Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to our guest. It's good to have you back at the foreign affairs committee.
This is a treaty that many had hoped would be able to curtail the trade in arms. Clearly, as we watch scenarios like Syria happen, we see that there's an urgency to deal with the proliferation of arms. I have to say that when you look at the conflicts in a multipolar world and at the types of conflicts that we're seeing now, it is absolutely critical that we do this in a multilateral way. As you mention in your overview, we can have our own policies as nation states, but it's clear I think that if we can do it in a multilateral way, it will be more effective, and it will deal with the proliferation.
Just in terms of negotiations, you made a couple of points that have been topical with regard to the treaty. In particular, you emphasized a couple of times that you want to make sure that the treaty is going to, as you put it, “respect the lawful ownership of firearms by responsible private citizens for personal and recreational uses”, and you reference “sports shooting, hunting, and collecting”.
This, of course, became a bit of an issue during negotiations. I'm just wondering about this. Were there other countries that had the same opinion on it that we did? Also, were there other countries that actually didn't find this to be as important an issue as Canada did?