I have to cut short, Madam Fraser, saying how happy I am to see you and go straight to questions.
I want to continue on chapter 4, if I could, Madam Fraser. My principal concern is this. When I was elected in 2004, I had a great deal of concern about the costs related to the gun registry program and felt they needed to be rectified. In the audit just referred to, which came out two years prior, in 2002, there were a number of deficiencies stated and some clear and rather systemic problems noted that needed to be changed.
The problem I'm having today is that ostensibly the problems then are being used as the rationale to cancel the program today, by and large. Yet what I'm largely seeing—correct me if I'm wrong in this—in the audit today is significant progress, both in terms of curtailing those costs and of following through on a variety of the recommendations that were made. If I look in chapter 4, on page 103 in exhibit 4.2, at the items that are listed as showing satisfactory progress, we see that there is significant progress now.
My concern is this. We clearly have policy differences. This is something you obviously can't speak to. If the current government goes to the House and there's a majority of members in the House who don't believe in a gun registry for long arms, then that's a policy decision. But if the rationale is that this is a poorly managed program today that is not headed in a good direction and is in a bad spot, then that concerns me.
In my own constituency, for example—I used to be a member of the Durham Regional Police Services Board—I would talk to officers regularly and to our chief about how valuable the firearms registry was in conducting their work on a day-to-day basis. I would talk to chiefs of police in many other jurisdictions around the area as I participated in events relating to my job on that police services board, and I know how valuable it is.
I guess the part you can speak to in this debate is whether you feel the progress being made is encouraging and leads you to believe this is heading in the appropriate direction and that your recommendations are being listened to, or would you concur with the assertion, which I really feel is being made on the basis of past problems, that basically it's so poorly managed it shouldn't continue?