Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have some comments to make, Mr. Speaker, about Bill C-68, the gun control bill. I have been a little bit concerned because there seems to have been some surveying done about people's attitudes and opinions on this issue. In my own attempt to get a feel for public opinion, Mr. Speaker, I found that there is a difference in the way people react, according to whether they're a gun owner or whether they're not a gun owner. That should be obvious, I suppose, but it would be very easy to take a survey of people and, if the vast majority of them don't own guns and you ask them about gun registration, they would say there would be no problem that they have to register their car, have to have a licence for their dog and they don't see a problem With having a gun registered.
However, if you're a gun owner, automatically --because you know what's in this bill --you would say this is under the Criminal Code of Canada, and I'm being treated as though I'm a potential criminal. They want me to register my gun because they don't trust me. It's very easy to do a survey to get the public opinion that people don't have any problems with registering rifles or guns.
So, Mr. Speaker, in my attempt to find out what people really felt, first of all, I found that people are very, very upset that a government which has a huge deficit could be faced with an act which costs -- according to various estimates depending on whether you're in the opposition or the government -- anywhere between $78 million and $500 million just to carry out the registration program. A lot of people are concerned about that. The biggest concern that people have, though, is if you really want to have some system for registering these guns, then why couldn't it be done not in a crime bill -- and that's what this is, a crime bill -- but like with any other thing that you own, so there would be registry. Even though it would be tremendously costly, the public would at least see that it has nothing to do with them and their potential to be involved in criminal activity.
I say any efforts that we make right now in trying to lobby the Senate to make changes and so on, will make no change to the fundamental nature of the bill, which is a crime bill. That's what northerners find offensive. Peace-loving people who own rifles, not to protect their property or to shoot people they don't like, are going to be treated as potential criminals. We are unlike the people in Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver because we don't see guns in the same way. That's what I found in my survey of local people. It depends on who you're talking to. If you own a gun, you know all the implications and if you don't own one, you have to be educated on what this bill is all about.
I wish our people the best of luck in Ottawa, but you can't change the fundamental nature of this bill, which is a crime bill. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
---Applause