Thanks, Chair.
Thanks, Minister Blair, for being with us again. It's always nice to have you here to answer our questions.
Minister, one of the things you've been doing is having consultations around handguns and assault weapons. I've been following the testimony at the Senate committee, and in particular the information that the Canadian Doctors for Protection from Guns have been talking about, as well as Dr. Alan Drummond, who has appeared before our committee a number of times. They have said that we need to be looking at firearms from a public health perspective.
Something I've brought up here at committee a number of times is not just the implication of guns in gangs and criminal activities, but also their prevalence in suicides: 75% to 80% of gun deaths are suicides. Also, in terms of intimate partner violence, 26% of deaths in Ontario involved a firearm. There are a number of other peer-reviewed studies of rural areas that point to firearms being implicated in intimate partner violence. I spoke to the director of the YWCA in Lethbridge, Alberta, and asked her in how many cases firearms were implicated in women coming to the shelter, and she said it was in all of them.
In your consultations, I'm wondering whether this has been a factor that you've been considering and whether it has come up at all, because it really is a part of the conversation that seems to get lost in all the rhetoric.