Mr. Speaker, recently in the House, Reform and Conservative members vigorously spoke against gun registration, arguing that licensing firearms was a massive intrusion on individual rights. Some MPs even raised the spectre of a police state, suggesting that registering guns was a prelude to their seizure by a government fearful of citizens with arms.
Later the same Reform and Conservative MPs spoke equally vigorously in favour of DNA sampling of individuals on arrest by police. In the interests of efficient law enforcement, these same MPs argued that police should be enabled to force individuals to surrender the most intimate physical data possible without their consent, without their being charged with any crime and without them having been convicted by any court.
This is big brother big time. The opposition wants to take away the most fundamental liberties of Canadians: the right to privacy and the right not to have to submit to arbitrary arrest.
No wonder Reformers and Conservatives like their guns. In their world they need them.