Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Thank you to the witnesses for appearing today.
I'm going to go back to something we talked about that arose earlier in the committee today, and the comments that were made in the House—and taken quite out of context—by the member for Newton—North Delta about the timing of this debate. Since this issue has been raised, I think it's quite important for people to understand the context in which she was speaking.
We have a situation in Surrey where there have been 23 shootings over the past month, I believe. There's a very serious problem with gun violence in the community of Surrey. The member for Surrey North and the member for Newton—North Delta have been raising these questions in the House to ask that attention be given to their community and this very serious crisis. It's resulted in a number of very tragic deaths.
What she was referring to was how fast this legislation, which was introduced in October 2014, suddenly appeared back on the agenda. I think it's important to remember that here we are today, really just nine days after this was approved at second reading, and finishing our hearings in this committee. I think that's had an impact on our deliberations here. The very rushed nature combined with some administrative errors means that, for instance, the Liberal Party had no witnesses appearing before the committee, and the NDP only had two of its four witnesses. We've ended up with an unbalanced set of testimony here, with no criticism of those who appear.