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 bill is from the 41st Parliament, 2nd session, which ended in August 2015.

Sponsor

Steven Blaney Conservative

Status

This bill has received Royal Assent and is now law.

Summary

This is from the published bill. The Library of Parliament has also written a full legislative summary of the bill.

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.

Elsewhere

All sorts of information on this bill is available at LEGISinfo, an excellent resource from the Library of Parliament. You can also read the full text of the bill.

Bill numbers are reused for different bills each new session. Perhaps you were looking for one of these other C-42s:

C-42 (2023) Law An Act to amend the Canada Business Corporations Act and to make consequential and related amendments to other Acts

C-42 (2017) Veterans Well-being Act

C-42 (2012) Law Enhancing Royal Canadian Mounted Police Accountability Act

C-42 (2010) Law Strengthening Aviation Security Act

C-42 (2009) Ending Conditional Sentences for Property and Other Serious Crimes Act

C-42 (2008) Law An Act to amend the Museums Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts

Votes

April 20, 2015 Passed That the Bill be now read a second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security.

April 1, 2015 Passed That, in relation to 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, not more than two further sitting days shall be allotted to the consideration at second reading stage of the Bill; and That, 15 minutes before the expiry of the time provided for Government Orders on the second day allotted to the consideration at second reading stage of the said Bill, any proceedings before the House shall be interrupted, if required for the purpose of this Order, and, in turn, every question necessary for the disposal of the said stage of the Bill shall be put forthwith and successively, without further debate or amendment.

Common Sense Firearms Licensing ActGovernment Orders

May 29th, 2015 / 12:55 p.m.

Conservative

Garry Breitkreuz Conservative Yorkton—Melville, SK

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the member for Prince George—Peace River for taking on the co-chairmanship of the outdoors caucus. Members from all parties are a part of it, including the Green Party.

His job there will highlight the traditional heritage activities that we need to protect in Canada. There are people who are trying to destroy our heritage activities, and we need to defend them. I wish the member the best as he co-chairs the caucus. I am sure he will do a good job.

Who are we representing? It is probably between four and five million people who are looking to us for leadership on the file we have been debating today. That is a sizeable part of the Canadian mosiac. It indicates how many people are interested in our heritage outdoors activities. As an example, there are more people who fish than play hockey and golf together in Canada. It is these activities that we need to ensure are properly protected.

Hunting is enjoyed by many people, and we need to get more young people involved. The more that young people are involved in these outdoor heritage activities, the less involved they are in unhealthy activities. We need to promote these things. Young people can enjoy hunting, shooting, fishing and all of these outdoor activities.

I thank the member for this question. I think it strikes at the heart of why the Conservative Party represents a part of the population in Canada that the other parties would like to dismiss, and in fact fight against.

Common Sense Firearms Licensing ActGovernment Orders

May 29th, 2015 / 12:55 p.m.

NDP

Jamie Nicholls NDP Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC

Mr. Speaker, I would like to salute the member for his involvement with the sport shooting community. I have sport shooters in my family, and we know that the safe use of firearms is possible.

However, the member's speech did not do justice to the issue, with the semi-paranoid discourse he undertook. I would like to talk about real problems that other members have mentioned, such as cuts to the CBSA that have hampered our ability to counter the predominant threat to Canadians, which is organized crime.

The member talked about the bad guys. The integrated border enforcement teams, in the 2010 report on threat assessment, said that the threat from non-urban regions of the border is low. However, with increased enforcement in urban regions, the border points in rural regions, places like Sault Ste. Marie could have smuggling moved there. Firearms smuggling could move to these regions. The ATTs have been changed, in this case with border points.

Could the member tell us how the Conservative government is going to address this problem of criminal activity by organized crime moving to rural border points for gun smuggling? What is the government going to do to counter this threat?

Common Sense Firearms Licensing ActGovernment Orders

May 29th, 2015 / 12:55 p.m.

Conservative

Garry Breitkreuz Conservative Yorkton—Melville, SK

Mr. Speaker, the question has nothing to do with the common sense firearms licensing act.

However, let me say this, and I will tie it together with what we are debating today. We need to stop wasting resources on needless paperwork, which was one of the tragedies with the long gun registry. It was $2 billion going down a big black hole, and it did not accomplish anything.

We could instead use those resources to target the problems that we do have. Smuggling is a problem, and that is something that I agree with the member we need to take a look at. In fact, our government is doing just that.

When we have scarce taxpayer dollars, we have to ensure that we use them in the right way. Needless paper-pushing, which was what the old ATTs were, did absolutely nothing. It did not even inform the police of who had a firearms licence or who was transporting firearms.

I appreciate the question from the member because I think it ties in with what we are trying to accomplish here in government.

Common Sense Firearms Licensing ActGovernment Orders

May 29th, 2015 / 1 p.m.