Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Davenport went right to the heart of the issue. The idea that one could have an amnesty from a provision of criminal legislation in Canada makes no sense at all. It is a very cynical kind of political way to do what cannot be done legislatively, doing it indirectly and in a rather unprecedented way.
The only example I can think of is a practice at the Canada Revenue Agency. If people voluntarily disclose income that may not have reported on previous tax returns, they may not face a criminal prosecution for tax evasion. The tax will have to be paid and there will probably be interest and penalties applied, but there will be no prosecution for tax evasion if people voluntarily come forward and say that they forgot to disclose income received when they filed their income tax return three years ago and that they would like to report it on their income tax return for the current year.
Criminal law with respect to something as important as gun control and public safety is hardly like a tax measure, which encourages people to come forward and report income which may not have been reported.
A better example is the idea that we would suspend Criminal Code provisions on impaired driving at Christmastime, because sometimes it is hard to get a cab and people go to different functions. It makes no sense at all.
The motion before us asks the government to correct what is a really cynical measure, allegedly designed, as my colleague from Marc-Aurèle-Fortin said, to encourage people to voluntarily come forward and register their guns. However, at the same time the government is telling them not to panic, that it really wants to abolish the firearms registry, once and for all. It makes no sense at all.