Mr. Speaker, in the debate, even from the previous member who asked me a question related to quotations from various officers, I at no time suggested that he or anyone else was deliberately misleading people in this debate. He shared some quotes. I shared some others. Injecting this fact that anybody would deliberately try to mislead people when it comes to the use of firearms is detrimental to the debate.
I quoted the numbers, and I will quote them again. In 1998, at the time when this unfortunate journey began of trying the impossible task of registering millions upon millions of long guns, there were 51 deaths as a result of long guns. The year the long gun registry was to be put in place officially, that had dropped to 32, without the long gun registry. Then two years after the long gun registry was officially in place, from 2003 to 2005, deaths actually went up.
It would be specious of my to say the long gun registry caused those deaths. I do not think it did, but it certainly did not reduce crime. The way to reduce crime is taking valuable and precious resources, getting more money on the streets, getting more police officers on the streets going after gun smuggling and keeping youth out of gang activity. When that is put into place, we know one thing, that approach works. The Liberal attempt to register every long gun did not work.