View From the Legislature

This past Tuesday the federal Conservative government introduced legislation that will eliminate the long-gun registry in Canada. This is a long overdue measure and with the federal government having a majority in Parliament, the legislation is expected to pass and the long-gun registry will be no more.

From the beginning, the long-gun registry missed the target. While the federal Liberals, who created the registry, said that the billions of dollars that were being spent on the program would make for a safer country, it failed to target those who were actually committing crimes. What it did was penalize and make criminals out of farmers, duck-hunters and other law-abiding citizens.

The common sense reality that Canadians always understood is that criminals don’t register their guns. The billions of dollars that were spent on the long-gun registry would always have been better used supporting our police and targeting those who use weapons while committing crimes.

Perhaps this is no more evident than in the province of Manitoba and the City of Winnipeg. For the past number of years violent crime has been on the increase in the City of Winnipeg and in particular violence involving guns. It has become apparent that handguns, for example, are one of the currencies that gangs trade in and the level of gang related violence involving handguns has increased.

The registration of long-guns has done nothing to stem the growing violence in Winnipeg and in fact the violence has worsened. Clearly, criminals are not registering their weapons.

What is needed is a renewed focus on those individuals who use guns in the commission of crimes and their illegal weapons. For example, Manitoba would benefit from having an integrated weapons enforcement unit that tracks the trade and flow of illegal weapons that are destined for the hands of criminals. The flow of these illegal weapons into Manitoba and on the streets of Winnipeg is creating a growing danger for Manitobans. As well, the focus should be on the individuals who are committing crimes with guns. This week I repeated a call in the Legislature for strict and tough sentence recommendations for crimes that involve the use of a weapon.

Ultimately, part of the solution to the growing violence in our province is taking more seriously crimes that involve weapons and going more aggressively after illegal weapons that gangs are trading in. That is where government resources should be directed.

It never made sense to make criminals out of law-abiding farmers, hunters and sport-shooters. The end of the long-gun registry will end an experiment that may have begun with honourable intentions, but which always was destined to fail.