Madam Speaker, this is precisely what I am trying to get across. We are in the same situation. We thanked the member for voting in favour of Bill C-68. The Bloc Quebecois did the same.
It is essential for the program to exist. The problem is that in its current state, it gives the Canadian Alliance ammunition to do away with it by citing poor management by the Department of Justice. More importantly, it was initially supposed to cost $2 million to administer the program. Think about what the Auditor General has given us. In 1995, the program was supposed to cost $2 million. To set up and implement it there was talk of $119 million, but $117 million would be recouped, reducing the cost of the program to $2 million. Implementing the program would cost $119 million less what was going to be recouped, namely $117 million.
In the meantime, the government noticed that it was hard to get people to register. In other words, it did a poor job explaining to people why they had to register their firearms and why there needed to be a registry and permits. It did a poor job and was forced at one point to waive the registration fee. This cost the government a great deal of money and, in the end, resulted in poor management of the program.
This is only one of the problems, but others have been raised. The government wants to implement a registry as large as this one and we see there are others it wants to implement. With the bill on the sex offender registry—