Mr. Speaker, I start off by explaining that I am an active firearms owner and user. I am a trap and skeet shooter. I am not particularly good at it but I enjoy doing it.
I am also a competitive pistol shooter. I am much better at that. Having said that, I say to the Liberals across the way and to everyone else that I support gun control. Gun control is good. We should have it in Canada. There is no question about that.
Gun control is ensuring that international arms dealers do not operate out of our country. Gun control is about ensuring that criminals do not smuggle Uzis and AK-47s into this country. Gun control is about ensuring that terrorists cannot easily arm themselves with illegal weapons. Gun control is about getting firearms out of the hands of criminals. Gun control is desirable for the average Canadian, and I agree with it. But Bill C-68 is not about gun control.
I have had a lot of people write to me. An overwhelming majority were opposed to this bill. Some were in favour. I spent as much time looking at their letters as I do with the others, perhaps even more. I know what a lot of the people opposed to it are going to say but I want to see what the people who are in favour in this bill have to say about it. One women said if it saves only one life is it not worth it. I am not going to brush that off. I am going to have a very serious look at that. If it saves even one life is it worth it? The figure that was going around at the time was $89 million. Later it went to $118.9 million. That figure is now quite low but that is the figure I worked with and looked at.
In 1993, 1,354 lives were lost in some manner related to a firearm, suicide, homicide, accident, legal intervention, every means we can connect to a firearm. The same year I looked at those figures I found out from talking to a doctor in charge of the breast cancer detection program in British Columbia that 17,000 women would be diagnosed that year alone with breast cancer. Of those 5,400 would be terminal. I asked if I provided him with $118.9 million what would he do with it and what results would we get. He talked to some of his colleagues. They did some math. He came back and said that if I gave them that much money they could double the early detection screening in the high risk category. I asked what results would that give. He said that statistically they could save 1,710 lives. That is 1,710 real lives saved, victims in this country, or some unknown percentage in some unknown way of 1,354 that has never been explained to us by the past justice minister or the present one. If this bill is about saving lives there are a lot better ways to spend the money.
We have another consideration. There are going to be a lot of things talked about today. I want to hit on a couple of very specific points. There is a challenge by the province of Alberta that has gone to court and is complete. We are waiting for the decision of that court challenge. The government is spending a lot of money on that court challenge. I might add that the province of Alberta is supported by the provinces of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and the territories.
When they say there is a lot of support out there, yes there is. I think it is because of misinformation. But that aside, there is a lot of support out there. There is also a lot of resentment to this bill from individuals Canadians, from groups of Canadians and from entire provincial governments. There is a lot of opposition to this as well. That should be a clue to the government that even if it wants to keep this bill it should perhaps at a very minimum look at it and see if there is some alternative to some of the aspects of it. Even without the most objectionable parts of it there is some alternative to what it is proposing to do.
Under the Alberta court challenge it is anticipated, and this is from fairly high up and not our opinion, that the federal government is going to lose that challenge. The decision will likely read that the federal government does not have the right to regulate private property. If that happens what it will do is not only strike down the registration provisions of Bill C-68, it will strike down the registration of handguns as well.
If there is support for Bill C-68 from people who want to see sporting rifles and shotguns registered, can we imagine the outcry from these people if the actions of the government, albeit intending to support the desires of those people, inadvertently causes the loss of the registration of handguns? I think the government would end up losing ground rather than gaining. In light of that it might want to reconsider.
The government, by claiming that the bill would reduce crime, has played a very cruel hoax on Canadians by providing them with a false sense of security and possibly reducing vigilance against criminal attack. The government claims that Bill C-68 will make our homes and streets safer but the legislation does absolutely nothing whatsoever to justify that claim.
The money the government is wasting on Bill C-68 could be spent far more effectively on disease prevention, detection and cures; on policing costs; on establishing DNA databanks to aid the police in apprehending and convicting violent criminals; on post-secondary education for young people who are inheriting a debt of two decades of wasteful program spending, which I might add can be compared very closely with this bill and the amount of money it will cost.
Bill C-68 is not gun control. It is a phenomenal waste of money. It provides a false sense of security to Canadians. It does absolutely nothing to hamper the criminal misuse of firearms. If anything, it actually helps criminals by diverting police activities from their apprehension.
The Canadian Police Association, the frontline police officers, not the politically appointed chiefs of police, who deal directly with criminals and criminal situations are totally opposed to the bill.
If the government's intentions were good, now is the time to correct the outcome. What the government intended may not be the way it will come out. I call on the government to rescind Bill C-68 and replace it with legislation that cracks down on the criminal misuse of firearms. If the intention is good that is great.
In the first speech I ever made in the House of Commons I said, and sincerely meant it, that I was not here to oppose the government for opposition sake. If the government does something right I will be the first to congratulate it. If the government comes out with a bill that I do not happen to agree with, I will speak out on it and try to suggest alternatives to make it a better bill.
I have done that in committee. I have worked with government officials not to try to expose what they are doing and say they are a bunch of whatever but rather to say what I believe the problems are and to give a justifiable and valid alternative.
There are alternatives. The government should not blindside itself by saying that everything it does it automatically right. It would be far better to say that everything it does it means to be right but sometimes it will have to make some changes along the way.
I believe this is one of those times. I hope enlightened members will look at it and see that it is not a weakness to suggest that the intentions were good but perhaps some changes are needed. This bill is one of those occasions.