Mr. Speaker, in a letter of July 1997 the commissioner of the RCMP, Philip Murray, accused the officials in the Department of Justice of misrepresenting RCMP firearm stats by overstating the number of firearms involved in violent crime. Contents of this letter were uncovered by Reform through access to information. Other letters revealed that the former minister of justice and his colleagues used inaccurate firearms data produced by the Department of Justice to help justify Bill C-68. At the time the RCMP commissioner requested that these incorrect stats be removed from circulation.
The bottom line is that the policy and legislating decisions which resulted from these misleading stats are now interfering with justice and public safety.
By March 1998, $240 million was wasted on registering guns owned by more than five million law-abiding Canadians. That is diverting resources from programs which would do much more to improve public safety, such as putting more police on the streets.
If there was ever a case for the auditor general to step in, this is the one. The government has tried to grossly underestimate the cost, but it is estimated that by the year 2003 $1.2 billion will have been spent on gun registration.
With four provinces to date opting out of gun registration and the federal government hiring personnel to administer the system in these jurisdictions, this comedy of errors has to be brought to an end. It is becoming a real comedy of errors.
We are talking about $1.2 billion to register firearms. And I repeat, the registration of shotguns and rifles will not save a life. It just so happens that criminals do not care if the gun they use is registered. I have not been able to get that through the heads of government members.
Let us take the $1.2 billion and let us not say no to hepatitis C people, but help that gang out. I know some do not want to. I know that no one on the other side wants to because they all had to vote no. The magic leader said “You had better or else”, so the little sheep bleated and they jumped up and did what they were told once again.
Perhaps $1.2 billion could be put into cancer research. That would save lives. We know it and members opposite know it. But the registration of guns will not save lives. I hope someone on the other side will get up and give me an example of where the registration of one shotgun or one rifle will save the life of anyone.
Let me tell members about something that happened in Winnipeg yesterday. This was in the headlines. A local city teenager blew his head off with a rifle that he had stolen the previous day. When the owner of the gun called to report it stolen the police rushed to his house to arrest him. That is what we all feared when Bill C-68 came into existence.
I do not know if this has happened elsewhere in the country, but we know for sure there is a big outrage in Manitoba. This victim who had his gun stolen is looking at very serious jail time. He was a victim.
I looked at the Criminal Code for the last four or five years when I was in the justice area and I never found anything in the Criminal Code that was bad. I thought it was a good Criminal Code. It went after the criminals of the land. Why all of a sudden do we want to invent inclusions to the Criminal Code that go after law-abiding, taxpaying citizens, such as we see outside today, in a manner that is totally wasteful and unnecessary?
The member for Ottawa Centre said earlier today “Wake up and smell the coffee”. That is a brilliant statement. They are going to spend $1.2 billion, according to the auditor general's estimates, and it is not going to save a life. It is not going to make our streets safer. It is a bunch of nonsense.
Members opposite know it. Their constituents know it. Their leader knows it. But it shall be done because the dictator of Canada has spoken. The dictator of Canada has said to those members over there “Vote for this bill”. They will. They will continue to support the things that cause innocent victims to be arrested, such as the individual in Winnipeg. That is what is going to happen, but they cannot see it. I feel sorry for them.