Mr. Speaker, I guess the bottom line in a lot of what we have seen in the gun registry has not been practical policy. It has been political spin to try to handle a problem that happened in Montreal, of all places. It turns out that a lot of this direction is going in a totally wrong-headed way.
No one in the country, including me as a gun owner, a hunter and so on, has any problem with training, safe handling, safe storage or registration as a gun owner, but the government does not need to know what I have unless I mess up with it and then, by all means, it can throw the book at me, as should be done, but we are not seeing that now. We are seeing money redirected into a false sense of security.
My other colleague from Selkirk--Interlake said that he had 30 years of service in the RCMP and retired as a staff sergeant. He saw what was required in the country and part of what drove him to run in 1997 was the wrong-headedness of the registry. This will not address it.
I talk weekly with my own RCMP members in my riding about this. I talked to them at a banquet I was at the other night with a number of members. We were sitting at a table discussing the gun registry and I asked them how they would handle this now that it was back on their table. They asked me what I meant. I asked if they had not heard the announcement where the justice minister just handed it off to the Solicitor General, that it was now back under RCMP purview. These guys did not know anything about it. I guess they did not get the memo.
The RCMP want nothing to do with this. They do not even want to handle the firearms that are turned in. They do not want to because most of them are not registered to do it. An RCMP officer who does not verify, check or do something just right under this stupid legislation can face a one year prison sentence and a $2,000 fine. This is a peace officer who is caught in the middle of this bureaucratic bungle. It is just absolutely untenable that this situation go on.
I did the PAL finally because I wanted to purchase some more guns. I found out that the two handguns that I used to register had not been registered correctly from 30 years ago. Now they want to take them away. I am a criminal because someone else lost the records. I phoned the firearms officer and the staff sergeant at the RCMP and asked what to do with my prohibited handgun. The firearms officer told me to weld it shut and make a paper weight out of it if I wanted to keep it. The police told me not to bring it to them because they wanted nothing to do with it. They said that if I had it for 30 years I should keep it.
Who is right? I am getting caught in the middle of all this bureaucracy. I am trying to figure out what to do with the handgun. I do not want to give it away because it has some sentimental value and some monetary value. I have had it for 30 some years and have not accosted anyone with it and yet this stupid law says that I am now a criminal because someone else did not keep track of the records properly. It is just ridiculous.