Mr. Speaker, I recently received a letter from Darrell McKnight, a Fredericton man whose shotgun was seized under order in council a few weeks ago.
His comments were so sensible that I will read them verbatim:
I don't purport to know more about law than the Attorney General. However, when I was very young, my mother taught me that taking something which belongs to someone else was wrong. It was called theft, and there used to be a law against theft-even theft by government.
This incident is typical of the level of honesty and fairness we can expect from the Attorney General. To call him a thief would not do him justice because he is much more powerful and dangerous to this country than a common thief who must break the law to steal from us. The minister just changes the law with the stroke of his own pen.
That is what one ordinary Canadian feels about rule by order in council.