Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that from the Speaker and from the member for Kingston and the Islands.
It said that I was in favour of gun registration. Let me get one thing straight. I would like to quote from Hansard , November 6, 1991, page 4687. I had already given my entire speech and was on questions and comments. Remember that I was sitting way back there all by myself and put up with any amount of heckling from members.
The parliamentary secretary, a dino-Tory, said to me, could I please make some comments on this, that and the next thing. I said to him at page 4687:
I would draw the member's attention to the Canadian Police Association and some of the recommendations they brought forward. They said that "over 90 per cent of our respondents believe that guns of all kinds should be registered".
The Canadian Police Association said that 90 per cent of its respondents believed that all guns should be registered. I then said right after that that I agreed with that and I think every Canadian would agree with that. If those are its numbers, that is the survey it did among its members, how can I disagree with that? I am not going to dispute those numbers. If I were in favour of universal gun registration, and here comes the English teacher, I would have said I agree with them. I would agree with them if I were in favour of gun registration. It makes sense.
Looking at this yesterday I thought that if this was such a loud situation that I was in favour of gun registration, why in heaven's name did I not hear about it on November 7, 1991 from such groups in my constituency as the wonderful people who belong to Lac La Biche Shooting Association, responsible firearms owners, and Grand Centre's Cold Lake District Sportsman Fish and Game Association? Do you think that if I had supported gun registration these people would have even let me off the aeroplane to come back home? This is bunk.
If the member for Burnaby-Kingsway is so concerned about the fact that I support universal gun registration, he should have found it in my speech and in my thesis. He did not find it there; he did not find it now. He is in big trouble with his own small, minute caucus here.
If we are going to talk about flip-flops, Mr. Speaker, let us talk about when you and I listened in the last Parliament to Ian Waddell, Margaret Mitchell, and I could list all 43 of them. I am sure I can remember who they were. Audrey as well. They were going on and on talking about how terrible this was. All of a sudden in 1995 it is just amazing how things change. The NDP caucus is not going to be supporting this legislation. I have to admire them for that. The member for Burnaby-Kingsway is not going to be able to. If he can justify that back home that is fine. Things were different in 1991 of course. I did not agree with universal gun registration then, nor do I now.
Let us look at the Canadian Police Association's latest viewpoint on gun registration: "The Canadian Police Association recognizes the clear value of information availability to police officers, which registration of all firearms provides, and supports a full firearms registration system, but cannot support the registration system articulated in Bill C-68 unless there is a guarantee from the federal government that any implementation or administration costs for such a system will not come from existing operational police budgets". I agree with that too.
I do not agree with gun registration, but I have to agree with what the Canadian Police Association says. Whether the police will be able to enforce it on the frontlines or whether that money will actually have to come from some of the operating budgets, if there are fewer policemen in our cities, in our small towns and on our country highways when people are hauling around firearms committing crimes with them, that is where the money should go.
The proposed national firearms registration system will contain data for six million to 20 million guns, which is a lot of guns, and three million to seven million gun owners. We just heard our friend from the maritimes, the parliamentary secretary for justice, saying that we are going to get something like a Visa card and we will just run it through the magnetic strip.
Has anyone here ever had their Visa card stolen? Is it going to be guaranteed that that is safe, that they are not going to be able to break on to the Internet and have absolute access and a shop at home catalogue? Can we have any guarantee that someone is not going to be able to get into the Internet? He promised us it would be safer than safe.
When we talk safe, I want to talk about the fact that someone who is a victim of a crime with a firearm does not give two hoots about whether that gun was registered or not and whether somebody in a criminal gang in downtown cities anywhere across this country is going to be able to break into that system. We hear about it all the time. Why should the gun registration be any safer than anything else?
It is frightening to me that they would be able to know who has guns, where they are, how many they have and have absolute access to them. Those people are not going to register their firearms. We have to be absolutely dreaming if we think such a thing is going to happen.
Do you think that someone coming across the border is going to give up a gun? Who is going to seize these guns?