Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome to our northern guests.
What I've been hearing a bit in testimony today, and we've heard it filter out a little bit over the last few meetings.... What is a little bit concerning for me is that we've now taken this issue of the registry and it seems as though we've created a female and male issue, a victim and offender issue. What we're forgetting here are the athletes, hunters, trappers, sport shooters, collectors, and law-abiding Canadian citizens who use guns every day. We've now created man against woman, victim and offender here, without really demonstrating where that registry is truly saving lives. As you said, A plus B isn't equalling C, or we don't have the empirical evidence to do that.
As a northerner, I can certainly appreciate the challenges in the north and the higher violence rates there. My tendency would be to want to deal with the root cause of those crimes, deal with the drug and alcohol addictions and the issues that are uniquely facing the north, to prevent those things from happening. I'm really failing to see where the registry stops a person from making a horrible choice to be involved in domestic violence.
My question is to Mr. McNeely. Do women hunt in the communities you live in?