I want to go back to what I believe to be a witness testimony that was tantamount to why this has arrived the way it has. We remember hearing the testimony of Ms. Irons, as horrific as it was, on what happened to her and her family. The suggestion was made that the individual should never have received a firearms licence. Well, she was absolutely correct. That individual, at the time that he received one, should never have received a firearms licence. If you look into that file, the reality is that the provisions in law were such that he should never have received a firearms licence. It was human error.
We can go back as far as we want, and there still exists the opportunity for human error. I think that's the part that there is some confusion about. That attacker had criminal offences in the past and would have been easily identified under the UCR codes, the unified crime reporting codes used by the RCMP. Those were in effect already. When he applied for a firearms licence, he would never have received one had someone not dropped the ball at some point.
As was indicated by Mr. O'Reilly, unless it's a court prohibition, there are still opportunities for someone—a person—to make a judgment error because they may not have the facts. We can go back as far as we want, but we still aren't going to eliminate completely the possibility of someone slipping through the cracks and committing a crime because they had access to a firearm and they had a licence, and they obtained that licence when they shouldn't have. I needed to add that. I think it's important for us to be aware of that information.