Public Safety committee  —as it becomes crystal clear for all to see that substance, once again, takes a backseat to symbolism. Thank you very much for your time.

Public Safety committee  Good afternoon Mr. Chair, vice-chairs and members. Thank you for inviting me to address you today. It's always a pleasure to appear before this committee. It's particularly a pleasure to be in person this time. In fact, since 2011 I have testified over a dozen times before this committee and others on proposed firearms legislation and regulation.

Public Safety committee  That's an interesting question. I'll say as follows. It's unfortunate that inflammatory political rhetoric has taken the place of an informed policy debate. I think this committee is a great example of what can happen when we actually look into the legal, regulatory and technical sides of these firearms.

Public Safety committee  Sure. That's a great question. It's one of the important questions that I know you're all trying to tackle here. I'll take your example of detachable magazines. Something that's really important to remember is that almost every type of firearm, particularly semi-automatic firearms, can be modified by people with a minimum of know-how.

Public Safety committee  I'm not an expert on border controls. I defend those charged with firearms importation offences. You're right that it's a very difficult problem. One of the benefits that we have of having a generally friendly southern neighbour and having enormous amounts of cross-border trade and transportation is that it may [Technical difficulty—Editor] potential.

Public Safety committee  What you can't buy is the receiver. The receiver is the essential part of the firearm. It's sometimes also called the action. You could purchase the barrel, trigger or components, etc. The real problem is not about buying those other parts, because they are useless without a receiver.

Public Safety committee  Was that question for me?

Public Safety committee  Wonderful. That's a great question. So, [Technical difficulty—Editor]. Any time you want to solve a legal problem, you have to look at how we ended up here. Essentially, we ended up here with the passage of the original Firearms Act in 1992, which delineated what were non-restricted, restricted and prohibited firearms.

Public Safety committee  I'll just briefly overlap with what Mr. Spratt was saying in terms of access to firearms. It's important to remember that in order to legally possess a restricted firearm—and handguns are largely restricted; some are prohibited, most restricted—you need to, of course, pass significant scrutiny, including a background check and references check.

Public Safety committee  Sure. It's good to hear that Statistics Canada recognizes that this is a problem because, of course, it's impossible to make good policy without good data. Once again, police services seize firearms for a wide variety of reasons. They are all perfectly legitimate. They could collect a firearm at a crime scene or they could have a noise complaint, go in and investigate it.

Public Safety committee  Thank you. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for inviting me to address you today. It's always a pleasure to appear before this committee and support your work. This is particularly the case in regard to the important study before you on gun control and illegal arms trafficking.

Public Safety committee  My view is these should happen automatically. If you're going to do an application process, then it should be one application for all of these. It should apply to people regardless of what other history they may have. These convictions, in my view, should simply disappear.

Public Safety committee  I look at the nature of the population that's disproportionately targeted by these convictions. Those are not people who may have the sophistication or the education to know about the record suspension process or to be able to go through it without undue hardship, like engaging the services of one of these predatory companies for thousands of dollars.

Public Safety committee  Yes. That's fair enough, right? I hear that. My view is that all of these should disappear. Whether you have one or five or 10 other convictions, why should you have the stigma of this conviction when it's not a crime anymore?

Public Safety committee  Those offences won't be suspended. The cannabis possession—