Senator Plett: Thank you. I want to make one comment about sport shooters. Of course, I will be making my own speech on this in the next little while, if the government leader doesn’t decide to put closure on it before we get to it next week.

I do want to make a comment about sport shooters. In fact, allowing sport shooters to continue, as this bill — you’re right — does, is a little bit like saying you can play hockey, but we will start hockey at the NHL. Nobody below NHL level can play hockey. That’s what this does. We can still have the Olympic shooters, but we can’t have the amateurs training to come up. Now, you’re right, the bill addresses the fact that we want to deal with this, but it’s not dealing with it. This is, again, the government saying, “Trust us. We will deal with this.” But it’s not in the bill, Senator Yussuff.

Right now, the way the bill reads, you can go to the Olympics and be a sports shooter but you cannot practise going up to the Olympics. So how many people will we have in the Olympics if we cannot train them?

I have one final question, and I thank you for your indulgence, Senator Yussuff. But you do state — and you said it again:

. . . fundamentally, for me, this bill is about striking a fair balance between the right of Canadians to safe communities and the privilege of Canadians to own certain types or models of guns for hunting and sport shooting. Finding that balance is no easy task.

I do agree with you. Finding that balance is no easy task. But based on the criticism that this bill has received from all sides, I would say that the government has actually destroyed a balance that previously existed, Senator Yussuff.

The bill is opposed by most provinces. It is opposed by hunters and sports shooters, even though you say sports shooters will be able to continue. It has been opposed by police witnesses who have appeared on this bill and have said that it will do nothing to stop the illegal guns on the streets. The criminal justice section of the Canadian Bar Association has said that the red flag provisions in the bill simply duplicate powers that already exist to seize firearms from persons who may be a danger to themselves or others.

So, Senator Yussuff, what do you or what does the government actually believe it has accomplished in the face of all of this opposition?

Hon. Tony Dean: Senator Yussuff, I, too, would be concerned if sport shooters were impacted negatively by legislation of this sort. But if I have my initial reading of the legislation correct, sport shooters who are part of sporting federations would be unaffected in the sense that they would be exempted from the requirements in this legislation with respect to handguns and other guns if they were in a program of training and exercises that led towards regional, national or international competitions. I’m just checking on that.

Secondly, I know a number of us were alarmed last weekend to learn of a tragic shooting in Ontario — I believe it was in Hamilton — in which a Canadian landlord gunned down two of his tenants as they fled from the rental home after a dispute over property. Police said that witnesses saw a young couple, both in their mid-20s, fleeing from their Hamilton, Ontario home. Following the killings, the gunman barricaded himself in the apartment and there was more tragedy involved because the gunman himself ended up dying in an altercation with police.

The point here is that we learned from reading about this that the killer was a gun owner, and several handguns and rifles were found in the home. Furthermore, they were registered to that user. In addition to the first question, would you have any comment on the second one?