Good morning. I'd like to thank the committee for having invited me to speak today.

By way of introduction, I'm an ex-RCMP officer of nine years service who attended many so-called “domestic disputes” during my service. Also, at that time, I was on the board of the North Shore Women's Centre in North Vancouver, B.C., as a police adviser.

I've also worked as an Ontario government investigator and investigative manager for Ombudsman Ontario, primarily in the field of corrections, and I retired as a government director of enterprise-wide services. Further, I'm certified as a Canadian human resources leader, or CHRL.

Sadly, I'm also the mother of 26-year-old Lindsay Margaret Wilson, born July 30, 1986. My precious daughter and best friend was stalked and shot to death by her ex-intimate partner, a legal gun owner who never should have been granted a licence, in a murder-suicide on April 5, 2013, in Bracebridge, Ontario, just two weeks before completing her graduating exams. I accepted her degree from Nipissing University posthumously.

I want to emphasize to the committee that my daughter's assassin had never been violent with her until the day he murdered her in cold blood. He was clean-cut, articulate and from a well-to-do family of professionals in the community where he lived. He was also manipulative, artful and controlling with my daughter in a number of ways. He'd tell her she was the love of his life, but he would undermine her self-confidence by constantly criticizing her looks, her weight—she was slim, not overweight—her clothing choices, etc. She left the relationship twice when she caught him drug-dealing behind her back—another manipulation, as he was not the person he purported to be.

The first time, he lured her back with letters articulating his love for her, his apologies and the inevitable promises of changed behaviour. Occasionally, he [Technical Difficulty—Editor]