Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have the opportunity to answer the member's question, and to once again highlight our government's commitment to law-abiding long-gun owners in Canada.
For far too long, law-abiding gun owners in Canada who were licensed to own firearms and use firearms for legitimate purposes throughout the country in rural areas, including in rural areas of Quebec, have been targeted. They were targeted by a wasteful and ineffective long gun registry.
The long-gun registry cost $2 billion to set up, as reported by the CBC. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever, nor is there any testimony from front-line police officers, that the long-gun registry has or had any ability to stop any kind of crime, much less violent gun crime. There are a number of reasons for that. Primarily, the data contained in the database of the long-gun registry was completely inaccurate. Only half of the firearms in Canada were actually in the database of the long-gun registry, because not every long gun was registered.
Therefore, police officers could not rely on the data. They testified numerous times in committee meetings regarding the bill that the government and I introduced to end the long-gun registry. I was at every committee meeting and I heard from front-line officers over and over again who said they could never count on the data. If they went on a call and the data said there were no firearms there, they knew they had to make sure to check, because many times the data was inaccurate.
We had a commitment that we made to the Canadian people and to long gun owners in Canada. We fulfilled that commitment. We scrapped the long-gun registry and we destroyed the data.
Certainly, if Quebec wants to set up its own gun registry, it is free to do that. However, I would suggest that in this time of the fiscal restraint it is going to cost millions of dollars, if not billions, to do so. It will do nothing to stop violent crime. It does nothing to end suicide, and it does not stop violence.
The measure we have in place with regard to gun control in Canada is the licensing mechanism. It may be that my hon. colleague does not understand the difference. Licensing means individuals go through a background check and a mental health check. Many times their spouses are consulted to see if they can legitimately, legally and safely own a firearm. That is where we have the ability to stop people from getting guns.
The majority of people who get guns illegally are doing so because they are involved in gangs, drugs and organized crime. That is where we have introduced legislation to get tough on organized crime and introduce mandatory minimum sentences for gun crimes. Unfortunately, the member and his party do not support any of those measures.
We will continue to stand up for law-abiding gun owners. There is only one party in the House that consistently stands up for long gun owners, because we know the NDP would reintroduce the long-gun registry, and that is the Conservative Party.