Mr. Speaker, I find it astonishing that anyone who has lived long enough to get themselves elected to the House would be able to formulate a question such as that one, to ask whether or not long guns are actually used in the commission of crime.
Of course they are. We can look at the statistics. That is the demagoguery. That is what we are dealing with here. The police across Canada consult the registry 40,000 times a day. They need it to do their jobs safely.
Those same high priests of law and order are not listening to the very women and men who are out there actually applying the law and maintaining order across Canada. That is the hypocrisy.
With regard to the faint hope clause, the member should remember what the Canadian Bar Association said. This is not some lobby group. This is not one of the parties against the other. Too many people believe that the faint hope clause simply allows those convicted of murder to be released after serving only 15 years of their sentence. The CBA section urges the government to set the record straight rather than enacting legislation based upon misinformation. That is a straight shot at the Conservatives by none other than the Canadian Bar Association. It is well deserved. It is a campaign based on misinformation and demagoguery.