Thank you, Madam Chair.
Minister, thank you very much for being with us today. I also want to thank the people working on this issue and the people affected by it.
The clear purpose for looking at section 810 of the Criminal Code, the subject of this study, is to find out whether it is actually appropriate for addressing the rise in femicide and violence against women. For all these reasons, we thought it was important for not only the Minister of Justice, but also the Minister of Public Safety, to come and testify before the committee.
The study is making some women's groups sit up and ask questions. We aren't doing a clause-by-clause consideration of a bill, but we still have a duty to ask questions that women's groups are concerned about. When these groups learned that the Minister of Public Safety was coming to testify before the committee to talk about violence against women, they sent us questions. Therefore, I am speaking on behalf of these groups when I ask my questions about things like compensation and the implementation of firearms regulations.
Bill C‑21 contained key measures to remove firearms from perpetrators of domestic violence. However, according to these groups, some of the measures have still not been implemented. For example, one of the measures was to prohibit people subject to a protection order related to cases of violence from having access to firearms. Draft regulations to that effect were even tabled in March 2025, but women's associations wrote to say that they were too weak. They asked that the bill be strengthened, because it excluded, for example, protection orders issued under the Criminal Code. A second consultation has just been launched on section 810 peace bonds, but there have been no other consultations.
What can you say to reassure these women's groups?