long gun registry, because it has been such a rallying cry for the Conservative party, it has moved too fast. This is not the first time they have done that. It has moved so fast that it has ignored the implications confirmed to us by the RCMP, that in removing the long gun registry we are now moving backwards to a point farther back than where we were before this bill was passed. We are going back more than 30 years and losing the requirement that a person who buys a weapon must ensure at the point of sale that the purchase is registered, so that the police will know that someone has a weapon. We have absolutely wiped out the registration for a whole category of weapons, including the kind of gun that was used at the massacre at École Polytechnique and the kind of weapon that was used at the CEGEP at Macdonald College.

Moving too rapidly like this, and not thinking things through because the goals have become much more geared by spin doctors than by criminal law analysts, is leading to our having bad legislation passed. I think we should now ask at report stage that we rethink this. The opportunity is a brief one: it comes down to 10 amendments put forward by members of the official opposition, the Green party, and the Bloc, as seconded by members of all parties on the opposition benches. They are saying that we should just take this chance to think this through whether we can, by deleting the sections that create unacceptable situations, and provide a way to lessen the negative impact of this legislation.

I wish we could have started this over, bearing in mind the concerns of so many witnesses before the House of Commons committee. I am reminded very much of the importance of the evidence by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. It pointed out very clearly in its evidence that there was a significant preventative and investigational value to law enforcement and the communities it serves in having the long gun registry. It pointed out that, yes, there has been over-spending. We certainly know that much more was invested in setting up the long gun registry than needed to be done. It certainly went over budget, but that money is all sunk costs. The annual functioning of the long gun registry now, as confirmed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigation, and confirmed by the Canadian Association of Canadian Chiefs of Police, is cost effective.

We have a registry now that is working and that law enforcement officials have reasons to use. If we look to the most recent report of the RCMP, the 2010 report that came out after the House adjourned for Christmas and the New Year, it again confirms that this registry is being used by law enforcement officials. It is being used more than ever before. It is being found to be cost effective.

If ever there was a time for members of the Conservative Party who are concerned about crime on our streets to pause and consider, this would be it. As my colleague from the Bloc Québécois just pointed out, when the registry is functioning and a long gun has been registered, it reduces the likelihood that someone will steal it. It is traceable and trackable. It actually reduces the risk of crime to legitimate legal gun owners.

We also know it provides police with the tools to avoid a conflict when responding to a domestic violence situation if they know there is a long gun present in the home. Gatineau police chief Mario Harel testified that the current registry is “a reasonable balance between the exercise of an individual privilege and the broader right of society to be safe”.

Since the House adjourned at Christmastime, there has been greater and greater evidence that this bill has moved too quickly and we are losing the opportunity to keep Canadians safe. The venerable mayor of Mississauga, Hazel McCallion, in mid-December called for a reconsideration of scrapping the long gun registry as it became quite clear that more weapons would not be traceable at all through the failure to recreate the existing registrations that were set aside when the superior registrations under the long gun registry came into effect.

The rush to kill the registry is borne more out of a visceral hatred for the fact it was created at all than for sensible public policy. There is a middle ground. In their speed and ideological vengeance toward the previous Liberal government which brought in the long gun registry, I am afraid my colleagues and friends in the Conservative Party are moving too quickly.

It is time to do as much as we can at report stage and pass all the amendments. I would plead with Conservative Party members to pass Motions Nos. 1 through 10. This would go a considerable way toward improving this legislation. I beg colleagues on all sides of the House with constituents in rural areas, hunters, farmers and those driven by a concern for the safety of women and knowing that passing this legislation would put women’s lives at risk, to take the chance and pass these amendments.

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I want to pursue that with the hon. member for Palliser. It is actually current federal law that materials produced through the legislative process remain in our archives. Privacy is protected. This is the normal course of affairs. It is really disturbing to people in the field of archivists and historians to see data destroyed.

Names would not be used but the historical data is valuable. Does the government realize it is changing public policy in a fundamental way?

Mr. Ray Boughen: Mr. Speaker, again I would share with the member that the data is suspect in terms of accuracy. The data has not been kept up to date. It is data that belongs to the federal government, not to the provincial governments. If the federal government chooses not to share that data, then it is certainly within its rights.

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Mr. Dennis Bevington: Mr. Speaker, I will take that question under advisement. Any time data and records are destroyed with no purpose other than to sort of cast it off in a way that is emotional rather than rational, then I am against it.

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At this point, as the registry is about to be ended, does the member agree there is money invested in the data and that it would cost money to destroy it? As long as some provinces would like access to it, should we not keep that data available for a period of years so that provinces can assess whether their law enforcement agencies would like to continue to have access to it?

Mrs. Cheryl Gallant: Mr. Speaker, the answer to the question is absolutely not.

My constituents and people across Canada want to see the information destroyed and deleted. As it is, with the passage of time, even within days of receiving the information at the Firearms Centre, the information is outdated. This is what police officers tell us. This bill is what our constituents want.

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