Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his statement concerning the fact that many people who possess firearms possess them, not only to make a living, but to hunt as a peaceful endeavour.
I also want to advise the member that according to the Criminal Code, if someone breaks into a place for the purposes of staying alive, in other words the person's motorized snow vehicle freezes up on a lake and the person is about to die because of the cold, and the person breaks into a cottage in order to get warm or to eat, that is not a crime. The same defence would be there for someone who needed a firearm in order to stay alive and had to commit that offence.
This bill would not change that defence at all. However it does say that if a firearm is used in the commission of an offence, a person is in possession of a firearm in order to commit on offence or a person steals a firearm to commit an offence we have upped the ante because we have found that having a firearm for a negative purpose has very serious repercussions in society.
I would just ask the member to comment on that end of the defence with regard to subsistence and know that the bill would not interfere with that.