Mr. Speaker, I asked a question in the House on December 2 regarding the firearms registry. The background to my question read as follows:
Mr. Speaker, the government keeps talking about the benefits of its bungled gun registry, which it now says will...cost [by its own estimates] $1.4 billion, 2,000% more than the Liberals said it would. They are so confident of the benefits that they keep the cost benefit analysis locked away as a cabinet secret.
I want to refer to the fact that while the government continued to say that the gun registry was providing a great service to Canadians, it went to the expense to carry out a cost benefit analysis of the program. The results obviously came back extremely negative because they refused to make the results of the cost benefit analysis public. The reason it gives for not providing the information under access to information is that it is a cabinet secret, which is absurd.
I therefore would like to try asking my question again in the hope that the parliamentary secretary, in his response, will say that the government will release the cost benefit analysis. I doubt that will happen but that is what I am hoping for.
I want to make it very clear that the benefit is not there for the gun registry and we know that. The following are the top 10 items that demonstrate that very clearly.
Ten. Of firearms used in homicides, 86% were unregistered and 80% of murderers were unlicensed.
Nine. A briefing note dated April 12, 2001, to the current securities minister, the minister from Edmonton, when she was the minister of justice, said that staffing levels associated with the firearms program were 1,800 employees.
Eight. The firearms registration in Nunavut was temporarily suspended by the courts for more than two years.
Seven. There is no requirement in the Firearms Act for gun owners to tell anyone where they store their guns or who they loan their guns to. So much for the Liberal promise that the police will know where the guns are.
Six. There are only 282,000 of the two million firearm licence holders who have taken a firearms safety course.
Five. There are more than five million of the seven million firearms in the gun registry that have still not been verified, contrary to police demands.
Four. More than 315,000 owners of a registered handgun still have not registered their handgun. They know they are out there but they are still not registered.
Three. More than 400,000 firearm licence-holders still have not registered a gun.
Two. More than 300,000 owners of previously registered handguns still do not have a firearms licence.
One. The Liberals have only registered 7 million out of 16.5 million guns.
I think those quick facts demonstrate very clearly that the Liberal firearms registry program simply is not effective. I am hoping that the minister or the parliamentary secretary--