I'd like to say, sir, that “high-velocity air guns” that are being referred to here are already considered firearms in Canadian law, and they require a licence to purchase.
The committee that was struck to deal with these air gun laws took previous laws in Canada and coordinated them with laws that are currently the standard around the world. The committee included representatives from the RCMP and the Ontario forensic centre. It determined that 495 feet per second was the accepted world standard for what constituted a firearm, that above that was the range of the very high-velocity firearms and below it was not the range in which the very high-velocity firearms fall. This was the result of several months' worth of work by the committee that Minister McClellan had put together specifically to deal with this issue, and it included medical people.
Since that time, the standard seems to be morphing all the time, and of course it always morphs down.
I might add as well that paintballs are fired at velocities below 214 feet per second and that any of the firearms we would consider to be high velocity are already considered to be guns.