Thank you, Chair, and I want to thank the minister for coming to the meeting today.
Minister, we've heard from you and your government consistently over the past several years about your concern for victims and the importance of the position of victims in this country. Now, even allowing for a certain amount of hyperbole--you tell us that the opposition could care less about victims and they're really more interesting in helping criminals, etc.--this has been the general tone of some of your comments.
So I want to ask you why you don't listen to victims when it comes to the protection they're seeking, that they believe is received by having strict control of and registration of non-prohibited and non-restricted weapons, such as the long guns you talk about, but also semi-automatics and other guns? I'm speaking here of Sue O'Sullivan, the Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime, who says the majority of victims' groups they have spoken with continue to support keeping the long-gun registry; the victims of the École Polytechnique in Montreal, including individual survivors and their families, who are strongly supportive of strong gun control, including the ability to track guns and the registration of guns; the Dawson College victims; and Priscilla de Villiers, a well-known gun violence activist whose daughter, Nina, was abducted and killed with an unrestricted, legally owned rifle in 1991, who is also very concerned about a gun control law, including registration and rigorous implementation, making it harder for dangerous people to get firearms and for firearms to fall into the wrong hands.
Recently, Elizabeth Pousoulidis, the president of the Association of Families of Persons Assassinated or Disappeared, who appeared before the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights last week in support of certain aspects of Bill C-10, is also adamantly in favour of the long-gun registry.
Why aren't you listening to those kinds of victims who say they are concerned and fearful of an unrestricted and unregulated system? Why aren't you adopting instead some of the approaches that were suggested by the NDP to achieve balance with the one-time, no-fee registration forever? It's not a massive red tape situation, as you've suggested. Why aren't you trying to achieve some balance in this to ensure the safety of Canadians as victims of gun violence, victims of domestic violence, and victims of others, with a registry that the chiefs of police, of course, have stated is a useful tool?
Why aren't you trying to fix it? Why aren't you trying to improve it? Why aren't you listening to victims?