I'm going to get to the amnesty issue in a minute. What I find troubling is that the evidence that law enforcement has shown across the country is that this.... You're the wrong person to ask, but I'm going to make the statement anyway, Ms. Geddes. Law enforcement has shown that the confiscation of these firearms will do nothing to improve public safety in this country, absolutely nothing. In fact, gun crimes continue to go up even during this amnesty program, and not by firearms owners.
I guess what I'm concerned about is that the law enforcement community have pushed back on government and voiced their concern and their opposition to being the ones responsible for confiscating these firearms. That includes the RCMP.
You can go to industry and ask them to voluntarily surrender the firearms that fall under this prohibition with compensation, which I hope will be appropriate, except the taxpayers are going to be on the hook for it. How are you going to deal with individuals? Who is going to collect the firearms of individuals who resist this policy? It's not because they are criminals, but we've made administrative criminals out of people who haven't committed a criminal act. I'm just kind of concerned about that.
I want to get to another question that's in line with that. The government has introduced some proposed legislation and changes to the Elections Act. One of them is that the election might take place later in October, like October 27, 2025. Has there been any thought to the impact that changes to the Elections Act will have on the amnesty period, which goes until October 25, 2025, and the impact of the fact that we will have no government sitting at that point in time? Are there some provisions that are going to be in place to make that work? How is that going to look moving forward?