Our understanding of it is that on the day the amendments were withdrawn, the government, or at least Mr. Trudeau and the minister, were committed to trying again. The manner in which it was done was problematic, which doesn't bother us, because they still wanted to work with the other two parties that had also, in the three previous elections, promised to support or adopt a ban on assault weapons. We believe that the willpower is still there and that it's still being worked on.
We are now relying on the committee, particularly to get an understanding of why the amendments were withdrawn. I think it's largely because of the disinformation that got the hunters worried. What we heard was that the bill was going way too far, but that's only according to certain members and certain groups. We analyzed it all ourselves, and we now know, after getting corroboration from the RCMP, that all the information out there to the effect that hunting firearms would be prohibited in the amendments is false. The hunting firearms category mentioned by those who were opposed to the amendments would not change.
So the amendments were misunderstood, and the time has come to stand back in order to figure out how it happened, so that they can perhaps be improved where appropriate and reintroduced into the bill. They certainly need clarification and simplification. I'm thinking in particular of amendment G‑46, because when hunters saw the model number of the gun they owned on the lists, they thought that all versions of the model were prohibited, which was not the case. It was only applicable to models with muzzle energy greater than 10,000 joules. These are firearms that can pierce military vehicles. For comparison, the muzzle energy for projectiles fired from an AK‑47 is 2000 joules. The purpose of the amendments was to limit this energy to 10,000 joules. It is in fact a criterion that is already there and that doesn't affect hunting firearms at all.
Unfortunately, because the bill was 309 pages long and you couldn't see the top of the paragraph, people did not understand that only military grade models were being prohibited. As it turns out, that was already covered by the current regulations. Models designed for hunting are allowed and nothing changes. And yet those were the weapons they mentioned in their campaign.