Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you very sincerely to all the witnesses for being here today. We greatly appreciate your candid testimony and sharing with the committee your thoughts on this bill and the country's approach to dealing with gun violence in general. On behalf of the Conservative Party, we are deeply sorry for the loss that you've experienced in your life as a result of violent crime and gun violence.
I've worked with this committee for a while now. Although we have different approaches by party to solve this, I can say quite confidently that we all take this very seriously and we want to see an end to gun violence in Canada. We are working very hard to achieve that.
I will start my questions with Mr. Wilson and his colleague. Thank you for both being here. It's an honour to finally meet you in person. Thank you for your contributions to many studies that we've had at the public safety committee.
Mr. Wilson, when you were here last February contributing to our guns and gangs study, you mentioned:
...when speaking on gun control, when we hear the phrase, it should always be synonymous with illegal gun crime and illegal gun trafficking as over 80% of the gun violence we are witnessing is committed with illegal firearms smuggled in from the USA.
You mentioned in your opening testimony that you experienced a life of crime for quite some time. Can you elaborate on that comment? How do criminals who commit gun violence...? Where do they get these guns from? Why do they have them?
Can you elaborate on that for the committee?