Madam Speaker, my friend across the way is always known for more sound and bluster than substance. I want to get back to some of the earlier comments he made. He deliberately confused public safety and gun control with the long gun registration program. Those things are not the same.
In the House we daily ask the government how much it would cost to get to the full operational status of the Bill C-68 program and thereafter how much it would cost every year. We have not been able to get the numbers. The minister had lots of chances to supply the answer and he did not.
When it came to the Auditor General, the problem with the numbers was that she asked the government for the documentation and the costs, but she was not satisfied with the information given, saying basically that she could not get the information from the government. The evidence of the Auditor General yesterday in committee was that she could not get the information.
Asked to verify the so-called puffed numbers that the government provided, the Auditor General could not verify that they were based on anything legitimate which came out of the department. We must be very careful when we talk about the so-called cost, what it may have cost or what the department is alleging it cost. The Auditor General clearly has said that within the foreseeable future the whole program would cost in the nature of $1 billion plus. That is where the vernacular in the common press comes from about the billion dollars.
When the member talks specifically about honesty with the numbers, he should accurately reflect what actually happened in the committee.