Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Many thanks to the witnesses for being here.
On behalf of my party, I, too, would like to express sincere condolences to all those of you who have been affected, directly or indirectly, by gun crimes. Your expertise and experience are very important, and I thank you.
Mr. Benabdallah, thank you for accepting our invitation to appear today. I was afraid that you would not be able to connect, because I have some questions for you.
You talked about the announcement on May 30 of this year. You stood behind the government when it announced the introduction of Bill C‑21. I know that certain other groups also backed the government at that time, because Minister Mendicino had promised them that he would amend the bill in order to ban assault weapons as well. That is not in the first draft of the bill, the one we have to consider. That was one of the conditions that certain groups gave the government for supporting this bill.
Are you one of those groups? Did the government promise you that it would introduce that amendment during consideration of the bill? Are you confident that it will keep its promise? On a number of occasions, it seemed to be in good faith and willing to ban assault weapons once and for all, and amend the Criminal Code to remove existing loopholes. But that has not always been the case. The same applies to the buyback program for assault weapons.
Do you think the Liberals will make this amendment soon?