Bill to Amend Certain Acts and Regulations in Relation to Firearms
Motion in Amendment
May 15, 2019
Therefore, honourable senators, in amendment, I move:
That Bill C-71 be not now read a third time, but that it be amended
(a)on page 1, in clause 1, by replacing lines 4 to 9 with the following:
“1 Section 2 of the Firearms Act is amended by adding the”;
(b)on page 11, by deleting clause 16; and
(c)on page 12,
(i)by deleting clauses 18 to 21, and
(ii)in clause 22, by replacing lines 21 and 22 with the following:
“22 (1) Subsections 3(2) and 4(2) come into force on a day”.
On debate on the amendment, Senator Plett.
Honourable senators, I will speak very briefly to this amendment and I would like to thank Senator Dagenais for bringing it forward. It is a good amendment, for all the reasons that Senator Dagenais mentioned and I would like to add a few thoughts.
At committee, we heard from quite a few witnesses about problems and concerns with the current system of firearms classification. If you sift down through the frustration and exasperation, you find that the problems primarily come down to this: The current system of firearms classification is a blunt instrument, which often results in arbitrary decisions.
I will read a quote from a publication of one of the groups that appeared before our committee:
The main problem with the current system is that the criteria do not reflect the risks to public safety in a systematic or coherent way. In fact . . . classification based on physical characteristics such as the length of the weapon or the barrel often appears arbitrary.
Senators, this quote is from a 2017 publication of Poly Remembers, a group of students and graduates from Polytechnique who advocate for greater gun control.
The arbitrary nature of the classification system creates frustration for everyone — gun owners and gun control advocates alike — and needs to be overhauled.
In their 2015 election platform, the Liberals stated that they wanted to, “put decision making about weapons restrictions back in the hands of police and not politicians.” This sounds good and it gets repeated quite often in this Liberal government echo chamber, but it’s basically nonsense. And you don’t have to believe me on this. I will quote from Poly Remembers once again:
. . . the RCMP doesn’t actually “decide” what classification to give a gun; they are bound by the definitions contained in the Criminal Code. In other words, their role is limited to interpreting the law.
Colleagues, it is very poor public policy to give the RCMP the responsibility to interpret the law while removing the accountability of parliamentary oversight.
It is a fundamental management principle that if you extend responsibility you must accompany it with accountability. You should never separate the two. And yet, in the case of firearms classifications, this is exactly what is being proposed by this Liberal government.
The RCMP have given the responsibility of classifying firearms by interpreting the law, but the government wants to remove oversight of that process from the parliamentarians who created the law, by eliminating the ability of the Governor-in-Council to intervene in reclassification decisions.
The government is advocating that the RCMP have responsibility without corresponding accountability. This is never a good idea, but especially under a system which is known to be arbitrary.
Colleagues, the arbitrary nature of reclassification impacts not only firearms owners but also firearms businesses. Alison de Groot, Director, Canadian Sporting Arms and Ammunition Association, told the committee the following:
We’re suggesting . . .that there be a structured framework to that classification process . . . I’ll use the 10/22 magazine as an example: Without discussing the merits of the change to the classification, no notice to industry was given on that change. The first we found out about it as business owners was to have a shipment seized by CBSA at the border. When product is seized by CBSA, you pay exorbitant secure storage fees, so our importer had to pay those fees. We were left stranded with unsold inventory in Canada . . . tens of thousands of dollars of inventory in small retailers that is now unsellable inventory. These are not products we are allowed to send back to the manufacturer . . .we’re asking that the government require the RCMP to develop a structured framework for that process, both for new products and changes to current products in the market, and that industry be allowed the opportunity to address our supply chain with respect to products that are being reclassified or facing changes to classification.
Robert Henderson, owner of Access Heritage, also spoke to the committee about the dysfunctional nature of RCMP reclassification. This is what he said:
In the last 18 years, I have been importing non-firing flintlocks from India. By removing a small connecting flash hole in the design, the technology was deemed deactivated and the flintlocks were allowed by customs . . . . last December, at the very height of the retail season, a key shipment was stopped by the CBSA. At that time, they arbitrarily decided to revisit allowing deactivated flintlocks without any forewarning to me and without any relevant change in legislation. The Canadian Firearms Program was asked to investigate. The new decision was that the products were not non-firing enough and that the short flintlocks were restricted devices.
Firearms owners and business people such as Robert Henderson and Alison de Groot are not asking for something unreasonable. Neither is Senator Dagenais in his amendment. Agreeing with this amendment will ensure that proper parliamentary oversight of firearm classifications is retained, ensuring both accountability and transparency. Thank you.
Honourable senators, when Bill C-71 comes to a vote, we will be deciding who will make the technical decision to classify a firearm as prohibited, with all of the restrictions that entails, because these are the most dangerous firearms. Who will make that decision? Will it be experts at the RCMP or politicians, who know very little about firearms, who are not experts and who are open to the powerful gun lobby?
Let me go through a bit of history. Since gun classification is provided for in the Criminal Code, the decision as to whether a firearm was non-restricted, restricted or prohibited has always been in the hands of the RCMP, until 2015 when this was changed. Let me remind you what that change was about. In 2015 Bill C-42 gave the Governor-in-Council authority not to classify certain guns in a certain way but to ignore the Criminal Code definitions of different classes of firearms, which I think is pretty serious. You have the Criminal Code which defines what is a prohibited, restricted and non-restricted firearm. It is stated in the Criminal Code as adopted by Parliament. Then you have the RCMP experts in their laboratory here in Ottawa because sometimes these decisions can be quite technical. They look at the Criminal Code. They have a firearm in front of them. They decide based on their expertise that this gun in particular will be prohibited, restricted or non-restricted.
In 2015, what the previous government decided to do was not only ignore the RCMP expert opinion on a certain number of guns but they would ignore the definitions in the Criminal Code. It is currently stated in the Firearms Act after the amendments brought in 2015.
There were many mentions of arbitrary decisions. The decisions are arbitrary. Well, it is not because some people are unhappy about a decision that it’s arbitrary. I visited the RCMP lab here in Ottawa. The work they do is very impressive. I choose to trust the RCMP. They are the experts. They know what they are talking about.
Several people have mentioned that gun owners affected by a sudden ban on a particular firearm aren’t compensated. I have two things to say about that. First, no owner of a prohibited weapon in Canada, whether as a result of Bill C-71 or any previous bill under a Liberal or Conservative government, has ever been compensated. However, they are grandfathered, which means they can continue to own their firearms and use them at authorized gun ranges. There was no compensation, but individuals were protected because they didn’t lose the right to own their newly prohibited weapons and use them at authorized gun ranges.
Governments of all political stripes have used exactly the same means of grandfathering current owners of the firearms that became prohibited.
There were discussions in the speeches of the honourable senators in favour of the amendment of an appeal mechanism, of more transparency of how the RCMP classifies firearms. As I have said in my third reading speech, I believe there is something in favour of these arguments. It is true that, in the past, the RCMP’s decisions were not always widely announced. If you wanted to know if a specific firearm was prohibited, restricted or non-restricted it was not easy to find that information. The RCMP has announced that starting in a couple of months, all of their decisions on firearms will be on the web on what is called the reference table. The firearms reference table will be on the web and updated regularly so you can know what category your firearm belongs to, the firearm that you want to buy, and the reasons why they are restricted, non-restricted or prohibited. The matter of transparency, in my view, has been solved.
What remains is the issue of an appeal mechanism. It is a good question. I believe this is something the government can look into to see whether there is a way of providing an appeal mechanism to the RCMP experts’ determinations.
For the moment, that is not what is in this amendment. All this amendment does is bring us back to the 2015 act which gives the Governor-in-Council the authority to ignore the Criminal Code classifications of firearms so they can respond to whatever firearms lobby is unhappy with an RCMP expert decision.
Honourable senators, I don’t know about you, but I choose to trust the RCMP experts on firearms classification. If Parliament wants to change the criteria for gun classifications, then Parliament must change the Criminal Code, not give the authority to the Governor-in-Council to ignore the Criminal Code.
I choose to trust the RCMP experts. I choose to trust the people who know firearms best over giving that authority to elected politicians who, with all their merit, are not experts on firearms. As we all know, as senators, as we have seen with Bill C-71, the politicians who are always submitted to a barrage of lobbying from the gun owners’ associations, the ones who purport to speak for all gun owners in Canada. Thank you.
I have a question for Senator Pratte.
Senator Pratte, I am not an expert in these matters. I had wanted to speak during debate but I hesitated. I have one question. I had an opportunity to meet with small business owners who mentioned that, with reclassification of certain products, they were given the directive to safely store, put away and not sell these products. They mentioned that these products that they have purchased are part of their assets and assets they cannot in any way use for their families or pass on to family. When they did what was asked of them in this sort of, I say, arbitrary reclassification, they said two years later there has been no further communication and they are just waiting. Even keeping it safely stored is a risk. I wonder if you have had a chance to speak to these business owners about the challenges they are facing in this regard.
Thank you for the question. Yes, I have met many times with owners of small businesses who sell guns. I appreciate the difficulty that they find themselves in. I think we also have to appreciate why these specific guns were prohibited by the RCMP experts. These firearms were imported into Canada under false pretenses. These firearms were derived from fully automatic firearms. Converted fully automatic firearms are prohibited by the Criminal Code. It’s not an arbitrary decision. It’s a decision based on the definition of what is a prohibited firearm. Fully automatic firearms and converted fully automatic firearms are prohibited by the Criminal Code.
Now, the issue is whether owners of guns or businesses that have these guns in their stock should be compensated. The decision taken by this government, exactly like the decisions taken by previous governments of all political stripes, is that there would be no compensation. Individual owners would be grandfathered and able to not only own guns but they could also buy the same guns from other grandfathered owners. That’s the decision that has been taken by this government, as other governments in the past have decided not to compensate firearm owners or small businesses.
Senator Dagenais, do you have a question for Senator Pratte?
Yes. Would Senator Pratte take a question?
Yes.
First of all, Senator Pratte, I would say that I’m somewhat surprised to hear from you. We both sit on the same committee and discussed no-fly lists yesterday. People on these lists are told that they have the right to appeal the government’s decision, and we’re even willing to argue that the government should have to cover people’s legal fees in such matters.
Bill C-71 states that people won’t be able to appeal the decision because law enforcement gets all the power. Don’t you agree that this might lead to the creation of a police state, a totalitarian state where people have no right of appeal?
I’d like to hear your thoughts on that.
First off, I want to point out that, by your reasoning, we’ve been living in a totalitarian state for a very long time since the experts at the RCMP are the ones who classify firearms. The Governor-in-Council has only had the power to disregard the Criminal Code since 2015.
Second, I remind senators that what worries me much more than having RCMP firearms experts making the decision is the notion that the Governor-in-Council would have the statutory authority to disregard the Criminal Code. Honestly, I find that much more dangerous.
As I was saying earlier, to my mind, the appeal mechanism you speak of is something we might want to consider so that Canadians are able to appeal the RCMP’s decisions. We should think about how this mechanism could work.
However, that’s not what I see in your amendment. Your amendment simply seeks to allow the Governor-in-Council to disregard the classifications set out in the Criminal Code, and I think that’s a very bad idea.
Are honourable senators ready for the question?
In amendment, it was moved by the Honourable Senator Dagenais, seconded by the Honourable Senator Plett:
That Bill C-71 be not now read the third time but that it be amended —
May I dispense?
All those in favour of the motion will please say “yea.”
All those opposed to the motion will please say “nay.”
In my opinion, the nays have it.
Do we have agreement on the bell?
We will defer the vote until tomorrow.
Pursuant to rule 9-10, the vote will be deferred until 5:30 on the next sitting day of the Senate, and the bells will ring at 5:15 to call in the senators.
