Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to address the motion presented by the Bloc Québécois today, asking the government to maintain the registration of all types of firearms in its entirety. It is truly a motion that reflects the wish of a majority of Quebeckers.
I want to begin by referring to a specific case. This example will be compelling enough to make those who are opposed to gun registration think twice about this issue. It will also show, to some extent, my support for this idea. A few years ago, in the Sainte-Thérèse area, the police was called because someone had barricaded himself in a house. Unlike in the example given earlier, that person was not a criminal. He had no criminal record. Therefore, the police had no reason to suspect that this individual could be dangerous. What did the female officer do? She had no warning, because the gun was not registered. She went to the door. The man was standing on the other side of that door with a hunting rifle. He fired a shot and the police officer died on the spot.
One may argue that this is just an exception. It is indeed, but it is one too many. If that gun had been registered, and if the police had known about it, the officers would have been aware of the danger. So, this case alone shows the need for the gun registry. Losing one officer may not seem like much in relation to the whole population, but it is one too many.
Of course, some chiefs of police, in Ontario or elsewhere, are saying that the registration process is not working. There are also Conservative supporters among the police. There are Conservative supporters in all areas. But we are talking about police associations, about the majority of officers who are saying that this registry is absolutely necessary. Just think that, on average, they consult it 6,067 times a day. They do not consult it just for fun, or to kill time: they do it to get information. Therefore, it must be relevant, otherwise they would not bother.
Earlier, it was mentioned that registering a gun was a difficult process. We do not understand. My colleague rightly pointed out that we register automobiles, among other things, but I would go even further. As members know, we must register a deer after killing it. Indeed, a hunter must register a deer after he has killed it. He must travel some distance, and he must pay a fee. By contrast, registering a firearm is currently free, and hopefully it will remain so. Mr. Speaker, if you go fishing, you have to register the fish that you catch. Is that too much work? Yet, everyone does it. To claim that it is too much work to register a firearm is nothing more than an ideological view. If one kills a wolf, even by accident, by hitting it while driving—it happened to me—one has to register it. Therefore, what is the big deal with registering a gun?
Is it too complicated? What about visas and residence permits to travel abroad? People have to spend days to get them. They have to go to one place to get a signature, to another to get a photo, and so on. Yet, they do it. Why would it not be the same with firearms? Why is it so complicated?
Finally, the Conservatives have never said what they really think down deep. They have certain prejudices because some of their voters still think they live in the wild west. They do not want to say they have guns at home. The member said we are criminalizing people who do not register their guns. We also criminalize people who do not register their cars. We criminalize anyone who does not register. Once people register their guns, they are in full compliance with the law.
The cost argument is the most beautiful of all because it comes back so often. This cost so and so many million dollars. However, the fact it was very expensive does not mean we should destroy it now. We should not get rid of it because the Liberals were incredibly irresponsible about the cost. It has been paid for, it is not a debt.
If we built a bridge and it cost 3 times or even 500 times as much as it was supposed to, would we destroy the bridge because it cost too much? Let us be sensible. We would just say it was badly handled, but that is all water under the bridge now. We would not say we should destroy the bridge and go back to rowing across the river because that does not cost anything. This is what someone just said: we should do what we used to do because it did not cost anything.
The entire federal firearms control program costs $73.7 million a year, and of this, the gun registry costs only $14.6 million. How much is that per Canadian if registration remains free, as is currently the case? Not even 50¢ a year. And they say it is too expensive? It is nothing. They do not know how to count. There is a problem here somewhere.
I want to look now at the myths surrounding the gun registry. Some people have a talent for mixing everything up. They have a talent for mixing the gun registry up with the licence to make it seem that the registry is hyper expensive and useless. Nothing could be further from the truth because the registry and the licence are two different things. Getting a licence is much more complicated. The registry costs very little and does not take long. It is hardly necessary to eliminate it. We get back to the fact, as was mentioned earlier, that family tragedies always happen as a result of the presence of hunting guns and rifles in houses.
Some will say that it is because there are very few handguns, and indeed, very few handguns in houses. When I was younger and had young children, it suddenly occurred to me that I had inherited a rifle from my father and there it was, in plain sight. At that time, there was no gun registry or anything of the sort. I thought having a rifle in plain view in one's house set a bad example, even though it was a beautiful hunting rifle from 1898. I gave it to a friend and never saw that rifle again. I thought that merely having an uncontrolled weapon in the house set a very bad example. Now, certainly, putting weapons away in a cupboard, sealing or locking it, and so forth, that is definitely complicated. Registering the weapon is not the complicated part.
We are in favour of the registry and maintaining it in full. With this motion, we are supporting the notion that all Quebeckers want it. With its legislation known as Anastasia's law, the Quebec National Assembly is also calling on the federal government to maintain it. Police forces and the general public want the same. It would be hard to eliminate something that has cost a fortune simply because there are a few people in another region who say that it serves no purpose. I will come back to this point. It is precisely because it has cost so much that we should consider it important to keep. We have it and people want it.