The police are going to seize the guns. This thing is going full circle because the Canadian Police Association just said in its most recent document: "Who is going to do the seizing? Who is going to do the policing?" How much time are the police going to have for that? How much time does any policeman in any constituency have for more bookwork and paperwork? They should be out in their cruisers stopping crime.
A universal registration system will be a very large undertaking with huge costs. People joked earlier when my leader was speaking about us not having any idea of what the costs are. We would like to know,or at least have an idea of what the costs are. The Minister of Justice may talk about costs but we have absolutely no proof of that.
The finance minister in his budget, somewhat recently, gave us an idea of what to expect for deficits. We are going to be spending $9 billion on interest payments for every dollar that is cut. It goes on and on. One hundred billion dollars will be added to the deficit. Give us an idea of the costs, it is a lot of money.
Canadian taxpayers are going to be paying for this. We hear the government saying that it will be user pay, not just taxpayers' money. What is user pay? It is nothing more than me taking $10 out of my pocket to pay for registering my .22. It is nothing more than giving my money to the government or to someone to register my gun. It is user pay. Is it still costing me money? Yes, of course it is. I would sooner pay that $10 to a health care system that is going to be more efficient than knowing that someone is just paying to have his gun registered.
The recreational firearms communities of two provincial governments have huge doubts about the legislation and the minister knows it. I participated in the rally in September and I was proud of all the responsible firearms owners. Nobody acted crazy or irresponsible that day.
I must say I admire the minister for going out and facing them. The people in my constituency said they thought that was pretty brave. There was no one to be ashamed of there. It is not the responsible firearms owners who we should be attacking in this legislation. It is the criminal misuse of firearms and a registration system will do nothing to eliminate or even alleviate crime.
This new scheme will represent a massive attack by the state and its police on property rights and the privacy of millions of law-abiding citizens. I frankly do not think I need to say anything more about this. I never did support universal gun registration regardless of what my friend from Burnaby says. I do not agree with the police association's estimate. I agree with the fact that they say those are their numbers, but I do not agree with them. There would not be people in my constituency, and many policemen as well, who could support that.
Crime is what we should be attacking here, not registration. Registration is not the answer. Therefore, let us split this bill in two and make sure that we deal with crime. As the bill is now responsible firearms owners are going to be labelled and become criminals.