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From the NFA Nov.6/2002
Here is the text of a speech and the debate given on 29 October 2002 in the Senate on Bill C-10

The Speaker is Senator Anne Cools.l
 

Hon. Anne C. Cools: I rise to speak to second reading of Bill C- 10 to amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals and firearms) and the Firearms Act. In 1995, the government and then Minister of Justice Allan Rock placed Bill C-68, the Firearms Act, before us. That bill passed despite strong opposition from many members of the House of Commons and senators, myself included. In fact, here in the Senate, the government supporters refused to allow any amendments to Bill C-68. Since then, this new Firearms Act has proved to be a complete failure.
 
     Politically, its adoption cost the Liberal government many House of Commons seats and has caused what may be irreparable damage in Western and Eastern Canada, particularly in Alberta. Many Liberal members of Parliament now regret their support of the bill. One such member gave a speech in Ottawa to the Financial Management Institute on October 22, 2002. The member for Sarnia-Lambton, Mr. Roger Gallaway, stated: A good example of unchecked policy nonsense becoming law is the federal gun registry, a piece of legislation I today regrettably supported. As a policy framework the objectives of that bill were handed over holus bolus to the ``experts'' at the federal Firearms Centre. For 85 million dollars, according to the testimony of  departmental experts, a gun registry would be put in place
that would trace the flow of guns in Canada. This would be a real check on the flow of weapons to those with criminal tendencies. Several years and perhaps one billion dollars later the bill is a shambles - it is a joke. You in this room know something about financial projections, flow sheets, costing and estimates. Can you imagine being out on an estimate by 1250 per cent or being twelve and a half times wrong?
 
   The Edmonton Sun reported on Mr. Gallaway's speech in an October 23 article by Andrea Sands headlined "Grit MP blasts gun legislation'' and in another article by Mike Jenkinson on October 24 headlined, ``Roger That, Roger.'' There are many members of Parliament like Mr. Gallaway.
However, their concerns are unheard today as they were unheard in 1995.Honourable senators, the extravagant cost of Bill C-68, and particularly the firearms registry, has been repeatedly raised in the Senate and in Senate committees, all with no response from the current or former Minister of Justice. On November 21, 2001, in the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance, during an examination of the Supplementary Estimates (A) 2001-02, the witnesses were Treasury Board officials. Senator Terry Stratton asked a question of Mr. Richard Neville, the Deputy Comptroller General of the Treasury Board Secretariat, saying: When will we quit spending money on guns? What are we at now as a total number? You are now asking for a staggering sum of $158.6 million in new appropriations. The minister
responsible at the time - the Minister of Justice, Mr. Rock - sat in that very chair and promised us that it would be no more than $85 million. What are we at now?
(1530)
Senator Stratton added:
The concern I have is that this is $689 million, which is virtually $600 million more than the minister promised it would be. How can someone be that incredibly wrong? Honourable senators, the National Finance Committee's tenth report presented in the Senate on December 4, 2001 reported on this burgeoning expenditure on the firearms program and on senators' concerns. It read: The Committee noted that additional funding in the order of  $158.6 million (an increase of 51.5 per cent) is required by
the Department of Justice to cover its operating expenditures. The largest proportion of the increase ($90.5 million) is dedicated to the Canadian Firearms Program. A smaller but significant amount of $26.6 million is allocated to cover the additional cost for unique legal cases. The costs surrounding the Firearms Control Program continue to be of concern to Senators. Since inception, the overall cost
of implementing the program, including current planned spending, will reach $689.67 million.
On December 11, 2001, Senator Lowell Murray, the Chairman of the National Finance Committee, while speaking in the Senate to the motion for the adoption of that tenth report said:..the officials let us know that this would bring the overall cost of the program to $689.6 million. It is reaching for $700 million. This is a program in respect of which Parliament and the country was told by the then Minister of Justice, Mr. Rock, that it would cost $80 million and would be recoverable.Honourable senators, this ministry ignores senators' concerns and Senate reports. Honourable senators, the Minister of Justice and the government have never accounted for this and have never provided any explanation to Parliament. They do not seem to think it is their duty. Further, they are now galloping forward with new amendments to this bad legislation and are about to create a firearms commissioner in Bill C-10. This
is unconscionable.

    On October 22, 2002 the government sponsor of Bill C-10 in the Senate, Senator Mobina Jaffer, adopted the posture that was held in 1995 by the then Minister of Justice, Allan Rock, and the then Secretary of State for the Status of Women, Sheila Finestone. This government's approach was that
the firearms program was a function of the oppression of women, particularly women's risk for domestic violence and homicide from men, their spouses and mates. The government's gender feminist mantra of 1995 was that Canadian women live in a constant state of fear of imminent death inflicted by
men with firearms in their homes. This mantra was repeated by the government supporters in certain radical gender feminist organizations as they were trotted out, one after the other. Senator Jaffer is relying on the tired and fallacious assertions that evil, vice, aggression and violence are the domain of men, and that virtue, goodness and light are that of women. The gender feminist assertion is that women are morally superior to men, and that men are morally inferior to women, or that men are morally
defective. In 1995, Minister Rock told us repeatedly that firearms was a gender issue, a women's issue, and that spousal and domestic violence against women was a major reason for Bill C-68 and the firearms registration scheme.

     On April 13, 1995 the Toronto Sun reported on Minister Rock's meeting with the Ontario Women's Liberal Commission. The article headlined, ``Women at risk: Rock,'' and quoted Minister Rock as saying:There are women who are at risk in their homes and police didn't have the information or the tools to protect them.That is why they needed the tools to register all firearms. Sheila Finestone, the then Secretary of State for the Status of Women, also echoed this. On December 6, 1994, in her news
release titled, ``Government committed to better protection for women and children,'' Mrs. Finestone said, ``Firearms control is a life and death issue for women in Canada.'' The debate on Bill C-68 was falsely and wrongly framed as a gender issue. The debate was permeated with emotionally-laden appeals to our natural abhorrence of violence, and to our natural repugnance of violence in intimate and family relations. These draconian measures were advanced amidst a swirl of hollow and false assumptions
couched in the notion that women must be protected from men and from the patriarchy. At the time, honourable senators will remember, I described it as, ``patriarchal nonsense.'' The rights and liberties of Canadians have been violated in the name of misguided policy, policy that is mere social engineering built on a foundation of scientific fiction. Social engineering and gender feminist ideology had been the
base of this public policy. It is therefore, honourable senators, no surprise that these policies and laws are failing and collapsing under their own weight of fiction.

    Honourable senators, on October 22, 2002 Senator Jaffer told us that, ``A vast majority of domestic homicides are committed with rifles and shotguns.'' Does she mean more than half of what, of 5, 10, 100 or 10,000 persons? She also said, ``This is why any practical approach to domestic violence must include proactive action regarding shotguns and rifles.''Such language is statistically and scientifically vague and
elastic, but is emotionally provocative. Such vagueness obfuscates and confounds the issue, issues that are difficult and complex. Further, it is a difficult task to discover the actual numbers of domestic homicides by firearms from gender feminist advocates, or from ministers of the Crown.
I have queried feminist advocates and cabinet ministers and even Senator Jaffer, trying to find out the actual quantum of women about whom they make these claims; in short, to discover the actual number of women.Honourable senators, I shall now record the actual numbers of homicides obtained from Statistics Canada's Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics for the year 1994, which data was the most current data when Bill C-68 was then before the Senate. In 1994, the total number of women killed by spouses
or intimate partners was 77; that is, killed by all methods of killing. Of that 77, the actual number of women killed by shooting, by firearms, by spouses or intimate partners was 23. Twenty-three, honourable senators, is this magical number. Honourable senators, I want you to know that I spent many
hours, days and weeks sieving through Statistics Canada data to obtain that number. It was a number that if you looked through the entire debate on Bill C-68, you would never find it except in my speeches.
Statistics Canada defined ``spousal and other intimates'' as ``spouse, legal and common-law, separated, divorced, boyfriends, extramarital lovers and estranged lovers.'' Honourable senators, in total of 77 women were killed by  spousal and intimates in 1994. The grand total of all homicides by all causes was 596. Of that 596, 196 were  killed by firearms, that is, by shooting. Therefore, simple Grade 1 arithmetic tells us that 400 homicides were committed not by shooting, a figure double that by firearms. Honourable senators, I shall provide a breakdown of the causes of homicides for that 400. Of this figure of 400, 154
were killed by stabbing, 106 by beating, 83 by strangulation, 51 by other means, and 6 from unknown causes.  Of these 196 homicides by shooting, I wish to further say that 157 were males and 39 were females. Of the 39 females killed by shooting, as I said before, 23 were killed by  either a spousal and other intimate using a firearm. Therefore, when Senator Jaffer said, in her context of violence against women, because this debate seems to always go forward in the context of violence against women, ``A
vast majority of domestic homicides are committed with rifles and shotguns,'' the imagery conjured up is of hundreds, if not thousands of women. In fact, in 1994, of the total 77 women killed by spousal and other intimates, 23 were killed by firearms by their spousal and other intimates.
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Honourable senators, I invite the Minister of Justice to address this question of domestic homicides of women by using science, and without using social engineering and without using gender ideology. In 1995, Minister Rock expected us to believe that Bill C-68 came about as a result of the terrible murders of women. The fact is that 157 men were murdered by the same terrible means. Let us understand that what we are talking about here is a terrible thing. In fact, the evidence shows that men are shot in far greater numbers than are women, and are killed in greater numbers by other means as well. The evidence also shows that most homicides do not involve firearms but are by other means, as explained earlier, stabbings,human hands, beatings and so on. I invite the current Minister of Justice, Mr. Cauchon, in our committee hearings on Bill C-10, to place the foundation of this policy before the Senate, because it is clear that the protection of women from their mates is not now and never has been the reason for Bill C-68 or is not now the reason for the amendments contained in Bill C-10. The evidence presented by the government does not support this;in fact, the evidence points in the opposite direction.
Honourable senators, about domestic violence, I shall say here that the American scholars of domestic violence, being Drs. Murray Straus, Richard Gelles, Susan Steinmetz and Jan Stets, all tell us that the domestic assault rates of men and women are equal and that mutuality, symmetry and reciprocity are the norm - men and women hit each other at equal rates. The research by these scholars has found that
men and women initiate and perpetrate violence at the same rates. Their data and conclusions have been replicated and confirmed in Canada by the Canadian scholars of domestic violence, particularly the research of Drs. Merlin Brinkerhoff, Kim Bartholomew, Donald Dutton, Eugen Lupri and Reena Sommers. Honourable senators, in 1971, my dear friend and associate Erin Pizzey opened the very first shelter in the world for battered women. She did this in Chiswick, near London, England. In 1974, she authored the famous book Scream Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear. In the July 5, 1998, United Kingdom's Observer newspaper, an article entitled ``Men are strong, men are bullies and men are violent. Men don't cry when their wives beat them up - this is the unreported face of domestic violence,'' Erin Pizzey wrote about the women at her refuge. She said: ..of the first 100 coming into the refuge, 62 were as violent as the partners they had left. Honourable senators know that Erin Pizzey and I were two of the world's front-runners in the field of domestic violence. Honourable senators, may I have leave to complete my remarks?
The Hon. the Speaker: Is leave granted, honourable senators? Hon. Senators: Agreed.
Senator Cools: Honourable senators, it is time -The Hon. the Speaker: Senator Cools, Senator Robichaud has stood.
[Translation]
Hon. Fernand Robichaud (Deputy Leader of the Government): Honourable senators, I am in favour of granting whatever time the Honourable Senator Cools needs to conclude her remarks.
[English]
Hon. Herbert O. Sparrow: Is His Honour including questions that may be asked? The Hon. the Speaker: No. The effect of Senator Robichaud's condition, in effect, of granting leave - his was the only
voice that I heard - was that the time is extended for Senator Cools to complete her remarks. My interpretation of that would be that it would not include questions. Senator Taylor: Could His Honour repeat that? The Hon. the Speaker: There are some other senators who wish to -
Senator Cools: I should like to know the basis of the rules in this place for any senator's comments to be interrupted in this way by a debate. I should like to know the basis in these rules, if it could perhaps be explained to me.The Hon. the Speaker: The situation we find ourselves in, Senator Cools, is that at the expiry of your time I asked honourable senators - to be more precise, you asked honourable senators - if leave would be granted for you to continue. Senator Robichaud -Senator Cools: That was granted, Your Honour. It seems to me that the rules provide for a -The Hon. the Speaker: Senator Cools, I would ask you to let me complete my comments, which are in response to your question to me.
Senator Cools: This is a joke. The Hon. the Speaker: Senator Robichaud rose. The practice here is if there is a dissenting voice to the request for leave, leave is not granted and as such there would be no
permission to continue. I believe Senator Robichaud clearly stated that he was in agreement to give leave for you to finish your remarks. I could be wrong; therefore, I hope Senator Robichaud will rise, when I take my seat, to correct me if I am wrong. Senator Sparrow then rose to ask whether the interpretation I have just given was correct, and, in effect, I said yes to Senator Sparrow. Senator Prud'homme has risen, and I would give him an opportunity to be heard because really what we
are looking at, Senator Cools, is a question of whether you are to be given leave to continue and, if so, whether there are conditions attached, and I gather that there are. Senator Prud'homme, did you wish to speak and then I will give the floor to Senator Cools on this matter? Hon. Marcel Prud'homme: Honourable senators, I shall be brief. I would have hoped that Senator Robichaud, knowing
how strongly some senators feel about this, would also include questions. I will not have any questions; I will speak in due time. However, this place is a house of debate, and this is a very important piece of legislation, as are many others. Some senators have stronger views than others and, as such, will take a little longer. I think senators have understood that by agreeing to grant leave. However, questions are also very important in order to complete a good debate, and I am sure Senator Robichaud will agree that
questions will be included.The Hon. the Speaker: Senator Cools is certainly right that this is not a matter for debate. In any event, Senator Robichaud has been invited to reconsider his position.
[Translation]
Senator Robichaud: Honourable senators, having to rise from time to time to give consent is not something I am fond of doing. In order to ensure that as many senators as possible can speak, we have accepted this practice, however. When an honourable senator has nearly finished speaking, we agree to give him or her a little longer so that he or she can finish. I have had a lot of comments on this. We have a duty to be consistent, if we want to continue this practice and if we do not want the debates to go on and on. For consistency, I must stick with the consent, with reservations, I have just given.
[English]
The Hon. the Speaker: It is not a debateable matter, Senator Sparrow. However, because you are a very senior senator, I will hear you. Senator Sparrow: Perhaps Senator Cools might permit me -
Senator Cools: I am going - The Hon. the Speaker: Senator Cools, you have leave to
proceed to finish your remarks. Senator Cools: I think what is going on here is extremely
improper and unparliamentary. The fact of the matter is that the rules are very clear, which is that if a senator wishes to have an extension of time he or she puts a question to the rest of the Senate, to all the senators, not to the Speaker and not to the Deputy Leader of the Government.
(1550)
The question is one to be resolved between the individual senator and the rest of the senators. I put my question as clearly as I could to honourable senators. I distinctly heard them give consent. As far as I am concerned, that was the end of the matter. At that point I should have been permitted to complete my remarks in peace without the record showing a collection of this senator and that senator jumping up and down and putting in a few words during a speech that I took some considerable time to prepare.
Honourable senators, the fact is that we are here to debate. If some honourable senators do not want to endure a bit of debate, that is okay, they can leave. If they do not want to listen to other senators, they can leave. Some Hon. Senators: Hear, hear!
Senator Cools: The chamber is for those who wish to debate issues. This is a fundamental issue that has been put before us. There are radical and revolutionary proposals in this bill. Senator Watt was absolutely right when he spoke about it. This is a bill that is deserving, demanding and compelling of our attention. As far as I am concerned, the time that we are giving it is insufficient. Honourable senators, I was talking about domestic violence. When you read your interjections on the record, you will see how
poorly it looks. Honourable senators, I was talking about Bill C-10 and the foundations of Bill C-10 and Bill C-68. I was speaking on the issues of the phenomenon of social engineering and the manipulation and use of the terrible tragedy that is domestic violence as a means of advancing what I would consider to be certain social engineering. Honourable senators, it is time for this government to admit
that aggression, violence and homicide are human problems and not gender problems. It is time for the Minister of Justice to admit that this failed gun registration policy is not about public safety but, rather, about a government seeking inordinate control and surveillance over its citizens, and about a government seeking to establish itself as the sole custodian of firearms and the sole custodian of
the instruments of force, even unto that government destroying civil liberties, destroying the rural ways of life and destroying Canadians' natural interaction with nature and outdoors as the hunters and the anglers have experienced for centuries. Honourable senators, I move now to those clauses of Bill
C-10 that will address cruelty to animals and will amend the Criminal Code. I operate on the assumption that cruelty to animals and the violation of animals is something that concerns us all very deeply. I think that all honourable senators would be concerned with humane responses. Of particular interest are the issues that Senator Joyal raised before, namely, the new provisions of the Criminal Code that Bill C-10 will create and, in particular, the new kind and quality of offences. Currently, the Criminal Code treats of offences against the person and treats of offences against property. Currently, the sections on property
include provisions about cruelty to animals. I believe those provisions are dealt with around section 446 of the code. Bill C-10 will create a new category of offended, that being animals, and it will also create the consequent offences against animals. Bill C-10 proposes sentences for these new offences against animals that will match sentences for crimes such as infanticide, with its maximum penalty of five
years. This bill provides that there would be a maximum penalty of five years for particular crimes against animals, while the same Criminal Code provides no protection whatsoever for crimes against pre-born human children. This approximation will, of necessity, demand an examination of  the relationship between these new animal provisions and the absence of provisions in the Criminal Code for the protection of pre-born children. Honourable senators, it is time to examine these important
questions and to study the role of the Criminal Code in protecting animals, in protecting pre-born humans and in protecting the newly born. The Hon. the Speaker: Honourable Senator Tkachuk, I believe that the record is clear. Senator Robichaud rose when leave was asked to extend Senator Cools' time, and he made it clear at that time and in a subsequent intervention that leave was granted on condition that it was leave only for Senator Cools to complete her remarks. If Senator Cools wishes to ask for further leave, I suppose that would be in order. Senator Cools: I understand that senators would like to ask me questions. I would be happy to receive those questions, and I would be happy to answer.
The Hon. the Speaker: Is leave granted for questions to Senator Cools? Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Hon. the Speaker: Leave is granted. Hon. David Tkachuk: When the honourable senator raised the
issue of the incidence of the commission of murder in 1994, I believe she said that 23 women were murdered by firearms. Senator Cools: By spousal and other intimates. Senator Tkachuk: Of that 23, does the honourable senator have the numbers as to the murders that were committed by revolvers or hands guns versus long guns? We already have one of the most stringent firearm protection practises for
handguns in the world. Senator Cools: Yes, we do, and I am sure that most of us are very well aware that this country already has probably one of the most stringent gun control regimens. I am aware of
the number the honourable gentleman is asking about, since I did some research into that in the past. However, I do not have it here with me, although I do have just about everything else.
Senator Tkachuk: If that information could be forwarded to my office, I would appreciate it.
Senator Cools: I would be happy to do that. Honourable senators should clearly understand that I was dealing with 1994 statistics because that was the last complete year of data that was available at the time Bill C-68 was introduced in the Senate. The data at the time was current. If you will recall, I said in my remarks just a few moments ago that the number of women killed by firearms by intimates was 23.
Another bit of data that showed up in that same year was that the number of babies killed under age 12 months was 27. I have heard numbers like, ``60 per cent of,'' and phrases such as ``a great majority of.'' Is it 60 per cent of 3 or 60 per cent of 10,000?'' However, when I studied mathematics and when I studied these kinds of phenomena, I was always taught that proportion is only worth something if you are given the absolute number. Therefore, when you hear 60 per cent of this, it could be 60 per cent of two, or six, or three. It would be helpful if the government, in particular the Minister of Justice, would try to clarify this record once and for all. There is no subject matter on which there is more confusion and opprobrium in this country than on this question of domestic violence. The Government of Canada, right now in the person of Minister Cauchon, has a duty to clean the slate and to put the proper facts before us. I have never been able to understand how Minister Rock was so successfully able to convince so many members of Parliament and senators in this chamber that the question of firearms was a gender question, when the data shows that the clear majority of people afflicted or dying by firearms are men.
I did not address the number of firearm deaths by suicide. Those are murders, too. We are now living in a community that seems to have had its history vanish and has separated itself or ruptured itself from its own legal tradition. The fact of the matter is that that is what suicide is. I can see Senator Kinsella looking at it. It was called self-murder and until quite recently it was illegal.
(1600)
Volumes have been written on the phenomenon that suicide is self-murder, and every one of us has a collective public interest in each other's lives. I did not touch on that at all.
Honourable senators, it would be helpful if the minister could attempt to bring some clarity to this dark area because it is such a painful area. Make no mistake. I worked in the field of domestic violence for many years, and it is a difficult and unpleasant area. Most of us are shocked and horrified by it. When a piece of legislation is advanced in that context, it makes it difficult for opponents to cut through the confusion. The confusion has been vast, as has the obfuscation. I am hoping that this committee, under the chairmanship of Senator Furey, will use that very able scalpel mind of a chairman to cut through much of the rubbish. Senator Sparrow: The honourable senator made reference to the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance and perhaps some other committees working on this matter. She
mentioned that there would be some cost recovery so that the program would not cost the taxpayer any money. Senator Stratton: Eighty million dollars. Senator Sparrow: My concern is that cost recovery is still a tax on the people. They have to pay for that expense. The government can suggest that the program will not cost the people anything because it is based cost recovery. I have heard that comment on other occasions, but it is a false premise. Cost recovery is a tax on the people. Was that issue considered in your committee? Senator Cools: Honourable senators, I tend to agree with
Senator Sparrow on that point. That is a fact. In 1995, the issue of partial or some sort of cost recovery was raised again and again. In point of fact, I do not think the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance has looked at that particular issue directly. However, I would be happy to ensure that we look at it during the next round of studying the Main Estimates. The real point to be made is that the government, in the form of the Minister of Justice, Mr. Rock, came before various committees, our national and Senate caucuses and said, essentially, that those who do not like it can hold their noses and vote. It will be a program, it will be done quickly and it will only cost this amount. The fact of the matter is that the program is not costing that amount. The evidence is that the cost is now up to $1 billion and climbing, and not a single person in government is taking responsibility for this fact. There will be a time
in this country when we will have to begin to admit that there must be responsible government or to go the other way and unmask the lie that there is no responsible government in this country. One would think that any minister of the Crown, when presented with a Senate committee report like that, would be on his feet, running to Parliament to provide explanation. Not so. Honourable senators, this situation is unique. Governments shrug, as do ministers, and move on as if we do not exist. One can raise these issues again and again, committees can articulate them again and again, reports can state them
again and again, and governments simply ignore us, which is getting tiresome.

I Have Also received the following links and information About Anne that is well worth reading

Dear Liberal gun farce: I think you should definitely include in your link to Anne Cools this link to a 1995 speech from Anne Cools that shows her long history speaking out against her own party`s anti gun policy C68 as its affectionately known. During the last election I printed this off along with a 2nd paper from the Association of Women Shooters of Canada also from 1995 and handed it to the Liberal quif now representing my riding , a 1st time candidate at that time now running of course for re-election, and told him this is why I`ll never vote Liberal. Also this next link is for Anne Cools biography as posted on her website which shows her credentials to speak about domestic violence. I`ve read many of the transcripts from 1995 from the "women`s groups" who appeared in front of the Senate and Commons to argue in favour of C68 labelling it a womans issue and other such absolute crap. http://sen.parl.gc.ca/acools/Biography.htm Here`s the link to the AWSC 1995 paper they prepared in 1995 to be heard by the Senate but weren`t invited in but the Wendy`s and other supporters of this social re-engineering cancer, C68, were. http://www.sharongunclub.org/awsc03.html

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