Mr. Speaker, it was actually the auditor general's report in 2006 which revealed that the cost of the program had come to close to $1 billion, some $946 million, in 2005. That is obviously a significant cost. I agree with my colleague that the cost stabilized to about $4 million of the total $76.5 million for the Canadian firearms program.
There is a lesson to be learned here. I know the member was not here then, but the Liberal government of the day should have addressed those issues much earlier on. I think it added fuel to the debate and gave the Conservatives, excuse the pun, ammunition to eliminate the gun registry. If it had been properly managed, they probably would have done it anyway, but I think it gave them much more leverage to say that the whole gun registry was just a boondoggle and was mismanaged.
It was mismanaged. There were problems and they needed to be addressed. This is very much a part of the proposals that the NDP submitted as a way to get through this very divisive debate. We said that the registry could remain and we could address the concerns that rural and aboriginal Canadians have. We could have good public policy on this.