Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for Nunatsiaq for his comments.
I notice that he spent his time reassuring his constituents that the bill would not be too harsh on them. I know that even the use of his language was an effort to better communicate that to his constituents.
I also have made an effort to consult and to try to get the feelings from my constituents as well. I had a town hall meeting to discuss this bill in an open forum. I could not get a representative from the justice department to present the government side. No one would come. I could not get anyone from the police chiefs to come to put their spin on it. I just could not get them. I could not get a representative from Wendy Cukier and her gun control group. They would not come. Frankly, I could not get anyone to come to defend the bill in a public forum.
A dentist got up at this public meeting and said that he wanted to shoot recreationally. He said that he wanted to shoot a handgun. He was pretty nervous. He said: "This is my first ever public presentation, but this is what I have to go through already. I decide that I want to take the course and it takes me a year to get a handgun. I have to get an FAC. I have to go through the course. I have to spend money. I have to have a background check. I have to allow them to question my neighbours. They do a criminal check on me. When I finally get a firearm, I can only transport it in the trunk of my car. Any other guns I might have are locked up; they have a trigger lock and the ammunition is separate."
This is already the case in Canada. In Canada we do not allow sawed off shotguns; we do not allow automatic weapons; we do not allow machine guns. This just is not allowed. People watching should know these things are already not allowed. The gun owners by and large say they are willing to go through the hoops, that it is a pain and they question its effectiveness, but they are willing to do it because they are law-abiding citizens. But they also say that there comes a time when they do not know what they are going to do any more: "I can't do more than I'm doing. I am not the problem".
The constituents of the member for Nunatsiaq are not the problem. The problem is the criminal element. This bill does very little to clamp down on the criminal misuse of firearms. This dentist who gave a speech and the other gun owners I have talked to say that when we find a criminal misusing a firearm, using it in the commission of a crime, we should throw them away for the rest of their lives: "I don't care, because they're not part of us. They're not law-abiding citizens, so throw the book at them". The problem is this bill is primarily concerned with the law-abiding citizens.
My question to the member is how will the universal registration portion of this bill make my constituent, this dentist, feel any safer? He has already jumped through a full year's worth of regulations trying to be a totally law-abiding citizen. Now he finds out that is not enough. He is exasperated, and I share his exasperation.