Madam Speaker, I will follow up very quickly on what the hon. member for Calgary North said.
I am very concerned that although we have asked the justice minister on many occasions to give us the evidence that shows that registration of guns will lead to a reduction in crime, each and every time he has used a phoney argument.
He has tried to appeal to the authority of the police chiefs. The police chiefs are just offering their personal opinion as politicians, certainly not as experts in the field. We have given him instance after instance of other jurisdictions where gun control has been attempted, where registration has been attempted, not the least of which is Canada.
I point that out to the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands. We have had the registration of handguns for 60 years and we still have an increase in the criminal misuse of handguns. That is a very powerful argument against the further registration of long guns.
Also, we have pointed out what has happened in other jurisdictions around the world, such as Australia, where they have had to repeal the idea of the registration of guns because the system did not work. Let us not engage in emotional arguments about guns. Let us look at some of the evidence out there.
The fact is that in other jurisdictions and in this jurisdiction gun registration has not been effective in controlling crime. If it had been, this party would be at the lead in promoting it but it has not. For that reason, we cannot support it.
I also want to touch for a moment on the whole idea of personal responsibility. There is a concept that many people believe in very strongly, which is that if one is responsible for something then that person should personally pay the consequences. In this legislation the government has stood that concept on its head. It said that if the bad guys do something bad then everybody should pay for it. That is what the legislation promotes.
I urge Canadians around the country to write to the government and tell it that this is wrong-headed legislation.