Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by saying that I am not in any way questioning the good intentions of the member for Lévis—Bellechasse who introduced this bill. However, I think his position is actually contrary to the policies of his party. Although he wishes to protect women and children in our society, by cutting numerous programs, the Conservative government will only put them more at risk. I would like to list some of the programs that were cut.
I acknowledge—and all the statistics show—that women are still the victims of spousal violence. However, given the government's approach that all persons must fend for themselves, I think we are going in the opposite direction from the member's goal.
The government has just imposed drastic cuts on Status of Women Canada. This organization speaks out and advocates for women's equality. Now that it has been muzzled, it will be more difficult for it to advocate for women. We know that financial support for the administration, which allows this organization to function, has been cut, so, again, I would ask that he speak to the members of his caucus and the Prime Minister to reinstate that funding.
On the question of programs for prevention, they are almost completely sidelined in favour of simply making more criminals, creating more prisons and building the prison industry rather than helping those who are at risk through solid prevention programs. The funding, as we saw in the budget, has become so limited that its usefulness is questionable.
On a third point, the Conservative Party has been unanimously against the arms registry. We have seen many crimes in the past year that have seriously endangered what we think of as our country's values. The saw the terrible tragedy at Dawson College, and recently women and children have been the victims of conjugal crimes.
We have to begin questioning why some of those weapons are even present in our society and why the government would not present a bill to simply ban the sale or the presence of these semi-automatic or fully automatic weapons. There is absolutely no reason for them in our society. Friends of mine who are hunters tell me that they do not need them.
Yet these are some of the measures that would begin to help reduce crime in Canada, particularly, as we have seen in the past few years, violence against women and children. I believe those measures, with the appropriate funding, would be more effective in helping address a problem that we have all recognize. We all want our country to have a strong social cohesion, to be a place where women and children feel safe.
I would suggest that these are the measures of which our party would be more supportive.