When we talk about killing the program, I think it's really important for our citizens not to think we are killing the gun registry or that we are killing the licensing requirements. In fact, we are not. We're making the program stronger.
One aspect of the program has proven to be incredibly expensive, to the point of incredible waste—I'm just referring to the Auditor General's findings—and it has not been successful in its goal. The goal of registering every duck hunter's gun, every farmer's shotgun, every gopher gun across the country, has been unsuccessful. With the number of mistakes that have been made, the impossibility of trying to get registration numbers, and the impossibility of trying to get the correct calibres of millions and millions of long arms, it has been an exercise in futility. That narrow aspect of the gun registry has proven not to be successful.
When you talk about a crime committed with a firearm, in the instances when a long gun was used, if the system itself had been working properly—not the registration system, but the actual system—there's a strong possibility that disaster could have been avoided. One case in point would be the tragic killing of a police officer last year in the province of Quebec. In that particular case, as the officer was approaching the door, the person inside shot through the door with a registered high-powered rifle and killed her. The bullet pierced her armour protection.
Upon investigation, what was very frustrating and agonizing was the fact that this person had committed crimes for which that long gun should have been removed. As a matter of fact, he had a prohibition order. He had been ordered not to own, not to be in the possession of, a firearm. Subsequent to that, he appealed. He went before a judge and he asked if he could please have that firearm because he liked to hunt, and if he could just have it during the hunting season. The judge allowed a criminal who had been prohibited from having a firearm to get his gun back.
This is why I'm talking about limiting the possibility of the wrong people getting firearms. One of our proposals is that if you have had that type of conviction, that is it. You can't go before a judge. We will word it in such a way that a judge is not able to give a dangerous person back his long gun.
That's why we say that hundreds of millions of dollars were used—probably well intended—to go into an area where there is comparatively so little criminal activity. As one of our proposals on the table in the House of Commons, we have said that crimes with guns should have a mandatory sentence with them, yet we can't get the Liberal Party to support us on that.