Mr. Speaker, my colleague across the way, whom I admire and find to be a very thoughtful, careful colleague, has said that the Auditor General did not criticize the principle of firearm registration. I make quite a differentiation between gun control and firearm registration. I noted he did not make that. That of course is not the Auditor General's mandate. The Auditor General has one mandate and it is to look at the financial matters relating to firearm registration. I want him to admit that this was not the mandate of the Auditor General.
The member knows that I come from a medical background. He knows that as a surgeon I had the opportunity to deal with lives on a regular basis. I believe that the funds spent on firearm registration would be far better spent on medical issues if we went to another issue that would truly save lives, or to front line police officers if we just stayed in the realm of security and safety.
Could he admit that the Auditor General does not have a mandate to go down the road of making any pronouncement on firearm registration? Could we not have spent that money and saved more lives in other areas?