Two, so I have to change my wording a little because there's a lot of information in the firearms safety course that, obviously, if you haven't taken the course, you're not aware of.
The instructors in Canada, we are the gateway for safety for firearms. Nobody even gets to the RCMP for a licence until they have gone through us. Our duties are instruction and making sure that the students are proficient and can pass the Canadian firearms safety course. Then they go to the RCMP and are vetted. The information that we give them is known across Canada as with all the instructors. There are a few things in different provinces where it seems that the different firearms officers have built little kingdoms across Canada, and they change it at will.
This new legislation is supposed to correct and make safe firearms owners and the general population in Canada. What has come out here, it's not targeting the problem. In terms of the statement that since 2013 crime has steadily gone up, 2013 was the safest year in Canada since the sixties. Yes, there are people who have actually come in and created problems, but this legislation does not attack those. I use the word “attack”. It will hit the rural farmer who has to use a firearm. It will hit the first nations who are trying to make a living in remote areas with that firearm, which is a tool for survival. It will hit the ordinary target shooter, but I do not see anybody from the gangs in Abbotsford or Surrey coming through our courses to take the PAL. There are actually incidences where the PAL has been counterfeited in Courtenay. I can't speak any more to that because it's in the RCMP's hands.
In terms of the information that was brought together for this proposal here, this legislation, you do have the people out there. You have the field officers, the people out in front. You have the firearms officers, and you have the conservation officers, who actually, in their duties, encounter more people with firearms than the average person because they're out working with hunters and so on. You have to have input from officers in the field for any of this to succeed. I think, having seen the people I've run through this course across British Columbia, this course should be mandatory for all enforcement personnel.
I do a lot of papers for the RCMP for different students, and I get very good reviews, such as, “We should have taken this when we took our Depot”. This is where I think it would be a big step up.
There should be an addition to the course, too, to include a protocol for when one is approached by the government officials: a firearms officer, conservation officer, RCMP. To the person in our class, we should be able to say that this is what you do, because they do have a firearm in their possession. For the safety of both them and the raw recruit who just came out of Regina, who probably hasn't seen some of these firearms, these are some of the things I want to work on.
The last thing for me is first nations and firearms. I don't know what's happening across Canada—