As I probably mangled in French a little earlier, the concern in not communicating on this particular issue is that some individuals may have inadvertently acquired these firearms after the June 30 date, and should the legislation pass as written, those individuals would be ineligible to register those firearms. They would have potentially bought them in good faith on July 1 of this year. Assuming the bill passes as it is currently written, fast-forward two years from now when they would go to register this firearm and in doing so would acknowledge that they had acquired it past the June 30 date, and then in fact would be ineligible for registration. We knew that was certainly the potential.
Also, because the legislation does not grandfather businesses, there was a need to communicate to businesses that firearms that were in their inventory past the June 30 date, if they remained in their inventory, could also be adversely affected if the legislation passed as it is currently written. We do not know the exact numbers of the firearms, but there has been speculation that they could be in the tens of thousands, so we felt it very important to inform individuals at the earliest opportunity about the decisions that we felt they should be aware of and that they would need to make going forward.
June 30 has come and gone and nothing has changed, but individuals who are going to decide to register these firearms in the future, if the bill is passed as it is written, need to upgrade their licence. They will also need to take the appropriate level of safety training. Some individuals may choose not to do that, so we felt it important to communicate the significance of the June 30 date in the pending legislation.