Madam Speaker, what is fundamental in this debate is that Quebec is clear. Quebec's public safety minister did not know that the data in the firearms registry would be destroyed. The minister can tell us today that we should have known, but Robert Dutil, his Quebec counterpart, just found out and has said that he is officially and strongly against the destruction of this data.
In addition, Quebec's minister of Canadian intergovernmental affairs, Yvon Vallières, has said that Quebec also paid for the firearms registry. We paid for that data, in part, of course. If Quebec and the other provinces want to retrieve the data, I do not understand why the minister is stubbornly refusing to allow them to do so.
The minister is telling us today that he does not respect the provinces' wishes, that he does not respect the wishes of Quebec, which were clear: the registry belongs just as much to Quebec as it does to the federal government. The federal government does not have to keep the registry, but it also does not have to destroy it. Why is the minister not listening to Quebec today?