March 23, 2010

Mr. Anderson: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Now, right after I just said all these nice things about the Justice minister and all the great legislation that she’s bringing forth, I’m going to say that I totally disagree with this next bill, Bill 12, the body amour act.

You know, it’s a difficult balance that you need to create in society between fighting crime and maintaining civil liberties. There’s a very delicate balance, and you can really get it out of whack if you start going down a certain track. This bill does that. I know that, obviously, the police are asking for this, and I respect that position. I respect that they want that. The police also asked for the gun registry. They’re in favour of that as well. We always want to make sure we’re giving the police, our men and women in uniform, the tools that they need to do their job and to keep us safe, but we can go over the line, and this bill takes us over that line, in my view.

We just fought as a province for years along with other governments to repeal the long gun registry, and the reason we did that is because we found that it was a completely ineffective tool for keeping guns out of the hands of criminals. All it did is implement a very onerous and wasteful bureaucracy on your average farmer or gun owner. There was just no reason for it. It didn’t take guns out of the hands of criminals, so it was a huge expense and for nothing in return.

This bill essentially does the same thing as the gun registry. You cannot own body armour unless you have a permit. You know, it’s funny, the Education minister making light: who wears body armour? I actually know a couple of women that do when they go for walks. It’s actually true. It’s not Kevlar, but it’s a stab-proof vest that they use. They’re worried, of course, of being taken advantage of and being stabbed. These are people I know, so there are people that do it. If the Minister of Education doesn’t know anyone, I guess that’s the way it is, but some people do use this.

I guess my point is that, you know, we were so against the gun registry here because of how unnecessary it was and because it did infringe on our civil liberties and the rights of gun owners. We were against that, and that’s actually a weapon you can use to hurt somebody, a gun. I think that’s pretty clear. We’re going to, essentially, make it illegal to own body armour, which you cannot use as a weapon. What are you going to do? Throw the body armour at somebody? No. It’s not a weapon. It’s a purely defensive piece of equipment that you can use.

This, I believe, is an infringement on our civil liberties. This goes too far. We have the right in our society to protect ourselves; that simple. In Canada we have a little bit of a different way of doing it than the United States, where they’ve kind of taken it to the nth degree. We have bans on handguns, and that’s good. We have these other things, but there is still a line there. We still have civil liberties here with regard to the ability to protect ourselves.

Now, people say: oh, well, criminals go into bars or gangs go into bars, and they wear these vests, and that just intimidates people. Well, okay. If somebody is caught with a vest while they’re involved in a crime, when they’re assaulting somebody, when they’re involved in a drive-by shooting or whatever it is, or they start a bar fight and they have this on, sure. Put a penalty on that. Increase their sentence by two years. Make it something that aggravates the offence, whatever. You can do that. But you don’t ban protective vests from the average citizen. It goes way, way, way over the line.

What are we going to? Just because someone gets intimidated by something, we’re going to ban it? Like, the Minister of Infrastructure has got that big beard on, and that’s kind of intimidating. Are we going to ban big beards in bars? I mean, come on. It’s silly. You know, somebody comes in with a shirt hiked up here, and they’re showing off their muscles to everybody. That intimidates somebody, so we’re going to ban that? I mean, it’s just juvenile to do this.

Ms Pastoor: That sounds nice.

Mr. Anderson: That’s right. That would be a good thing. We would never want to ban that – right? – hon. Member for Lethbridge-East.

Anyway, I do think it is absolutely going over. You know, you’re taking a sledgehammer to this when all you need is a fly swatter. It just doesn’t make sense. I think that this government needs to think that through a little bit. There are people that this does affect. These are not the types of people that are going to come and march on the Legislature Grounds because some of them are embarrassed that they use the stuff, that they use the equipment, the protection. Some of the people have privacy issues. They don’t want to say: I wear a knife vest out. This isn’t as small a number of people as individuals in this Assembly might think. So that would be one thing.

In fact, you know, it’s funny. The person who invented Kevlar was actually a pizza delivery man, if you can believe it, by the name of Richard Davis in the 1970s. While delivering pizza, unfortunately, tragically – well, it was good that he survived this – he was attacked, and he ended up killing his attackers. There were three of them. He actually had a gun with him and ended up shooting them. I don’t know. For whatever reason it was – I would assume because he thought that that was not a very good thing to have to be forced to do – one of his solutions to that was establishing a company called Second Chance. He started it out of his garage in the 1970s, and since then he’s manufactured these vests, and they’ve saved thousands of lives of police officers and other people through the years. The very inventor of this invention did it because he was attacked in a public setting randomly, so he went about and did that.

You know, there are some pretty rough areas in some places in Calgary, in certain areas. If somebody wants to go for a walk and walk their dog and they’re worried because they think they might be targeted for whatever reason, should they not be able to wear that type of protection? What’s wrong with it? There’s nothing wrong with it, and I think that to ban it – I mean, it’s like the gun registry, too. Did the gun registry cause criminals not to have guns? Do you think that a gang member is going to go and register his Kevlar vest? I mean, come on. He’s not going to register his Kevlar vest. Why would he do that? Exactly. He’s not going to do it, so this is just a total bureaucratic waste of time.

An Hon. Member: Soft on crime.

Mr. Anderson: That’s right, hon. member. I am soft on crime. Exactly. That makes a lot of sense.

You know, it absolutely goes beyond the line. Let’s start bringing things back to where we are discussing what we should be doing that’s really going to stop crime. For example, why don’t we start talking about – oh, I don’t know – mandatory minimum sentences for some of our offences in this country? We’re talking about it. Well, let’s actually do something about it, okay?

An Hon. Member: That’s federal law.

Mr. Anderson: No, it’s not all federal. There are mandatory minimum sentences we could do here for certain offences. I’m thinking of drinking and driving, things like that. After you do it five times, maybe you should get some kind of minimum mandatory sentence for that, okay? There are things that we can do. Again, the Education minister doesn’t seem to know how serious drinking and driving is, which is a little alarming. We’ll definitely have to talk about that.

Going back to the subject matter of the bill. I’m assuming that’s why you’re on the edge of your seat. I think that we’ve got to realize that self-defence is a basic human right, and having a defensive piece of equipment – I mean, what are we going to do? What if people start wearing helmets into bars? Are we going to say that you can’t wear a helmet because it protects you in a fight? There are so many different things that you could say that you could apply this law to on other pieces of equipment. It doesn’t do the job. It will do nothing to help the safety of Albertans, nothing whatsoever. All it will do is waste money, and it will cause ordinary citizens to have to go through getting a permit and all that sort of thing: do I fall under one of these exemptions, blah, blah, blah? That’s all it’s going to do. It’s just going to annoy people, and it’s going to cost money.

Sometimes I feel I have to wear a Kevlar vest after being in here every day. I mean, it’s tough. Sometimes I’m worried. So we all fear for our safety once in a while, Mr. Speaker, and we’ve got to make sure that we protect that basic human right.

The money, too. Setting up any kind of permit system costs money. I don’t know how much this permit system will cost. If government is involved in it, I’m sure it’ll cost a lot. Whether it’s $100,000 or $1 million or $2 million or $3 million, let’s spend it on more police officers, or let’s increase the number of ICE teams that we have battling child pornography. I mean, let’s use the money in a way that’s actually going to help protect people, that’s actually going to help protect children and real individuals. You know what this is? This is a let’s do something to look like we’re doing something law. That’s what it is. You know: we’ve got to bring in a law and order agenda; we’ve got to do something that is impressive. So they bring this in, and it’s just painful to watch.

Mr. Hancock: It’s painful to listen to.

Mr. Anderson: Well, you can leave. You’re welcome to leave, Minister of Education. There’s nothing keeping you here if you don’t like what you’re hearing.

What I would say, too, going back to that earlier argument that was yelled across the way, is that we can actually spend this money improving our laws here; for example, drinking and driving. Yeah, it’s a Criminal Code offence. It’s also an offence under our traffic laws. That’s where you could actually do something provincially with mandatory rules and requirements to cause people to rethink some of their actions. Doing this just absolutely will have no effect whatsoever.

You know, I would challenge. I would say: can somebody explain to me on that side of the House how this is any different from the gun registry? Just what’s the difference other than with one you can shoot someone and kill them, and the other one is a purely defensive piece of equipment? What is the difference between asking someone to register their long gun and asking them to register their defensive vest? Are you in favour of the long gun registry? Come on, Minister. You know you’re not. So why on earth would you be in favour of a bill like this, which is essentially setting up a long gun registry for safety vests in Alberta? There’s no reason for this whatsoever.

I look forward to some of the questions. I know that the Minister of Education is probably raring to go with some questions. But I absolutely will be voting against this bill. I think it’s an infringement against civil liberties, and I think that there’s no reason why the average person shouldn’t be able to protect themselves using a stab vest or bulletproof vest or anything like that.

Thank you.

The Acting Speaker: Standing Order 29(2)(a) is available. The hon. Member for Calgary-North Hill.

Mr. Fawcett: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I find it funny that earlier on in the afternoon this member got up and was so concerned about what a bad province this was going to be if the government just kept spending money and money and money. I’m just wondering because, you know, it’s going to have a huge impact on the future of his children. I’m just wondering if he’s less concerned about the amount of money that the government is spending as opposed to some of the stuff that’s happening on our streets as far as gangs that are shooting each other.

I’m not sure this member honestly understands why these members wear these bulletproof vests. They don’t wear them to intimidate anybody. I don’t think a bulletproof vest intimidates anybody. They wear them because they go out there and they shoot and spray bullets everywhere in an attempt to kill each other. Unfortunately, we see a number of examples where innocent bystanders are hurt. I’m wondering: how does this jive? You’re talking about wanting to make Alberta a better place for your kids. Tell me: wouldn’t this make Alberta a better place for your kids to have this in place so that these guys couldn’t run around spraying bullets everywhere and killing innocent people?

Mr. Anderson: That was probably one of the most illogical arguments I’ve ever heard in my life, but I will attempt to address it. I notice that the hon. Member for Calgary-North Hill is talking a lot about kids lately. He brings them up a lot. I’m wondering if there’s something on his mind. He keeps bringing those things up.

You know, what he has to understand is that correlation is not causation. I think it’s funny that he would say that outlawing, essentially, or permitting bulletproof vests is going to somehow stop people from spraying bullets at each other in gangs. I mean, I don’t understand how on earth he makes the leap there.

You know, hopefully, one day if I want to have more kids, I’ll have a daughter. If that daughter was going out for a jog or out for a walk and she wanted to wear a stab vest or something like that, how would it make it better for me to make that more difficult for her to get that vest? I don’t understand what the correlation could possibly be between those two, between making Alberta safer and effectively making a vest registry. I’m completely clueless.

Obviously, the hon. member would like to see the gun registry kept in place because, surely, that would help with guns. I mean, those are exactly the same arguments that you hear from the Bloc Québécois and the Liberals. You hear those exact same arguments in favour of the gun registry that you’re hearing in favour of this bill. The only difference is that a vest isn’t dangerous to anybody, and a gun is. That’s the only difference between the two. I think that should answer the question regarding that. We should just be increasing the overall penalties that we impose on people for using those in a crime. That’s where we should be focusing our efforts.

Video

A Body Armour Ban Would Infringe on Peronal Liberties (Part 1)
Dim lights

A Body Armour Ban Would Infringe on Peronal Liberties (Part 2)
Dim lights

April 20, 2010

Mr. Anderson: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to reiterate my opposition to this bill. Again, I just don’t understand. The inconsistency just confuses me. I really do want to honestly hear a response to this from government members if any of them are willing to do it. I mean, most of the members on that side of the House, I would say the vast majority of them, opposed the long gun registry out of Ottawa. I know most, if not all, the rural MLAs certainly did. I’m assuming most of them over there – I don’t have, you know, the record about that for every single MLA, but my guess, my sense was that most of them, if not the vast majority of them, were opposed to that.Here we have a long gun registry in Canada that we’ve been fighting as a province against for a very long time. There, of course, you have it brought in by the eastern, federal Liberal Party, and they wanted every long gun to be registered. They thought that that would somehow curb crime and gun shootings in the cities or in the country. As we all know, it was a huge debacle. It was supposed to be just a few million dollars to set this registry up, and it turned into a billion-dollar boondoggle. It was a total failure. It didn’t do anything to curb crime, all that sort of thing. So we have this, and rightfully we were opposed to it as a province. Most of the MLAs, anyway, in this Assembly across the way were opposed to it. Now we move over to body armour. I have absolutely no problem with saying that if someone is using body armour in the furtherance of or carrying out of a crime or a gang shooting or something, I have absolutely no issue with tacking on an extra dollar amount or an extra jail time or whatever to say that that’s not allowable. I understand what the police are trying to achieve there, and I would support that.

How do we then jump from that, which is a good goal, a laudable goal, and say: “Look. You know what? In order to enforce this, we’re going to make sure that every single person who owns body armour has to license it.” It just doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. It’s the same issue. Criminals are not going to license their body armour. What gang member is going to go and license his body armour? It just doesn’t add up. It’s absolutely a contradiction to say that you oppose the gun registry, but you’re in favour of the body armour licensing registry. You’ve got, you know, some members saying: oh, the registry is different than licensing. No, it is not. It costs money to do this. You have to set up the process; you have to track it. We’re against the long gun registry, but we’re for a body armour registry. It makes no sense, Mr. Chair.

I’d like to hear from the hon. Member for Livingstone-Macleod on this issue, why he supports the body armour registry. I’d like to hear from the hon. minister of agriculture on why he supports the body armour registry. I definitely would love to hear from the Minister of Transportation on why he is in favour of the body armour registry and how he thinks this is any different from the long gun registry, which I know he’s opposed to. It just makes no sense. The Deputy Premier: I’d like to get his thoughts on it. The hon. Member for Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills: I want to know his thoughts on that. Obviously, I know he’s against the long gun registry. I know that. Why is he going to vote for this bill, or is he going to vote for this bill? The inconsistency is just through the roof. I understand what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to make it difficult. They don’t want people walking in, gang members walking into bars with body armour and intimidating everybody and all that sort of thing. I understand that. That’s fine. The answer to that is not to make everybody, all law-abiding citizens who want to use it . . . [interjection] Well, I know it’s difficult for someone like yourself, Minister, to understand, but there are a lot of people that make their living in very dangerous environments. For example, some people live in rough areas of town, and they feel better if they put on a vest because they think their 7-Eleven or somewhere might get ripped off. They might want to wear a piece of body armour. So now they have to register it? Come on. There’s no point to this.

Just because members of this Assembly don’t wear it doesn’t mean that others don’t want to wear it. I mean, there are websites you can go to and buy this stuff, so there’s obviously a market for it. You know, it’s not just police officers buying it. But the gang member who buys this stuff is not going to go and register it. That’s not what happened with the long gun registry. With the long gun registry at the very least you could say, well, at least you were registering something that could shoot somebody. Absolutely. A gun can obviously be used to kill somebody. There’s no doubt about that. So there was that excuse. It didn’t work. It was a bad idea. Most of us here were opposed to it. But at least you had that legitimate excuse that, yes, this is a weapon that can kill someone. But body armour? Mr. Chair, how is body armour going to kill somebody? Body armour is meant to protect people.

What are we going to register next? Are we going to register – I don’t know – knives? Are we going to register mace? You know, a young lady who wants to go jogging and likes to bring mace with her – I know my wife takes mace with her in her little pack when she’s out on her jog. And many, many people do the same thing. So why would we make that something you would need to register? You wouldn’t do it. It’s absolutely ridiculous that we’re taking something that is essentially a protective device, something that is meant to protect people’s lives, and we’re making it essentially something that people, law-abiding citizens, have to go and register. That’s certainly not the right thing to do by any stretch. Again, I’d like to hear from the various different ministers. I’d like to hear from the minister of housing. I know he was dead against the long gun registry, so why is he for the body armour licensing registry? Definitely the Member for Battle River-Wainwright was against the long gun registry. What’s changed, in his view, that he would support the body armour registry? It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.

It’s a boondoggle. It’s a waste of money. If we’re going to expend resources, we should be expending resources on hiring more officers. If we’re going to set aside however many millions of dollars it’s going to be to administer this, we should instead take that money and put it into new Internet child exploitation teams, ICE teams, in other words. We should put it into more officers. We should put it into other things. There are about 30 other law enforcement mechanisms that we should be putting money into rather than expending money on registering protective body armour. With that, I would like to get some answers from the government side. I don’t know if they will or not. At least just give me the justification for why you would support this bill, but you didn’t support the long gun registry. I find those positions to be very inconsistent.

Video

Why Shouldn't People Be Allowed to Protect Themselves? (Part 1)
Dim lights

April 20, 2010 (evening session)

Mr. Anderson: We’re on the bill, Bill 12. What I’d like to know from these individuals – and I hope that they’ll talk about it – is: why would you support disbanding the gun registry, yet you support what essentially is a body armour registry? It’s one thing to support a bill that is going to add an additional penalty to using body armour in the perpetration of a crime. I understand that. I can agree with that. That makes sense. It’s entirely another thing to say that we’ve got to take this body armour and that we’ve got to register it, for law abiding citizens to register it. It’s a waste of money. It’s a waste of resources. I just do not understand how a government on that side of the House can say over and over and over again, almost every time I’ve heard them talk about it, that they’re against the gun registry, that it’s a boondoggle, that criminals don’t register their guns, that it doesn’t cut down on crime, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, on and on and on. Great. I agree with all that. Then they turn around and they say in the same breath, “Oh, well, we’re going to support, essentially, a body armour registry,” where you have law-abiding citizens that need to register their body armour. They say: “Well, the police support it. The police support it.” Well, great. The police supported the gun registry, so what’s the difference?

I would like to know from this government: why the contradiction? It’s a clear contradiction. There’s no difference between registering and licensing; it’s the same blinking thing. You still have to go to the government and say that you have it and register it. It’s the same thing. So what’s the difference? Why do they not support the gun registry, yet they support a body armour registry? That’s the only part of the bill we have a problem with. That’s the only problem. No one in here is saying that we think gang members should be able to wear body armour around. We’re not saying that. We disagree with it. If they’re using it in the perpetration of a crime, a shooting, whatever, we totally agree. Why not outlaw it or ban it in nightclubs? If that’s a problem, ban it in nightclubs. Fine. I understand the reasoning behind that.

But then you go the next step. You take policing resources, that should be used for many of the initiatives that the hon. Justice minister has put forward, that are good initiatives – she wants to increase police on our streets. Fantastic. I agree with it. She wants to, you know, make sure that we have more sheriffs. Well, that’s the Solicitor General. That’s great. We want more ICE teams. That’s great. These are all great things. So why are we using money, especially when times are tight financially, to essentially create a body armour registry? Of course, it’s going to be integrated, but it’s still going to cost money. There’s no reason.

Criminals and gang members aren’t going to register their body armour. It’s ridiculous to think that they will. They won’t. They absolutely will not do that. The only people that this affects are law abiding citizens that for whatever reason feel they would like to, whether it’s in their job or whether it’s a woman that wants to wear a stab vest for whatever reason. Perhaps she has a hostile ex. I don’t know. There are a hundred reasons. The point is: why do we take that liberty away?

You know what? The government is right. There aren’t tens of thousands of Albertans that wear body armour. No one is saying that, but it does affect our personal liberty and a little bit more. It takes away an option that law-abiding citizens have, makes it more difficult for law-abiding citizens to protect themselves and to make a choice, to just make a choice. That’s not right. It’s also, like I said, a waste of taxpayer money. That’s the other issue. So there’s a liberty issue, and there’s also a waste of taxpayer dollars issue.

I keep asking the other members on that side, and I have yet to hear any excuse other than: oh, the police want it. Well, police wanted the long gun registry, too. We agree with the police, I think, in this House on lots of different things, on most things. We want to give them all the tools that we can to fight crime, but there is a limit. That’s why we didn’t support the long gun registry. There’s a limit to what we want to do because at some point it becomes burdensome and wasteful for taxpayers, and it starts taking away our liberties. The long gun registry: why should we have law-abiding farmers register their guns, their long guns, their hunting rifles? It’s stupid. It’s a silly law, and that’s why we didn’t support it.

It didn’t create the intended effect that the government at the time, the federal Liberal government, was trying to get, so we fought it, and we’re still kind of fighting it. It’s now officially kind of gone, but now we have to dismantle the bureaucracy, and it still has to get through the Senate and all that stuff. The point is that it’s moving. We spent all that time trying to get that out, and it took over a billion dollars before we realized the mistake there. Now we’re going to duplicate it in Alberta, of all places, with a body armour registry?

I’m sure it won’t cost as much, but it will still cost something. What if it costs $80,000? Say that it’s really cheap and we get it done for $80,000. Well, that’s a police officer. What if it takes $160,000? Well, that’s two police officers or a new ICE team or something. The point is that it takes resources out of effective policing resources, and it puts them into something that is absolutely ineffective. It’s just totally ineffective to have a body armour registry. I would ask that the Justice minister and this government review that policy, and before they go and put it into regulation, I would hope that they would find a way to get it out. Leave the rest of it in there. Make it illegal to use it and run around with it in a nightclub and intimidate people. That’s fine. I don’t know how you’d word it; that’s the Justice minister’s job. But figure that out and slap a big penalty on them if they’re using it in a crime, in a gang shooting, or make it an asset that can be seized when it’s found with other illegal weapons or illegal narcotics or whatever. That’s fine. We can all agree on that. But let’s not take this to the silly step, to the silly level, where we start making law-abiding citizens register body armour. It’s expensive. There’s no reason to do it.

I know that 29(2)(a) is meant to question the speaker, but I would welcome the opportunity of two or three members of this government explaining the contradiction of why they support, essentially, a body armour registry and why they do not support a long gun registry. Hopefully, they can find a logical explanation for that because I think that Albertans would like to know. We certainly would like to know. That’s the point of this House. That’s why we’re here, to debate these things. So somebody explain it to me. It’s an open question, Mr. Speaker.

Video

Why Shouldn't People Be Allowed to Protect Themselves? (Part 2)
Dim lights