Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to pick up on Mr. Lee's final point and then make a couple of specific points.
This motion is really trying to communicate to the government that it's their responsibility to justify what they are doing behind closed doors but should be doing in public. They have legal opinions that say they cannot get rid of the long gun registry, because it's mandated for the Government of Canada to deliver a long gun registry—I'm aware of at least two legal opinions that tell them that—and that they should not be proceeding, as they appear to be intent on doing, without bringing an amendment to the House of Commons to see if they can get that law changed.
Until they do that, it's irresponsible and imprudent for them to proceed. It's also undemocratic. For a government that has gone into power claiming corruption in the government before them, and accountability and all those other buzzwords, taking this approach is really quite hypocritical.
The motion is very appropriate at this time. I would hope that we would get a positive response from the government, but I'm not really expecting it, given how much political capital they've invested in this issue.
Mr. Chair, I want to touch on a couple of specifics raised by members of the Conservatives, Mr. MacKenzie in particular, on the whole issue of the hits that are coming. All of those are going to occur. If you proceed with this, every one of those hits will occur, because they're still going to be looking to see if there are handguns, if there are restricted weapons, in those residences. So nothing's going to change; therefore, the cost of the registry is going to continue on, even if we get rid of the long gun registry. It's not going to save one penny in that regard, from what I can see. There will be the savings in some staff, because we'll start laying people off who accept the registrations of the long guns, but beyond that there are no savings here. The costs will go on.
The point of the unintended consequences is, of course, one of the advantages we would have if we did take evidence on this. I have no reason to oppose that. In fact, I would welcome it. There were significant unintended consequences. We got between one million and two million guns out of the hands of people who didn't want to use them. The guns were being stolen, were being used improperly, weren't being stored safely. That was one of the unintended consequences. It wasn't planned.
As Madam Freeman was saying, it certainly significantly raised the level of comfort for women in particular, because we know that women are the major recipients of violence from long guns in domestic relations, far outweighing the rest of society or women's partners.
You know, Mr. Chair, if we were really serious about dealing with crime as a result of handguns, we'd be enforcing the long gun registry. We'd be enforcing the entire registry. The provinces, particularly the western provinces, have chosen not to do that. I think that's being irresponsible. But if we really wanted to get at it, rather than spending all of the effort we're doing to avoid the enforcement, if we actually enforced, we would probably drive down the statistics on gun-related crimes.
To Mr. Hawn and Mr. MacKenzie, you can talk all about the anecdotal evidence you get from speaking with...because I speak to police officers as well, but the reality is that the chiefs of police and the professional police association have gone on record, with votes, democratic votes within both those organizations, to continue to support the registry. They want to see the savings, which I believe have now occurred, but they're not done. There are still more efficiencies to be built in once the computer system is functioning.
At any rate, the point I want to make is that since the new year, I've been at two funerals for police officers, one in my home riding. That officer was killed with a handgun. It was in Laval, outside of Quebec. That young woman police officer was killed with a long gun.
You know this, Mr. Chair, because you were here when we received the letter from the chief of police here in Ottawa. It pointed out what I thought was an interesting and rather compelling statistic. If you go back the last 20 years, including the last 10 years since the registry has been in place, more police officers have been killed with long guns than with handguns.
That's not in any way to deny the current problem, the increased usage of handguns. That's very clear, and we know why that's happening. They're being smuggled in at a much higher rate from the United States than they were five and seven years ago, mostly because of the biker gangs. We need to deploy resources there.
Again, we need to do more enforcement in those areas, but getting rid of the long gun registry does nothing at all to deal with that problem. It doesn't deal at all with the reality that long guns remain a crime problem. There's no question that the percentages have changed. We have more handgun problems, but in absolute numbers we have as many long gun problems as we had before--other than, as you heard the statistics from Mr. Ménard and Ms. Freeman, the suicides have gone down, the accidental deaths have gone down, and the domestic violence has gone down with regard to long guns.
But it's there. I'm not naïve, I'm not sticking my head in the sand, and I'm not pretending we don't have a problem with handguns and restricted weapons. We do, and it's gotten worse in the last few years. But the reason it's gotten worse has nothing to do with long guns. The long guns problem has not decreased. It's still there, other than, again, the savings that I just talked about.
Coming back to the motion itself, it seems to me that it's very appropriate. I'm hoping the government will take the message that it's their responsibility. It's the government's responsibility to prove that they should amend that legislation, and they should do it in that process, not in reverse order, not do it behind the scenes, not do it without that authority of Parliament.
That's what they're supposed to do. All the steps they're taking right now to dismantle the long gun registry should cease immediately. That's what the motion is really about. We should have some hearings on this. The committee should take that on. But until that is done and until that amendment is through the House--and I don't believe it is ever going to get through the House--they should stop what they're doing.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.