Yes. I'll continue.
As I said, Toronto Deputy Chief Myron Demkiw testified that 86% of crime guns were smuggled into Canada.
I will continue from the National Post:
Blandford said facing the nearly insurmountable task of securing Canada's porous borders and coastlines, it's not surprising Ottawa went after low-hanging fruit of punishing gun owners.
That's why I'm bringing it up today. It's because that's what we're talking about.
From the National Post:
“Legal gun owners go through a rigorous process to be vetted to own a firearm,” he said.
“Legitimate gun owners, whether they're handgun or long-rifle, are probably amongst your most law-abiding citizens in the country.”
“They're not the problem.”
The reason I bring that up today is that this is why we're here today. We're talking about Bill C-21, a bill that's supposed to make us more safe by, again, tackling the wrong element. It's going after law-abiding firearms owners and their firearms, their hunting firearms.
Let me go on to talk about what the problem is. It's very relevant to this conversation because, again, Bill C-21 is meant to address this very question: “What is the problem?”
As I have just laid out, illegal guns coming across the border are the problem. According to Toronto Deputy Chief Myron Demkiw, 86% of those firearms that are killing our kids on the streets of Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal are coming from across the border.
What can we do about it? I'm going to talk about how many firearms were seized at the border.
This is another article, from CTV in July 2022, and it speaks to these guns that are coming across: “The number of firearms Canada seized at the border more than doubled last year to 1,110 from 495 in 2020—the highest total since at least 2016, according to the numbers provided to Reuters by Canada's Border Services Agency.”
These are the only ones that they have seized: How many guns pour across our border and end up in criminals' hands and are, again, killing our kids?
It goes on:
Gun violence in Toronto, Canada's most populous city, reached a 15-year high in 2019, with 492 incidents involving firearms, according to police data. That number fell the following two years but 2022 is on track to rise once again.
That's the problem, and yet this government brings in Bill C-21 and brings in even a further amendment to punish law-abiding firearms owners even more.
On what Bill C-21 is going to cost Canadians, I think it's going to be relevant in my final point, because we know that even on the previous long-gun registry, which once again targeted law-abiding firearms owners, it was promised that it was going to cost $2 million and it ended up costing $2 billion.
Then what is the estimate? Well, I will read from an article from an expert. He's a Simon Fraser professor and said that the “Trudeau government 'buy back' firearms plan may cost up to $6.7 billion”.
That's prior to this latest G-46 amendment being laid on this committee's table.
I'll quote—