Mr. Speaker, I count this as an opportunity to again rise in this place to speak to Bill C-19, the ending of the long gun registry.
I will begin by thanking the member for Yorkton—Melville for his many long years of trying to get rid of the long gun registry. I also thank the former member of Parliament for Crowfoot, the one I followed, Mr. Jack Ramsay, who spent a lot of time working on Bill C-68 and also trying to get rid of the long gun registry.
As someone who is not only a farmer but who represents a vibrant and thriving farming community, I feel that it is important to ensure that my constituents' views are heard during the debate. In fact, I am very pleased to be able to chair the committee that will receive the legislation, Bill C-19, study it a bit more and report it, hopefully, back to the House.
I do not know how many of my hon. colleagues have had the pleasure of visiting Crowfoot. It is a riding that I am privileged to represent. My constituents work extremely hard and the folks there make a good, honest living, many of them off the land. My own family has been farming there for generations. In fact, my parents still live on the farm that my grandparents homesteaded over a century ago.
Farmers in Crowfoot raise all manner of crops and livestock. On my own farm, we raise wheat, barley, canola and, before I was elected, we raised cattle and had a cow-calf operation.
However, whether it is cattle or any other livestock, or grain, I can tell members that they can count on one thing being virtually the same in my riding. Every farmer has a long gun. It is one of the tools that they use on their farming operation, whether it is to protect their stock from a coyote, shooting a skunk or shooting gophers so their horses do not break their legs in gopher holes when they are riding through the pasture, long guns are part of everyday life on the farm in Crowfoot.
That is why the long gun registry has been such a thorn in people's sides for many years. For too long, the law-abiding farmers and hunters in my constituency have been made to feel like they have been doing something wrong simply for owning a long gun. They are burdened. They are burdened by the paperwork and by the cost of registry. They are burdened by the fact that many of them question whether they are abiding the very letter of the law. They are burdened by the very suggestion that by owning a shotgun or a rifle, even perhaps a .22, somehow, in the eyes of some politicians, they are made to feel like a criminal.
At the same time, these same law-abiding farmers in my riding open the newspaper every day and are confronted with stories about gun crime in cities across the country. These crimes are being committed by thugs and gang members. After one of those criminal activities takes place, they listen to the Liberals or the NDP talk about the reason that we need the long gun registry. The farmers and the ranchers in my constituency sit back and say, “Listen. I've never broken the law in my life. Why am I being thrown into the same conversation with these thugs and criminals when they talk about the registry and long guns?”.
There are crimes being committed with illegal handguns and weapons that have been stolen or smuggled in from across the border but the opposition says that it is all a gun issue.
The good folks of my riding look at these stories and wonder why they are being penalized for crimes committed so far away by people so very different from them. They wonder what this place is doing to target those criminals, because the long gun registry will not stop them.
We have yet to see any evidence that the long gun registry actually prevents gun crime from happening. It does not prevent guns from being used in a violent manner. It does not stop illegal firearms from getting into the hands of criminals. It does not stop the smuggling of them across the border in the trunk of someone's car who is involved in organized crime. All it does is provide a list of all law-abiding hunters, farmers and sports shooters. All it does is provide a list of all those who own firearms. It provides a list how many firearms are in a farmer's farmhouse. It provides a list as to the types and models of firearms that an individual has.
Like my colleagues on this side of the House, I can see there is a fundamental problem with the long gun registry. It targets the wrong people. It targets people like farmers in my riding of Crowfoot. It targets those who have never perpetrated a criminal offence. It targets the farmer who picks up that 22, puts it into his halfton and rides out to the pasture to shoot gophers and rodents, which the member for Vegreville—Wainwright has been unable to kill with strychnine. That is the problem. At the same time, it does nothing to prevent the gun crime that is happening in cities across our country.
That is why I am adding my support to Bill C-19 today. The first speech I ever gave in the House was on Bill C-68 or the long gun registry. It has been 11 years and I still believe this as much or more than I did when I started.
Bill C-19 is straightforward legislation. Through the bill, our government will scrap the long gun registry. The bill would remove the requirement for law-abiding hunters and farmers to register their unrestricted long guns. It would ensure that the data in the registry would be destroyed. I applaud our government for doing that. In doing so, we will be ending over a decade and a half of injustice and of targeting the wrong people on gun crime.
At the same time, Bill C-19 would keep in place the regulations for restricted and prohibited firearms, such as handguns and semi-automatic rifles. These are the firearms that we read about in the media and which are used to perpetrate crime. These are the guns that are getting into the hands of criminals and being used on innocent Canadians. Putting the focus on long guns and law-abiding hunters and farmers who use them is simply misdirected attention that should be elsewhere.
Speaking of resources, I also want to mention something else I hear a lot about in my riding. People in the riding of Crowfoot, as do most in rural Canada, play by the rules. There is a lot of outrage over the shear waste that we have seen with the long gun registry. The previous Liberal government originally said that the cost would be $2 million, then a year later it would be $80 million, then Anne McLellan said $300 million and then $700 million. Now it is over $2 billion. That is too much waste for no reason at all.
The member for Toronto Centre said that if the registry saved only one life, it would be worth it. That $2 billion could have saved many lives if we had been able to get more resources out on the streets, more police officers on the streets, and if we had been able to crack down on crime like some of our other crime bills have done. That is way too much waste for little or no value.
Our government believes in taking real action to keep Canadians safer, to hold criminals accountable. That is why we have delivered tough on crime legislation to crack down on those who are targeting law-abiding Canadians.
We passed the Tackling Violent Crime Act, which delivered: longer mandatory minimum sentences for gun crimes; tougher new rules for bail for serious weapons; mandatory minimum sentences for drive-by shootings; tougher laws to combat organized crime; and mandatory minimum sentences for the use of a firearm in the commission of an offence.
This is the type of crime fighting measures this government is putting before Canadians and before the House. They are crime measures that are focused on the criminal and on criminal activity.
That is what this government is doing. We are committed to keeping its promise. We are committed to living up to those campaign policies and promises that we have made. We realize this long gun registry has been a colossal failure and we will be so pleased when we see the end of it.
