As regards the costs, we know that the registry is used 11,000 times a day. In Quebec, as soon as a call comes in for an incident involving domestic violence, call centre dispatchers check the registry to provide any available information to officers. That allows them to modulate their response. Also, since 1995, under the Quebec domestic violence policy, police officers are asked to seize guns and, where a danger exists, to do so immediately, without having a warrant. That provides them with very useful information.
So, if we want police officers to be able to do their job, we have to give them the proper tools. The role of our organization is to protect women, but we cannot do that alone, and police officers cannot do it without the proper tools. We see this as an effective and useful investment.
Through the work we do, we see what happens every time there is a domestic homicide. It is very rare, at least in Quebec, for domestic homicides to be committed with handguns. The firearms used are always rifles and long guns. For that reason, we think it is very important to be able to trace those guns, most of which are not owned by people with a criminal past. If we stop registering guns, we will make it easier to smuggle them. They will be able to circulate freely.