Mr. Speaker, the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine is always interrupting. She cannot make an effective point in debate so she has to heckle from her seat, but that is fine. We will let her do that.
Let me point out though that the reasons Bill C-68 was ineffective are still valid today. The gun registry does nothing to reduce the threat to public safety. It does nothing to reduce crime. It does nothing to reduce violent gun incidents.
Time after time we have spoken in the House of the fact that criminals who commit the most egregious crimes against Canadians are using illegal guns, guns that perhaps were smuggled in from a different country. Criminals do not register their handguns. They do not register their long guns. Therefore, the long gun registry is only putting a burden on those honest citizens, the farmers, target shooters and hunters. They are not criminals but they are required under this abhorrent law to register their firearms when in fact they have no intention of ever breaking any law or using those long guns in an illegal fashion.
I come from a province in which our police association is dead set against the registry and for good reason. The police association recognizes the fact that the majority of legitimate law-abiding gun owners in our province use their long guns not as a weapon but as a tool. Farmers in my province, and I would suggest farmers across Canada, have long guns as part of their tool kit, literally. It is the same thing as the farm machinery they use to cultivate their land. A long gun in the hands of a law-abiding farmer is a legitimate tool. It is not used for any other reason. Yet they are the very people in this country who are being burdened by this cumbersome and expensive long gun registry. I said expensive, and darn right it is expensive.
Back in 1995 when the then Liberal government introduced Bill C-68, it stated that the registry would cost $2.2 million to be fully implemented and operational. We know how much of a fallacy that is. To date, according to the Auditor General of Canada, in figures that I would suggest are three years old, it has cost the Canadian taxpayer well over $1 billion in direct costs for the registry itself. That is not counting indirect costs; in other words, the costs of other departments that have to comply with the registry. It does not talk about compliance costs for the actual gun owners themselves.
Not only is the cost abhorrent, but the Firearms Centre itself, according to the Auditor General's report of 2006, stated that it could not provide one shred of evidence that the registry had anything to do with reducing the threat to public safety or reducing deaths or crimes. This is the Firearms Centre that was established to actually administer the registry. It could not produce one shred of evidence, according to the Auditor General, that it has been effective.
We have a situation in which Canadian taxpayers are footing the bill to the tune of well over $1 billion during the 15 years that the registry has been in effect. It is not proven to reduce the threat to public safety, to reduce crime or to reduce violent incidents, so I would argue, what good is it doing?
There is a big difference, I would argue, between licensing provisions and the registry. We have always had licensing provisions for long guns, always. It used to be called the FAC, the firearms acquisition certificate. Provinces used to administer this individually. I believe in Saskatchewan, to obtain an FAC back in the days when it was still called an FAC, one would apply through the Department of Environment. Speaking with many legitimate long gun owners in my province, it was entirely effective. A person could not purchase a long gun at any point in time in our history without getting an appropriate licence, in some cases called the FAC or a certificate. It was the same thing. Those are interchangeable terms.
We are not suggesting that be changed whatsoever. We continue to say that all long guns should be licensed, and licences are part of the culture of gun owners. They accept that. They approve that. They agree with that, but it is the registry that offends legitimate long gun owners because it is not required. It is useless. It is a bureaucratic exercise in waste.
I would also point out, as everyone in the House knows, that handguns and restricted weapons such as automatic weapons have always needed to be registered. That will not change by our call for the elimination of the long gun registry. We are not trying to eliminate the registry provisions for handguns. We admit and we agree that handguns and restricted weapons such as automatic weapons should be registered. That should be maintained.
In fact, handguns have been registered in this country since 1933. We are only talking about long guns, because the registry, at such a cost to the Canadian taxpayer, which has been proven to be totally ineffective, is not required. It is absolutely useless. We could be using that money, well over $1 billion over the course of the last 15 years, for more effective crime prevention policies, or one could even argue, if we did not want to put it into crime prevention measures, we could put it into another government initiative, such as health care.
It is quite clear to me and quite clear to hundreds of thousands of rural residents across this great country that the long gun registry should never have been introduced. The legislation should never have been passed in the first place, and now is the time to get rid of it.
I would also argue that if all opposition parties were allowed to vote freely, if their members were allowed to vote freely on a bill brought forward to eliminate the long gun registry, the elimination of that registry would occur in a heartbeat.
Thank you for your indulgence, Mr. Speaker. I look forward to comments and questions from my colleagues.