Bill C-42 (Historical)

Common Sense Firearms Licensing Act

An Act to amend the Firearms Act and the Criminal Code and to make a related amendment and a consequential amendment to other Acts

This enactment amends the Firearms Act to simplify and clarify the firearms licensing regime for individuals, to limit the discretionary authority of chief firearms officers and to provide for the sharing of information on commercial importations of firearms.
It also amends the Criminal Code to strengthen the provisions relating to orders prohibiting the possession of weapons, including firearms, when a person is sentenced for an offence involving domestic violence. Lastly, it defines “non-restricted firearm” and gives the Governor in Council authority to prescribe a firearm to be non-restricted and expanded authority to prescribe a firearm to be restricted.

Common Sense Firearms Licensing Act

[The Acting Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

Again, we are back to a situation which actually underlines why the Standing Orders, in fact, ask members to avoid references to other members in the House, either their absence or presence.

It really comes from the fact that characterizations of other members usually gets us into a spot in debate that we can quickly get to, for example, contravening the principles of, in particular, article 18 of the Standing Orders, which really calls on hon. members to refer to other members in a respectful manner.

These kinds of characterizations are really not very helpful. I would ask the hon. member for Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette to be mindful of that in the course of his comments.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the way the member for Malpeque used the words “gun lobby”, it was obviously intended as an insult to the people I represent in my constituency. The gun lobby, so-called, is mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and uncles and aunts who hunt and fish in this country and who dedicate themselves to the conservation of our fish and wildlife resources.

The members opposite want to narrow the debate and we are enlarging it.

As the chair of the Conservative hunting and angling caucus, I travel right across the country and meet with hunting, angling, and conservation groups. As a group, they are genuinely supportive of the common sense firearms licensing act, and even more supportive of the conservation measures this government has brought in, such as the national conservation plan. I am making the point that because most of the firearms owners are hunters, the act of hunting generates a spirit of conservation and a caring for the earth that the members opposite are actually attacking. They do not realize it; they think it is all about the guns. It is not. It is about a way of life. Many of us view the long gun registry and the comments by the members opposite, including by the member for Malpeque, as an attack on a way of life. I know they do not want to think of it that way. They want to narrow it down to an NRA gun lobby kind of thing. That is so far from the truth.

Our message from the Conservative hunting and angling caucus is resonating right across this country when we say and point out and prove that this party and this government and this Prime Minister and this minister are standing up for a way of life that millions of Canadian cherish. We have the recreational fisheries program. We have the national conservation plan. We have our national areas conservation program, the habitat stewardship program, and the North American waterfall management plan—the most important program of all—a continent-wide conservation plan encompassing three countries to conserve North America's waterfowl. Guess who supported, created, and funds that? North American hunters. That what my community does, I am so proud of them for what they do.

They were quite right in the early days of the long gun registry, realizing that it was an egregious attack on their way of life. That is what it really was.

The members opposite can bleat all they want that “It's not about the hunting and angling. We really care about public safety.” No, they do not. They are attacking a way of life because they do not like the people who participate in this way of life.

In Canada, there are four to five million people who hunt, fish, and trap. It is our duty, at least on this side of the House, to help preserve and protect this way of life. Again, I am so proud to be chair of the Conservative hunting and angling caucus and am proud to see the member for Yukon, my co-chair, a former conservation officer and wildlife biologist, who deeply understands this way of life, in the House today.

Again, what the common sense firearms licensing act would do is help preserve and protect this way of life.

We know that criminals are not licensed gun owners and that licensed gun owners are not criminals; but, again, the logic of the old Bill C-68 the Liberal government put forward burdens people who are not criminals while letting criminals off.

We see how the members opposite vote. Time and again, they vote against our strong, tough on crime justice bills, looking for root causes. Do members know what a root cause is? Basically, when someone commits a crime, the root-cause-types look at those of us who are law-abiding citizens and work hard and own property and basically say, “Well, it's your fault. You're the person and the group who made this root cause that caused the criminal to commit the crime.”

On this side of the House, we know that criminals commit crimes because they are not good people. It is as simple as that. That is common sense.

Again, what is really interesting is that when we eliminated the long gun registry, the crime rate actually fell. In fact, the year after the registry was abolished, gun crime in Toronto decreased by over 80%.

I am not here today to claim that these two things are necessarily linked. In fact, it is precisely the opposite. It proves empirically that measures make left wing politicians, like all of them across the way, feel like they are tackling crime and are generally not worth the paper they are printed on.

There is more to directly address the matter that is before us today. As I said, as chair of the Conservative hunting and angling caucus, I travel across the country, meet with wildlife associations, rod and gun clubs, and everyday ordinary hunters. Without exception, the first problem I hear about when talking about the federal firearms legislation is that there was no common sense. We are bringing common sense in. It is clear that the early laws drafted by the Liberals were crafted by someone who could not tell a rifle from a shotgun.

Let me talk about the Manitoba Wildlife Federation and what it had to say about this bill. It stated:

We support smart, cost effective firearms policy that keeps Canadians safe, but treats gun owners fairly. We applaud the Harper Government’s ongoing efforts to streamline firearms licensing in Canada to make it more effective and efficient.

This next one is very interesting. Pardon my Manitoba high school French, but it is by La Fédération québécoise des chasseurs et pêcheurs, or the Quebec Hunting and Fishing Federation. They said that they were “...thrilled with this initiative. Quebec hunters are very pleased with this bill because it simplifies the licence issuing process for law-abiding users, while reinforcing the concepts of safety and education.”

There are 575,000 Quebeckers who own firearms and enjoy hunting. We are going to make sure that every one of those law-abiding Quebec firearm owners and hunters knows exactly what is in this bill, and we think that they will react accordingly.

The Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters, 100,000 strong, stated:

...the changes introduced...by the...government...strike a balance between the need to remove administrative burdens on legal, law-abiding firearms owners in Canada, and the government's intention to protect and enhance public safety. In our opinion, they have succeeded on both accounts.

I have quotes from hunting and angling conservation groups right across the country, so this notion of the member for Malpeque that there is some kind of narrow base we are appealing to is utter nonsense. These are regular, common folk who know something bad when they see it and are applauding our government's efforts to protect and preserve the grassroots hunting and angling traditions in this country.

I will say a quick word on the authorization to transport. It applies only to restricted and prohibited firearms. The member for Malpeque clearly does not understand the difference between firearms. When the reclassification happened, the Swiss Arms and CZ rifles were reclassified simply because of how they looked, not because of what they did. They were semi-automatic firearms. I own semi-automatic firearms and other people in this room do as well. They were reclassified because of how they looked, not what they did. No one is proposing that any restricted firearms ever be legalized, like fully-automatic firearms. I certainly would not support that.

In terms of the ATT, every single time that a law-abiding shooter went to the range, he or she had to get a permit every single day. We have made it so that once shooters get there, the first ATT is good.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, that was an interesting—albeit sometimes strange—speech. One thing stood out to me.

There was one thing from the speech that makes me want to say to my esteemed colleague in front of me is that Bill C-42 is anything but a tough on crime bill.

I sense that even the Conservative base is starting to feel a bit used and abused by the attempts to always parade them when the government brings forward anything that is gun related. I want to read something to him. Some party stalwarts were saying that they are starting to feel taken for granted. I quote:

Dennis Young is a former RCMP officer who was the Reform Party's regional co-ordinator for Manitoba and Saskatchewan in the 1990s and then spent 13 years in Ottawa as an aide to Conservative MP.... Recently, when called by a Conservative fundraiser at his home.... Young told him not to bother calling back until the public safety minister responded to his letter about Bill C-42.

Young said he was “miffed” that after all his work for the Conservatives, he had received no real answer to his questions. “It all leaves us feeling a bit like we're just being used for fundraising,” he said. “If they have that attitude they're going to be disappointed”.

When he talks about tough on crime legislation, how does he respond to the minister of intergovernmental affairs from Quebec who said:

...this runs counter to the concept of public safety and security.

How does he answer that?

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am not surprised for a minute that the member opposite would find my speech odd. She has no understanding of what I was talking about. I expect all of them to find my speech odd. Of course, the notion of hunters and anglers, and families enjoying the outdoor life as a family group with friends, eating wild game, and understanding what conservation is all about is odd to them.

In terms of the public safety aspect of the bill, the member referred to Mr. Young. I understand. I know him personally. Nothing is perfect in this room. In fact, perfect is the enemy. This is a very good bill.

In terms of public safety, we are strengthening the provisions relating to orders prohibiting the possession of firearms by a person who is convicted of an offence involving domestic violence. We are going to import information sharing of restricted or prohibited firearms into Canada.

This bill strikes the right balance between ensuring that needless paperwork is eliminated, that the rights of law-abiding citizens are protected, and that public safety is protected.

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to ask a question about the common sense component of this bill. When I started to read it, the only place it is actually mentioned is in the introduction. There is no common sense in the bill, which is interesting.

The question I have is a very simple one for the member. I am trying to figure out, and the House needs to know, how allowing people to drive around cities with a gun in the trunk, where I assume no hunting is being done, is a safe thing to do. We have some big raccoons, but they are really not that dangerous. Cars are stolen, and we have had reported and repeated incidents of people being followed home from gun ranges and being robbed.

How does allowing guns to be driven around a city more easily make cities safer? I am not speaking for the four or five million legal gun owners who are law-abiding citizens. I am talking for the 26 million people who do not own guns, many of whom live in those cities and are looking to the government to make their cities safe from the illegal use of guns, particularly assault rifles.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

Mr. Speaker, under our watch, in Toronto, gun crime is down 80%. That result speaks for itself.

In terms of the authorization to transport, often called an ATT, it applies to prohibited and restricted firearms. A criminal will never register a handgun. A law-abiding citizen will. A criminal will never apply for an ATT. A law-abiding citizen will.

By streamlining the process so that once the owner of a restricted firearm, who is legally authorized to own it, gets an ATT, that person is allowed to use it over the time period that their license goes. I think that is strictly common sense.

We can safely see that the gun crime rate in Toronto continues to go down. Now, the knife crime rate in Toronto keeps going up. Perhaps we could ask the members opposite to help us with our tough on crime policies, but I doubt it.

[The Acting Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

Before we resume debate with the hon. member for Yorkton—Melville, I will let him know that there is actually only five minutes remaining in the time permitted for government orders today. However, he will have that five minutes and the remaining five minutes when the House next resumes debate on this question.

[Garry Breitkreuz, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Mr. Speaker, five minutes is hardly enough time for me to go over all the things I would like to go over, but I will begin and then finish at another date.

I am really pleased to be able to rise and discuss the common sense firearms licensing bill. I am pleased to see the government is standing up for the rights of law-abiding Canadians who enjoy and use firearms.

As members know, I have been fighting for the rights of law-abiding hunters, farmers, and sport shooters for two decades now. I fought the introduction of the wasteful and ineffective long gun registry from the time it was introduced by the Hon. Allan Rock under the previous Liberal government, and I was proud to stand in this place two years ago to support and pass the Ending the Long Gun Registry Act.

The gun registry was the epitome of political pretense. It pretended to protect us by reducing crime, but in fact it did just the opposite. The long and short of it is that criminals do not register their guns and they do not obey laws. It was about time people realized that spending $2 billion of taxpayers' money to keep a list of property of individuals predisposed to obey the law was not a good use of resources.

Equally, I am glad to see that this bill today includes strong measures to focus the use of resources on that which actually prevents crime rather than simply seeking to disarm Canadians.

This legislation will streamline licensing and eliminate needless red tape for responsible gun owners, and it is something that I have advocated for many years. In fact, some measures in Bill C-42 can also be found in my 2009 private member's bill, Bill C-301. They are housekeeping items that will simplify procedures without reducing public safety and include items such as merging the possession only licence with the possession and acquisition licence, for instance, or making the authorization to transport a restricted firearm, more commonly known as ATT, a condition of a restricted licence.

Let me explain, for those in the House who are less familiar with firearms regulations, what an ATT is. An ATT is a document that specifies where a licence-restricted firearm owner may take their property. It may contain a variety of locations or it may be very specific. This is dependent on the whim of the provincial chief firearms officer. It is not in legislation.

If travel to a location outside of those previously approved is needed, more forms must be filled out and more approval must be sought. Some may say that this level of rigour is needed, as restricted firearms can be dangerous in the wrong hands, but the fact of the matter is that those with restricted firearms licences get a background check every day, and the application for an authorization to transport is not even shared with local law enforcement. It is the definition of wasteful paperwork.

It is frustrating for me to sit here and listen to people talk about this thing when they know very little about it. Hopefully, if we get to questions and comments, I can explain more about the lack of knowledge here in regard to this issue.

If the government trusts a restricted licence holder to have a restricted firearm in their home, the government should trust them to travel to appropriate locations to use the firearm. Some have said that this will allow for conceal and carry by the back door; that is absolutely false. All safe transport requirements remain in place, such as unloading a firearm, rendering it inoperable, and placing it in a locked case.

The logic that these ATTs, which are not shared with law enforcement, will somehow reduce crime is the same logic put forward by those who think that registering a firearm will somehow reduce crime. At the end of the day, violent crimes committed with firearms are committed by evil people with evil intentions.

No amount of paperwork or regulation will divert them from their path of wanton destruction. What will stop them is being incarcerated for a lengthy period of time, which is why we passed mandatory prison sentences for those who commit crimes with firearms. As well, we created a specific offence for drive-by shootings.

These measures truly increase public safety and reduce the cost of crime. That is what we are focusing on: tackling those who are predisposed to break the law, rather than those who are simply trying to enjoy a way of life that has been part of Canada's heritage since Confederation.

The focus on safe and sensible firearms policy is the reason this bill amends the Criminal Code to establish firearms prohibition orders for those convicted of domestic violence.

Once this bill is passed, those convicted of serious domestic violence offences, which include offences against a spouse, common-law partner, or dating partner, would be subject to a mandatory prohibition from owning a restricted or prohibited firearm and from owning long guns for a minimum of 10 years.

I am sorry that I had to split this bill and speak to it at a later date, but I look forward to some healthy debate in this House, because there are some serious misconceptions that need to be addressed.

[The Acting Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

The hon. member for Yorkton—Melville will indeed have another five minutes when the House next takes up the debate, and of course the usual five minutes for questions and comments.

The House resumed from November 26, 2014, consideration of the motion that Bill C-42, An Act to amend the Firearms Act and the Criminal Code and to make a related amendment and a consequential amendment to other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Second reading

[The Acting Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

Order, please. When the House last took up debate on the motion, the hon. member for Yorkton—Melville had five minutes remaining for his comments, and that will be followed by five minutes for questions and comments.

The hon. member for Yorkton—Melville.

[Garry Breitkreuz, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I want to continue from where I left off some time ago. The bill has been before the House for quite some time, so people may not remember those comments. I invite them to look them up in Hansard.

The changes that are proposed in Bill C-42 show just how serious we are about improving public safety and keeping the public safe from real threats rather than simply trying to take guns out of the hands of hunters and sports shooters. There are types of common sense measures that are important to bring forward. They keep the public safe without putting needless barriers on law-abiding Canadians. That is the main point I want to continue to make.

I would like to address one of the colossal problems that has been raised in the firearms community, and that has a direct impact on thousands of law-abiding gun owners.

In February of 2014, overnight and by the mere stroke of a bureaucrats pen, thousands of law-abiding gun owners became criminals. Without taking any action on their own at all, thousands of Canadians were unwittingly potentially the subject of criminal charges that came with a mandatory three year prison sentence. I am of course talking about the reclassification of the CZ858 and the Swiss Arms family of rifles.

Our government took swift and decisive action at that time to condemn this nonsensical decision and to put in place measures to allow people to use their property and to protect them from prosecution. However, at the end of the day, individuals who owned the impacted rifles were still in legal limbo. Their ability to use their property varies across the country. Their ability to sell their own property was halted. They could not even plan for the future use of their asset, given the amnesty had an expiration date.

This legislation would end arbitrary reclassifications once and for all. For the first time, the elected government would have oversight of classification decisions. On the advice of outside experts, elected officials would be able to overturn incorrect decisions. Additionally, once the bill receives royal assent, the impacted rifles will have their original classification status restored.

It is clear that these measures are safe and sensible, as everything else in the bill is. While the bill is by no means a panacea for all responsible gun owners, many think it is a good start, including me.

I know there are MPs in all political parties who support Canadian heritage activities that include hunting and sport shooting. It is my sincere hope that those members, regardless of their political affiliation, will support the legislation. It will save money and focus on fighting crime. If we listen to the experts who agree, the paperwork does not stop gun crime.

I would like to made a few additional comments.

Those who oppose this legislation are never able to explain how what they advocate will ever reduce crime. For example, there was a lot of talk about the gun registry when it was abolished that it would violate public safety, increase crime and all those kinds of things. Murders using long guns—that is rifles and shotguns—have steadily declined since the registry was abolished. If $2 billion had not been wasted but rather invested in measures that could improve public safety, we could have truly saved lives.

For example, if we had a stronger police presence in some areas of our cities, that would be effective. We need to promote healthy outdoor sports activities for the youth of Canada. That is healthy and good for them.

I would also like to point out that many people on the opposition side use the term “gun control” and they somehow equate it to public safety, but they never explained how it will improve public safety. The one thing they can never explain is how if one lays a piece of paper beside a firearm, it is somehow will control what criminals do with that firearm. It does not make sense. We are bringing in common sense firearm laws. That is what needs to be done.

If we look back in history, we can see that all the criticism the long gun registry received was valid. We changed that and crime did not increase. In fact, crime with firearms decreased.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I noted with interest the suggestion of the member opposite that this had been before the House for a long time. It has actually not been before the House for a lot of time. It was stalled by the government for a considerable period of time and then, surprise, it wants it back and it wants it back in a hurry, without proper debate. That is the problem.

In light of that, the member talks about public safety. In my riding of York South—Weston, public safety is not going to be affected by anything that the government has done because the public safety that needs to be addressed is stopping handguns at the border. Even in the grade 10 classes that I go to, half of the kids there either have a handgun or know someone who has one. That is an astounding number of people.

What does the government intend to do to stop the flow of handguns at the border? So far, it has not managed to protect the people of my riding.

[Garry Breitkreuz, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to hear the member admitting that it is illegal handguns that are the problem. When we last debated this several months ago, the opposition made the point that most of the guns that were used in crime came from law-abiding citizens because they had been stolen from them. Finally, he admits that we have to put more resources into stopping the flow of illegal guns.

Ninety per cent of the firearms that are involved in crime in Toronto, where he is from, are illegally owned. They are not registered. We have had a handgun registry since 1934. If we had used the $2 billion that was wasted on the gun registry and had started to put it into police resources to enforce our laws, we would be much safer right now. The opposition often misses this point.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to share with the member a comment that was in the The Globe and Mail on December 4, 2014. The interesting thing about the comment is that it comes from a representative of the National Firearms Association. The article states:

“While there are aspects of the bill that may be helpful, it’s really tinkering with a failed system,” NFA president Sheldon Clare said in an interview, later suggesting the bill seems designed more as a political fundraising effort. “The Conservative bill really isn’t a problem-solving bill. It’s a pre-election, you know, ‘we’re trying to tinker with this and give us some money’ bill.”

There is a fair concern that many out there have. They believe this is just the Conservative Party playing with an important issue to try to cater to a certain group and possibly generate money.

How would the member respond to that very serious allegation, given that we are only months away now from an election?