Madam Speaker, we know when the government was elected in 2006, having campaigned on the same issue that it campaigned on in the last election, that for five years it did nothing to fix the problems of the registry or bring forth legislation such as that which is before us today.
When the private members' bills that were stalking horses for the government's legislative intent were brought forward, both in the House and in the Senate, greater measures were included to actually protect and maintain information on the sale of guns by businesses, whose records had to be kept. Also, when a gun was being transferred, the individual transferring the gun had to notify the administrators of the registry and ensure that the individual to whom the gun was being transferred was in fact licensed to own a gun. These measures are absent from the bill.
Also contained in the bill, which was not in any of the others, is the destruction of records. The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police specifically asked the minister in a letter to keep those records and make the information available to its police forces in an effort to help save lives and trace guns. I have a copy of that letter, dated May 19.
Why is the minister bringing in legislation that, in addition to abolishing the long gun registry, is weakening gun control protection in Canada as well as destroying valuable records which the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police has begged the minister to keep for use as a tool to help save lives?