Mr. Speaker, I read the article this morning and unfortunately the reporter made the same mistake that the Prime Minister does all the time of using statistics selectively. I go back to what I just said in response to the member for Wild Rose. The rate of crimes involving the use of guns by organized crime groups, by street gangs, in particular in our inner cities in fact has gone up. That is what we need to be focusing on. That is what this bill does with the amendments that I pushed the government to accept.
With regard to the second point in the question, my friend is very correct. The Conservative Party has so focused itself on penalities and getting people after they have committed crimes, that the Conservatives are not spending enough money, time, or analysis on what is really needed to prevent the crime from occurring in the first place. There are lots of programs that should be in place. I have been critical of the government that the promises the Conservatives made in the election and in last year's budget in terms of some very minor preventive dollars that were available, they did not even spend until near the end of the year because they did not know how to spend them. I do not think they are doing much better this year. They need to spend a lot more in that area.
Of course we have heard from representatives of the police association and how offended they are by the fact that there was this promise of 2,500 police officers on the street. Not one has been put there. There is not one agreement with the provinces to do it and here we are 15 to 16 months into this administration. That was promised both in the election and in the last budget. We still have not seen it. In fact, they are trying to stick the provinces with part of the cost for that and in a number of cases the provinces cannot afford it.