Mr. Speaker, my colleague asks an excellent question. First, I want to say that one case is one too many, but the fact is that in Canada today we have far more knife killings than we do gun killings. It is important that we set the deterrent. As I said in my presentation, the certainty of consequences is far more important than the potential severity of consequences.
Every day when we look at the newspaper we see that there has been another knife killing. In today's Edmonton Sun there was another story. A person in Winnipeg has been robbed eight times in just one year, seven times with a knife and once with a gun. As for the prevalence of knife crimes in Canada, knives have become the weapon of choice. It is so easy for people to put that knife in their pocket without thinking of the potential consequences. That is what this bill attempts to address.