Madam Speaker, before the vote I talked about the closure issue. Closure was forced upon the democratic principles of the House by the Liberal government before debate really took place on the Bill C-68 gun issue. Although the justice committee talked about the gun control legislation, there is more to it than that. The public has a right to hear from all members, all of its representatives from across the country on this issue. I do not think what the Liberals have done is in the least bit democratic. Back in my riding people are asking why such an imposition has occurred on this particular bill.
In fact, the Reform Party introduced 138 amendments to Bill C-68. I would like to ask the government, with closure limiting debate to six hours at report stage and another six hours at third reading, how on earth is it possible to debate 138 amendments? It surely does not allow the members of the Reform Party to accurately describe what is wrong with Bill C-68. This is forcing an anti-democratic bill through the House and it is wrong.
That is in part what is wrong with a majority government. This government has not taken the hint from the last government that was in majority in this House of Commons. It got arrogant. It got overconfident. In the early stages, those are the signs we are seeing from this Liberal government. That is unfortunate, but fortunate for the rest of the land because we only have about two years to put up with this nonsense.
There are two other bills of particular note going through here on the basis of closure, and they are Bill C-41 and Bill C-85, the criminal justice system and MPs' pensions. Again, this government invoked closure on perhaps the most important legislation they could dream up since Parliament opened. They forced closure on it. It is absolutely unbelievable.
I can tell members that there are many people across this land who do not understand why, including myself. They make jokes about it here as I talk. We will see where the jokes go two years from now when we hit the election.
Before the votes started I was about to talk a little about the Ridgedale Rod and Gun Club, one of many rod and gun clubs in
this country. I had the privilege of participating in a shoot in that club about three weeks ago. I won one of the competitions. It was on a politically correct gun competition with pistols and politically incorrect guns. I had never really shot these pistols before, although I am a gun owner myself; I have three rifles. What surprised me in particular about this competition was the level of pride and satisfaction these members had. There was an extreme level of competence these people had.
One of the members who spoke here previously from the Liberal Party said that these people do not mind Bill C-68. Every person at the Ridgedale Rod and Gun Club was extremely upset at it.
I do not understand how a government that invokes closure on this bill, says it is not costly, and whose members say that people agree with what they are doing could be so wrong. I guess what we are going to see is a lot of this Liberal arrogance for the next two years. It is going to catch them and it is going to catch them hard.
These people at the Ridgedale Rod and Gun Club, I have admiration for people who have collections of any sort. There were several people there. One fellow had one of the better collections of Enfield rifles in Canada. He was asking: "Why are they doing this? What is this for? Come and look at my collection. I will show you what safety is all about". I did not get to see the collection, but as far as safety goes with these folks, they are probably number one in the country. They know what gun safety is all about.
I do not understand what the direction is here. I thought we were after crime and criminals. These people are not criminals. These are not crime makers unless a government chooses to head them in that direction by way of calling them criminals by virtue of non-compliance with Bill C-68.