I hear the member opposite shouting and shaking his head. I can hear it rattling from here. He is suggesting that front line police officers are in favour of this. I do not know who he has been talking to. We have heard from plenty of front line police officers. Toronto Police Chief Julian Fantino, the police chief of the biggest city in Canada, said on January 3, 2003:
We have an ongoing gun crisis including firearms related homicides lately in Toronto, and a law registering firearms has neither deterred these crimes nor helped us solve any of them. None of the guns we know to have been used were registered, although we believe that more than half of them were smuggled into Canada from the United States.
Here is the final unkindest cut of all. He continued:
The firearms registry is long on philosophy and short on practical results considering the money could be more effectively used for security against terrorism as well as a host of other public safety initiatives.
There are many other references that could be made and a lot of issues that the Liberals like to overlook. They talk about the number of firearms registered. They say 7 million. It is estimated that there are over 16 million firearms in the country. They suggest that the firearms are just going to disappear or evaporate once the computer system is up and running. More than 300,000 owners of previously registered handguns still do not have a firearms licence.
If the emphasis is to be on licensing, let us put it on licensing, training, public safety and proper storage, all of which were put in place by a previous Conservative government, where the emphasis was actually on public safety. There was some nexus to protecting the public, not simply putting money into a registry.
I will explain very simply how the firearms registry is flawed. If I took one of the little laser-guided stickers that are placed on a long gun and stuck it to this chair and picked it up, and hit my friend from Cumberland--Colchester--Musquodoboit Valley over the head with it, it would not prevent a thing, whether that number was registered in a computer or otherwise.
It is completely flawed from start to finish. It was presented to Canadians in the wake of a terrible tragedy that we commemorated this week, the terrible massacre of women at École polytechnique de Montréal.
The totally offensive way in which the government has tried to play on the sentiments of Canadians in suggesting that somehow this registry would have or could have prevented that tragedy is asinine and offensive. That incident took place because a deranged individual used a restricted weapon that would never have been caught by this firearms registry.
I would like to put on the record some more facts. More than 315,000 owners of a registered handgun still have not re-registered them. We have had the registration of handguns in Canada for 70 years. The biggest problem in Canada today is related to handguns, not Uncle Henry's duck hunting rifle or a person who has collected a rifle for sentimental reasons or a person who engages in a completely lawful and understandable practice of hunting or shooting for sport.
Only 282,000 plus of the 2 million firearm licence holders have taken safety courses. There is a bit of a focal point that maybe we should revisit. More than five million of the seven million firearms in the gun registry still have not been verified, according to police. There is no requirement in the Firearms Act for gun owners to tell anyone where they store their guns or who they would loan them to. Firearms registration for the Nunavut Inuit has been temporarily suspended for two year. There is an entire region of the country where this registry is not even operating.
A briefing note to the current minister when she was the minister of justice back in 2001 in relation to the firearms registry stated:
There are currently just over 1,800 employees associated with the firearms program, counting processing sites, the regions and all partners including the Registrar and CCRA.
It continued, “The Liberals have refused to provide a complete statistic on the number of employees associated with the firearms program since that date”. This is part of the ongoing mystery as to how close to $2 billion could be spent on a registry system.
I am told there is a program in the country now, and many of my colleagues from the west would know this, where every cow in the country has been registered for somewhere in the range of $2 million. The registry is aware of every cow in the country, but we cannot register firearms for a cost of less than $2 billion. It is absolutely shocking.
Here is what $2 billion would pay for, just to put it into perspective for some members. It would be the average income of 76,136 Nova Scotians for a year. It would be the salary of 4,444 new police officers for eight years with an average salary of $66,000. It would be the maximum annual salary for 25 years for over 1,500 nurses in the province of Nova Scotia. It would have paid for 500 installed MRI machines. It would have paid for all kinds of practical programs that would actually save lives, prevent crime, and enhance the lives of Canadians living at home.
This program has been perhaps one of the most abject failures of any program. It is probably the biggest and most serious case of fraud ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public by any government at any time in this country's history. It should be reduced, cancelled, and the money should be put into front line policing where it would actually do some good.