Mr. Speaker, 90% were deliberately put in with errors and omissions. A substantial number of people had to be hired to individually contact all of those registrants to get the information correct. It took a lot of time.
In addition, based on the information that we have, the National Rifle Association from the United States was working to get people to flood the registry, to crash the system, so that it would not be operational.
There was also a significant misleading public relations campaign, which took substantial cost to respond to, so that Canadians had the correct information about what was happening and why. At the time it was being promoted that somehow we wanted to take people's guns away from them. This was a substantial problem and it took a lot of money to put in, but that was a one time cost.
What is the annual cost of administering the current firearms registry? The member did not say it in her speech because she did not want to take people's attention away from a bigger number.
According to the work done by the Auditor General and also by the RCMP, the annual cost of administering the firearms registry is $15 million. According to the RCMP, the annual savings by retaining the registry, but just for restricted and prohibited firearms, would be only $3 million. If this bill passes and gets to committee, it is important to determine that because it means this bill is only about $3 million a year. What can we get for $3 million? I will get to that.
Members may remember the riots in Los Angeles, which I must admit was a terrible situation. People were trashing their own neighbourhoods. When it was all over and their neighbourhoods were trashed, they said, “There, take that”. They were hurting themselves.
Why is it that we force a system to incur a $2 billion bill because people are opposed to it? Because that is the democratic process. There is not much we can do about it when people want to oppose something like a firearms registry.
The member suggested in her speech that the firearms registry does nothing to end gang violence, drug crime, gun crime, make the streets safer, protect communities, help our police officers or reduce domestic violence. The registry does because police officers on the front line have said many times that knowing where those guns are in a volatile situation helps out.
We cannot expect the $3 million in savings to somehow solve all the problems of the world.
In her speech the member referred to and attributed information to the Auditor General of Canada, and she referred to the 2002 report. The latest Auditor General's report was in 2006 and the Auditor General said that the registry was making significant progress.
I do not understand why all the relevant facts have not been put on the table. I do not understand why we deal with sloganeering and all kinds of misinformation.
I will be opposing Bill C-391 at second reading.