Standing Senate Committee on National Security, Defence and Veterans Affairs (44th Parliament, 1st Session)

THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY, DEFENCE AND VETERANS AFFAIRS

EVIDENCE

OTTAWA, Monday, October 30, 2023

The Standing Senate Committee on National Security, Defence and Veterans Affairs met with videoconference this day at 3 p.m. [ET] to continue their study on Bill C-21, An Act to amend certain Acts and to make certain consequential amendments (firearms).

Senator Tony Dean (Chair) in the chair.

[English]

The Chair: Honourable senators, welcome to this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on National Security, Defence and Veterans Affairs. I am Tony Dean, representing Ontario, the chair of this committee. I am joined today by fellow committee members, whom I would ask now to introduce themselves, beginning on our right with our deputy chair.

[Translation]

Senator Dagenais: Jean-Guy Dagenais from Quebec.

[English]

Senator Cardozo: Andrew Cardozo from Ontario.

Senator Anderson: Margaret Dawn Anderson, Northwest Territories.

Senator Pate: Kim Pate. I live here on the unceded, unsurrendered territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe people. Thank you for joining us.

Senator Dasko: Donna Dasko, senator from Ontario.

Senator Yussuff: Hassan Yussuff, senator from Ontario.

Senator M. Deacon: Marty Deacon, senator from Ontario.

[Translation]

Senator Miville-Dechêne: Julie Miville-Dechêne from Quebec.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you, colleagues. To my left is the committee’s clerk, Ericka Dupont.

For those watching the session today, we are continuing our study of Bill C-21, An Act to amend certain Acts and to make certain consequential amendments (firearms).

Today we will hear from five panels of witnesses consisting of academics, researchers and firearms control and anti-violence organizations.

For our meeting today, we are going to be discussing topics related to gun violence. This might be disturbing, both to people in the room with us as well as some watching and listening at home. If anyone requires support, there are services available 24-7 toll-free through Wellness Together Canada, 1-866-585-0445, if you would like to talk to someone. That number again is 1-866-585-0445.

Senators and parliamentary employees are reminded that the Senate’s Employee and Family Assistance Program is available to them and offers short-term counselling for personal work-related concerns as well as crisis counselling.

In our first panel today, we have the pleasure of welcoming Pamela Palmater, Professor and Chair in Indigenous Governance, Toronto Metropolitan University; and A. J. Somerset, author and subject matter expert. We are joined via video conference by Emma Cunliffe, Former Director, Research and Policy, Mass Casualty Commission and Professor, Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia.

Thank you all for joining us today.

We invite you to provide your opening remarks, to be followed by questions from our members, and I remind you that you each have five minutes for your testimony.

We start today with Dr. Palmater. Dr. Palmater, you may begin when you are ready.

Pamela Palmater, Chair in Indigenous Governance, Toronto Metropolitan University, as an individual: Thank you very much. Thank you for inviting me here. Wela’lin.

This is an issue that is very important to me both personally in terms of my advocacy work but also in terms of the research work that I have been doing. I have been researching and engaging on issues related to national security for 15 years. My focus is criminality and corruption in policing, but also far-right and White nationalist groups, as well as the link between hate groups and gun violence and who is at risk from that.

Domestic threats in the U.S. and Canada from White nationalist groups that spew hate, incite violence, both in person in their tiny little groups and online, is rising in Canada. It is considered a domestic threat both here in Canada and the U.S. It has happened so quickly in terms of the increase that many of us don’t believe that the government is fully prepared for this, and gun control is one of those issues, because that does pose a serious public safety threat, but also a threat to national security.

The White nationalist movement is sometimes hidden under the guise of the so-called populist movement, and sometimes they will call themselves far-right conservatives, but they often align themselves with the gun lobby itself.

You have a mix of White nationalist leaders who also purport to be anti-vaccination, pro-free speech, pro-cop. It is a big mix of people who get into this.

Now we know that they have also, sadly, infiltrated law enforcement and the military. There are two different kinds of national security threats there. They are often in the background, agitating as pro-pipeline, pro-choice, pro-gun and also being anti-immigration, anti-vaccine, anti-feminism and anti-Indigenous. According to all of the data we’ve collected on these cells in Canada, they incite violence against a variety of groups.

One group could be anti-Muslim, and another group could be anti-women and the Black community.

The one common denominator in all of these cells is being anti-Indigenous. So guns especially present a specific threat to Indigenous peoples, and the issue of murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls is a statement to that fact.

You have segments of society — human traffickers and obviously drug dealers and gangs, but also certain segments of society that are involved in targeting Indigenous peoples but also Indigenous women.

We all know that guns are the weapon of choice, especially guns that can have multiple rounds at a time, automatic, semi-automatic, and that causes mass casualties at schools, universities, churches and various other killing sprees, not unlike the mass casualty event in Nova Scotia, sadly.

We also have the highest level of online extremism in the world. That should be a particular concern when it comes to the link between online extremism and White hate groups and gun violence, and their close connection to the gun lobby, cannot be understated in terms of the amount of resources they have access to. They are able to go to court and challenge all of these things, whereas victims of violence often don’t.

They are different from traditional terrorist groups, which tend to be larger in nature, more identifiable and have been on the radar of anti-terrorism law enforcement, whereas these smaller groups are much harder to find in the online noise of online hate, which is why I am in favour of significant limits on the purchase of both the types of weapons and the number of weapons. I am also a proponent of in-depth, detailed, ongoing and repeated background checks for everyone, and not just a criminal background check, but details including have they been inciting violence online, have they abused their former spouses, and have they been guilty of other things?

I am also in favour of the confiscation of weapons, at least on an interim basis, when men are charged with violent crimes, including domestic abuse, for example, and I believe we could have avoided many of the casualties in Nova Scotia had that been the case.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Dr. Palmater.

We will now hear from Dr. Cunliffe. Whenever you are ready, Dr. Cunliffe, please proceed.

Emma Cunliffe, Former Director, Research and Policy, Mass Casualty Commission and Professor, Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia, as an individual: Thank you very much, indeed, to the members of this Standing Senate Committee on National Security, Defence and Veterans Affairs for inviting me to speak with you today. I begin by acknowledging that I speak from the traditional ancestral and unceded territories of the Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh and Squamish peoples in the place we know as Vancouver.

As the honourable chair mentioned, I am a professor of law at UBC. I also had the honour of serving as the director of research and policy at the Mass Casualty Commission. I am not speaking today on behalf of the commissioners, but I will direct this honourable committee’s attention to some key parts of the commission’s final report and share some of what I learned in my capacity as the director of research and policy for the commission.

The commission’s orders-in-council directed the commissioners to examine issues including access to firearms and issues touching on police responses to reports of the possession of prohibited firearms and matters related to coordination among law enforcement agencies including the Canadian Firearms Program and Canada Border Services Agency.

The commissioners were directed to give particular consideration to groups and individuals who were differentially impacted by the mass casualty or had the capacity to be differentially impacted by the recommendations made by the commissioners with the stated goal of identifying lessons learned and making recommendations that could help prevent and respond to similar incidents in the future.

To further their mandate, the commissioners looked closely at empirical research on firearms regulation, including the effectiveness of steps taken in other jurisdictions in response to mass shootings. The commissioners attended carefully to the particular questions of rural Canadian culture with respect to firearms, hunting, and Indigenous rights and title.

The commissioned expert reports received evidence and submissions from participants, including the Canadian National Firearms Association, the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights and the Canadian Coalition for Gun Control, as well as women’s anti-violence organizations. They convened expert panels and stakeholder discussions on these topics.

Senators, you may see key aspects of the commissioners’ conclusions and recommendations made on the basis of that body of evidence in chapter 13 of volume 4 of their final report. The commissioners also addressed some specific aspects of rural firearms culture in chapter 2 of volume 4, and the broader research on mass shootings in chapter 7 of Volume 3 of their final report.

The commissioners found, as others have done, that the question of firearms regulation is characterized by growing polarization in Canada. Canadian law clearly states that there is no right to bear arms in Canada and that owning a firearm is a privilege that is susceptible to careful regulation in the interests of public safety and to being withdrawn where appropriate.

The commissioners found that the best evidence demonstrates convincingly that prohibiting handguns for most purposes and prohibiting centre fire, semi-automatic long guns has led, in other jurisdictions, to a statistically significant decline in the rate of homicides by shooting; the overall rate of gun deaths, including suicide; the frequency of mass shooting incidents; and, the lethality of mass casualty incidents when they do occur. This evidence is statistically robust, and it is overwhelming.

The commissioners also found a very significant, indeed overwhelming, body of evidence to demonstrate strong connections between gun violence, intimate partner violence, gender-based violence and mass casualty incidents. In the Nova Scotia mass casualty and as it appears devastatingly in the incident that occurred last week in Sault Ste. Marie, a significant history of intimate partner violence and family violence, coupled with concerns about access to firearms, has led to mass casualty incidents occurring in Canada. Those are two striking recent examples. They are far from being the only examples, the Renfrew County femicides being yet another. The commissioners found a very strong through line between misogyny and intimate partner violence, gender-based violence and gun violence.

The commissioners particularly considered the arguments made by some that reforming firearms law in response to these incidents is opportunistic or takes advantage of the victims of these crimes. They found overwhelmingly that such reforms had been rational and had rationally addressed gaps and shortcomings in regulations and enforcement that have been identified by incidents such as the Nova Scotia mass casualty or the Sault Ste. Marie killings.

Bill C-21 addresses many of the recommendations made by the commissioners. Those measures must be accompanied by implementation of other measures, which I would be pleased to speak to during the question time.

Thank you, senators, for your attention.

The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Cunliffe.

Finally, Mr. Andrew Somerset. Please begin when you are ready.

A.J. Somerset, Author and Subject Matter Expert, as an individual: Thank you. My chief area of interest is in the rhetoric of firearms politics and also in rationales for gun ownership.

A shift has occurred in gun culture in North America — in Canada and the United States — in the reasons that people own firearms. In the 1990s, only 6% of Canadians reported that they owned firearms for self-defence. According to recent polling done for Public Safety Canada, that number is now 24% to 30%. There has been a great growth in interest in owning guns for the purpose of, essentially, shooting people. That is accompanied by a shift — again, this is North America-wide — toward ownership of assault weapons and handguns. Those are the growth areas for the firearm’s industry now.

I just used the expression “assault weapon.” I will take a moment to define that, because it is contentious. Assault weapon or assault-style firearm — what this has referred to in the past is a class of firearms that has been developed to look military. They have military features such as pistol grips and so on, and they appeal to people who like that kind of thing. They like the military appearance.

This leads to the complaint that efforts to regulate assault weapons are all about cosmetics, because there are guns with the same functional characteristics that do the same things, and we’re not going after them. Why are we only going after the military-looking ones?

This has been the approach that has been used, for example, in California to try to define those cosmetic features. It is an erroneous approach. We should be focusing on the function and not the appearance.

The function is easy to describe. First, they are semi-automatic. A semi-automatic firearm allows an unskilled shooter to achieve a higher rate of fire than one with a manually operated action such as a bolt-action firearm. They have detachable box magazines. This allows an unskilled shooter to change magazines and reload the weapon in four seconds or less, which is much harder to accomplish if you are stuffing shells down the tube magazines of a shotgun one by one, for example. The box magazines also make it easy for people to carry a large quantity of ammunition.

This creates a public safety concern, I believe, around assault weapons. These are the weapons that are most seriously implicated in those mass public shooting events and also in extremist violence when we see that. Extremist violence actually often merges into those mass public shooting events. For example, the Quebec City mosque shooting.

The magazines themselves are also part of the problem. In Canada, we have a problem in that we have legislated a five-round limit on magazines, but the magazines for assault weapons are typically actually 30-round magazines that have been altered so that they can’t hold more than five rounds, typically by adding a rivet that stops the magazine follower from moving. Any person with hand tools can modify these magazines back, and then you have a 30-round magazine, and it takes minutes. That is a significant concern as well. Everyone who is involved in the broad firearms debate actually acknowledges that this is a problem.

In terms of what we can do about this, we can’t prevent mass murder from occurring. Mass murders are going to occur, but we can, at the risk of repeating what has already been said, reduce the frequency of the events, the number of fatalities, and we can reduce the severity of the wounds among those people who are wounded.

In short, we don’t need to make it easy for people to commit mass murder, so there are things that we can do about this.

We don’t have a lot of examples in Canada that we can use for mass public shootings but, fortunately, the United States offers us many.

In the United States, the frequency and severity of mass shootings are up since 2004, which is the date of the expiry of the federal assault weapons ban in the United States. In the period of the assault weapons ban, which was 1995-04, there were annually 3.4 incidents on average and a total of 17.8 annual deaths on average. In the last ten-year period, that is now 6.1 incidents on average and 55.6 deaths. The deaths have increased far more than the number of incidents. We’re seeing a greater number of fatalities per incident.

Also, there’s recent research in the United States — this was in the American Journal of Public Health — in 2019, a 62% higher death toll when we have large-capacity magazines used in a mass shooting. Magazine size does, indeed, matter.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Somerset. There will be time to engage further, as you know.

We will now proceed to questions. Our guests are with us until 3:55 p.m. today.

We will do our best to allow time for each member to ask a question. With this in mind, you each have four minutes for each question, including the answer. I will hold up this card to indicate that 30 seconds remain in your time. Isn’t that impressive?

I ask that you keep your questions succinct and identify the witness you are addressing.

The first question goes, as always, to our deputy chair.

[Translation]

Senator Dagenais: The way you put it, crime is entirely attributable to white male supremacists. You mentioned people in the military and police. I just want to point out that I was a police officer for 40 years, but I don’t relate to any of that.

Anyway, there were 8,047 gun crimes in Canada in 2021. Can you tell us how many of those were committed by supremacists in possession of firearms? Many were domestic crimes, organized crime score-settling and hunting accidents that I’m sure have nothing to do with the supremacists you’re talking about.

[English]

Ms. Palmater: Thank you very much for your question. The problem with these groups is the crossover. Think about discrimination and how there is intersectionality. You cannot just look at race; you also have to look at gender and sometimes disability. It is the same with these groups. A white supremacist group could cross over with an incel group, which could cross over with a drug group, a gang, a guy who commits domestic violence against his partner — for example — or someone who believes in all of that and participates informally. The reach and the crossover is what is extensive.

What we have said is that law enforcement agencies have not done enough to actually look at that crossover, the impact of it, and the numbers attached specifically to gun violence in those crossover areas.

[Translation]

Senator Dagenais: Mr. Somerset, the number of mass shootings that happen in the U.S. every year certainly doesn’t compare to what we’ve seen in Canada in recent decades, fortunately. When politicians try to introduce new gun control measures, do you think they’re paying more attention to what’s going on south of the border rather than actually evaluating the behaviour of Canadian gun owners?

Do you think there’s a way to modify Bill C-21 to make it acceptable to hunters and gun owners while tightening control over sale and possession?

[English]

Mr. Somerset: With respect to Bill C-21 and its effect on hunters, in the first place, this bill does not change the status of a single long gun in Canada. The only long guns that would be affected by this legislation would be those designed and manufactured after it comes into force. It does not affect hunters nearly as badly as some of the rhetoric we’re hearing pretends.

Something that we know from the recent Environics and EKOS surveys focusing on gun owners, which were done for public safety, is that, in fact, although our gun lobby likes to claim that there is a 2.2 million-strong voting block that all thinks the same way, about 60% — depending upon which poll you are looking at — of gun owners in this country would actually support action to ban assault weapons.

To address the premise of the question: I don’t think this bill is necessarily unacceptable to hunters at large in this country. I think it is unacceptable to a relatively small proportion of gun owners who use hunters as their shield and rallying cry.

[Translation]

Senator Miville-Dechêne: This question is for Ms. Cunliffe, who is with us via video conference.

[English]

I will ask it in English to make it very clear.

The Mass Casualty Commission recommended that the federal government amend the Criminal Code to prohibit the use of a magazine with more than five rounds. However, I understand the rules on magazines allow the sale of modifiable magazines that are pinned at five but can easily be converted to their full illegal capacity — as several mass shooters have done. It can include drums of 110 rounds if I understand well.

According to you, what should be done? I know you are not talking for the Mass Casualty Commission, but I would like to hear your thoughts on the fact that on the one side, we say that five is the maximum, but on the other side, there are all those exceptions.

Ms. Cunliffe: Thank you, senator, for that important question. This is also a question that was grappled with by New Zealand in the wake of the Christchurch mosque massacre. The path that New Zealand took in response to that problem was, first of all, to extend regulation much more clearly than had previously been the case to magazines that can be switched out and, secondly, to regulate the sale of external magazines only to those that could not be modified in that way. A switchable magazine is still a possibility but only one that is truly limited to five and can’t be altered simply through drilling out the pin, which is, as I understand it, the way people get around the regulation at present.

You are quite right that I don’t speak for the commissioners. My view is that this would be an appropriate measure in Canada.

Senator Miville-Dechêne: Do you think this could be done in regulation or in this bill?

Ms. Cunliffe: It is my understanding that it can be done by regulation. The value of making it part of the bill is clarity. One of the very important things we heard in the evidence of the Mass Casualty Commission is that there is a great deal of uncertainty about what is and isn’t lawful in the community at large. The commissioners heard from 35 community members who were aware that the perpetrator had an arsenal of weapons but, for the most part, were not sure whether they were legal, whether he had a licence or what to do if he didn’t or shouldn’t.

One of my additional recommendations is that all that can be done to clarify the regulations so that they are simple and easy to apply is worth doing. As well, all that can be done by way of community education so that people understand what is and isn’t permitted and know when something is happening that shouldn’t be, is an effort well spent.

Senator Miville-Dechêne: I have a quick question on violence against women and firearms.

I read somewhere that if there’s one arm or gun in the house, that’s a factor that must be taken into consideration for violence. Is that true? I’m trying to explain in English something that’s complicated.

Ms. Cunliffe: I understand. There is a researcher from New Brunswick, Deborah Doherty, who has done extremely helpful work on gun violence in rural communities, intimate partner violence. She had large numbers of participants over many years. She has found that women’s fear of lethality and the experience of lethality increased by orders or magnitudes with the presence of firearms in the home. She also managed to untangle some of the rural surveys that suggest rural communities are opposed to increased firearms regulation to find that is a gendered phenomenon. Women in rural communities are supportive of increased firearms regulation whereas men are largely opposed. That reflects a differential experience of personal violence, not least.

Senator Miville-Dechêne: Interesting. Thank you.

Senator Cardozo: Thank you. My question is for Dr. Palmater. I am surprised at your statement that the high level of online extremism is in Canada. That’s most disturbing. Can you talk a bit more about that?

You talked about these multiple groups. I wonder if they are the same people sometimes but with a different message. Would you add anti-LGBTQ, anti-trans rights as part of the latest battle that they are launching? How does all of that relate to gun use?

Ms. Palmater: Right. In the international study done on online extremism — and, it is online where they do the recruiting, the misinformation, the fear mongering, the conspiracy theory stuff, how to make weapons, how to modify weapons, where to access them — there are all different levels. Then there is the incitement. It is not just like people going online saying, “I hate women,” incels, for example. It is a matter of, for example, “This is what should happen to them if only someone were brave enough. Do you know anyone with an assault weapon? Think of how many people we could get.” Or, “The next time we’re in Ottawa and they try to impose vaccines, let’s bring weapons,” kind of like what they did at the border in Alberta during the whole freedom convoy. It is not just the view, it is the view coupled with the incitement and the fact that Canada has the highest international online engagement with right-wing extremism which obviously isn’t just White hate groups. In almost every case, they are somehow attached to what falls under the category. Some are neo-Nazis; some are KKK; some are incel groups; some are anti everything that isn’t White male, for example.

This poses a problem because kids are being recruited in these online fora. Kids are being incited to violence. That’s not being tracked at the same level because they are not gun-toting adults saying, “I want my hunting rifle,” or “I want my assault weapon.” It is literally how they morph into that.

Senator Cardozo: Why Canada? In some ways, we have thought of ourselves as being a small-L liberal, open-minded society. Is this a backlash to that, or is there any other factor that would put us on this list?

Ms. Palmater: I think there are a multitude of factors. One, how many law enforcement agencies in Canada are detailed, tracking that and all of the feeding group factors, all of the crossovers, all the threats not only to public safety — which is significant; we don’t want mass casualties, we don’t want people taking trucks and running down people in the street — but also what is the threat to national security in these groups when you have people with those views who participate in those fora informally and are in law enforcement, or in the military, or in some kind of emergency management public safety position. That’s a threat to national security. I don’t think that is looked at enough.

Canada is slow on the draw in terms of considering White hate groups as a domestic terror threat and a link to gun violence. Indigenous people have been killed by White supremacists. Leo LaChance was killed. Look at rural racism — not in the area of White hate groups but having the same feelings. What happened when unarmed Colten Boushie was shot point-blank? What was the response by rural farmers? “Let’s get more weapons. Let’s shoot them. Let’s kill them and put them in the ground.” It is that kind of incitement to violence that leads people to do things that they might not otherwise do if they didn’t have that community of support. Canada, being the most significant in the world, that should be a bigger concern, but we pay attention to the U.S. to the detriment of our own.

Senator Cardozo: Thank you.

Senator Dasko: Thank you to our witnesses today.

Professor Palmater, your description of the various groups intersecting, makes me think about a massive Venn diagram where you have different overlaps. I would love to know the percentage of Canadians in each of the overlaps in a Venn diagram. Maybe you have that somewhere. That’s what came to mind when I listened to you because we’re not talking about all these people together. We are talking about mixtures of them and overlaps, as opposed to one large group. I think there are overlaps there. In any case, that’s a bit of an aside.

I want to dig deeper into your comments on background checks on guns. You said that you favoured this. Do you have a sense of the deficiencies that exist in background checks? I don’t know if you have done any research in this area, but what is lacking? Who might be responsible? What should we be doing? Does this bill address it or, through the provisions of the bill, are we addressing this in any way?

Ms. Palmater: Those are good questions. Before I get into the background checks, on the issue of far-right extremism and their attachment to White hate groups, obviously one of the things they are doing on social media is speaking to younger groups. They will take an issue that Canadians are upset with, for example, inflation, and they will grab onto that and give an overly simplified solution to the problem that aligns with where they are going. That’s how they draw people in. That’s how many anti-vaxxers were suddenly pro-gun and they weren’t even talking about guns before, or anti-Muslim, that kind of thing.

In terms of background checks, I even hate the word “background check” because I feel we are missing opportunities for prevention. Just like in the environment or in medical situations, we should always use the precautionary principle. How many opportunities or stages of opportunities do we have to catch a problem? Is it only at the point of sale? I would argue that’s a blip in a person’s life. What about when a domestic abuse complaint is made? Why are we not checking then and not just for criminality, not just for a criminal charge, but also are you running these online fora, inciting people to run down people with vehicles or shoot them with guns? Are you doing that? Have you committed violence against other people that may not have attracted a charge, that might have been settled? Is there a civil suit where you have been doing those things, namely, threatening gun violence and you were sued civilly and not criminally? We don’t have an expensive enough background check and we don’t do it at multiple stages. It should be rechecked on an ongoing basis. Who someone was when they bought the gun to begin with can be very different 10 years later.

Senator Dasko: That means going back to people who have gun licences and doing these kinds of checks periodically?

Ms. Palmater: Yes.

Senator Dasko: Will this bill deal with that, even through other provisions? Is this a kind of stand alone —

Ms. Palmater: The bill is something. I’d rather this bill than nothing. As Ms. Cunliffe said, we can fill it in with some regulations, but I do think more is needed.

Senator Yussuff: Thank you, witnesses, for being here. I will start with Ms. Cunliffe.

In regard to the mass casualty report, and, of course, the recommendation, is there anything missing in this bill that would aid and support, of course, what the findings were, that is critical and is not currently in the bill?

Ms. Cunliffe: Thank you very much, senator, for that extremely important question. We heard evidence, particularly from Australia, that the success of the firearms reforms that took place in that jurisdiction under a Conservative government in 1996, after the Port Arthur massacre, was very much predicated on the fact that the prohibition of certain firearms, the regulation of magazine size and the strengthening of background checks were accompanied by a variety of other measures that were also intended to address the problems of gun violence. Those included —and I think this is significant in terms of the polarization that we’re seeing in the Canadian community — close work with sports shooting associations and hunting associations in order to ensure that the regulations worked well, to allow, for example, Olympic sports shooters to continue to compete, and to allow rural landowners to continue to do pest control or manage livestock in the ways in which they needed to do. That was achievable while prohibiting handguns and semi-automatic firearms by working with those people as partners.

Something that concerns me is that there does seem to be an extremely polarized rhetoric playing out. I suspect, as my colleague on the panel said, that there is a quiet majority of law-abiding gun owners who respect the skill, frankly, associated with appropriate firearm ownership and use, and who are concerned by the growing violence and the growing self-protection discourse that’s emerging from segments of their community. I would like to see more done to engage that segment of the gun-owning community, frankly.

I also think that it’s necessary to implement other recommendations made by the commissioners of the Mass Casualty Commission. For example, to ensure that victims of intimate partner and family violence have safe and effective pathways to leave violent relationships and to stay safe; to report concerns about firearms if they choose to stay, as is their right; and to implement public education about firearms regulation, so that community members know what’s allowed, know when they should report concerns and how to do so safely.

It is important to offer culturally appropriate firearms education to Indigenous youth and communities, and to work with those communities to ensure culturally appropriate community-led approaches to firearm safety that allow the exercise of Indigenous hunting rights. It is also important to ensure that rural and remote communities have access to mental health services and addiction treatment, to reduce both the rates of self-harm using firearms and firearm violence in those communities.

The commissioners really emphasized that this is a complete package of recommendations, and while strengthening regulation and coordination, as Bill C-21 does, are both important steps, they need to be accompanied by other measures.

Senator Pate: Thank you to the witnesses for appearing. My questions are for Dr. Palmater and Dr. Cunliffe, but I’m happy to have you also weigh in as well. First, Dr. Palmater: Many people are raising issues around the rights of Indigenous people, First Nations people, to their hunting rights and the like. I am curious how you see this legislation impacting those rights?

Dr. Cunliffe, you mentioned the Port Arthur massacre, and I’m struck by, in addition to using very clear language, like even “mass casualty,” for instance, the importance of looking at all the other factors that contribute — the fact that we often see people who end up convicted of serial killing or mass shootings, first having been known to be perpetrators of intimate partner violence or violence against women. We know that this is so in virtually every situation internationally that’s happened, and yet we don’t take that seriously. The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, they pointed out the same thing yet we don’t take that seriously. What other measures would you like to see included in addition to what you’ve already said in response to Senator Yussuff? I ask that of both of you, but let’s start with Dr. Palmater and then Dr. Cunliffe.

Ms. Palmater: Thanks for the question. It is a really important one because the gun lobby very quickly tried to expropriate and exploit Indigenous peoples to be in favour of unrestricted gun use and no background checks, as if they had any kind of sympathy or compassion for First Nations rights. That being said, First Nations do have a right in this country. In fact, they are the only group in this country that has a constitutional right to bear arms. The Supreme Court of Canada has already said that no one else does, but we do. We have that by virtue of our treaty rights, Aboriginal rights and our rights to protect our territories. Now that’s reinforced not only with section 35 but with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, or UNDRIP, the right to govern our territories, which would include things like gun control. That’s on a collective level.

On an individual level, the whole idea that First Nations need assault rifles and handguns to shoot a deer is ridiculous. Never. Never has that ever happened. The two really need to be separated: weapons of significant destruction, like an assault weapon, versus a long gun for hunting. They are not even remotely similar.

We have to make sure that we are taking into account that even First Nation rights, even within a First Nation community and First Nation law, has to be balanced with the safety of women. We do have to take that seriously — and the safety of children and everyone around us. No right is absolute. The First Nation right takes priority over others in the Constitution, but that has to be balanced with safety, and I think this bill can go ahead and pass. I think you can fill it out with regulations, but I think that the government should also commit to working in partnership with First Nations on how we are going to do joint background checks, identify what the kinds of opportunities for safety that we can do are and what the other limits we should put in place given that we know there are many societal threats to First Nations, in particular, First Nations women.

Ms. Cunliffe: Thank you, Senator Pate. You are quite right that the commissioners drew a strong line between a history of intimate partner or gender-based violence and the perpetration of mass casualties, and that’s very well established in the research. Whether we look at the Nova Scotia mass casualty, the most recent incident in Sault Ste. Marie, or other Canadian examples, such as Renfrew County, we see a history of concerns about a violent man, his access to firearms and his treatment of women. We see that those concerns have been reported to the police, but frequently not properly investigated or taken sufficiently seriously.

A significant thing that should accompany this bill is a very clear focus on accountability of law enforcement agencies to actually implement the law as it is written.

There are presently measures for the withdrawal of a firearms licence in circumstances of concern about public safety. Those mechanisms are rarely used, and they weren’t used in the three mass casualty examples that I’ve just shared, despite the fact that they could have been.

The Chair: I am sorry to interrupt. I apologize, but we have to move on.

Senator Boehm: Thank you to our witnesses for being here and to Dr. Cunliffe for joining us virtually. My question is actually for you, Dr. Cunliffe, but I think our two witnesses here might want to respond to this as well. I am really looking at whether we can learn anything from observing what is going on in other jurisdictions. What do I mean by this? There are parallels between what happened in Nova Scotia and what happened last week in Lewiston, Maine, both from the similar number of casualties to the respective manhunts for the perpetrators, what the lessons might be and what can be learned by Canadian gun policy researchers and advocates.

I don’t expect that we know all the details about what happened in Maine, and don’t know, as was the case in Nova Scotia, of any link between gender-based and/or intimate partner violence.

I am curious, Dr. Cunliffe, about your views on what can be learned across jurisdictions, keeping in mind the gun laws and that, indeed, the debate around guns and the political-cultural aspects are much different in Canada than in the U.S.

Ms. Cunliffe: Thank you, senator. I will try to keep my remarks brief so that my colleagues can also address your questions.

The commissioners found that it is an appropriate strategy for law enforcement and lawmakers to use to look to examples in other jurisdictions rather than wait until they arrive at our doorstep. One of the significant parallels between the sad incident last week in Lewiston, Maine — and Nova Scotia, of course, is the source of the guns — and in the Nova Scotia mass casualty event, the source was largely Maine. We share a border with the U.S., and aspects of the U.S. gun culture are influencing Canada’s gun culture. Studies of those matters that are proceeding in the U.S. are directly relevant and helpful to the conversations we are having here.

Some use that as a reason not to make changes. They say that because we share the border and it is largely undefended, there’s no point in seeking stronger regulation because guns will be smuggled and guns can be 3-D printed. I disagree with that perspective, not least because having clarity around what is and isn’t permitted allows the community to play the role that it must play in assisting law enforcement to enforce firearms regulations — to recognize when there is a problem and to report it.

Mr. Somerset: When we look at the rhetoric of gun politics, there tends to be this attempt to shut down international comparisons, particularly any comparison to events that happen in the States. We absolutely can learn from events that happen in the United States. There’s a great deal of research in the United States. They have a lot of incidents to study. It is a great laboratory for what happens when you don’t regulate. Similarly, we can learn from New Zealand, Australia and the U.K.

Senator Boehm: I find the Maine example interesting. Maine is very close to Canada. The cultures are very similar — small towns, hunting communities, that sort of thing. It might be interesting to look at.

Mr. Somerset: I would add that the idea that we have a different gun culture here in Canada is both true and untrue. There are ways in which we have a different gun culture in Canada. Certainly, the broad attitudes of Canadians toward guns are quite different than in the United States. The culture of gun ownership in this country tends to shift with the culture of gun ownership in the United States. I provided an example of that in my introductory remarks when we talk about self-defence and the growth of the market for handguns and assault weapons.

Senator Oh: Thank you, witnesses, for being here with us.

I have a question for Professor Palmater. I want to follow up on a question from Senator Dagenais that you did not answer. He asked you what percentage of violent crime is committed by White supremacists. Can you tell us a bit more about your studies and comment on the evidence?

Ms. Palmater: For sure, and I can make a submission after this as well.

My point to the senator was that, sadly, law enforcement is failing to be proactive and preventive in this area and is primarily looking at formal groups. You can identify a Ku Klux Klan — or KKK — group and organization, what their membership structure is, where they are and all the chatter online. It is much harder to make statistics when they cross over into an incel group, an informal group or a multitude of these groups.

We have been telling law enforcement that they need to do a better job of disaggregating data on all of this stuff. They need to put this in their report, and they need to look at their associations. Yes, it might be domestic violence and he shot his wife, but what groups was he part of prior to that and who is he affiliated with? Those are the kinds of things that aren’t followed up after the fact unless they consider it relevant for trial. Oftentimes, people plead guilty, so you are not getting that information.

We are saying that we need disaggregated data. We can point to incidences and to all of these things that are happening in the United States but my question is, why wait? Why wait until it is as bad as the United States and then say that we should start collecting the disaggregated data?

Senator Oh: Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much. This brings us to the end of our panel. On behalf of the committee, I thank you, Dr. Cunliffe, Dr. Palmater and Mr. Somerset. We greatly appreciate, first of all, you taking the time with us today but, second and most important, the significant contributions you’ve made to our learning as we move through this and to the study we are undertaking. It will serve us well. We wish you all the best. Thank you again.

Colleagues, we will now continue with our next panel. For those tuning into today’s meeting, we are exploring Bill C-21, An Act to amend certain Acts and to make certain consequential amendments (firearms).

For the next 55 minutes, we have the pleasure of welcoming, Dr. Natasha Saunders, Physician with the Canadian Paediatric Society and at the Hospital for Sick Children; by video conference, Dr. Alan Drummond, Chair Emeritus, Public Affairs Committee with the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians; and, Dr. Najma Ahmed with Canadian Doctors for Protection from Guns.

Thank you all for joining us today. I invite you to provide your opening remarks, to be followed by questions from our members. I remind you that you each have five minutes for your testimony. We will begin today with Dr. Natasha Saunders.

Dr. Natasha Saunders, Physician, Hospital for Sick Children and Representative of the Canadian Paediatric Society: Thank you for having me here today. As mentioned, I’m a paediatrician at the Hospital for Sick Children and a health-services researcher whose research is focused on firearms, mental illness and their intersection. I have the privilege of being here today to represent the Canadian Paediatric Society.

As an organization, we support the passage of Bill C-21, and I would like to illustrate why we do in terms of its often underestimated potential to affect the lives of children and youth.

To me, the collective measures proposed in this bill are designed to reduce the total load of circulating firearms, especially those sourced from organized crime. Strengths of the bill include increased penalties for weapons offences, creation of offences for processes related to 3-D printing and inclusion of certain firearm parts in offences regarding firearms.

Critics of Bill C-21 have dismissed or downplayed this powerful legislation, suggesting it will lead to modifications in the way they use their firearms for recreational enjoyment or in how they run their businesses or that the total number of firearm deaths in Canada, particularly from legal firearms, is relatively low. I’m here to tell you as a paediatrician that the impacts are much greater.

In Ontario alone from 2003 to 2018, 5,486 children and youth showed up in Ontario hospitals with a firearm injury. Over 500 of them died. Of the over 5,000 injured, over a quarter were assaulted with a firearm. The rest was unintentional or suicide related.

All of these injuries were not just scrapes and bruises. Half were shot in the head and neck, and of those, half resulted in traumatic brain injury. These are not small numbers.

Now, I want you to consider for a second, the ripple effects of just one of these injuries. When a 17-year-old boy is shot and killed in a Toronto community housing complex, caught in the crossfire of gang violence, what then happens to his 15-year-old younger brother who now mourns the death of his older brother and wants revenge? What about his 12-year-old sister who can no longer sleep at night, who can no longer attend school and completely withdraws in fear? What about their mother, whose life has been destroyed by the tragic and premature death of her son? Then, of course, there is the teen’s entire community that grieves. These, too, are victims of firearm injury, and these lives should always be counted, considered and supported. The impact of firearms on their lives must also be weighed.

I would like to now bring your attention to the school setting. Some argue that there are few domestically sourced guns that pose a problem in Canada, but imagine for a second that just one of these domestically manufactured guns ends up with an active shooter in a school. Picture a school lockdown of 600 students. In school shootings, every time there is a lockdown, every time a ten-year-old has to hide under their desk at school, away from the windows, that is traumatizing and anxiety provoking. Every time there is a gun on school property with an associated lockdown, we have 600 school age victims terrified by the threat of violence.

I urge you to see the forest through the trees in order to see the bigger picture and see how stopping just one of these, whether it is by preventing a legal gun from being diverted or by rapidly removing a firearm from an individual who threatens violence toward others or themselves, as this bill will allow, can be impactful. Through all this debate, we must remember that young people have a right to feel safe and secure at home and at school.

I want to speak briefly about the importance of the proposed red and yellow flag laws in the bill. This past week’s tragic death by firearm of five people in Sault Ste. Marie, including three children aged 6, 7 and 12, is a stark reminder that intimate partner violence is not just about intimate partners. It affects whole families, children and innocent lives.

The introduction of red and yellow flag laws in Bill C-21 provide one tool to protect the public and vulnerable families from assault-related and self-inflicted injury. Specifically, this bill protects children by facilitating licence revocation and weapons surrender in cases of domestic violence with clear and specific definitions of what constitutes domestic violence, such as coercive and controlling behaviour, psychological and financial abuse and threats to cause harm to any person.

As we move forward, the Canadian Paediatric Society recognizes that all levels of government must work together to make meaningful changes to reduce violence among Canada’s youth. We all have important work to do, and as such, we strongly support the passage of Bill C-21.

The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Saunders.

Next, we will hear from Dr. Drummond. Over to you when you are ready.

Dr. Alan Drummond, Chair Emeritus, Public Affairs Committee, Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians: Thank you very much.

We, in the emergency medicine community, are very strongly supportive of this bill, particularly with respect to the red flag law provision. We believe that that is an application of a public health and injury prevention measure, which has the potential promise of lives saved.

Gun control is increasingly polarized in this country, but I think we can all agree that the prevention of death is clearly sufficient motivation across the ideological divide and in the best tradition of Canadian values.

Of all firearm deaths, 35% to 80% are due to suicide, and if we, as a nation, are to be serious about reducing firearm deaths, then we must make suicide prevention a priority.

There is a little bit of cross-referencing with Dr. Ahmed’s presentation, so I am not really going to go into the statistics, other than to say that there are about ten Canadians who die every day as a result of suicide, and for every one of those, we have literally dozens who show up at the emergency department seeking assistance. Because a gun in a home is a recognized factor for completed suicide, we worry that when we send people home, we are sending them home to an uncertain future, such as a loaded shotgun under the bed or a handgun under the pillow. We just don’t know.

The inevitability of suicide is a total myth. We know that most of these things are impulsive, and if people survive their initial suicide attempt, we know that they will not go on to complete suicide, with little risk of substitution methods.

The other big issue is that of intimate partner violence. Up to 30% to 40% of people who present to our emergency department have been victims of intimate partner violence. Again, the risk of death to a victim of intimate partner violence is significantly higher — fivefold — when there is access to a firearm in the home. The emergency department on a daily basis is faced with individuals who are at potential risk of firearm death, but knowing that there are firearms in the homes, we cannot really intervene. Only in the face of clear and imminent danger can confidentiality be breached.

The other issue is that of mass shootings. The University of Michigan looked at about 6,000 red flag law impositions, and about 10% of those were for shooting threats to intend to harm as many people as possible.

We have been very supportive since 1995 in our original brief to Bill C-68 with regard to a notification system, and so we were obviously quite delighted in 2020 when Minister Blair announced the potential of a red flag law. This is based strictly on the American model, in which there are 22 such laws, so it is a bit of a hybrid, and of those 22 laws, only 3 allow for the physician to breach confidentiality.

It should be noted that the seven states with the lowest rates of firearm death in 2020 all had red flag laws, and in Indiana and Connecticut, for every ten Extreme Risk Protection Orders, or ERPOs, there was one suicide saved.

Canada’s model requires a petition to the court, a judicial hearing and then an unexpected time frame for initial removal of the firearms. We only make some observations and not recommendations, but we are concerned with the absolute need for a petition to the court and judicial hearing prior to the removal of firearms, only because that leads to the potential of time, and a loss of time can lead to increased risk of femicide. Furthermore, from a suicide prevention model, we are concerned, given the abysmal state of lack of access to psychiatric care, that we are sending people home to die by suicide.

Similarly, Canadian provinces have all adopted a medical reporting mechanism, where when a gunshot victim presents to the emergency department, it is reported to the police. We view the development of a direct medical reporting system prior to the trigger being pulled as a positive upstream solution to this increasing problem.

Lastly, and fundamentally, however, the decision to allow medical reporting and the breach of patient confidentiality is a provincial concern, not a federal one, and it is within the purview of the provincial regulatory colleges. Following the passage of this legislation, the next logical step for the federal government would be a collaborative effort with all the provinces and the medical colleges to develop a template for such a medical reporting system and provide the required financial resources for their effective implementation.

Thank you very much.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Dr. Drummond.

We now move to our final witness in this panel, Dr. Ahmed. Please proceed when you are ready.

Dr. Najma Ahmed, Professor of Surgery, Trauma and Emergency Surgery, University of Toronto, Canadian Doctors for Protection from Guns: Thank you very much, senators, and my esteemed colleagues. I’m delighted to be here to speak on this matter.

Nearly five years ago, physicians from across Canada came together to call for stronger legislative measures and other interventions to prevent gun violence because we, as physicians, could no longer accept the many harms being inflicted upon our patients, their families and entire communities; harms like the mass shooting that we all witnessed last week in Sault Ste. Marie that killed a woman and three young children.

In 2021, the Canadian Medical Association declared that firearm-related injuries and fatalities are a major cause of premature and preventable death in Canada. A 2020 Ontario study showed that over a 15-year period, there were nearly 6,500 gun injuries with a fatality rate of 42%. Another Canadian study showed that up to 20% of patients who survived firearm injuries suffer with lifelong disability.

I can tell you that many of my patients never go back to work or school. A B.C. study from earlier this year found that firearm violent crime cost that province nearly $300 million per year.

Canada needs Bill C-21. It will save lives. There are a lot of differing views on this issue, as well as some disinformation. I would, therefore, like to tell you about an event last month intended to inform public policy discourse on this subject.

I had the privilege to serve as a scientific co-chair for a conference themed gun violence as a public health issue co‑sponsored by the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. In addition to an outstanding cross-section of international subject matter experts, including researchers who have published in some of the most esteemed scientific journals in the world, attendees heard first-person accounts from survivors of mass shootings, physicians, anti-racism educators, community organizers and gun owners, including an Indigenous health leader and hunter.

Several clear and consistent themes emerged, which are relevant to this debate: One, Canada has one of the highest rates of per capita gun ownership and gun deaths among economically developed nations.

Two, evidence presented showed that the more guns in a society the more gun deaths there are, and stricter gun laws result in fewer gun deaths.

Three, Bill C-21 would bring us closer in line with our peer nations such as the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Norway, among others. All these nations have banned most types of semi-automatic assault-style weapons firearms that can kill and maim many people in mere minutes. All these countries, like Canada, have robust hunting cultures.

Four, in urban environments where handguns are more predominantly used, racialized communities and Black youth in particular are disproportionately affected. The mental health impacts of this violence in Black communities are enormous, this is why we urge greater investments in the social determinants of health.

Five, there is a strong link, as has been discussed today, between domestic violence and presence of firearms, including to intimidate and control. There is a five-fold increase in the risk of being killed when a gun is involved in an intimate partner incident. Those at higher risk include Indigenous and rural women.

Six, as Dr. Drummond just said, firearm suicides account for about 75% of gun deaths in Canada, mostly affecting men in rural communities. As firearms are the most lethal means of suicide, putting time and distance between a person at risk and lethal means can save lives. More than 90% of people who survive a suicide attempt do not go on to die by suicide. And one presenter at our conference noted that in 48 of 49 studies, firearm restrictions were associated with an overall reduction in suicide rates.

Seven, with respect to Bill C-21’s proposed red flag laws, research from the U.S. suggest that rates of suicide, mass shootings and intimate partner violence can be lessened with tools like a red flag law. Experts stress the importance of a 24/7 process for courts to consider applications, and that sufficient funding and education are required for successful implementation.

Eight, firearms have a specific and dangerous connection to far-right hate groups further strengthening the arguments and need for this bill to pass into law. The conference strengthened our resolve as an organization to ensure that evidence-based, common-sense measures included in Bill C-21 become law.

There is still more to do, and a national research centre focused on studying the various facets of gun violence is needed in Canada. Our members are pleased with the significant efforts toward making all our communities safer. For the last 20 years, I have been treating patients devastated by firearm injuries and consoling patients and families left behind with immeasurable grief. My sole interest today is to protect Canadians and prevent further devastation. Thank you for listening, and sorry for going over time.

The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Ahmed. We will now proceed to questions. The panel finishes at 4:50 p.m. I will limit each question, including the answer, to four minutes. I will hold up this card to indicate that 30 seconds remains in your time. Please keep your questions succinct and identify the person that you are addressing the question to.

The first question to Deputy Chair, Senator Dagenais.

[Translation]

Senator Dagenais: My question is for Dr. Ahmed. In 2021, gun crimes accounted for less than 3% of violent crime in the country. Most of the weapons involved were obtained via the illegal gun trade, not lawfully owned by Canadians.

What direct and immediate impact will Bill C-21 have? How can it be amended to help the government find the actual source of the guns being used to commit these crimes and murder people?

[English]

Dr. Ahmed: Thank you for the question. In fact, it should be noted that many legal firearms are also used to commit crimes and, of course, the majority of suicides and domestic violence incidents involve legal firearms.

I believe in this hearing, Mark Flynn, Acting Commissioner, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, testified and I quote:

. . . if you look at the number of firearms that we have traced through various tracing efforts, 69% of those firearms were deemed to have been illegally imported into or manufactured in Canada.

Legal firearms that are in Canada are likely contributing to the pool of firearms that are being used in gang-related and organized crime homicides. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t address the illegal flow of firearms into our country, but I think it is not accurate to say that legal firearms are not contributing to crime in our country or gun deaths overall. As an example, the gun used in the mass shooting on the Danforth was stolen from a gun shop in Saskatchewan.

[Translation]

Senator Dagenais: There has been a significant increase in the number of violent crimes committed by people suffering from behavioural issues that require psychiatric care.

Weapons such as knives and swords are often used instead of firearms, and we know there’s no knife control. Does the medical community have thoughts on the use of guns versus knives that you could share with us? How big a concern are knives right now?

[English]

Dr. Ahmed: Certainly, mental health issues need to be addressed. We need to provide people with supports.

But it is a myth that people with mental illness are necessarily violent. In fact, people with mental illness are often the victims of violent crime rather than the perpetrator.

I can tell you as a trauma surgeon, the case fatality rate for a stab wound is much less than for gunshot wounds. Guns are in fact intended to kill and maim people. That is why we quip our armies with them. Knives are much less injurious.

Senator Kutcher: Thank you. I have two questions, one for Dr. Ahmed and one for Dr. Drummond. Dr. Ahmed, soon after the Danforth shooting, you and a group of your colleagues put forward statements about a need for interventions to decrease firearm violence and that firearm violence should be addressed as a public health issue. Because of these statements, you were targeted with a stay-in-your-lane doctor campaign similar to the National Rifle Association, also known as the NRA, actions against the American College of Physicians after it framed gun violence as a public health issue.

Do you think that Bill C-21 should be framed in terms of gun violence being a public health issue? Would you tell us a bit about where those threats against you originated and what impact they had on you and your colleagues?

Dr. Ahmed: Thank you for the question, senator.

Indeed, most scientific communities, medical communities and public health researchers in this area support the notion that gun violence is a public health issue. The gun is the vector. The bullet is the vector. Think about it from a bacterial or virus perspective. In any disease and in any disease state that we look at from a public health perspective, the decreasing exposure to the vector, which is the gun— or the bullet in this case — reduces the harm and disease from that vector. Jurisdictions where they have applied this lens have been very successful in reducing harm, injury and death from guns.

You are right to point out that, in fact, when we started our work — it wasn’t just me; many physicians and health care professionals across the country thought it was time for Canada to address this issue seriously — the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights orchestrated a campaign with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, or CPSO, which is the regulating body in Ontario that licenses physicians, to have my medical licence revoked on the basis that my advocacy to reduce harm and injury for patients and communities was somehow unprofessional.

In fact, advocacy is a core competency for physicians. It is something that we are tested and trained in. If you think about anti-smoking campaigns, seat belt laws and asbestos laws, all of those campaigns, in fact, were taken up by physicians who saw the harms of those things at the coalface in our emergency departments and hospitals.

That was not an easy time, I must say. The whole medical profession did stand up and support our efforts. I had a lot of support — from a lot of ordinary Canadians as well. All of those complaints against the CPSO — 17 of them lodged by people whom I had never met or treated — were dismissed as moot and frivolous.

Senator Kutcher: Thank you for that.

Dr. Drummond, you have co-authored a paper looking at the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians, or CAEP, position paper, looking at the impact of gun registry and decreasing firearms-related suicide.

Do you think that as a public health measure, decreasing access to firearms is a factor in reducing firearm-related suicides? As well, since about 75% of all firearm-related deaths in Canada are suicides, do you think Bill C-21 will be likely to decrease the number of firearm-related suicides in Canada?

Dr. Drummond: Thank you for the question. I think it is pretty straightforward. Internationally, the literature over the last 30 years has been strong in terms of the impact of access to firearms and the completion of suicide. There have been studies done in various military settings — Switzerland, Israel — where there was a reduction in the number of firearms being taken home by soldiers on the weekend and consequently a reduction in suicide deaths. Therefore, access to firearms is, indeed, a fairly important and significant factor in relation to increased risks of fatal suicides. Clearly, this is a public health measure in terms of suicide prevention.

I think this bill in its construct will be helpful. There could be improvements in terms of making sure that the web of those who can report an individual at risk could be increased to include all kinds of health care workers, social workers and educators. This is not the first rodeo for red flag laws in Canada. Quebec, following the Dawson College shooting, introduced Anastasia’s law, which basically allows physicians and other health professionals to report an individual at risk. The lesson from Anastasia’s law is that we need to make sure the public and police forces are fully aware of the components of those bills and know how to access those services. Part of the problem is —

The Chair: Sorry to interrupt. We have to move on.

[Translation]

Senator Boisvenu: My first question is for Dr. Ahmed. I’m not sure I understand. Did you say that firearms are made to kill people?

[English]

Dr. Ahmed: Some firearms are indeed intended to harm, maim and injure people. Handguns with reloadable magazines are an example. Semi-automatic rifles generally cause a lot of injury and harm to patients and can kill with minimal effort.

Certainly, there are other kinds of weapons that —

[Translation]

Senator Boisvenu: If we look at the stats in Quebec for 2023, many people with mental health issues killed other people using a car or a truck. Would it be fair to say that trucks and cars are made to kill people?

[English]

Dr. Ahmed: I’m not sure that is a relevant comparison. I’m not sure the statement that —

[Translation]

Senator Boisvenu: So, why can you make that blanket statement for firearms that are used primarily for sport hunting and target shooting, but I can’t make it in relation to Quebec where, last year in Gaspé and Montreal, people killed people by running them over with their vehicle? Why can’t I make the same blanket statement as you? Is there any scientific evidence?

[English]

Dr. Ahmed: There is irrefutable scientific evidence for the testimony I have given today. The scientific evidence and the consensus among public health researchers and physicians who work in this area is that decreasing the proliferation of firearms makes our communities safer. I have two goals here today: to save lives and to prevent Canadians from being injured by firearms.

[Translation]

Senator Boisvenu: What steps would you take to control guns entering Canada illegally, the kind that people can easily obtain from street gangs? An experiment was done in Montreal. It takes just 20 minutes to acquire an illegal weapon from a street gang.

The minister said the bill will have little impact on organized crime. How can anyone be sure at this point that this bill will reduce crime and organized crime?

[English]

Dr. Ahmed: Again, I would reiterate that although smuggled firearms come into Canada — and we absolutely must address that — there are also domestically sourced firearms that are used in crime — not to mention that the majority of firearms used in suicide and femicide are legal guns.

I believe that it was at these series of hearings that Mark Flynn, the RCMP Acting Commissioner — I will repeat myself — testified last week that if you look at the firearms traced through our tracing efforts, 69% of those firearms were deemed to be legally imported or manufactured in Canada and legal firearms that are in Canada are likely contributing to the pool of firearms being used in gang-related and organized crime homicides.

It is not one thing. Of course it is everything. Ignoring legal weapons in Canada that are used in crime — such as the one that was used in the Danforth mass shooting — would be a grave error.

Senator M. Deacon: Thank you all for being here this afternoon. These are very important testimonies with the focus we have today.

I would open this question up, and I would love to hear from you also, Dr. Saunders — I don’t want to leave you out. My question is coming back to something that was touched on earlier, which is that we continue to hear in Canada that suicide accounts for about 75% of our gun deaths. A gun in a home, regardless of where it comes from, increases adolescent suicide rates by threefold to fourfold. This legislation is not banning firearms entirely. Many Canadian homes still have guns within them. I’m hoping that I can zero in, from your perspectives, on why you think this legislation will assist in lowering these terrible incidents.

For instance, does the presence of a handgun increase this possibility over an individual having access to what might have been a traditional hunting rifle?

You folks are seeing specifics, so I would love to hear from you.

Dr. Saunders: Both a handgun or a long gun — a rifle — in the home increases the risk of suicide, in particular in adolescents with mental illness. The Canadian Paediatric Society strongly recommends that physicians or health care providers counsel removal of any type of firearm from the home where teens are living who are at risk for mental illness. Whether it is a handgun or a rifle, it doesn’t matter.

In terms of the reduction in suicides over time and will this bill improve that, when I have a patient on the wards at the hospital who has attempted suicide and it is nonfatal, that’s an opportunity for us to fight for that child, to fight for that teen, to survive. If they die before they get to the hospital because they have died by just one firearm — however they got it — we don’t have that opportunity. Removing firearms from the home, even if it is just for one kid, saves that one child’s life.

Senator M. Deacon: I want to come back to you because of something you said in the opener: In my background, lots of lockdowns, lots of intruder drills, lots of real weapons, lots of fake weapons, lots of trauma. We always wondered, over time, in the work you are doing, when these young people — not those who maybe are coming in with a weapon or have attempted to take their life — the trauma of these events on others. Is there a databank on what the biggest impacts are for folks that witness, that are shocked, that are already vulnerable, that are going into intruder drills or lockdowns?

Dr. Saunders: We know in Canada more broadly that mental illness is already rising among children. Anxiety disorders are one of the largest increases that we have seen in our hospitals. What is contributing to that is multi-factorial.

It’s very hard to measure the specifics. Did the specific event contributed to the child’s anxiety? But it is certainly not normal for a child to normalize hiding under a desk from the threat of a weapon. That is not a normal part of healthy child development, and it is increasingly becoming that. When my five-year-old comes home after an active-shooter drill, it’s absurd.

Senator M. Deacon: Thank you.

Senator Oh: I have a question for Dr. Ahmed. The government has a limited amount of money, and in the coming years, money will become even tighter. Are you not concerned that wasting $750 million or more on a bill that won’t work will contribute to making our health care system even worse?

Dr. Ahmed: Thank you for the question. In fact, time and time again, we have learned in health care that an ounce of prevention is actually worth a pound of cure. The patients that I see in my hospital, they come in clinging to life, often require many operations, hang in the balance between life and death in the ICU, attached to ventilators and life support. They go back and forth to the ICU sometimes 10 and 12 times during their hospitalization. Once they leave the hospital, they have to go to rehabilitation. Some of them never go back to work or school.

These are young people in the prime of their lives, so, in fact, preventing this will be very cost-effective. We are spending millions and billions of dollars. I cited one study from B.C. showing that that province alone is spending $300 million treating firearm injuries. The U.S. is spending half a per cent of its massive GDP to treat this problem because they have not tackled firearm injuries and gun control in a responsible way.

Senator Oh: Dr. Ahmed, in your experience in the emergency ward, what is the average percentage compared to a normal emergency than a gunshot wound?

Dr. Ahmed: I work at a trauma centre in Toronto. We receive many of these patients, and we receive two or three —

Senator Oh: Do you have any statistics?

Dr. Ahmed: I can tell you my experience. We treat two, three or four of these patients a week, which is two, three or four too many. The majority of patients who attempt suicide by gun, 90% of them will die, so they don’t come to us. They go to the morgue.

Senator Oh: When you say three or four, is that the average every week? Is that government statistics?

Dr. Ahmed: No. I don’t know. I’m telling you my experience. You asked me about my experience. I’m telling you my experience.

Senator Oh: But you are only working in one location.

Dr. Ahmed: I work at St. Michael’s Hospital, that’s right. We are one of two trauma centres in the city. I can tell you that the experience in all of the urban trauma centres in the country is the same.

Senator Oh: Are you sure?

Dr. Ahmed: Pretty sure. We are a tight-knit community. We talk to each other regularly: Montréal, Vancouver.

Senator Oh: Can you get those figures from the government?

Dr. Ahmed: I don’t know if the government is collecting this data, sir. You asked me about my experience. I’m telling you my experience.

Senator Oh: Who collects the data?

Dr. Ahmed: I think, senator, you asked me about my experience, so I answered with my experience.

Senator Oh: I am asking for scientific figures. You told us that in the emergency ward, a gunshot wound was one of the major ones. I want to follow up on that.

Dr. Ahmed: I can tell you the rates are increasing. The injuries are getting more severe. There are more and more victims per incident. I can tell you that we treat two to four gunshots —

Senator Oh: But could it be more on gang violence?

Dr. Ahmed: I am not a member of the criminal justice system. I am a surgeon who treats patients.

Senator Oh: Thank you.

Dr. Ahmed: You’re welcome.

[Translation]

Senator Carignan: My question is for Dr. Drummond.

You talked about the link between gun possession and suicide. I believe you were saying the suicide rate is higher in such cases. The Justice Canada website has a section called “Link Between Overall Availability of Firearms and Suicide.” It cites various authors and studies from other countries that do not come to that conclusion. For example, it says:

The main question is whether the increased availability of firearms is more likely to facilitate completed suicides. . . . So far, however, the evidence about that particular hypothesis is contradictory and mostly inconclusive.

That does not seem to be saying that suicide rates will be higher wherever firearms are available. That information is from the Justice Canada website.

Are there statistics about suicide among those who do not own guns? Is the suicide rate lower within the non-gun-owning population than within the gun-owning population?

You talked about Israeli soldiers, but right now we’re talking about a subgroup and methods for committing suicide within the general population of people who own guns and those who do not. Is the suicide rate similar for both groups?

[English]

Dr. Drummond: That’s a long question. I will try to give you a brief answer.

The Department of Justice Canada is not the best resource in terms of trying to determine what is actually happening in Canada. A lot of the information is backdated. You will see people being quoted from studies from the 1990s and the 2000s. What you need to look at is the international literature. Those published in well-resourced international journals should give you that information.

I am confident in telling you, senator, that the reality is that access to a firearm in a home will increase the suicide rate. That is true internationally, regardless of what you are gleaning from Justice Canada.

[Translation]

Senator Carignan: Would you please send us that information? Then we can help Justice Canada update its website.

[English]

Dr. Drummond: Far more important, to be honest with you — I think we have been clear — is that it is difficult to make a made-in-Canada solution when we use international studies exclusively.

One of the things we’ve been asking for, for a number years now, is a totally funded Canadian research base in terms of firearm injuries so that we would have made-in-Canada research, made-in-Quebec research. That would help guide public policy in a more rational way.

[Translation]

Senator Carignan: I agree.

I have another question for Dr. Saunders. You talked about the population, about children who come in with gunshot wounds. That is always so sad.

When wounded patients come in, are you able to calculate the percentage or people wounded by legal firearms versus illegal ones? Or do you just have general stats about people killed or injured by bullets?

[English]

Dr. Saunders: The data we have available to us in Ontario are the mechanism of injury. So we know it’s a bullet. We have reports that it may be a handgun, a rifle, a BB gun — we don’t know. It is whatever is reported to us and in the health record. At the hospital, we don’t actually collect the weapon. We don’t know if it is a legally sourced weapon or not. In fact, in most injuries, we never even know what the weapon was. We don’t have the data to be able to say a certain percentage is legally sourced or illegally sourced. It is a real data gap that we need to do better on as Canadians.

The Chair: We have four senators remaining with questions. We have only three minutes, I’m afraid, for questions, so we have to tighten it up.

Senator Cardozo: I thought I could see that coming, but thank you, Mr. Chair, all the same.

I want to thank our witnesses very much for your presentations, especially Dr. Ahmed and Dr. Saunders. Thank you for bringing to us the professionalism you bring forward every day in your jobs in saving lives, in saving children’s lives and the passion with which you do it. We appreciate you taking time from your busy schedules in jobs which are often, I am sure, traumatic every single day. Thank you for that.

I want to ask all three of you about this, if there is time, but to start with Dr. Ahmed and Dr. Saunders. A couple of witnesses last week said the red flag laws were not good because they could target racialized and Indigenous people who would be anonymously complained about.

Could you talk about that suggestion? Dr. Ahmed first and then Dr. Saunders?

Dr. Ahmed: I will be brief. The evidence from various jurisdictions, including the U.S., suggests that a population level, rates of suicide, mass shootings and intimate partner violence can be reduced. Certainly, we have to guard against that. What is needed is a system that allows for confidential, rapid access for people. New York State, for example, has a system where one can go online and, within 24 hours, a court officer can issue an order to the police to have those firearms removed. On balance, this is thought to be protective of the community and protective for women, children and the community at large.

Dr. Saunders: When you have somebody in front of you and there’s perhaps a vexatious complaint you are concerned about, I think that vexatious complaint doesn’t carry the same weight as the actual threat of injury or death that might happen to a woman or a child independent of race. Over time, with this bill — if passed and implemented — we have to monitor by whom it is being used and when there are vexatious complaints. However, at the end of the day, if you are protecting a child or a woman with the threat of violence, that trumps everything.

Senator Cardozo: Dr. Drummond?

Dr. Drummond: If I may, looking at the Colorado experience, which is relatively new, of the first 109 ERPOs issued, there was only a 4% vexatious rate. If you talk to American researchers across the U.S. — and I have — that’s a bit of a canard often used by the pro-gun lobby to try to dissuade people from enacting ERPOs.

The Chair: Thank you for keeping this tight.

Senator Yussuff: Thank you, witnesses, for all you do on the front lines to help Canadians on a daily basis. I can’t say enough about your work. Thank you for taking the time to be here today.

Dr. Ahmed, in regard to being on the front line and the kinds of injuries that you are dealing with in a trauma centre — especially in Toronto; I will ask you to talk about Toronto — is gun violence that you are seeing more prevalent on a day-to-day basis? Is it more frequent in the last while in regard to what you are observing on that basis in the city?

Dr. Ahmed: Sadly, I’m afraid the answer is yes. We are seeing more and more of this. When I was training, we used to have to go to the U.S. to get experience to treat gunshot injuries. Our Canadian trainees no longer have to go there, whether they’re specializing in emergency medicine, or trauma surgery, or neurosurgery, or critical care. Sadly, our urban academic centres provide enough experience with firearm injuries that our trainees become experts. Over time, we are seeing a rise in the number of patients per incident, a change in the calibre of these bullets and, increasingly, we are seeing these incidents happen during the daytime, in broad daylight. Sadly, that’s why we are here. If this were not an issue or a problem that we saw in our clinical work, I assure you, we would not be here.

Senator Yussuff: Dr. Saunders, as a parent, I am, of course, constantly troubled and worried about the challenges we are seeing with teen violence in this country, specifically around gun violence that affects teens in this country. Based on your knowledge and expertise and the work you are doing with regard to teen violence, is gun violence the cause of some of the trauma you are seeing with teen violence in our hospitals?

Dr. Saunders: In terms of overall violence, guns are not the leading cause. There is the threat of violence — which may not necessarily show up in the emergency room setting — as well as other forms of violence such as stabbings and assaults. Guns are not the leading cause, but it is certainly an important cause.

In terms of what we do about it, it is multi-factorial. We do need to get to the root of the issue, but if we can remove the number of circulating guns and reduce accessibility, that can help. If we can support those, once they have been injured by gun violence so that we don’t see the ripple effects, then that can improve things as we move forward.

Senator Boehm: Dr. Saunders, thank you for being with us. I would like to thank the other witnesses as well.

In your opening statement, you were very compelling about the things that you have seen as a paediatrician dealing with gunshot wounds and horrific injuries. You added later about lockdown drills and active shooter drills in schools. My children have faced that as well, particularly when we lived in the United States and I was working there.

There’s a lot of misinformation and disinformation out there. We have received much mail from people across the country concerned about losing their rights as sports shooters and the like.

My question is very simple: How can hearts and minds be changed? You are on the front line. You see this. Do you have any suggestions?

Dr. Saunders: How do we change hearts and minds?

Senator Boehm: On both sides if that’s appropriate.

Dr. Saunders: As a paediatrician, we have to think about our own kids, our communities, and what it means to have healthy child development. Hunting and shooting at a range is for fun, but personal safety and community safety are the base of the pyramid for child development and well-being. I don’t have the answer to how we change hearts and minds, but if that’s not enough, I don’t know what is.

Senator Boehm: The well-being of children who go through this constantly, of course, is a concern. When I was a child, we had to get under the desk for drills about a nuclear attack. That shows how old I am. We didn’t worry about gun-type drills, but our children do and their children will as well.

Dr. Saunders: Yes, it is increasing. It is something that I never thought we would have to think about, but it happens all the time. Whether it is an active shooter or an active shooter drill, sadly, it happens all the time.

The Chair: Thank you.

Senator Dasko: Thank you so much to our witnesses. Two of you — Dr. Saunders and Dr. Ahmed — work in my city. I am so grateful for the work you do at both hospitals, not far from where I live.

Earlier, Dr. Ahmed reminded us that you are physicians and not legislators, but I do want to ask you one thing about Bill C-21.

There is a gap in the legislation around assault-style weapons. About 1,500 have been prohibited. In the future, new ones are to be prohibited, but there is a gap. There are a number of assault-style weapons that are not being dealt with directly in this bill.

I don’t know whether you’ve taken any position on this, but I wanted to ask you if you had anything in particular to say about that aspect of the bill, or would you say that this bill is good and let’s pass it as is?

Dr. Saunders: I’m not a technical expert by any means. There are some principles that go into whatever guns are prohibited or limited: if they can kill a lot of people, and a lot of people fast, and are easily accessible. Whatever goes behind the technicalities of that, I will leave that to the technical experts, but those are the principles that I think we need to consider.

Dr. Ahmed: I believe that Bill C-21 includes a definition, which is very important, and an evergreening mechanism to ensure that new models that are slightly changed, don’t come successfully to market. I think you are referring to the 350-odd gap guns, which I think should be carefully considered and measured against a definition of exactly what Dr. Saunders is referring to, namely, weapons and guns that can kill a lot of people very rapidly.

I would urge senators to ensure that the definition of “assault-style weapon” is carefully considered in this legislation.

Dr. Drummond: As for an emergency medicine perspective, we’ve always taken the position that it is a societal issue and not so much a medical issue. As a Canadian society, will we be more permissive in our approach to guns in society or will we be more restrictive? It falls on Canadian legislators and lawmakers to decide what kind of Canada they want for their children.

Senator Dasko: Thank you. That’s exactly what Bill C-21 is all about.

The Chair: Senators, this brings us to the end of our panel. Dr. Saunders, Dr. Drummond and Dr. Ahmed, thanks so much for sharing your extensive experience with us today. We are grateful to you. You have brought great gravity to this room, I can tell you. I’m sure Dr. Saunders feels it, and I’m sure that you do as well.

I will join with other colleagues in saying thank you for the work that you do every day — and I suspect on some nights and weekends — to save lives and help protect children and adults affected by these matters. It’s greatly appreciated. I say that on behalf of this committee, on behalf of the Senate of Canada and on behalf of Canadians across the country. Thank you very much.

We will now continue with our third panel of the meeting. For those tuning in today, we are examining Bill C-21, An Act to amend certain Acts and to make certain consequential amendments (firearms).

We have the pleasure of welcoming by video conference, on behalf of the One By One Movement, Marcell Wilson, Founder and President, and Francis Langlois, Researcher, Observatory of the United States, Raoul-Dandurand Chair, Université du Québec à Montréal.

Thank you for joining us today. I invite you to provide your opening remarks to be followed by questions from our members. I remind you that you each have five minutes for your testimony.

We begin today with Mr. Marcell Wilson. Please proceed whenever you are ready.

Marcell Wilson, Founder and President, The One By One Movement: Good afternoon. My name is Marcell Wilson, founder of The One by One Movement, or OBOM. I am a subject matter expert on gang culture theory. Also, I was recently deemed the expert on gender, diversity and inclusion by the Centre for Gender, Diversity and Inclusion Statistics at Statistics Canada, or CGDIS.

As many of you know, I am a former gang member and former international crime figure. Most of my expertise is rooted in lived experience.

I would like to thank the Senate of Canada for the invitation and for allowing us the opportunity to come here and represent a majority demographic that is affected by gun violence in Toronto. We work directly with boots on the ground in some of the communities most affected. We continuously work directly with people and families who were victims and with some who were perpetrators of this violence.

Our data at OBOM is sourced directly from this pool, which is historically difficult to research and obtain accurate data from. This is due to several reasons. As an example, most of the people that we serve, have a lack of trust in government and are fearful of speaking out due to possible consequences and repercussions from government and/or the streets. This makes it particularly difficult for academia and government bodies to collect accurate and robust data from a demographic on this subject that could possibly or potentially redirect the efforts of our government’s current plan for combatting this problem.

We all know that gun violence is a prevalent threat to many Canadians but especially to individuals in marginalized communities across the country. You now know that most of the guns used in violent crimes, such as homicides, throughout the communities we represent are illegally sourced firearms. I have said it many times, and I will continue to say it, that even one loss of life or injury to senseless gun violence is an absolute travesty, and to effectively combat this problem, we need to focus the majority of our efforts and resources on prevention and root causes. The methods and outcomes of violence are important to address but should be secondary to root causes and their risk factors.

Prevention doesn’t only mean addressing root causes. It also means preventing illegal guns from entering the country, judicial punishment coupled with strong reformation efforts and investing in an underfunded mental health care system, to name a few. I do understand that some of these concerns have been addressed through amendments to Bill C-21, such as the Building Safer Communities Fund, a promise to strengthen our border efforts and others. But if the premise of this bill is to prevent gun violence, then these amendments or add-ons, if you will, should be the focal points of a gun violence prevention bill.

Sadly, people are killed by legal firearms in Canada. This does happen, but I think any expert or rational person can agree that when speaking about gun violence in Canada, this represents a minority. How is it that on such a major issue, the minority has the loudest voice? How is it possible that the majority, their representatives and experts advocating for them, can feel so unheard?

As I was researching the Government of Canada’s website about Bill C-21, I read something that concerned me:

Bill C-21 proposes to strengthen rules to prevent gun violence in our communities by placing responsible restrictions on some firearms used in Canada.

I wish that this statement was true, “to prevent gun violence in our communities,” because if it were, I would absolutely support it. But this claim gives false hope to Canadians who don’t know any better and should be a catastrophic letdown to those who do.

What I am asking from the government on behalf of the Canadians and communities we represent is to simply say it like it is. This is a bill to remove legal firearms from legal firearm owners, not to prevent violence or make our country significantly safer. Please stop exploiting people who have already been through enough for a political agenda. We know better, we want better and we deserve better. Thank you for your time.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

[Translation]

Francis Langlois, Researcher, Observatory of the United States, Raoul-Dandurand Chair, Université du Québec à Montréal: I want to thank the committee for inviting me and giving me time to speak. I’ve been studying firearms-related issues for over 10 years now. I’ve looked at technical changes and how firearms are made, marketed and regulated.

I also study different forms of gun culture and causes of and solutions for armed violence. I’ve talked to the media and government authorities about these subjects a lot in recent years. I’ve also written about right-wing extremism in the United States.

Simply put, firearms are weapons designed to kill. They don’t make people violent. However, these tools make violence easier and more efficient. As Mr. Wilson said earlier, this is a problem that affects Canadian cities in general and the most vulnerable communities in particular. For that reason, the way they are made, used and stored must be governed by the law.

Despite its flaws, Bill C-21 contributes to efforts to regulate legal firearms while also tackling ghost guns and strengthening penalties for gun crimes.

As Mr. Wilson said, the goal is to remove guns lawfully owned by Canadians from circulation in Canada, specifically handguns — in the long term — and military-style assault weapons, to use the government’s term.

Although I’m very aware that these two measures will have very little impact, or, at least, little impact on the violence affecting big Canadian cities, I support the bill because it’s an expression of the desire to reduce the risk of mass killings in the future. There was one just last week in the U.S., and there’s no guarantee there won’t be more of them here in Canada. Mass killers tend to prefer assault rifles and other semi-automatic weapons.

That said, the bill has its flaws. The definition of a military-style assault weapon could be problematic. The real cost of the bill and of buying back so-called assault weapons does not seem to me to be well fleshed out because once weapons are bought back, provisions must be made to handle, store and possibly destroy them safely. I haven’t seen any numbers related to those issues.

Nor do we know how many of these weapons are circulating in Canada right now, which makes it very difficult to calculate the cost precisely.

In conclusion, I would say that a bill like this one cannot solve every gun violence problem. Additional measures are needed. As Mr. Wilson said, prevention is key. It’s also important to invest in communities affected by gun violence and destroy the root causes Mr. Wilson was talking about.

Mass killings are virtually unknown in Australia, New Zealand and England because they got rid of assault rifles altogether. It worked. That said, those three countries do not share a border with the U.S., which sells huge numbers of illegal guns that go to Mexico and also come to Canada.

Lastly, mass shootings are high-intensity but low-frequency events. Any reduction in the risk of a mass shooting happening will not really affect the current incidence of gun-related homicide. That’s why we have to be realistic about this bill. I agree with Mr. Wilson. Prevention is key to the fight against gun violence, but I am hopeful that the risk of future mass killings can be reduced.

Thank you.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Langlois. We will proceed to questions now. This panel will conclude at 6 p.m. As with the previous panel, I will limit each question, including the answer, to four minutes. I will hold up this card to indicate when 30 seconds remains in your time. Please remain succinct and identify the person you are directing the question to. I offer the first question to Deputy Chair, Senator Dagenais.

[Translation]

Senator Dagenais: My question is for Mr. Langlois. I would like to hear your thoughts on ghost guns and 3D-printed guns. There have been a lot of amendments to Bill C-21 to better deal with the market for these guns, which seem easy to make from scratch or with parts available on the market. Is that good enough? What can we control? What will remain beyond our control? Should we be more worried about these guns, or are they a minor concern for now?

Mr. Langlois: Thank you for the question, senator.

Yes, it’s a growing problem around the world and especially here in North America. We’re finding more and more of them all over the place, different models, including automatic weapons that can shoot a lot of bullets very fast. Criminals love them because they’re untraceable, or almost. The polymers used to print them can be broken down to see which printer made them, so if the printer can be located, that’s good, but if not, it’s practically impossible.

That said, during a previous presentation, I did suggest broadening the definition of a firearm not only to the stock, which is printable, but to all the main components, such as the receiver, the barrel, and so on, so as to see who is importing a lot of these kinds of components or pieces. At the moment, in the eyes of the law — especially in the U.S., but here, too — these things are not exactly considered weapons. It would therefore be good to regulate all of the important components that make up a firearm, which is what several European countries, such as Germany, are doing. It’s much harder to get printed weapons there.

It’s relatively difficult to control software and especially the files used to print these weapons, whether they’re made with plastic components or a combination of plastic and metal parts. That’s what criminals are really after. The police officers I talked to told me the metal and plastic guns are almost as good as the original models, especially Glocks, which are very easy to use and copy.

These weapons will remain relatively easy to get unless the federal government figures out how to control the Internet in a “Big Brother” kind of way. I doubt the problem can be completely stamped out, but if the measures I talked about are incorporated into Bill C-21, it may be easier to tackle this phenomenon.

Senator Dagenais: To what extent is the current government correct about what it calls weapons of war and semi-automatic weapons? Can you tell us what kind of people are buying these kinds of weapons? I can’t imagine what purpose they would serve other than for soldiers and major police force tactical teams.

Mr. Langlois: A lot of enthusiasts and collectors who like to do target shooting or compete, and people who like cool technology are very interested in studying and owning these precision weapons. The problem is that some of these weapons are currently restricted, which means they are identified, but, up until recently, many of them were non-restricted.

That means we can’t trace many of these weapons that are in circulation in Canada right now. That’s a problem. We know they were sold at some point, but there’s no real way to know who bought them and how many firearms those people have.

It’s a major problem right now, a nightmare for police, the legal system and governments.

[English]

Senator Kutcher: Thank you, both, for taking the time out of your busy days to be here with us. My question is to Mr. Langlois. In your House of Commons testimony, you stated, in Canada, we are hearing:

. . . something very similar to the rhetoric being bandied about in the United States. Proponents of the right to own and use firearms sometimes spout arguments taken directly from organizations such as the National Rifle Association.

I’m sure that you are aware that in 1993, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Canadians have no constitutional right to own firearms, and owning firearms is a privilege; yet much of the correspondence on Bill C-21 that I have received seems to be misinformed, thinking that firearm ownership is a right in Canada. Can you share with us some of the U.S.-style disinformation about guns and gun violence that you are seeing promoted here in Canada that you refer to in your House of Commons testimony? Is there anything you would add to the bill to help mitigate the impact of this important rhetoric?

Mr. Langlois: Thank you for the question, senator. Yes, I remember saying that. Last week, I was reading on Facebook groups and on X, this kind of rhetoric coming right from the United States where people were saying, basically, that if we don’t have firearms at home, what can we do to defend ourselves? It is not a right guaranteed by the Constitution to have a gun at home to defend the home. Also, how firearms are related to freedom, and how they are related to a lifestyle that involves firearms. This is all coming from the United States. Many people are saying that this is a right guaranteed by the United States’ Bill of Rights, which was signed in 1689, if I am not mistaken, because it was in the Bill of Rights at some point. But it was very well known, even at that point, that the King could not disarm his Protestant subjects — not the whole population. Anyway, it was removed here in Canada from the Canadian Bill of Rights and even in the United Kingdom. I think it will be very difficult to stop this rhetoric from crossing the border.

I have a few American — I receive every month Guns and Ammo. It is a mainstream gun magazine from the United States, and a lot of people are subscribing to that kind of publication here. They read the argumentation of people who are writing for those magazines. You can see it online everywhere. I don’t think it is a good idea to try to forbid that kind of publication here in Canada, but what I think is that the government should be clear and explain how the law works, what the Supreme Court has ruled, the jurisprudence, how it works here in Canada and how different it is from the United States. I think that would be key for a better understanding of the gun control debate here in Canada.

Senator Kutcher: Thank you for that. In terms of your own research, are there any organizations that you’ve seen in Canada that promote this kind of American rhetoric based on American perspectives, as opposed to being clear about what the Canadian law states?

The Chair: A 10-second answer, please.

Mr. Langlois: I think some members of the National Firearms Association, Tous contre un registre Québécois des armes à feu and other groups like that, are repeating what is said in the United States. I don’t think they publish it officially, but I would say that’s how I see it and how I read it online.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

[Translation]

Senator Cardozo: My questions are for both witnesses. You both talked about measures in this bill that tackle the root causes of the problem. I’d like to know which things you think should be at the top of the to-do list, starting with Mr. Langlois.

Mr. Langlois: Thank you for the question.

Fighting poverty is one of the first solutions to address the root causes of urban violence, as is offering alternatives to youth, different options than violence or crime. Revitalizing local communities by creating programs that integrate local elites, social groups and street workers is important. Of course, a certain small proportion of police is also required; repression may still be needed when necessary.

If not, we need to draw inspiration from the successful experience — albeit undermined by COVID-19 — of New York, Philadelphia and Boston, places where people have invested in communities, met with elites and rebuilt neighbourhoods through greening, for example, simply to offer alternatives to young people who are attracted to crime.

We’ve seen what happens when leading resources are withdrawn, because we saw it during the COVID-19 pandemic: violence increases, because the protective factors that frame people at risk of turning to violence are either undermined or withdrawn altogether. This is where we need to put money, lots of money, more than into repression.

Senator Cardozo: Thank you.

[English]

Senator Cardozo: Mr. Wilson, what are your thoughts on new cases beyond this bill?

Mr. Wilson: Yes, my answer echoes the professor’s. I believe that we should start with tackling issues like poverty and dealing with mental health issues in our communities. There are definitely not enough resources. There tends to be a broken chain. Often we hear about a multi-pronged or multifocal approach, which could work, and, in most cases, should work. But what we are seeing on the ground level is a lack of communication between agencies, bureaucracies and government bodies. A quote one of my old mentors used to say is that we are not underserved, we are poorly served. We need to fill those gaps. Second, from my lived experience as a former criminal, we must definitely fill the gaps at the border, invest more there and stop the flow into the communities. But most of all, we must deal with the culture of violence that we’re seeing.

Mr. Langlois: It should be done in the long term, not for one or two years.

Mr. Wilson: Sustainability.

Mr. Langlois: Sustainability. That’s it. Five years, ten years — I don’t know, but much longer than it’s done right now.

Senator Cardozo: Professor Langlois, just briefly, what are your thoughts on the red flag clauses? There were suggestions that they would affect him minorities and Indigenous people more than others. Any thoughts about the red flag issue?

Mr. Langlois: I must admit that I’m not an expert on that particular topic, but one thing is sure. It should be done in a way that nobody’s rights are attacked.

[Translation]

Senator Boisvenu: I have two questions, one for each of the witnesses, whom I thank, initially.

The first is for Mr. Wilson. I recently met with a group of Montreal youths, many of whom are often in indirect contact with gang members. The comment other groups made to me was the underfunding of street workers, people who work with 14- to 18-year-olds, the primary manna for street gangs.

We’re going to invest nearly a billion dollars in gun buybacks. Isn’t there a contradiction between buying back firearms, whose impact on crime is likely to be relatively minor, and having groups intervene with young people in cities, especially big cities that are underfunded, knowing that we’re going to lose these young people to street gangs? Isn’t there some kind of contradiction when it comes to the government’s priorities?

[English]

Mr. Wilson: Thank you for your question, senator. Yes, I would have to agree 100%. We currently work with many young people. That is where I was trying to go with my opening statement. I feel that many of our young voices and many of the people who can play a major role in combatting this issue, their voices are not being heard or taken into account. If the data were collected properly, coming from young people, from people who are living in marginalized communities and from those who are most affected by gun violence, it could help sway the government from spending this much money on an issue that will not impact those who are affected in the communities in which we work. Those young people are right, 100%.

[Translation]

Senator Boisvenu: My next question is for Mr. Langlois.

Toronto’s police chief claimed that 86% of weapons seized from the criminal underworld and other sources came from the United States. There is no strategy in this bill. In fact, when the Minister of Public Safety came to testify, he was asked what his strategy would be to prevent guns from entering Canada freely.

I’m trying to understand how we’re going to spend a billion dollars buying up so-called “legal” firearms to take them off the market in Canada. What’s more, 86% of the guns entering Canada come from the United States, and we have no strategy to stop this illegal entry.

Are there not contradictions in the bill? Because we’re going to invest massively to buy illegal weapons and do very little to prevent the entry of illegal firearms from the U.S.

Mr. Langlois: Thank you for the question, senator.

Yes, this seems to me to be a major weakness in the bill, unless another bill or program is in the works that I haven’t heard about at the border.

The figures you quote about Toronto are for handguns recovered from crime scenes in the Greater Toronto Area, around 86% of handguns. Some other police forces have told me that 90% of the handguns that are seized in major cities would come from abroad, particularly the U.S.

In fact, there’s a problem with gun trafficking at the border. The border is very porous. Weapons sometimes enter on a massive scale, as was the case in March 2021, south of Dundee, where a young man was arrested with 249 Glock-type pistols. In other places, in the town of Stanstead in 2011, a group of amateur dealers were caught with six or seven pistols. They had swapped backpacks in the bathroom of the library that straddles the border between Derby and Stanstead. There are a multitude of entry points and methods to bring these weapons in. Indeed, we don’t hear much about strategy—

[English]

The Chair: Mr. Langlois, I’m sorry to interrupt. We have gone a bit over time.

Senator M. Deacon: Thank you to our witnesses for giving us this very important time and testimony today.

My initial question is for Mr. Wilson. I have been intrigued by your testimony at the House. I have read it a few times. Without being too invasive on your life as a group of senators, you have a pretty authentic background and you have been on the street. If it is appropriate, I will ask this question in two parts.

For our learning perspective, what drew you into your gang life and existence and what drew you out of it?

The second part is supplementary to what my colleague said. You mentioned in your testimony that this bill and the conversation around the money might be a bit of a distraction to the heart of the work that you are most concerned about, which you have talked about today.

On this latter point, the government is looking at increasing the maximum penalty from 10 to 14 years’ imprisonment for firearms-related offences, including firearms smuggling and trafficking.

As we review this and as we think about you and your background — which I hope you will share more about — I wonder what more you think the government can do to address this bill. Do you think we may have missed some parts?

Mr. Wilson: Thank you so much for the question.

In terms of how I got in, what we do in The One by One Movement is we try to track the history of an individual. Our programs are tailored specifically to an individual depending upon their risk factors. My risk factors were definitely the neighbourhood I grew up in. I grew up in Toronto community housing, right across the street from abundant wealth that I could see every day. It seemed there was no way out from watching my mother struggle and watching the people around me struggle.

Unfortunately, the guys I had to look up to were involved in criminal activity. This culture of violence becomes a survival mechanism. It doesn’t make a person good or bad per se. This will lend to my answer later about justice and incarceration. It doesn’t make people bad. I definitely wanted to survive. I actually got good grades. I did well in school, and I wanted a way out.

People in this situation become good at sniffing out the need for protection and survival. That is what happened in my case. I felt the need to feel protected, to earn and to elevate myself in life, and I got involved with the people around me. Unfortunately, I entered that world with both feet and a lot of bad things happened — a lot of trauma and a lot of things that I suffer from now.

The way out was simply to remove myself slowly from the things that were around me. I fell in love. I started to embrace components of mental health. I started to understand that it was okay to love and to show compassion and that this made you human. I used those opportunities to take a step back.

What makes my story unique is that I asked permission. I spoke to the people around me and I said, “I am no threat. Is it possible that I can step down?” I was given permission and I then used this to change my life.

As far as the bill being sort of a waste of our time and in terms of the work we do, it is a distraction as far as we always want to deal with the reason why. Why does this young person want to pick up a gun and harm another person? What can we do to change the factors that lead to that sort of behaviour? If the government could focus and invest more in that — we do see some finances circulating, but it is never sustainable, as was pointed out earlier.

A lot of the time, people have the right heart and the right sentiment but not the right people running the programs. We need more people who look like us, who come from the places we come from. One of the biggest holes we’re finding is lack of proper oversight and lack of evaluation in terms of which methods are effective versus which are not. Hopefully, that answers your question.

Senator M. Deacon: Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you. That is very helpful.

Senator Plett, you are next.

Senator Plett: Thank you. I have a couple of questions for Mr. Wilson and then, if I have time, for Dr. Langlois. If I don’t then I will go to second round for that.

First, Mr. Wilson, thank you for being here. It is good to hear your story and what you have done and accomplished.

This bill, as with many government bills — and maybe with this government more than others — paints so much with the same brush. Bill C-21 impacts the legal sale and purchase of all handguns, including reproduction of antiques. They are all captured with the same brush by this bill.

In your experience, is it fair to say that there is probably little interest by gangs in antique guns? Is it fair to say further that it is unlikely that anyone will use a muzzle-loading pistol to commit a crime?

Mr. Wilson: Yes, sir. Thank you for your question. I can attest from my lived experience. I operated at some of the higher levels here and internationally. Never once did I ever — myself or anyone that I ever knew — carry a legally sourced firearm. That is for a number of reasons. You do not want your name attached to something that could be traced back to someone who, by six degrees of separation, can be traced back to you. It doesn’t make sense for a criminal to use a weapon that was legally sourced, let alone one that could misfire on you or be as old as a muzzle-loaded weapon. So, no, sir, that was not one of the ways that we resourced or used weapons. I feel very confident and comfortable in saying that that would stay true to now.

Senator Plett: Thank you. Mr. Wilson, you have also said that younger voices of people living in minority communities are not being heard.

The government has claimed that it consulted widely before it drafted this bill. As a matter of fact, the minister appeared in front of this committee last week and reiterated this.

Are you aware of anyone within your community with which the government consulted before they introduced this bill?

Mr. Wilson: Thank you for your question, sir. I would have to say no, not one.

Currently, we serve over 300 families in the above-mentioned communities. As I stated in my opening speech, most of the demographic that we serve, would never speak to a police officer. They would never speak to a nurse. They would never speak openly to a doctor. They would never speak openly to anyone who comes with an authoritative title.

What makes us effective at our work is that we are from these communities. We were born in these communities. We are trusted members of these communities. A lot of times, outside organizations and agencies come into our communities with ideas and push this on community members which pushes them away even further. This is what I meant by getting this kind of skewed data. I am very confident that the government is not receiving the robust data that it could be receiving.

Senator Yussuff: Thank you, witnesses, for being here. My first question goes to Mr. Wilson.

We both agree that it will take a multitude of approaches to deal with violence and specifically with gun violence in the community. We have to do many things. Prevention is obviously an important part of deterring young people from getting into the culture of gun violence and criminal activity.

Equally, we need effective laws in our country that people should know. They should be a deterrent. In other words, you do not want to get yourself in trouble because you would get a record and it may damage your life for a long time. In the context of doing that, we should also be looking at ways to pass legislation to ensure a broader impact of gun violence in all of our society. At the end of the day, that is something we need to work hard to prevent.

I applaud you for the work that you are doing in the community and recognize that it is important work. If we are going to deter young people from getting into a culture of violence, we have to work hard to ensure that we can influence them.

Like you, I am a person of colour. I know very much about the impact of racism and the systemic challenges that people have to overcome in that regard while recognizing that, sometimes, some people don’t understand the dysfunction and how it may actually maim and challenge people.

In terms of the work that you are doing, and in regard to this bill specifically, obviously this bill does not get to all of the aspects of how we can deter young people from getting into gun violence. However, it is one part of the broader effort that we need to take on in how we are going to tackle it. That is, investment in the community over the long term — not just when it suits the need but over the long term — to ensure that we can help a lot of our young people who may see gun violence as a part of their future and their lives.

Would you agree that we have to take many different approaches and not just one approach in regard to the work that we have to do is how we prevent young people from getting into gun violence in this country?

Mr. Wilson: Yes, sir. Thank you for your question.

I absolutely agree that we have to take a multifocal approach to tackling this issue, even more so oversight among the different pillars that are trying to address the issue.

We see efforts being made in different countries and cities on a micro level. A lot of the times, even what we are seeing back at home is, again, a lack of communication, a lack of sharing data and political banter. While all of this is going on, we’re burying 12-year-olds and people are getting shot at the mall while we get lost in this analysis paralysis.

I do agree that a multi-pronged approach is the only way, but, again, with an acute focus on prevention. As another speaker has said, and as many people have said time and again, prevention is much cheaper than intervention.

Senator Yussuff: Thank you.

The Chair: We will now go to the second round.

Senator Plett: Dr. Langlois, I know that you have alluded to this already but I want to delve into this a little more.

You mentioned that one of the problems is that gun violence in Canada is linked to our proximity to the United States. We have witness testimony that over 90% of guns, for example, are smuggled guns. Yet, there is almost nothing in this bill that in any way addresses smuggled guns. Mr. Wilson, maybe you could also answer this at the end.

Would you not say that is a major gap in this bill, namely that we’re not addressing what seems to be the largest issue?

Mr. Langlois: Thank you for your question, senator.

I think you are right. This is an interesting gap in this bill. The government already put more than $90 million toward the border about two years ago, something like that.

Also, the government contacted their American peers and decided to put in place a new committee to work on all types of smuggling, but especially gun smuggling. The government also gave money to the provinces. Quebec, for example, received something like $250 million with which the Quebec government developed a program to fight against smuggling in that area. They decided to work closely with their American counterparts, especially the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, also known as the ATF, although the ATF is very weak. It seems it works, and so there are more gun seizures. I am not sure if I am using the right term here, but the police get more guns at the border.

Even then, you are right; more money — or more resources should be put on the border, and it seems that our American friends are not as concerned by what is going north than what is coming south.

I agree with you. There is a problem with that bill at that level, but perhaps the government will put money somewhere else.

Thank you.

Senator Plett: I think it would be normal that the Americans would be more concerned about what is coming into the U.S. than what is leaving, and I think we would probably do the same thing if the roles were reversed.

You mentioned all of the money that has been spent. You did correct yourself, at least partially, at the end and say “more resources,” and I support that, because it seems that we are pretty good at throwing money at issues that don’t really get any results.

Mr. Wilson, do you not also agree that that is a huge gap in this, and we should spend more resources and time in filling that gap?

Mr. Wilson: Yes, sir. Thank you for the question.

I absolutely 100% agree, and that is from a lived experience point of view. That is from the point of view of working on the ground with these young people.

We conducted an experiment just a couple of years ago to see how quickly we could access an illegal firearm. This was with a media organization that wanted to run a story. We were able, through a bunch of teenagers, to resource a weapon in under two hours.

If we’re going to decrease the gun violence in Canada, step one is dealing with illegal weapons and how they are coming in, 100%.

Senator Plett: Thank you very much.

Senator Kutcher: Along with my honourable senator friend across the aisle, I completely agree that we have to really deal with these illegal firearms that are being smuggled from the U.S. into Canada. We have to do much better.

I want to phrase the question in a slightly different way. A recent article in Bloomberg entitled, “NRA-Style Politics Transformed Canada’s Gun Culture — and Shootings Rose 869%” stated, “A third of guns used in Canadian crimes and then traced by authorities were legally imported from the U.S. ”

Compared to other countries, Canada has the highest volume of U.S. semi-automatic firearm imports, and the market, as you know, is growing.

Do you think that some of the U.S. disinformation rhetoric that you were discussing earlier is part of a strategy to grow the Canadian gun market, and would this bill potentially have an impact on decreasing the amount of legally imported firearms to Canada?

Mr. Langlois: Yes. I do think the National Rifle Association, or NRA, and the gun lobby in the United States are — without making a pun — targeting the Canadian market and all markets. They changed the marketing of their guns first in the 1980s and then at the beginning of 2000 where they decided, very willingly, to put on the market and push all those civilian versions of assault weapons or military-style assault weapons — whatever you call them — and it is not a coincidence that those weapons are very popular and in high demand right here in Canada and everywhere in the Western world. The marketing is very efficient, and the rhetoric is very efficient for protection and for fun and some kind of manliness.

On that front, the young people who want the new guns coming from the United States — legally or illegally — are influenced by what they see on the internet and in advertising or in culture. So, yes, perhaps, the bill will have an effect on the availability of those weapons here in Canada — that’s for sure — if there is a ban on assault rifles.

Senator Dasko: Thank you to both witnesses for being here today.

Sorry, chair, I did not raise my hand quickly enough on the first round.

My question is mainly directed to Mr. Wilson. I took note of your youth in Toronto, and I am very happy to see that you have turned your life around for you and for others.

Your experience and data are focused on Toronto, which, of course, is good for many of us to understand, but I want to ask you a question about Saskatchewan. Saskatchewan is the province in 2020 and 2021 that had the highest rate of gun homicides in the country. The city of Regina has had, for years, the highest rates of gun crime.

The Chief Firearms Officer who testified here last week said that the problem was not handguns, that it was not imported handguns at all. It was rifles being stolen from local gun owners in Saskatchewan, and these rifles were then sawed off. He told us that this was the source in Saskatchewan of the gun crime. He was trying to deal with it in his ways.

I want to ask both witnesses about that, but let’s start with Mr. Wilson. Is it possible that your perspective is based on one type of observation? What would you do about this situation in Saskatchewan?

Mr. Wilson: Thank you so much for the question, senator.

From my lived experience, one of the ways that my organization and others resourced weapons was by stealing them, which, in turn, turns them into illegal, criminal weapons.

Similar to Toronto, the culture is still very similar. The way a gang operates in Alberta is not much different than the way a gang operates in Ontario. Anyway that you can resource these weapons illegally would be palatable to any organization that is either fighting a war or trying to make money.

The solution there would be very similar to what the solution is in Toronto, and that is dealing with the square root of the issue. Why are these young people stealing guns? Why are they sawing them off? Why are they trying to kill each other, and what can we do to tackle it from that level?

We would focus less on the tool of destruction and more on the reason why.

Senator Dasko: I certainly agree that there are root causes here, but I just wanted to really focus on the fact that he told us it was not guns smuggled from the United States. It was not handguns smuggled from the United States.

Would you agree that there are other issues besides the smuggling of guns from the United States that are the sources of gun crime in this country?

Mr. Wilson: Yes. Like I said, I would agree that even in my case, if we could not access — because there are these things we call “dry spells” where we couldn’t access illegal weapons from the United States, so we would have to rob and steal from shops or legal gun owners. Then, again, it turns the weapon into an illegal weapon. These are not straw purchases. These are not legal gun owners that were selling us the weapons.

My answer is still the same. If we deal with it from a square root issue, we would worry less about the tools that are being used.

Senator Dasko: And we do have to focus on domestic guns as well. That’s what I would say.

Thank you.

The Chair: Colleagues, this brings us to the end of this panel. On behalf of this committee and the Senate of Canada, I extend our very sincere thanks to both Mr. Wilson and Mr. Langlois. You have brought different experiences and different expertise to this panel, and I think you can tell that it has been deeply appreciated. We thank you for the time and the effort that you have brought to this study and the expertise alongside it. Thank you both.

Our fourth panel is joining us on our examination of Bill C-21, An Act to amend certain Acts and to make certain consequential amendments (firearms). We have the pleasure of welcoming, from the Danforth Families for Safe Communities, Ken Price, Spokesperson; and Samantha Price, Survivor and Spokesperson. From the Coalition for Gun Control, we have, Dr. Wendy Cukier, President and Professor, Toronto Metropolitan University.

Thank you for being here today. I invite you to provide your opening remarks, to be followed by questions from our members. I remind you that each organization has five minutes for testimony. We will begin with the Danforth Families for Safe Communities. I understand that Ken Price and Samantha Price will be sharing speaking time. We have a 30-second warning card that you’ve probably seen before. Mr. Price, please begin when you are ready.

Ken Price, Spokesperson, Danforth Families for Safe Communities: I will have Samantha Price start.

Samantha Price, Survivor and Spokesperson, Danforth Families for Safe Communities: Mr. Chair and senators, on July 22, 2018, my friends and I experienced life-changing and life-ending terror and tragedy.

All we were doing is eating ice cream out on a summer night. Then we became the targets of a hate-filled individual we did not know, using a stolen handgun to carry out his rampage. What should have been a peaceful and fun night of celebration ended in horror and misery. This endures today for me and for my friends and family and hundreds of others in the community. I can confirm through lived experience that gun violence has a terrible ripple effect. It’s been over five years and when this comes up and people ask, “How are you doing? Have you recovered?” I usually say, “I’m fine,” as we all often do.

I will always be grateful to the off-duty doctor who gave me first aid in the restaurant I ran into and the police, ambulance workers, doctors and nurses at St. Mike’s that helped me. But in my mind, I think, “Well, I had a bullet pass right through my hip. I saw my friends get shot at close range and a good friend of mine, Reese Fallon, was murdered.”

Things are not the same, and they probably never will be. Mainly, I feel I lost my trust with my community and I’m now very cautious about where I go and how I get there.

I know that living with this is even harder for the Fallons who lost 18-year-old Reese and all the living that she was robbed of. The same is true for the Kozis family, who lost 10-year-old Julianna. I did not know Julianna personally, but her family has told me about her. They honoured her by holding an event called Just Do Kindness to celebrate her selflessness.

As uncomfortable as this is to talk about, I am here for my community to remind the committee of the lethal nature of guns; to make the case for change.

To those that have tried to minimize our grief or explain away the facts of our experience in order to defend their position, just know that gun violence is felt widely, deeply and profoundly and does not go away.

I think that losing a life or having your life changed is not the same as having your hobby curtailed. We need to change the rules to be fair to all of us. We need to do better.

Senators, I appreciate expressions of sympathy, but I need your help. Help pass this bill. No one ever deserves to experience what we had to go through that night. Thank you.

Mr. Price: Senators, I am here to support my daughter. I am here as a spokesperson for the Danforth Families group. We are here to urge you to put public safety at the centre of your decision making and your process.

We recognize other stakeholders in this debate. But “reasonably used” is the key phrase in the law guiding the availability and classification of firearms for private owners. We should not just let the manufacturers that supply us with firearms push their latest and newest weapons into the mix. Permit firearms cautiously because innovation in this industry produces a more hazardous and a more lethal product. We see Bill C-21, in part, as an update to the application of our existing firearms framework — and a necessary update — to balance public safety considerations in the face of our gun violence problem.

As to our experience, the Danforth incident was a wake-up call for our family and for many others, and I offer the following observations.

The handgun used was a Smith and Wesson M&P40. The M&P stands for Military and Police — as we learned — because that was the initial target market for this gun. So, why is a policeman’s sidearm available for sale to the general public? These handguns are far different from what Olympic target shooters use so why are they necessary for sport shooting?

Second, the gun was imported legally. It was housed in a retail shop and then stolen in one part of the country and used later in another part. as we have learned, about 1,500 guns per year are lost or stolen and not recovered. That was for the period reported between 2016 and 2020, according to the RCMP’s own information.

Given what happened to us, we wonder what has happened to all those other lost and stolen guns? Given a large base of ownership, of course, mistakes will be made. This is foreseeable. Let’s get the most dangerous of these weapons out of circulation, in as fair a way as possible.

Finally, the gunman was able to buy magazines to quickly reload his stolen gun, without needing to have a licence. We see that Bill C-21 has addressed this loophole.

We have other points. We’ve submitted a brief where our support of Bill C-21 is outlined.

I will sum up this way: After our tragedy, our families took several months before deciding whether we could speak out and what to say. We have come from different backgrounds and we have different political views among us, but we support Bill C-21 across that because it is a wide-reaching bill and it is not just about gun bans. It will contribute to a public health approach that we believe is the ultimate end game for addressing gun violence.

What we need here now, from this committee and from the broader Senate, is support for Bill C-21. Thank you for your attention today and thank you for your public service. We are happy to take questions later.

The Chair: Thank you so much to you both. We now go to Dr. Cukier. Please proceed when you are ready.

Wendy Cukier, President and Professor, Toronto Metropolitan University, Coalition for Gun Control: Thank you, senators, for giving me this opportunity to address you again. I represent the Coalition for Gun Control, an alliance of more than 200 public health, violence prevention, public safety, community, womens’, and victims’ organizations. We will submit a brief after our testimony that is translated, as is required.

We are asking that you pass this legislation in its current form. We want to provide an analysis of why we think it is important. I should say, I am a professor. I wrote a book called The Global Gun Epidemic: From Saturday Night Specials to AK-47s with the past president of the American Public Health Association, so our approach is grounded in public health, looking at primary prevention, enforcement and implementation. However, we know from the evidence that controlling the availability of firearms reduces the risk that they will be misused.

I also want to say at this time that I am also a parent. When people are making decisions about this legislation, it is really important to consider the impact of gun violence on victims, their families and communities, as was so poignantly described just now.

In terms of Bill C-21, our view is that it includes measures that will reduce the risks that people who are a threat to themselves or to others will have access to any firearms. It improves controls over firearms where, in our view, the risk outweighs the utility. By that I am referring to the fact that military-style semi-automatic firearms and handguns which are not used for hunting are not needed by farmers and serve no more purpose in rural communities than they do in urban centres.

We believe that the legislation will also strengthen controls over manufactures and imports making it more difficult for them to circumvent the legislation because the gun industry is very innovative. What is particularly important to us is the legislation explicitly includes a non-derogation clause protecting Indigenous hunting rights.

You’ve heard from a lot of witnesses. You’ve received a wide range of research studies and summaries. Our view is — and it is shared by most injury-prevention experts in the country — that the evidence, on balance, supports the fact that strong controls over firearms, over the availability of firearms as well as over firearms where the risk outweighs the utility, do have an impact on public safety.

We also want to remind senators — I think you’ve seen the emphasis — that while there is a lot of emphasis on smuggled guns, which is important to address, fully 50% of the firearms Canada traced that were involved in crime originated from domestic sources. Those guns were legally imported to Canada and were either misused by their owners or diverted to illegal markets. It is important to note that most mass shootings, most domestic violence, most suicides and most murders of police officers in this country are not committed with smuggled guns but with guns that were domestically sourced. I’d be happy to provide more information about that.

The second point is that gun violence comes in many forms. If we think about gun violence as we think about cancer, it is true that this legislation is not a panacea. It won’t address all the dimensions of gun violence. However, if we look at cancer, we know that there are differences in skin cancer, breast cancer and stomach cancer. We don’t say, “Because this particular measure won’t address that, it is not good.” I want to underscore the fact that while smuggled guns are a problem, while we do need better border controls, while we do need support for intelligence-led policing, we also need strict controls over domestic firearms.

You heard from Emma Cunliffe. We had standing at the Mass Casualty Commission. I think this legislation responds to that extensive study and the research that was presented there. It also responds to public opinion polls. Most Canadians, for the 30 years I’ve been working on this issue, want to see a ban on handguns and military-style semi-automatic firearms.

No law is perfect, but we believe this piece of legislation goes a long way to addressing a problem which has gotten worse. Since I’ve been working on this issue, the number of legally owned handguns in Canada has increased from about 250,000 to over a million, and we have seen an escalation in rates of violence that reflect that.

Finally, it’s worth noting — and you’ll hear from others on this — that this is a gender issue. Women are far more likely to represent a higher percentage of victims than they do gun users. The attitudes of women are quite different. So, when people say that there is opposition to gun control in rural communities, they are often not taking into account the gender differences. We know, and you will hear this from many witnesses talking about the role of guns, not just in femicide, but also in other forms of harassment and threats.

I’m happy to answer questions, but will urge you to please support this legislation. Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Cukier. We will now proceed to questions.

[Translation]

Senator Dagenais: My first question is for Mr. Price.

Mr. Price, you’ve expressed your agreement with the provisions of this bill, which aims to ban handgun ownership altogether, thus punishing all Canadians who own them legally and have duly registered them.

Assuming that 80% of the weapons seized were illegal, and therefore unregistered, can you tell us what we can find in this bill that actually deters criminals? Do you believe that the sentences for gun possession and gun crimes are severe enough to scare off organized crime?

[English]

Mr. Price: Well, I have a hard time with the premise of some of what you have said, sir. I don’t agree that 80% of guns are coming from smuggled sources. That’s a statistic that has been cited in the case of the Toronto Police Service, although that number is high relative to when we started. It used to be 50-50, and now it’s 80%. There is clearly an issue with smuggled guns, and, in fact, we have said that’s absolutely true. We are heartened when the police intercept those weapons at the border. We think more tools should be provided, such as they are in this legislation through some of the legal remedies that I think can be taken. There is a decision to lengthen criminal sentences, as a deterrent. That issue needs to be tackled. But that’s not what happened in our case, nor is that what happened in about half the cases. We have two problems to solve; not one. If there is one point we can get across on the supply side, it is that we have two issues. We need to carefully consider the utility-considered risk of the domestic gun supply we have, which is about 10 million firearms from what I understand. I’m rounding off, I realize. We don’t have precise numbers, but we know about a million of those are handguns, and we know that the incidents of homicide and the incidents of firearm use have grown, and that half the problem or more is related to handguns.

We think this legislation is appropriate because it is not taking into account — taking to task — all the guns out there. In fact, at the end of this, there will be 8 or 10 million shotguns and rifles still in the closets and firearms storage facilities of law-abiding gun owners. But what we are doing is taking the guns that are most frequently used in crime out of circulation. I think this legislation is appropriately targeted and fair.

[Translation]

Senator Dagenais: My next question is for Ms. Cukier.

Ms. Cukier, gun control laws have had some positive effects in Switzerland, Australia and New Zealand. Canada may legislate and make laws, but in my opinion, the problem of illegal weapons is still far from being solved with a bill like C-21.

Do you feel that Canada’s proximity to the United States is a factor that makes gun control more difficult in our country? Is it a question of North American culture or a deep-seated crime phenomenon?

[English]

Ms. Cukier: Thank you very much for the question. I am happy to provide you with some data that compares Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the U.S. and Canada. I think it is worth looking at, because what it shows is that when you take guns out of the equation, and when you only look at murders through beatings, stabbings and other means, the rates of homicide are comparable in those countries. It is only when you add guns to the mix — so, the United Kingdom, for example, which has roughly twice the population of Canada, had about 30 gun murders last year because of the availability of firearms.

It is true that our situation in Canada is made more complex by the fact that we live next to a country with as many guns as people, but the evidence is pretty strong. We were on exactly the same trajectory as Australia. If you looked at what was happening with gun death and injury in Canada, it was declining until 2013 when it took a different tack. We could talk more about why that might be, but there is no question that controls over legally owned firearms affect certain kinds of gun violence. The fact that we also have a smuggled-gun problem should not prevent us from taking action on what we can.

Smuggled guns, for the most part, are not used to kill police officers or women. Smuggled guns are not used in mass shootings or in suicides or unintentional injuries.

It is important, as I said at the outset, to recognize that gun violence takes different forms, which you well know, Senator Dagenais, and that we can, therefore, have different strategies for addressing those different types of violence.

The Chair: Thanks very much. Not surprisingly, just about every senator in the room wants to ask a question.

Senator Plett: I have a question for each of the panels, either Samantha Price or Ken Price. First of all, I want to thank you for being here. I know it is a very difficult time for you, and you have experienced an unspeakable tragedy. I understand your sentiment about handguns entirely, but the fact of the matter is that this bill, Bill C-21, removes no handguns from circulation — zero. It will do nothing about smuggled firearms, and I know, Mr. Price, you don’t think it is as big a problem as the Toronto chief of police does, or many — most — other witnesses do. But the fact of the matter is, the previous panel said that smuggled guns are the choice of criminal gangs.

How concerned are you about the fact that this bill focuses on the wrong problem because it will not remove handguns from circulation?

Mr. Price: I think that this is a fair compromise because the reality is that a lot of people bought those guns under circumstances that allowed them to do it. Now the question is, if you want to end up transitioning to a time when you don’t have as many handguns, that’s going to have to be accomplished over time. I think that’s part of the strategy, and it is actually what we called for, because we had about 50,000 guns added per year since 2015 and we’ve seen with that a corresponding amount of homicide growth in this country.

I agree with Dr. Cukier, who said that there are different kinds of supply scenarios for different kinds of gun crimes. In our particular situation, it was a policeman’s sidearm for sale in one part of the country that ended up being stolen, as 1,500 other guns are per annum, and ended up in the streets of Toronto. It is very foreseeable to imagine that you will have those kinds of mistakes and thefts occur as long as we keep allowing more and more guns to come into the country.

Senator Plett: — [Technical difficulties] available even if Bill C-21 had passed.

Mr. Price: Hopefully, over time, that won’t be the case, sir. We feel that we need to start at some point in time.

Senator Plett: Professor Cukier, we asked many witnesses this question, and we will ask you the same one. The minister has told us that they have done nothing but consult widely on this bill. Were you personally consulted before this bill was introduced?

Ms. Cukier: Not before the initial Bill C-21 was introduced. We were consulted about some of the amendments that were introduced, and we were part of group consultations with other organizations.

Senator Plett: Thank you.

Senator Kutcher: Thank you all for being here and for sharing your experiences. I’m sure it’s not easy. My kids grew up playing on Danforth, so I know whereof you speak.

This bill tries to balance the privilege of firearms ownership with the need for all Canadians to be protected from firearm violence.

One of the concerning aspects of the public discourse around this bill is the application of a logical flaw called the moral equivalence fallacy, where less damaging consequences are equated with major negative impacts, suggesting that both are equal — for example, the privilege of owning a handgun for use in cosplay, as a previous witness has described, versus the right not to be shot with a handgun.

Concerns have also been raised that substantial amounts of disinformation about the bill are being shared on social media and in correspondence with parliamentarians.

What kinds of false equivalency arguments are you hearing? What kinds of disinformation about this bill have you noticed? Do you think that Bill C-21 is a positive step toward getting the right balance between the privilege of firearms ownership and public protection from firearm violence?

Ms. Cukier: Thank you for the question. To me, there’s a difference between differences of opinion and disinformation. Many of us around this table may have differences of opinion, but there are certain things that are fact. As Mr. Price noted, it is a fact that guns that are legally owned in Canada are misused by their owners and are diverted from legal to illegal purposes. That is simply a fact, and the evidence is very clear on that.

It is also a fact that gang violence is only one kind of problem. While people bring us back constantly to say that this legislation won’t fix that, you have heard from specialists in domestic violence and suicide prevention. I’m sure you heard something about mass shootings and the role of legally owned firearms in those contexts. Again, it is a fact that gun violence takes different forms. There is some of that.

What we saw in the lead-up to this iteration of the legislation — and I get this constantly in the vast quantities of hate mail I receive — the idea that this is going to negatively impact hunters, farmers or Indigenous peoples in pursuing their livelihoods and so on.

It is a fact that most of the firearms that are being prohibited are currently restricted, which means they cannot be used for hunting and they are not supposed to be used by farmers. I would say that the notion that banning the AR-15 has an impact on Indigenous hunters is another form of disinformation.

The rural-urban issue, for me, is another big one. We constantly hear that this is a conspiracy of people from urban centres being foisted on Canadians — when, in fact, as you would know, the rates of gun death injury, and even crime, in rural areas are higher.

Senator Boehm: I would like to thank our witnesses for being here. All of us know how difficult it is for you to address the subject.

I wanted to touch upon the topic of the handgun ban impacting sports shooters. I have received a lot of correspondence from sports shooters. Of course, this is one of the concerns raised by gun control groups such as PolySeSouvient, and it’s the potential for the so-called Olympic exception to be used as a loophole by bad actors. Conversely, advocates on the other side of the argument, such as the self-named Magnificent 7, two of whom we heard from last week, referred in a letter to this committee to “the elimination of entire sports and sporting communities in Canada.” We know that sports shooting is popular in our country and it is quite a community activity in many places across the country.

How do you weigh the valid fears of victims and women’s groups against the valid concerns of sports shooters? How do we find this balance if we can?

Mr. Price: Certainly, the path that we have been on has made me more interested in what we call sport shooting in this country. I have looked at the history of Canada in the Olympics. For example, I learned that there are far more Olympians and Pan American participants in long-gun categories than in handguns and air pistol. In fact, I think we just had a gold medal winner in air pistol at the Pan Am Games with a gun that would have nothing to do with this legislation. I wonder, how did he become so proficient? Was it with a M&P40? I doubt it.

We are asking what is reasonably required to be successful as a target shooter. What are the sports that we are going to suggest are the sports that Canadians can participate in to do that? We have tried very hard not to judge what those are.

We have looked at what that leads to on the supply side? The International Practical Shooting Confederation, or IPSC, allows for the broadest assortment of guns. Testimony in the other place revealed that it would certainly be a risk as a way to bypass the legislation and its intention because it doesn’t have the same standards as the International Shooting Sport Federation, or ISSF, and the Olympics.

We need to be careful about which of these sports we call sport shooting and we need to look at what is reasonably required to accommodate that. If we do, we will find that a lot of the semi-automatic handguns that are out there are not required for that and should be removed over time in our society. That is our view.

Senator Boehm: Dr. Cukier, if there’s time.

Ms. Cukier: I am a professor.

Yes, I think we have to differentiate between Olympic-style shooting and practical shooting, acting out self-defence scenarios.

One IPSC shooter had a break-in at his condo in downtown Toronto. The thieves took off with 40 guns, including an UZI. The police confiscated another 140. One IPSC shooter, 200 guns.

Again, it is risk versus reward. It is a hobby versus people’s lives. As a parent and as a researcher, I know where I would put my emphasis.

Senator Yussuff: Thank you, witnesses, for being here.

Ms. Price, I know that coming to testify is really important to you, given what you have experienced as a young woman and, more importantly, given the advocacy that you, your dad and your family have been doing in building broad support for the efforts in terms of how we deal with this issue.

In the legislation, one aspect of your direct experience and the criminal who stole that gun is already addressed in the bill in terms of how you can buy ammunition without having to have a licence to do so.

If you look at the legislation in its totality, based upon the advocacy work you have been doing, what you would see as some of the positive aspects of the work you have done, the result of which is in this bill?

Ms. Price: I would like to pass this question to my dad, if that’s okay.

Mr. Price: I think the topics raised have been more than gun bans, and that the supply is more than just the domestic supply. Some of the measures are in the bill and some of them are around things that the government has done, such as investment in the community — for example, the Building Safer Communities Fund.

We need to look at marginalized communities and create programs that will encourage youth, in particular, not to pursue a life of crime. What we have done is create a more wholesome conversation.

Ultimately, I think this ladders up. There are other roles for other institutions and other levels of government. Gun control and updating which guns we say are necessary in our society versus the risk is an important part of it, and Bill C-21 will accomplish that.

Senator Yussuff: Domestic violence is an issue that gets referenced quite often around December 6 in this country. However, every week in this country women die as a result of gun violence. Why is it so difficult for society to come to terms with this reality? Is it women’s lives or is it that we do not think it is worthy of the debate that we should have about how we can reduce homicide against women in this country?

Ms. Cukier: I think that is longer than a minute’s answer. In spite of changes to the law and in spite of increased awareness, somehow, people view domestic violence as a matter that is between two people which doesn’t put them at risk and will never affect either them or their loved ones.

I think people view domestic violence as something that affects other people and are unaware of the extent to which it is actually pervasive. We have seen case after case after case where so-called law-abiding people have a dark undercurrent. We will find more out about some of the more horrific cases that have occurred recently, but there are people in the room who have been involved in inquiry after inquiry that has the same conclusions. The Arlene May inquest, which was almost 25 years ago, came to the same conclusions as the most recent inquest into the shootings outside of Ottawa, namely, that we must do a better job of protecting women and of removing firearms from people who are a risk to themselves or to others.

In my view, we simply don’t put the same priority on the lives of women that we do on other forms of violence which people feel more threatened by. As well, women’s voices — and you can look at who speaks on these issues — are often silenced.

Senator M. Deacon: To all of you, thank you for being here today.

To the Price family what a beautiful spot of the world you live in and what a tragic family experience. This is a pretty daunting environment, a hearing, and we really appreciate the testimony that you are giving us.

Ms. Price, I wonder about one thing that you might wish to respond to. You are hearing a lot of information today. You have seen the testimony. You have had the experience. Is there anything that we’re not hearing, or that we have not thought about yet, or that was not in the testimony but is really important to Canadians? Is there anything else that you would like to share with us?

Ms. Price: That is a hard question for me, given my experience. I don’t think it is one thing. I think it is important to hear not only about my experience, but also the experience of everyone else who has spoken today. I think that each thing is extremely important to listen to.

Obviously, what I went through is an extreme tragedy and something that I, unfortunately, do have to live with every day. Losing my friend was another experience in itself. I have trouble thinking of something that is one thing, but I am very happy to be sitting here next to my dad and Wendy Cukier, who have been very supportive of me throughout this experience. Thank you for acknowledging that this has been a very difficult experience and that it is a little nerve-racking for me to be sitting here today.

Senator M. Deacon: Thank you and thank you to your family for making the decision to do this today. We’re here today, but if you do think of anything else, you can submit it before we finish our study. Thank you for that.

Ms. Cukier, I have a comment to add onto that of my colleague Senator Boehm who was referring to shooting. In your testimony before the committee in the house, you said that if there are any exceptions to the federal handgun freeze, they should be specific and narrowly defined.

As Senator Boehm said, we have rifle, pistol, shotgun, traps and skeet shooting— all kinds of different disciplines — which you mentioned today may not be using the types of guns that we’re talking about. How do you think we can ensure that these individuals can continue competing while ensuring that it does not become a loophole? Do we need to consider any exceptions or are there any concerns that you wonder about with trying to go from here to here but not losing this group?

Ms. Cukier: Well, you can look at legislation in other countries and where the exceptions are.

Countries that have very strict gun control also participate in shooting sports in the Olympics. These involve issues around implementation and regulation which are very important but probably beyond what this committee can address specifically other than making recommendations. The loopholes are potentially huge if we’re not very careful, and then what is the point of having done this?

The other thing we have to continue to say is this law is actually quite generous in that it bans the import, sale and transfer of guns. It is intended to stem the proliferation. It is not taking guns away from current legal target shooters.

Again, a lot of that gets conflated and misrepresented in the media. It is important to make that clear. This will stem the proliferation and, over time, we will see a decline in legally owned handguns. People have hobbies, but it is very important to consider the costs. I think that point was made effectively.

Senator M. Deacon: Thank you.

Senator Dasko: Thank you to everyone for being here today. To the Price family, the Danforth community is such a great place. I was just there the other night and Halloween decorations were everywhere. It is a great and vibrant community. I think it still is. It seems to be, from my observations.

Professor Cukier, we hear from the people who criticize Bill C-21. There are some data issues about the guns that come from south of the border, crime statistics, and so on. We hear about this from the people who oppose the bill. However, one theme we hear about Bill C-21 is that it punishes law-abiding gun owners. I would like to hear what you might have to say about that.

Ms. Cukier: I think punishment is losing a child. I think not being able to acquire more handguns to pursue a hobby or a collection is not punishment.

I am going to try to say this briefly, but I think it is ironic. I was redecorating my house. I sent my contractor out to get me more blinds. He came back to say, “Sorry, you cannot have those blinds anymore. They will not allow you to sell blinds for the window that have strings in them because it’s a risk.” Canada banned blinds with strings based on potential risks to public safety. But how many people are killed by the strings in blinds every year in Canada compared to the nearly 1,000 who are killed by guns? To me, it is a question of proportionality.

To say that having to change hobbies is punishment in the face of the victims of gun violence is insulting and ridiculous, in my view, respectfully.

Senator Dasko: You are a superb analyst of data in your job and in your career. Looking ahead, if this bill is implemented, more or less the way it is right now, how much of a difference do you think it is going to make? Have you given that any thought? Is this going to be a big deal? What is your sense of the extent of the impact of this bill?

Ms. Cukier: All we can look to are historical impacts. What we saw, for instance, was stronger gun laws introduced in 1991 by the Conservative government and then in 1995 by the Liberal government did have an impact on, for example, violence against women. The number of women killed with guns declined precipitously over the next 15 years or so and then started creeping up.

Legislation is a key piece of that, but so is the implementation. The impact of this law, for example, on domestic violence will very much be a function of the extent to which those measures are actually used, because we hear time and time again about people who are considered a risk to themselves or others or about a mass shooter who has been engaged in hate speech and made threats against a mosque and so on, and we see these cases over and over.

It is critical to have the measures in the legislation and to have the implementation and the resources to back them up. When we look at domestic violence, hate crimes and so on, that is critically important.

When it comes to handguns, stemming the proliferation of handguns, in my view, will reduce handgun crime and handgun homicide. If you look at the data over time, and if you look at how the explosion of handgun ownership in Canada has been linked to increases in the use of handguns in crime, I think there is evidence to suggest that.

If you look at international comparisons, the more our laws resemble industrialized countries in Europe, Australia and so on, the more I think we can expect the patterns of gun violence to follow those trends.

Social science, as you know, is imperfect. It is not like testing vaccinations. We can only look at probabilities, and I think the probability is that this combination of measures will make a difference.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

[Translation]

Senator Boisvenu: Mr. and Mrs. Price, I sympathize with you very much for what has happened. I know a little about your struggle, as my own daughter was murdered by a sexual predator who should have been in prison. Unfortunately, the government released him too quickly. Every month, the government releases unmonitored sexual predators, even though it talks a good game about public safety. I believe that in this respect, it is completely at odds with its rhetoric.

The bill is in contradiction with the government. We want to tighten the screws on illegal arms smugglers, and at the same time, the government is passing Bill C-5, which would send people home to serve their sentences in their living rooms, as we saw recently in Quebec; people who are involved in arms trafficking, drug trafficking and whose sentence is two years at home.

Earlier we talked about the young man who imported 200 weapons from the United States and is serving his sentence of two years less a day at home. How can we deal with a government that claims to be serious about the problem of gun trafficking, and yet passes bills that are contradictory?

[English]

Ms. Cukier: I can certainly take a crack at it.

I think the way in which the courts behave, as you know, is not purely a function of what government does.

Senator Boisvenu: No. The government adopted a bill that now allows, instead of having a serious sentence in jail, that bill will allow people to go into their home to have their sentences. It is not the courts. That is the government’s decision.

Ms. Cukier: A government’s decision to allow people to serve their sentences in the home —

Senator Plett: Bill C-5.

Ms. Cukier: But the sentencing provisions are decided by the court.

You will recall the mandatory sentences that were introduced to accompany firearms violence. Do you remember those? They were struck down by the courts as being unconstitutional and a violation of the Charter.

It may be true that serving sentences in the home as opposed to prison is something that is worth discussing, but I don’t think that specifically, with respect —

Senator Boisvenu: Is trafficking of firearms serious, yes or no?

Ms. Cukier: Trafficking of firearms is serious, yes.

Senator Boisvenu: So if it is serious, why would the government adopt a bill that would give such a soft sentence that it is not a strong message about a serious thing?

Ms. Cukier: But you think the government made the decision that this individual was going to serve their sentence at home, or was it a judge that made that decision?

Senator Boisvenu: No, the government allowed the judge to do so. This means that if the government did not table that bill, the judge would not be allowed.

Ms. Cukier: It is the ability to have the sentences at home, as opposed to that specific case, is what you are saying. Sorry. Thank you.

Senator Cardozo: I want to say, as we are closing, thank you to the Price family. Samantha Price, your being here and the words that you have shared with us are a major contribution to good government policy in this country, and I thank you for it, sincerely. Despite the pain you have, you have done a great service to this country today. Thank you for that.

My brother lived near the Danforth for a number of years, and the area you talk about is an area that we had many happy times together. We enjoy those patios, the ice cream stores and everything else in that area, and I know that area well. That tragedy struck very close to our family.

It is really interesting that you remind us, Mr. Price, that it wasn’t a smuggled gun that was used in that case.

I want to finish by saying that there is no “but” to what I said. I just want to say, emphatically, thank you for being here; you are right.

Dr. Cukier, I want to ask you about the red flag clauses. There was a suggestion by a couple of the witnesses last week that they could be used negatively against racialized people and Indigenous people, I suppose, because one could make anonymous complaints.

I hear otherwise, and, certainly, the government would suggest that there are enough safeguards around vexatious complaints being used.

What are your thoughts on the red flag clauses and whether that is a useful tool?

Ms. Cukier: I would say that the red flag clauses were not a priority for us. Our priority was really on broadening the conditions under which firearms could be removed and introducing implementation measures like hotlines so that when complaints are made, the firearms are removed immediately.

Going to the courts, in our view, is a secondary process. You should be able to call up and say, “I have a concern,” and those guns should be removed immediately.

For us, it is a backup. We know that Physicians for the Prevention of Gun Violence feel quite strongly about it, based on research that they’ve done. I think there are circumstances where it might prove useful, but it is the other measures in the law that are, from our perspective, more important.

Senator Cardozo: We talked a lot about recreational gun use. What about farmers who need guns for whatever purposes?

Ms. Cukier: Hunters and farmers can use guns. The legislation has no impact upon them at all. They don’t use handguns, and they don’t use military-style semi-automatic weapons.

The only instance where hunters or farmers would be affected is if they are a risk to themselves or any other person, and those are concerns that we have to take into account, whether we’re talking about urban or rural communities.

Senator Cardozo: Thank you very much.

The Chair: Colleagues, we are at the end of this panel.

On behalf of this committee and the Senate of Canada, I want to thank our witnesses for the crucial work that you do and for sharing your experience and expertise with us tonight. It has been very helpful.

In this case, that experience has been traumatic and painful. We particularly thank you, Samantha Price, and your dad, Ken, for having the courage to come here tonight and to share your experience and the advice that flows from that. It is generous of you. It is important. The work that you do is important. It matters. On behalf of all of us here tonight, I thank you for that, all three of you, and the different ways that you do that. We wish you all the very best as you continue this important work. Thank you very much.

Colleagues, we continue with our final panel this evening examining Bill C-21, An Act to amend certain Acts and to make certain consequential amendments (firearms).

We welcome to the committee on behalf of NOT HERE, Flora Dommanget, Spokesperson and, by video conference, on behalf of the Families of Dawson, Meaghan Hennegan, Spokesperson.

Thank you for joining us today. We invite you to provide your opening remarks, to be followed by questions from members. I remind you that each of you has five minutes for your testimony. We will begin this session with Ms. Flora Dommanget.

[Translation]

Flora Dommanget, Spokesperson, NOT HERE: Mr. Chair, members of the Standing Senate Committee on National Security, Defence and Veterans Affairs, witnesses and audience, thank you first of all for the opportunity to testify today on behalf of the NOT HERE movement. My name is Flora Dommanget and I’m the External Affairs Coordinator for the Polytechnique Student Association, as well as a representative of the NOT HERE movement.

Our Canada-wide student movement, which includes over 285,000 student members, is deeply concerned about the issue of gun control in Canada, particularly with regard to the availability of weapons and accessories that maximize the number of victims. The safety of the student community is at the heart of our concerns, given the many tragedies that have taken place within our various universities and schools. Our main objective is to prevent mass killings and ensure a safe environment for the entire student community in Canada.

We primarily call for a ban on assault weapons, handguns and high-capacity magazines, recognizing that these weapons and accessories have been implicated in numerous gun violence tragedies in Canada. We support Bill C-21, which includes a freeze on handguns and several other measures, particularly those regarding domestic violence.

However, we see major gaps in this law. It does nothing to address the control of assault weapons, i.e., it does nothing to change the fact that hundreds of legal models are currently circulating in Canada, nor the ability to legally acquire a weapon of this style. Remember that this kind of weapon is designed to inflict maximum destruction in minimum time, that is to be able to kill as many people as possible in a short space of time.

As an engineering student, I see the extent of the damage they generate. The science supports our position. Wound mortality increases with caliber. The number of victims multiplies with the semi-automatic function. Bursts of fire are all the easier with high-capacity magazines. What’s more, these weapons can be fitted with all kinds of military features.

Tragedies such as the École Polytechnique femicide in 1989, the Concordia University massacre in 1992, the Walter Ray Myers High School shooting in 1999, the Bramalea High School shooting in 2004, the Dawson College shooting in 2006, and the La Loche Community School shooting in 2016, are all mass killings that took place in Canada.

We also think of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown in 2012 and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland in 2018, in addition to thousands of other school tragedies in our neighbours’ country to the south.

Finally, this kind of tragedy is not limited to schools; these tragedies also take place on the streets and in our communities, like the Portapique, Nova Scotia, massacre in 2020, or in the context of domestic violence, like the multiple murders in Sault Ste. Marie, most recently, which included three murdered children.

All of this shows us what a huge lack of gun control there is.

Thus, we ask that Bill C-21 be passed without amendment, and quickly. Secondly, we are asking senators to support the government’s intention, announced here last Monday by the Minister of Public Safety, to complete the 2020 orders-in-council in order to correctly classify existing assault weapons as “prohibited firearms.” This second order is a vital step towards achieving the banning of these deadly weapons.

The Senate may also speak out on the need to eliminate loopholes and exemptions for high-capacity magazines.

We firmly believe that ensuring the safety of the public and thus of our student community must be the government’s priority. By passing Bill C-21 and banning assault weapons, handguns and high-capacity magazines, we can help significantly reduce the risk of gun violence, and therefore the risk of tragedies such as mass killings. These events have no place in our country.

The NOT HERE movement, which unites the student community in Canada, is thus calling on the Standing Senate Committee on National Security, Defence and Veterans Affairs to support Bill C-21, while calling on the government to strengthen this legislation with a new order-in-council and to eliminate the exemptions and loopholes for large-capacity magazines, in order to ensure a genuine assault weapons ban that is clear and precise.

The safety of the student community and all Canadians is at stake. It is our duty to take meaningful measures to protect it.

Mr. Chair, members of the Standing Senate Committee on National Security, Defence and Veterans Affairs, witnesses and audience, thank you for your attention.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Dommanget.

Ms. Hennegan, please go ahead when you’re ready.

Meaghan Hennegan, Spokesperson, Families of Dawson: Hello. I would like to thank everyone for having me today.

For those who don’t know me, my name is Meaghan Hennegan. In 2006, I was shot outside Dawson College. For the last 17 years, I have been working alongside PolySeSouvient as a representative for the Families of Dawson. Many of you have also seen the mother of Anastasia de Sousa by our side. This is something that is very close to us; it’s very important to us. We do support Bill C-21 because it’s introducing strong measures that are important for public safety, and they are important for closer, more intimate acts of gun violence. However, I want to talk to you today about the loopholes on extended magazines, the large-capacity magazines.

Despite the theoretical limit of 5 or 10 rounds for long guns and handguns, a series of exemptions and loopholes allow magazines with capacities surpassing these limits to remain legal in the Canadian market. The government has promised to close one of these loopholes, the one allowing modifiable magazines, but to be truly effective, the ban on large-capacity magazines must be comprehensive.

Some other examples — the current magazine rules that limit rounds to 5 or 10 include an array of them. Modifiable magazines are magazines pinned at five rounds; they are legal. Many mass shooters have bought such magazines and illegally modified them to achieve the full illegal capacity by simply removing a rivet.

The House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security recommended they be banned. If a magazine is not purposely designed for a specific gun in which it fits, it escapes the 5/10 limits. According to the RCMP, magazines up to 110-shot capacity are available since rifles are exempted.

Magazines for semi-automatic handguns can contain 10 rounds. I am in Montréal. The Quebec City mosque shooter used five of those. I was also shot with a weapon that was modified to hold a larger magazine. The Beretta Storm that the Dawson shooter used could only hold five rounds. He modified it to hold 10. If he had not been able to do that, if those alone had been banned, the body count would have been much lower on the injury side, and he probably wouldn’t have been able to make it into the cafeteria.

That is not even getting to the point of the new definition of prohibited weapons. The assault-style rifle definitions do not cover the existing weapons on the market. They only cover the new weapons that are coming out, which makes it very easy for people to still get guns that can do a lot of damage in a very short amount of time and are exempt from the rules. If we want to prevent the thing that happened to me from happening again, we need a full ban on assault weapons. We need a full ban on large-capacity magazines. Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, Meaghan. Thank you for your courage in doing this tonight. You are off to a terrific start, and we want to hear more from you. Thank you very much.

We will now go to questions. This panel finishes at 8 p.m. As with the previous panels, I will limit each question and answer to four minutes. I will hold up this card to indicate that 30 seconds remain in your time.

I ask senators to please keep your questions as short as possible. Get them to the point, so that we can bring the most from our witnesses. Please identify the person to whom you are addressing your question. I offer the first question to our Deputy Chair, Senator Dagenais.

[Translation]

Senator Dagenais: Ms. Hennegan, I remember the Dawson College shooting very well. At the time, I was a police officer with the Sûreté du Québec, and I even accompanied the Quebec Minister of Public Security at the time, Mr. Jacques Dupuis, when he tabled the Anastasia bill.

That said, the Dawson College shooter who wounded you had two weapons in his possession; both were legally registered and one has now been banned since 2020.

I will obviously support Bill C-21, but the fact remains that certain aspects of the fight against firearms among organized criminals is not treated seriously enough to be meaningful.

With hindsight and experience, can you share with us the thoughts and emotions you feel when you see mass killings like last week’s in Maine? Can government laws be enough to stop behaviour like this?

Ms. Hennegan: Of course, every time I see something happen in a school, in a community, in a grocery store, it upsets me a lot. I still find it very hard to see things like that happening. It frustrates me, because the laws in place right now aren’t strong enough to prevent this from happening.

It’s not just about thinking about who did it; it’s about accessibility to firearms, whether they’re handguns or assault weapons. That’s the thing we can control, so we need as much control as possible to make sure everyone has done their best to keep the public safe.

Senator Dagenais: You’re not unaware of the rise in gun crime in Montreal, among other things. There isn’t an evening without gunfire, and you also have to look at the difficulties the police have in combatting this phenomenon.

Do you feel that Bill C-21 has enough teeth for judges, so that they can give deterrent sentences to those who commit crimes with firearms, whether registered or not?

Ms. Hennegan: Honestly, senator, I’m not a lawyer, I’m just a victim who’s been through a very, very traumatic experience, so I’m not going to talk about criminality, that’s not my focus.

Of course, Bill C-21 takes the first steps in the right direction to stop them, but as such, it’s a completely different side of what I’m talking about. However, anything the government wants to adopt now is better than doing nothing.

Senator Dagenais: Thank you very much, Ms. Hennegan.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Hennegan.

Senator Plett: Ms. Hennegan, I have two questions for you. Then I have one question for both witnesses. I will try to be succinct. You experienced an unspeakable tragedy. We understand that. Well, I can’t understand what you are going through, quite frankly.

We all agree that we want laws in Canada that are effective. We have heard considerable evidence already that Bill C-21 will not be effective legislation. In that respect, Professor Christian Leuprecht of the Royal Military College of Canada, told our committee the following:

The data is unequivocal. Over 90% of firearms seized in the commission of a crime or that are possessed unlawfully in Canada have been smuggled by organized crime from the United States. . . . Show me the data that supports this bill. There is none.

If the professor is correct, how concerned are you that Bill C-21 will be ineffective?

Ms. Hennegan: I am not concerned at all that it will be ineffective, senator.

May I remind you that the mass shooter in Maine not long ago was an army reservist with access to legal guns. The man who shot me was former army and he had access to legal guns.

Many mass shooters are not using illegal weapons or illegally obtained weapons to commit their crimes. They are buying them just like everyone else. They are acquiring permits like everyone else. There are no checks and balances to ensure that these men, for the most part, are being held accountable for having such dangerous tools in their possession.

Let’s not mince words. A gun is a killing tool. It is the only thing that it can be used for. I do not think that dismissing the bill just like that out of hand, saying that, oh, no, nothing in it will work, is genuine.

Senator Plett: No one is suggesting that we dismiss the bill out of hand. We are trying to get a bill that will be effective and will help all Canadians.

Effective gun control requires support, whether we like it or not, from legal gun owners since gun control, by definition, focuses on legal firearms.

I will ask the question. I have a feeling that you will say that you aren’t, but I will ask the question: Are you at all worried that support from firearms owners for gun control could decline if bills are seen to target law-abiding citizens for limited effect?

Ms. Hennegan: No, sir, I am not. Most law-abiding gun owners who recognize the importance of gun control will have no problem having those checks, balances and bans on things that are very dangerous that are pretty much useless.

If you see a weapon as a toy, that is when you are moving away from responsible gun owners.

Senator Plett: In fact, the majority of legal gun owners are opposed to this legislation.

Let me ask both witnesses this question, please, and I have asked this of a number of witnesses: The minister appeared before our committee and he said the government had consulted widely and extensively on this bill. He specifically said that victims’ groups were consulted in this regard.

Were either of you consulted by the government before this bill was introduced?

Ms. Hennegan: We had meetings with different people from different levels of government. I am not the spokesperson for my organization, so I cannot answer that question definitively.

I am confident that my colleagues, Heidi and Natalie, were, in fact, more involved in it than I was. As I say, I’m just one representative from one branch of the PolySeSouvient umbrella doing work to help make this bill as effective as it can be.

Senator Plett: Thank you. So you are not sure.

[Translation]

Ms. Dommanget: I have just returned to resume representing the PAS HERE movement. We’ve been in touch a lot with the other people involved in the movement. We haven’t been asked personally, but I know we’ve communicated, for example, with PolySeSouvient a great deal about the shortcomings of the bill.

[English]

Senator Kutcher: Thank you to our witnesses for being here. I can appreciate that it is exceedingly difficult to talk about these kinds of personal experiences. I thank you for your forbearance with us.

I have been deluged with correspondence urging me not to support Bill C-21. Many of the arguments that are made are that it does not support Canadians’ rights to guns, which is a piece of disinformation that confuses American with Canadian constitutions.

The correspondence is also filled with other types of disinformation. It seems that much of it is consistent with what is being promoted by the gun industry that I have been able to see on various websites. It is almost identical wording.

However, I have hardly had any correspondence urging me to protect women, students, children and all Canadians from death and injury from firearms. I don’t know that this correspondence is the majority of gun owners in Canada, I frankly don’t think so. I think that it’s some gun owners who are using the voice of the gun lobby to drown out the voices of women, students and children.

If each of you had one suggestion for strengthening public safety through Bill C-21 for us, what would your suggestion be?

Ms. Hennegan: Mine would absolutely be to strengthen and make the definition of an assault rifle less vague and prohibit anything that could possibly fall under that definition. If you are talking about hunters or farmers, they do not need those kinds of weapons. They are war toys for grown men. They don’t serve a better purpose for doing those things.

There are already weapons on the market that can do the job of hunting or protecting a farm well enough. We do not need assault weapons on our streets in this country.

[Translation]

Ms. Dommanget: As Ms. Hennegan just mentioned, the biggest problem is the definition of assault weapons in Bill C-21. From our point of view, we really need to pass this law, because it reinforces control, and then we really need to complete the 2020 orders-in-council to strengthen this law. This will ensure that, thanks to this, we won’t have sufficient control, but it will be better than what we have now.

[English]

Senator M. Deacon: Thank you both for speaking with us today. This is a technical bill. Both of you have demonstrated a high level of courage. We thank you for that.

Ms. Dommanget, I will ask you about something but I hope it doesn’t mean repeating what you started with. You were going quickly through an important opening piece and you talked about the fact that you support the bill but it does not go far enough.

I heard what my colleague Senator Kutcher asked you a moment ago, namely, what one thing we might do to improve it? I want to make sure that I heard this correctly. When you talk about the bill not going far enough, can you can slow that down and tell me what pieces you think must be in place for it to have the substance you think it needs to have?

Meaghan, after that one, if you want to respond to it, too, that’s fine. I’m just going to start here.

[Translation]

Ms. Dommanget: In our opinion, what we understand is that the definition used in the bill is not sufficient to apply to all the weapons that exist. Many loopholes mean that the new weapons that will be created will not be targeted.

Right now, we’re talking about Bill C-21; it’s still a good bill, good legislation that contains good measures, but it’s not complete. We want to complete the 2020 orders-in-council that have been adopted to strengthen the definition, to take into account more weapons that currently exist. Amendments have been made. We’re talking about 482 firearms that were left out. We realize that they were dangerous because they were part of the law, and we wonder why they were removed. A new order-in-council would close all the loopholes that currently allow dangerous firearms on the market.

[English]

Senator M. Deacon: Meaghan, do you have anything to add?

Ms. Hennegan: No, Ms. Dommanget got it done.

Senator Yussuff: Thank you both for being here and for your courage presenting here today.

Ms. Dommanget, when I was young and I went to school, gun violence was not a thing. My biggest worry was to get to school on time so the principal didn’t have to take me to his office and ask me why I was late. Yet, in today’s reality, we are seeing more and more that gun violence is a real thing — not just at universities and colleges, but in public school where kids today are having to deal with this reality. What does this say about our society and, more importantly, about the challenges that young people have to struggle with in going to school, never mind getting a good grade?

[Translation]

Ms. Dommanget: We are students. We are trying focus on our schooling, and we have an additional layer of stress weighing on us at school. There’s somewhat of a contradiction right now. We’re told that we have to learn how to respond when an attack occurs. We have active shooter drills at school. They aren’t available at every school, but they do exist. We are being told we have to learn how to respond in these situations, when the weapons the shooters are using are legal. That is another source of stress for us as students, stress we don’t need.

One of the challenges it creates is anxiety. We see what’s happening. Last week, an act of domestic violence really showed us that violence is on our doorstep. Today’s youth are the ones who will be running tomorrow’s world, and it’s really hard to accept the fact that this is still the subject of debate. The debate has been going on for 33 years, since the Polytechnique femicide. We can’t understand why this is still being debated when so many measures have been taken at school. We want to see this ban in place.

[English]

Senator Yussuff: Ms. Hennegan, you talk about other aspects of the bill which are not in the bill but that the government is required to look at in regard to the regulation. You are very specific about that. The reality is that the sooner we can pass this bill, hopefully, the government can get on with the necessary regulatory efforts required but equally get the advice required to look at the other measures they have talked about that would complement the bill at a later date. Could you comment more about that?

Ms. Hennegan: As I said, it is disappointing that we have to wait and do this at a later date because it really should have been part of this bill to begin with. It is important. The magazine capacity is an important piece of these discussions. Without those magazines, without the bullets, the gun is useless, right? You can’t really separate the parts of the machine like that. That’s not how it works. You can’t regulate one and not the other. It gets a little weird.

Obviously, we really hope that once Bill C-21 is passed, we can get on this and start closing those loopholes on large-capacity magazines. I believe there was also something on requiring permits to buy ammunition. That would be a fantastic idea. Everybody loves to talk about illegal gun crime. That will bump it up too because if you have an illegal gun but you are going to buy legal bullets; now you can’t do that. It’s that old Chris Rock bit about bullet control, right? If you don’t have bullet control, you don’t have gun control. That needs to be looked at urgently because it really does affect how much damage these weapons can do, even if they are not banned.

Senator Cardozo: Thank you to our two witnesses who are here. You are very brave with all the work you do.

Meaghan Hennegan, I want to thank you for taking the time to do this and for your courage. Having been through that event at Dawson College, I’m sure there is somewhat of a re-traumatizing that happens when you come to a session such as this. We know that you do it to help develop good government policy and we all thank you for that.

Can you tell us about the work you do, how Families of Dawson work and how you interact with PolySeSouvient, for example? You had a question earlier about consultation, but do you all work together and address some of these issues together? Are you focusing on legislation and all the other things that come after this?

Ms. Hennegan: Yes. It is a really collaborative effort. We’ve had, obviously, PolySeSouvient and their team of victims and witnesses and people who worked so hard for over three decades — three decades they’ve been working on this.

They brought in Dawson College after our event happened. It was really eye-opening and empowering to be able to feel that you can take something like this and turn it into a public good, instead of just a public trauma.

We had members from the Quebec City mosque shooting too. They have done amazing work focusing on legislation around Islamophobia and gun control. The work they’re doing is important.

We have some collaboration with the Danforth Families. It’s really focused on advocating for changes to the gun laws in Canada, to make them more strict, to let people know. A lot of people will look down at what is happening in the U.S. and think, “Oh, but we have gun control in Canada. We’re safe from this. We’re fine.” We really aren’t. It’s getting worse every year. If we don’t find a sense of urgency as a country, we’re not far off from where the U.S. is right now.

Our focus is raising awareness that is needed to really mobilize the Canadian people into demanding action from the government on stricter legislation surrounding firearms.

Senator Cardozo: I would imagine that after the kind of experience you’ve been through, some people would advise you to put it behind you, to move on with the rest of your life and to try to recover, yourself, by getting away from it. But I do salute you for not doing that and for carrying on the fight for better government policy. I am sure most Canadians thank you for doing that.

[Translation]

Senator Dagenais: Obviously, Ms. Hennegan, I don’t want to dredge up painful memories. After the shooting at Dawson, the government brought forward Anastasia’s law, named after one of the victims who was killed during the shooting, Anastasia De Sousa. Legislation prohibiting firearms in educational institutions was passed. It was a small step in the right direction. Even though Bill C-21 isn’t perfect, do you see it as a step in the right direction?

Ms. Hennegan: Absolutely.

Senator Dagenais: Thank you, Ms. Hennegan.

[English]

Senator Yussuff: My question will be an obvious one. In a very short time, after three decades, we will be observing December 6 again. As we will be observing that date while this legislation will likely still be in the Senate at some stage, and as we get to the final moments, what message would you ask us to bear in mind as we hold those deliberations just prior to December 6?

[Translation]

Ms. Dommanget: What we want is to see the bill passed as quickly as possible. It’s a shame to mourn the victims of the tragedy as another commemoration comes and goes, while progress is being made, but not quickly enough. Time is not on our side. If the bill isn’t passed quickly, the risk of more mass shootings and massacres persists. That’s really what we want to prevent.

We are urging you to move quickly. What we really want is for you to pass this bill post-haste. Massacres are still happening. Look at what happened just last week in Maine. We want the bill to be passed as quickly as possible for a total ban on assault weapons.

[English]

Ms. Hennegan: Yes, that is my point, too. We need to get it passed and we need to get it passed fast because the people from Polytechnique who are still here have waited 33 years. I have waited 17. I cannot imagine waiting 33 years.

The longer we wait to pass this, the more likely it is that something like this will happen again. Maybe not in Montréal. Maybe not in Nova Scotia. It might be in B.C. this time. It might be in Alberta, but it’s going to happen. It is not an “if.” It’s a “when.” We really need to light a fire under something and get this going.

Senator Cardozo: My question is for Ms. Dommanget. In terms of violence in our society, if you look at films and video games, they are becoming increasingly violent at a time when we’re trying to make our society less violent. Are you concerned about the influence on young people in terms of violence in video games that normalizes gun violence?

[Translation]

Ms. Dommanget: Yes, of course, it’s very concerning. It’s important to separate video games from reality. We are talking about reality, here. Just playing video games doesn’t make someone commit a tragedy like this. It goes beyond that. They have to have altogether different intentions. In our view, video games are an outlet. I can’t speak to how video games impact real life. I can only speak to actual facts.

As time goes on, the massacres continue. It’s been 33 years. I listed many of them, and I’m sure I forgot a few. As I said in my opening statement, they happen on a daily basis. As we heard, these types of crimes are on the rise in Quebec and Canada. For students, this is really hard to bear: on top of having to worry about our studies, we have to deal with the stress of wondering whether something is going to happen.

We really struggle with the knowledge that the weapons being used to commit these massacres are legal. It makes us more and more anxious. This is the only thing I ask of you: please move as quickly as possible to prevent other tragedies.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you.

Colleagues, this brings us to the end of our meeting this morning. On behalf of the committee and on behalf of the Senate of Canada, I express sincere thanks to you, Ms. Dommanget and Ms. Hennegan, as I do to our previous witnesses today. It is vitally important that we heard from the two of you this evening, from young women whose work and efforts are responsive to tragic events in Canada. Sadly, many of these events involve violence against women.

Ms. Hennegan, we particularly thank you for your courage in being with us tonight. We wish you well as you move forward in what has already been a long process to recovery. You have our best wishes.

I also thank the members around the table for your participation this evening. It has been a long period, and your questions have brought out the very best of our witnesses, and your attention did not waver through the course of a very long meeting. We will continue this examination of Bill C-21 on Wednesday, November 1, at 11:30 a.m. ET. With that, I wish you a good evening.

(The committee adjourned.)