Madam Speaker, I have not argued that some of these amendments are an improvement to the original bill. I have argued that because of the complexity of the legislation and the way it is so poorly drafted it would do nothing to remove firearms from those who really should be targeted. We are diverting resources, through the subsection that was just referred to, from police into a bureaucracy that would do nothing to control the illegal use of firearms.
The onus is on the government to demonstrate that this subsection, and any of the other 20 pages of amendments, in some way would improve public safety and the quality of life in Canada. I maintain that it would do the opposite. It has created a huge bureaucracy which now employs 1,800 people. That bureaucracy is taking resources away from where it would do the most good, that is, to put police on the street.
We could put 7,000 or 8,000 more police on the street to go after the real criminal element in this country. We could have our spy agencies trying to find the real terrorists in this world rather than sitting behind desks shuffling pieces of paper and laying a piece of paper beside every gun in this country.
There has never been one demonstration of how laying a piece of paper beside a gun in any way affects how that gun is being used. We have had safe storage laws for years. We have had the requirement to take safety courses and all kinds of courses on the proper use of a firearm for 20 some years.
It is obvious to Canadians that if we were to enforce the law that we already have, do the proper background checks and make sure that only those people who should have firearms have them in this country, we would be much better off than trying to create a huge registry which has no measurable benefit. In fact, it has the opposite effect because it diverts resources from the police to other areas.
In answer to my colleague's question the amendments given here may in some small way improve the original errors in Bill C-68. We proposed many amendments previously, but it in no way addresses the fundamental flaw with Bill C-68. That fundamental flaw is that it does not improve public safety. It does not put resources where they are best spent in this country; that is, to put more police on the street, to secure our borders and ensure that firearms are used in the proper way.