Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Minister, thank you for being here.
I also thank your colleagues who are with you today for their availability.
Minister, I would like to talk to you about guns. We often talk to each other about it during question periods. We also talked about it during your last visit to the committee. My Bloc Québécois colleagues and I have assured you, on several occasions, of our support for better gun control. However, we still expressed our disagreement on how to do it.
We believe that banning military-style assault weapons piecemeal or passing regulations banning thousands of weapons at a time has the effect of making other weapons, available on the market once the regulations are in place, legal. My party and organizations like PolySeSouvient have proposed amending the definition of assault weapon in the Criminal Code. This would prevent some weapons from falling through the regulatory cracks. Other countries have done this, including the United States in 1994.
I'd like you to talk to us about that, because I know that you recently announced investments for police forces, provinces, and municipalities. That is very good and we agree on these investments. That said, I think there is a way to amend the Criminal Code so that more weapons are not allowed to remain unrestricted for the time being.