Mr. Speaker, the government stood in the House this morning and repeatedly said that this issue was about gun control. Do we not wish it was so? It is absolutely a deception to say that this issue is about gun control.
The Auditor General herself said, “the issue here is not gun control”. Excuse me, the issue here is not gun control. It is not even the astronomical cost overruns, although those are serious. What is really inexcusable is that Parliament was kept in the dark. If we were take that a step further, Canadians were kept in the dark. Victims of family violence were kept in the dark. Victims of assault with a firearm were kept in the dark. Women, who are being threatened because peace bonds are not being enforced, were kept in the dark. This is absolutely about waste, inefficiency, deceit and deception deliberately imposed by the government.
The minister, if he wants to have a career in politics, has an opportunity to do something about it but he just stood in the House and told us that he would not, that he will allow it to continue.
We started out with an estimate of $117 million for the cost of a long gun registry. The net cost to run the program was supposed to be $2 million a year, for a total cost of $119 million. This is unprecedented deception on the part of the government.
Let us review the administration. There has been no ministerial responsibility and that was proven again this morning. Where is the responsibility on the shoulders of the member for Etobicoke Centre, from the member for Edmonton West, from the member for Outremont, from the member for LaSalle—Émard, from the member from Shawinigan? Does Shawinigan sound familiar? It should sound familiar.
What have we accomplished? We have had cost overruns hidden in the supplementary estimates. We have had a refusal to follow procedure in Parliament. Very little has been accomplished other than wasting a billion dollars. What would that billion dollars have done to protect women in this country?
This is not about long gun registration. Most parliamentarians support reasonable, responsible gun control. What saves lives is the safe handling and safe storage of guns. We have a gun registry in place and homicides have gone up 19%. Members should listen to the facts. The government has not done its job. It has lied to Canadians. It has lied to victims of violence. The government cannot do that. It is not acceptable.
The government has not done the job that it set out to do. It is time to scrap the long gun registry, to walk away from it and do the parts of gun control that work: training, safe handling, safe storage and making sure people are screened before they have access to a firearm.
There are millions of safe firearm owners out there and those are the people the government is targeting. It is not targeting the criminals. It is not targeting Mom Boucher who has a registered firearm. That makes me sleep better at night and makes me feel a lot better about the gun registry.
The government has not done the job that it started to do. Government members should be embarrassed to stand in this place and try to tell members of Parliament, and the Canadian public that we represent, that they somehow have been transparent in the application of their duties, because they have not been.