Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Oxford. I heard the member for Wild Rose say, and this is pretty close to a quote, we will have to get the
Hansard
to check, that he would support anything if it was voluntary. I think that is what I heard him say.
Does that mean then that criminals are going to voluntarily register? On one hand they are saying that criminals will not register their guns. Obviously they will not. What the member said is that he would support the bill if it was voluntary. That is what I heard.
That is very interesting that we have principles and if you do not like them, we have other principles. The point is what I heard is that the general concept is something the member can agree. He just does not want it to be a forced situation. That is very interesting.
I wonder where the Reform Party went wrong when it decided not to support the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, the Canadian Police Association, the Canadian Association of Police Boards. You would have thought that these gentlemen and women would be lining up behind everything these groups had to say. Yet they will say that registering guns is a horrible violation which will not help the police in doing their job in fighting crime.
The three bodies I just mentioned would beg to differ. They say that registration will help police solve crimes where firearms are recovered. That seems like a reasonable idea. It will help identify the sources of firearms that are recovered. It will enable police to trace some of the 3,000 firearms that are lost or stolen every year back to their rightful owners. It will enable police to determine whether firearms have been skimmed from commercial shipments. It will allow information on safe storage and handling regulations to be directed specifically to firearm owners. The police are very concerned about that. It will help the police to determine what types and numbers of firearms they might encounter when they are responding to an emergency call.
Just talk to someone in the business of policing. They get a phone call. Quite often it can be late at night. There is a report of violence. There is a report of someone in distress and we are asking them to simply walk into that situation with no ability to access a database that might allow them to determine that the place they are going into happens to house a firearm or a number of firearms. Why would we restrict that information from the police? Why would the Reform Party restrict it? It is truly incredible.
I listened to the leader of the Reform Party earlier today saying that it was his mandate, or words similar to that, that he would fight against these unjust laws. What he is really saying is that he is the Leader of the Opposition and therefore he is going to oppose it, whether it is good legislation or not.
We see all these folks out on the front lawn of Parliament Hill. No one can deny there is a movement against registering firearms. They ask why would we support this. They call us sheep. They say we are simply going to do what we are told. Let me tell you who is telling us what to do. It is the Canadian people, with 78% of all Canadians approving of the legislation; 86% of people in the province of Ontario approve of the legislation; and 47% of firearm owners who are registered approve of the legislation. Why would they not?
What is the problem? It is absolutely mind boggling. We register our cars. We have to renew the license on a regular basis. We register things like our home ownership and our mortgage. We register our dogs, for goodness' sake. We register most things. We even register our children. Why in the world would we not want to have some idea? Granted, it will not solve all the problem. There is no question that criminals are not going to come forward and say “I am here at 11 division and I want to register six firearms that I use to rob banks”. We understand that. Why would we be opposed to registering weapons that could be dangerous? We need to have some confidence that they are being treated properly and that people are properly licensed.
In my view we have a real serious problem in this country. When I see the province of Ontario deciding that it is going to lower the age for hunting to 12 I get a little nervous. I understand about education, training and getting young people into a sport early to make sure they understand how to use guns properly. But I get a little nervous about the sense of responsibility, about the confidence, about the understanding and the calmness. I am not sure I want to be walking around in the woods this November in Parry Sound where I have a cottage. I am not sure I want to go out in the woods knowing there are 12 year olds with rifles. It is a little nerve racking knowing there are men and women. But to go down to the age of 12, I do not know where in the world those people are coming from or what they are thinking.
The thing I find most interesting is the lack of information. The people out front, and we will hear the speeches, and the people in the Reform Party fuel myth. I cannot use the word lie, it is not parliamentary. It is a myth when they say that this act is just about registration. We know—