Mr. Speaker, gun control legislation, it will be recalled, is legislation that we supported.
The primary goal of this legislation—and this is something I remember, having been a member of the Standing Committee on Justice at the time—was to reduce the number of incidents in which people going through a psychologically difficult period in their life come across a gun and turn it on themselves, with fatal or very serious results, having first in some cases fatally wounded members of their own family, their wife or children, or strangers.
This extremely tragic kind of behaviour, attributable to temporary psychological distress, would not have taken place if a gun had not been available at that particular point in time.
This is not the case with hunters or employees whose activities give them legitimate access to firearms. Statistics show that this kind of accident occurs when guns are stored, sometimes for many years, with ammunition nearby. The gun has not been used in ages. The original owner no longer uses it. In short, there was no need for the weapon to be available to anyone. Unfortunately, it was available at a particular and tragic point in time and was used to kill one or more people.
Faced with legislation that could reduce this risk, that could save human lives, one could hardly do other than support the underlying principles.
The then Minister of Justice introduced a bill in the House the very purpose of which was to reduce these risks, to save lives. Faced with these objectives and principles, the Bloc Quebecois could only agree with a bill that preserved human life, a very precious commodity.
At the time, however, the Bloc Quebecois asked the Minister of Justice to make a number of amendments. An initial group of amendments was intended to ensure that hunters and members of shooting clubs were not unduly hindered by the legislation in the exercise of their sport. The Bloc Quebecois introduced a number of amendments.
Some of them were accepted. The Bloc Quebecois' proposal, for example, that the costs of registration be low, was well received by the government, and the costs are very reasonable indeed. However, in the case of the Bloc's proposal that a hunter's failure to register be decriminalized, the government's response was less positive.
The Bloc sought to have gun handling courses taken in the past recognized, and the bill permits this.
In the end, the bill as amended got the support of the Bloc, first and foremost because of the principle of the value of human life and then because a number of amendments had smoothed the rough edges. Today, however, we are well past that situation. Regulations have been submitted to the Standing Committee on Justice and discussed. These regulations were introduced and tabled here in the House and are now part of the package permitting the legislation to be applied.
In this regard, I would like to quote to you two paragraphs of the Bloc's dissenting opinion in the justice committee report on the proposed regulations introduced by the minister in connection with the Firearms Act, and I quote:
Representatives of industry, hunters and gun clubs all complained that they had not really been given the time to prepare properly. Moreover, even though some witnesses had devoted hours to putting together briefs as best they might, in many cases as volunteers, and had submitted them to the Committee Clerk, the briefs were never distributed to the Committee members because there was no time to have them translated into both official languages. It is attitudes like this on the part of the federal government that undermine the credibility of elected representatives and institutions in the eyes of the people.
I will finish the quote:
While the Bloc Québécois supports the concept of gun control and endorses the Committee's recommendations, it strongly deplores the fact that the disgraceful haste insisted on by the government and the Committee's Liberal majority has cast doubt on the quality of these regulations and put at risk the support of all Canadians and Quebeckers, which will be indispensable in the near future for the implementation of such an important piece of legislation.
We have indeed got to that point. The problem is not the principle of the law; it is not that the law wants to save human lives. The problem is the way it is being applied at the present time.
We are faced with cost overruns, unmet timetables, things that had been anticipated and with which the Bloc Quebecois cannot agree.
But, as I read the motion put to us by the Reform Party, I see that it swings the pendulum totally in the other direction. We are in favour of the principle of the legislation. The Reform Party has never been in favour of the principle of the legislation, and that is where our paths diverge.
Consequently, we cannot be in agreement with the Reform Party motion, although we continue to strongly disagree with the way the Minister of Justice is currently proceeding with implementation of this legislation.
I offer one example: believe it or not, they are calling for volunteer auditors. I have here a letter dated July 8 and signed by Mr. Buisson, the superintendent of the national firearms registry. He says:
The business auditors designated by the director are volunteers who will be responsible for checking business inventories and all transfers to and from those inventories.
This creates a situation in which reliance is being placed on people's good will to ensure application of the very mechanics of the legislation, of the regulations, and is just one more example of how this legislation is not being properly implemented.
In conclusion, the Bloc Quebecois maintains that, for the sake of human lives, the legislation implemented must deliver the services we expect from it. The value of human lives, however, is such that implementation of this legislation must be done in such a way as to respect all those involved, and this is not the case.