Madam Speaker, I would like to begin by asking the following questions: can we have any greater responsibility as legislators, as elected representatives of the people, than to ensure the safety and security of our fellow citizens, of those who have elected us?
You will understand that my answer to this is no. The members of this House have no greater responsibility than to ensure that the people of Quebec, the people of Canada, live in a healthy and safe environment.
You will understand from my introduction that I am opposed to the Canadian Alliance motion. The Bloc Quebecois is in favour of the firearms control program. We are, moreover, not alone in that.
This morning I met with representatives of the Canadian Police Association, an association that does a remarkable job all year long. They come to us once a year to share their concerns and express their grievances. This very morning in my office they again repeated their support of the firearms control program, and I was pleased to hear it.
I have also spoken recently with the officials responsible for the Coalition for Gun Control, including Dr. Chapedelaine and my friend, Caroline Gardette, also an exceptional person, who accompanied him. They, too, reiterated how important the coalition felt the firearms registry program was, and rightly so.
However, we condemn the administrative fiasco that the government has made of the program. All punning aside, this Liberal government's administrative fiasco has claimed two victims. First, obviously, the pocketbooks of Quebec and Canadian taxpayers who have paid for this program, and second, the very principle of gun control, and that is very serious.
Those who are ideologically opposed to the principle of gun control—such as the leader of the Canadian Alliance—have been all over the Liberal mismanagement, using it as ammunition to shoot down the very idea of gun control.
The Minister of Justice and his predecessors are largely responsible for this. They have made life a lot harder for the thousands of people across the country who advocate for gun control, because people are telling them, “Look at the fiasco, is it really worth it?” We believe it is, of course. But what a waste.
What a waste to give this kind of ammunition to the Canadian Alliance and its henchmen, who have been fighting against gun control since the beginning. It is ironic, by the way, that a party that claims to be a grassroots party is against gun control, when a majority of Canadians support it. Incidentally, the place with the highest percentage of support for gun control is Quebec. This little tangent just demonstrates the specific character of the homeland we share, Madam Speaker. So, it is ironic that members of the Canadian Alliance are ignoring what Quebeckers and Canadians are telling them.
On December 6, 1989, when the massacre took place at the Polytechnique, I was a first-year law student. I clearly remember being in a restaurant in Quebec City, where Université Laval law school students were celebrating. It was our class's first Christmas party. When we received the first reports of the massacre, during which 14 women were killed and 13 others were wounded by a mad gunman, in that instant, everything changed.
There are such moments in history. We feel we are at a point of transition, that everything has changed. We felt it immediately. People became subdued. They wanted to listen to the different radio stations to learn what was happening. The young men and women there said, “This must never, ever happen again”. The coalition was created in that instant, with the results we see today.
It is very unfortunate that the Liberal government was unable to manage a program that, really, should have been quite simple. Registering firearms is not very complicated. We have been able to land on the moon for 30 years now. So I refuse to believe that it is so difficult to register guns.
Despite transferring the firearms program from the Department of Justice, which proved its incompetence, to the Solicitor General, the government must still tell us what is going on. Not only that but, starting today, it must ensure that the program administration is transparent. It must ensure that the public and the members of this House have access to all the information needed to ensure that the government cannot, once again, prove its incompetence, as it has here.
In Quebec, the program was implemented by Quebec's ministère de la Sécurité publique and the Sûreté du Québec. From having spoken with staff at the former, I can tell you that things are going smoothly; program registration and application are going well, and they are sticking to the initial budget.
I should also mention that Quebec and the federal government have signed an agreement making the Quebec government responsible for issuing the permits, and this is also going well.
When the Firearms Act was being implemented the Government of Quebec cooperated by sharing its expertise on firearms and how to monitor them. Given that this works well in Quebec, we must avoid handing the program back over to the federal government, because there is no reason to do so.
We want to maintain the firearms program and we support the existence of the Bureau de traitement and the Centre d'appel du Québec, which do very good work and employ a significant number of people.
We want to avoid creating a federal firearms management agency, which would place the program back in the federal government's hands, since it has shown in the past that it is unable to manage such a program.
In conclusion, I reiterate the Bloc Quebecois' support for the firearms control program. We are going to vote in favour of the proposed budget this afternoon and I call on all members from all parties, including the New Democratic Party, to do the same. I am a little disappointed to hear my colleague and friend, the member for Burnaby—Douglas, say that he will abstain from voting. Despite the fiasco and the somewhat difficult situation that making this a confidence vote places us in, the fact remains that beyond all this and beyond the political posturing, the safety and security of Quebeckers and Canadians is what is most important. The firearms control program will ensure that there is better security for all our fellow citizens. I call on all members of this House to vote in favour of the proposed budget this afternoon and against the Canadian Alliance motion.