Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
While we have great overall concerns about the overall impact of this bill, one thing that we heard from witnesses at committee, and increasingly from residents from rural and remote areas, is the concern that this bill will eliminate the ability to challenge the firearms test.
While we do support the firearm safety course and believe that everyone should take that course, it's simply not a practical reality for many in the far north or in rural areas to do so. In some places, the course is only offered either very irregularly during the year or it requires someone to travel two, three, or four hours, and stay overnight to take the course. It involves great inconvenience and cost to those people.
What we're proposing in this amendment is restoring the ability to challenge the firearms licencing test. We're really just restoring the existing wording in the law, by deleting the changes that were proposed to paragraph 7(1)(b) of the existing act.
It's a fairly simple amendment. It restores the existing situation, where it is possible to challenge the test. By no means are we arguing that the safety tests are of no value; we're just trying to accommodate those who live in rural and remote parts of Canada.