Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My question part is over. You've answered it thoroughly and I appreciate the answer. Now, I'll go back to my point.
Every day in the House of Commons for the last number of weeks, the subject of gun crime has been coming up. No matter what newspaper you read, radio station you listen to or social media you engage with, you're hearing about firearms crime in Canada. We're dealing here with individuals who are in illegal possession of firearms, not by mistake but because they're engaged in criminal activity.
I should remind the committee that this deals with the very issue that Canadians are asking us to grapple with, which is illegal firearms in Canada and the possession of those illegal firearms by criminal elements. It's not duck hunters, sport shooters nor the poor guy who maybe inherited a firearm from his grandfather. They've jumped through hoops to get licensed, do safe storage, have a licence if they have to buy ammunition and are subject to the full weight of the law. We're talking about people who are flooding our streets with illegal firearms.
We know they come in vehicles across the border. We know they get smuggled across the border otherwise. I hadn't thought of this, but the law's always playing catch-up with criminals: We know, in fact, that they've used a drone to drop a bag of handguns from the U.S. into Canada.
That's how some of the people who are going to be convicted under this section will have come into possession of these illegal firearms. By definition, these people are in illegal possession of the firearm, meaning they're not licensed and they're restricted in Canada.
Gary, I guess there's a bit of argument, but you used to have to have a registration on a non-restricted firearm. That was called the long-gun registry. It was supposed to cost $2 million. I think it ended up costing $2 billion. This is important because a previous Conservative government ended the long-gun registry because it was targeting the exact wrong people.
It is my philosophy—and I think it's the philosophy of those on this side— that if you have a crime problem, you go after criminals. When I saw in my own riding senior citizens lining up to get their firearms licence, I thought to myself, “How is this making Canada a safer place?” If someone's going to line up for an hour to get a firearms licence so they can possess a firearm—a shotgun or a rifle that they inherited—how on earth is that making Canada safer?
That was the gun registry legislation. We committed to ending the long-gun registry. We did that and Canadians are better off for it. We're all better off for it because in spite of all the money that's spent globally right now with the pandemic and everything, there are finite resources. Dollars that we spend at the federal level chasing good guys are dollars that can't be spent chasing bad guys. We heard all kinds of witness testimony on this from police that said they're under-resourced. They don't have the resources sometimes to go after the bad guys.
I want to juxtapose what I just said about legislation that goes after the good guys. This legislation that we have before us, subsection 92(3) of the Criminal Code, is all about the bad guys. These are people who haven't got it right the first, second and now third time.
In light of everything, I would urge real caution. Think about what we're saying. We're saying that we, as parliamentarians, think that you can be in illegal possession of a handgun in Canada—a restricted, not licensed weapon—you can be found guilty of that, and you could possibly not go to jail. A month later, you could do the same thing and go before the courts, be found guilty and not go to jail. Then, a month after that, theoretically, you could do the exact same thing.
What I'm starting to hear is a message—and it's the message we heard from witnesses, which they didn't want us to send—that you can get away with crime in Canada. You can get away with gun crime. Illegal guns are part of gun crime, and this section is all about illegal guns.
I'm urging extreme caution before we vote on clause 3. Think about the message we're sending not only to the criminal element—they're getting the message loud and clear that you can do whatever the heck you want and not face a consequence under this bill—but also to the people who have been victims of gun crime. I don't need to explain this to you. It's in every one of our newspapers. There are victims of gun crime every day now in Canada.
I would strongly urge members to vote against clause 3.