Thank you, Chair.
Before I get to the officials for questions, I would like to remind my colleagues opposite of two things that are often forgotten when talking about firearm bans—the opportunity costs of these excessive and ineffective gun control measures being put in place and the small risk of being victimized by law-abiding firearms owners that actually exists.
I ask my colleagues what kind of cost-benefit analysis has been conducted for this project in terms of the cost of the buyback, the last part of which was not even completed yet. A host of measures could be purchased to actually improve public safety, as my colleague Mr. Zimmer has said, with the high estimate, or even just with a medium-term estimate of $5 billion, which is what the Fraser Institute said for the last buyback before we even included new firearms through the proposed amendments.
We could make quick work of many outstanding needs at a cost of $3 million U.S. That is how much Grand Cayman just spent this year for a modern shipping container scanning system. It finds not just firearms but all contraband, including drugs. In the nation of Canada where, I believe, we have 119 ports of entry, if we convert $5 billion Canadian into U.S. dollars, we could literally buy 10 of these scanning devices for every port of entry, rather than buying five billion dollars' worth of firearms from law-abiding Canadians.
Now, you tell me and the Canadians who are watching which is likely to have a larger impact on public safety—being able to scan virtually every vehicle and every container that comes into our country or taking property away that's sitting there idly in the lockers and vaults of everyday Canadians? I already know what the answer to that question is. Only one per cent of containers currently passing through our ports of entry are scanned. That's it—one per cent. We obviously need to improve this if we're going to stem the tide of illegal firearms moving north from our southern neighbour—speaking of which, a large number of border patrol officers could also be hired to ensure a further reduction in cross-border smuggling. After all, most of the guns used in urban gang shootings— a staggering 85%—are smuggled in illegally, according to the Toronto police.
On the social services side of things, we could surely throw in that $875 million that the Liberals promised in their last election campaign for mental health, which I would argue is probably at the root of most of the gun violence that we have in this country, if somebody from the law-abiding community were to do this.
How many times could we fund the mental health strategy that the Liberals haven't allocated a single dollar for, instead of potentially— and I don't even know—