Madam Speaker, I am sure that you yourself are quite sure that I am going to speak in support of my party’s proposal.
I believe we should not extend the amnesty on gun control requirements set to expire on May 16, 2009, and that we should maintain the registration of all types of firearms in its entirety—I repeat: in its entirety.
The Bloc Québécois is the federal party that best represents the interests of Quebeckers and that calls for the consensus in Quebec to be respected. As a result, the Bloc Québécois is firmly committed to improving firearms control and maintaining the registration of all types of firearms in its entirety, as I said.
For the umpteenth time, the Conservative government is attacking the firearms registry; it wants to exempt unrestricted firearms—rifles and hunting weapons. This stubborn persistence, which can only be described as ideological, is hard to justify when we see how the gun registry has led to a drop in tragic events involving firearms. But the Conservatives do not care about that.
We already knew that when it comes to justice and public safety, the Conservatives care only about their partisan interests. Was it not the Minister of Justice who said, on July 17, 2008, “We do not govern by statistics. We are governing by what we promised Canadians in the last election and what Canadians told us”?
The bills that are currently before Parliament regarding the registry quite simply provide the evidence that the Conservatives are wilfully blinding themselves to reality. It is not the Bloc Québécois members who see the benefits, it is police services in Quebec and Canada, which say that the registry is a useful and effective tool; it is public health agencies, which report the situation on the ground and observe the significant declines in homicides, suicides and accidents involving firearms; and it is the statistics—and this is very important—that show that firearms control reduces the number of crimes, including the most violent crime, murder.
This is obvious when we compare Quebec’s track record to the United States. The rate is five times lower in Quebec than in our neighbour to the south.
When it comes to justice and public safety, the Bloc Québécois firmly believes that the most effective approach is still and will always be prevention. This means that we have to tackle the root causes of crime and the conditions that lead to tragedies in the home. We have to tackle the causes of youth crime and violence, rather than waiting for things to get broken and then trying to fix them, that is the wisest and most importantly the most profitable approach, in both social and economic terms.
This can be clearer, and I will spell it out. First, we have to tackle poverty, inequality and exclusion, all of which provide fertile ground for frustration and its manifestations: violence and crime.
And in addition, we have to limit access to the firearms that make it easier to commit serious crimes. The evidence is in on this point: gun control is one of the most effective ways of preventing crime, particularly the greatest danger of all, homicide.
There is a direct connection between the homicide rate and how easy it is to acquire guns. They go hand in hand. Now that the cost of setting up the firearms registry has been covered and the actual registration only costs about $15 million a year, it would be a huge mistake to deprive ourselves of a tool that has proven its worth.
Most importantly, it is wrong to assume that removing non-restricted firearms from the registry would result in fantastic savings. That is totally false. Somehow the Conservatives need to understand that the cost of registering hunting guns is only a small fraction of the total cost of the registry.
The Bloc Québécois was in favour of removing certain obstacles that might annoy hunters and target shooters, including making registration free. That was done back in 2004. Considering the advantages of a gun registry, its low annual cost and the lack of any serious disadvantages to people who meet their obligations, the Bloc Québécois is convinced that the registry should be maintained and gun control should be improved. I want to point out as well that the Quebec National Assembly has twice expressed its unanimous support for keeping the gun registry.
The Government of Quebec has also indicated its intent to assume more responsibilities in the area of gun control. On May 17, 2007, the Quebec public safety minister sent his federal counterpart a letter asking him to amend the Firearms Act to give Quebec and the provinces that so desire more regulatory authority over firearms. The Government of Quebec asked specifically for the power to tighten the rules governing the control and storage of restricted firearms. On the same occasion, Quebec repeated its support for keeping the firearms registry in its entirety. The Quebec government reiterated this stand during the last election campaign when the Premier wrote to his federal counterpart asking him to continue registering all firearms.
This is the text of the document included in the Premier’s letter to the Prime Minister of Canada.
To prevent events such as those at the École Polytechnique and Concordia from happening again, the Government of Quebec has taken steps to protect the people of Quebec.
Recently, the Government of Quebec passed the Anastasia Act. This act is designed to protect the people of Quebec by tightening gun control, regulating gun ownership in certain places and creating a system to control the practice of target shooting with restricted or prohibited firearms.
The Government of Quebec would have liked to do more to protect the public, but as you know, criminal law comes under federal jurisdiction. After consulting with the province's police forces, the Government of Quebec asked that the gun registry be maintained.
The Government of Quebec is calling on the federal government to make a commitment to maintain the gun registry.
The Government of Quebec is also calling on the federal government to make a commitment to strengthen gun control by tightening the rules for transporting and storing firearms.
In conclusion, the Premier of Quebec said:
If you [at the federal level] do not want to proceed in this way, we [in Quebec] ask for a delegation of powers so that we can achieve the objective stated above.
We must act accordingly. We must maintain the registry of all guns.