Public Safety Committee on Nov. 22nd, 2011

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Ms. Thom.

Now we'll move to Mr. Gayder.

You have seven minutes.

[Constable John Gayder, Constable, As an Individual]

Thank you very much, sir, and thank you also for your very kind introduction earlier. I do need to clarify the fact that I'm here as an individual. I'm not here representing any agency.

I have reviewed the excellent testimony of Mr. Weltz, Mr. Grismer, Mr. Kuntz, Mr. Bernardo, and Mr. Farrant in relation to how expensive and ineffectual the long-gun registry is. I am in complete agreement with them.

The long-gun registry has become the symbolic focal point in the gun control debate. But it is really just one of many elements within the Firearms Act that are odious to law-abiding gun owners and a detriment to law enforcement.

The Firearms Act and its long-gun registry were marketed to law enforcement as a tool to target the criminal misuse of firearms, but only six of its 125 pages deal with increased penalties for criminals. The other 119 pages are aimed squarely at law-abiding Canadians who own or seek to own firearms. It is a political constant that people will only have respect for a legal system when the legal system has respect for them.

Of course, we're talking about the same Canadian citizens who went to war twice in the last century to successfully rescue Europe. It was Canadian farm boys and hunters who especially showed that the firearms skills they had learned at home, at high school gun clubs, and in the woods were useful in defending freedom. In doing so, these citizen soldiers showed the awesome content of our national character. At the time, firearms ownership was a natural and respected element of our national makeup.

Unfortunately, by the 1990s, we were told by the Coalition for Gun Control and other groups that Marc Lépine now defined our national character. Canadian citizens who wanted to possess firearms were to now be treated as potentially ticking time bombs.

How did that happen? How did we as a nation allow our national character to be defined by a single madman?

Canadians are great people. Sure, there are occasional, rare, and bitterly unpleasant problems. But the idea of using these abominations to instruct how we govern our entire good nation is foreign to the historical traditions—being innocent until proven guilty, trusting in our fellow man—that have made our nation great. If the human race were really as homicidally inclined as the Firearms Act treats them, we would have been extinct eons ago.

Peace officers could not do their jobs, nor would they want to, if the vast majority of Canadians were not good people deep down. What would be the point? Disgusting, misogynist kooks like Marc Lépine need to be captured alive and brought before the courts. If that's not possible, it is wrong to honour them by creating expensive and ineffective laws that insult good people. When we think of Marc Lépine, we must not allow ourselves to succumb to dismal prejudices that if not checked would instruct us to treat everyone as a pre-criminal.

In World War II, Canada registered and confiscated firearms belonging to Canadians of Japanese, German, and Italian ancestry. We subjected their homes to warrantless searches, just like those found in the Firearms Act. Recently we have been very careful to prevent committing similar injustices in the war on terror. Yet we have submitted Canadian firearms owners to the same type of treatment. In fact, today, convicted pedophiles and bank robbers are not even subject to the kinds of intrusions visited upon gun owners by the Firearms Act.

Some of the groups subjected to the wartime registrations and confiscations based on hysteria have received official government apologies. I'll submit to you that a case can be made that Canadian firearms owners are also owed an apology for being the victims of unwarranted suspicion. Bill C-19 is a good start down that road.

With regard to the long-gun registry being useful for enforcing prohibitions or for removing weapons from the home of a dangerous spouse, the registry should never be trusted as an accurate inventory or checklist. A home in which the threat of violence is real still needs to be checked for weapons as if the registry never existed, because real or potential weapons beyond what are contained in the registry could exist in that home.

You'll remember that we've heard a lot about the errors and omissions in the registry. It's the information not in the registry that is the most dangerous. Gang members and other sociopaths don't register their guns, so the registry is useless when visiting their homes or stopping their cars.

Supporters of the registry claim it is a useful tool for alerting officers to the presence of a firearm in a home, but what are the responding officers to do with that information? Even the smallest-calibre firearm represents a potentially large danger area. When responding to a call, it's still going to require a patrol officer to go up the front steps to find out what is going on in that home, either through conversation with the participants or through direct observation. At that distance, those conversational distances, they could be stabbed or clubbed in an ambush almost as easily as they could be shot. This is the same way officers have been doing business since before the registry. The registry changes nothing.

I'll close by stating that front-line officers, the ones who are at the interface where the laws created by Parliament get applied to the public, want Parliament's attention. They want funding to go toward things that have been proven to assist in the detection and apprehension of real criminals. They don't want money wasted on dreamy, ivory tower ideas like the long-gun registry, which are costly, ineffective, and drive a corrosive wedge between them and the public they are sworn to protect.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Gayder, and my thanks to all our guests.

We'll move to the first round of questioning. We'll go to the government side, with Mr. Norlock.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I'd also like to thank our witnesses.

I want to make it known that I don't believe any member of Parliament around this table loves his wife or community, or cares about the people in those communities—whether they be women, children, or the disadvantaged—more than anyone else.

I take great exception when somebody says that someone's stand on a particular issue shows that he or she doesn't care about a certain segment of society. That tends to be the leftist way of arguing, often when their argument begins to lose.

I want it known that I respect everyone around this table. Just because some people don't agree with the stand that I and my party have taken doesn't mean they don't love their community as much as anyone else. So I took exception to Mr. Sandhu's preliminary statement. I hope we can get away from this business of “we care more about people than you do”. We just see things differently.

Ms. Thom, as a woman, wife, and mother, and as a gun expert and someone who knows the benefits and dangers surrounding the ownership of firearms, do you feel that Bill C-19 does away with your feeling of safety and security in your community?

[Linda Thom]

No, absolutely not. In fact, I think it would be safer, because I believe there'll be more peace officers on the beat. The resources that go into maintaining this registry by police forces all up and down this country have reduced the number of officers out on the street, officers performing social interventions and improvements, all that sort of thing. In addition, they'll be able to bolster anti-smuggling squads, because a lot of firearms are coming in from the United States.

Back in the day when Bill C-68 was passed, Mr. Rock, the justice minister at the time, promised to increase smuggling squads. He failed to deliver on that promise. In fact, I think if they were truthful, police chiefs up and down the country would tell you they actually lost resources rather than gained them, because they have to have people to babysit the registry.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Mr. Gayder, we heard from a previous witness that registering a firearm is akin to registering your car, your dog, or your cat. In your experience as a law enforcement officer in Ontario, which is a job I know something about, would you agree that registering a firearm is the same as registering these other items? Would you not agree that by failing to register a firearm you automatically have committed a Criminal Code offence for which you can go to jail, while failure to register a car or a cat or dog does not put you in the same jeopardy? You've committed an offence against a provincial statute that carries with it a fine, and this in turn carries with it some temporary loss of the use of that item.

[Cst John Gayder]

Yes, that's the way the legal system is set up. Failure to register a car, or driving a car without a licence, is a provincial offence. Failing to register a firearm is a criminal offence.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Thank you.

Do I have any more time?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

You have about another three minutes.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Great.

Mr. Epps was talking about our international commitments, most of which, you mentioned, are binding. I'm given to understand that some are non-binding because they're covered under Canada's export laws—to the extent that any law or government can prevent illegal exports or imports taken care of by our export policies.

I'm also given to believe, by statements that are made in the U.S., and in particular following—perhaps not as well as I should—U.S. politics, that CIFTA is not going to be ratified by the U.S. Senate because of the statements and some information taken from there. I just want to mention that, because our export laws and import laws do cover Canada's commitments in those particular areas.

To go back to some of the statements you made, Ms. Thom, would you not agree with me that if we're interested in keeping guns out of Canada, the government of the day would make sure that illegal firearms, and in particular those firearms in Canada that are restricted or in some cases prohibited...and would you not say that by putting more resources towards our borders, that would go a long way to begin to slow down those illegal imports—or smuggling, actually, which is what it is?

Secondly, you mentioned police officers. I like to refer to them as “boots on the ground” with regard to law enforcement. Would you not agree that some of the commitments the current government made with the hiring of additional municipal and provincial as well as federal police officers, and the fact that in the first year we hired 1,200 federal RCMP officers—as opposed to the year prior to our taking office, where there were only 300 trained—go a long way to making our society more safe, as opposed to making a person who just happens to own a piece of property called a firearm feel like a criminal because they didn't follow a law?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Please give a quick answer, Ms. Thom. You have about 20 seconds.

[Linda Thom]

Yes, I agree that those resources are going to really, definitely, make a difference to the safety of Canadians.

You know, there's prevention too. I'd like to say a word for social scientists who really try to focus government attention on getting after and preventing bullying in the workplace and in the home—abuse and that kind of thing. That also is very important.

But I do agree with what you said, Mr. Norlock. I do agree that better use of those resources—boots on the ground, anti-smuggling squad, bolstering and improving our front line with the United States versus smuggling—will help a lot.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Ms. Thom.

[Linda Thom]

You have to get those illegal guns off the street.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

We'll now move to Madame Boivin.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to say to Mr. Norlock that I can sympathize. We have been treated as though we were

defenders of child molesters and lobbyists for criminals. So for it to be said or implied that you don't love your community: ouch.

However, the problem in this debate over the firearms registry is that the reality lies somewhere in the middle. No one in this room thinks that the long-gun registry is going to eliminate all conjugal violence or all individual deaths. It remains that it's a tool. Likewise, I have a hard time listening to arguments by people who don't think the registry serves any purpose. The reality lies somewhere in between.

Unfortunately, we are not dealing with a government that is prepared to listen to reasonable positions. We hear speeches from athletes like you, Ms. Thom, from police like Mr. Gayder and from hunters and, since the debate has been raging, we've known that some very minor amendments might succeed in reconciling all positions. Unfortunately this isn't the path the government has decided to take, and so we're struggling with Bill C-19.

I have a question for Mr. Epps.

I'm curious because sometimes governments create laws like this without having some type of long-term, overall, or further vision. They are so on their little thing that they want to correct and make the hunters and athletes happy that they forget we have some international obligations. Do you believe that Canada will have to introduce a new tracking system for firearms to meet international obligations because of Bill C-19?

Also, am I correct in saying that at the United Nations arms trade treaty preparatory meetings in July, the Government of Canada sought to include in the preamble of the treaty that small arms have certain legitimate civilian uses and to exclude sporting and hunting firearms for recreational use from the scope of the treaty? And would you agree that Canada's position misunderstands the purposes of the treaty and confuses legitimate ownership of legal guns with the arms trade that fuels conflicts around the world?

[Kenneth Epps]

Thank you.

In response to the first question about a potential new system to meet Canada's obligations, clearly something will be needed, if Bill C-19 is passed, for Canada to meet existing obligations, some of which are political rather than legal, and that's a point to be made. But as I pointed out, it will make it difficult for Canada to ratify conventions that are already in existence that have been ratified by other states in the hemisphere and worldwide that are important instruments for dealing with illicit trafficking of firearms. These instruments have been developed by states based on the understanding that to deal with trafficking of firearms one has to have good systems in place for legal firearms. I'm not sure if an entirely new system is going to be needed, but something definitely will be needed to fill those gaps if Canada is to meet its commitments.

With regard to the arms trade treaty, I quite deliberately did not mention it in my remarks because it's yet to be a treaty. It's still in negotiation, so it's unknown what its commitments will be. But certainly the strong treaty that is desired by many states, and certainly by NGOs like Project Ploughshares and many states that suffer from illicit trafficking, will require all firearms to be covered by the treaty. The point to make here is that this is about transfers of firearms from one state to another. It's not about domestic ownership or internal transfers of firearms, but it would require commitments similar to things like CIFTA and other existing instruments. And it would require all firearms to be covered because under international law there are no distinctions.

I hope that answers your question.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Ms. Legault, six provinces, namely British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, manage their own firearms programs.

Who owns the data in the registries of the provinces that manage their own firearms program?

[Jennifer Stoddart]

Ms. Boivin, technically, we don't talk about ownership. I imagine that the terms pertaining to the control and possibility of disposing of personal information are stipulated in the agreements the federal government must have concluded with each of the provinces. However, I can't tell you anything more, because I've never seen these agreements.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Would the data be easy to transfer? For example, if the federal government withdrew from the program, would it be impossible, in light of the protection of personal and private information, to transfer the complete management of this program to the provinces if they so wished?

[Jennifer Stoddart]

No, the Privacy Act provides that the signing of agreements or arrangements with provinces for the control and management of personal information is at the discretion of the government.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Do you have any idea of the costs that might be entailed to destroy the data in the registry?

[Jennifer Stoddart]

I have no idea.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

The accuracy of the personal information in the registry has long been in question. The government has decreed a moratorium in recent years, which means that the data may no longer be current in 2011.

Are you reasonably satisfied with the accuracy of the information in the registry?

[Jennifer Stoddart]

Ms. Boivin, I don't have any information enabling me to have an opinion on the accuracy of the information found in the registry.