Having worked in government most of my career, one of the things I do know is that a bill is a bill and what flows from the bill are the regulations, the policies and the processes to implement and support the bill. To me, the bill alone, when it refers, for example, to background checks, is only the first step. There is work to be done on how that bill is then to be implemented.
I do remember many occasions in my government career where the government would pass a bill and, we used to use the line, “chuck it over the fence” for the public servants to then figure out how to implement. I think it's too narrow to say, “Will the bill do this and will the the bill do that?”
However, my personal bias is that for somebody with a criminal record such as my daughter's killer concealed from her, where there was a crime of serious personal violence that got plea-bargained down to a much lesser offence, when combined with something, as you've mentioned, like drug trafficking, first of all, there should be no discretion under the stage A failure for the CFO to override that.
As far as I can tell...and, again, because of privacy law in Ontario and in many other provinces, I wasn't able to obtain the records on what else was done to check his background except to interview him. I wasn't able to find out whether his references were his mother or his best friend who had a history for domestic violence, but I do know from speaking to the police officer who arrested him in that kidnapping that they were never contacted by the CFO and they were shocked that nobody had contacted them to find out the context of those offences. I might add, they were more shocked to find out that he then used that firearm to kill my daughter.
Thank you.