Honourable senators, I rise today to speak to Bill C-21, An Act to amend certain Acts and to make certain consequential amendments (firearms). This bill is a necessary and urgent step to protect the lives and safety of Canadians, especially women and other marginalized groups who are disproportionately affected by gun violence.

I would like to thank Senator Yussuff for sponsoring this bill, and Senator Coyle, the Independent Senators Group’s legislative lead, for her work on this bill.

I want to begin with a story. It is a story that many of you know very well, one that we need to tell over and over again when we deal with issues like those raised by Bill C-21.

On December 6, 1989, engineering students at École Polytechnique in Montreal were studying. At around 5 p.m., a 25-year-old man, later identified as Marc Lépine, entered the building. He was dressed in a military uniform and was carrying a concealed Ruger Mini-14, a lightweight semi-automatic rifle that he had bought at a local sporting goods store three weeks earlier.

After spending an hour in the lobby, Lépine made his way to the second floor of the building, where he intruded on a classroom of about 60 students, women and men alike.

Forcing the men to leave, he proclaimed to hate feminists, and at 5:10 p.m., he opened fire. Quickly, he left the classroom and shot numerous women as he made his way to the ground floor and to the third floor, where he intruded into another classroom.

Having taken the lives of 14 women and injuring 10 others and 4 men, Lépine fired his last shot at 5:29 p.m., ending his own life.

That day, Lépine left behind him the grieving families and friends of those he killed. Among the confusion that ensued, Lépine was deemed insane by the press and professionals, who chose not to focus on the gender of Lépine’s victims.

The horrific event has become etched in the psyche of Canadians, sparking a national debate on gun control and violence against women. However, it also revealed how much work still needs to be done to prevent such tragedies from happening again.

That is why I believe we need to study Bill C-21. It introduces several measures that aim to reduce the risk of firearm-related violence and death in Canada. Honourable senators, despite this tragic incident, violence against women remains a persistent challenge in Canada.

In 2018, around 600 incidents of police-reported intimate partner violence involved firearms, up from 401 in 2013. In 2020, Public Safety Canada stated that women accounted for almost 8 in 10 victims of intimate partner violence. Furthermore, a 2022 Statistics Canada report revealed that women and girls are disproportionately affected by gun violence, as are visible minorities, LGBTQ2 people, children and youth, lower-income families, those living in poverty and people in northern and remote communities.

Bill C-21 is a safety bill which aims to keep Canadians safe from gun violence. No single solution is ever perfect, but there are measures we can take to mitigate risks of injury or death by firearm.

As you know, gun violence has been on the rise in Canada this past decade. Statistics Canada reported that in 2013, 26% of all homicides involved a firearm. By 2020, that number had risen to 37%.

A 2021 Statistics Canada study revealed a woman in Canada is killed by an intimate partner approximately every six days. The Canadian Women’s Foundation also found that access to a firearm is the best predictor that domestic violence will turn lethal.

Bill C-21 seeks to address intimate partner violence and gender-based violence by enacting red flag and yellow flag laws. The red flag provision would enable anyone to make an application to a provincial court judge for an emergency weapons prohibition that would require the immediate removal, within 24 hours, of firearms from an individual who may pose a danger to themselves or others. This provision is further strengthened by the applicant’s ability to apply for a limitation on access order if the respondent has access to someone else’s firearms.

In such a situation, the judge can decide to immediately remove firearms from that individual as well. The temporary prohibition would last 30 days. However, a longer prohibition is possible — up to five years if a judge decides that there are reasonable grounds to deem that the firearm owner continues to pose a risk to their safety or the safety of others.

Furthermore, the bill protects the safety of red flag applicants by allowing judges to close red flag hearings to the public and media, seal court documents for up to 30 days or remove identifying information for any period of time that the judge deems necessary, including on a permanent basis.

The yellow flag provision is an administrative process through the Chief Firearms Officer. It allows any member of the public, including medical professionals, to notify a Chief Firearms Officer of a situation or behaviour that may affect someone’s firearms licence eligibility. If the Chief Firearms Officer determines that there are reasonable grounds to suspect that a person is no longer eligible to have a firearm licence, they will suspend the holder’s authorization to use, acquire and import firearms for up to 30 days while conducting an investigation.

If through the investigation the Chief Firearms Officer decides that the individual is no longer eligible to hold a gun licence, they will issue a revocation and the firearm owner will need to surrender all firearms to the Chief Firearms Officer, firearms officers or a peace officer within 24 hours of notification.

These provisions, though not perfect, are well-received by a majority of women’s organizations who foresee positive impacts on reducing gender-based violence, intimate partner violence and family violence in Canada.

Senators, these are good provisions, but there is still an issue that I have in mind. The government has great laws, and there are many laws for violence against women in this country, but there are no resources to prosecute them, and some violence that is on the books has had no prosecutions at all. So I urge the committee that will be studying this bill to ask: What resources will be provided? Otherwise, the red and yellow flags will mean nothing if the government is not willing to give resources.

Honourable senators, I believe that all senators will agree that armed violence is a real and urgent problem. However, some may disagree on how to solve this problem.

Bill C-21 plans to enhance background checks and further expand the $250‑million fund to address root causes and social determinants of gun crime such as poverty, racism, mental illness and gang involvement. This will help prevent crime before it happens, and offers positive alternatives and opportunities for vulnerable youth. I ask the committee to study whether this money will really be applied to what it is set out to, and how it will be applied.

Nevertheless, there has been a sufficient amount of misinformation and disinformation spread about this bill, which has caused fear among firearms owners. However, I would be remiss if I did not speak to the valid criticisms and weaknesses of the bill. I hope these issues will be comprehensively studied in committee.

To start, there is a widespread misconception that the main purpose of Bill C-21 is to target lawful firearms owners, including hunters, and that it does not focus on criminal activity and gang members who tend to use illegal arms. Indeed, the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal claimed that 95% of handguns used in violent crimes come from the black market, and that there’s a strong correlation between the drug trade and firearm violence. This is something that needs to be studied at the committee stage.

This leads to a second point that Parliament should be addressing the U.S.-Canada gun trafficking problem. Indeed, illegal guns often arrive in Canada by boat, train or drones, which is why we should make more resources available that enable border service officers to patrol our borders between our official border crossings.

Third, some have said that Bill C-21 will have negative repercussions on sport shooting and airsoft, which have nothing to do with the increase in crime.

Finally, some maintain that our government should invest more money and resources into mental health, because some of our young people are being radicalized or joining gangs for several reasons.

Honourable senators, I believe these concerns should all be studied in committee, and I call on those who study this bill to take these issues seriously.

I will close this speech with another very sad incident that is very close to my heart and to my faith. I’ve had the possibility to go to the Quebec mosque in Quebec City many times, from the second day this incident happened. The last time I visited this mosque was with the Human Rights Committee, and I had the privilege of meeting Imam Boufeldja Benabdallah of the Quebec mosque last summer when we took part in the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights’ study on Islamophobia.

He had a kind smile and an open mind. He welcomed us into the mosque where a nightmare had taken place to the congregation and held a service in our presence. On that day, the imam took us to the main praying hall. Slowly, we were shown where his fellow members — his brothers in faith — were shot and killed in 2017 by Alexandre Bissonnette.

We were told that six men had tried to cram themselves in a small opening in the wall to protect themselves from bullets. We were told that someone had died in the corner and someone else on the ground. These victims had families, wives and children, and one man had not seen his mother for six years, and she had just come from Gabon.

When I first went there and saw that woman who just saw her son for two days before he was shot, I will never forget that. That was the deep and profound tension in the air — fear, anger, pain, devastation mixed with a sense of dignity and even hope.

During our visit to the mosque, a man stood up and asked a question. I still think about that question often. I have tried to answer it myself ever since. This man asked us — senators — how our visit would be any different from the previous ones, and how our hands would be different than those he shook last month.

May I have five more minutes? I have one page of my speech left.

Is leave granted?

Thank you.

He asked if our presence would lead to anything more than pretty pictures and speeches — if it would lead to any sort of action on the government’s part.

I don’t know if he’s listening or following these hearings. I know that this isn’t a perfect answer, but Bill C-21 is part of the answer that I would have liked to give him at that time.

Honourable senators, Bill C-21 will not solve all of our problems with gun violence. It will not heal the wounds or bring back the loved ones killed by firearms. However, it is a step in the right direction. It is a tool that will help us reduce the risk of firearm-related violence and death in Canada.

After the incident at l’École Polytechnique, I visited the institute as the president of YWCA Canada. I will never forget how Mrs. Edward, whose daughter had been killed, was trying to bring about changes in gun violence. I don’t know if she is alive now, but if you saw her pain — and the pain of all the mothers who lost their daughters at the university — you will understand why we, as senators, have to do something. This bill is not perfect, but it is a start. Thank you, senators.

Honourable senators, I rise today on National Indigenous Peoples Day, on the lands of the Algonquin Anishinaabe people, to speak at second reading of Bill C-21 — a bill that aims to build on existing national gun control legislation in order to build a safer Canada.

Many colleagues will remember Bill C-71 — the most recent firearms legislation, which received Royal Assent in 2019. Bill C-71 expanded background checks, required businesses to keep point-of-sale records for non-restricted firearms and reinstated a requirement related to authorization to transport restricted and prohibited firearms.

My intention today is to quickly touch upon the main elements of this new firearms bill — Bill C-21 — including clearly stating what is not in the bill; and then I will highlight a few key areas and key stakeholders that I would suggest the committee examine in their study.

Honourable senators, let’s review the main elements of the bill:

First, the bill brings in a national handgun freeze in order to cap the number of legal handguns circulating in Canada. It is not a ban; it is a freeze. There will be no confiscation of legally owned handguns.

Second, it brings a new prospective, not retroactive, definition of assault-style weapon characteristics.

Third, as you have heard Senator Jaffer mention, the bill introduces red flag laws and yellow flag laws, with the purpose of reducing and preventing firearm-related family violence, self‑harm and suicide.

Fourth, the bill includes a number of elements aimed at strengthening border controls, including anti-firearms smuggling and trafficking measures, and requiring a firearms licence in order to import ammunition.

Fifth, it includes measures to address illegally manufactured firearms, otherwise known as ghost guns. The prevalence of 3-D printing of guns makes traceability very difficult. This law will provide a new definition for a “firearm part,” and require a person to have a licence to import, purchase or transfer a prescribed firearm part.

Sixth, and finally, there are new firearm-related offences and strengthened penalties in this bill.

To clarify again, the government is not proposing in this bill to ban or confiscate any existing hunting guns. The new prospective “assault-style weapon” definition only applies to long guns designed and manufactured after Bill C-21 receives Royal Assent.

Senator Yussuff, the bill’s sponsor, addressed these key components of the bill in detail in his speech kicking off this debate, and I will not repeat what he’s already said so thoroughly.

Public Safety Canada’s technical briefing on Bill C-21 is entitled Building a safe and resilient Canada. We know that this piece of legislation has more than one purpose. It is aimed at reducing and preventing gun violence that we are seeing in cities, often perpetrated by gangs; it is aimed at preventing further mass tragedies, such as the one experienced in my province in 2020, as well as l’École Polytechnique murders, and the Quebec City mosque murders that we’ve heard about tonight; and it is aimed at addressing family violence, self-harm and suicide.

Our job will be to determine whether this bill is, in fact, fit for purpose. Will the bill’s measures contribute — and contribute effectively — to the intended outcomes? This legislation is meant to enable Canada to make advances in these critical areas and — pardon the analogy — it is not meant to be a silver bullet. As with most legislation, this bill is meant to be one piece of a much larger puzzle.

I will now turn to a few key areas that I would recommend the committee investigate.

Colleagues, we have heard Senator Manning and Senator Boisvenu speak about the scourge of femicide and intimate partner violence. Several of us have spoken to Senator Boniface’s inquiry on intimate partner violence; we have heard about this tonight.

With that in mind, it is important to examine if — and how — Bill C-21 responds to the recommendations of the Nova Scotia Mass Casualty Commission and the Renfrew County inquest. The proposed red flag laws and yellow flag laws respond partly to Recommendation C.22 of the Mass Casualty Commission, as well as recommendations 56 to 62 and recommendations 70 to 72 of the Renfrew County inquest.

It will also be important, colleagues, to examine which firearms restrictions are handled through regulations versus legislation. We know that around 1,500 firearms were banned through regulations in May 2020 in response to the mass murders in Nova Scotia and the case of intimate partner violence which kicked off that horrible rampage.

In the House committee, the government proposed amendments to Bill C-21 that would ban those firearms and others through legislation, but, as we all know, they later withdrew those proposed amendments. Therefore, those are no longer part of this legislation.

I also believe that it will be important for the committee to examine how Canada measures up internationally on gun control and gun violence. In the recent Time magazine article entitled “Canada Risks Following the Path of the U.S. on Gun Violence,” the authors point out that Canada has the fifth-highest gun ownership in the world, and now has the third-highest rate of firearm homicide among populous high-income countries, after the U.S. and Chile. Worldwide, Canada has the ninth-highest age-standardized rate of firearm-related suicide among men — more than twice the global average.

Canada’s gun control measures are stricter than those of the United States, but less stringent compared to some other Western countries. Countries like Australia, the United Kingdom and Japan have implemented more comprehensive gun control measures than Canada, and these countries have achieved lower rates of firearm-related deaths and mass shootings compared to Canada. The U.K. banned handguns following the Dunblane school massacre in Scotland in 1996. In the U.K., there have been no school shootings and one mass shooting event since then.

Studies suggest that red flag laws in the United States have prevented potential acts of violence. Research conducted in Indiana and Connecticut found a reduction in firearm-related suicides after the implementation of those laws.

In the U.S., states with more comprehensive “red flag” laws, adequate resources and strong community outreach have seen better outcomes. All of this important international data and much more will be critical for the committee to examine in detail.

It will also be critical for the committee to listen to the perspectives of a number of key stakeholder groups, and these include mass shooting victims’ groups such as PolySeSouvient, Danforth Families for Safe Communities and Centre Culturel Islamique de Québec. These groups are devoted to the prevention of future tragedies.

The committee should also meet with women’s organizations, including #Women4GunControl, a coalition of 33 women’s and feminist organizations, which includes the National Association of Women and the Law. These groups are naturally engaged on this given that access to firearms is one of the top five risk factors when determining a woman will die in domestic violence situations.

It might be instructive for the committee to hear from Lisa Banfield, the spouse of the Nova Scotia mass murderer, on how she was subjected to coercive control and almost died herself the night of the mass tragedy.

It will be important to connect with both urban and rural women’s groups, as the risks related to firearms and the implications of “yellow” and “red flag” laws have different nuances in different contexts. These women’s groups are clear that gun violence against women needs to be treated as a distinct issue from the “guns and gangs” issue. They want us to look at both of those.

Indigenous groups such as the Assembly of First Nations, the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the Métis National Council, the Native Women’s Association of Canada, Pauktuutit, Les Femmes Michif Otipemisiwak — Women of the Métis Nation and others should be contacted and communicated with.

We know that Bill C-21 includes a specific provision stating that nothing proposed within it derogates from the rights of Indigenous peoples, recognized and affirmed under section 35 of our Constitution. It will be very important to balance the valid interests of hunters with the rights of all people to live in safe homes and communities in all communities in Canada, be they Indigenous or non-Indigenous.

Of course, police groups, including the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Police Federation and the Association des directeurs de police du Québec, should all be called to testify. They will have feedback on all of the measures in this bill, as well as issues related to the capacity to implement those measures. And, of course, court officials who will handle “red flag” laws will have an important perspective to add as well.

With the main focus of this legislation on prevention of smuggling and trafficking, the Canadian Border Services Agency will have important feedback on, again, the specific measures as well as their own capacity to implement those measures.

It will be important to hear from firearms advocates and hunters, including the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights and the National Firearms Association.

I live in rural Nova Scotia and I know how important hunting is to many families in my area. We’ve heard from Senators Wallin, Richards and LaBoucane-Benson on the importance of respecting hunters. I believe that part of respecting hunters is equipping those hunters with honest information on what is actually included in this bill so an honest discussion can be had.

Consulting sports shooters, including the Shooting Federation of Canada and the International Practical Shooting Confederation, is very important.

The handgun freeze in Bill C-21 does not remove handguns from any current owners but makes it illegal to acquire one, with exemptions for Olympic and Paralympic competitors and select individuals such as police officers. The exact rules for an individual to qualify as training for Olympic handgun disciplines will be determined by regulations.

Finally, and very importantly, as we’ve heard from Senator Kutcher in his speech, it will be essential for our committee to hear from people with expertise in health, mental health and suicide prevention. The group Canadian Doctors for Protection from Guns argued that this legislation should be informed by public health science.

Colleagues, my staff team has done extensive research on the perspectives and positions of these key stakeholders and expert groups. As legislative lead on Bill C-21 for the Independent Senators Group, I’ve shared some of that research with our ISG colleagues, and we would also be happy to share it with anyone else in this chamber who would be interested; just let us know.

Unfortunately, colleagues, we know there has been a well‑organized campaign of disinformation on this bill.

Colleagues, I came to this chamber from St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, whose motto is Quaecumque Sunt Vera — “Whatsoever things are true.” As you all well know, it is our responsibility as senators to pursue, find and share the truth.

Senator Yussuff said in his speech introducing Bill C-21 at second reading:

. . . I want to recognize . . . that the conversation about guns is never an easy one to have. It is usually filled with high emotion and strong opinions, and it can be very divisive and polarizing because it is about life and death . . . people’s rights and privileges.

Colleagues, we may not all agree on the best ways to keep Canada and Canadians safe, but I know we all believe we share a responsibility to protect Canadians from gun violence. Colleagues, that is what Bill C-21 is intended to do.

Honourable senators, while second-reading debate on this bill is essential — and I look forward to hearing Senator Plett in a few moments — I believe we are close to being ready to send Bill C-21 to committee. There, at committee, I have confidence our colleagues will work diligently to seek and consider the evidence required to further inform our deliberations on whether and how this bill is or can be fit for purpose.

Colleagues, let’s fulfill our duty to Canadians and move this bill to committee.

Thank you, wela’lioq.

Another thing about the good old days was we had a bit more room in our seats. That has nothing to do with the makeup of the Senate but, rather, of the building.

Honourable senators, I rise today to speak to Bill C-21. Before I get into the meat of my remarks on this bill — and I have a lot of meat here — I wish to devote a few comments to the unjustified pressure that this government has attempted to exert on us here in the Senate to simply adopt this bill without even hearing from witnesses, as they have with so many other bills.

I find it extremely objectionable that both the minister and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons have, in recent weeks, been pressing for the Senate to simply rubber-stamp this bill. Even before Senator Yussuff or a single senator spoke on this bill in the chamber, the Parliamentary Secretary tweeted that I should stop delaying the bill.

To set the record straight, I believe it is useful to go over the timeline of Bill C-21.

Bill C-21’s journey began in the House of Commons with first reading on May 30, 2022. Second reading occurred on June 23, 2022, and the bill was then sent to the House committee. There, the bill ran into multiple and serious problems.

As I will explain in my remarks, this is a very badly thought‑out bill, and its problems were made worse by the amendments that the government itself attempted to make to the bill in the late fall of 2022. As we shall see, these amendments were proposed with no meaningful consultation and certainly without meaningful consultations with the Indigenous people whom they seriously impacted.

The government was forced to withdraw these amendments from the bill itself, though I do not believe that it had actually abandoned the objectives behind those amendments. I will discuss this matter as well in my remarks later on, but I think it is fairly clear that the government will now attempt to leave further changes to future regulation and orders-in-council, just as they have already done through the arbitrary gun ban they imposed in 2020 and through their arbitrary ban on the purchase and sale of legal handguns held by licensed sport shooters and collectors, which they imposed last year through an order-in-council.

To stifle all further debate, the government then introduced time allocation in the House and forced the bill through third reading on May 18, 2023. It was only then that Bill C-21’s journey in the Senate began. Although the bill was introduced in the Senate on May 18, debate did not begin until May 31, when our colleague Senator Yussuff, the sponsor of the bill, delivered his speech over a period of two days. But even before Senator Yussuff had said one word, the parliamentary secretary to the Government House Leader was again accusing me of delaying the bill.

The minister then followed this up with a letter sent to the leaders of the different Senate groups on June 8, demanding that we pass the bill. The minister even had the gall to write to the chair of the Senate National Security and Defence Committee with this demand. Colleagues, the Senate itself determines which committee will study any piece of government legislation, and the minister attempted to intervene in that process before we had even taken a decision.

The minister not only demanded that the bill be passed without any substantive debate; he also prejudged which committee might review the bill. In effect, he made additional demands about how exactly the committee should review it. This represents an unprecedented level of interference in the business of the Senate, and it fully exposes the very little respect the government has for this chamber.

Since June 8, we have had a number of senators who are not from the official opposition speak to this bill, and I submit that these senators had every right to prepare their remarks to be able to speak to this bill. We have an unwritten rule here that the critic is typically the last person to speak. I have done the same as my colleagues and spent a fair bit of time preparing my remarks. I was also informed by a critic briefing that I received from officials. My remarks are also informed by the research that my staff had to do on this bill. That research work reveals how deeply flawed this bill actually is, and I submit that it will be absolutely the duty of the Senate to hear from a broad cross-section of Canadians who are very concerned about this bill and who have views on all sides of this issue in relation to this legislation.

In that regard, colleagues, I want to assure the government that up until now, the official opposition has not delayed this bill. However, having personally reviewed the very negative implications of this bill, I wish to say that since the last speaker in this chamber spoke on the bill literally two minutes ago, I have now officially begun to delay Bill C-21. So let there be no question, and let the minister know so the minister and his parliamentary secretary can mark that in their calendars for future reference.

Colleagues, this bill amends the Firearms Act and other legislation to impose new requirements and restrictions on Canada’s legal firearms owners. There are currently well over 2 million gun licences in Canada, and in almost all cases, Canadian gun owners are extremely responsible members of our society. That has been the case throughout Canada’s history.

I think we need to understand who Canada’s gun owners are. They are, of course, Indigenous peoples who have used firearms as an integral aspect for their sustenance for centuries. They are Canadian hunters who have also used firearms responsibly for centuries. They are rural and urban Canadians. They are sport shooters and collectors who use firearms at clubs across the country. They are shooters who use pistols in a variety of disciplines, including Olympic competition.

These are people like Linda Thom from Ottawa, who won the Olympic gold medal at the 1984 Olympics in the 25-metre pistol competition. They include people like Lynda Kiejko, who won double gold at the 2015 Pan American Games, also in the 25‑metre pistol event. They include thousands of Canadians who participate in International Practical Shooting Confederation matches across the country. They are people who will be subject to the new restrictions being proposed by Bill C-21, a bill that the government claims is “. . . part of a comprehensive strategy to address gun violence and strengthen gun control in Canada.”

Bill C-21 does no such thing. It does not do so since there actually is no strategy from this government to address gun violence in Canada. In fact, this bill not only fails to address gun violence, it also significantly weakens gun control in Canada, and it may even destroy it.

In my remarks today, I will examine the policy rationale for this bill. In doing so, I will need to speak about the many flaws of this bill.

Second, I will discuss some of the implications of this bill and, in particular, about how I believe this bill will actually contribute to a growth in violent crime on our streets.

Third, I will address what I believe are the negative implications of all of this for gun control in Canada.

I want to begin by looking at the government’s policy rationale for this bill. At a core level, I believe this legislation illustrates the fact that ministers in charge of this bill don’t know very much about firearms. I believe this ignorance explains many of the serious flaws of this bill. It also explains why, over the past year, this bill has faced so many tumultuous ups and downs.

This became particularly evident late last year when a series of amendments were hastily proposed to the bill, which made it clear that ministers themselves did not understand the key issues. The government now claims to have abandoned these amendments, but I believe the mistaken ideas that led to the amendments remain at the heart of this bill. It is reasonably clear that the government will now attempt to do by regulation what they failed to do as completely as they would have liked through legislation.

The amendments in question were proposed by Liberal MP Paul Chiang, and what they did was expand the scope of the bill significantly to try to introduce bans on a wide range of hunting rifles. The amendments opened to complete prohibition any semi-automatic centrefire firearms that were designed to accept a detachable cartridge magazine and whose magazine capacity was greater than five cartridges. The provision would have immediately applied to as many as 1 million legal firearms in Canada, most of them non-restricted and almost all of them owned by hunters. I do not believe ministers gave the slightest thought about the likely impact these measures would have on Indigenous hunters, many of whom rely on them for subsistence hunting. I do not think that ministers really understood that when one talks about semi-automatic firearms, these are actually employed by hundreds of thousands of Canadian hunters.

For the information of colleagues who may also not be familiar with long guns, rifles and shotguns are actually manufactured in several different firing modes called actions. Some firearms are pump-action firearms, where the cartridges are moved into the chamber based on a pumping action. Some are lever-action firearms, where the same process is accomplished through a lever-action mechanism. Some are bolt-action firearms, where the process is accomplished — you guessed it — through a bolt‑action mechanism. Some are semi-automatic firearms, where the process is accomplished automatically when a previous round is discharged.

All of those actions can be fast, particularly when the firearm is in the hands of an experienced shooter. It is a commonly held belief that the semi-automatic action is the fastest, but that is not necessarily the case. Much depends upon who is using the firearm and how well it is maintained.

In Canada, semi-automatic long guns are legally limited to no more than five rounds in the firearm. That has been the case for decades, colleagues. There is no similar limitation for lever‑action, pump-action or bolt-action firearms. Those firearms might commonly hold 10 rounds, for example.

What colleagues should understand and what ministers should have understood is that semi-automatic long guns are very common among hunting firearms. They should also have understood that semi-automatic firearms already have magazine restrictions that are greater than those imposed on other long guns.

I think a reason that was overlooked and not well understood is because the government has consulted so inadequately on this bill. They certainly did not consult with Indigenous authorities on this amendment. We have often heard government ministers claim that when it comes to laws impacting Indigenous peoples, the slogan “nothing about us, without us” applies. But the reality is that this slogan is observed more in its omission than in its implementation.

Despite the government’s repeated claims that the enactment of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples requires them to consult with Indigenous peoples on issues affecting them, that certainly did not occur in any systematic way on Bill C-21.

The question, “With whom did you consult?” was posed to the officials during my critic’s briefing on the bill. When the officials were asked to describe their process of consulting with Indigenous peoples, they turned and looked for answers to the representative who was present from Minister Mendicino’s office. Departmental officials did say they had consulted on the previous Bill C-21, which died on the Order Paper, but they engaged in no such consultations with Indigenous peoples in advance of introducing this bill, which has different provisions from the previous bill.

Subsequent to my critic’s briefing, officials sent my office a list of meetings they held with Indigenous groups after the bill was introduced. In other words, those were meetings held between January and May this year. But that was months after Bill C-21 had been introduced and only occurred after the public opposition to the government’s amendments had arisen, colleagues.

As on so many other occasions, Indigenous peoples were only an afterthought. That really makes a mockery out of the claim that when it comes to Indigenous peoples, it is “nothing about us, without us.”

On Bill C-21, officials also failed to consult with outside experts who are well-informed on firearms.

All of that makes Bill C-21 remarkably similar to another Liberal gun bill, Bill C-68 in the 1990s, which enacted a universal firearms registry. Like that earlier bill, Bill C-21 will achieve almost nothing when it comes to enhancing public safety. Yet it will prevent legal handgun owners from buying or selling their firearms, but it still allows them to keep those guns and use them. Where, exactly, is the public safety benefit in that?

The bill will also set up a red flag law that will permit Canadians to take other Canadians to court if they fear that those other Canadians have guns and might pose a risk to others. Colleagues, Canadians can already call the police to deal with those sorts of concerns, so where is the public safety benefit in that?

That is what makes Bill C-21 so similar to Bill C-68 of the 1990s. Bill C-68 was ultimately rejected and, in large measure, repealed because it could not be explained how creating a universal gun registry at an enormous cost would enhance public safety.

Remember, colleagues, that the Chrétien government originally claimed that creating a universal firearms registry would carry a net cost of $2 million, but those costs subsequently exploded to $2 billion. By the time the Harper government repealed the long-gun registry, the public safety benefits of the costly long-gun registry had become impossible to explain.

Like Bill C-68, the provisions of Bill C-21 are already proving difficult to explain and to justify, and the bill has not been enacted yet. Ultimately, the Canadian public lost confidence in what was being claimed would be the benefits of Bill C-68. The same is already happening with Bill C-21, and once again, we have a piece of Liberal legislation that risks undermining the very foundations of gun control in Canada.

What, then, is the government claiming that it will achieve with this bill?

When he spoke on the bill in June 2022, Minister Mendicino stated that this bill is “. . . how we will eradicate gun violence and protect all Canadians.”

Reluctantly, I take the minister at his word that this is actually his objective and the objective of his government. In that sense, it is an emotive reaction to the scourge of gun crime. I’m sure that every senator in this chamber would agree that gun crime is a scourge on our society, but the minister says that his government’s goal is to eradicate gun violence. The word “eradicate” is defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as “to do away with as completely as if by pulling up by the roots.” That is a very noble objective in theory, but the sad reality is that no piece of government legislation can hope to accomplish such a sweeping objective when it comes to any criminal activity; it is simply not possible.

We do not know if the minister literally believed what he said, but if that is actually his goal, then he simply doesn’t know what he is doing, and we’ve raised that issue in the Senate a few times here in the last few weeks.

If we consider the other bills the government has enacted when it comes to criminal justice — ones like Bill C-5 and Bill C-75 — those bills have actually undermined the ability of law enforcement to fight gun crime.

Under Bill C-5, the government repealed a number of mandatory sentences for gun crime, including the following: using a firearm or imitation firearm in the commission of an offence; possession of a firearm or weapon knowing its possession is unauthorized; possession of a prohibited or restricted firearm with ammunition; possession of a weapon obtained by commission of offence; discharging a firearm with intent; robbery with a firearm; and extortion with a firearm.

The mandatory sentences for all of those offences were repealed. Many of those provisions had actually been put in place not by the previous government, but by previous Liberal governments.

In 1995, Justice Minister Allan Rock said the following about the need for mandatory penalties for gun crimes:

The right approach to firearms control in Canada is to find an efficient way to fight criminal use of firearms while respecting legitimate uses and interests of law-abiding firearms owners.

. . . we must strengthen controls at the borders and impose tougher sentences for smuggling and trafficking in illegal firearms.

. . . the longest mandatory minimum penitentiary terms in the Criminal Code for those who use firearms for any one of ten serious crimes, including robbery; the prospect of a mandatory jail term for possessing stolen or smuggled firearms . . . .

The minister continues:

Our efforts at the borders must be more effective. It makes a mockery of our domestic controls if we cannot staunch the flow of illegal arms coming into Canada.

That, colleagues, is what the Liberal Minister of Justice said in 1995.

To be sure, what Allan Rock did in creating the long-gun registry was foolish, but he was at least right when he spoke about the need to prevent firearms trafficking and the criminal use of firearms.

Is it not strange for today’s Liberal government to declare that its objective is to completely eradicate gun violence, and then to turn around and deliberately eliminate mandatory sentences for those very same crimes?

As Allan Rock argued, the reality is that mandatory sentences can assist in reducing gun crimes. They are particularly useful in removing violent and repeat offenders from circulation on our streets and in preventing them from committing new violent crimes. Mandatory sentences provide some measure of assurance that gang members and other violent criminals won’t be back to prey on people in vulnerable communities that are most often plagued by gun crime.

But keeping measures in place to stop that sort of crime has not been a strong consideration in this current government’s policy-making. Instead, this government decided that a range of firearms offences should no longer attract any mandatory sentencing. How is that consistent with the government’s pledge to eradicate gun violence?

And, of course, the government did not stop these contradictory measures with Bill C-5. Under Bill C-75, the government also introduced a new legislative “principle of restraint” for police and the courts to observe when it comes to granting bail. The government argued that these specific measures would “. . . ensure that release at the earliest opportunity is favoured over detention . . . .”

The impact of this policy has been nothing short of devastating, and I now want to discuss some of these impacts.

In British Columbia, a recent study looked at 425 bail hearings involving a suspect both accused of a violent crime and with a breach of bail conditions on their file. Of those 425 hearings, the Crown sought detention orders in only 222 cases, or 52% of the time. That meant that in nearly 50% of the cases, violent criminals with bail breaches on their files were back on the streets.

If we look at Ontario, this province has experienced a 57% increase in serious violence and weapons cases before the courts between 2018 and 2021. Who was in government?

Constable Greg Pierzchala of the Ontario Provincial Police was shot and killed last year. He was murdered by a repeat criminal, Randall McKenzie, and another man. McKenzie was out on bail on assault and weapons charges. He also had a warrant out for his arrest.

At the time that Bill C-75 was passed, the eradication of gun violence was supposed to be the goal of this government. But somehow that goal did not impact the provisions of Bill C-75. When Bill C-75 was passed, the government already knew that crimes committed by repeat offenders were skyrocketing. And Bill C-75 added fuel to that fire.

The Toronto Police Service reports that in the last two years, 17% of accused in Toronto charged with shooting-related homicides were already out on bail at the time of the alleged fatal shooting. Think about that, colleagues: Of the perpetrators of fatal shootings in Toronto, 17% were out on bail. Once again, how did the government’s supposed goal of eradicating gun violence fit with this outcome?

Colleagues, we can only come to two possible conclusions when we consider facts like these: Either the eradication of gun violence is really only a slogan for this government, or this government is completely and totally incompetent. If we are honest, colleagues, it’s probably a mixture of both.

This is a government and a minister who pay far too little attention to the details of policy. Like the Prime Minister who leads them, they somehow believe that slogans are sufficient and that slogans themselves will determine and set policy. We see this approach time and time again, and it is leading to disastrous policy outcomes. The government’s policy approach in Bill C-21 is only the latest illustration of this incompetence.

In his second reading remarks on Bill C-21 a year ago, the minister referenced the experiences of numerous Canadians who have been impacted by gun violence. No words can ever comfort those whose loved ones have been murdered in senseless acts of violence, but if he actually wants to eradicate gun violence as he claims, then the problem is that he has absolutely no idea how to accomplish that objective. That is because this government blames society for the actions of criminals. It is a government that identifies legal gun owners as the primary problem when it comes to gun crime. And it is a government that somehow believes that shorter periods of incarceration, even for repeat violent offenders, will produce less crime.

Colleagues, this is an incompetent approach, and it has significantly contributed to increasing violent crime in the past eight years. According to Statistics Canada, in 2021, 788 people were murdered in Canada. Let’s contrast that with 2013, when there were only 509 murders. Now, 509 murders are still way too many, but just eight years later, the number of murders increased by more than 50%. And in 2021, one quarter of those murders were gang-related.

Shootings, always using illegal firearms, represent three quarters of all gang-related homicides. In Winnipeg, there were a record 53 homicides in 2022. Firearms were used in more than 30% of Winnipeg’s homicides, but knives were involved in about 28% of homicides.

I asked the minister about this when he was here in the Senate to answer questions. I asked how the government’s repeal of eight mandatory minimum penalties for gun crime in Bill C-5 would help combat the rise in violent crime. The minister did what his government always does: He hid behind court decisions and claimed, by implication, that he had no choice.

Colleagues, that is a pathetic response from a minister and is cold comfort for the victims of rising violent crime.

Effectively, what the minister is saying is:

We are sorry, but as a government we are completely helpless. We have no choice but to go after legal gun owners because the courts won’t let us go after the violent criminals.

First of all, the minister’s response is factually wrong. The courts have not struck down all mandatory minimum penalties. In fact, the Supreme Court has upheld the principle that Parliament may impose mandatory penalties and, in specific cases, has often given the government options to respond to its judgments.

The Supreme Court gave such an option to the government in R v. Nur, a decision of the Supreme Court in 2015 which struck down one aspect of a minimum penalty related to firearms possession.

The court struck the provision down, but it nevertheless provided room for the government to modify the existing law. The Harper government did just that in response to that particular ruling when it introduced Bill C-69. Unfortunately, that bill died on the Order Paper prior to the 2015 election and the current government chose not to proceed with it.

If the current government is too afraid to respond to Supreme Court rulings in order to work within those rulings to protect Canadians in the face of gun crime, it should say so. But it should stop hiding behind the courts and claiming that it has no choice but to do nothing. That is an abdication of responsibility and it ensures that many Canadian communities will continue to be plagued by gun crime.

Second, even where the court provides the government with few options in a particular case, we still have a principle of parliamentary supremacy in this country.

When Canadian streets are plagued by rising violent crime, there are other constitutional and legislative tools available for a government and Parliament to protect Canadians. If the current government doesn’t have the courage to use those tools, then that government deserves to be replaced; it is as simple as that.

Parliament and the Government of Canada have an obligation to protect Canadians. When Parliament fundamentally disagrees with a Supreme Court ruling, it should be prepared to act. What we require is an elected Parliament that is willing to do just that. Hopefully, colleagues — and I am, indeed, positively hopeful — that we will have such a Parliament after the next election.

What we have now is a government that is doing exactly the opposite of what is required to protect Canadians. There is ample evidence to suggest that various government measures, including badly thought out criminal justice legislation, as well as Liberal policy on drug distribution, have contributed significantly to the major increase in violent crime in Canada.

The sad fact is that, since 2015, violent crime in Canada has increased by 32% while gang-related murders, many of them committed with firearms, have doubled. None of these trends are impacted at all by Bill C-21.

The government may argue that Bill C-21 is part of a larger effort but I see no evidence of a larger effort. The truth is that Bill C-21, like Bill C-68 before it, diverts and wastes the efforts and resources to go after legal firearm owners when the attention of police, instead, should be on real criminals.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer has estimated that the government’s decision in 2020 to ban certain classes of previously legal firearms and to pay the necessary compensation will cost as much as $750 million. Others say the costs may be even higher.

This money, colleagues, should be used to support front-line officers. Instead, these funds are being completely and totally wasted. This, again, leads one to ask with whom the government actually consulted in order to produce this bill.

In his remarks on the bill a year ago, the minister claimed:

Bill C-21 represents the culmination of the advice we have received from so many constituencies, including from survivors and many others . . . .

If Bill C-21 represents the culmination of advice that the government has received from so many constituencies, then there remains a remarkable degree of public opposition to this bill.

If we consider even what earlier supporters of the bill are saying, it does not seem that the government listened to any advice they provided. Their expectations were unrealistically raised by the government when the minister unrealistically claimed that he could somehow eradicate gun violence. Now these groups feel betrayed.

The group PolySeSouvient supports Bill C-21 but has declared that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will no longer be welcome at future Polytechnique memorials.

Nathalie Provost, a survivor of the terrible shooting at the École Polytechnique, in speaking about the Prime Minister’s attendance at future commemoration events, reportedly said, “We won’t invite him and if he wants to come, we will not agree for him to be there.”

I understand why they are angry. The government promised a bill that would do the impossible. Then, when expectations were dashed, people became angry. You can’t promise the unachievable and then backtrack and not expect severe disappointment.

What about the total lack of government consultation with Indigenous peoples? Chief Jessica Lazare of the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake told members of Parliament that the absence of comprehensive consultation with Indigenous peoples is clearly evident given what she says is the “incoherence and inconsistency” of the bill itself.

She further said:

We ask that you address the real underlying problems that cause gun violence, not further restrict Indigenous peoples from carrying out their lives in a sustainable ceremonial and generational way.

This, again, is the essence of the problem with Bill C-21. The government claims that this is a bill that is designed to address gun violence. The real target is law-abiding firearms owners, including Indigenous hunters.

Vice Chief Heather Bear of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations said that Bill C-21 and its proposed amendments infringe on Indigenous rights to hunt both on reserve lands and on traditional territories. This includes the provisions in the bill that target legal handgun owners.

Bill C-21 proposes to freeze the sale, purchase or transfer of legal handguns. This provision impacts more than 1 million legal firearms that have been used by law-abiding competitive shooters and collectors for a century and more.

Naturally, this measure will have no impact on criminal gangs who are largely interested in illegal firearms, which they can easily acquire from across the border. Instead, this so-called handgun freeze goes after those who hold restricted firearms licences for a variety of legal purposes.

As Vice Chief Bear stated, “Handguns are used in the far north. . . .” Why are they used? They are sometimes employed for safety reasons, where an animal such a bear may come upon a hunter very quickly, making a handgun easier to use at close quarters than a rifle. Having an available tool like a handgun might actually mean the difference between life and death; not only did the government not consider that when it drafted Bill C-21, it also did not, of course, consult with the people most affected.

It is scarcely surprising that, in December, First Nations leaders at the AFN General Assembly voted to oppose Bill C-21.

Cat Lake First Nation Chief Russell Wesley, who brought forward the resolution at the AFN Special Chiefs Assembly, referred to the bill as “just another demonstration of our First Nations constantly being attacked with respect to our rights.”

When it comes to Indigenous consultation, the Department of Justice states:

The Government of Canada has a constitutional duty to consult Indigenous peoples when it considers measures that might adversely impact their potential or established Aboriginal or treaty rights. This has been consistently confirmed by the Courts. The Government of Canada has consistently worked to uphold this duty and has shown its commitment to taking additional steps to do so.

What happened to that commitment? I believe that it is absolutely imperative that when our Senate committee reviews this bill, it must take the time to hear from all Indigenous witnesses who want to be heard.

If the government is not going to consult Indigenous peoples in the manner that it promised, then the Senate must do that job for them. We will do our utmost to ensure that this bill receives full hearing at the Senate committee, and that Canadians can and will be heard.

In that regard, I want to come back to the matter of the handgun freeze that is proposed in this bill. The minister said that this provision:

. . . would introduce a national freeze on handguns for the first time. In very clear language, this means that on a go‑forward basis no one would be able to buy, sell, transfer or import a handgun.

That is the purpose, according to the minister. But what will that provision actually accomplish when it comes to public safety? We know it will do nothing when it comes to illegal handguns, which are the weapon of choice for criminal gangs. The Deputy Chief of Police of the Toronto Police Service, as he then was, Myron Demkiw, recently testified in the House of Commons that approximately 86% of crime guns seized were ones that had been smuggled into Canada. A recent CBC story noted that 90% of gun crimes in Ontario were committed with smuggled guns.

Deputy Chief Demkiw was very clear about handguns on Toronto’s streets, saying:

They’re not domestically sourced. They are internationally sourced. Our problem in Toronto is handguns from the United States.

When asked about the proposed handgun freeze and the government’s other firearms buy-back program, he said:

Investing in what you described is certainly not going to deal with the crime problem we’re facing in Toronto as it relates to criminal handguns and the use of criminal handguns.

We must ask again: Who did the government listen to or consult with? There is no public safety benefit in legislating that legal handgun owners can keep their 1 million firearms, but they can’t legally buy or sell them. Neither does restricting competitive pistol shooters make our streets safer.

The government claims that in many areas of Canada, the theft of legal firearms must be combatted, but freezing purchases and sales of legal firearms that are already tightly controlled does not address that problem. The major problem for a city like Toronto is organized firearms smuggling. On that, Bill C-21 does nothing at all.

In his remarks on the bill, the minister claimed that:

Bill C-21 will take on, in a very intentional and direct way, organized crime. It does this by first and foremost raising maximum sentences for illegal gun smugglers and traffickers at the border, from 10 years to 15 years. What is the effect of that statement of intent? It is to send a very powerful and clear message to anyone who is in the business of illegal gun smuggling that they are at greater risk of facing stiffer sentences.

It’s hardly surprising that the minister actually got the proposed new maximum wrong. The new maximum proposed in the bill is 14 years, not 15 years as the minister said. He doesn’t know his own bill. He’s a lawyer and a former prosecutor, but somehow he missed the fact that 14 years is a normal maximum sentence in the Criminal Code, not 15 years.

Be that as it may, what does this increase in the maximum possible sentence actually accomplish?

First of all, in relation to the current 10-year maximum for firearms smuggling, we need to be honest that even this sentence is rarely imposed in Canadian courts. I asked Library of Parliament researchers how often the 10-year maximum sentence had been imposed in the past 20 years. Library researchers failed to find a single example.

When officials from the department briefed me during my critic briefing, they acknowledged that very few sentences for firearms smuggling are at the higher end of the sentencing range permitted under the law. There may be such cases, but they’re so rare that they’re very difficult to find even by officials.

In the face of that fact, the minister claims that raising the maximum to 14 years will send a strong signal to the courts. This seems highly doubtful when most custodial sentences are five years or less.

I recognize that some gun offences may at times attract stronger sentences. In his second reading remarks, Senator Yussuff claimed that “on average those who are convicted [of smuggling] serve eight years of their sentence.” I believe what Senator Yussuff was likely trying to claim was that the average sentence was eight years, not that they actually served eight years in custody. In fact, serving eight years in prison is almost impossible if someone were to receive a maximum 10-year sentence. That is because statutory release of all inmates occurs at about the two-thirds mark of a sentence, so even on a maximum 10-year sentence, all inmates would be released even before the 7-year mark.

I also don’t believe that there is any evidence that eight years is actually the average sentence for gun smuggling. I can only repeat what the Library of Parliament said. They could find no example of a maximum sentence being imposed on firearms smuggling, and officials acknowledged that there were very few sentences at the high end of the sentencing range. One would hope that this trend might change, but, in fact, the tendency is actually towards sentencing at the lower to middle range of the scale.

One illustration of how this works is the case of William Rainville who, in 2021, tried to smuggle 248 Polymer80 Glock‑type pistols into Canada. These pistols were smuggled without serial numbers. The guns had an estimated street value of $1.6 million and they were destined for criminal use. He, colleagues, received a five-year sentence.

Some might argue that is a stiff sentence, but it’s actually only in the middle range, and the fact is that William Rainville was out on day parole in 12 months of that five-year sentence.

Colleagues, think about that: 12 months served for smuggling 250 firearms into our country with the serial numbers filed off. These were guns that were clearly destined for criminal use and would likely have killed people, but he was out in 12 months.

Why only 12 months? Here we have to reference another bill passed under this government, Bill C-83. That bill introduced a principle into the Corrections and Conditional Release Act mandating that all offenders must be incarcerated at the least restrictive level of security consistent with public policy. That means that as long as offenders keep their noses clean while inside, they are often transferred to increasingly lower levels of security, speeding their way to early day parole and full parole. It means that, regardless of the seriousness of the offence, if an offender knows how to work the system, he can often be out very quickly.

The government was warned that this would happen when they passed Bill C-83. Those warnings included ones given by our very own colleague Senator Boisvenu, but those warnings were ignored.

Another individual, Tony N’Zoigba certainly knew how to work the system. He was arrested in February 2020 after crossing the St. Lawrence River in a motorboat in which he had a duffle bag containing nine guns. These guns were clearly intended for criminal use, since their path had been traced through a joint Canada-U.S. sting operation. His intent was to sell those guns to criminal gangs right here in the city of Ottawa.

For that, he faced 92 charges. What was his sentence? He received 18 months.

A few months later, he was out on day parole. And what was he up to on day parole? Allegedly, he was working on yet another deal to smuggle even more guns into Canada, so his day parole had to be suspended.

Colleagues, when it comes to cross-border firearms smuggling, criminals are highly organized and they take advantage of lax Canadian laws, weak Liberal judges and limited law enforcement at the border. I am afraid that neither the limited measures that the government has taken nor the proposed minor increase in a maximum sentence — that even today is rarely if ever used — will have any impact on the grave problem that Canada faces.

The minister has argued that the bill grants new investigatory powers by expanding the list of eligible firearms offences. This, he says, will allow police to obtain more wiretaps. His government also claims that they have invested over $1 billion to combat gun crime. But statistics of money spent are not the same as results. This is a government that is very willing to throw money at problems but never wants to ask detailed questions about whether their policies are actually working.

We also need to be honest that this money is spread over many years. It is spread across the country. It is spread over multiple initiatives. Much of it does not go to the support of front-line officers. Certainly, the $750 million or more that is being wasted to compensate legal gun owners for the 2020 gun ban enacted by the government does absolutely nothing to support our front-line policing.

The reality is that gun crime is going up, and much of that crime is fuelled by smuggled guns. With regard to that problem, the minister is actually doing very little. He claims that border officers are seizing record numbers of guns at border crossings. But how are such seizures actually impacting the crime on the streets?

My office posed an Order Paper question related to firearm seizures at border crossings. We asked how successful the Canada Border Services Agency, the CBSA, has actually been in intercepting illegal guns destined for street gangs. In response to that question, the Department of Public Safety responded that in 2019 the CBSA seized 713 firearms from all sources at the border. That sounds impressive, but the reality is that the CBSA also reported that only 72 of these firearms were identified as prima facie crime guns, that is to say, firearms that were believed destined for illegal use in Canada.

In 2020, the numbers were less impressive. While 470 firearms were seized by the CBSA at the border in 2020, a mere 8 of these were identified as likely crime guns, in other words, about 2% of all gun seizures.

Seizing guns from otherwise unsuspecting American travellers, unfamiliar with Canadian laws, who will only be in Canada for a few days or weeks, has no impact on crime in urban Canada. We need instead to stop gun smuggling by organized groups who are funnelling those guns to gangs on our streets.

For all the minister’s talk about investments and money spent, the sad reality is this, colleagues: If we don’t have sufficient numbers of officers on hand to investigate organized gun smuggling, then we will not seriously address violent crime on our streets. If we don’t have aggressive and well-funded intelligence-led policing that targets gun smuggling, then we will not address violent crime on our streets. If we don’t have sufficient numbers of police officers or border officers policing the border between ports of entry, then we will not seriously address violent crimes on our streets. If we don’t have sufficient numbers of officers and Crown attorneys to pursue wiretap warrants and to support major investigations, then we will not seriously address violent crimes on our streets. Lastly, if we don’t have serious sentences for gun smuggling and gun crime, sentences that will permanently remove violent criminals off our streets, then we simply will not address gun crime on our streets.

To be honest, Bill C-21 and all the rhetoric surrounding it provide none of those capabilities. This bill is focused almost exclusively on legal firearms owners. It views them as the problem. The approach is particularly evident in another provision of this bill. It relates to the so-called “red flag” provisions.

Minister Mendicino said:

We are seeing gender-based violence in our workplaces, communities, homes or wherever online. There is a trend between gender-based violence and guns. Between 2013 and 2019, the incidents involving gender-based violence and guns went up more than 30%, and that trend has continued.

The minister is suggesting that the mere existence of legal guns is a problem, but there are millions of legal guns in Canada. Unless the minister is suggesting taking them all away from every hunter and sports shooter, then I don’t know how he plans to address this. He certainly won’t address this through any provisions of Bill C-21.

I do think that all Canadians agree that the increasing incidence of violence, sometimes rampage attacks, that we are seeing in our society is extremely disturbing. Such attacks may be driven by religious or other ideological extremist ideas. They may simply be driven by a collapse in an individual’s mental health. Whatever the reason, we seem to be seeing more of them. They may be random stabbings or other assaults. They may involve someone using a car as a weapon, or they may involve firearms.

Our legal firearm controls are designed to help address that issue. That is why, in Canada, we have long recognized the need for reasonable firearm controls. There has been a broad political consensus in Canada when it comes to firearms licensing, mandatory safety training and ensuring the safe storage of firearms. There has also been a broad consensus around police background checks. Holders of firearms licences in Canada must renew their firearms licences every five years. Firearms owners are subject to continuous review. If issues of concern arise, licences can be suspended, and firearms seized. These are comprehensive legal provisions, but we must recognize that we will never have fully foolproof solutions.

In Bill C-21, the government is proposing to add a new set of provisions called “red flag” laws. The provision will allow anyone to go to court and ask a judge to seize the gun or suspend the licence of a person who owns a gun if they believe they pose a threat to anyone else or themselves. What does this provision really add in terms of enhanced public safety?

The Criminal Justice Section of the Canadian Bar Association, the CBA, notes that police officers already have the power to seek a warrant to seize firearms under specific circumstances. The law allows police to seize firearms without a warrant when obtaining one is impractical or when someone fails to show a licence or other authorization.

The seizure of a firearm means an automatic revocation of licences and authorizations. The individual then has an opportunity to be heard in court. In other words, any individual can already file a complaint or a concern with the police, who are then empowered to act.

As stated on the CBA website, the Criminal Justice Section of the CBA believes:

. . . the current law contains sufficient powers to accomplish the goal of seizing weapons believed to have been used in a crime or removing them from the hands of persons who are believed to be a danger to themselves or to others.

It is difficult to understand what precisely layering “red flag” provisions on top of these already existing provisions will achieve. Is an individual more likely to call the police if they have a serious concern, or are they more likely to take the time to go to court? The answer seems rather obvious.

It will be very important for the Senate committee studying this legislation to hear from legal and other witnesses on this matter. These issues are complicated, and it will be necessary to understand how the current law functions, as well as what these proposed new provisions add when it comes to enhancing public safety.

In considering all of these issues, this bill appears to have no practical value. What is its actual purpose? I believe that purpose is not to eradicate gun violence, as the government claims, but to lay the foundation for future actions that can target legal firearms owners more comprehensively. In that regard, the government proposes to incorporate in this legislation an expanded definition of prohibited firearms. That definition would now include semi‑automatic centre-fire firearms that were originally designed with a detachable magazine with a capacity of six cartridges or more. That will technically incorporate, perhaps, the 1 million‑plus existing non-restricted firearms that I have already referenced.

The government claims that this definition would apply prospectively, meaning that it would only apply to firearms designed and manufactured on or after the definition comes into force. It would not impact the classification of the existing firearms in the Canadian market. But if that is the case, what is the public safety benefit of the amendment? New firearms that may be largely the same as old firearms, and that shoot the same ammunition, would be banned, but the 1 million-plus existing firearms would not be banned.

When I use the number “1 million-plus,” I do so because nobody actually knows the exact number. What we do know is that banning new guns — that are exactly the same as the old guns — and then leaving the old guns in circulation makes absolutely no sense. The government claims that the purpose is to “close a regulatory gap where firearms that enter the Canadian market may be misclassified.” But the capacity to do much more than that is there, and the government’s ultimate intent is shown in the amendments that have, for now, been withdrawn. This means that no one should be fooled into thinking that firearms — which may have been held by Canadians for decades — are safe from arbitrary prohibition. In the firearms prohibitions that the government introduced by order-in-council in 2020, the government showed that it is more than willing to initiate completely arbitrary firearms prohibitions whenever the political considerations suggest that this would be a good idea.

Canadians are not made safer when governments arbitrarily take a political decision to ban a few classes of firearms simply based on their look, but leave other similar classes of firearms, often shooting exactly the same ammunition, in legal circulation. That, of course, makes no sense, but it is exactly what the government did in 2020.

Previously, the government argued that its decisions related to firearms prohibitions would always be based on facts and on professional input, but that promise has gone out the window, and the reclassification of firearms will now take place behind closed doors, subject to all manner of pressure from politicians.

What are the implications of all this for gun control in Canada? As occurred with Bill C-68 exactly 30 years ago, it is probable that support for gun control will take a major blow. Gun control of legal firearms is, by its very definition, focused on law-abiding citizens. For the most part, gun owners in Canada have always cooperated with gun control in Canada, and their cooperation is necessary in order to maintain viable and effective gun control. It is, after all, their firearms that are being regulated. But laws must be seen as legitimate and necessary if they are to retain the cooperation of those who are most impacted by those laws. Bill C-21 undermines that public confidence. This bill is already being perceived as a politically driven and gratuitous attack on gun owners. It is their personal property being targeted.

As a result of the government’s actions, 1 million handguns held by law-abiding gun owners can no longer be legally bought or sold. This arbitrary decision comes with absolutely no financial compensation, making it particularly unjust.

Shooting disciplines and handgun clubs across the country are being impacted. When it comes to the various handgun shooting disciplines, the government has decided that only Olympic shooters will be exempt from buying and selling handguns. What sense does that possibly make? How can you sustain Olympic‑level competitors in Canada without allowing any other shooters into the shooting sport? As I have said before, it’s as if we were to say that the only hockey that will be allowed is the NHL, but we won’t allow anybody in amateur hockey to play. Every legal gun owner knows that the real objective here is to kill all shooting sports in Canada.

We have also been told that a side impact of this is that police officers across the country, who are often only able to train at their local gun club, may suddenly have nowhere to keep up their shooting skills, as these clubs start to close in the years ahead. Did anyone in the government think about this public safety impact? How will our police officers keep up their shooting skills as clubs start to close?

It is hardly surprising that — when one looks at all of the implications — people are reacting very negatively to this bill. That is why this bill is already opposed by a broad cross‑section of Canadians. Colleagues, it is also opposed by most provinces and territories. In fact, some provinces are enacting legislation that will thwart the very objectives of Bill C-21.

Some senators in this chamber will, no doubt, console themselves by believing that this is only what Conservative provincial governments are doing. But this is what Irfan Sabir, justice critic for the Alberta NDP, said about this legislation:

There are legitimate criticisms of the federal firearms program, and absolutely they needed to withdraw and reconsider their amendments that would have captured many firearms, including those used by Albertans and Indigenous peoples for hunting.

Honourable senators, that is the view of the Alberta NDP.

The only point of correction I would make is that, unfortunately, the federal government has not walked away from its amendments to Bill C-21. Instead, it has merely tried to temporarily freeze those amendments with the full intent of bringing them back in future regulations. These regulations will be recommended by a ministerial committee composed entirely of individuals appointed by the Minister of Public Safety — a man whose credibility is already completely shattered by the bad bill that he has introduced. We should not be surprised that this minister is simultaneously presiding over other fiascos, such as his demonstrated incompetence over the transfer of killer Paul Bernardo to a medium-security institution.

Honourable senators, the reality is that this minister and his government have mishandled the entire criminal justice file from the very beginning. Its approach to combatting gun and gang violence in our communities is wrong, and it should simply start fresh.

What should it be doing instead? First, it should admit its mistakes on Bill C-5, Bill C-75 and Bill C-83. In regard to Bill C-75 and bail conditions, it has now done that half-heartedly, but the new measures that it has proposed are unlikely to have a major impact on stopping crime on our streets. All of the bad bills that the government has passed need to be completely revisited if we are going to make a dent in the rise of violent crime in Canada.

Second, in regard to firearms smuggling, tackling this problem should become the real top priority. We will never be able to fully stop crime guns from entering Canada from the United States, but we can, at least, try to make it very costly for criminal gangs to engage in cross-border smuggling. We need to make it monetarily costly for them — and we need to ensure that when someone is caught smuggling guns into our country, they are removed from our streets, either for a very long time or, if they are repeat offenders, permanently. Parliament, not the courts, is supreme when it comes to law-making in Canada, and we need a government that is ready to stand by that important principle.

Third, the government needs to work closely, and in a collaborative fashion, with vulnerable communities. We need a government that invests in them and in the youth with measures that actually work.

Most importantly, those communities, like all other Canadian communities, deserve an environment in which law and order can be taken for granted and where children and youth can grow up without fear. You can have all the programs you want, but if the streets around where those programs are being delivered are unsafe, then the impact is going to be very limited.

Fourth, we need a federal government that is willing to work collaboratively with provinces and not at cross-purposes from their objectives. In other words, we need a federal government that is more interested in real results than it is in bills like Bill C-21 that are based on slogans and on targeting law-abiding Canadians. I understand that provinces have different views on this matter. The federal government needs to be prepared to work with all of them, not to impose solutions from afar.

Lastly, colleagues — I’m sure you are happy to hear — we need to maintain a firearms licensing regime in Canada that is both effective but also reasonable. This is not the United States, and in Canada, we have a strong tradition of responsible but reasonable gun control.

For gun control to be effective, it must be seen as being legitimate. Gun control must retain the support of legal firearms owners. With this bill, the government risks losing that support. It took years to build back a measure of support for an existing gun control regime after the debacle of the long-gun registry created by another Liberal government 30 years ago. Now, this government has thrown that support away. That makes this bill extremely foolish and short-sighted.

Colleagues, all of these issues need to be thoroughly examined by the Senate committee that will review this legislation. I trust we will not close the door on the diverse number of Canadians who want to be heard on this bad bill. I hope we will not do what the government did in the House, which was to introduce time allocation and ram the bill through the House committee process as well as third reading. That would be a slap in the face to many Canadians who deserve to be heard. It would also be a betrayal and complete abdication of the Senate’s constitutional role.

I strongly oppose this bill, but if we are going to send it to committee, we also need to give the committee time to do its work effectively. I trust we all agree with that principle, but it would be far better if we would not waste the committee’s time with this bad bill.

Bill C-21 will not make Canada safer. It does nothing to address crime on the streets. It is opposed by legal firearms owners. It is opposed by our Indigenous peoples. It has been opposed by provinces and territories. It risks destroying gun control in Canada.

Colleagues, I urge you to reject and defeat this at second reading. Thank you very much.

Would Senator Plett take a question?

I was hanging on to the podium for the last 30 minutes. I would respectfully decline questions.

Are senators ready for the question?

Is it your pleasure, honourable senators, to adopt the motion?

Those in favour of the motion will please say, “yea.”

Those opposed to the motion will please say, “nay.”

In my opinion, the “yeas” have it.

Is there an agreement on a bell?

Yes, there is. Fifteen minutes.

The bells will therefore ring for 15 minutes. The vote will be at 9:39. Call in the senators.