Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
National Security and Defence
Issue No. 37 - Evidence - Meeting of February 25, 2019
OTTAWA, Monday, February 25, 2019
The Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, to which was referred Bill C-71, An Act to amend certain Acts and Regulations in relation to firearms, met this day at 11:02 a.m. to give consideration to the bill.
Senator Gwen Boniface (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Honourable senators, the government response to the Veterans Affairs Subcommittee report From Soldier to Civilian was received last week and referred to our committee.
Is it agreed to refer it to the Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Chair: We have an updated work plan, but translation has not come back yet. We are hoping to get it to you all sometime during today’s meeting.
We have also adjusted today’s schedule to allow time between panels, as well as a half-hour break in the middle.
Before we begin with witnesses, I would like senators to introduce themselves.
Senator Griffin: Diane Griffin, Prince Edward Island.
Senator Richards: Dave Richards, New Brunswick.
[Translation]
Senator Dagenais: Jean-Guy Dagenais from Quebec.
[English]
Senator Oh: Victor Oh, Ontario.
[Translation]
Senator McIntyre: Paul McIntyre from New Brunswick.
[English]
Senator McPhedran: Marilou McPhedran, Manitoba.
Senator Kutcher: Stan Kutcher, Nova Scotia.
[Translation]
Senator Gold: Marc Gold from Quebec.
Senator Pratte: André Pratte from Quebec.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Julie Miville-Dechêne from Quebec.
[English]
Senator Jaffer: Mobina Jaffer, British Columbia.
The Chair: I am Gwen Boniface from Ontario, and joining us at the table is Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu from Quebec.
We begin today by welcoming a number of panellists. From Polysesouvient, Heidi Rathjen, Coordinator, and Nathalie Provost, Spokesperson; from the Canadian Paediatric Society, Dr. Natasha Saunders, Physician, Hospital for Sick Children; from the NOT HERE organization, Wendy Vasquez, Spokesperson; and from the Centre culturel islamique de Québec, Boufeldja Benabdallah, President and Co-Founder.
We welcome all of you. Each of you will have five minutes, to be followed by questions from senators.
[Translation]
Nathalie Provost, Spokesperson, Groupe des étudiants et diplômés de Polytechnique pour le contrôle des armes (Polysesouvient): Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for having me and for this opportunity to make the voices of the victims of the Polytechnique massacre heard.
In December 1989, I was hit by four rounds from a Ruger Mini-14. It was equipped with a 30-round magazine and had been legally acquired. Six women in my class died in less than five minutes, and three more were wounded. No one was uninjured. Polytechnique resulted in 14 deaths, 13 wounded, suicides, an incalculable number of silent victims and long and profound suffering.
Since that day, my fellow students, our professors and the families of the victims have mobilized for better gun control. In 30 years, my country has progressed, then regressed and even reverted to the past. My children, my friends and you as well, all of us are as much in danger today as we were in 1989. Licences are no harder to obtain or renew than they were at the time. The Polytechnique killer would have equally easy access to his licence today. The Quebec City mosque massacre is eloquent proof of that. There is no follow-up for non-restricted weapons or any sales registry. A person wishing to acquire an arsenal can secretly do so; there are no mechanisms to deter him, and public officials have no way of knowing with whom or what they are dealing.
The firearms market has changed. Business is conducted online, and transactions are much more private. Classification rules are out of step with reality. The weapons that are available in the market and considered non-restricted have the characteristics of assault weapons. Anyone can legally acquire accessories that alter the characteristics of those weapons. For example, high-capacity magazines can be expanded to maximum capacity — as Bissonnette did, and Bain in the Métropolis attack, and as Bourque did against the RCMP in Moncton — which is illegal.
Now, I understand that some of you doubt whether Bill C-71 is the way to go. And yet what it proposes is designed to improve our safety and controls — not enough, in my humble opinion, but it’s already a step in the right direction.
How much is a life worth in Canada? Because that’s what this is about: the value we attach to life. Let’s never forget that the primary function of a firearm is to take a life, to kill. A firearm is an extremely dangerous object. Consequently, we think it’s essential that we control them. I’m not saying they should be abolished; I understand firearms can have important uses, but I’m saying — and we’ve been saying this for nearly 30 years — that they must be controlled. With every new tragedy, the public demands controls. That was true 30 years ago, it was true after the mosque attack, and it’s true after the Toronto attack. The public wants control measures. Let’s get serious, and let’s implement effective measures.
I’m talking about the value of life because many arguments against the bill concern the administrative hassles that are imposed on honest firearms owners. However, I believe that we, as a society, have to tolerate hassles when it comes to people’s lives. Those who oppose the bill and any form of control often ask me to shut up. They impugn my credibility and attack my reputation. They attribute to me intentions I don’t have, and do so in violent and vulgar ways: “Hey, ugly chick from Poly, get over it;” “Poly-whiner;” “You know nothing about it; what are you doing here?” “Target the criminals, not legal owners;” “More people die by other means and for other causes;” Come on, it’s just a small percentage of total crimes!”
Sometimes I’m afraid and I get tired. People tell me you have to forget about what troubles you, forget our story because it hurts, because it’s tough, because it’s troubling, because it’s a burden. Senators, I believe we have a duty to make progress for our children. Please tell me we aren’t forgetting the suffering, pain, injustice, all those pointless deaths, all those foreshortened lives. Tell me life is more important than hassles. Thank you.
[English]
Heidi Rathjen, Coordinator, Groupe des étudiants et diplômés de Polytechnique pour le contrôle des armes (Polysesouvient): Thank you, chair and honourable senators. You have undoubtedly heard from thousands of gun owners who are complaining that Bill C-71 represents an unfair burden on legal gun owners. Some even say it is an assault. That is right. Being forced to make a phone call before selling someone a gun or getting an extra piece of paper before transporting a handgun is considered tantamount to being treated like a criminal.
Given this forceful and widespread opposition to the bill, I would like to take this opportunity to place Bill C-71 in a slightly larger context.
In the years following the tragedy at l’École Polytechnique, students, survivors and many families of victims came together and fought to improve our gun control laws. After six years of advocacy, we shared in the public safety victories that were Bill C-17 and Bill C-68. Indeed, one research institute estimated the number of lives saved by these reforms at 300 a year on average.
Around 2009 the Polytechnique community regrouped again under Polysesouvient or PolyRemembers, this time to protect the gains from an openly anti-gun control political party. Unfortunately, as soon as it had a majority, the Harper government abolished or weakened most of these new measures. Canada lost much ground in terms of gun control measures.
As a result, we have seen the number of restricted weapons more than double over a dozen years. Worse, we have seen four consecutive years of increases in gun homicide, as well as gun crime and suicide.
We had high hopes when the Liberal government promised in 2014 “to get handguns and assault weapons off our streets” and reverse much of the damage caused by the previous government. Unfortunately, the government has chosen not to maximize the public safety potential contained in its election promises.
It has not at all moved on legal access to handguns and assault weapons. The RCMP continues to approve new models of assault weapons for the Canadian market. Regulations regarding import markings have been delayed once again. The government has chosen to implement the six-month grace period for gun owners who fail to renew their licences even though they didn’t have to. While hundreds of millions of dollars have been made available to fight gangs and guns, which we fully support, the government failed to do as much to provide comparable resources to help improve screening for better training for officers and the courts and for research addressing the role of guns in homicide and suicide. All these were to improve prevention.
Last week, we learned that on top of the Harper cuts there are new cuts for crime labs that trace guns, which will result in longer delays, guns not being traced and so on.
As for the promised measures, we consider Bill C-71 to be the strict minimum for the government to be able to say, at least technically, that it is respecting some of its promises, and not fully for most of them. After taking five steps backward under the previous government, we had hoped that this new government, having been elected to a majority based on a pro-gun control platform, would take at least three or four steps forward.
In our view, Bill C-71 is about one step forward. Nevertheless, it is an improvement over the current situation and we therefore support it. Although we would like to see it amended to be strengthened, we are asking senators to ensure, amended or not, that it clears both houses before the summer break. Thank you.
Dr. Natasha Saunders, Physician, Hospital for Sick Children, Canadian Paediatric Society: Thank you for having me here today. I am a pediatrician at the Hospital for Sick Children. I am also an epidemiologist and health services researcher whose research program focuses on injuries, specifically firearms, mental health and their intersection.
I have the privilege of being here today to represent the Canadian Paediatric Society, which is the national association of over 3,300 pediatricians, pediatric subspecialists, trainees and others who work with and care for children and youth across Canada. As an organization, we support the passage of Bill C-71 and recognize its importance in helping to ensure the health and safety of young people and their families in Canada.
High-quality national data on firearm injuries are limited. However, in Ontario we have analyzed data from emergency room hospital discharge and death records for all children and youth up to age 24 years from unintentional and assault-related injuries between 2008 and 2012. The particular study was published in Canada’s leading peer-reviewed medical journal, CMAJ, and did not include suicides.
During the study’s five-year period, 1,777 children and youth were injured or killed by a firearm. That’s an average of 355 children or youth per year in Ontario or one per day, and this was only for Ontario. You can imagine what the numbers would be like if we had national data. Again, this does not include suicides.
Some 75 per cent of these were unintentional injuries and not gang related. Those victims were not intended to be injured. Some 25 per cent were assault related. Some 19 per cent of those injured were under the age of 15. Importantly, of those who were unintentionally injured only 6 per cent died and of those who were assaulted 30 per cent died.
I have seen many witnesses speak at these hearings and have read countless reports about firearm fatalities. The numbers I just presented point to something really important. They show that the commonly used measure of firearm fatalities, and not firearm injuries, grossly underestimates the true burden of this public health problem, especially in the pediatric and young adult population.
Another important piece is that most injuries of these are unintentional and preventable. This is a public health problem.
While those who support liberalized access to firearms often dismiss firearm injuries as a problem for those involved in gangs and other criminal activity, these data refute that. This is not about gun violence. Innocent children and young people are unintentionally being injured by firearms. Children and adolescents lack the experience, cognitive development and impulse control to consistently handle a firearm safely and understand the consequences of misuse. This can be amplified in adolescents with peers, high levels of emotion and substance use.
We know that jurisdictions with strong child access prevention laws that impose criminal liability on adults who negligently allow children to access firearms have significantly lower rates of both self-inflicted and unintentional firearm injuries compared to jurisdictions with weak child access prevention laws.
What about suicide? Suicide is the second leading cause of death among youth in Canada. There are more deaths by suicide in youth than from cancer, stroke, heart disease, diabetes and infections combined. Suicide by firearms accounts for 13 per cent of youth suicides and mental illness is present in up to 90 per cent of youth who have died by suicide. There is a strong positive correlation between the availability of a firearm in the home and the risk of completed suicide and homicide.
As such, the CPS encourages pediatricians to strongly recommend the removal of firearms from the homes of young people struggling with or at risk for mental illness.
Then there is violence. Assaults by firearm are part of a complex problem that will ultimately need the collaboration of multiple ministries at every level of government. A single intervention or legislative change will not solve this important problem, but the evidence is clear that greater restrictions on firearm accessibility and availability in Canada will help reduce the number of homicide victims in Canada.
Bill C-71 is important to help protect children and youth from this public health problem. Taken together, the statistics on firearm injuries and the developmental, behavioural and cognitive characteristics of children and youth suggest the following measures must be put in place as strategies for firearm injury prevention.
First, measures to ensure lawfully permitted owners are encouraged to safely store, transport and use firearms to prevent loss, theft and inappropriate use by youth. This includes measures to ensure the transfer or sale of a firearm is to a licensed individual. Merchant record-keeping requirements and verification of valid licences should discourage straw purchases and firearm trafficking of unrestricted firearms to ineligible persons.
Screening and restriction of licensing to individuals deemed at risk to others and themselves and further deliberations are required for an extension of this screening for licensing to include the household; for example, one with an adolescent with mental illness and not just the applicant.
Measures to allow changes to farm classification need to be based on public safety and not political opinion. For children and youth, this includes processes to allow firearms capable of penetrating eyes or skin, which includes non-powdered firearms, to be classified at a minimum unrestricted firearms.
As child health professionals the CPS feels it is essential to voice our concerns over the preventable and tragic repercussions of gun violence, suicide and unintentional injuries, and to come together to find meaningful solutions to stem this rising problem. As such, we strongly support the passage of Bill C-71.
[Translation]
Wendy Vasquez, Spokesperson, NOT HERE: Good morning. First of all, thank you for welcoming us and for listening to the voice of young people on this important issue. My name is Wendy Vasquez, and I am a computer engineering student at the Université de Sherbrooke and President of the Association provinciale des étudiants en génie du Québec. I’m here with my colleagues Guillaume Lecorps, President of the Union étudiante du Québec; Bryan Gingras, Vice-President for External Affairs of the Association étudiante de l’École de la technologie supérieure; and Marianne Lee, a student at Carleton University.
We are here today to represent the Canadian student movement because we don’t want what’s happening in the United States to happen here in Canada. We represent 19 Canadian student associations totalling more than 250,000 students across the country. Our organization’s main objective is to make our campuses safe. We want universities to be living spaces where we don’t fear for our lives.
We support Bill C-71. It’s a step in the right direction, but it isn’t enough. We think several improvements should be made to the bill, such as removing the five-year period to take into account the eligibility criteria, adding new eligibility criteria, requiring businesses to retain information on non-restricted firearms and repealing the power of the Governor-in-Council to amend the classification of firearms in order, for example, to prevent a prohibited firearm from becoming restricted or non-restricted or a restricted firearm from becoming a non-restricted firearm.
However, even more improvements should be made. In particular, information should be centralized so that police officers can properly do their work and can easily access the information they need to trace weapons.
Improvements should also be made to the eligibility criteria, which are currently discretionary. By that I mean that, the person who analyzes a case may select one factor and determine that that factor is more important, or simply not consider it in his or her decision. This means that people who should not have had access to a firearm may obtain one legally. That was the case of Adrian Clavier, who had been under psychiatric care for 35 years and was taking medication that could cause suicidal thoughts. He managed to obtain a firearm legally and used it to commit suicide.
Our movement represents youth, but you must look beyond that. We also represent the majority of Canadians who support stronger firearms legislation. In addition, the scientific consensus is that more stringent legislation contributes to improved public safety. You must not yield to the pressure of pro-firearms lobbyists because they represent a tiny segment of the population. They promote their own interests, but you must ensure the safety of all Canadians. The decisions we make today will have consequences for the society of tomorrow. Young people will have to live with the consequences of a bad act. Young people will have to live with the impact of a society that isn’t strict enough in the way it handles lethal weapons, weapons that are designed to kill living beings. Thank you.
Boufeldja Benabdallah, President and Co-Founder, Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec City: Honourable senators, ladies and gentlemen, on January 29, 2017, a terrorist appeared at the door of the Quebec City mosque — with which you are all familiar — carrying a bag in which he concealed a handgun, an assault weapon and several full magazines. He then calmly fired an assault weapon at the first person leaving the mosque. I’m going to describe the horrific scene that ensued to help ensure that the act you put in place is a good act for our society.
The shooter had 50 rounds in his magazine and he fired his assault weapon. The weapon jammed, his combat weapon became unusable, and he threw it away, but that wasn’t enough. He had handguns. He took out his handgun and killed the two Guineans who were at the door. They fell into the snow. The shooter then calmly pulled the handgun out of his bag again and shot my two friends, Mamadou Tanou and Ibrahima Barry. Even though they were sprawled on the snow, he stepped over to them and fired two more rounds into their heads, in cold blood, with a firearm. I’ve described the scene to show you how an individual can take weapons and set out from his home, with impunity, to go and kill innocent people, Quebec and Canadian citizens, in premeditated fashion.
Are we now living in a society that trivializes death? No, I don’t think so. Murders occur because we don’t have control over these instruments of death and, quite simply, because we haven’t prohibited or seriously regulated these weapons of war. Whether it be a handgun or an assault rifle, it’s a weapon of war that kills. We live in a peaceful country that is a good place in which to live, as most of my colleagues here have said. So is our Canada gradually becoming one of those countries where firearms circulate and will continue to circulate as a consumable commodity?
We have a moral responsibility to introduce all technical, administrative and legal measures to prevent these weapons from circulating in our society. We will do so with laws. We have a moral responsibility to future generations. The Polytechnique students, those 14 young women, were of the age of those generations when they were shot by a crazy man with a weapon.
That’s why I’ve come before you, from Quebec City to here, braving the cold and the storm, to talk about this. That’s why I’m also talking about my community, because people are afraid of weapons. When anyone comes to pray, people turn around every time the door moves. They’re afraid of weapons. That fear isn’t going away. It stays in the subconscious. What about the children?
It took only one automatic weapon on January 29 to take the lives of six Canadian citizens whose names still resonate within us. I want them to continue resonating in you. Those names are Abdelkrim Hassane; Aboubaker Thabti and Azzeddine Soufiane, magnificent ordinary merchants; Ibrahima Barry; Khaled Belkacemi, distinguished professor at the Université Laval; and Mamadou Tanou, father of four young children who are now orphans. All those individuals, contributors to their families and Canadian society, engineers, financiers, computer scientists, university professors and merchants, were ordinary citizens who died in a hail of gunfire.
Six individuals were violently killed with a firearm, leaving behind them six wives in distress and 17 children, most of whom are now failing at school. And they aren’t failing at school because they’re spending too much time on the Internet. They’re failing because their lives have been completely upended and thrown out of balance. The merchant’s teenager has just been diagnosed with very high blood sugar levels. She is already undergoing treatment, and the doctors say this is the result of the stress caused by her father’s death. Her father had told her, “Wait for me, I’ll be back to talk to you.” Five minutes. It took only five minutes to put an end to a conversation with her in which he told her about her future in Canada. He left Morocco to live in Canada, to talk to his daughter about her future, about her courses at school. He left and didn’t return. She’s still waiting for him.
I want you to listen to me, please, even though I’m going on too long. The private film screening that the judge authorized at the courthouse was attended by all the families. In it, you see the dead, the wounded and those who escaped. As in a Hollywood movie, it shows the killer who fired his weapon at the people, men and children. There were four children in the room. The shooter reloaded his 10-round firearm five times. He fired at the victims and finished them off when he returned. It’s like in a Hollywood movie, where the shooter is portrayed as someone who’s committing a glorious act. The shooter had a weapon so he could act like those imbecilic heroes in Hollywood movies. The killer fired 48 rounds in two minutes, not with a rope dart, but with a firearm. He fired 48 rounds in two minutes. Has Canada turned into Hollywood? I don’t think so. If we don’t want Canada to become Hollywood, let’s work toward prohibiting these weapons or at least strengthening the laws we pass.
I recognize that a step has already been taken in this country. We have a beautiful democracy that has allowed me to come and speak to you today. In other countries, I wouldn’t have the power or the right to speak. We have that right here, and I’m pleased to find myself in this kind of country. That’s why I want this to be a country where weapons don’t circulate or kill any more people.
Two years ago, we started increasing awareness of this cause with the Polysesouvient organization, which has been doing this for two decades. There is some danger here. We took an initial action to oppose the media consortium that wanted to make the film on the tragedy. The entire film was recorded, and the judge screened it in the closed courtroom, but we refused to let the media use it to spread death in public and to prevent people from seeing how such an imbecile could kill people because that might give ideas to other people who had access to weapons that weren’t controlled by legislation.
I can’t complete my testimony — which is based on what we were actually destined to experience in that mosque as a result of the possession of firearms — without also telling you that the killer felt powerful merely because he had that weapon in his hands. The psychologists say that, because he had a weapon, even two, an assault weapon, he felt powerful. He also had a handgun, and he felt powerful; he felt exhilarated by the power he had to terrorize a group of citizens praying in a holy place.
He also used that power to fire seven rounds, one after another, at a person who is now confined to a wheelchair. Only his head and hands can move, and only a little. He fired seven rounds into his body, one after another. He didn’t shoot darts; he fired a handgun, a round from which is still lodged in his neck. It took him a few minutes with a weapon to rack up six dead, five wounded and 35 people completely devastated psychologically.
You know, I also visited the people from the killing at the synagogue in Pittsburgh, in the United States, where Hollywood is located. I also saw their distress over what had been done. They too are alarmed at the way these weapons of war and death circulate; 11 innocent people killed by a crazy person. And what did that crazy person have? He had an assault rifle. What a waste! Dead people and human resources that could have contributed to education, social affairs, culture and art, which do good, give us heart and afford us rest.
Should we continue to describe the indescribable after learning about the killing of the 14 Polytechnique victims some years ago? Not to mention the tragedy that resulted in the death of a young female college student and 20 wounded at Dawson College, seven RCMP officers, two of whom were wounded, and so on, to mention only those unfortunate and unhappy events, including the killing of a young police officer in the performance of his duties.
[English]
The Chair: With the greatest respect, could I just ask to wrap up, please?
[Translation]
Mr. Benabdallah: I am done. It’s the uncontrolled circulation of these firearms of murder and war that hateful people use to attack their fellow citizens. We would like the act that is passed to be as strong as possible so that these weapons cannot circulate with impunity or even be permitted on Canadian soil.
Thank you.
[English]
The Chair: Senators, we will move to questions. You may have noted that this is a rather larger panel. We particularly tried to accommodate witnesses who were shifting because of the weather conditions.
The next panel is only two people, so we can go slightly over to try to accommodate all of you. Having said that, we have a number of senators who want to ask questions.
[Translation]
Senator Dagenais: Thanks to our guests. I will ask only three questions. My first question is for Ms. Provost.
Ms. Provost, the Indigenous communities would like to be exempted from the obligations imposed by the Canadian and Quebec firearms control registries based on privileges associated with their lands and hunting. What do you think of their demands and how should we handle them?
Ms. Provost: I can understand the demands of the Indigenous communities. However, those communities also face challenges and issues. Ms. Saunders mentioned some challenges associated with children. Indigenous children are definitely included in the statistics Ms. Saunders gave us.
In the short term, I think Bill C-71 may be acceptable, even to the Indigenous communities. I believe the Government of Canada can work with the Indigenous communities to come up with amendments or procedures that meet their needs and suit their circumstances.
Firearms control must be a national issue, and I include the Indigenous communities in that. People from the Indigenous communities have appeared here and addressed the major challenges those communities face. Some communities are able to find solutions that meet their needs, such as keeping all firearms together to prevent anyone experiencing an episode of distress from gaining access to them. They must be listened to, but I don’t think that will prevent us from going ahead with Bill C-71.
Senator Dagenais: Thank you.
My second question is for Ms. Rathjen.
Ms. Rathjen, don’t you find it strange that the present government has added nothing to Bill C-71 to compensate for the fact that the Supreme Court overturned the act that imposed a mandatory minimum prison sentence of three years on persons caught with a loaded firearm? Are you in favour of the mandatory minimum sentence for those who fail to comply with the Firearms Act?
Ms. Rathjen: If my understanding is correct, both Bill C-17 in 1991 and Bill C-68 in 1995 provided for longer sentences for firearms offences. The Conservatives also increased penalties, and I’m going to rely on the Supreme Court, which has held that this went too far in certain cases. So, in our view, sentences are less important than prevention because, in most mass killing cases, the killer commits suicide or dies as a result of police intervention, and the penalties then don’t have a lot of impact.
So I rely on the Supreme Court. Once again, what we’re concerned with is prevention. Since the act of punishing someone is recognized as an ineffective preventive measure, we want to see measures that will prevent people who shouldn’t have access to firearms from gaining access to them.
Senator Dagenais: Thank you.
My final question is for Dr. Saunders.
Dr. Saunders, do you sincerely think Bill C-71 contains provisions that may effectively combat the street gangs currently rampant in Toronto, for example? How could we amend the act to make it more effective in combating organized crime, which is not known to use legally registered firearms?
[English]
Dr. Saunders: I think Bill C-71 does have some measures in it to help fight some of the gang violence and crimes with the merchant record keeping and reducing the likelihood of straw purchasing.
Does that go far enough? Probably not, no. Certainly, the Canadian Paediatric Society would like to see a ban on handguns and assault-style weapons to help reduce violent crime in particular among youth.
As I said before, though, I don’t think it’s only about restricting firearms and gun legislation. As a society we have to work together with multiple ministries of education, social services and security to get to the roots of violence.
I do not think there’s one specific solution, but I think Bill C-71 has some elements that can help reduce violent crime.
[Translation]
Senator Jaffer: First of all, Ms. Provost, I want to tell you I’m sorry to learn you’ve been a victim of harassment. I’m really sorry to hear that.
[English]
I only have a very short time to ask questions, so I will only ask two.
I will start with Mr. Benabdallah. As-salaam-alaikum. I met in Quebec City with the widows and the mothers from Guinea. They’re suffering. Does Bill C-71 go far enough?
Forgive me for asking you this, but people say that it has nothing to do with guns, that it has to do with our social problems and that guns don’t make a difference. May I respectfully ask you: Would this bill or a stronger bill have made a difference in the mosque shooting in Quebec City?
[Translation]
Mr. Benabdallah: Of course, it would have made a difference. That individual would not have been able to drive around in his vehicle with impunity. His parents wouldn’t have stored weapons like that without guidelines, without regulations. If there had been an enforceable act, the individual would have thought twice about it. He wouldn’t simply have accessed those weapons, knowing they were prohibited, outlawed, restricted or well regulated.
The purpose of the act is to persuade. That’s why you enact laws and why we use them to protect ourselves. That helps prevent future acts that would harm society. I don’t have any thorough knowledge of the act — I leave that task to the experts who know it in detail — but laws are made to establish guidelines so that society stays in equilibrium. This act is very important, given the increase in the number of homicides involving firearms. Let’s not mix things up; we’re definitely dealing with the firearms sector. Thank you.
[English]
Senator Jaffer: I have many supplementary questions but I have to be respectful of my other colleagues.
I will quickly ask a question of Ms. Rathjen. As a spokesperson for the police you said in a news release published in March of last year:
Where are the controls on store inventories? Proposed controls on sales are weaker than what existed since the 70s, when the police did not require judicial authority to consult them.
Even in the United States, commercial gun dealers are required to record gun sales and those records are readily available to the authorities.
I find this statement interesting and I would like you to comment on it. Does this bill cover the recorded sales? It doesn’t. The authorities cannot see it.
Ms. Rathjen: No. This is what we mean. We feel the bill does not maximize the election promises, one of which was to reinstate the commercial sales records.
They’ve been in place since the 1970s and police had easy access to these records. They were able to do quality checks, look at the inventory, and compare the inventory with the guns to make sure there were no illegal diversions.
Many chief provincial firearms officers opposed the elimination of the registry, saying that it would make it easier to divert guns to the illegal market.
Instead of reinstating the sales ledgers that were in place since the 1970s, the measure in Bill C-71 requires sales records but makes it a lot more difficult for police to have access. They need to have a search warrant for a specific gun with reasonable doubts in specific investigations, whereas we have all the debates about the sources of guns in crime and in suicide. If we don’t trace these guns systematically, it will be very difficult to know where they come from to help legislators make better policy to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands.
That is one of the amendments we’re hoping to see to the bill before the Senate, to ensure the same access by police to do all kinds of things and not just a specific check for one gun found at the scene of the accident in order to make sure guns are sold to people who have permits and are not diverted. Currently, the way the law is written, it does not help police do that at all.
Senator Pratte: My questions will be directed to Dr. Saunders.
[Translation]
However, the other witnesses may also respond if they wish.
[English]
Dr. Saunders, in your presentation you said something like greater restriction on gun availability would reduce gun violence and that this had been demonstrated by different studies.
We will hear from other witnesses this afternoon, notably Professor Langmann and Professor Mauser, who say exactly the opposite. We will also have statistics and studies to show that the opposite is true, that gun control initiatives have not produced results.
How can we as legislators and non-experts decide what science really says?
Dr. Saunders: Dr. Langmann’s study, if I am not mistaken, looked only at firearm homicides. It did not look at injuries from firearms.
When it comes to children and youth, which is my area of expertise, that doesn’t account for 70 per cent of assaults by firearm, so I think Dr. Langmann’s study does not show the whole picture.
We look to jurisdictions like Australia or Japan where they have low rates of homicide. We have to look to other jurisdictions because in Canada we haven’t measured it. We don’t have the statistics. We need those data but we don’t have them.
Senator Pratte: The study that you quoted, your own study regarding injuries to children and youth, has been challenged by gun control opponents. They say, for instance, that your definition of children and youth is overbroad because it goes up to the age of 24, and that many of the firearms included, like paint guns and so on, were not firearms.
What is your reply to these comments on your study?
Dr. Saunders: As a pediatrician I care for children up to age 18 at the hospital, but my care for children does not end on their eighteenth birthday. If you’re a parent and your child is 17 and shot and killed by a firearm versus if they’re 19, does that make a difference?
Youth is something that goes up to age 24 and some organizations call it up to age 29. As pediatricians we have a vested interest in ensuring that transition from adolescence to young adulthood is a healthy one.
When I use youth in my study, I count up to age 24 because it’s an important population that is affected by this issue.
Senator Pratte: How about the fact that not all firearms included are really in fact firearms?
Dr. Saunders: You raise a really important point. This study is based on health records. Pediatricians or health-care providers are not ballistics experts. When someone comes in with a gunshot wound, we don’t know necessarily the type of firearm that caused it.
These are serious injuries that require an emergency room visit or a child or youth to be hospitalized.
The Canadian Paediatric Society supports the notion that non-powdered firearms should also be considered as firearms if they can penetrate the skin or the eye. Currently, anything that fires at less than 152 metres per second is not considered a firearm unless it’s used in a crime.
My seven-year-old son can go online and buy from Walmart or Canadian Tire a gun that fires at 151 metres per second. Certainly that is not something you would want to be fired at you because it can kill you.
I submitted a brief prior to attending today which refers to a study of children and youth with respect to assault and where we know the type of firearm used. There were equally as many assaults by handguns as there were by air guns or BB guns. We really have to rethink whether or not non-powdered firearms used in assaults, which can kill or injure people, should be considered firearms under the Canada Firearms Act.
Senator Pratte: Do I have time for another short question?
The Chair: Very brief.
[Translation]
Senator Pratte: Ms. Rathjen, you very much want the RCMP experts to classify firearms rather than the Governor-in-Council. Why is that important for you? Those who oppose the regime say it’s undemocratic to leave those decisions in the hands of bureaucrats.
Ms. Rathjen: In fact, it isn’t the RCMP that decides how firearms are classified. It interprets the criteria of the federal act. It’s the politicians who establish the criteria, and the RCMP applies them. Sometimes it’s complicated, obviously, and there may be room for interpretation, but it’s experts who attempt to comply with the act.
In Bill C-42, the government established its authority to impose interpretations of the act made by the RCMP for political reasons. That was the case with Swiss Arms and the CZ858. The RCMP hadn’t decided to prohibit those weapons; they were prohibited under the act. The act provides that, if a firearm can be converted to automatic mode, it is considered an automatic firearm and is therefore prohibited. Under the section of the act that would be repealed by Bill C-71, politicians could reverse that interpretation, always in order to weaken it, always to downgrade from prohibited to restricted or non-restricted status or from restricted to non-restricted status.
The classification system is in fact defective. It’s up to the government to correct it through legislation, with the aid of a new classification system, and the RCMP will apply those criteria and make decisions in order to interpret and enforce the act.
Senator Pratte: Thank you.
[English]
Senator McPhedran: I will limit myself to one question out of respect for allowing as many senators as possible to engage with our witnesses.
[Translation]
My sincere thanks to all the witnesses for being here this morning.
[English]
Every one of you has provided excellent testimony. I wish I had time to ask every one of you a question.
May I express to all witnesses, but particularly to Mr. Benabdallah with the recent massacre you have helped us understand better, condolences and appreciation that you are here?
A lot of what has been said by panellists so far today really helped senators to be less remote and to better understand what is at stake for Canadian society.
I would ask you, sir: What would you say to the senators on this committee, and in the Senate at large, who have argued that Canada does not need this bill? What would you say to the gun owners we have heard from, and we will hear from more, who say that this bill is not needed because the system is working and should stay the same?
[Translation]
Mr. Benabdallah: We’re telling all the senators and politicians to shoulder their responsibilities now and for future generations and to stop playing politics because it’s our society that’s at stake. If the act is necessary in order to provide guidelines, to prevent, to heal and to correct, you have to get to it and put it in place. There isn’t a country in the world that doesn’t have laws. That would be unrealistic. There have to be laws, and they’re essential in the case of firearms. If we make room for people who have access to firearms without impunity, without laws, where are we headed? We don’t live in a Hollywood version of a country. That’s all I have to say.
This fight is everyone’s responsibility. Future generations will judge us if this isn’t done here. Even if we, from the mosque, hadn’t stood up and come here to testify before you and express our feelings — We don’t need to express our feelings, but they’re so strong, it’s to heal wounds, and it’s too build a better future for our children, of all denominations. So let’s be responsible and work toward an act that’s as enforceable as possible. Thank you.
Senator McIntyre: My sincere thanks to you for coming and testifying here today. I want to express my respect and offer my deepest sympathies to the victims and to the families directly or indirectly affected by the terrible tragedies such as those that occurred at the École Polytechnique, Dawson College and the Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec City.
I understand why the Province of Quebec passed the Anastasia Act following the Dawson College shooting in 2006. Could you tell us a little about that act? To your knowledge, has this type of act been passed in any other provinces, and, if so, which ones? Do you think there are any loopholes in the Anastasia Act, and, if so, what are they and how could we close them?
Ms. Rathjen: That provincial act improves certain processes, protects health professionals and encourages them to report the cases of patients of theirs who make death threats or similar threats so that police can make preventive withdrawals. The operators of shooting clubs also have a responsibility to report odd or suspicious behaviour by participants at their club. There are also stricter rules for shooting clubs.
The act is definitely more effective when the public is simultaneously made aware of the risks associated with firearms. There are definitely some deficiencies in this area, and we’re seeking stricter licence eligibility criteria under the act. Enforcement of the act should also be stepped up and made more rigourous. That’s really a matter of resources and education at this point.
I’d nevertheless like to single out cases such as that of Thierry LeRoux, the police officer who was killed in Val-d’Or in 2016. The killer was known to police. He was suicidal and in treatment. He had been convicted in the matter of a domestic violence incident. The police knew that. And yet, even after removing his firearms, the police were forced to return them to him. In our minds, that means there really is an enforcement problem because there’s far too much discretion. We would like to see the act include permanent criteria that would result in an automatic prohibition, which is more appropriate and more sound.
It’s stricter in the United States, at the federal level, than in Canada. People who are subject to a restraining order in domestic violence or harassment cases, for example, may not possess firearms. Why wouldn’t the situation be the same in Canada? There was a case in Manitoba in which a woman had obtained a restraining order against her former spouse, who was threatening her but who was nevertheless allowed to hold a licence.
Consequently, under the Anastasia Act, the requirement to report risk factors is significant. However, once those risks are known to authorities, the act should be stricter in determining who may or may not possess firearms. Although we support the amendment adopted in the house, which adds criteria that must be examined, the act in no way alters the discretion enjoyed by firearms officers and the courts, which may still permit people who present extremely serious risks to possess firearms. So those criteria should be reinforced.
Senator Gold: I add my voice and name to those of my colleagues and offer my condolences to you, your colleagues and your community for the pain you have suffered as a result of these murders.
My question is for Ms. Rathjen and Ms. Provost, but I invite our other guests to respond as well.
Your organization has noted on many occasions that the act is disappointing and doesn’t go far enough. As you’ll nevertheless remember, we have introduced significant measures. I would like to know a little more about what you consider are essential measures, in Bill C-71, for improving public safety.
Allow me as well to invite you to comment on one aspect in particular, authorizations to transport. We’ve had some witnesses tell us that these are just pointless red tape. How do you respond to that statement?
Ms. Rathjen: The important measures include, for example, the obligation to verify that the licence of the person to whom firearms are sold is valid. We think it’s completely ridiculous not to require verification from the outset. That’s something that has been around for a long time. Under the registry, the licence automatically had to be verified. Currently, however, a firearm may be sold to a person provided there is no reason to believe that person does not hold a licence. You don’t even need to take note of the name of the person to whom you are selling of firearm or anything else. A reasonable presumption at the time of the sale is enough. That’s an enormous loophole permitting the illegal sale of firearms. First, non-restricted firearms aren’t registered and can’t be matched to the legal owner or traced. Second, it’s very difficult for authorities to determine the frame of mind of a person at a specific time. We therefore think this measure is extremely important.
Sales registries are the other measure. Although we’d like that measure to be reinforced, it’s a major step in the right direction in documenting sales made by merchants. We understand that most of them do it in any case. However, everyone should do it because the laws, in many instances, are designed for exceptional cases.
The measures regarding authorizations to transport are very disappointing. The Liberals promised to repeal the amendments made under Bill C-42, which eliminated authorizations to transport restricted firearms. However, Bill C-71 requires specific licences, but solely in 4 per cent of transport cases. In the vast majority of cases, the reasons for transporting a firearm are to go to a shooting club or firing range, and no authorization is required for that. Furthermore, you can be at home or at any shooting club in your province, even if you aren’t a member, without violating the act, provided you’re going between your home and the shooting club. So it’s very hard not to comply with the act in those cases.
The authorization to transport is important. Restricted firearms must be controlled in order to determine who can own them, how, where and when they may be used and where they may be transported. When we control the transportation of these firearms, we minimize the possibility that they may be used impulsively and prevent any incidents that may ensue. In Hamilton, on February 13, there was a road rage case in which a fight broke out because someone was driving aggressively. We’re familiar with that type of incident. The individual got out of his vehicle with a firearm in hand and fired on the other individual. Another case occurred in Manitoba shortly before Christmas in which a man was involved in an altercation in a bar. He became aggressive and left the bar. He had a weapon in his car, and he used it to fire on vehicles that were passing by and killed a young woman. Why was that man in possession of his firearm when he left the bar? Transport control is one of the measures that can limit the circulation of restricted firearms and thus minimize the chances they may be impulsively used and abused.
Senator Gold: I have no further questions.
Senator Boisvenu: Given the time, I’ll be brief.
Thanks to our guests and witnesses. Mr. Benabdallah, once again, I offer my condolences along with those of my colleagues. You are no doubt still grieving. I believe that all Quebecers and Canadians sympathize with you.
We know that the RCMP is experiencing significant problems with backlogs in checking domestic violence and mental health cases. In British Columbia, in 2017, backlogs were noted in 2,000 cases. A recent news article reported the same problem across Canada. There are also problems with backlogs in the health care system in forwarding medical information quickly to police departments. That information is hard to obtain and often slips through the cracks.
Can you confirm for me that Alexandre Bissonnette, the shooter who burst into your mosque, applied for a licence from the Sûreté du Québec without reporting a psychiatric history, as a result of which police officers were unable to conduct a check and he got his licence?
Mr. Benabdallah: Exactly. He didn’t report it, even though the police were required to check.
Senator Boisvenu: You’re required to report your history on the licence application. However, I don’t believe there’s any such obligation if you don’t have any such history.
Going back to the Bissonnette case, would you agree the bill should be amended to provide that, when someone applies for a restricted firearm licence, the checks the police department conducts, whether it’s the Sûreté du Québec or the RCMP, should include all individuals living in the same building where the person applying for the licence lives? The purpose of the amendment would be to expand the background check, especially to include psychiatric history.
Mr. Benabdallah: We consider the idea of expanding the framework promising. That way, the individual would not be the only one targeted. That expansion must not limit action though. Things must be done precisely and seriously to tighten up the framework and not to lessen the accountability of the main party concerned.
Senator Boisvenu: Dr. Saunders, the news items that appeared in November reported that it’s hard for the medical system to respond, within a reasonable timeframe, to requests for information from police departments concerning medical histories, especially mental health. Checks currently go back five years. However, the bill provides for them to cover the entire lifetime of the licence applicant. If medical checks are expanded to include the person’s medical history, how will the medical system provide an adequate response to police requests? Will this bill put you in a better position to provide available information to police officers?
[English]
Dr. Saunders: I can’t really speak to what happens in terms of that backlog from the health-care providers standpoint and about what happens in terms of that backlog from the police standpoint. Just because there is a delay or a backlog doesn’t mean it shouldn’t happen. It doesn’t mean those people shouldn’t be checked.
I am not sure why there is such a backlog. If as a health-care provider I have a patient with a seizure disorder and I am concerned about their driving safety, I fill out a form, report it to the Ministry of Transportation and their licence is suspended until they are deemed safe to drive. There is not a huge backlog there. There is infrastructure in place that we can build on for firearms to consider this.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: Here’s an example. We saw a case in Lac-Saint-Jean where it was reported that one individual had domestic violence problems. When police officers received the information, it was too late to intervene and the spouse was killed.
How will this bill help you be more effective in forwarding information to police departments quickly so they can intervene quickly and seize the firearms or licence? How will this bill help make both systems more efficient?
[English]
Dr. Saunders: I don’t think this bill addresses the timeliness and implementation. It addresses identification of individuals at risk, but it doesn’t address how that can best be implemented in terms of the backlog.
Whether or not that means more resources and funding into the scale-up of existing background checks from police and enforcement of removal or suspension of a firearms licence, that certainly needs to be looked into. It may be an investment we need to make.
The bill doesn’t specifically address that implementation, but it doesn’t make it any less important to identify those with mental illness or who are at risk of domestic violence.
Senator Kutcher: I think all the witnesses have helped us clearly hear two things from your testimony. First, you reminded us that we cannot hide from the human face of this issue. Second, you have told us that Bill C-71 is a relatively limited administrative approach that can help us reasonably address the oversight of firearms in Canadian society. It doesn’t solve all the challenges and all the concerns.
I have two questions. The first is for Dr. Saunders and then to anybody else. You are in a unique position as a physician to be able to interpret scientific data and bring to that your clinical experience at the cold face of reality.
You’ve raised with us an interesting construct of firearms injuries that takes the discussion beyond suicide and homicide. Could you tell us a bit more about why it is important for us to consider this issue, both from a public health perspective and from the individual and family perspective?
Dr. Saunders: The pediatric population suffers from some similar things that the adult population suffers when it comes to firearms. As I presented, unintentional injuries are a major problem.
Children do not have the cognitive capacity or impulse control to handle a firearm safely. Parents don’t always store their firearms safely. When we do surveys, about 50 per cent of households with children don’t store their firearms safely in the home. By legislating things it is partly a reminder and partly a legal avenue to help enforce this issue.
As an example, without giving too many details of the case, I have a patient who was nine years old and looking after his seven-year-old brother at home. There was a firearm in the home, and I called Child Protective Services because it was unlocked and loaded. When I called Child Protective Services, they said, “Oh, it’s only a .22. It’s no big deal. We all have them here.” I said, “This is a nine-year-old, unsupervised, with a firearm, and I am concerned about their safety.” However, because we normalize the behaviour around firearms and their safety for children, I have no avenue to say that this needs to be removed, that child is being subject to neglect, essentially, and that is not safe. I have very few avenues to remove that firearm from that home. Clinically, that’s something I face every day.
In another case I have a 17-year-old in my clinic who is suicidal. They have passive suicidal ideation. They don’t have a specific plan, but they are depressed and want to end their lives. Their father has a firearm at home. I told him that I recommend he removes the firearm from the home, at least until we get his child’s depression under control.
The dad says, “Do you know what? It’s okay. He is fine. He won’t do anything. He doesn’t have any plans to use a firearm.” A month later, that child ends up dead.
You can’t tell me that this isn’t a problem we don’t see every day.
Senator Kutcher: That’s consistent with the studies of David Brent of Pittsburgh on child death, for sure.
The Chair: We are out of time and actually over time.
[Translation]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Thank you for your deeply felt testimony.
My questions are for the spokesperson of the Polysesouvient organization.
We know that more men own firearms than women. The 2016 statistics indicate that 600 women were victims of domestic violence or violence between intimate partners committed with firearms, compared to 100 men.
My question concerns the background check, the eligibility criteria stated in the act. Do you think those criteria are adequate? What do you think should be changed? Should we consult the female spouse and talk to her in order to prevent armed domestic violence instead of requiring a signature?
Ms. Rathjen: Thank you for that question. I think it’s extremely important in this debate to recall that there are victims who have been killed by firearms in domestic disputes. Unfortunately, we mainly hear the bill’s opponents talk only about criminal gangs and so on, as though, first of all, the killings we’re discussing were all committed by legal firearms owners and thus with legal weapons. However, opponents of the bill appear to exclude the entire issue of suicide and domestic violence from the debate.
As regards potential improvements to the criteria, if, for example, someone is subject to a restraining order, according to the amendment moved by the house, the firearms officers, those who issue the licences, must consider the fact that someone is subject to that order. In the United States, however, it’s automatic: Someone who is subject to an order for criminal harassment may not own a firearm. I think that’s the simplest and most logical thing. Why not make that a mandatory provision of the act?
Consulting the male or female spouse or the former male or female spouse is unfortunately discretionary. The provinces or the police forces that enforce the law may decide whether or not to call the references and the former spouse. It’s currently a matter of resources or political priorities. The provinces must be urged to make these calls systematic.
One of our recommendations is related to that of a Manitoba judge in the Runke case. Ms. Runke was killed by her former spouse, who was subject to an order, but he was nevertheless legally able to own a firearm. We therefore recommend that this kind of consultation be mandatory.
We’re talking about the possession of extremely dangerous objects. We think it would be normal for police officers to be required to conduct a minimum-level investigation of the person instead of relying on the good faith of the individual requesting a firearm so that that individual has to state whether or not he or she has a history of violence or mental health disorders, as in the case of Alexandre Bissonnette, who didn’t check the box stating that he suffered from mental health disorders, which, however, was the case. Unfortunately, the Sûreté du Québec currently does not conduct checks of those who say they haven’t suffered from mental health disorders. That makes no sense. A lot of improvements should be made. That could have been included in the act, but, in our view, the bill unfortunately doesn’t go far enough in that respect.
At the same time, we will continue putting pressure on the provinces to establish a much more rigorous process. It’s really a matter of priorities, and the priorities are often related to resources. Of course, Minister Goodale has promised $325 million to fight street gangs. That’s a measure that we and everyone else supports. However, the other non-criminal parties, who represent approximately half of the people killed by firearms in Canada and who have nothing to do with street gangs, don’t seem to be considered a priority. No one’s holding a summit on those deaths, avoidable suicides and family murders. There’s an urgent need for resources to drive the process and support more stringent procedures.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Thank you very much.
[English]
The Chair: Senators, I have to close it off on that. To our panellists, I express our sincere thanks for your making the trip here and for your evidence. It is very important to the work we are doing as we consider Bill C-71.
We welcome Senator Plett to the table. For our next panel, from Silverdale Gun Club, Dave Partanen, Spokesperson, and from Toronto Firearm Safety Services, Marty Kerluck, Owner.
For the information of senators, David Fritter who was on our list was unable to get here because of the weather. I know we will have some effect throughout the day from witnesses.
We welcome you to the Senate committee.
Dave Partanen, Spokesperson, Silverdale Gun Club: Thank you, honourable senators, for inviting me to give my thoughts on Bill C-71.
I am here today as a law-abiding firearms owner representing my club, our 3,000 members, and what I believe to be a significant percentage of the firearms community across the country that has concerns with some of the measures in Bill C-71.
I preface my remarks by acknowledging all victims of violent crime and, especially in this forum, the victims of firearms-related violence and those affected by it. Please don’t ever think that we are insensitive to the horrors you have had to endure. These are experiences no one should ever have to have, and we all grieve with you.
Despite what people not familiar with the complexities of the issues may believe, we all want the same thing. While our approaches and perspective may differ, if a tangible reduction in violence and safe communities are desired results, we all share that goal regardless of the instrument used. We are not the enemy.
At Silverdale Gun Club a number of police services, federal ministries, military personnel and armed guard services, along with those participating in various training courses or competitions, are regularly among the roughly 25,000 that use our facilities in any given year. Our members come from all walks of life and are always willing to help out when one of our own is in need.
With the help of our extended community, we have donated $225,000 over the last 10 years to a charity with a mission to create life-changing wishes for children with critical illnesses. We are not bad people.
In these committee meetings we have been and will be presented with studies, statistical analyses and emotional opinions as justified as they may be, but I will defer to some of my esteemed colleagues, whose expertise on these far exceeds mine, to speak to their details, contextual relevance and methodological validity. I will, however, comment on a few points in a somewhat more colloquial manner.
I have spent my entire professional career in the field of software engineering and development and know that a system defect, whether in design or implementation, must be identified where conditions converge to manifest the defect if it is ever to be corrected. Brute force manipulation of the result of a particular function will not only diminish the ability and effectiveness of the solution as a whole but will leave the environment vulnerable to an escalating of incidents of unintended side effects.
The debate around firearms is no different. We must have honest conversations to identify root causes and approach them in a balanced, practical and just manner. Honest conversations, however, can never happen if every time there is a shooting differentiation between legal firearms owners and those in illegal possession of illegal firearms using them for illegal purposes is ignored and the general public is led to believe they are one and the same.
We have heard testimony already from individuals and groups advocating for the confiscation of personal property of hundreds of thousands of Canadians that have never done anything wrong, the rationale being it is time to reframe the debate about guns in Canada and look at firearm-related injuries and deaths through a public health lens.
We don’t necessarily disagree with that. However, that is merely one facet. In far too many cases, when all reasonable external observations suggest mass shooters are motivated by misogyny, bigotry, racism or extremist ideologies, we seem to be too quick to throw the mental health challenge blanket of pardon on them. Perhaps that proposed public health lens could be focused there for a while as the myriad factors that affect the behavioural escalation trajectories of those willing to resort to these heinous acts are also examined.
On Friday, in Toronto, a group of victims and families of those affected by the Danforth mass shooting last summer gathered to voice their support of a federal ban on the private ownership of handguns and the oft-misused term of assault rifles. Again, none of us dispute the horror this man inflicted on the community or the shockwaves his actions sent through the country.
What of the investigation, though? Why were some of the most disturbing facts of that much wider case only briefly mentioned and then left out of public dialogue completely? That doesn’t seem very honest to me.
We have also heard the plea that we are calling on policy makers to demonstrate courage and take decisive action to protect the safety of Canadians. Again, we don’t disagree with that stated position in and of itself. Courage, however, ought to be tempered with the wisdom begat by knowledge gathered through comprehensive examinations of all the facts from subject matter experts, and not necessarily placating the groups that shout the loudest for their well-intentioned but often misguided demands to be fulfilled. Courage without integrity and honesty is meaningless and quite probably counterproductive.
We live under increasing pressures of social conformity, motions passed in the House of Commons not to allow our ignorance to breed stereotypical perceptions and bigotry, and not to judge an entire segment of the population based on the horrible actions of one. If we are to pursue truth, we must extend the same courtesy and respect to legal firearms owners as well. We are not the problem, but we want to be part of the solution.
Our resistance to this bill and any proposed bans is due to the fact that very little, if anything, exists in them to address the underlying issues. They are neither courageous nor likely to be effective.
I know my time is running out, but I welcome the opportunity to elaborate on some of our specific concerns with the bill during question and answer period.
Marty Kerluck, Owner, Toronto Firearm Safety Services: I am from Toronto and I am a past director and current member of the Toronto Revolver Club, established in 1905 and accident-free since our inception.
In addition to being a competitive target handgun shooter at my home club, I am also a member of Gagnon Shooting Centre in Oshawa. I’ve also been designated by the Chief Firearms Officer of Ontario as an instructor and examiner of the Canadian Firearms Safety Course. I conduct classes regularly in the Toronto and Oshawa area.
I want to paint a picture of what an individual must accomplish prior to obtaining their firearms licence, long before they can join a gun club or even purchase their firearm. Canadians must first take and pass the RCMP Canadian Firearms Safety Course, the prerequisite for applying for their licence. Training is from a certified instructor-examiner. It consists of a minimum of 12 hours of both lecturing and physical handling exercises of disabled rifles, shotguns and handguns. It is followed by a written and practical exam, with a minimum passing grade of 80 per cent.
The key objective of the course is to teach safety in every aspect. Students must learn to prove the firearm is safe and unloaded at all times when not in use. They must learn safe handling procedures. They learn the legal responsibilities for safe transport and safe storage to ensure they fully comprehend their legal and moral responsibility as a firearms owner 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
Once the student passes the course, they may then complete the possession and acquisition licence application. This includes a spousal reference who must sign off that they are in agreement with their partner possessing a firearm. They will also be interviewed by the RCMP during this process.
The applicant will also be required to state if within the past five years they’ve been subject to a criminal offence, whether they’ve imported or trafficked controlled substances, misused a firearm, or whether they’ve ever been reported to the police or social services for violence or attempted violence.
Once an individual is licensed and all the checks pass through, they will be scrutinized every day by the Canadian Police Information Centre or CPIC database. Any infractions that can potentially cause a public safety risk would be immediately flagged and dealt with.
Now that an individual is licensed, do you want to join a gun range? Let me talk about that process quickly. They will need to take another mandatory club-level safety course. It’s truncated, but it proves the applicant will demonstrate their knowledge of safe firearms handling learned during the safety course they originally took. They will be observing stringent range-specific safety rules, such as ceasefire commands and the all-important legal transport of firearms to and from the range.
The club itself is required to record each and every member visit. In Ontario, the Chief Firearms Officer must also regularly inspect the club to make sure it is legally allowed to operate. No accidents can occur. This is why such stringent safety training and constant monitoring by a club range safety officer is required.
The new prospect must also undergo a complete probationary period, where they will shoot alongside a full member present in direct supervision until the time they can demonstrate safe use of a firearm to be accepted as a club member. This is quite a process. It exists to ensure our sport is safe and accident-free.
What type of demographics make up the individuals of a gun club? Members represent many professions, religions, nationalities, age groups and races. The shooting sports have no gender bias. In addition, sports shooting is a fantastic activity for the disabled. An able-bodied target shooter has no advantage over a one-handed target shooter or a target shooter in a wheelchair. Canadians enjoy various shooting sports offered by clubs. Some just want to enjoy family time in a sport that we have been enjoying for centuries in Canada.
Canadians are also represented in many levels of the Olympic shooting events, where I am proud to say we excel on the world stage.
Bill C-71 was introduced with no evidence of benefit, no evidence of need, and no estimate of cost. This is simply a feel-good bill designed to appease voters when in fact the illegal use of firearms is already controlled. Bill C-71 creates more red tape for a licensed, vetted, trained, legal, law-abiding citizen. It will not stop illegal use of guns in crimes. Bill C-71 will do nothing to stop the increase of gang violence that has plagued my city of Toronto and many other Canadian cities.
Criminals using illegal guns do not possess a valid firearms licence. They cannot buy ammunition or firearms legally. Crime guns are already illegal. Making them more illegal will not help stop gun violence perpetrated by people with no regard for human life or law and order.
Legal gun owners are the most vetted and monitored citizens in Canadian society. It is unfair to be vilified and linked to those who use illegal firearms to commit crimes.
My understanding is that the current government wants to be shown to be doing something to stop gun violence, but this bill only serves to punish law-abiding citizens, the most vetted, trained and monitored citizens as I’ve mentioned.
The concern of all legal gun owners and non-gun owners alike is not being addressed. That concern is to curb violence through mental health support and programs to support the at-risk communities where gun violence exists. Not addressing these important issues fails to address the root causes of gun violence. I really hope there’s a plan B, because the problem of gun violence will continue to escalate if this flawed bill is passed.
Senator Jaffer: I learned quite a bit from your presentations.
I will start with you, Mr. Kerluck. Not being as familiar as you are with gun ownership, I was interested in your last sentence when you said that this bill would be punishing gun owners.
I see this as administrative background checks, transport, classification by the police, how the guns are classified and how records are kept. I don’t see this as punishing gun owners.
I’d like you to clarify that.
Mr. Kerluck: Legal guns need to be purchased legally by a vetted and licensed individual. There are some key points in Bill C-71 that for time constraints I didn’t address in my presentation. I appreciate your question.
One key thing is section 12, the prohibited category. In Canada, we have three classifications for firearms: non-restricted, restricted and prohibited. The bill is asking to add two new firearms ito the prohibited category at section 12.
I call this the open hole because the open hole exists to confiscate the legal property of individuals for no good reason. The only way you can sell that property is to a like-licensed individual in the same category. When you pass away, it goes to police and gets destroyed. This is an extremely un-Canadian way to confiscate personal property.
I currently own a Swiss Arms rifle. I’ve owned it for 10 years. It’s a wonderful piece of technology for target shooting. Why, after 10 years, has the gun suddenly been deemed more dangerous than it was when I originally purchased it? It’s not a weapon.
Legal gun owners in Canada don’t shoot weapons. We don’t have weapons. We have firearms. We don’t shoot people with them. We shoot targets. I don’t understand why certain guns suddenly need to be controlled more than others.
Senator Jaffer: Perhaps I could clarify that I understood those were to be grandfathered, so you would still be able to own it. What you’re saying is that you can only sell it to someone else who has been grandfathered. Is that the issue?
Mr. Kerluck: That is correct. You are shrinking the possibility of me being able to sell my property, which is valued at nearly $5,000 Canadian, to a very small group of people.
Senator Jaffer: I appreciate that. Thank you.
[Translation]
Senator Dagenais: I have a question for every one of our guests. Mr. Partanen, would it be possible to adopt Bill C-71 while supporting the demands of the groups representing victims? In addition, could we introduce amendments that would satisfy you? If so, what amendments might we propose?
[English]
Mr. Partanen: I guess it depends on how one defines meeting their requirements and meeting our requirements. If their goal is to stop firearm fatalities, and I am not being flippant in this comment, but why not just make murder illegal?
The people that out there shooting others don’t care what laws are on the books now. Like the panel previous to ours alluded to, this has to be a societal attack on the problem of violence. It can’t just be a symptomatic look at saying this person shot this person over here, so he has a gun; let’s take them away from everybody.
Stabbings outnumber firearm fatalities, beatings, all that stuff, so why is the focus on firearms? People often perceive us as being defensive about our firearms. We are because, as Mr. Kerluck alluded to, we spend a lot of money on those things. It’s something we enjoy and we are passionate about. We never break any laws.
Are there measures we can take? Possibly, but Bill C-71 is going in completely the wrong direction on that.
[Translation]
Senator Dagenais: Mr. Kerluck, you mentioned conditions that must be met in order to obtain a licence. Why are we debating a new firearms control bill when there are so many conditions that must be met to obtain a firearm licence? How do you explain the fact that we’re studying a bill when many conditions must be met to obtain a firearms licence?
[English]
Mr. Kerluck: Thank you for your question. Many conditions are required for an individual. I wish I had more time to go through the entire application form.
One of the most important ones to me is a spousal reference check. Our predecessors this morning spoke about gun violence by mainly male firearm owners toward their female partners, which is a tragedy and terrible to hear about. The spousal reference check is a fantastic point.
Many points in the application form request whether the owner has been involved in drug abuse, in the selling of drugs or in any previous crimes, including people in the house that they cohabit with.
It’s a very good application form as it is set up. There should be checks, if it is run properly, so that a person is flagged and denied a licence. I will not comment on the RCMP’s ability to run the Canadian Firearms Program, but it saddens me to hear sometimes that people get past the program who legally should have been notified and stopped at first.
It’s extremely important to understand the CPIC database. I live in Toronto where there is unfortunately a strong potential for road-rage incidents. If I was involved in an assault or argument that I caused, within 24 hours it would be reported through the CPIC database, and there is no question that I should be denied the possession and ownership of firearms immediately.
If the existing RCMP firearms programs and police databases are run the way they’re supposed to be, dangerous incidents should be flagged.
Senator McPhedran: Mr. Partanen, this is part of a process where we try our best to make evidence-based decisions. I will put this in context. Data provided by Statistics Canada show that in the last five years the firearm homicide rate of licensed gun owners has been from three to eight times that of unlicensed firearm owners.
Let me put it another way. While licensed firearm owners represented about 5.8 per cent of Canada’s population in 2017, the most recent figure available to us, they account for around 12.8 per cent or almost 13 per cent of firearm homicides committed in the country.
This is without taking suicides into account, even though according to Statistics Canada, 77 per cent of all firearm-related deaths were self-inflicted in 2016.
Because you are representing the Silverdale Gun Club, on August 31, 2018, according to your Facebook page, your club shared a picture of the Canadian flag with an anti-Bill C-71 sign in the place of the Maple Leaf. It was accompanied by this text:
Start picking out the coolest slingshot around. The Liberals will not give up until you are disarmed completely! Trudeau is trying to ban all handguns and that’s just the beginning. They are targeting semi-automatic rifles next. Please voice your opinion in any way you can. A great start is visiting OneClearVoice.ca or contact your local MP. Power in numbers, do not let these people take what is already yours!
On September 4, you shared a post on YouTube channel code comparing Justin Trudeau to Hitler, although it has been demonstrated by very serious publications that in fact Hitler did not disarm his citizens.
Here are my questions to you. What in this bill makes you think that it is the first step toward civil disarmament? How do you fact-check the information you’re sharing with your members?
Mr. Partanen: I will address the second question first. Unfortunately, I was not responsible for either one of those postings so I can’t speak to any of the motivations behind them.
The fact that Bill C-71 allows the RCMP the power to basically classify anything into a prohibited status, as well as the registration of every single firearm owned by every single individual in the country legally, gives you an analytical perspective to say, “Okay, we know what people have. If it’s something we want to eliminate completely from society, we know where to go and where to get them.”
As it is right now, Parliament has the authority to override those decisions based on voices from their constituencies. With Bill C-71 removing that, it’s hard not to come to that conclusion as you’re examining possible scenarios.
Senator McPhedran: Mr. Kerluck, in anticipation of your presentation this morning, on Twitter you asked, “Who’s paying Dr. Gun Ban Lady and the other one to attend the Senate hearing? Hotels, transportation, food. I am paying my own way to drive and stay in a hotel Sunday night for Monday’s Bill C-71 Senate hearing, sponsored by nobody, and I am proud of it.”
Could you please confirm for us, Mr. Kerluck, that you know all committee witnesses are offered the opportunity to have their expenses covered? You went on, on Twitter, to say: “They never have an answer to how Bill C-71 is going to be the magic bullet. I will be bringing this up next Monday for sure.”
Mr. Kerluck, could you tell us, please, what the magic bullet is?
Mr. Kerluck: First, the magic bullet is looking after mental health illnesses and avoiding problems with guns to begin with. The Danforth shooter should never have had a firearm. He wasn’t entitled to have a firearm legally. He had a mental illness. There was drug use in the family. He never ever would have passed the RCMP firearms program checks.
To address the previous issue, I did not understand at the time of that tweet that there was the ability to be compensated for attendance here.
It strikes me as odd when I see anti-gun groups spending what I would assume is quite a large amount of money in the PR they do. I am a plain individual. I run my own business, as a firearms safety instructor. My key purpose in my vocation is to ensure that those who want firearms understand their responsibilities for storage, transport, display, and the moral obligation of ownership.
Again, I am not being sponsored by anybody; I am here on my own. On Friday in Toronto, at the Danforth Music Hall, there was an opportunity for people affected by that terribly violent incident to speak on behalf of those individuals. I really do have to wonder: Is somebody behind the scenes paying for this? It’s not a big concern of mine, but I just don’t understand that.
Again, going back to my tweet, it was only later when I had a revision document sent to me that I saw there was an ability to be compensated for this visit, which I don’t think I am going to be searching for.
Senator McPhedran: This is my last quick question. Are you funded in any way or associated in any way with the National Rifle Association of the United States?
Mr. Kerluck: No, madam, I am not. I am a Canadian citizen. I am not funded by anybody. I am a completely independent individual. I represent no lobby. I only represent legal law-abiding gun owners in this country.
Senator McPhedran: Mr. Partanen, are you funded in any way or affiliated in any way with the National Rifle Association of the United States?
Mr. Partanen: No, ma’am. First of all, the NRA by their own mandate is not allowed to operate in Canada. I receive no funding from anybody. All of my involvement in the firearms community is 100 per cent volunteer. I put money out of my own pocket to do what I do.
Senator Gold: Central to your presentations is the distinction you’re drawing between law-abiding gun owners and criminals who, let’s agree, don’t care about what the law might say. I think we all understand that the great majority of Canadians and Canadian gun owners are law abiding.
I want to suggest that we have certainly heard from other witnesses something that I brought up in second reading debate. There is another category of law-abiding, non-criminal Canadians. Some of them may suffer from mental illness. Others are just under stress, whether it’s from their families, their lives or what have you. In moments of stress, they might lose control of their capacity to act rationally and reasonably and on impulse, turn to a legal firearm in the mistaken belief that it will solve the problem that is overwhelming them at the moment.
We’ve heard evidence from Statistics Canada about the growing number of deaths by firearms, excluding handguns. That problem is especially pronounced in rural areas of Canada. I lived in Toronto, although I don’t anymore.
We’ve heard from doctors and clinicians about accidents to children, which we all bemoan. I am sure you share the same concerns we do. We’ve heard about intimate partner violence, and so on and so forth.
What is wrong with those relatively modest provisions in Bill C-71 that would supplement the existing rules about background checks or maintain some of the existing rules about how one stores legal firearms?
It’s a question to both of you, but I can’t help but give you the opportunity, Mr. Kerluck, to comment on some of the tweets, not that you’ve tweeted but that you’ve retweeted, that seem to take a rather extreme view. I have it written down here somewhere, but I will paraphrase: “Let’s do away with gun storage and let’s just allow gun-safe life. Gun control kills.”
Are you against removing storage regulations which we heard from the previous panel are sometimes honoured in the breach rather than in their observance? Do guns save lives? Tell us what in Bill C-71 you think is worth preserving, or should we scrap the whole thing?
I am having trouble getting a beat on your position.
Mr. Kerluck: First, you’re misquoting tweets. I never retweeted things like that. I preach gun storage when I teach the firearms safety course. I taught the course this past weekend on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday was non-restricted; Sunday was restricted.
Toward the end of each day, I strongly focus on the section regarding the moral and legal obligations of safe storage, transport and display. I personally make very sure that people understand not only to store their guns within the legal limit but to go above and beyond what is required by law.
I also discuss the moral obligation, if friends or relatives are drinking, facing job loss or relationship loss, to monitor the situation because the safest thing you can do is store your gun safely.
Senator Gold: Time is tight. I am glad to hear it. You disavow the individual who tweeted against this.
Mr. Kerluck: Absolutely. I preach this.
Senator Gold: Good. What about the sharp distinction you’re drawing between criminals and law-abiding citizens? Given the evidence from Statistics Canada and from the emergency rooms of our hospitals in Toronto and elsewhere, far too many injuries and deaths are caused by law-abiding citizens turning to guns or misusing guns.
Why doesn’t Bill C-71 represent some step in the right direction of reducing those incidents?
Mr. Kerluck: I would focus on mental health issues. One could use a firearm, if they wanted to harm another individual, or a vehicle as we’ve seen unfortunately, or a knife, or something else like a baseball bat. It doesn’t matter. Any inanimate object in their possession, if used incorrectly, can harm another individual.
Bill C-71 doesn’t address, in my opinion, how we can assist those with mental illness issues that will use any tool available to cause harm to another individual. They have no regard at that stage for human life or law and order. I don’t see that in the bill.
I’d like to quickly address the background check question that you brought up. The RCMP is currently required to do background checks when you apply for your firearms licence. In my previous occupation prior to becoming a firearms safety instructor I was in the enterprise software world, a very high-level software. I used to interview potential candidates, developers and consultants for this high-level product from areas of the world where we would never have been able to check their educational requirements or to validate that they went to a certain university, their marks and their employment background.
If we want to expand background checks, which I am not personally against, I am a little concerned about how we expand it for new Canadians. Many people from other countries come to my courses. In my previous life I had a tough enough time trying to get validation of their employment records and for whom they worked. To me, it would be a very difficult to obtain. I just don’t see how it could be done, if I couldn’t do it for an employment purpose.
I am not against background checks. It’s just the physical ability to perform them accurately and knowing that the data is correct.
Senator Gold: You would support, then, the provisions in Bill C-71 that broaden the elements to include mental illness linked to violence for the purposes of determining whether someone should get a lawful permit.
Mr. Kerluck: That’s how it is currently, today, when you fill out your Canadian firearms licence application.
Senator McIntyre: As you know, an amnesty period is proposed to provide owners with time to comply with grandfathering requirements and not to be subject to criminal liability.
As I understand it, the Governor-in-Council would be given authority to grandfather but not downgrade in future cases, if required.
Are you satisfied with the amnesty period which I understand was declared until 2021? Are you satisfied with the grandfathering process that Bill C-71 will put in place for owners of affected firearms?
Mr. Partanen: On paper it sounds great and at the surface level it does, but when you look into the implementation details of the grandfathering and the amnesty period, what you come to realize is that the authorizations to transport are now to be on a one-to-one basis.
I want to take my gun to the range. I am going to take my now prohibited firearm to a range that is authorized or prohibited. My understanding is that the provincial and territorial CFOs are being instructed not to authorize their transportation. Basically, even though you are legally allowed to own that equipment, you can’t use it anywhere. No, I am not satisfied with what you are left with.
Mr. Kerluck: I mentioned in answer to a previous question that I have owned one of these firearms safely for 10 years. I was granted permission to purchase it and possess it at the time. It has not been a dangerous firearm to anyone. It has been used to put holes in a paper as a target shooter.
I fail to understand how in 10 years it has changed into a more dangerous firearm. It also restricts. Again, this isn’t an inconvenience. It is a significant investment in this property. To me, it is not insignificant that I can now only sell it to a very small group of individuals that may not want to purchase it. Upon my passing, which hopefully will be quite a ways in the future, I am going to lose that property. It will not be able to be grandfathered to my child. That worries me. That’s not very Canadian.
I know individuals who currently possess fully automatic prohibited firearms. They were legally entitled to own these at a certain date before they were classified into the position they are today. One of these individuals has a rather large collection. He is a very safe individual. They will go into the smelter or into a museum upon his passing. He is not even able to grandfather them to his son, who happens to be in the Canadian Forces.
Grandfathering and prohibition are confiscation. I don’t see any other way to answer that in any other stage.
Senator Pratte: First, I would like to clarify that Bill C-71 will not confiscate the properties of hundreds of thousands of Canadians, which is what you said, Mr. Partanen. That’s not true, and it doesn’t ban firearms. That’s another debate. There is a discussion about banning handguns and so-called assault weapons, but it’s not part of Bill C-71.
Mr. Kerluck, you said that prohibiting and grandfathering firearms is not Canadian. Would you agree that over the past 30 years governments of all stripes have prohibited some firearms that people used to own legally, and the system they used to prohibit and allow the owners to keep the firearm was grandfathering?
That has always been the Canadian way. Whether or not you agree, it has done many times in past, right?
Mr. Kerluck: Yes, and grandfathered firearms cannot be redistributed to other individuals except for that same category. When those individuals pass away, and that generation of ownership is getting older, they get destroyed. I don’t see how that isn’t confiscation and destruction of a firearm.
Senator Pratte: My point is that you said it was un-Canadian to do this, but it was done by governments of all political stripes very often before.
Mr. Kerluck: I don’t agree with that.
Senator Pratte: You don’t agree with grandfathering, but it is better than simply confiscation, right? With grandfathering you can still own and you can still use your firearm at an approved gun range.
Mr. Kerluck: That is correct.
Senator Plett: Either of you can answer my first question. Under Bill C-71, the seller of a non-restricted firearm will have to request permission for the transfer to take place and to obtain a reference number. This request will be able to be made on a website or by phone. It requires that the seller provide the possession and acquisition licence numbers for both the seller and the buyer. If the transfer is approved, the seller will receive a reference number valid for a limited time to complete the transfer.
The sponsor of Bill C-71 has said many times that this is not a gun registry. Do you share the concern that the items I just mentioned create a connections registry recording those who transfer or consider transferring non-restricted firearms and is essentially a decentralized long-gun registry?
Mr. Partanen: The short answer is yes, that’s exactly what it is. There is one remaining piece out of that puzzle to make it a full-blown registry, and that is the serial number.
Mr. Kerluck: It is data collection and it is a registry in any other way. I can’t see how it isn’t.
My big concern is how that data will be handled in the long term. We have seen many incidents of data going in the wrong hands over the last five years, specifically, and I am concerned about whom.
I go through strong legal obligations like all gun owners do to make sure they are safely stored. I am concerned that the information can get leaked at some stage. I would be afraid the wrong person would now know my address, what I own and what I have in my collection. That greatly scares me. It is a gun registry.
Senator Plett: Mr. Partanen, two of my questions can probably be answered in one word, so I will ask them quickly.
Are restricted firearms, such as pistols, for example, used at your ranges?
Mr. Partanen: Yes, they are.
Senator Plett: How many members do your ranges have and how many people use your ranges during a given week or weekend? Do you have numbers?
Mr. Partanen: We have about 3,000 members. I have an annualized number, which is approximately 25,000 people walking through the door in a year.
If we do the math on that, it works out to almost 500 a week. You get the picture: a lot of people come through.
Senator Plett: What impact would more restrictive authorizations to transport provisions found in Bill C-71 have on your members and your club?
Mr. Partanen: The biggest one we’re concerned with is the authorizations to transport. Considering the backlog we have now with licence checks and existing long-term authorizations to transport, if it becomes a matter of my saying on a Wednesday afternoon, “Hey, guys, do you want to go shooting? If so, let’s put the call into the CFO, get our ATTs, and we will get set to go on Saturday.”
If that backlog extends beyond our planned date and non-members have to pay a $20 entrance fee to cover insurance and all that kind of stuff, that directly impacts our revenue model. That’s one aspect of it. At the end of day, all these people come regularly whether or not they are members. We know who they are. CFO knows who they are. There is no benefit to that from our perspective anyway.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: Welcome to our guests. I’m concerned about the increased red tape this bill will cause. Police departments already have enormous backlogs for psychiatric background checks. That’s the case in Yukon and British Columbia, which has a backlog of nearly 2,000 cases. So I can’t imagine the backlog that lifetime background checks would generate. You need only consider the lack of availability of psychiatric services in Quebec. You have to wait 12 to 18 months for an appointment if you’re suffering from psychiatric problems. I find it hard to imagine the police departments being required to conduct those checks.
When I listen to the testimony of the mayor of Toronto, I wonder whether we’re attacking the real problem. We have to be aware that the government introduced this bill, not because of hunters, but rather because there has been a phenomenal resurgence in the use of handguns, street gangs and homicides caused by those people and other petty criminals in Canada’s major urban centres, in Toronto in particular. According to the mayor, the problem stems from the fact that these people are released from prison too soon and with minimum conditions.
Action should be taken to address arms smuggling, the illegal trade in firearms, most of which come from the United States. Street gangs and petty criminals have increasing access to those weapons — as one panel of witnesses told us — and they return to their environment too soon. Consequently, we aren’t addressing the real problem. Won’t this bill create a false sense of security in cities like Toronto, Vancouver and Edmonton, where there has been a resurgence in violent crime? Won’t we be creating a false sense of security by saying we’ve just solved the problem?
[English]
Mr. Partanen: That’s exactly what this is. Like Mr. Kerluck mentioned earlier, it’s a feel-good bill. People want solutions. If you talk to the vast majority of Canadians and ask what the current regulations are around legal firearms ownership in the country, they have no idea. They see a picture of a shooting club on a website and say, “Oh my gosh, that’s illegal.” You have to walk them through, as Mr. Kerluck did, what is involved in actually getting a licence, purchasing a firearm, and transporting it to a place where you can actually shoot it. Then the little light bulb starts to go off.
Until you have those conversations they have no idea. They think all handguns in Canada are already illegal unless you are licensed. When they hear on the news of all these horrible acts and hear that their government is putting together legislation, it doesn’t matter to them what are the implementation details of those bills. “They are doing something and it must be great, so let’s applaud them.”
It’s not until you do the analysis and it is like there is a whole bunch of holes in the bill. Like the scenarios you described, they don’t care about the laws on the books right now. They will get them from the United States and through other channels.
We have heard from the Liberal government for the last three years, and even before the election, that $327 million were being allocated to fight guns coming in illegally from the United States and gangs.
How much of that money has been disbursed? My understanding is very little, if any.
Mr. Kerluck: I completely agree with Mr. Partanen. I am an RCMP-approved firearms verifier. It allows me to look at a gun and, by using the firearms reference table, determine its classification and what the gun is.
When I see in the news firearms that are confiscated from gangsters, I am looking at them and they are not old, prohibited firearms. They are modern, manufactured prohibited guns. I can tell by the picture the barrel length. It’s easy to see if you know firearms.
They had to have been smuggled from the United States. These are not firearms that can be legally imported. You cannot import prohibited-class firearms. It’s not possible. They were never part of the police services, the only people who can have prohibited firearms.
Where did they come from? The largest gun store south of the border. We need to do as much as we can to stop the illegal trafficking of firearms into Canada. There is no doubt about it.
I witness it every time a gun is confiscated in Toronto. Where did this come from? It’s a modern semi-automatic handgun. It’s not a collection from an older gentleman’s safe. I can tell from the age of it. Where are these coming from?
Senator Oh: Bill C-71 does not go far enough into dealing with criminal offenders, the culprits. Instead it punishes legal gun owners. I grew up on trap and skeet shooting. One of my brothers was the 1976 Olympics representative for Singapore at the Montreal Olympics. I know all about target shooting.
My question is for both of you. Do you think that this bill should go further into punishment of the culprits, the killers and the illegal gun owners, instead of doing more in the field of proper sports shooting?
Doctors can recommend the removal of a driving licences. Can they not report a mental illness to the legal authorities to remove any firearms? I would like to see much heavier penalties and more on prevention.
Mr. Partanen: I agree with you there. There is debate on how effective punishment is and all that stuff. I am not an expert, so I don’t want to comment on it. I agree with you that more emphasis should be put on the consequences and prevention of those actions.
I see a problem with lifetime background checks. This concern has been raised a number of times. I am approaching 50 years old. It’s actually my birthday today.
Some Hon. Senators: Happy birthday.
Mr. Partanen: Perhaps I made a stupid mistake when I was 18 and have never been in trouble with the law since then. Perhaps it was an assault charge or whatever, but it’s not the case for me. It is just an example. If I make a stupid mistake when I am young, will that affect my ability to own and operate firearms? That’s one concern.
The previous panel mentioned a certain level of discretion was not well defined in the guidelines for determining a good candidate for firearms licensing.
Another concern I hear a lot of is from service people in the military, police or anything like that. The incidence of PTSD and other stress-related incidents is super high. If they even come forward to ask for help, they are concerned that will flag them and they will lose their firearms and their licences.
The short answer is that Bill C-71 needs to take a step back to look at the real issues and go after them, instead of the people who are the low-hanging fruit and the easy targets, for the lack of a better term.
Mr. Kerluck: I echo that statement. I am not a law enforcement individual, but speaking for legal gun owners at the clubs I belong to and being a former director at the Toronto Revolver Club, it’s very disturbing to see people charged with gang violence that seem to escape with any real incarceration or punishment, or not long enough.
Legal gun owners want these people to have the book thrown at them. It is frustrating to see that sometimes or often it isn’t. We go through stringent obligations for our own transport and storage rules for home use and going to the range.
Near where I live in the east end of Toronto at Woodbine and Queen Street on a Sunday, a few months ago, there was gang violence and open shooting with no regard for bystanders. These people need to be punished to the highest level of the law.
You have heard me say during my entire time here today that something has to be done to stop no regard for human life or rule of law. They have illegal firearms. They don’t care where they shoot, whom they shoot or whom they kill.
We saw innocent people shot as bystanders in Toronto at bowling alleys last year. It’s sad to see this happen. We must increase the punishment. I don’t want to make a super prison like they have in the United States, but something has to be done to curb this increase in violence.
As you said, Senator Oh, someone in your family is a target shooter and you understand what they do and their sport. One of the issues in Bill C-71 that I can’t understand is regarding the authorizations to transport. They want to change the rules for going to the border for a competition or going to your gunsmith.
Currently we are allowed six conditions with our licence if you possess a restricted firearm. Two of those six conditions affect going not into the States but to the border point if you have been invited for a competition, which is very common for target shooters.
One to be removed in Bill C-71 is being able to go to a licensed gunsmith. I fail to understand how that will affect gang violence in my city of Toronto. I will end it there. I just don’t see how it will change.
Senator Richards: I kind of wish we didn’t need to discuss this topic because we all know that spousal abuse, rape and murder are horrific. I am not sure this law does what it says it is going to.
I am looking for a very quick answer. I know my view. I wrote a book of essays on murder that is coming out in the fall. I’ve dealt with this in my books most of my life, but it seems that at least part of this legislation is profiling a group of people for crimes that have not yet been committed by people who cannot be controlled by government legislation.
I want to know your opinions on that point. It seems like it wants to do what it will not be able to do. Either one of you could answer that question.
Mr. Kerluck: At the end of my statement I mentioned that there should be more programs for those who have mental illnesses, the root cause of gun violence, including the ability we already have with spousal references. Don’t forget we have a spousal reference check as part of the licensing program. The RCMP is supposed to interview the spouse to make sure they are okay with their partner owning a firearm.
In the Canadian Firearm Safety Course we talk about calling the police or the Chief Firearms Officer immediately if a spouse has any fear of gun violence from the partner. They should feel empowered to do that to stop potential gun violence.
I don’t see anything in the bill to address anything like spousal firearm violence, mental illness or the use of illegal firearms by gangsters.
Senator Kutcher: Thank you for pointing out the importance of effectively addressing gun violence and the importance of not stigmatizing legal gun owners.
First, Mr. Kerluck, does firearms safety training significantly decrease the rates of suicide by guns and, if so, by how much?
Second, Mr. Partanen, as previous senators asked, how would you suggest we improve the bill, or do you suggest that we simply not pass the bill?
Mr. Kerluck: I don’t have numbers regarding whether the Canadian firearms program prevents suicides. I don’t know, to be honest.
I can tell you that it’s part of my course derived from the RCMP. In case you weren’t aware, I don’t develop my own course. It’s a federal course developed by the RCMP. We address the causes of gun violence. We talk about the moral obligation for individuals, as I said, to look for issues in the home with friends, relatives, brothers-in-law, brothers, sister and sisters-in-law. If someone is suffering or encountering a personal issue, make sure the guns are secure and the ammunition is separate, and keep the key hidden.
It is our legal and moral responsibility to ensure suicides are prevented. I can’t address whether the numbers are going down when they take the course, but I can say we talk about it. It’s something very important to me when I deliver the course.
Mr. Partanen: This is where I think members of the previous panel will fall out of their chairs because I agree with them that there has to be an all of society and all levels of government approach to it. It cannot be focused, like I said before, on symptomatic availability of a certain tool to accomplish a certain end.
I think you will hear later this afternoon some statistics about hangings and various other forms of suicide. If a firearm is not present and you are intent on committing suicide, you will pick another method.
Should we pass Bill C-71 as it is? I don’t think we should. We need to go back to the drawing board, start from square one, and understand that this is not a firearms issue per se. This is a matter of moral and social decay, and we need to look at those factors. If there is anything we can do to legislate it, let’s move forward at this point.
Senator Pratte: Mr. Partanen, you mentioned earlier that an owner would need to call the RCMP or the CFO to get an authorization to transport or an ATT to go to the gun range. I want to clarify that Bill C-71 maintains the automatic ATT for gun ranges. Therefore it is still covered.
Mr. Partanen: Yes, I did misspeak on that.
The Chair: Mr. Partanen and Mr. Kerluck, I am not sure how your drive was, but I know some witnesses are having difficulty. We appreciate your being here and your input at the table and, particularly to Mr. Partanen, we wish you a happy birthday.
For the purpose of those viewing and for all senators as well, we’re trying to balance the time as best we can, given that we have been shifting to accommodate witnesses this morning. We’re facing some weather issues in terms of travel. I ask for your patience.
We now welcome to the table from Association québécoise de prévention du suicide, M. Jérôme Gaudreault, Director General, and from the Coalition for Gun Control, Dr. Barbara Kane, Psychiatrist.
Dr. Barbara Kane, Psychiatrist, Coalition for Gun Control: Thank you for the opportunity to give my perspective as a mental health physician on Bill C-71.
I have been in practice as a psychiatrist in Prince George, B.C., since 1990. It is important to understand that harm from guns or gun violence is not only big city phenomenon and not only linked to gangs and guns. On a per capita basis, rural areas have higher rates of firearms violence than urban centres.
I support the amendments to reinstate the 1977 provisions requiring gun sellers to verify that gun buyers have valid licences and that gun merchants keep records of their gun sales. The Vancouver police support this level of accountability and note that stolen rifles and shotguns are increasingly being confiscated by police.
Indigenous rights should be respected for hunting, but it is important to understand that firearm suicides, accidents and homicides are elevated in Indigenous people. These are preventable injuries and deaths.
The screening provisions are critical to keep guns out of the hands of people who should not have them. Lengthening the requirement for criminal record and other checks to the lifetime of the person, rather than the most recent five years, will provide more rigorous screening of people who wish to own and operate potentially lethal weapons.
I have a number of patients who are not able to get guns, at least in part because their mental state means that I cannot support their application for an acquisition licence. As a psychiatrist, I can tell you that for some people with major mental illnesses the severity of the disease may not dissipate in only five years.
There is clear evidence that restricting access to guns reduces firearms suicides, accidental injuries and homicides. I will draw your attention to two studies that demonstrate this in particular.
Israeli Defence Forces draft all 18 to 20 year-old children in that country. Approximately 90 per cent of all suicides in Israeli Defence Forces are performed using firearms. Between 2003 and 2005, there were an average of 28 suicides per year, with 26 using firearms. Many of the soldiers would take their weapons on leave with them on weekends.
In 2006, the policy changed, preventing soldiers from taking their weapons with them on weekend leave. The suicide rate declined by 40 per cent annually, from an average of 28 to 16 per year. Most of this decrease in suicide rates was due to the decrease in suicide using firearms over the weekend. Notably, there were no changes in rates of suicide during weekdays and there was no compensatory increase in suicide performed by other means.
In Canada, we know that injuries and deaths resulting from gun violence dropped from 8.4 per 100,000 among adolescents in 1979 to 2.3 deaths per 100,000 in 2003, related to stronger firearms laws during that time. Particularly in young people, suicide tends to be an impulsive act. Suicide by firearms is lethal 90 per cent of the time. Other methods such as overdoses are lethal about 10 per cent of the time.
I have seen hundreds of people over my career who have attempted to kill themselves by overdoses, stabbing, cutting and even hanging, and the vast majority were glad they survived their attempted suicide. However, those who attempt suicide by firearms are either dead 90 per cent of the time or disfigured and disabled.
The impact of firearm suicides on the families, friends and communities is profound and devastating. Let me recount a recent situation, although the details are somewhat disguised. I was asked to see a woman whose husband shot himself at their home. She came home to find him dead. She is now a shell of the person she once was and is overcome with grief, guilt and anger. Their young children will not remember their father. Not only have they lost him, but for now they have largely lost their mother as well, as she is barely coping with these tragic circumstances.
This one permanent act has devastated an entire family, leaving them all at risk for mental health problems over their lifetime. This was potentially preventable.
I urge you to consider the lives that will be saved from harm and death with Bill C-71. It is not perfect, but it is a step in improving the health and well-being of Canadians. Thank you.
[Translation]
Jérôme Gaudreault, Director General, Association québécoise de prévention du suicide: Greetings to all the members of the committee. Thank you for inviting us to discuss firearms control from the perspective of suicide prevention.
I represent the Association québécoise de prévention du suicide. We are a 30-year-old organization with a mission to develop suicide prevention in Quebec by all possible means. Our mission is, first, to increase awareness of suicide prevention issues among the general public and elected representatives and, second, to encourage elected representatives to make decisions and choices that enhance prevention efforts.
We also offer training programs for citizens, caseworkers and health professionals to help them identify suicidal individuals, provide them with assistance and support and dispel their suicidal thoughts. We strive to encourage the public to organize suicide prevention activities in all Quebec communities to ensure that people are more supportive of this cause.
First of all, we have expressed our position in favour of firearms control on several occasions. Bill C-71 is a step in the right direction, but we believe some aspects should be strengthened. Studies show that all firearms control measures help lower suicide rates.
It is possible to reduce the number of suicides. We’ve said so. According to the World Health Organization, restricting access to the means with which to commit suicide, including firearms, is one of the most effective measures for lowering suicide rates. Why is controlled access to those means effective? First of all, because suicidal individuals have not definitively decided to take their own lives. They are ambivalent about death up to the final moment, and I would say up to the final second. In 50 per cent of suicide cases, less than 10 minutes elapse between the onset of suicidal distress and commission of the act. When a vulnerable individual has easy and immediate access to lethal means, suicide risk is distinctly greater. Earlier one speaker said that, if a person doesn’t pick up his firearm, he’ll use some other means, which is completely false. The farther removed the means from the suicidal individual, the more time there is to provide direct assistance to that person.
A firearm is an extremely lethal means that very rarely affords a suicidal individual a second chance. It leaves those around the individual little time to act effectively to save the individual’s life. Consequently, firearms control measures such as registries are important because they facilitate the work of police officers and caseworkers when they know an individual is considering suicide.
According to statistical analyses, 80 per cent of firearm deaths are suicides, both in Quebec and across Canada. Suicide risks are five times greater in homes that possess firearms. A significant number of firearm suicides are committed with a weapon that the person in distress does not own. We also know that countries that have stricter firearms controls have suicide rates lower than those that do not. The same is true in the United States, where rates of suicide by firearms are much higher than in the rest of the world. We know from inter-state comparisons that we have established that states that enforce stricter control measures have lower rates of suicide by firearms than other states.
According to the Institut national de santé publique du Québec, between 1998 and 2011, when the Canadian gun registry was in force, the number of firearm suicides in Quebec declined 53 per cent, with no indication of substitution of another means.
We support the adoption of Bill C-71. However, we believe it should be subject to the following amendments: restore authorizations to transport restricted firearms so they state the specific conditions on which a firearm is authorized; include in the establishment of controls for the sale of non-restricted firearms the requirement to report private sales to authorities and ensure that data are preserved indefinitely; facilitate access for police authorities to firearms sales data; further tighten eligibility criteria and reinforce the applicant screening process for the acquisition, renewal and maintenance of a licence to possess firearms.
In conclusion, the significant decline in Quebec’s suicide rate from 2000 to 2008 may be explained as the combined effect of a host of measures, including enhanced firearms control. Hundreds of Quebecers who have contemplated suicide are still here today and happy to be alive because, in a moment of despair, they didn’t have access to the means to commit this irreparable act. Thank you.
[English]
The Chair: We will move to questions from senators. I would ask you to keep the preambles brief and get to the question.
[Translation]
Senator Dagenais: Mr. Gaudreault, I listened very closely to your presentation. I’m a former police officer and therefore handled many cases of suicide committed by hanging, firearms and so on. One of my co-workers even committed suicide using his service weapon.
However, all those weapons were registered. So will this act, which concerns the registration of handguns and long guns, help reduce the number of suicides? People commit suicide with weapons that are already registered.
Mr. Gaudreault: You have to look at this issue from two angles. On the one hand, quite stringent procedures for obtaining a licence to possess firearms make owners aware that the possession of firearms comes with significant responsibilities. I think that can help encourage owners to store their firearms more securely for their own safety and that of their loved ones. On the other hand, the registration of firearms helps improve traceability. When you help people in distress, if you know that they own firearms and how many they own, that will have an impact on the work that caseworkers and police officers do. In my view, that’s essential information that they must have access to.
Senator Dagenais: Dr. Kane, how should we address the opposition of Indigenous communities to any legislative firearms control? As a physician, can you explain their position to us?
[English]
Dr. Kane: I am not sure I can explain their position, but in dealing with a lot of Indigenous communities, as I’ve done in the North, it would be fair to say they are sensitive about having influence from non-Indigenous communities on anything that is done and can be resistant to an idea.
One very complicated factor is probably education about guns in their communities and what can be done to prevent such things. Another huge factor, not only in the Indigenous community but in all communities, is what role alcohol plays in a lot of gun deaths. I have certainly seen that very often alcohol is a factor in all kinds of suicide attempts.
There isn’t a simple solution. It really has to involve those communities, but they may need some education about what the impact is in their areas.
[Translation]
Senator Dagenais: Mr. Gaudreault, you said you were open to changes to this bill to reduce its impact on hunters and the members of shooting clubs. Can you give us some examples of amendments we could make to this bill?
Mr. Gaudreault: I don’t think I said I was open to changes to facilitate the situation of firearms owners. However, we could probably expand the list of conditions for the purpose of prohibiting firearms possession. For example, we could check mental health histories and expand the circle of people who are consulted when you conduct an investigation into an application for a firearms licence. In that way, we could ensure that people who obtain their licences are capable of using their weapons properly.
Senator Dagenais: Thank you.
[English]
Senator Jaffer: Thanks very much to both of you for your presentations.
Dr. Kane, Prince George, British Columbia, is a long way from Ottawa. Many British Columbians have called my office to say that gun control is really a gender issue. Some even said rural and farm women who experience violence in the home describe a cycle of intimidation with guns. You have a lot of experience with this issue, as you have already mentioned in your comments.
Could you comment further on how this legislation will help prevent domestic violence, or will it help prevent domestic violence?
Dr. Kane: It will help prevent domestic violence. In situations where they’re trying to get a gun away from someone, it will make it easier for the police at least to know that they have or possibly have a gun, which is difficult now. At times, when we want to get a gun away from someone, one of the problems is partly because there is no registry now and the police don’t know who has a gun. These situations make it a lot harder for the police to go in and search the house. In particular, having at least a little more information in the gun merchant records and talking to the spouses during screening will be helpful.
They do a lot of that now, but it’s a difficult situation. Many women won’t even say if they’re not happy that their husbands, boyfriends or whoever have a gun because they’re afraid to. It will not solve everything.
Senator Jaffer: Mr. Gaudreault, on your website it says that firearms suicide has decreased 53 per cent in Quebec between 1995 and 2011. There is also evidence that countries with tighter gun control have a lower suicide rate than countries with looser gun control. Investing in mental health will not replace firearm registration. Both are necessary to prevent suicides.
I would like you to comment from a gender lens. How can women benefit from better gun control, especially when it comes to spousal violence?
[Translation]
Mr. Gaudreault: If I could give you an answer that relates to suicide prevention, I think we can say that firearm suicides are committed by men. In fact, there are an average of 120 suicide deaths by firearms in Quebec every year of which four or five are committed by women. This is a problem that mainly involves firearms. However, since one third of the people who die, who commit suicide with a firearm, don’t own the firearm in question — firearms are generally owned by men — better measures should be put in place to ensure the protection and safe storage of firearms to protect the people who live in an environment where firearms are found.
Consequently, facilitating the registration of firearms, knowing where they are and how they can be retraced, and knowing how they circulate among owners, ensure greater public safety.
Senator Jaffer: Thank you.
[English]
Senator Pratte: I have two questions, one for each of our witnesses.
Dr. Kane, you mentioned in your presentation that firearm violence was not only a big city or gang problem but also existed in rural areas where you work. Would you care to paint us a picture of what the problem is in rural areas compared to large cities like Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal?
Dr. Kane: Guns are somewhat more available. They are on farms and there are lots of hunters, so there are a lot of accidents as well. They are tragic accidents when they happen with firearms.
It’s hard for me to say because I don’t live in the big city, but on a per capita basis you don’t see it as often as you would in a place like Prince George where it’s not uncommon for people to have firearms for hunting. There’s a lot of hunting in our area, so you see more of those accidents.
Unfortunately, we also have issues with people not safely storing their guns. I’ve had situations where I’ve had to basically threaten the parents of adolescents who have been telling me that they know there is a gun and they know they can get to it. I’ve had to tell the parents to store their guns safely or get them out of the house, or I will call the police. I don’t go to the police right away.
We have higher suicide rates with guns, and those are some of the situations.
[Translation]
Senator Pratte: Mr. Gaudreault, in your presentation, you emphasized that, if you prevent suicidal individuals from obtaining a firearm, they will find another way to do it. I know that the research points in both directions. What convinces you that better firearms control prevents firearm suicides and that firearms are not replaced by other means?
Mr. Gaudreault: As I said, given their lethal nature, firearms don’t give people an opportunity to change their minds. According to the data, for every suicide death, some 25 to 30 people make an attempt. That’s enormous. If that many people attempt suicide but are unsuccessful, it’s not because they’re incapable of taking their own lives; it’s because they change their minds during the attempt. So giving people more time lets them get a grip, change their minds and ask for help so someone can come in the meantime and call for assistance. Firearms don’t allow for that.
According to the statistics, there was a 53 per cent decline in the number of deaths by suicide committed with a firearm between 1995 and 2011. That figure is combined with the fact that, during the same period, deaths by suicide by other means fell by only 11 per cent. That means two things. First, there was no transfer of means because rates of death by other means should normally have increased. Second, we also can’t simply say that, as a result of certain socioeconomic factors, such as the fact that the situation of Quebecers in general is better, there are fewer deaths by suicide because the number of deaths by firearms declined five times faster, and that decline was five times greater, than by any other means.
That’s why we think it’s important to set more restrictions on the acquisition and possession of firearms.
Senator Pratte: Thank you.
[English]
Senator McIntyre: Thank you both for your presentations. I have two questions that both have to do with the eligibility to hold a licence and background checks as proposed by Bill C-71.
First, in determining an applicant’s eligibility to hold a firearms licence, pursuant to section 5 of the Firearms Act, we recognize that the judge or the Chief Firearms Officer is required, among other things, to consider whether the person:
. . . has been treated for a mental illness, whether in a hospital, mental institute, psychiatric clinic or otherwise and whether or not the person was confined to such a hospital, institute or clinic, that was associated with violence or threatened or attempted violence on the part of the person against any person;
In your opinion, would the judge or the Chief Firearms Officer be required to consider suicide attempts when looking at those terms?
Dr. Kane: They would probably be required to consider it, but that doesn’t mean an automatic restriction against it. At least, that has been my experience.
I am quite sure I’ve seen people who have attempted suicide and did not get their guns back, including police officers who need to have them back for their job.
It is something that should be considered, definitely. There are a lot of different circumstances.
[Translation]
Mr. Gaudreault: Yes, I quite agree. You have to consider the person’s history. If someone has a history of attempted suicide, you have to take a closer look to determine whether the individual is over it. Since people do get over it, as Ms. Kane said earlier, most people who have attempted suicide but have not been successful are pleased to be alive today. You shouldn’t discriminate and withdraw the rights of people who have recovered and who absolutely might own a firearm and use it properly in future.
[English]
Senator McIntyre: My second question is a follow-up to my first question and is simply one of clarification. The proposed new subsection 5(2)(c) of the Firearms Act was amended by the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security to require a judge or the Chief Firearms Officer to consider whether the person.
Has a history of behaviour that includes violence or threatened or attempted violence or . . .
And these are the key words:
. . . threatening conduct on the part of the person against any person.
Would an amendment to the Firearms Act be needed to address occurrences of self-inflicted harm, or would suicide attempts be included under the proposed new subsection 5(2)(c) of the firearms act as amended by the house committee?
Dr. Kane: My memory is not bad but maybe not quite good enough to remember all of that. You said threatening toward a person, so I presume that could also include the person in question. I would think then it would not need an amendment for that reason.
Senator McIntyre: The key words that the House of Commons threw in the package were the words “threatening conduct.” These words were added to Bill C-71.
How should “threatening conduct” be defined if it is to be defined?
Dr. Kane: I think that gives the judge or the firearms officer a lot of discretion. I am not a lawyer, but I think that would give enough leeway for them not to have to put in extra words about suicide.
Senator McIntyre: You don’t see an amendment needed to the Firearms Act, do you?
Dr. Kane: I don’t.
[Translation]
Mr. Gaudreault: Perhaps you could require an independent check from a health professional where applicants have a history of poor mental health or attempted suicide to determine whether they have recovered and are able to process firearms today.
Senator Gold: As the saying goes: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
[English]
We have heard witnesses who say that the bill simply addresses the wrong problem. Sometimes we are told the real problem is gang violence and handguns in urban areas. Most recently we heard the problem is really a social problem of mental illness.
Could both of you comment on those statements? Do you believe that Bill C-71 is nonetheless a step in the right direction?
Dr. Kane: I don’t think there is just one problem. One or the other isn’t the real problem. They are both problems. As far as whether we should go ahead, I am not sure I am quoting him correctly but Arthur Ashe, a famous tennis player some of you might remember, made a very helpful statement:
Start where you. Use what you have. Do what you can.
We should get on with it. We have this legislation. We should just do it and move on from there. That’s where I am with that.
[Translation]
Mr. Gaudreault: As regards the Firearms Act, I’d don’t really like hearing opponents say that the problem isn’t firearms owners, that you should address the real problem and that you shouldn’t invest in checks and registries but rather in mental health. Of course you must invest in mental health. If you provide more support to the health sector and the community sector, which provide assistance to people suffering with mental health problems and are experiencing suicidal thoughts, that will help prevent more suicides. However, it would be wrong to think that investing solely in mental health will help solve the problem. Suicide prevention involves a range of measures that, working together, will have an overall impact.
We can draw a parallel with road safety. In Quebec, in the early 1980s, there were 1,050 suicide deaths and 1,500 road fatalities. People said at the time that the road deaths were a major health problem and that we were going to do everything possible to prevent them. So we increased road safety, expanded policing, strengthened drunk driving laws and made it mandatory to wear seatbelts. We regulated the way children should be buckled into cars. We repaired dangerous sections of highways. In short, we took action on several fronts. We also increased awareness. We should do the same for suicide prevention.
In Quebec today, we still have 1,050 people who commit suicide every year. However, we now have 300 deaths from traffic accidents. We’ve reduced the number of road deaths by 75 per cent because we decided it was a major health problem and we took action to prevent deaths from traffic accidents. That was a major success. We should apply the same model to suicide prevention, and that includes firearms control.
Senator Boisvenu: Dr. Kane, I’d like to discuss the medical controls component. We know that, in the case of Alexandre Bissonnette, who was the Quebec City mosque killer, even though the system provided for medical checks for previous psychiatric problems, we failed. Police officers didn’t conduct checks because the individual had reported no medical history. Now we’re going to expand the checks to include the entire lifetime of people who want to own firearms.
When you receive a request for information on a patient’s medical history from a police department, how long do you currently take to respond to that request?
[English]
Dr. Kane: That’s a difficult question, but the important thing about that in the cases I’ve been involved with is that at the time when I am responding they don’t have a gun. They don’t have a licence, so we are erring on the right side of safety, I would say.
I usually don’t write if I am not going to give it to them. That’s the way they set it up.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: Let’s say you receive a request this morning from a police department in your municipality that wants to know whether a person has a history of psychiatric problems. How long, today, will it take for you to respond to that request? In your province, there’s a backlog of 2,000 cases awaiting answers to the RCMP’s questions on the psychiatric histories of people applying for licences or who have exhibited a problem. How long will it take today for you to respond to the police department that that individual has a psychiatric history and must have his or her firearms confiscated?
[English]
Dr. Kane: I would say it doesn’t really work like that. For example, if I get asked about someone’s mental health and their gun, I am not required to respond if I am not going to agree with it. I have some patients who haven’t had their guns, and it has taken several years for them to get better.
After several years I write to say, “Now I think they are ready,” but I don’t respond in the meantime. I don’t know if it works differently in different provinces, but that’s the way I’ve generally operated.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: The situation troubles me even more. What this bill must not do is give an impression of security. You tell me I’m not required to respond, which means that police departments could submit a request to a psychiatrist and never receive a response.
[English]
Dr. Kane: I have not had a request from a police organization. I have only had requests from firearms officers. We don’t usually get requests from the police. That would be unusual.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: Today, the fact that the history is being expanded to include a patient’s entire lifetime will mean you won’t just have to look at the past five years. You’ll have to check the entire lifetime of the applicant, who may have been treated by two or three psychiatrists. How can the information get to the police departments quickly? Otherwise, we’re leaving vulnerable people in possession of firearms, which can result in incidents, because the bureaucracy will be slow in providing an adequate response to the police departments. We’re dealing with a problem this bill won’t solve.
[English]
Dr. Kane: It has been my experience largely, when I get a request from the police, that they generally have already taken the person’s firearms away. It’s more of a situation where I will be in a position to possibly help them get them back. I know it’s not 100 per cent, but generally it seems the police operate on the side of safety. They take the guns away and then ask for an opinion.
I don’t think it would lead to a false sense of security, but there probably will be times when people fall through the cracks, which has happened.
Senator McPhedran: I wanted to pick up on Senator Boisvenu’s comments and ask for a little more clarification from both of you, please.
We have heard from witnesses. As far as I could tell, none of them had expertise in mental health but were opposed to extending the background checks to a licensed applicant’s entire life.
In your experiences, could the provision in Bill C-71 save lives? What factors do you think may make a person at risk beyond the current minimum of five years for background checks?
Dr. Kane: One of the things about certain mental illnesses is that they can be episodic. People can have terrible, awful mental illnesses and be sick for months and even years sometimes, and then recover and be fine for 10 years until it hits again. That’s the nature of some mental illnesses.
It will save lives to look back over the lifetime, for mental illnesses at least, yes.
Mr. Gaudreault: Could you repeat your question, please?
Senator McPhedran: In your experience, could the provision in Bill C-71 about background checks being extended in time save lives?
What factors do you think may take a person at risk beyond the current five years for background checks?
[Translation]
Mr. Gaudreault: Yes, going back and expanding the period covered by the checks can help provide a somewhat broader picture of a person’s mental health history. An individual may suffer from a mental health disorder, recover and experience another episode five, 10 or 15 years later. That’s been documented. In that case, extending the period helps provide more knowledge of a person’s life history. Now, we know it’s entirely possible to recover for life. In that case, it’s important that an independent assessment be conducted by a health professional who can determine whether the individual is ready to possess firearms again or for the first time.
[English]
Senator Plett: Thank you, witnesses. I don’t think there is anybody around this table, or indeed any of the witnesses that we’ve heard before, that would argue suicide isn’t one of the most devastating, horrible things one can experience. I personally have been involved with seven suicides of either family or friends in my lifetime: three by hanging, two by train, one by pills and one by a gun. I am not sure whether my situation would be unique, but one out of seven was by a firearm.
Do I believe there were mental issues with each of these people to some extent? A person doesn’t kill himself or herself without that. Four of these people were male and three female, by the way.
You have given us compelling testimony about your opinions, but I haven’t heard stats and I haven’t heard facts. Even to what Senator McPhedran just asked Dr. Kane, I heard an opinion.
The bill we have before us today does not formally restore a gun registry, but as witnesses previous to you agreed, there is only one thing short of a gun registry and that’s a serial number. It’s a registry of sorts.
The effectiveness of gun registries in reducing homicide and suicide rates has been called into question by a witness we heard last week, Solomon Friedman, who noted that a court found in the Barbra Schlifer Clinic case that there was no evidence that the long-gun registry had ever been effective in reducing either homicide or suicide rates.
What evidence would either of you have that this would be effective? What stats do you have that indicate it would be effective? Certainly, when it comes to background checks and/or signing off on people with mental illnesses being able to acquire guns, Dr. Kane, we already have that in place now. Nobody is arguing that.
Do you have stats that would indicate other than just personal opinions?
Mr. Gaudreault: I gave you stats, and I will say them again. Between 1998 and 2011 when the registry was in use in Canada, suicides by firearms were reduced by 53 per cent in Quebec. It went from around 250 suicides to around 120. In the meantime, the decrease of the rates by other means was only 11 per cent.
It says two things. First, there was no redirection of the means. If people stopped dying by arms then they used another means, but the rates decreased.
Second, you cannot say that the reduction is explained by the social or economic situation which is better. Fewer people committed suicide less; there is a fivefold difference between the decrease of deaths by firearms and those by other means. For me, it’s an important fact that we need to take into account considering the impact of firearm restrictions.
Dr. Kane: Over the last week or two, or however long you’ve been going, you have heard a lot of statistics that have shown reductions and increases in suicide depending on what the law was. I am not an expert in statistics so I don’t want to try to quote those.
You made a comment about the registry and that basically this legislation would lead to a de facto registry. I have to disagree with that because the police could phone up the registry and say, “Are there guns in this house?” Once in a while, but not frequently, we try to get guns away from somebody. If we don’t know whether they have them, we can’t do that.
They will not be able to do that with what’s in Bill C-71. This is not a registry. Some people might feel like it is, but it’s nothing like the registry. I don’t think we could equate those at all.
Senator Plett: The Department of Justice noted that in Canada provincial comparisons of firearm ownership levels and overall rates of suicide found that the levels of firearm ownership had no correlation with regional suicide rates. Furthermore, the Canadian rate of firearm suicides has dropped without evidence of similar reduction in the rate of firearm ownership.
I would like to follow up on your comment about it being reduced. I am not sure in what years it reduced. Did it reduce before the registry was in place, during the registry or after the registry was cancelled? Has it gone up since the registry was cancelled? Do you have the numbers before, during and after?
Mr. Gaudreault: All the numbers I gave you came from the Quebec Public Health Institute, the ones responsible in the province for determining suicide data.
During 1998 suicides in Quebec were at the highest point at 1,600 deaths. In 2008, nine years later, there was a pretty even decline subsequently to 1,100 deaths by suicide. There was a decrease during all those years and not just before or after. It was pretty steady.
Senator Plett: And now it has gone up since 2008.
Mr. Gaudreault: No, it stayed the same.
Senator Kutcher: Both of my questions are for Dr. Kane. You are a psychiatrist, and I assume you use evidence-based medicine when you practise. We’ve heard differing opinions about data from different studies showing different things.
First, when you are faced with that in your medical practice, what do you look to, to help resolve dilemmas? What medical analysis, critical literature reviews, et cetera, would help us so that we can look at those techniques ourselves?
Second, you mentioned the Israeli Defence Forces study, which in my memory, bad as it was, was a quasi-experimental prospect of longitudinal cohort study of about 1.2 million people. It showed a decrease of about 50 per cent in suicide rates and no substitution for suicide once weapons were controlled.
How robust is that kind of study compared to historical analysis of statistical administrative data?
Dr. Kane: I try to use evidence-based information. Studies of 1.2 million people are compelling. Using the information, I understand you have from Statistics Canada, it was based on the whole population of Canada. We try to use that kind of information as much as possible. You apply it to individual situations.
I am not sure if I am answering your question, but that’s what I try to do.
[Translation]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Thank you for your testimony. Mr. Gaudreault, this is a question for you and it’s not an easy one. How should the eligibility criteria be raised to prevent suicides by other family members who have suicidal tendencies? You talked about the one who purchases the firearm, but how do you go about it? I’m asking the question because Michèle Audette, Commissioner of the Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, came to Ottawa and told us we not only had to check the histories of individuals who own firearms but also had to consult all individuals living in the same house. Since the Indigenous communities are overpopulated and their houses are full, it’s a long process, but it’s also necessary in helping to prevent suicides. As an expert on these issues within a support group, how do you think we should tighten up the criteria? Because that seems difficult to me.
Mr. Gaudreault: Yes, it’s extremely difficult. That’s a very tough question. You’re right about the individual’s circle: A person may apply for a licence to possess a firearm and pass all the tests, but that doesn’t guarantee the people in that person’s circle are safe. The owner of the firearm is responsible for considering the health of the people in his circle and for avoiding purchasing or adding firearms and ensuring at all times — regardless of the health of the people in his or her circle — bulletproof security to prevent access to those firearms when they aren’t in use. So we have to work with the communities.
Second, police departments must be given the necessary leeway to intervene as quickly as possible where there is any risk associated with the presence of a firearm, whether it be to the owner or to the owner’s circle. Fortunately, in the vast majority of cases, when a suicidal person is in contact with a caseworker, the first question to ask is whether there are firearms in that individual’s circle. If there are, the person will be invited to remove them in a safe manner. Most of the time, people agree to cooperate freely and remove their firearms. However, where there are risks, you have to be able to report them and to act as quickly as possible.
[English]
The Chair: Senator Boisvenu, on a point of clarification.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: I have a question for Mr. Gaudreault further to that of my colleague. When we worked on the cancellation of the gun registry in 2013, if my memory serves me, we had statistics on two reference points: 1979 and 1995. We know that, in 1979, the government established measures to monitor the acquisition of firearms. The registry operated from 1995 to 2010. The reduction in the homicide and suicide rates from 1979 to 1995 was approximately 40 per cent. From 1995 to 2010, the rate was 35 per cent. That was one of the statistics most frequently cited to show those in favour of increased control — I’m in favour of some firearms control — that it’s hard to make a connection between the decline in the number of homicides and suicides and the presence or absence of a firearms registry. It is virtually impossible to do it scientifically.
Do you have any data on two reference periods, that is, the one you cite, from 1995 to 2010, relative to another period during which there was no registry? Can you provide us with data to support the idea that there is no correlation between the two?
Mr. Gaudreault: The correlation between the two would have to be validated, but I’ll be pleased to send you the data that has been collated by the Institut national de santé publique, which is responsible for evaluating it.
[English]
The Chair: Dr. Kane and Mr. Gaudreault, we thank you very much for taking the time to join us today. Your evidence has been extremely helpful.
Senators, we are distributing the updated work plan. I remind that it is confidential until discussions take place, and we will suspend until 2:45 p.m.
Senator McPhedran: Madam Chair, if I may, I want to put on the record before our witnesses leave that there was a question from Senator Plett which referred to your “personal” opinions. I think it’s important to note that you are here today because of your professional qualifications and your professional expertise. I hope in no way do you hear that question as a denigration of your qualifications. We were here to hear from you professionally. Thank you.
The Chair: We welcome as our next panel from Simon Fraser University, Professor Emeritus Gary Mauser, from McMaster University, Dr. Caillin Langmann, Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine at McMaster University, and from University of the Fraser Valley via video conference, Irwin M. Cohen, Director of the Centre for Public Safety and Criminal Justice Research.
Irwin M. Cohen, Director, Centre for Public Safety and Criminal Justice Research, University of the Fraser Valley, as an individual: My work has primarily been focused on examining the academic research on the various strategies, processes and legislation that have been tried in Canada and internationally to reduce and remove illegal firearms from circulation, particularly from offenders.
Many countries have some form of firearm legislation to restrict who can possess firearms and the types of firearms that can be owned. This is based on the simple theoretical basis that firearms are dangerous and contribute to the increasing rate of lethal violence in a community. The assumption is that by restricting firearms, particularly from people deemed to be at a higher risk of being involved in violence, such as those involved with gangs or organized crime, it is likely that the volume of criminal violence involving firearms will be reduced.
For example, many countries prohibit firearm possession by minors, individuals who have been convicted of a crime, or those diagnosed with a mental illness. Further, many countries restrict the types of firearms that can be possessed, such as the restrictions on fully automatic firearms, handguns, specific types of ammunition and magazine capacity.
When comparing the Canadian system to those of other Western countries, some researchers have concluded that Canada has taken the approach that an individual’s freedom is greatest when the community is safe, while other countries have placed a greater emphasis on an individual’s right to own a firearm over the safety of a community.
By the implementation of Bill C-68 in 1995, research indicates that many Canadians were already shifting their views about firearms, becoming less tolerant of the presence of guns in homes and more concerned about the damage firearms could cause individuals, their families and their communities.
In the United States, for example, for the most part gun regulation is up to each individual state or local government. Each state can have a unique approach to gun ownership or carrying a gun in public. There are no federal restrictions on semi-automatic weapons, handguns, high-capacity magazines or minors possessing firearms such as those seen in other countries. Even in the wake of highly publicized mass shootings with high levels of public support for legal change, there has been little to no change in firearm laws at the federal level.
Part of the challenge in the United States is the constitutionally protected right to possess firearms which does not exist in Canada. The outcome of cultural differences, the view of firearms in society and gun control policies have resulted in a smaller proportion of households in Canada having at least one firearm compared to the United States.
Great Britain is known for having some of the most restrictive gun control laws in the world. Most types of semi-automatic rifles and shotguns are restricted from private ownership by citizens, and only police officers, members of the armed forces or individuals with written permission from the Home Secretary may lawfully own a handgun. It is likely that the very low use of firearms in crime are due in large part to these restrictive laws.
Restrictive firearms laws in Great Britain came in response to rising crime rates and a number of high-profile mass shooting massacres in the late 1980s and 1990s. Prior to these events, firearms ownership in Great Britain was rather non-restrictive. After much stricter gun control legislation between 1997 and 2010 there were no mass shootings in Great Britain.
Similarly, Australia has had three significant legal changes that have continually moved the country toward more restrictive firearm legislation following a series of mass shootings. Australia’s National Firearms Agreement was implemented in 1996. It included a prohibition for public possession of all self-loading semi-automatic rifles and other kinds of weapons. It also prohibited the importation of any firearm parts or magazines for any military-grade firearms or the resale, transfer of ownership or manufacture of military-grade firearms.
The Australian system requires an acquisition permit for all firearms, along with a mandatory 28-day waiting period. All sales are restricted to licensed firearm dealers only and require dealers to record information regarding the sale, which is open to police inspection at any time. Further, the system limits the amount of ammunition that a dealer can sell or buy at one time and only allows the sale of ammunition that matches the firearm the purchaser hold a licence for.
If you look at the Canadian legislation and the effect of the legislation between firearm legislation and homicide in Canada, researchers found that the 1995 legislative changes in Canada requiring all firearms to be registered likely had little effect on homicide rates, based on the findings that the vast majority of firearm homicides in Canada were committed by people using illegally owned firearms. Criminals are far more likely to buy, trade and lend firearms from others and from those they know well. Legislative changes increasing the burden to obtain a firearm legally likely has less effect on an offender’s ability to get a gun.
If you compare simple general trends between the United States and Canada, Canadian firearm legislation has likely reduced at least some portion of the violent crime rate given that it restricts easy access to firearms.
There is also research in Canada suggesting that Canadian firearm legislation reduced the number of domestic violence murders, particularly against female victims. On the issue of suicide, the chance of a successful suicide attempt is greatly increased when a firearm is used. For example, nearly all suicide attempts with a firearm result in the individual dying, compared to a small fraction of drug overdose suicide attempts.
Research has consistently concluded that there was an increased risk for a successful suicide when a firearm is present in the home. Research has also repeatedly shown that there is a relationship between the illicit drug trade, gangs and firearm-related homicides in Canada. Although gang violence can be sporadic, research has identified that a growing proportion of gang-related gun violence is being committed by youth in their late teens and early 20s.
In terms of sourcing of guns, a common concern in Canada is the possibility that the majority of illegally obtained firearms are entering the country illegally from the United States. There is some research to support it.
Across several studies from different jurisdictions across Canada the findings have varied from a low of 34 per cent to as high as 84 per cent of seized illegal firearms originating from the United States. Currently, it appears there are fewer seized firearms originating from the United States than in previous years.
In conclusion, one of the research findings that has some degree of consistency is the correlation between guns and gun deaths. More guns correlate to more homicides and suicides. Some pieces of legislation and a number of initiatives have shown promise in Canada. Some national and international research has suggested that legislation restricting the type of firearm individuals can acquire, restricting who can legally acquire firearms, especially as it relates to mental health issues, and extensive background checks have reduced the volume gun-related violence and suicide.
While Canada’s rate of firearm-related violence is comparatively low, research suggests that continuing to develop and implement effective and enforceable legislation, educating the public about gun safety, supporting enforcement strategies against offenders and gang members who carry firearms, straw purchasers and illegal firearm importers and sellers are critical to combating firearm-related crime and violence.
Dr. Caillin Langmann, Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine, McMaster University, as an individual: Gun control has not resulted in a reduction of firearm homicide or overall suicide in Canada. In 2012, I published a definitive study on firearms laws in Canada and homicide. It showed no associated benefits from background checks, authorizations to transport and gun registries on firearm homicide and spousal homicide.
At the time some people were shocked by such findings, but the reality is that these findings did not disagree with most of the published work already out there. I brought some of that with me for you to submit into the record.
Let’s briefly review some of these other studies and how they agree with my work. First let’s consider the recent meta review that most of the organizations here are referring to called “What Do We Know About the Association Between Firearm Legislation and Firearm-Related Injuries?”
I will quote directly from this article:
Cross-sectional studies assessing the association between background checks/waiting periods and firearm deaths provide mixed results.
A great number of papers found no association between background checks and firearm homicides as follows: Kleck and Patterson; Sumner et al., 2008; Lott and Mustard, 1997; McDowall et al., 1995; Ludwig and Cook, 2000; Hahn et al., 2003; and Wintemute, 2018.
My paper also showed that laws targeting restricted firearms, such as handguns and certain semi-automatic and fully automatic firearms in Canada in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s had no associated effect. From the same 2016 review, Koper and Roth, 2001, and Guis, 2014, also found the assault weapons ban in the United States had no associated benefit.
While only looking at the early stages of gun licensing, a paper recently published by Professor Blaise and Professor Gagné of Montreal in 2011 also agreed with my assessment and said that homicides committed by restrictive and prohibitive firearms were not affected by the introduction of these laws.
Let’s look at this review and what it said about Canada. Leenaars and Lester, 1999; Mauser and Holmes, 1992; and McPhedran and Mauser, 2013 are all in agreement with my studies.
Australia has long been cited as a model for gun control. It is a country of controlled borders, universal background checks and cross-country firearms laws. Interestingly the published research in Australia also agrees with my studies. Firearms legislation is not associated with a decrease in firearm homicide. One of the most recent and commonly cited Australian papers, Chapman et al., 2006, demonstrates no statistically significant benefit between the Australian firearms legislation and firearm homicide.
Lee and Suardi, 2008; Baker and McPhedran, 2007; and Gilmore et al. most recently in October 2018, demonstrate the same results.
Let’s turn to suicide by firearms. Suicide by firearms in Canada has been on a steady decline since the 1980s. Suicide by other methods has been on a slow, steady increase. The recent analysis performed by myself on this data demonstrates no statistically significant change in the decline post legislation in the 1990s. There was a small drop in firearms suicide that corresponds with similar increase in non-firearms suicide. I use another method called “difference in differences” to analyze this, and the same thing was found.
We are now seeing a slow, steady increase in firearms licences held by the population. If they were increasing, we should have seen the firearms suicide rate also increasing. According to this data, regression analysis also shows that there was no association. Finally, if some provinces had more licenced firearms owners they should have higher rates of suicide. However, analysis of firearms owners across the province shows that provinces with a higher rate of firearms licensing have no higher rates of firearms suicide. A notable association was found with the number of natives on the reservations, suggesting a problem lies there.
How does that compare with the published literature? There is some evidence that the increase in firearms laws is also associated with a decrease in suicide by firearms. This is not always the case. For instance, a paper by Hemenway, 2013, demonstrates no association between firearms legislation and ownership rates and firearm suicide.
The question is whether people substitute another method for suicide such as hanging, thus resulting in no overall increase in rates. Hanging, according to some studies, is as successful a method as firearms. Ker, 2004, looked at Canadian Indigenous reservations in firearms laws in the 1990s and found no significant overall change in firearms suicide, as a drop in suicide by firearms was accompanied by an increase in suicide by hanging.
Chengdu, 2005, showed that in young men in the 1990s suicide rates by firearms dropped by 40 per cent but was associated with an increase by 40 per cent in hanging. G. Vidal, 2009, examined Australia and a similar substitution phenomenon was found. Most recently, Gilmore et al., 2018, showed no association between suicide and legislation.
Methods that have been shown to be more effective in reducing firearms homicides involve targeting the demand side of firearms prevalence in criminal activity. As demonstrated by StatsCan, a significant percentage of firearms homicide involves gangs. A recent fluctuation in these rates largely involves Toronto, Ontario.
As youth violence increased in Boston in 1995 they launched Operation Ceasefire, which involved reducing the demand for weapons by targeting gangs specifically in terms of warnings and legal interventions, as well as working with community groups and workers to reduce youth membership in gangs.
The other arm of Operation Ceasefire involved reducing the supply of weapons by legal interventions to decrease weapons trafficking and availability.
Braga et al., 2001, examined both aspects of Operation Ceasefire and found the demand side was effective but the supply side, or targeting weapons trafficking, was ineffective.
The Chair: Could I ask you to wrap up, please?
Dr. Langmann: To reduce violence that is currently occurring in Canada, the evidence suggests you need to reduce youth involvement in gangs and gang activity, not just by legal interventions but also deterring youth from entering gangs at the pre-contemplation stage.
A research report by Public Safety Canada gathered evidence from a number of programs operating in Canada to reduce gang participation and demonstrated beneficial effects in the ranges of 50 per cent in terms of participation.
Gary Mauser, Professor Emeritus, Simon Fraser University, as an individual: First, I would like to apologize. I am as deaf as a post. This is a bilingual system. It works in French but does not work as well as in English.
Second, I am hopeful that the charts I had asked to be distributed will be distributed.
As part of my academic duties, I have published in criminology and political science for over 30 years.
In my professional opinion Bill C-71 is a Rube Goldberg contraption that assumes without evidence multiplying regulations will reduce criminal violence. The government offers concerns but produces no hard evidence.
Bill C-71 myopically focuses on gun crime when a gun is used in less than 1 per cent of violent crimes. The problem is criminal violence, not guns. Knives are used in as many murders as are firearms.
Worse, by confusing licensed firearms owners or holders of possession acquisition licences with criminals, Bill C-71 misses the target completely. At least one million Canadians own guns without recourse to anything legal. These are the people that you should control. I ask the Senate to exercise sober second thought.
Bill C-71 will not improve public safety. It is not a small step. It is in fact an endangerment to public safety because it misdirects scarce public resources.
How big a threat is a licensed firearms owner? In Canada, moose kill more people each year than registered and licensed firearms owners. He is unregistered and unlicensed.
Criminal violence by gangs has increased since Minister Goodale picked his magic number in 2013, while PAL holders have not increased their violence.
At least 10 times as many people die each year from medical mistakes in our hospitals than PAL holders are accused of killing. The worst mass murder in Canada involved gasoline and not a firearm. Even where guns are prolific and readily available, hanging is the preferred method of committing suicide.
Here is a chart for the nation. As you would see, if you had one, the hanging frequency increases and the shooting frequency decreases. Hanging is your problem. Most suicidologists will tell you the problem is mental health and suicide, not access to guns. Healthy people are not suicidal. This room is not likely to commit suicide with anything.
Bill C-71 also neglects the overwhelmingly positive contribution PAL holders make to Canada. If you assessed cars, cellphones, sex, marriage and haircuts by only the negative consequences, you would think they were all dangerous and inimical. It is irrational to merely look at the downside of anything.
No evidence has been produced that PAL holders are a major source of crime guns. No evidence has been produced that there are significant abuses of the authorizations to transport restricted firearms. On average, the number of PAL holders accused of homicide is so small that Statistics Canada is concerned about their reliability.
Over the past 20 years, between 13 and 20 PAL holders have been suspected or accused of homicide annually out of two million people. Obviously not all suspects are accused. Nor are all accused convicted.
As Senator Pratte has demonstrated, the lion’s share of firearms homicide is committed by illegal gun owners. No methodologically valid study has been able to find evidence that stricter gun laws, or even gun bans, have reduced general homicide rates or spousal homicide rates, as my two colleagues have already stated.
A simple example is that in 1995 the Canadian government banned over one-half of all legally registered handguns. Not only have handguns remained, the murder weapon of choice but gang killings have increased. Gun bans, by the evidence, do not seem very useful.
For over 30 years legal gun ownership in Canada has increased but homicide rates have decreased. Bill C-71 falsely assumes criminals get their guns from lawful domestic sources.
The government claims the source of crime guns has changed. This is false. The only thing that has changed is the definition of crime guns. At the height of the long gun registry, StatsCan data showed that only 4 per cent of guns used in homicide could have been stolen or gathered in a straw purchase.
The government cannot provide solid evidence to support concerns about the problems with ATTs or authorizations to transport restricted weapons. An access to information request found out that over a million ATTs were issued, and 0.05 per cent, or less than one-half per cent, were any kind of abuses. For this do we need new legislation or perhaps better management? Requiring additional ATTs diverts scarce political resources.
Internal audits show there are serious backlogs in data processing for the police. This backlog denies judges and CFOs timely access to vital information. By increasing the paper burden, Bill C-71 will endanger public safety.
This is not a small step in the right direction; this is a big step backward.
The Chair: May I ask you to sum up.
Mr. Mauser: To sum up, Bill C-71 is fundamentally misguided. Gun owners are a public safety resource, not a threat. Bureaucratic busy work diverts scarce police resources away from programs that are more effective in dealing with violent criminals. Inflating the already bulging federal firearms bureaucracy will not solve the real problem facing our youth in gang-infested corners of Canada or women in abusive relationships.
I respectfully ask the Senate to reject Bill C-71, exercising the sober second thought for which you are well regarded. Thank you.
Senator Jaffer: I found all your presentations to be very interesting.
Professor Mauser, you said that gun ownership was a resource, if I understood you correctly. Could you explain what you mean by that?
Mr. Mauser: Are you interested in the scarce political police resources?
Senator Jaffer: You said that gun ownership was a public safety resource.
Mr. Mauser: I am not sure why this is not working.
First of all, hunters are the lion’s share of wildlife conservation in Canada. Most of the gun owners in Canada are hunters and hunting is a serious, effective control of wildlife. Wildlife, as you know, don’t believe in birth control, so the only way to control burgeoning populations is by hunting. One could hire bureaucrats but that would be a cost. Hunters pay the government to shoot animals and control populations.
There is a large industry that provides food for cities. We need grain, sheep, cattle and all sorts of stuff that is grown in the rural areas of Canada. Predators prey on that and hunters provide control for that.
Hunting and gun ownership teaches children to have responsibility. It keeps families together. Hunting and shooting are sports that women can engage in, just as men can, and are equal in all competitions. All of our Olympic shooting athletes are female. They are an excellent credit to Canada.
Certainly, gun ownership provides a great resource, and we should consider it.
Senator Jaffer: I have a question for Mr. Cohen. I see you played a key role in the redaction of the chapter entitled “Intimate Partner Violence in Canada” in a book called Domestic Violence in International Context. As mentioned in this chapter, rates of intimate partner violence for Aboriginal women are substantially higher in Canada.
Could you please expand on that? What were your findings? Why did you find they were higher in Canada?
Mr. Cohen: We looked at RCMP-provided data on domestic violence or intimate partner violence. We looked at a range of variables that could contribute to domestic violence or interpersonal violence in terms of size of community and a range of variables that compared hot spots for domestic violence to non-hot spots in the same jurisdiction. Then we looked at the demographics and characteristics of victims and offenders, particularly around the issues of age, gender and ethnicity.
Which element of that does your question specifically relate to?
Senator Jaffer: Violence against Aboriginal women was substantially higher in Canada in your paper, and I wanted you to expand on that. Why did you think it was higher in Canada?
Mr. Cohen: The research data simply suggested that the rates per capita for Indigenous people was higher for domestic violence than non-Indigenous. A range of explanations come from colonialization, to the transmission of intergenerational violence, and to the effects of residential schools in terms of family continuity and integrity. Alcohol and drugs play a role. Obviously, isolated community plays a role. Mental health plays a role.
The rates were found to be higher among Indigenous communities. I am not sure if you are suggesting or moving toward the relationship between firearms. I don’t recall that our study looked at that.
Senator Jaffer: I understand your study didn’t look at firearms. Is that correct?
Mr. Cohen: That is correct, yes.
[Translation]
Senator Dagenais: My first question is for Mr. Mauser. When I listen to you, I get the impression the present government seems to be responding to a very active anti-firearms lobby rather than proposing genuine solutions to address criminal violence. Furthermore, several years ago, a government of the same political stripe established a firearms registry that proved to be costly and ineffective. That registry created false feelings of security among police officers and cost $2.5 billion. Today, we seem to be going back to the same solution. We’re establishing prohibitions on paper without being able to apply them. Do you think we’re mixing politics and safety without distinguishing between the two?
[English]
Mr. Mauser: One of the most serious disadvantages of committee hearings such as this one is that you can always find two, three or sixteen experts that disagree with each other, making solid claims that are completely contradictory to the others.
A committee like this has trouble with is evaluating the methodology that lies underneath the research the experts quote. There is a lot of shoddy research out there. Advocates love to collect claims and not use proper scientific methods.
I personally got into this gun idea by doing research and discovering just how much shoddy research had been done.
The first question you have to ask is this: How is it that people know what they claim to know? That’s very hard for a person who’s not a scientist to know.
There are two rules. Science is not fancy technology. Science is suspending belief until you test the hypotheses. Most of the medical and public health research that comes before you is not based on this scientific approach. This is the basis of science. To have a fancy test, to have a fancy publication, and to give it to your friends and say, “Whoa, that’s cool,” is not science.
Most human beings look for ways to bolster their opinions and beliefs. That’s why suspending belief is important. I hope that helps to answer your question.
[Translation]
Senator Dagenais: My next question is for Mr. Cohen. You said that Canada is one of the countries with the most restrictive gun control laws. However, when we look at what happened in Toronto, we can’t say this is an act that will change the way we solve the problem of criminal groups. Personally, I see nothing in Bill C-71 that might change the way criminals use firearms. They often buy their firearms on the black market, and police officers virtually never find them. Several murders were recently connected to the Montreal mafia, and I can tell you that police officers never found the weapons. Do you have any recommendations for improving this bill?
[English]
Mr. Cohen: I would respectfully agree with my two colleagues who made presentations after me, in that the largest proportion of challenges are related to crime guns and not necessarily guns that are being held legally by people who are lawfully entitled to hold them.
You can bolster the legislation to help establish quicker timelines around the tracing of guns, the importation of guns, the illegal transportation of guns between straw purchasers and gang members being able to acquire guns unlawfully. That is the way to go.
I would agree that putting greater restrictions on the ways in which people can lawfully obtain firearms will do little, if nothing, to reduce the gang violence that is being seen in Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia.
A number of programs, public education campaigns and specific proactive police strategies can help reduce the ability of gang members or criminals to get guns and use them. I would encourage efforts made in that direction.
Senator McPhedran: I have two questions for both of you. First, has any of your research at any time been funded by U.S. sources, including the National Rifle Association?
Mr. Mauser: Almost all of my research is funded by the Canadian government. One of my studies was funded by the Canadian American consulate, and it is an American source in that sense. None of my research is funded by the NRA.
Senator McPhedran: None of your research.
Mr. Mauser: None.
Dr. Langmann: None of my research has been founded by any firearms organization. Nor do I belong to any firearms organization. Nor am I a supporter of any organization. Nor do I have any conflicts.
My research is not contradictory at all to what is out there and currently available. I have submitted to the Senate a number of papers that validate my paper and agree with its findings.
When they read the literature, the problem is that most people only read the abstract and not the actual data inside the paper. The data inside his paper is very clear. Even the papers cited by a number of people who have come before me are very clear that firearms legislation is not associated with a decrease in firearms homicides or an overall decrease in suicide.
Senator McPhedran: I think my next question for both of you can probably be answered with fairly simple yes or no, but let me lay out a number of quotations from Statistics Canada.
In Homicide in Canada, 2017, StatsCan stated:
Canada’s firearm-related homicide rate was 16% higher in rural areas compared to urban areas . . .
Then, in Firearms and Violent Crime, 2016, StatsCan stated:
Firearm-related crime has been increasing in recent years—while other types of crime have been on the decline. In 2016, there were approximately 7,100 victims of violent crime where a firearm was present. This resulted in a rate of 25 victims of firearm-related violent crime for every 100,000 Canadians, a rate that was 33% higher than that reported in 2013 . . .
Gentlemen, these are not my words. I’ve quoted from Statistics Canada. Is Statistics Canada wrong? Yes or no.
The Chair: Before you begin, Senator McPhedran, are you looking for answers from just the two witnesses before us, or did you want an answer from the witness on a video conference?
Senator McPhedran: My apologies. Yes, please.
Dr. Langmann: With respect, yes or no answers are not informative. I rarely give those to my students or allow them to give those answers to me, so perhaps you will indulge me for a minute.
For a lot of the increase in rural areas we need to look into Native reserves. It is a big source of homicide in Canada in terms of the statistics. We are not doing that. We don’t have the data.
I have tried to obtain a lot of that data from StatsCan, but I’ve had some difficulty based on some of the numbers being quite low, in particular for spousal homicide, which interferes with confidentiality. I was interested in looking at that for rural areas, in particular.
In terms of the 16 per cent higher in rural areas, not all statistics are a good source of information because some of them depend on collection and validity. Some of the best statistics in terms of firearm offences are discharging a firearm with intent, using a firearm for commission of an offence and pointing a firearm. The police use those consistently. They have been in the legislation since 1988.
If you turn to supplemental one of the figures I provided, you will see that there is no increase or change in this rate when these are aggregated in Canada.
Mr. Mauser: I will briefly supplement what my colleague just said. Nationally the Native population in Canada is about 5 per cent. In the major city urban areas, it’s around 2 per cent of the population. In rural Canada it varies, depending upon the rural section of Canada, between 13 and 17 per cent.
Aboriginal males in the Stats Canada 2017 report, and please correct me if I am wrong, are 50 per cent of the accused and 37 per cent of the victims. That is a huge number for 5 per cent of the population.
Firearms are regulated totally differently on reservation than off reservation. If you talk to Vancouver or Toronto police, Aboriginals in Vancouver’s urban settings are certainly disproportionately responsible for crime.
The problem is not guns but social problems. Almost all First Nations are well run and have solid citizens. Some are not, and that is our problem.
Mr. Cohen: I would agree with the statement made by my two colleagues. Statistics Canada collects data in certain ways. It is provided by the police, in many cases, with respect to firearms. There are different ways of interpreting, collecting and deciding what to include.
I wouldn’t suggest, necessarily, that the Stats Canada data is wrong or incorrect. It may be, I would argue, incomplete. As my two other colleagues have said, there are ways in which you can interpret, include and exclude data.
I would agree that social problems are the larger contributor to these crime issues than guns are.
Senator McIntyre: Mr. Mauser, assuming Bill C-71 becomes law, the RCMP, not the Governor-in-Council, would be the sole authority to classify or reclassify firearms.
Is the RCMP the only organization in Canada that has technical firearm expertise, or are there other technical experts? Could I have your thoughts on that?
Mr. Mauser: No, most certainly not. There are many technical experts in Canada with equal expertise to the RCMP. It is part of the wonderful British and French traditions that the enforcement of the law is separated from the making of the law. It seems inordinately irresponsible to make the police the creators as well as the enforcers of these regulations.
Senator McIntyre: My second question has to do with automatic authorizations to transfer. We all recognize that Bill C-71 would impose strict rules concerning the transport of restricted and prohibited firearms by eliminating the automatic authorizations to transport from an individual’s residence to locations other than an approved shooting club or range.
Are changes being proposed because individuals were transporting their firearms across long distances within their home province? If not, what are the reasons for the proposed changes?
Mr. Mauser: In response to ATIP requests, the RCMP and the Ontario police have reported that under 1 per cent of ATTs result in problems, either criminal or administrative.
This is a microscopic problem and, therefore, I don’t see how adding paper burden to the CFO departments to solve this helps. Ontario police have reported it cost them $1 million a year to go back to the old system.
Dr. Langmann: I also looked at ATT in terms of its legislation and the effects on firearm homicide and violence. In my paper we also looked at discharge of firearms with intent. With the implementation of the ATT in the 1930s and the changes to it in the 1990s, there was no change in both violence and homicide.
Subsequently, we submitted the ATIPs that Dr. Mauser reported.
Senator Kutcher: Prior to asking my two questions, I want to make sure I didn’t mishear Mr. Mauser. I think you stated that you compared the side effects of harm caused by haircuts to the harm caused by guns.
Earlier today we heard from Polysesouvient and from people who were present at the Quebec mosque shootings. I am hoping that you didn’t infer that harm caused from haircuts is the same as harm caused from guns.
I have a couple of questions.
Senator McPhedran: Is it funny? He’s laughing.
Mr. Mauser: Was that a question?
Senator Kutcher: I don’t find this amusing.
Mr. Mauser: I am asking you: Was that a question?
Senator Kutcher: It wasn’t a question. It was a statement.
Dr. Langmann, interestingly a recent critical review with very different perceptions than you identify by Stroebe, a very well-done Cochrane level review, indicated:
With very few exceptions, studies found gun ownership positively related to gun-related suicides and homicides. Furthermore, there is evidence that guns do not merely serve as substitutes for other means of killing, but increase the overall rates of suicide and homicide.
There are exceptions. Why do you think Stroebe, who reviewed the world literature at the individual, macro and national levels, would have such different perspectives than you have?
Dr. Langmann: A lot of the studies are separated into two types of studies. Some are cross-sectional and some are time series.
Dr. Kleck has looked at these studies and at the methodology involved in them. The time series studies are inherently better than cross-sectional studies. Cross-sectional studies are comparing two states to each other in those legislatures, primarily in the United States.
The problem with that is multiple. There are different factors in each state that contribute to both homicide and suicide that cannot be measured easily and cannot be inferred. Hence, the best studies are studies that look at time series analysis. You have a period of time before a law, you have the law or the intervention, and then you look at the time afterward.
A lot of these studies are done in Australia and Canada. Dr. Mauser and I have done them, there has been a number of studies in Australia. Those are better in quality. You don’t have outside sources crossing borders as easily as in the U.S. where obviously there are differences in legislation. As well, you can easily look at what happened before and what happened afterward.
When you read all those studies, even the studies that are cited like Chapman, there is no associated decrease in firearm homicide with legislation.
Senator Kutcher: There are studies that are weaker and studies that are better.
Dr. Langmann: Gary Kleck and I submitted that paper.
Senator Kutcher: Thank you for that. In your opinion quasi-experimental studies would clearly be better than studies done of community databases. They are more robust.
Dr. Langmann: You could have a problem with validity.
Senator Kutcher: They are much more robust. Could you help us out with the Israeli Defence Forces study of 1.2 million soldiers, a quasi-experimental prospect of longitudinal cohort study showing a 57 per cent decrease in suicide rates and no substitution from any other kind of death on the use of gun control?
Could you help us with a much more robust study, way better than a time analysis study and way better than a binomial regression analysis? How do you address that?
Dr. Langmann: Why would you say it’s better than binomial regression?
Senator Kutcher: I was waiting for you to say that. Could you respond to my question about the Israeli Defence Forces study?
Dr. Langmann: I don’t have that study before me.
Senator Kutcher: You’re the expert, and you don’t have that study before you.
Mr. Mauser: Perhaps you could ask him a question.
Senator Kutcher: I am asking very specific questions.
The Chair: Can we just allow the witness to answer the question?
Dr. Langmann: I would say to you that you are looking at a small cohort of individuals. Those are people in the military. They have a completely different background from the wide variety of people in both Canada and Australia who do not participate in the armed forces mandatorily and do not suffer the same consequences of that.
The Australian and Canadian legislation are good studies. When you take aggregate them and analyze them, there is no change in overall suicide. There is a change in firearms suicide when you decrease the prevalence of firearms. In overall suicide there’s no change.
People use substitute methods, and that’s the problem. Most of those studies show that.
Senator Plett: I have a question for each of our witnesses and I will try to be brief.
Dr. Langmann, Senator Pratte has made allegations that gun owners belong to a demographic which is more dangerous than the general population of Canada. The senator’s assertion is that licensed owners represent 7 per cent of Canada’s adult population yet account for at least 12 per cent of firearm homicides committed each year.
I believe Senator McPhedran may have referred to those same numbers in a question she asked an earlier panel.
I understand that you’ve done some work in this area. I am wondering if you could explain to this committee if this allegation is incorrect and misleading and, if so, why?
Dr. Langmann: I don’t believe, with all respect, that Senator Pratte said that to me specifically.
Senator Plett: I didn’t suggest he said it to you. I said that he said it.
Dr. Langmann: I can’t answer that. I can say that he has shown me data and asked me questions about the number and percentage of legal firearms owners who have committed homicide. Initially, he asked me how that compares to the rest of Canada. I replied that if you are to make that comparison, you have to look at males in Canada specifically that do not own firearms, aren’t licensed and are over the age of 18.
When you take the overall Canadian population, which includes infants and women, generally 90 per cent of firearms owners are men. Women generally don’t own firearms. They generally commit less homicide, as well.
If you are to make a comparison, you have to take the same cohorts and compare them against firearms owners. When you do that comparison and you adjust for the percentage of males in society, as well as the ones over the age of 18, you find that Canadian licensed firearms owners are less likely to commit firearms homicide than Canadians that are unlicensed.
Senator Plett: I apologize to the chair that my preamble will be a little lengthy. These comments were made by a witness here last week, and I think you should have an opportunity to address them.
We heard from Professor Wendy Cukier when she referenced your work, and I quote:
One of the studies he did was on arming for self-protection, and the initial study was funded by the National Firearms Association. That’s a matter of record. His study included a survey, again a sample of Canadians, and it asked the question: Have you or a member of your household used a gun in the last I think five years to protect yourself? If so, was it against a person or an animal?
He took the percentage that responded yes and extrapolated based on the population of Canada to conclude that a very large number of Canadians used firearms to protect themselves.
Then she said:
My colleague David Hemenway at the Harvard School of Public Health responded to that study, comparing it to a study that was done, with very similar results, asking Americans if they had ever seen a UFO and whether or not they had been abducted by an alien. And he argued — and you can look at the data; I’d be happy to send it to the Senate — he argued that Professor Mauser was using exactly the same methodology, and if you applied it to that study of sighting UFOs and being abducted by aliens, you would conclude that a very substantial proportion of Americans had, in fact, been abducted by aliens. So there are some real flaws in some of the research that he has done, in my view.
I take it that you do not possibly agree with her conclusion, but did she accurately characterize your research?
Mr. Mauser: No, she did not. The first issue that one should look at in survey research, when asking about very infrequent behaviour is that there can be and often are both false positives and false negatives. The key to being able to conduct accurate research is not to base a conclusion on one single question, which is what Ms. Cukier asserts.
If you look at the study itself, as well as Professor Kleck other studies, about 20 separate studies involved somewhere around 15 to 17 screening questions to assess the value of people’s responses.
At the very least the use of a firearm in protection is a morally controversial act. It is very problematic. It is possibly an illegal act.
The person on the other end of the telephone does not know who they are speaking to. In such a situation it would be quite reasonable to think that a denial of an actual event would be more likely than the gratuitous creation of a positive event.
The research in question was published by Gary Kleck in his award-winning book, Targeting Guns. Professor Kleck and I worked together on this research and it is quite well regarded. Professor Hemenway’s snarky comment is indeed humourous but it is a one-sided speculation, which is not a proper way to assess research.
Senator Plett: Mr. Cohen, the general lack of contemporary research makes it extremely difficult to assess the utility and effectiveness of current policies and intervention programs. Moreover, the lack of reliable empirical data on firearms and violence including suicides makes it virtually impossible to undertake comparative analysis or the ability to develop more effective responses. In sum, the current evidence is generally inconclusive and suffers from a range of methodological challenges and limitations.
Those are your words, Mr. Cohen. Could you comment on how it is that some people are so confident that all we need is more gun control when it is not even clear the current policies work?
Mr. Cohen: As has been mentioned several times today there is competing data on both sides. It is difficult to find research which is both methodologically sound and can speak to broader issues. There is a variety of methodological limitations in most of the studies done.
When you are comparing research out of Canada compared to research out of the U.K. or the United States, there are many differences between the countries which make a simple comparison between two variables very challenging.
As was pointed out today, much of the research, particularly as it relates to Canada, is a decade or more old. I would respectfully suggest that much more research is required, both in terms of the preliminary stage and at the stage of evaluating processes, programs and legislation that are in place before we can qualitatively, quantitatively and definitively state that this works and this does not work.
As is clear from the discussions this afternoon, there is research on one side and there is competing research on the other side. Some will argue that this research is stronger than that research. Even if you look at the recent RAND Corporation research, it tries to do a meta analysis of all the published research out there and decide what is strong methodology.
They have a rigourous standard for what is considered strong methodology. It comes down to a few studies that meet their standard and show that the research conclusions in many of the studies are inconclusive in terms of their findings.
Senator Pratte: Dr. Langmann, in the brief you submitted to the House of Commons committee on public safety you explained, as you’ve explained to us, that according to your research most gun control initiatives or legislation has not produced the results they were supposed to produce.
One statement in your brief is that classification of firearms results in no public safety benefit and should be discontinued.
Would you care to elaborate on that? According to your research, does that mean we should get rid of the whole classification system and all firearms would be unrestricted?
Dr. Langmann: All firearms are dangerous in different contexts. I will readily accept that. A lot of firearms were reclassified in the 1990s, and my research showed no statistically significant change.
I am not the only one because Blaise et al. from Montreal showed the same thing in their paper that I submitted. The United States has a number of studies because some states have restricted those weapons. Also an assault weapons ban occurred in the United States that resulted in no change in firearm homicide.
If you look at the number of homicides committed by rifles in the United States, it’s actually a very insignificant number compared to the number of handgun homicides.
Senator Pratte: We are not discussing the United States. Neither are we discussing a ban.
Dr. Langmann: I agree, but people brought up Israel, Australia and all these places. In Canada there is no proven benefit. It is expensive. It results in a number of arguments such as the one we are having here now.
We can better direct these funds at the people who need help right now: the youth at risk. From the government’s own research in youth programs involving cognitive behavioural therapy and other methods, there is clear evidence that trying to reduce youth membership in gangs works. It reduces their membership by 50 per cent. It is sustained. It improves lives. It would definitely benefit homicide in Canada because this is where we’re seeing an increase in the number of homicides committed.
Senator Pratte: The government is investing lots of money into prevention among youth, for instance. I want to make sure I understand. You say that your research has demonstrated classification of firearms does not work, but you go beyond that to say that it should be discontinued. The effect of that, if I understand correctly, is that all firearms would be unrestricted, right?
You would simply have handguns, assault weapons, automatic weapons, and all those that were prohibited, unrestricted because your research has shown that it doesn’t work, right?
Dr. Langmann: Correct.
Senator Pratte: You also asserted in your brief to the House of Commons:
. . . questions involving past suicide, depression and emotional problems, divorce, separation, job loss, and bankruptcy should be removed as per the Privacy Act.
Are you saying that the government should not inquire into someone’s mental health issues or previous suicide attempts before issuing a gun licence?
Dr. Langmann: It is not just me saying that. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada is saying that specifically. They undertook a study in 2001 on that exact questions currently in the firearms program application in terms of suicide and attempted suicide as well as drug and substance abuse.
In looking at the evidence, they found there was no benefit to collecting this data. It actually had a risk in terms of confidentiality and, therefore, there was no need to collect it.
I am an emergency physician. I see patients who are depressed every day. Mostly every day I have to place someone under the Mental Health Act on a form and detain them until a psychiatrist has seen them. The vast majority of these forms are negated after being seen.
It’s extremely difficult to predict who will commit suicide. There are no algorithms we can use in medicine to predict it. Our studies are poor. We don’t even have a good concept of the risk factors involved, which sounds a bit odd.
Senator Pratte: The effect of your proposition is that the government would issue gun licences without even asking questions on mental health or past suicide attempts.
Dr. Langmann: Here is the problem: You will have a large false positive rate with that collection, especially if you start collecting the number of people who have been placed on the forms under the Mental Health Act.
You would have a large number of Canadians that are prohibited, possibly, from having firearms who would never kill themselves.
Senator Pratte: Based on your evidence, which part of the whole gun control regime should be kept and which part should simply be dismantled?
Dr. Langmann: There may be some possible benefit from a list of people, to put it that way, who should not be permitted to have firearms. Currently, the courts do that by placing people under court order so that they do not possess weapons.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: Dr. Langmann, I entirely understand the viewpoint of the people who defend this bill because they’ve been victims of unbelievable acts of violence. I think that defending this kind of cause gives meaning to their struggle. I understand them because I myself have experienced great suffering. When you defend a cause, you’re convinced of something, but you lose a bit of objectivity. I’d like to draw your attention to that point.
Some people say the firearms registry established in Canada in 1995 helped save 300 lives from 1995 to 2010. They ultimately use the registry as a reference point, but they forget to compare that period with a previous period during which the number of deaths, by suicide and homicide, was lower. So I have trouble with people who say the registry helped save many lives. Citizens, particularly in Toronto, have the impression they’ll be safe downtown the day after Bill C-71 is passed. I’m convinced citizens believe that.
I’d like to take you back to the central focus of the debate, from 1979 to 2010, and to the developments we experienced with the decline in the number of homicides. Do you think there’s a connection with the introduction of a firearms registry?
[English]
Dr. Langmann: I understand where those people are coming from. I see violence every day. If you are to design public policy, you have to be mindful of the expense and the effects it may have on other people who are caught up by the unintended consequences of it.
I referred to that a bit in the point about people who will be no longer able to participate in the shooting sports or hunting because of a past history in mental health and how we are to collect a lot of confidential information on people.
As a physician, I am afraid that one day I might be forced to give up patient records. That makes me a bit afraid. I don’t want to be placed in a position where a patient coming to me is afraid of me because what I might do to them in terms of taking away their property.
I completely sympathize with the people who have had violence happen to them or their family members. I don’t think it is amusing at all.
Some necessary interventions are being clouded by a lot of distraction. I have gone over some of those necessary interventions. We need to start putting more attention into mental health. Right now it takes me three to six months to refer a patient to see a psychiatrist.
When someone comes in and tells me they need help now, they’re falling apart and dying inside, I have to tell them it will take three months to see someone for help. I make their problem worse. Now they are even more agitated.
We are spending a lot of money on the Canadian firearms program. It’s $53 million a year, by some projections. I can only imagine what an extra $1 million would do in my hospital alone toward getting people help or for some of the kids who are at risk that come into the emergency departments.
They have been in gang violence. They have been assaulted. They have nowhere to go. They have little family to take care of them. They have no programs to change the way they think and redirect their attention and energy toward something positive in their lives. We need to look at that, and we don’t have all this money to spend.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: I have another fear regarding the number of people waiting for authorizations. In Yukon, some 2,000 people are waiting for a decision by a police department or the health system. There could be a backlog of nearly 10,000 cases all across Canada. People are waiting for a response from a doctor or a police department. People wait five, six or even seven years before they get an answer. What are the chances of them deciding to buy an illegal weapon? What do you think would be the consequences in the case of people waiting for a response who want to buy a firearm strictly for hunting or for creative purposes?
[English]
Dr. Langmann: I think the consequences in terms of those people are probably insignificant in terms of homicide or suicide. They tend to be generally law-abiding people who will wait and no longer participate in their activities.
Like we said before, the program is already stressed. I don’t think it reviews most applications. A number of people slip through, and we have seen problems with that.
Increasing some of these background checks by more than five years will fully burden the program and increase its cost. We really don’t know what that cost will be.
As I said before, we will get a lot of false positives. People who their firearm licences for the last five years will now have to resubmit. They will check back 10 or 15 years when they may have been in the military and had issues with PTSD or something like that. They will no longer be able to participate in their sport. They will also have to come to me to have me sign off on their firearm licences.
It is a problem for certain physicians because it places us as risk as well. I have no good way of judging whether someone is competent in terms of possessing firearms. There are some people you can obviously say should not have one, but with most people it’s difficult. There are no algorithms, risk factors or future projections we can make.
Most physicians in taking that risk on themselves will say, “I don’t really want to take that risk. If I sign off on this and this guy goes and does something stupid or kills himself, the family is going to come after me and it could be litigious. It’s better for me not to even sign this.”
I’ve worked with the CFO in Hamilton a number of times with patients that have had mental illness. That CFO is pretty good at differentiating and solving some of the issues, but it’s not an easy burden.
I am willing to work with them, but there may be some doctors that will not be. It’s a serious thing to put on a physician’s back.
Senator Richards: I will be brief. I’ve been to Australia a couple of times. I love it there. The people are quite a bit like Canadians. We get along pretty well.
Australia has been held up as a model of successful firearm prohibition, but what is the correlation between Australian gun laws and the murder rate? Has it lessened the murder rate or the homicide rate?
Dr. Langmann: As I said before, in Australia there are a number of studies. A recent study in 2018 from Australia by Gilmore used difference in differences modelling for pre-legislation and post-legislation. It found no statistically significant decrease in firearms homicide and overall suicide.
Most of the other studies also show the same as Lee and Suardi, Baker and McPhedran and Cleveland. I’ve submitted those studies to the Senate.
Recently there were two mass shootings of over five people. There have been a number of mass homicides in Australia. Most of them have been arsons involving 20 people killed and another one involving about 11 people. There was a van attack as well in Australia. These mass homicides are very difficult to predict and to prevent. I don’t think the evidence in Australia has shown any benefit.
Regardless of what the media says, you actually have to read these papers. If you read them, they clearly show it.
Mr. Cohen: Prior to the legal changes made in 1996, some good research suggests that Australia had 13 mass shootings in 18 years and that for a period of nearly 20 years after the legal changes they had no mass shootings. That is different from other mass killings as was just reported.
I don’t know the specifics around homicide rates in particular. When it comes to mass shootings, researchers have been pointing to what the restrictive laws have demonstrated, at least in correlational research. They made the link to effectiveness given the fact there were no mass shootings.
Dr. Langmann: The firearms act in Australia made a certain number of firearms illegal. Only two of the mass shootings in Australia were performed by firearms that were made illegal. The rest of the mass shootings were performed by firearms that are still currently available.
The Chair: Let me express my thanks on behalf of the committee to Dr. Langmann, Professor Mauser and Director Cohen. We appreciate your time here.
We will suspend for a few minutes while we change panels.
[Translation]
Senator Jean-Guy Dagenais(Deputy Chair) in the chair.
The Deputy Chair: We will continue the meeting with our next panel of witnesses. We have the pleasure of welcoming, from the Canadian Sporting Arms and Ammunition Association, Wes Winkel, President, and Ms. de Groot, Director, as well as Adam Caruana, Director of Firearms Outlet Canada, and Matthew Hipwell, from Wolverine Supplies. We will begin with the presentation of Mr. Winkel.
[English]
Alison de Groot, Director, Canadian Sporting Arms and Ammunition Association: Thank you, chair, senators and fellow colleagues here today. The Canadian Sporting Arms and Ammunition Association represents business owners in the sporting arms category, including Canadian manufacturers, importers, distributors, wholesalers, retailers and gunsmiths. The bulk of our members are all small business owners, the category that drives the Canadian economy. The bulk of our businesses are located in non-urban, rural communities, northern communities and Native communities.
In the opinion of our business owners, the legislation we are here today to speak about today is ill-conceived, ideologically driven and minus any input or consideration on the significant impacts it will have on the 4,500 licensed firearm businesses in Canada or the 25,000 employees who work in these community businesses.
The government is intent on imposing a poorly drafted and poorly thought-out piece of legislation on our industry in Canada just to say they passed a bill. The government has stated that its intentions with this legislation are based on increasing public safety, addressing the growing issue of gang violence and decreasing illegal firearms transactions.
We as an industry fail to see any provision that get us to those stated intentions. We are equally motivated to stop illegal firearms transactions in Canada. Illegal firearms transactions do not benefit our business owners.
With this bill the government is imposing new requirements on the industry that simply transfer the burden of traceability to our business owners to avoid being pegged as the creator of a new long-gun registry without regard for the impact on our businesses. These include but are not limited to insurance issues, legal liability, compliance, workplace safety and supply chain management.
In our discussions with the government and the minister’s department, our association has repeatedly offered our expertise to help draft and make the legislation less detrimental to our industry members. To this point, the government has not acted on our offers despite accepting our invitation to host round tables and working panels on many of the technical issues in the bill.
Despite our objection to the legislation, we are here today to present our very practical requirements with respect to this specific legislation that our board president, Wes Winkel, will outline for you today. Thank you.
Wes Winkel, President, Canadian Sporting Arms and Ammunition Association: I am also the owner and operator of Ellwood Epps Sporting Goods in Orillia, Ontario. I have been in business for over 20 years, and I have been an advocate for shooting sports and hunting my entire life. I am here today as a small business owner and a very concerned member of the firearms industry. I have witnessed first-hand the roller coaster of legislative changes in my 20-plus years of business.
By not engaging the affected Canadian businesses in the industry when drafting legislation, these initiatives frequently fail in their objectives. Without some changes, Bill C-71 will also fall under this category.
Our requested changes are as follows:
The CSAAA is requesting to be consulted and directly involved in the design and implementation of the regulations that will regulate our business members. As experts in manufacturing, import and export, distribution and retail of firearms, the CSAAA can offer the government technical expertise on public safety and economic impact issues with respect to the bill’s regulatory and legislative measures.
The CSAAA is requesting the Minister of Public Safety implement guidelines to structure the RCMP classification process for new productions coming to the Canadian market and for products being considered for reclassification.
CSAAA is recommending the minister create an appeal process for decisions made by the RCMP under this framework. CSAAA is willing to work with the minister’s office to draft a framework that sees the RCMP have a maximum time limit to approve new products and a notification process that allows the industry to be aware when a product is being considered for reclassification, with a minimum time limit to allow for changes to manufacturing, importing and retail distribution of products.
CSAAA is recommending adequate funding be attached to Bill C-71 for the Canadian Firearms Centre and the provincial chief firearms offices of each province to ensure the business and services these offices provide are met and to deliver on the commitments contained in the legislation.
The CSAAA is recommending the minister invests in the necessary training, technology and staffing to implement Bill C-71 without interruption to sporting arms business owners.
The CSAAA is recommending the automatic transportation privileges to and from a licensed business remain in place. There should be no barrier to a firearm owner properly maintaining their firearm in the interest of public safety. The potential impact for the removal of the automatic ATTs to a licensed firearms business is devastating.
Finally, the CSAAA is recommending the Minister of Public Safety appoint a representative of our organization to the government’s Firearms Advisory Committee to represent small business owners in the sporting arms industry. The CSAAA will bring along technical and economic expertise related to firearms-related issues. Thank you.
Adam Caruana, Director, Firearms Outlet Canada: In my current role as general manager of Firearms Outlet Canada I oversee the daily operations of the business and activities of our 15 staff members. Three years prior, FOC employed only four individuals myself included.
I am here today to express my concerns regarding Bill C-71, the impact it will have on a robust industry and the financial burden it places upon businesses in its efficacy in reducing firearm-related crimes in Canada. I am also here to urge the government to adhere to their assurances of evidence-based legislation.
Any legislation that dissuades, discourages and impedes individual participants of a sport or hobby that is legally sanctioned will greatly impact the businesses that support it. The proposed amendments focus only on a segment of the population that is an overwhelming majority of highly vetted, law-abiding individuals who prioritize safety and responsibility in lawful firearms ownership. It does not propose any legislation to address the individuals who overwhelmingly commit the majority of firearms-related crimes in Canada.
At the National Summit on Gun and Gang Violence in Ottawa in March 2018, hosted by the Minister of Public Safety, it was revealed that gun crime in Canada was less than one-half of one per cent of overall police-reported crime.
What was not and has not been accurately presented to date is what percentage of these crimes were committed with firearms sourced domestically, or how many of these crimes were committed by individuals who held valid firearms licences.
By examining Bill C-71 without this information, and specifically its proposal to withdraw all but one condition afforded by the authorizations to transport, I can only doubt its overall efficacy in reducing gun crime. By removing the transportation conditions, the government is once more reverting to an inefficient and costly program.
This process has not shown any measurable benefit over the current legislation in preventing firearm-related crime. Conversely, current ATT legislation has not demonstrated any measurable risk to public safety, and an increase in deviancy by licenced individuals illegally transporting their firearm has not been reported.
The effect this amendment will have is to dissuade licensed firearms owners from seeking services and advice from our business and every other. It will overburden an already redundant government system and spend tax dollars with no measurable positive effect. There is no evidence to suggest further legislation regarding the transportation of firearms is required, as firearms owners continue to demonstrate that we do and will continue to abide by the legal sanctions that govern our sport.
Furthermore, Bill C-71 proposes a much more troublesome issue to businesses, a security threat to licensed individuals and a further waste of resources that could otherwise be invested preventing violent crime as a whole. This proposal passes the labour, responsibility of maintenance and cost of an already failed system on to businesses. This system, which in essence is a long-gun registry, has already been deemed by the government as too costly, too inefficient and of too little value to criminal investigators.
The requirement of Bill C-71 to collect, maintain and store non-restricted firearm sales without any clear indication of how to record or protect what is extremely sensitive information will only pose an additional security risk to businesses and their clients. It will also cause increased processing time and additional costs to everyone.
These are finances that would otherwise be invested in increased staffing or business development. These proposals limit what use this data would provide law enforcement by decentralizing the storage of this collected information.
More to the point, what we have observed is that the majority of crimes committed with firearms are committed with handguns, which are classified as restricted and are stringently controlled. Furthermore, the majority of these handguns are obtained illegally outside of Canada, contrary to what has been reported. Therefore, if the majority of crimes are committed with restricted firearms and most of these firearms originate from outside of Canada, what effect could the storage of non-restricted firearms sales have on preventing these crimes?
Prior to entering this industry I spent six years working with the Toronto District School Board as an educational assistant and supply teacher, primarily working with special populations. I witnessed the desperate need for funding to go toward resources, social and meal programs, staffing, and the opportunities we have for early intervention.
I strongly urge the committee to recommend specific amendments to Bill C-71 regarding the proposed changes to the authorizations to transport and the requirement of businesses to keep in store sensitive information that will do nothing to achieve its suggested intention.
I implore you not to dedicate much-needed funds to ineffectual legislation when the statistics clearly demonstrate the antidote to crime is investing in people so they have opportunities to succeed. Thank you.
Matthew Hipwell, Wolverine Supplies: Wolverine Supplies is a retail and wholesale business which is now entering its thirtieth year in business in Western Canada. We are located in southwestern Manitoba. We have grown as a business from two people and a dream, to employing over 24 people. It is now transitioning into the next generation. We currently service customers from coast to coast across Canada.
Firearms have been a part of my life from a young age, from recreational use, to varmint control, to hunting, to competing in the Canada Winter Games. My involvement with Wolverine Supplies began on a casual basis, as I was employed as a police officer with the RCMP for 17 years. I left the RCMP in the summer of 2017 to join Wolverine Supplies on a permanent basis.
My history as a police officer was from general duty, to drug investigations, to full-time use of force and firearms instruction. I spent eight of these years as a member of the Emergency Response Team as an assaulter and sniper.
This experience has provided me with a solid understanding of how well-worded legislation can enhance Canadian public safety. Bill C-71 does not address or enhance Canadian safety by stopping illegal firearm use or criminal activity involving the use of firearms.
Bill C-71 will adversely affect my business and many other businesses like it in Canada, as well as the staff that all of our businesses employ.
I support the recommendations of the CSAAA and endorse the suggestions that they have put forward today, as far too many of the issues in the bill are undefined and unclear. Thank you.
Senator Gwen Boniface (Chair) in the chair.
Senator McIntyre: My question has to do with the definition and classification of firearms. Are the definitions used to classify firearms clearly defined, or are they more open to interpretation and opinion?
I assume a review of the definition would allow the RCMP to be better equipped to do the classification work.
Mr. Hipwell: There are two parts to your question. The first part was the definition of firearms and the second part was the classification of the firearms. Is that right?
Senator McIntyre: It was more on the definition.
Mr. Hipwell: My understanding is that the definitions are fairly clear. The classification is where we run into the issues. The definitions are laid out as to what are the parameters for the types of firearms in question.
We raised before the standing committee that the classification of firearms was open to open when it comes to business issues. No appeal process has been put in place. It is inconsistent across the board. Definitions were accepted at one point, then not accepted at another point, and vice versa.
I haven’t given you a clear answer, but there is a lot of work to be done on how they are classified and how those classifications need to be supported.
Senator McIntyre: On the issue of classification, assuming Bill C-71 becomes law, the RCMP would be the sole authority to classify or reclassify firearms, not the Governor-in-Council. I would like to have your thoughts on that.
Are there experts other than the RCMP that could do that job in terms of the firearm expertise?
Ms. de Groot: Our concern is that Bill C-71 turns regulation of our industry product over to the RCMP. They become our product regulatory body in the same way the pharmaceutical and food industries are regulated.
In those industries the regulators have structured guidelines under which they must operate and how they interact with the industry they’re regulating. In this case, the RCMP has carte blanche jurisdiction over our products with no formula for us to participate.
I will give you an example. We have distributors who travel overseas to foreign shows. They identify a new product they would like to bring to the Canadian market. They sign an exclusive distribution agreement for the Canadian market. They get all of the information and a sample product. They submit it to the RCMP, but the RCMP has no guidelines under which it must provide that service to the industry. It can take two years to classify a product.
In the meantime, a distributor’s distribution agreement has expired. Two years have been invested in trying to get the product into the Canadian market. Six weeks after the distribution agreement expires, the RCMP approves it and a competitor gets it. That’s with new product.
We’re suggesting, the same as it is with other industry regulatory bodies or agencies, that there be a structured framework to that classification process. If the industry provides these nine things to the RCMP, the RCMP has 90 days to classify a new product. That allows us to manage supply chain, distribution agreements and our product marketing into Canada.
We’ve experienced a number of classification changes in the last 18 to 24 months. I will use the 10/22 magazine as an example. Without discussing the merits of the change to the classification, no notice to industry was given on that change. The first we found out about it as business owners was to have a shipment seized by CBSA at the border. When product is seized by CBSA, you pay exorbitant secure storage fees, so our importer had to pay those fees.
We were left stranded with in Canada with tens of thousands of dollars of unsold inventory with small retailers. These products are now unsellable inventory that we are not allowed to send back to the manufacturer.
If we are turning classification over to the RCMP, we are asking that the government require the RCMP to develop a structured framework for that process, both for new products and changes to current products in the market. We are also asking that the industry be allowed the opportunity to address its supply chain with respect to products that are being reclassified or facing changes to classification.
Senator McIntyre: I have one final question regarding the issue of classification. I would think that the tabling of the report is crucial, especially when a firearm is changed from non-restricted to restricted or prohibited or vice versa.
Is it possible to obtain a full forensic report from the RCMP on the conversion of firearms?
Mr. Winkel: On changes to classification, we have not been given a full forensic report. Please keep in mind that with these reclassifications there have been no parameters or laws changed inside the legal arena. Yet the RCMP has unilaterally changed their mind and affected a large number of products in the industry.
It’s quite frustrating that the RCMP classified these firearms initially. Then they admitted they made an incorrect classification, reversed it, changed it and caused the industry to absorb penalties of thousands and thousands of dollars.
Our concern is that many mistakes have been made in the past, and we foresee many more in the future.
Ms. de Groot: I have a final point on a fair process for regulating an industry. We want to remove politics from the appeal process, which I understand is the intent of the bill, and not to have a political override on the RCMP decision. Given the six-month to 18-month supply chain from manufacturer to retail in Canada, we as an industry want to have at least one opportunity to appeal an RCMP decision.
I don’t think any other industry regulatory board goes without an appeals process. Right now, we have no ability as an industry to say, “Hey, you’ve made a mistake; we want this relooked at.” Other than going to criminal court, we have no way to appeal an RCMP decision.
Senator McPhedran: My first question is for Mr. Winkel, Mr. Hipwell and anyone else who operates a gun-selling business. Do you keep records of your sales?
Mr. Winkel: Yes, we keep records of the sales for the purposes of warranty and tracking.
Senator McPhedran: What information is in these records?
Mr. Winkel: The level of record keeping would vary from business to business. In our instance we record name, address, firearms licence and phone numbers, only with the permission of the client. We must always ask permission before we do so.
Senator McPhedran: What will Bill C-71 change for you in terms of records?
Mr. Winkel: Many things. First, a burden of record keeping is put on us now to store it for an extraordinarily long period of time. Also, we must now automatically provide proof that we’ve checked the firearms licence and recorded a serial number. Now we are registering the serial number to the vetted process, which is something we currently don’t do.
Senator McPhedran: Sir, do you consider that unreasonable?
Mr. Winkel: Yes. The reason we consider it unreasonable is that it puts a large amount of record-keeping burden on businesses that are not properly trained to keep that kind of record keeping.
Mr. Hipwell: I agree with that. We are to keep records for an extraordinarily long period of time. There is no indication of any of the guidelines as to what types of records they are supposed to be. What format is these records supposed to be? How are they to be stored?
We have privacy issues. There will be some personal information in there because of where the initial point of sale will be. Who is regulating what is kept? How is it kept?
We can’t even provide information to our insurance providers on the guidelines around this so we can make sure we have the appropriate insurance covering that side of the business and people’s private information.
Senator McPhedran: Both of you are keeping records now. Do you consider the records you are keeping now to be reasonable?
Mr. Hipwell: Yes.
Mr. Winkel: Yes.
Ms. de Groot: In our survey of business owners this is something that consumers are not happy about. Record keeping for our business owners is not a concern in that we have done it before. It was our practice prior to the long-gun registry.
Our concern is about when we go to the minister’s staff. We need to know what compliance looks like. This goes to our request to be engaged in the drafting of the regulations that will go behind this legislation. We need compliance to be provable for our insurance industry to do the risk assessment on our privacy insurance, and for us to be able to prove to our business licence inspectors from the CFO office that we are compliant.
When we spoke to the minister’s policy staff, we asked, “Can you please tell us what compliance for a retailer looks like under Bill C-71?” We also wanted to train our businesses and get them prepared for this legislation. They said to us, “We thought they would just do it.” That’s not enough for us to operate our industry on.
Our request today to the Senate is that the Senate recommend the industry association be included in the development of the regulatory framework for this bill, so that we can ensure it is doable for our businesses, help our businesses prove compliance for it and help do the risk assessment for our insurance industry.
Senator McPhedran: If I may understand better your response, the records are already being kept. Presumably you have some knowledge of that. Not only with the request for consultation, but do you have a proposal for what record keeping would be consistent, reasonable and able for there to be compliance?
Ms. de Groot: We would be willing to have that conversation with the minister’s staff. To answer the first part of the question, it depends on the business owner. For example, Whitewood Outdoor Pet Supplies and Bakery Cafe in Saskatchewan is a two-person shop selling firearms in a very small community. They are probably entirely paper based. Even the idea of getting an online verification number will be difficult, which we will address later in the funding conversation for Miramichi.
It depends on the business. A very sophisticated business keeps some portion of the records for warranty service, customer marketing and retention. It really does depend on the size and scale. We will need a regulatory framework that incorporates the distance between those two businesses: a business operating in paper and one operating on a sophisticated POS system. In order to do that, we need to understand what we have to store, how it has to be stored, what our response time for a business owner would be based on a production order, and what the business owner has to do what their business licence inspector walks in and says, “I am compliant with the law.” We need to know what that looks like.
I don’t think it’s one answer. The industry is quite scaled.
Senator Griffin: You’ve indicated there needs to be a structured framework for dealing with products or firearms that are either classified or reclassified by the RCMP. There is a huge loss to the retailer with this, so you mentioned an appeal process as being one possibility to have at least a chance to address this.
What other mitigation specifically would you see being needed so that the retailers are not out?
Ms. de Groot: A structured time frame that’s relative to both new products and protects our distributors. Distributors are the ones bringing in 90 per cent of the imported products available in Canada. We are talking about a six- to eighteen-month time from manufacture to the time they are available for retail in Canada.
For our distributors, the main issue is getting new products to market in a timely fashion. This is related to their distribution agreements that they sign when they find a new product they would like to bring into the Canadian market. We have had products take as long as 2.5 years to be classified, at which point they are no longer new and at which point the distribution agreement for Canada has expired. They are typically 18 months.
For the retail side and taking that manufacture to retail timeline, it is important that industry be notified even when a product is being considered by the RCMP. That allows business owners to do a risk assessment and ask, “Do I want to order more or do I want to stop and wait to see how this turns out?”
As it stands now, sometimes the first time we find out that a change has been made is when a shipment is seized at the border. Thousands of dollars worth of those products are already in the country and we have no opportunity to get them out of our supply chain.
Our ask is that there be a minimum time frame in which industry is notified and allowed to address the supply chain in the country, and that there be a maximum amount of time the RCMP has to get back to us on new products coming into the country.
We understand that is providing the distributor provides what the RCMP requires to classify a product, but we as an industry have never been given that list. We would like to suggest that the RCMP produce for us a list that says these are the nine or 10 things we must have to conduct a product classification when bringing new products into Canada. If the distributor provides them, from that point the RCMP has 90 days.
This is an industry that operates in the same supply chain management system as any other industry. We need to be able to respond.
Senator Griffin: The reason I am asking the question, partially, is that often when an industry is inconvenienced by new regulations, new policies or policy changes, they are often looking for compensation to help mitigate their losses. I don’t hear you saying that.
Ms. de Groot: We would love to know where to apply for that.
Senator Griffin: I want some more detail regarding the ATT, the authority to transport. I am thinking about taking the firearm to be serviced at a gun shop or gunsmith. It would seem to me this would be highly desirable to encourage as opposed to discouraging by more paperwork.
We had a witness last Monday who was working with Olympic shooters. They cited the case of all of a sudden on Friday realizing the firearm they compete needs servicing. If the competition is Sunday and this is a Friday, they have no chance to get that done.
Have you run into this kind of thing? What practical purpose does it serve to discourage people from going to a gunsmith?
Mr. Winkel: On the authorization to transport requirement, we fail to see the service it provides at all. There has been no burden of proof on that to start with. To make a licensed owner get an authorization to transport to bring the firearm to a licensed business for service does seem ridiculous from our standpoint.
It seems to be a public safety concern. These people will be shooting firearms at firearms lines in a competition. If the firearm needs servicing, it should be possible to bring it to a licensed business for servicing.
Today is a great example. The Chief Firearms Office at Orillia is closed today because of weather. Yet there will be firearms matches going on tomorrow night.
These types of obstacles come into play every day. We don’t think the authorization to transport should be required among licensed owners for licensed businesses.
[Translation]
Senator Dagenais: Mr. Hipwell, I’m going to rely on your experience as a police officer to help us demystify some of the statements we have heard here today. I believe I understood you to say that Bill C-71 served no purpose or was not very useful. How do you interpret the allegations that the registering of firearms by the RCMP will help reduce the number of crimes?
[English]
Mr. Hipwell: No, I do not believe the registering of firearms will decrease crime. Criminals do not register their firearms. That point has been brought up in many avenues over the past while.
Bill C-71 is focusing on law-abiding firearms owners. I see nothing that focuses on the criminal element or the criminal misuse of firearms. We need to focus on the criminal element, not on the law-abiding citizen.
[Translation]
Senator Dagenais: We’ve often heard today that Bill C-71 will help combat street gangs that use handguns. We know very well that, when street gangs, the mafia and criminal biker gangs commit murders using handguns, they’re firearms that aren’t registered. So when people say Bill C-71 will prevent street gangs from committing murders in the streets of Toronto, that bill will change absolutely nothing.
[English]
Mr. Hipwell: It is most likely that Bill C-71 will not change anything because there is nothing in it that specifically addresses the gang and criminal use of firearms. I agree with that last statement.
[Translation]
Senator Dagenais: Thank you very much, Mr. Hipwell.
Senator Pratte: First, I’d like to clarify a minor point following the questions from my colleague Senator Dagenais. Bill C-71 doesn’t introduce the registering of firearms by the RCMP. The bill even provides, and I quote:
(4) For greater certainty, nothing in this Act shall be construed so as to permit or require the registration of non-restricted firearms.
[English]
I want to thank CSAAA for bringing forward some pragmatic concrete suggestions. The committee can recommend some of these ideas such as RCMP service standards, for instance. It’s not something we can legislate, but certainly we can suggest that the government and the RCMP do it. The recommendation that the industry be included in the drafting of regulation is a very good idea. The committee would have no hesitation at suggesting this to the government.
I want to go back to the records. There was some mention that there would be personal and private information in these records. Maybe I am misunderstanding the bill, but the bill says that what should be included in these records is the reference number issued by the registrar, the day on which the reference number was issued, the transferee’s licence number, and the firearms make, model and type.
There is no personal information there. There is no requirement to keep the name, address or whatever. Obviously, the businesses can decide. Businesses that have already been doing could continue to do it. It’s just a practice continued. However, there is no requirement in the bill that would require a business to record personal information related to a gun, unless you see something in the bill that I don’t. Do you?
Mr. Winkel: Yes. Again, it comes to the regulatory framework of a bill. We currently have a system where we have to register restricted firearms. We have to transfer the ownership of those. When we go on the Government of Canada website to post this information, we must record the information of the buyers in order to plug it into the Government of Canada website.
Once this system gets put into the regulatory framework, we are quite certain that again it will require businesses to record that information in order to plug it into the website. There has to be some way for us to get that authorization number. There has to be some kind of information put in there. Obviously we need the recorded licence number and personal information to get to that authorization number.
Ms. de Groot: It’s our understanding that the intention of minister’s office is to use the existing restricted online platform to facilitate the verification numbers. That platform is fixed, and it requires a name and address.
Senator Pratte: That is interesting. We will have to study this part. The act does not require a name or an address. There may be work to do on regulations. I hope you are consulted and involved in drafting the regulations, but the act does not require personal information.
Ms. de Groot: That is exactly what is motivating our request to be involved in the regulatory framework. It is the presumption of the bureaucracy that they can use the current system.
That brings up a couple of our concerns around budgeting with this legislation as well. We understand that a Royal Recommendation is attached to the bill with respect to funding for Miramichi and their online systems. However we see no funding attachments for the increased duties that will fall to the provincial CFO offices.
We know the Ontario CFO office is more than at capacity. At one point this summer, they were behind in their transfer requests for businesses by 4,500. To see the provincial CFOs take on the additional responsibility of lifetime background checks and mental health evaluations, we are concerned those offices will not have the resources available to provide the business services we need on a daily and hourly basis.
Also it’s our understanding that the Royal Recommendation attached to Miramichi is for enhancement of their online system. As I mentioned, we have businesses that are not digital. In some cases they are remote and not on a reliable Internet service. It’s our request that budget also be available to Miramichi and that they have telephone service available during retail business hours across Canada. It can’t just be an online platform.
These are things we can address with the government if we are consulted in the crafting of the regulatory framework.
Senator Pratte: Briefly on the authorizations to transport, I think Mr. Caruana or Mr. Winkel said that removal of the automatic authorizations to transport would have devastating effects on your businesses. I am curious to see how you see this unfolding because this automatic authorization to transport is quite recent, right? I think it was 2015, if I am not mistaken.
Before that you needed an ATT to go anywhere with a restricted firearm. The new regime changed that with automatic ATTs for certain destinations. Now we are going back to pre-2015, but the automatic authorizations to transport will still be issued with the licence for gun ranges which is at least 90 per cent of use.
I can understand someone not being in agreement with what Bill C-71 proposes as far as ATTs, but I fail to understand how these changes, which will bring us back in part to pre-2015, will have devastating effects on your businesses.
Mr. Caruana: In these conversations and with such a polarizing topic as firearms, I think people forget the social, hobbyist and sporting aspects of our industry. We like to think of our shop as a community space for members of our community to come in to share knowledge, information on products, upcoming events and especially legislation, et cetera.
To get through to the CFOs office in Ontario, it is a wait of about 35 to 45 minutes on average, if you get through. Generally speaking, you are left with a voice mail that may or may not come back or be responded to in a day or so.
I believe it was Mr. Hipwell who said that if you have a need to visit the store on Friday evening, Saturday or Sunday, you are not given the opportunity to transport your firearm. In an industry that really focuses on not only the hardware or the firearms themselves but on supplemental products, services and accessories, the option not to come in to seek that advice will have profound effects on our business. Realistically, from a dollars and cents standpoint, that is where the lion’s share of the margins exists.
Ms. de Groot: You mentioned something about 80 per cent. I was not sure if you meant that 80 per cent of businesses are ranges. That is not correct.
Senator Pratte: No, no. Over 90 per cent of the transport needs are to gun ranges. That’s what I meant.
Senator Plett: I would like a little information about each of your businesses, if I could, before I ask my questions. I apologize to Mr. Hipwell, who says his business is in southeastern Manitoba.
Mr. Hipwell: Southwestern Manitoba.
Senator Plett: That makes me feel better because I am from southeastern Manitoba.
Are you a full-range business, not necessarily a sporting goods store that would sell hockey equipment, but camping, fishing and hunting supplies? Do you sell all of those supplies?
Mr. Hipwell: I would classify Wolverine Supplies as a full line shooting and outdoor store. We are primarily firearms, optics, ammunition and a bit of archery. The archery side of things is more for our local customer base. We retail products. We are one of those businesses that also distributes, so it gives another hurdle as a business internally. We distribute products from coast to coast and we retail products coast to coast. Our primary function as a business is firearms, ammunition and optics.
Mr. Winkel: We have a firearms retail store that employs 32 people. We are a full-line outdoors business. We carry all the accessories needed for hunting, fishing, shooting and camping. We are also an old type gun shop where we advise clients to bring in trades on a regular basis. We accept firearms coming in from individuals into the store.
Mr. Caruana: Unlike Mr. Winkel and Mr. Hipwell, we are a newer store. We have only in operation for four years. We started with 1,500 square of retail space and we recently moved into a facility with 15,000 square feet, with plans on opening an indoor firing range. We focus exclusively on the firearms industry in terms of firearms, ammunition and accessories.
Senator Plett: Hopefully Bill C-71 won’t shut you down.
We’ve talked about the RCMP having complete discretion over the reclassified firearms. We had one witness today tell us that he had a gun valued at $5,000 and that he would be grandfathered but not able to pass the gun down to his son if it was reclassified.
I started thinking about that. That’s one person with one gun. What would that do for any one of your stores? Do you have guns that could be in danger of all of a sudden being reclassified? If so, what happens to the stock? This man has one gun worth $5,000. A store might have a quarter of a million dollars worth of guns. I am not sure. Would you be compensated for this stock?
Mr. Winkel: Not at all. Back when there was a large reclassification of guns from restricted to prohibited based on barrel length and calibre, our store was in possession of over 500 firearms in that classification. The total devaluation of inventory was estimated at $38,000 at that time.
Senator Plett: All three of you could run with that, and it would be devastating to your operations.
Mr. Caruana: Especially because of the firearms we focus on. The firearm you are referring to one of the family of Swiss rifles. We have a large inventory of them now. If those guns were to become prohibited, we would be stuck with them and unable to sell them. If there was a system in which to sell them to properly licensed individuals, they would be valueless at that point.
Senator Plett: What would you be required to do with them if they are prohibited and you can’t sell them?
Mr. Hipwell: We would deactivate them. Essentially it turns that firearm into an ornament. A step-by-step process has to be gone through where they are cut, welded, parts removed and grounded. A variety of steps happen, and then they are signed off as being a deactivated firearm. They are sold without any paperwork because it’s like having a fancy piece of artwork. They have less value because they are now non-functioning. It loses its value when you take a fully functional product and turned it into a non-functional product.
There is no mechanism for compensation. It is my understanding that compensation has been brought up in the past but that has never gone anywhere. With the proposed changes, which could happen to many other types of firearms overnight. With a stroke of a pen, they would become valueless, and individuals and businesses would be out large amounts of money.
Senator Plett: I am assuming that the criminals would all turn in their declassified and prohibited guns.
Mr. Hipwell: Apparently. That’s what we are told.
Senator Plett: Minister Goodale wants retailers to verify that purchasers of non-restricted firearms have a valid firearms licence before selling them a firearm, despite the fact that it’s already a Criminal Code offence to buy a firearm without a licence, the retailer has to have no reason to believe the purchaser doesn’t have one and, according to Minister Goodale’s own testimony in the House of Commons, vendors often check anyway but are not in fact required to do so.
How often does someone try to buy a long gun without a licence, in any one of your opinions, and do you know of any incident where a person without a PAL successfully purchased a long gun?
Mr. Hipwell: In our business you will not walk out of the store with a firearm without a valid PAL. For the second part of your question, that resorts back to my time as a police officer.
Mr. Caruana: It is important to recognize in your question is the presence of a valid firearms licence or the production of a firearm licence is in itself proof of its validity. If individuals find themselves on the wrong side of the law, the second thing after the initial incident is taken care of is the removal of the licences so that they are unable to produce them when requested.
It’s very much a trustful relationship between retailers or the industry and law enforcement. If the RCMP and the law enforcement sector are doing their due diligence, an individual who is not legally able to be in possession of a firearms licence will not be able to produce one. In that case, the only people I have ever interacted with are people who have basically wandered in off the street and are unaware of firearms or ownership regulations in Canada. The question they ask is a genuine one: “What do I need to do in order to be a firearm owner?”
No, I’ve never seen anyone purchase a firearm or be given a firearm or ammunition without producing a valid firearms licence.
Senator Kutcher: Thank you very much for your contextualization of the potential small business impacts of the bill and your offer of assistance in discussions on regulatory frameworks.
Do you have consensus among the four of you on what would be the top suggestion for one or two ideas to improve the bill itself as opposed to the other components?
Ms. de Groot: I guess that depends on if you agree with the underlying premise of the bill. If the underlying premise and the stated purpose of the bill is to stop illegal firearms transactions in Canada, I don’t think the bill works at all. I am pretty sure there’s a consensus among the entire firearms industry that the bill does nothing to address its stated purpose.
I am not sure there’s anything we could suggest to improve it. The suggestions we are bringing to the table today are for the well-being of our industry if we are to be subject to this legislation, but I think there’s consensus across the board that it does nothing to address its stated purpose.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: I have a question for information purposes and another one that is somewhat unusual. Last June, the head of a Montreal business, Perfection Métal, was sentenced to seven years in prison for manufacturing illegal firearms parts. The police found some 60 weapons during the search, but also on the scenes of murders ordered by organized crime. It would appear that increasing numbers of illegal weapons are being produced in Canada. Does Bill C-71 address this type of problem?
[English]
Mr. Caruana: Just to address the last part of your statement when you said that in Canada there seems to be an increase in illegal manufacture, I would have to disagree, or I would ask you from where that information is derived.
In regard to your specific question about this one business manufacturing illegal parts, any industry or any professional association would be hard pressed to provide a flawless record. The fact that the individual was actually apprehended and worked their way through the justice system is proof that the system actually works.
To address that specifically, it is an extremely rare situation where a professional business is operating on the opposite side of the law or against what we are trying to achieve today. Together with our industry, law enforcement and current legislation, the fact that they were actually apprehended shows that it is effective in curbing the manufacture of illegal firearms.
Ms. de Groot: I am not aware that Perfection Métal had a firearms licence, so I am not sure they’re within our fold.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: The business in question legally produces firearms for paintball games, and it would appear that this person used the same equipment to produce parts for firearms. Police officers report that they’re finding illegally manufactured weapons, particularly at homicide scenes. It happens regularly. So I’d like to know whether Bill C-71 addresses this type of problem.
[English]
Mr. Winkel: In short, to answer your question, I do not believe Bill C-71 will address this issue. I have not seen any part of Bill C-71 which requires a criminal background check or record keeping of paintball machine parts. I might have misread the bill, but I didn’t see where that was covered.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: To conclude, I refer you to a decision rendered by a Seattle judge in June or July 2018. In that decision, the court barred the U.S. government from permitting a business to sell guides for 3-D printers. The government alleged that weapons production with the aid of printers is increasingly accessible as a result of new technologies. Does Bill C-71 legislate on these new technologies which might enable an individual, alone and at home, to produce illegal weapons by combining them with other parts sold in the market?
The idea may be somewhat unusual, but it appears that legislation in the United States has already come up against decisions or prohibitions from distributing instruction books for the production of those weapons.
[English]
Ms. de Groot: In order to manufacture firearms in Canada, you must have a licence to manufacture firearms in Canada. Anybody producing firearms without a business licence is doing so illegally.
Mr. Hipwell: There is nothing in Bill C-71 that addresses either of your questions or concerns. There is nothing at all regarding the manufacturing or the 3-D printing of firearms. Although that was a U.S. example, there is nothing there on the Canadian side.
Mr. Winkel: Yes, especially if that person was producing sulphur for the criminal element. It’s quite unreasonable to assume that somebody that with those intentions would submit their plans to the RCMP for classification.
Senator Richards: I have three short questions as a result of the discussion that anyone can answer.
How arbitrary will the RCMP classification become with regard to hunting rifles and long guns? How could Bill C-71 lead to litigation because of the information you have to keep?
You said 90 per cent of your stock is imported. Who manufactures hunting rifles in our country if 90 per cent imported? Could you provide that information?
Mr. Hipwell: Are you looking for Canadian-made hunting rifles?
Senator Richards: Yes.
Mr. Hipwell: Savage Arms is one.
Ms. de Groot: One.
Senator Richards: Full disclosure, I have six rifles and none of them are Canadian.
Ms. de Groot: To go back to Senator Boisvenu’s question with respect to the impact on inventory, we are not only governed by Canadian law. We are also governed by Homeland Security law in the United States.
As I said, 90 per cent of the firearms in Canada are imported from other countries. Of that 90 per cent, 80 per cent come from the United States. By Homeland Security law, we are not allowed to re-export firearms imported into Canada from the United States. When we’re stranded with inventory in Canada, the bulk of which comes from the United States, we are not allowed to send it back to the person we bought it from. We own it. It is not leaving this country. That’s not by our domestic legislation. That’s governed by homeland security.
Senator Richards: I asked how arbitrary has RCMP classification become or could become.
Mr. Winkel: The one issue we have with the classification and the arbitrary nature of it is that the previous laws written to classify firearms in Canada opened the door to the arbitrary classification by using the word “variant.”
The problem with the word “variant” is that it’s very open to scrutinization. Our concern is that over the years the RCMP has used the variant term in improper classification in many instances. Our concern is that the word “variant” will come up again once the RCMP has unilateral ability to classify firearms.
Senator Richards: How could Bill C-71 lead to litigation because of the information you have to keep on file? Someone mentioned litigation. I was thinking it was probably because of that but perhaps someone could answer that.
Ms. de Groot: Once we got the wording behind Bill C-71, we met frequently with our insurance industry and with our legal industry. There is some concern about privacy breach and with respect to storing the data. If that data was breached in any way, what would be the liability of the retailers in storing it?
That is in respect to smaller retailers who might not have sophisticated systems and might be keeping paper copies. This was an issue with the logs that the industry formally kept as well. We had a couple of instances in the industry with respect to logs. Even today logs for ammunition are a roadmap to where the firearms and ammunition are in private homes. There is some pushback from our insurance industry to add privacy breach insurance to our retail business policies.
Senator Dean: Thank you for very helpful presentations and answers to questions. I am not a member of this committee but I am finding these sessions to be enormously helpful.
Like some other senators in this place, I own and use firearms. I am a registered user. One of those firearms is made in Canada, I am happy to say. I also understand that the large majority or the vast majority of recreational firearms users in Canada are proud, law-abiding citizens.
One other thing by way of preface is that I strongly lean on the delegation of classifications to the RCMP because it’s consistent with the delegation of regulation-making power in other spheres of regulatory work designed to tackle harms. The one I am most familiar with is workplace health and safety.
I agree with the need for transparency and inclusion. We’re all learning that we have a firearms community that is a bit offside, to say the least. We need regulated communities to be onside in sharing the virtues of the goals of regulation.
It’s great to have retailers here. I’d like you to tell us a bit about what you sell. In particular, what’s the split between long guns and handguns? To what extent has that distribution changed over the last 10 to 15 years, if at all?
Mr. Caruana: To address your question, our store, like I said, is quite new and based upon the interests of the founding partners. We probably have one of the widest selection of handguns and what are considered modern sporting rifles or AR-15s. Primarily the platforms that we sell our handguns and AR-15s.
In speaking with a colleague in Quebec, since the long-gun registry has been reintroduced they have seen an almost complete destruction of their long-gun sales. It has motivated people to purchase restricted firearms like handguns, ARs and other such firearms. What we haven’t seen is increased usage. We don’t see these guns turning up at crime scenes and being used to commit crimes.
We sell quite a large volume, probably close to 100 a week, if I had to be put against the wall to make a guess. Our business is based predominantly on restricted firearms. It’s what we do.
Senator Dean: For those of you who have been in the business a bit longer, the question again is: What is the distribution between long guns and handguns? Has that changed and to what extent over the last 10 to 15 years and in what direction?
Mr. Winkel: In our business the split has definitely increased in favour of handguns. Handgun sales are up from where they were years ago. Our split is now basically 55 per cent long arms and 45 per cent handguns. That number has been coming closer together every year we’ve been in business.
The outdoor sports have had a slight decline, both on the hunting and fishing sides over the years, but we’ve seen a fairly large increase in the shooting sports. Believe it or not, a lot of young people don’t like to go outside as much. We’re seeing there’s more growth in the shooting sports, especially indoor.
Mr. Hipwell: On the retail side where we are located we have seen a similar trend. We have seen an increase in restricted firearm. I will say restricted firearm sales because it will include rifles in that classification as well. I would say we have moved up into that 50 per cent range. It could be 60-40. I don’t have the exact numbers in front of me, but that is where the trend has moved up on the retail side.
We’re probably pretty even across the board between traditional hunting rifles and shotguns and non-restricted long guns, as opposed to those that are now into the target shooting and collecting sides. That is where there is an increase in our market. Those individuals have a PAL, an ATT and a restricted PAL. They are transporting their firearms to approved ranges for the purposes of recreational shooting and competition.
Ms. de Groot: I can speak a bit about the industry collective. We recently did a survey for the purpose of this conversation and for the purpose of our consultation with Minister Bill Blair. Some 54 per cent of our business owners report that sport shooting is driving their business as opposed to hunting sports.
There are 25 active competitive shooting organizations globally, five of which are very active here in Canada. I know IPSIC is probably one of the largest. In Nova Scotia alone, IPSIC has 5,000 members, and it’s a similar trend across the country. Sport shooting is definitely driving our industry.
Senator Dean: I know people who sport shoot. I have some sense of how much enjoyment and how much personal satisfaction comes out of that.
If one were to be evidence or data driven and if the government understood that perhaps there was a shift toward more restricted and potentially harmful firearms, it probably wouldn’t be surprising if they wanted to take a fresh look at the regulatory system.
Let’s go to harms. You guys sell guns and I’ve been in your stores and I know you take that really seriously. I’ve had to wait and come back a couple of days later for my PAL to be verified because of the kinds of delays you’re talking about. Nothing was given on trust. Take the gun now and we will let you know when we’ve verified.
The statistics are a bit startling with 7,700 violent crimes in 2017 involving firearms, a 50-50 urban split, 600 suicides annually, and 582 cases in which firearms are used in domestic and partner violence. In light of those harms, I’d ask for your perspective on the proposals that go to background checks.
In this regulatory scheme you are not asked to make determinations about people’s suitability. You look at the PAL. I know you exercise judgment. Obviously you are not going to sell a gun to someone who comes into your store drunk. We recognize that.
Given those harms, this bill would extend background checks. It would seem to me, as somebody who has worked in the regulatory world, that background checks are pretty important when I look at the statistics on harms associated with the use of firearms. It’s important that we get them right. Do you have any perspective on that?
The Chair: Could we allow the question to be answered? We have another panel.
Senator Dean: Do you support the background checks and the proposals in this bill? What’s your reaction to those proposals?
Ms. de Groot: Our business owners rely on those agencies responsible for vetting PAL holders to do their jobs and to be adequately funded, adequately trained and adequately resourced to do their jobs. For the safety of our stores and our employees, we as business owners rely on those agencies to do their jobs so that when somebody comes into our store with a valid PAL they are a valid customer of ours.
We are not mental health experts, social experts or experts on domestic violence. We have a number of initiatives that we are working on to educate retailers on things like straw purchasing. That’s an area where we can contribute, but on these areas with respect to background checks, that is not our area of expertise.
Senator Dean: That’s somebody else’s responsibility, and I wondered what your perspectives were on the proposed changes to background checks by those people who conduct them.
The Chair: One last answer, and I am closing this panel. It’s fine to say that you can’t answer.
Mr. Hipwell: I am just trying to determine how to answer that question when it’s a lot of opinion. I don’t think we’re the right people to ask for an opinion on a background check and the validity of it. It all depends on the intended purpose behind that background check, and on how and who conducts it.
Mr. Winkel: From the business aspect, like Adam Caruana said, without the background check being done in a timely manner we have no market to sell any items to.
The Chair: I thank you very much for appearing. I know the senators have found it very interesting. We’re particularly grateful to those who took the trip today on difficult roads, such as those of us who come from southern Ontario.
We will move to the next panel. I thank our witnesses for their patience. It has been a long day, but we look forward to hearing from you.
We have with us Jooyoung Lee, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Toronto, and Professor Brian Mishara, from Department of Psychology, Université du Québec à Montréal, via video conference.
Brian Mishara, Professor, Department of Psychology, Université du Québec à Montréal, as an individual: I can certainly hear you. My voice is hoarse this week. I hope that you can hear me.
The Chair: Can you just hold? Our interpreters are having difficulty hearing you.
Could you try closer to the mike and we will see if we can pick you up better?
Mr. Mishara: It is one of these funny tortoise mikes but I can try picking it up a little. Is that any better?
The Chair: Mr. Mishara, I think we will have to try to reschedule you because the interpreters cannot pick up what you are saying as a result of your hoarseness.
Mr. Mishara: There is nothing I can do about it. This is the best I can come up with, with the mikes.
The Chair: Let me just say how much appreciate your effort, but unfortunately when we cannot pick up the interpretation for the purpose of the record we are not able to have an accurate record. We will be in touch with you to reschedule.
Mr. Lee, you are on your own. Please go ahead.
Jooyoung Lee, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Toronto, as an individual: Honourable senators, thank you for inviting me to share my ideas about Bill C-71. I’ve spent the past 14 years of my career studying gun violence in places like south-central Los Angeles, Philadelphia and now Toronto. This work has put me in hospitals with victims and families. It’s also led me into underground prescription drug markets with survivors looking for pain relief. It has put me at memorials for the dead who are mourned by families and friends.
When I first moved to Canada seven years ago, I was struck by how much better Canada’s gun control system is than the United States system. I was struck by the fact that people who want to buy guns have to get a licence, that they have to take a safety training course and that many of the most popular firearms in the United States are restricted or even prohibited here.
To be sure, there is a lot that Canada gets right about gun control, but having better gun control laws than the U.S. is a poor benchmark for effective policy making. If we look beyond the United States, we see that Canada currently ranks in the top five among 22 OECD nations when it comes to firearm death rates including homicides and suicides committed with firearms.
In 2017, police reported a total of 660 homicide victims in Canada, 40 per cent of whom or 266 victims were killed by firearms. This doesn’t include suicides committed with a firearm, which account for three-fourths of gun-related deaths in Canada. Nor does it account for the many more people who get shot and survive, thanks in large part to our ever-evolving trauma care response.
In my reading, Bill C-71 will help reduce annual gun deaths and injuries in Canada by strengthening two domains of current gun law. First, it can strengthen the background check system. As I read the bill, I was struck by the fact that Canada only requires gun buyers to subject the past five years of their lives to screening. This provision assigns an arbitrary significance to a five-year window prior to the point of purchasing a gun.
As a sociologist, one of the tenets of good life course research is that you have a better understanding of who a person is when you are able to have multiple observations of them over time. This perspective allows you to identify patterns and behaviours that are not as clear when you limit your observations to a smaller interval of time.
By the same token, we know from a pretty robust literature in criminology and health research that violent behaviour and mental health issues don’t cluster into neat five-year intervals. These can be lifelong issues, and CFOs ought to have access to this information when determining whether a person should own a firearm.
It would be akin to me trying to describe a person’s life history and character only by basing this on five years of observations. This would not pass the methodological standards of life course research in sociology, which highlights the importance of knowing a person’s entire life history before you know who they are.
Bill C-71 also helps strengthen law enforcement oversights on the informal and illicit flow of firearms between people by requiring transferees to have their licences verified before a transfer can be completed. This is a critical issue in my reading as interdisciplinary researchers across the board have documented how firearms move in the real world. Contrary to Hollywood movies that show criminals getting their guns from elaborate gun-trafficking rings, many more people get guns from family, friends or people in social networks.
Daniel Webster, a leading researcher on gun policy from Johns Hopkins University, and his colleagues neatly summarized this point in a 2001 peer-reviewed article in Injury Prevention. They wrote:
Criminals and delinquent youth tend to obtain guns in private transactions with acquaintances and to a lesser degree from thefts. Although these transactions are difficult to regulate directly, laws that restrict legal gun ownership and gun transfers such as licensing and registration could constrain the supply of guns from these typical sources of crime guns.
Requiring verification for transfers is a mechanism that will help constrain the illicit flow of non-restricted firearms that are also used to commit violent crimes in Canada.
In the end, most social scientists are in agreement that there is not a single answer to solving gun violence. However, there’s also widespread agreement that reductions in gun violence are most sustainable when you attack the problem from multiple angles.
Tightening gun control laws is one of these angles. It is a core feature that can reduce violence and death when paired with attempts to change underlining conditions that funnel at-risk youth into gangs, drug dealing and other risky activities.
The Chair: Thank you. We will now move to questions.
[Translation]
Senator Dagenais: Mr. Lee, you mentioned that Canada is one of the countries where firearms regulation is excellent. However, you then added that one of the aims of Bill C-71, which is to determine the classification of firearms — not to register them, but that’s not much of a difference — will help address the increase in armed violence and especially violence among street gangs.
You and I both know that street gangs don’t register their firearms. Their firearms come from the black market or are smuggled into the country, often from the United States. We all know the point of entry; I don’t need to name it. However, do you think the prohibition or classification of handguns in Canada will have an impact, however slight, on the availability of weapons and Toronto?
Our witnesses often tend to compare Canada with Australia, the United Kingdom, Denmark and Norway. They may be very beautiful countries, but they’re far away from here. One point we should not forget is that Canada has a very permeable border with the United States. Wouldn’t it be logical to say that, as a result of our border with the United States, organized crime will always be able to move weapons along our borders? In fact, isn’t that what it’s currently doing? Will Bill C-71 shrink the black market between Canada and the United States? Will it prevent trafficking in handguns?
I believe instead that Bill C-71 will hurt the honest people who engage in hunting or target shooting, for whom shooting is a sport. I’m not sure Bill C-71 will help address the phenomenon of street gangs that use handguns. I’d like to hear you on that point.
[English]
Mr. Lee: I have to say that the translation was not coming through on the second part, but I got most of the gist of it.
My comment about gun laws being good in Canada is based on this perception of the United States being a kind of reference point. As an expat from the U.S., relatively speaking Canada is doing better on all of the indicators we care about when we talk about gun violence and common sense gun laws.
The statistic that really jumps out to me is that Canada is not doing better than many other wealthy, industrialized nations in the world. There is widespread consensus among social scientists that there is a correlation between the kinds of laws you have in place domestically to control the flow of firearms between people and those to regulate who can and cannot buy firearms. These kinds of laws have impact on things like suicide rates, violent crime rates including things like homicide and non-fatal injuries, and the spread of different kinds of crimes that don’t even involve physical injuries. These are armed robberies committed with a gun. These are issues of domestic violence when a person has a gun and uses it to intimidate someone. There is a whole kind of range of crimes connected to possessing a firearm.
Bill C-71 takes some modest steps toward making the background check system better. It also takes some steps toward regulating the transfer of firearms between people. There are still 220-some people in Canada annually who are being killed with firearms in homicides and 600 or so who are killing themselves with firearms. There is still some work to do. One of the merits of Bill C-71 is that it is attempting to control the flow of guns in those ways.
On the second point about guns just coming from the United States, that has been an assumption for many years. There is some evidence to suggest, over the years historically, that guns seized from crimes that have been submitted to traces are coming from the United States.
The problem that we face is that we don’t have a robust database to say where all these guns are coming from. This is all left at the discretion of local police who then collaborate with agencies like the ATF and submit guns that are seized to these kinds of gun traces. We don’t have robust enough data to really say it is all coming from the U.S. or it is coming domestically.
I have been struck by recent reports from the Toronto police and other police departments saying that a higher percentage of the firearms they are seizing and submitting the traces are now domestic guns coming from Canada. There is often this belief that these guns are coming from the United States. That part is true, as is your point about how Canada is geographically and contextually very different from a lot of other OECD nations. There is a unique dilemma in sharing a border with a country that leads the world in terms of gun consumption. The reports from local police saying more guns are now being found to have come from Canada is an indicator that things could be changing.
[Translation]
Senator Dagenais: But you’ll admit, as I do, that, in many instances, when crimes are committed with handguns by street gangs, criminal biker gangs or the mafia, police don’t find the weapons in question. Don’t bother trying to solve a murder that was committed by criminal biker gangs with a handgun. It’s hard to establish statistics when you can’t find a weapon.
However, apart from background checks going back more than five years, what aspects of Bill C-71 do you think will help us lower crime rates?
[English]
Mr. Lee: This was sort of what I alluded to at the end of my opening remarks. There is widespread consensus among gun violence researchers that one policy lever that will not magically reduce gun violence.
Across the board, among people who study this systematically, there is a belief that gun control laws are part of the solution. Eliminating poverty in the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods is also part of the solution. Providing public health interventions for young people who are at risk of getting involved in retaliation violence is a solution.
There are many different ways to address it, but a lot of times what happens in these public conversations about the gun violence problem is that there is this belief there is one thing to do. That’s simply not the case. Gun control is one of those many different levers that will help reduce gun violence.
Senator McPhedran: A translation of a statement that you are reported to have made in La Presse last summer was that whenever you have a legal market for civilians to have hand-held firearms there is always a possibility that these types of legally purchased firearms may fall into the hands of people who want to use them to commit carnage.
Would you agree that this issue is directly in Bill C-71? There is the obligation for licensed owners to make sure they transfer their firearms to someone holding a licence, and the obligation to notify such transfer to the authorities. Is this part of the approach you are recommending?
Mr. Lee: Yes. It is kind of the elephant in the room. Whenever you have a legitimate industry around firearms, you also have an illicit one. As I was reading that part of the bill, it seemed to me like a mechanism that would help make police work easier. It would help create greater monitoring over the flow of firearms.
One of the more difficult aspects of controlling guns is that once a person has gone through the established hoops to get a PAL and to go through a background check to get a firearm and once it’s out there in the world, we are essentially working on the honour system.
The vast majority of PAL licence holders, people who own firearms in Canada, are law-abiding people who are meticulous about transferring firearms, the practices of transporting them and so forth, but there are other individuals who are not. This particular part of the bill would create oversight for law enforcement to help monitor where non-restricted guns are going.
Senator McPhedran: To follow up on that, I had an informational discussion with one of the industry representatives today. She agreed when I asked the question that as far as Bill C-71 was concerned the requirements on gun sellers were not more onerous than the requirements we already have on car sellers.
Could you comment on that and whether you consider the possibility of being prosecuted for illegally transferring firearms a reasonable and practical tool in the approach that you are recommending?
Mr. Lee: Getting a firearm informally and getting it transferred shouldn’t be easier than getting a car. Any time you have a policy that requires individuals to have a valid licence and to demonstrate that they are still meeting the requirements to have the licence and that this is reported, you are creating a paper trail that allows law enforcement an easier means through which to trace how these guns are moving. That’s what I took away from that part of the bill.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: Welcome to the committee, Professor Lee. A few seconds ago, you said Bill C-71 would improve the background check system.
Last fall — I think it was in November — The Canadian Press had access to an internal RCMP report expressing concern over the significant delays in providing background checks. I see that as a kind of contradiction of what you said when you suggested Bill C-71 would improve background checks. I’d like to understand how you can draw that conclusion today.
[English]
Mr. Lee: Could I ask for clarification? Are they delays in terms of approving and denying background checks?
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: Perhaps it’s up to you to clarify your statement. You say the bill will improve the background checks system. However, last fall, the RCMP said there was a major problem with background checks. We were also informed that there was a background check backlog in nearly 2,000 cases in British Columbia.
I’m trying to understand what’s in Bill C-71 that will miraculously solve the backlog problem overnight.
[English]
Mr. Lee: I am not sure if it would solve the problem with backlogs. To me, that seems like an infrastructure question about how much funding and how many resources the RCMP has to process background checks.
My point was that any time you have more data you can come to a more informed decision about a person’s likelihood to offend and a person’s mental health history. This five-year window is an arbitrary one. We know about violent behaviours and mental health issues.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: Your statement would be correct if police departments controlled background checks for patients in the health care system. However, an officer who submits a request to a psychiatrist for information on an applicant’s history has no control over how fast the health system responds. How will Bill C-71 give the officer more power to require the health care system to answer his request?
[English]
Mr. Lee: I am not sure if it would address your point about the timeliness of processing background checks.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: It was you who said that Bill C-71 would improve the background checks system; I’m not saying that; it was you who said it.
I’m saying that we’re seeing very significant backlogs right now and that police services don’t control the health care system or, at least, psychiatric services. So if we increased the number of controls — because checks won’t go back five years anymore but over an entire lifetime now — I wonder how the system will be able to respond to the backlogs were currently seeing.
[English]
Mr. Lee: As I was stating, my point about strengthening the background checks was not about timeliness of these checks. It was about giving the people who determine whether or not a person passes more power by highlighting a range of observations. That’s the point at which I think Bill C-71 would help control the flow of firearms at the point of purchase.
The way I understand at the current moment is that individuals have to submit five years of their life history prior to the point of purchasing a gun. The assumption is that you can take that five-year chunk of time and generalize that to who the person is across their biography and predict with some certainty their likelihood of offending or using the gun for nefarious means.
As a social scientist, that doesn’t meet the methodological standards of good life history research which says that you should have as many observations as you can about a person over their life course before you can make that kind of determination or before you can say this is a person who will use this responsibly or not. It’s empowering the RCMP to have more data at their disposal when making these kinds of determinations.
I am not sure pragmatically what that would mean in terms of the backlog you are referring to, but when I was speaking about strengthening the background check system, I was speaking specifically about the fact that the RCMP would have more data to assess a person’s fitness for owning a firearm.
Senator Pratte: Professor Lee, you said earlier there was a wide consensus among gun violence experts that there was not one silver bullet but many different parts to the solution. You also said there was a wide consensus that gun control laws have an impact on suicide rates, homicide rates and so on.
Earlier today other researchers who said exactly the opposite. They said there was widespread consensus that there was no relationship between the number of firearms in circulation and gun crime and gun violence. They also said there was no demonstration in the research done, notably by Dr. Langmann and Professor Mauser, that gun control laws work and that the evidence was they don’t have any effect on homicide and suicide rates.
Are you reading different reports or journals?
Mr. Lee: Perhaps. To the first point about guns in circulation and correlation to violence, if you look at the United States, among wealthy industrialized nations the U.S. is an outlier in terms of gun consumption and guns in circulation. It is also an outlier among wealthy nations when it comes to gun crimes in general. If that was the point, I am not sure where that kind of point came from.
To the other point about gun control laws not working, I would have to see what kinds of studies they are referring to, to weigh in on that. A number of researchers who worked in fields spanning the fields of medicine, public health, sociology and criminology are saying the exact opposite. I am not sure what studies they were referring to.
Senator Pratte: You also mentioned that longer or deeper background checks were necessary and useful. In the view of gun control opponents they are measures that do not address the “real problem” of guns and gangs or criminals. In their view also this bill only harasses law-abiding gun owners. What is your comment on that?
Mr. Lee: To me, the term “real problem” is also problematic. It is an issue that has multiple angles as I alluded to in my opening remarks. When you say that there is a real problem, it presumes that if we just address this other thing the problem of gun violence would somehow disappear.
The work that I have been building on, citing and reading suggests that gun control is part of the real solution in addition to a number of other kinds of policy levers that would change the conditions which funnel at-risk youth into things like gangs.
One of the studies I have been building on is a piece in 2016 in Epidemiologic Reviews by Julian Santaella-Tenorio. It makes a global comparison of gun control laws across the globe and how that’s broadly correlated to reducing gun violence. A number of other studies have this bird’s eye view. They compare and look across different countries to find patterns to make that assertion.
I am not sure what studies they are drawing from, but there are studies that point to the opposite direction as well.
Senator Kutcher: We very much appreciate, Professor Lee, your thoughtful approach.
There can be confusion about conflicting research findings, for sure, and I think Senator Pratte has identified some of those. Overall, much of the research is correlational epidemiological studies, time-frame analyses and binomial analyses.
More recently we are starting to see quasi-experimental prospective cohort studies such as in the IDF studies. What is your professional opinion on the quality of the latter group of studies as opposed to the earlier kind of work?
Mr. Lee: In the scientific community in general they are viewed in some circles as more valid and more robust because you can isolate a variable you are testing or manipulating. Then you can say with a lot of certainty that if you do this, this is the outcome.
I also come from a tradition that does not think that experimental design is the holy grail in science either. There’s quite a bit of stuff that you miss when you’re only looking at it through that lens.
As a qualitative researcher, I spent a lot of time with people on the ground in communities. The meanings of gun violence, injury and addiction from injury are lost in these experimental studies. It would depend on whom you talk to about which studies have more weight.
Senator Kutcher: Thank you for raising the issue of the qualitative side. I think this is the first time someone has raised that issue. I would agree with you that it’s a fundamentally important component. Mixed methods of research gives us a better picture of what we’re looking at.
Could you share with us your understanding of the qualitative research on this particular issue?
Mr. Lee: A lot of the work I have done looked at how shootings unfold. There is this narrative that shootings are gang violence, particularly within marginalized communities. A number of studies have disputed that kind of framing. A lot of times there is a presumption that if individuals are affiliated with a gang, if they have family members in a gang or if they’re profiled as a gang member by police, they’re necessarily carrying out violence on the behest of the gang. A lot of shootings in poor urban neighbourhoods get classified as gang violence.
I can give you an example. One of the respondents in one of my studies admitted to me in the hospital that he was a gang member. He said that the other person who shot him was also a gang member, but the dispute they had had nothing to do with their respective affiliations but everything to do with a love triangle. The guy who shot him was the younger brother of a woman he was cheating on. This was an interpersonal dispute that was made more violent by the fact that these individuals had access to firearms.
The nuance and how shootings unfold are lost when we only look at experimental design studies or even quantitative studies that are done relying on official administrative data. You don’t get these kinds of back stories when you’re approaching this phenomenon from the ivory tower, which is something I am critical of for a lot of colleagues of mine.
The meaning of gun violence is lost when we don’t approach it from the ground level and we don’t see the kinds of long-term health impacts. When we talk about gun violence, the kind of holy grail indicator is homicide, but homicide is just the tip of the iceberg. Many more people survive shootings these days than who end up dying. People who are exposed to gun violence, even passively by just hearing about it, are also traumatized and suffer a range of different kinds of health effects that diminish their relationships with people and disrupt their ability to do well in school or at their job. The effects of gun violence are much broader than just people who get killed.
Senator Kutcher: Thank you for that humanistic perspective. It is an important one that had not been highlighted to date.
From your reading of this bill, is there anything in it, as you see it, that you consider to be a severe burden on gun owners or on gun sellers?
Mr. Lee: I guess I would ask you what you mean by “severe burden.”
Senator Kutcher: They are not my words.
Mr. Lee: I guess it would come down to how you interpret the phrase, “severe burden.” I am of the belief that the mechanisms in Bill C-71 would impose extra work for lawful gun owners. Whether or not that’s severe, I am not sure. If 200-odd people are being killed every year and many more are being injured, it might not be that severe of a burden to ask people to verify their licence when they’re transferring a firearm, if it means a parent doesn’t have to bury their child or if it means that a person doesn’t have to live with a colostomy bag for the rest of their life after suffering a gunshot wound.
These things are very costly. Everybody pays for the long-term health care for wounded people who are overwhelmingly from disadvantaged neighbourhoods and communities.
There are extra responsibilities and things that people would have to do, but I guess it would really come down to what you mean by severe burden.
Senator Richards: When I get into this kind of legislative stuff, I sometimes think of Tolstoy’s exclamation that everyone thinks of changing the world but no one is willing to change themselves.
I agree with you. I’d love to see violence stopped. I’d love to see all of this reduced dramatically. From the time I was 15, the same things have been said. The statistics and criteria about poverty, unemployment and racism are the same. We have had a very limited success rate in all of this.
I am not sure how Bill C-71 will help in the broader scheme of things when there are still poverty, hopelessness, bigotry, gender violence and hatred. I don’t think the systemic causes can be addressed by this legislation.
I am not the only one to say this. A former gang leader who was here three weeks ago pretty much said the exact same thing. To address the problem by gun legislation will not really work unless the ideas inherent in violent acts are looked at. I’d like you to comment on that.
Senator McPhedran: On just a point of clarification before you answer that, the fact is that not a single gang leader who came here and spoke to us rejected Bill C-71. Every one of them supported adopting the bill.
Senator Richards: Yes, but he did say what I just said. He did say that.
Senator McPhedran: Not the way you said it.
The Chair: We have a disagreement about what was said.
Mr. Lee, would you answer the question?
Mr. Lee: When we’re talking about the root causes, those are certainly important to address. Those things are perhaps beyond the scope of this bill, but in my reading of the bill it is identifying two different things that help facilitate episodic violence using firearms.
One is the person who can get through a background check. Their record doesn’t come up with a red flag because it didn’t happen within the five years prior to the point of trying to purchase a gun. The other is that there is this informal market where firearms can move. If a person can transfer a firearm to somebody who does not have their licence verified, they can do with the firearm what they want.
One of the interesting stats I discovered in doing some reading was the fact that according to Stats Canada from 2009 to 2016 there has been an increase in the number of guns stolen or reported stolen to police. That’s another mechanism through which people get firearms when they want to use them for crime.
I don’t think the bill is addressing the root causes. I think there is a problem when people make comments about this not addressing the real causes of gun violence because the consensus among health researchers is that there are many different policy levers that will address gun violence, one of which is tightening gun control laws. That’s not to say that it is at the expense of also addressing root causes like poverty, racism and other issues that affect at-risk youth.
When people say that there is a tendency to try to make this into a one-cause issue when it’s a very complicated issue.
Senator Richards: I agree it’s a very complicated issue, sir. I’ve known 11 murder victims, and nine were killed without firearms. I can name every one of them. It is a very complex issue.
I am not being cynical or facetious. I would like to know your opinion on that, that’s all. I know it’s an old and stupid saying that guns don’t kill, people kill. However, there is something about that in our social network that is absolutely true.
Mr. Lee: Yes. One of the insights I’ve gleaned from my research is that the presence of firearms in conflictual situations, meaning there’s a back and forth where people are arguing with each other over time and where they are having disputes over time, makes those conflicts more serious and raises the stakes of the conflicts. There’s a bunch of good work on how having access to firearms can lead people to do violence that they might not have done, simply because of the design of a firearm. It’s a very efficient tool for killing.
In a number of different studies across time in criminology people talked about how they were overcome with rage in the moment. They used the gun and then regretted it immediately afterward. That’s the violence that is only made possible in everyday life by having access to firearms.
Senator Richards: I respectfully disagree with that. I respectfully disagree that only firearms can cause that, or that a person in a rage can’t use something else.
I will say one more thing. I have access to firearms and I would never, ever think of using them, no matter how much rage I had.
The Chair: Senator Richards, is there a question you would like to ask?
Senator Richards: No. Thank you very much.
[Translation]
Senator Dagenais: Madam Chair, I have a point of order. Senator McPhedran spoke several times during a period of questions. I believe Senator Richards had the floor, and we have to respect that. She can’t just speak every time someone says the contrary of what she thinks. That was an exchange between Senator Richards, who had the floor, and Mr. Lee. So perhaps we should respect that.
[English]
Senator McPhedran: Thank you, Madam Chair. My intervention was about misleading the witness.
Senator Richards: How was I misleading the witness?
The Chair: Perhaps we can we have this discussion offline.
Dr. Lee, thank you very much. I know all senators appreciate the fact you would make the trip, and your contribution has been significant.
I would ask all senators and the committee to stay for an in camera session.
(The committee continued in camera.)