Madam Speaker, I will try to live up to the compliments my colleague from Shefford just gave me. I think she does outstanding work on the status of women, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank her.
As we have said, Bill C‑21 is a good bill. The Bloc Québécois plans to vote in favour. That said, it does need to be improved in committee.
Let us talk about the pros. It puts a freeze on the acquisition of legal handguns. That is a good thing. As we know, right now, over one million such weapons are in circulation across Canada. Every year, over 55,000 of them are acquired legally, increasing the total number of handguns in circulation in Canada. We do not need one million handguns in Canada. We hope it will be possible to cap and significantly reduce the number of weapons in circulation, which do nobody any good and can be very harmful under certain circumstances, as we have seen in recent years.
To deal with that issue, the Bloc Québécois is proposing that the government bring in a voluntary buyback program. That was not included in Bill C‑21, but we would have really liked to see that in the bill. The owners of these legally acquired weapons are not breaking any laws, but considering that these weapons are so harmful that we want to freeze their acquisition and restrict their circulation, let us go for it. This is a step in the right direction, as is often said, but let us go one step further and bring in a buyback program. It would be voluntary, not necessarily mandatory, at least not at this time. The government should be able to take these handguns off of people who want to hand them over, thereby reducing the number of such weapons in circulation.
Now let us talk about assault weapons. Gun manufacturers are finding ways around the regulations adopted over two years ago on May 1, 2020. Everyone knows this. Manufacturers just have to modify the models slightly so that they no longer match the prohibited models. The government has decided to draw up a list of banned assault weapons. Of course, like any list, it is not exhaustive, and there are ways to get around it.