Mr. Speaker, my colleague has asked a very important question. The city of London, in a period of about two or three months, four or five years ago, lost five young women to gun violence. Five young women disappeared forever. Their families will never get over that. The community will never get over that. Their children will never get over that. We have to be very cognizant of that.
In a former incarnation I was a rural member in Middlesex county. I absolutely remember the day I went to the Women's Rural Resource Centre in Strathroy. In those days there was no community house for women, no safe refuge between London and Sarnia. These rural women were basically abandoned. The director of the rural resource centre told me about the women who called or the women who desperately cried out. These women were at the end of a 300-yard laneway on a remote farm. They had been victimized, beaten by husbands, threatened with guns, raped with guns. They had no one to turn to and nowhere to go.
The same is true of women in small towns. There is no one to turn to, nowhere to go. They could not tell their neighbour because it was a small town and it was something about which they did not talk. However, they were crying out for someone to listen to them and to help them. Therefore, I not only helped them to build a women's community house, but I also was very committed to their safety with regard to taking these guns out of the hands of those who had used them violently.