Mr. Speaker, in an effort to help your deliberations on such a delicate matter, in addition to the plea made by the House Leader of the Official Opposition, I would like to suggest that you read the only objective document, because opinions, arguments and facts can help you. This document is entitled RCMP Canadian Firearms Program—Program Evaluation. It was published in February 2010, and is widely available, though the government would have liked to have hidden it.
On page 22 of the document, there is a chart entitled “Victims of Spousal Homicide Committed with Firearm by type of Firearm”—that is the topic we are discussing—and there was a decrease in the number of spousal homicides during the reference period, 1996 to 2007. In the beginning, there was an average of 20 such homicides per year, and that number decreased to an average of 6 at the end of the study.
I should point out that when we look at the last reference year, we can see that 100% of the victims of crimes committed with handguns, rifles, shotguns, and other types of weapons were women. That is right: 100% of the victims were women. So, the registry has produced concrete results in reducing the number of women killed. That is what this report shows.
Mr. Speaker, to add a little context, I would also like to point out a bill that was passed after 10 years of fighting in the House, a bill called the Westray bill, named after the mine where a number of miners were killed. With this bill, the House, the Canadian Parliament, reflecting the will of the Canadian people, made it very clear that if an organization has knowledge and is reasonably well informed of a danger, it can be held criminally liable.
I believe this should be taken under consideration, Mr. Speaker.