Mr. Speaker, when I speak with police officers in Timmins and in the Iroquois Falls region and ask them how they use the registry, they say that when they go out on a domestic violence call, they need to know if there are four or five guns in the house. They say that knowing there is a gun owner is not sufficient because that fifth gun could be the difference between life and death. That is what we hear from front-line police officers.
The security chief over there from Yorkton—Melville sent a letter to me saying that he believed that the Chiefs of Police of Canada were attempting to find all the data on gun owners so they could seize their weapons. He said that he felt that the police were leading us to a totalitarian state. I think that kind of language from a government member is very disturbing.
Why does my hon. colleague think the government is so convenient about using police when it suits its needs but when the police speak about their actual use, they are decried as a totalitarian threat to the liberties of the Conservative backbench.