Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I thank the witnesses for being here with us this morning.
Mr. Price, unfortunately for you, you have become a regular at these committee meetings. When you were speaking with my colleague, Ms. Damoff, you mentioned an article that was published in yesterday's editions of the Montreal Gazette and the Ottawa Citizen. It said that, while we are debating this issue, new weapons are coming on the market, as has been the case for a long time. Since the 2020 regulation, manufacturers continue to circumvent the rules to put new weapons on the market.
From what I understand of Canada's classification of firearms, there are three classes: non-restricted, restricted and prohibited. When a manufacturer puts a new firearm on the market, it is automatically considered a non-restricted weapon. Only later can it become classified as prohibited. The RCMP is not automatically informed of the arrival of all these new firearms on the market, so when it realizes that a new firearm may have to be classified as prohibited or restricted, it conducts an analysis and then the firearm can be classified as prohibited.
Would it be possible to do the opposite? Could a firearm automatically be classified as prohibited before the manufacturer puts it on the market? Then we could wait for the RCMP to analyze it to determine whether it should be classified as non-restricted or remain a prohibited weapon. Perhaps there is a way to include that in Bill C‑21. Perhaps that is another way to change the Firearms Act.
Do you think such a change could be a good thing?