Mr. Speaker, if ever evidence was needed that this debate is very highly polarized and charged probably with misinformation on all sides, it is in this debate today.
When I became embroiled in the whole gun control issue it was evident to me that the position a person would take on the debate depended at which end of the barrel that person was going to find themselves. We can see this in the House today not just on this side but on the government side and perhaps on the Bloc side, if they would speak on this.
Very clearly this is a debate on the bill which is charged emotionally and divides the country, as if we needed one more reason to be divided. This divides us on rural-urban issues rather than language issues, cultural issues or some other issue. Anyone who would suggest this is not a rural-urban issue has not been following it because very clearly it is.
Our country, as everyone knows, is thousands of miles across. All areas of the country are different. One rule of law on guns may not make sense in downtown Toronto but perhaps it makes sense somewhere else, either the maritimes or the prairies.
There is wisdom in splitting this bill and I urge the Minister of Justice to carefully consider this. It would be an opportunity for people from both sides of the House and from all over the country to come together on that part of the bill about which everyone agrees, namely those issues aimed directly at crime control, such as mandatory sentencing.
There are other aspects of this bill which concern most Canadians from that part of the country which is less enamoured with the whole notion of gun control. For example, there is the registration of handguns, which is already a fait accompli. We are supposed to be registering them now.
If anyone were to purchase a rifle or a shotgun today, it would be registered. There is nothing wrong with the notion of centralizing the registry of these weapons. Your name and address would be taken. There is no problem with that. It is the notion of a universal registration.
Before I get into the heart of what I want to talk about, I want to say that I am going to be voting against this bill despite the results of a survey I commissioned and which I believe to be accurate. Residents in my constituency, a majority of 69 per cent, would prefer to see universal registration. However, I am prepared to go against that in the full knowledge that this is causing me some grief.
Before I get into that, I would like to spend a couple of minutes to pay a particular vote of respect to two people for whom members may not expect to hear many kind words from this side of the House. They are Wendy Cukier and Heidi Rathjen from the Coalition for Gun Control.
When Heidi's friends and associates she went to school with were killed at the École polytechnique in Montreal, it caused her to do something. She wanted to rid our country of the kinds of weapons that caused that outrage and terrible massacre. We do not need automatic weapons in our country; we just do not need them. Many years ago she set upon this long journey to rid our country of these weapons. She enlisted the aid of Wendy Cukier and between them they formed the Coalition for Gun Control.
I would bet that they did not think they would ever have the sun, the moon and the stars all line up to find themselves with the Liberals in government wanting to address the issues of the people in the vote rich areas of downtown Toronto or Montreal. This decision was made in order to get elected. In my opinion it was not based on what was right for the country. It was a decision on what they could do to get elected. They appealed to people who, for good reason, were afraid of guns. The idea then became a red book commitment.
In some way that is unfair to the intent of Wendy and Heidi. They wanted to rid our country of the dangers posed by weapons and from the crimes involving the use of weapons. They wanted to focus attention on this. I do not think in their wildest dreams they ever expected everyone, no matter where they lived in the country, was going to be forced to register shotguns and rifles. In any event, this is the point we are at now.
By justice department estimates, it is going to cost $85 million to set up the national registry over a five-year period, plus a further $60 million if you accept the fact that there are six million long guns presently in the country. If that is the case, over five years it is going to cost $145 million to register guns. That is a modest estimate. Others say it will cost upward of $500 million or even more, but let us go with the low end at $145 million.
Our country is going into the hole at the rate of $110 million a day. We would be using money to register all of these weapons for which there is not one iota of evidence it will prevent one single, solitary illegal use or crime committed with a gun. The last time I checked, criminals do not get a permit nor do they register their guns. We will be spending $145 million so that some people, particularly those who wrote the Liberal red book can feel warm and fuzzy when they go to bed at night. That is not an honest or prudent way to run the country.
If there were a shred of evidence to prove that registering long guns would in any way prevent crime, then I would be most happy to support this bill. However there is no such evidence. We will then go to the money markets of the world and our children and grandchildren will be borrowing money and paying interest on that money and they will have a standard of living depreciated by the fact that we will be raising this money to spend on registering long guns. Imagine if we used that same money, the same $140 million over five years, for breast cancer research. Would that be a more efficient use of the $145 million?
It is not easy to stand here because I am not a hunter. I do not have a gun. I have not had a gun for years. I originally commissioned a poll in my constituency to buttress my argument within our own caucus. In so far as this is not a moral or ethical issue I am not bound by the poll. It was for guidance. I wanted it to buttress my argument. I wanted to have that argument buttressed within my own caucus so that when I voted against our caucus position I could say clearly this is why, I am representing my constituents.
In evaluating what I was doing here in Parliament over the last year and a half I came very clearly during the Christmas break to understand that I was here for three specific reasons: to restore fiscal responsibility to our nation; to put the rights of victims ahead of the rights of criminals; to restore the bonds of trust between the elected and the electors.
I cannot in conscience spend $140 million to accomplish something clearly not accomplishable through the expenditure of this money, and on one hand spend the money and on the other hand try to save it.
My constituents have very clearly sent me here to bring fiscal sanity to the spending affairs of our country. That is why I will regrettably vote against Bill C-68.