Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for her question because it does allow me to get into that aspect, which I did not have a chance to raise in my speech.
The Conservatives have correctly raised the issue that this is far from sufficient. It is only one piece of the much larger puzzle of how we tackle the growing epidemic of gun violence. There are a few things we could do.
First of all, when we talk about counter-radicalization efforts, we often talk about it in the context of radicalized individuals committing acts of terrorism, but that also applies to dealing with gangs. Gangs, too often, are recruiting vulnerable young people. That is something that we need to stem the tide on.
Certainly, the government falls back on the money that is invested, but as with any investment made by a government, the devil will be in the details of how that money will be spent and what initiatives will be looked at. While the summit that took place here in Ottawa a few weeks ago was a welcome overture to that, it is definitely far from sufficient. That is one issue.
The other issue is tackling the issue of guns coming across the border from the U.S., which is a huge issue, and making sure CBSA has both the authority and the resources to tackle that and is able to collaborate with law enforcement. There is also the growing epidemic of domestic thefts of firearms, which is a problem, and a problem that both rural Canadians and law-abiding gun owners will look at as something they want the government to tackle as well.
There is a whole slew of issues here. I will just end with this. I think another thing that would be great to bring back, which unfortunately was a cut in the previous Parliament, is the police recruitment fund. It was a great fund that went to funding both provincial and municipal efforts. It was federal money that went to the provinces and municipalities to invest in police and policing. When that money was lost, we saw things like the Éclipse squad in Montreal being hurt by that. Their mandate, in large part, was to tackle gang recruitment and gang violence.
Those are the kinds of initiatives we can look at. Certainly more robust background checks like we see in this bill are helpful, but far from the end of that discussion. I welcome the Conservative members' contribution to the debate in that regard, because it is an important issue. This is certainly not the end of that discussion with this legislation.