Honourable colleagues, I rise today to speak in support of Bill C-71, An Act to amend certain Acts and Regulations in relation to Firearms.

Between 2000 and 2016, 13,168 Canadians lost their lives due to gun violence. This year alone, we have already reached over 600 deaths due to firearms, a number that has been on the rise over the past four years.

Colleagues, as watchers of trends, this is not the kind of direction any of us would want to see.

Throughout this country, there has been a call to take action to address this trend and reduce the number of gun-related deaths facing people in our communities.

Bill C-71 will not solve all the problems we are seeing. We have just heard Senator Wallin speak to this. No bill can do that. More will be needed to be done to address the reasons for this increase in violent behaviour. However, Bill C-71 does take an important first step at minimizing the likelihood of a gun finding its way into the wrong hands.

My intention today is not to repeat what has already been said so eloquently by Senator Pratte. I simply want to add my voice to those of my colleagues, particularly Senator Petitclerc, who spoke so clearly and passionately yesterday in favour of the bill. I want to shed light on the epidemic of gun violence that we are seeing in this country. More specifically, I want to draw your attention to a few aspects of this bill that are especially important, before concluding with some reflections on where we are now in terms of managing the problem of gun-related violence in Canada.

Colleagues, this bill is important to every Canadian wherever they live. The differences in gun violence in rural and urban, southern and northern areas must not be understated. Nevertheless, Bill C-71 is one tool in our tool box and the tool box of our law enforcement personnel. I firmly believe it is time we all look closely at the issue of gun violence and commit to changing the course we are on. This is, after all, a matter of life and death.

In Canada, in 2016 alone, there were an estimated 7,100 victims of a violent crime where a firearm was present during the incident. One hundred and twenty of those victims were in Nova Scotia.

Between 2009 and 2017, 345 Nova Scotians were victims of a firearm-related violent crime committed by an intimate partner, a member of their family or a friend. If we take the data for Canada as a whole for the same period of time, we are looking at 20,163 people who found themselves victims of a violent crime using a firearm at the hands of someone they knew.

Colleagues, it’s actually quite fitting that I am able to rise on this topic today during the UN’s 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence.

Intimate partner violence was the leading type of violence experienced by women in Canada in 2016. Of the 93,000 victims of intimate partner violence reported that year, 79 per cent of those were women and eight in 10 of those suffered violence at the hands of their current spouse. We all know the additional intimidation factor that can exist for these women when a weapon is present in the house and, of course, we know the serious, often fatal, consequences if a gun is deployed in a domestic violence incident.

Equally upsetting are the countless stories I have heard and read over the years of Nova Scotians and other Canadians whose lives have been lost far too soon, those lives of our youth.

Jamie Lee Bishop was 21 years old when he was killed in a drive-by shooting in Eastern Passage. Joseph Cameron was just 20 years old when he was shot and killed in Dartmouth.

One story in particular stands out for me, though, and today I want to take a few moments to tell you about a young man named Tyler Richards.

Tyler was well known in Halifax and in my city of Antigonish. As a former member of the Halifax Rainmen, Tyler was a champion basketball player at St. Francis Xavier University. He was active in his community, volunteering as often as he could at places like the Needham Community Centre. He was a hero to the kids and young people in Mulgrave Park, where he grew up.

This talented athlete was charismatic and had a gift for bringing people together, a skill he often used as a youth program leader. His St. FX basketball coach, Steve Konchalski, commented that “He was an all-star in our league for four of the five years. He was a young man that was so enamoured with the game that he carried a basketball with him everywhere he went, including to his senior prom.” And that “He was part of our family and when you lose a family member, that’s always a tragedy.”

Tyler was 29 years old when he lost his life on April 17, 2016, to gun violence, Halifax’s fifth homicide of that year. Tyler left a grieving family, including his daughter Niara, and a community in shock. When this young African Nova Scotian man was killed, news of his previous run-ins with the law invaded news reports and some in the community even uttered, “Thug gone, good riddance.”

In The Coast newspaper, Lezlie Lowe says, “Naricho Clayton was shot two days after Tyler Richards. Daverico Downey was shot less than a week after. Rickey Walker was found shot behind my old elementary school. Terrance Patrick Izzard was shot outside his Halifax home in November. Tyler Keizer was gunned down last month, too.”

This epidemic of gun violence is affecting our African Nova Scotian community in disproportionate numbers and it is not acceptable. These young men are not dispensable. Where are these guns coming from and what can we do to prevent them from getting into the wrong hands? Bill C-71 is one answer among the many required to deal with this societal crisis.

In addition to the loss of many young people to murder by shooting, Senators McCallum and Cormier have highlighted the suicide epidemic in our country. Suicides accounted for 9,919 of the 13,168 gun deaths in Canada between 2000 and 2016. This is over 75 per cent of gun deaths in this country.

The statistics related to suicide in Canada’s Indigenous communities and the Arctic are even more jarring and we’ve all heard those. In Nunavut, 87.1 per cent of deaths by firearms were self-inflicted, between the years 2000 and 2016.

Across this country, suicide remains the most common firearm-related cause of death, and it is — and this is important to hear — the second leading cause of death for children, youth and young adults. The second leading cause of death.

According to Statistics Canada, in 2016, over 90 per cent of individuals who died by suicide were living with a mental health problem at the time, a statistic that is directly related to what we are talking about today, colleagues.

Whether we are talking about self-inflicted wounds, domestic violence or gang violence in our inner cities, gun violence is on the rise and we must take action to address the situation.

Support for youth-at-risk programs and other community-run initiatives must be increased, of course. Programs like Souls Strong initiative in Halifax, which works with men aged 15 to 20 to help them on a number of issues, from finishing their education to finding employment. These need to be expanded.

Organizations that seek to help those fleeing domestic violence need to be recognized for their important work and funded accordingly.

An increased level of attention must be placed on addressing mental health issues across this country. This includes a very strong Northern strategy to address the root causes of depression in these communities and renewed support for health workers to meet the growing needs for mental health services.

Nevertheless, we are here today to talk about Bill C-71, a tool to manage gun-related violence. I want to talk about some aspects of the bill that I think will help us take a step in the right direction towards stopping Canada’s gun problem.

At the moment, there is a five-year limit on the factors to be considered for a licence. Yet we were reminded by Senator Pratte that in the past 10 years 169 gun-related homicides were committed by licensed firearm owners.

Bill C-71 seeks to remove the five-year limit from section 5(2) and allow for a person’s lifetime history to be considered in acquiring a firearms licence. This would mean that a judge or the Chief Firearms Officer will need to consider a person’s lifetime history prior to granting a firearms licence. A more thorough investigation into a person’s past, including any violent behaviour or history of mental health issues will now be taken into account.

In the case of the transfer of non-restricted firearms, Bill C-71 will require a person who wants to transfer a non-restricted firearm to verify the transferee’s eligibility. This raises the previous threshold of responsibility for those wishing to transfer such a firearm and adds an additional step to ensure a lawful exchange.

Changes are also being introduced regarding the transportation of prohibited and restricted firearms in order to remove certain automatic authorizations. Owners of restricted and prohibited weapons will need to obtain an Authorization to Transport from the provincial Chief Firearms Officer.

It bears repeating that nothing in this provision will affect the transportation of non-restricted firearms, such as hunting rifles. Transporting these items will continue to be unobstructed.

Finally, Bill C-71 requires that the buyer provide the vendor with the licence at the time of purchase and recreates the prior requirement for the retention of records of sale by vendors for a 20-year period in order to aid our law enforcement officers in better responding to situations in which a weapon was used.

As the debate has progressed in this chamber, I have listened intently to the concerns raised by you, honourable senators, and am confident these areas will be studied in depth at committee.

One concern in particular that I have been pondering is the impact this may have on Indigenous Canadians. To that end, I asked Senator Pratte a question during his speech at second reading stage. I am appreciative of the answer I received at the time. I am also appreciative of the time he is now dedicating to this topic. I asked him this question because my neighbour, Kerry Prosper, a band council member from Paqtnkek Mi’kmaq Nation and St. FX University’s Indigenous Knowledge Keeper, had asked me about the implications of Bill C-71 for Indigenous people pursuing their traditional hunting activities.

Since his speech, Senator Pratte’s office has worked with Indigenous senators in this chamber and met with several Indigenous groups, as well as government officials, to ensure the rights of Indigenous Canadians are not adversely affected by Bill C-71. This is an issue that will, no doubt, be further explored at committee.

I do, however, feel it is important to note that no Indigenous women’s group was called to testify before the committee in the House of Commons. That is certainly a perspective I would hope to see pursued by our own committee.

Colleagues, Bill C-71 will not fix all of our country’s gun problems. It will not reduce the number of suicides overnight. It will not instantly eliminate cases of domestic violence involving guns. It will not put an end to gang violence. That said, this bill is part of the solution.

I am convinced that enhanced background checks and the stronger firearms transportation, transfer and recordkeeping requirements outlined in Bill C-71 are necessary steps in reducing gun violence in Canada. For these reasons, I support the intent of this bill, and I hope you will join me in sending Bill C-71 to committee soon in order to allow for further study regarding the concerns that have been brought forth during our debate and in order to provide our law enforcement personnel and our society with the tools we need to ensure the safe, lawful and appropriate use of firearms; and, most importantly, to provide safeguards to Canadians from gun violence in all its forms.

Life, after all, is our most precious gift. As senators, it is our duty to do everything in our power to protect from harm our fellow Canadians. Thank you. Wela’lioq.