Mr. Speaker, I want to start by extending my heartiest congratulations to my dear colleague, the hon. member for Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert. This is a good motion. It is a very important motion that I personally support. The Progressive Conservative Party also supports it, as does each of its members.
I want to begin by addressing quickly some of the points that were made by the member opposite. He spoke of the black market.
There is an increase in the rifles available on the black market as a direct result of this gun registry because people are not participating. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of long guns are now available on the black market.
Oodles of money, hundreds of millions of dollars have been put into this registry. It totals $1 billion. It is astronomical that this could continue, that the government would even as recently as today request $10 million more and try to slide it in the back door.
Do not take it from a partisan, which I am, or members opposite but listen to what the Auditor General had to say about this. The Auditor General stated clearly, “The issue here is not gun control. And it is not even astronomical cost overruns, although those are serious. What is really inexcusable is that Parliament was kept in the dark”. It was a direct affront to the public purse.
I suggest this will go down as the biggest fraud ever perpetrated on the Canadian taxpayer in the history of Canada. The gun registry is an absolute farce. The police are not enforcing it. The provinces are not prosecuting.
This is not about lifesaving as Liberals would have us believe. This is about face saving. This is face saving for the Liberals and the former minister of finance. Who was there? Who was shovelling that money out the door? It was the former minister of finance, the member for LaSalle—Émard. He is the man with his finger on the trigger of this astronomical waste of public money.