Mr. Speaker, I need to put on the record that I am sorry that the member will not be running in the next election. I have met the young woman who will be seeking to assume his position and she certainly would bring a lot of great qualities to the House of Commons. I wish her a lot of luck.
The whole issue of guns is a very sensitive one. My understanding, from being involved a fair amount in these issues, is that most of these guns are being stolen and smuggled across the border. I know that we had committed x amount of dollars for further border security. The current government is following up on those kinds of commitments to tighten the border.
We also hear about the amount of times that guns are being literally ordered and delivered through Canada Post. This is an area that we all need to work on with Canada Post to ensure that it checks out items being shipped to various homes to ensure it is not passing guns or anything that could be used as such.
One of the issues we do not talk about is the number of killings committed with knives and items like that, not only the guns. As we focus on getting guns off the street, especially in our large urban regions, we need to keep in mind that other instruments are used as well.
As someone said, yesterday, members of gangs used to get into fist fights and today, unfortunately, it is gun fights, which is clearly not acceptable. We need to work with our communities to decrease that but we also need to work with young people in my community and other communities who feel the need to belong to gang.
Our real focus is to ensure that all our kids, from day one, have an opportunity for early learning and great education from zero on, that they have hope for tomorrow, that they do not need to join gangs, get into the gun fights and all the rest of it.
Unfortunately, many of our youth feel they do not have any hope for the future. We need to be focusing our efforts on education, opportunities and hope for them for tomorrow.