Bill C-71 (Historical)

An Act to amend certain Acts and Regulations in relation to firearms

Part 1 of this Act amends the Firearms Act to, among other things,
(a) remove the reference to the five-year period, set out in subsection 5(2) of that Act, that applies to the mandatory consideration of certain eligibility criteria for holding a licence;
(b) require, when a non-restricted firearm is transferred, that the transferee’s firearms licence be verified by the Registrar of Firearms and that businesses keep certain information related to the transfer; and
(c) remove certain automatic authorizations to transport prohibited and restricted firearms.
Part 1 also amends the Criminal Code to repeal the authority of the Governor in Council to prescribe by regulation that a prohibited or restricted firearm be a non-restricted firearm or that a prohibited firearm be a restricted firearm and, in consequence, the Part
(a) repeals certain provisions of regulations made under the Criminal Code; and
(b) amends the Firearms Act to grandfather certain individuals and firearms, including firearms previously prescribed as restricted or non-restricted firearms in those provisions.
Furthermore, Part 1 amends section 115 of the Criminal Code to clarify that firearms and other things seized and detained by, or surrendered to, a peace officer at the time a prohibition order referred to in that section is made are forfeited to the Crown.
Part 2, among other things,
(a) amends the Ending the Long-gun Registry Act, by repealing the amendments made by the Economic Action Plan 2015 Act, No. 1, to retroactively restore the application of the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act to the records related to the registration of non-restricted firearms until the day on which this enactment receives royal assent;
(b) provides that the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act continue to apply to proceedings that were initiated under those Acts before that day until the proceedings are finally disposed of, settled or abandoned; and
(c) directs the Commissioner of Firearms to provide the minister of the Government of Quebec responsible for public security with a copy of such records, at that minister’s request.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

I consider both Bill C-71 and Bill C-59 to be vital pieces of legislation that need to receive the appropriate parliamentary attention as quickly as possible. I want to thank this committee for dealing with both of those items of legislation in a very thorough way. There was no compromise on your scrutiny. You examined the issues very carefully. You made a number of recommendations for changes in the legislation and sent them back to the House in a timely way. I thank this committee for that work. Now, both of those issues are before the Senate.

I have had the opportunity to speak with a number of senators about the very heavy agenda that is before them, including Bill C-71 and Bill C-59. They do seem to be optimistic that in the time they have available between now and the summer they will be able to deal with the legislation in a full and final way.

I share the belief that this legislation is vital. It contains very important measures, such as the extensive background checks that you referred to in Bill C-71, which I believe has received support across all party lines.

In Bill C-59, issues that you mentioned included the ability of CSIS to deal properly with bulk datasets, the new authorities that are provided to the Communications Security Establishment, as well as the creation of a new national security and intelligence review agency to get out of these silos for reviewing our security intelligence organizations and to have one review agency that has full jurisdiction to examine any issue in any department or agency of the Government of Canada and follow the evidence wherever it may go.

There's a lot more to the legislation than that, but those are really critical innovations in the law, and it is important for the legislation to receive careful and timely consideration. The communications that I have heard from the Senate would lead me to believe that they are working diligently on the issues before them and are confident that they will be able to discharge their parliamentary duties in a timely way, and I look forward to that.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thanks, Chair.

Minister, it's always great to have you here, along with your very able officials. Thank you for taking the time to join us this afternoon.

On Friday, media reported that the Senate Standing Committee on National Security and Defence had delayed consideration of crucial government legislation on national security, as well as firearms, in order to hold meetings on the number of ministers who had held the Veterans Affairs portfolio.

Dr. Stephanie Carvin, an expert in national security at Carleton University, tweeted on Friday with regard to the delay, and this is her tweet:

Not great, @SenateCA. You came to work late and you need to get the job done and pass #C59. Failure to do so will mean @NoFlyListKids will go years without redress, CSIS will not have a legal basis to store datasets crucial for ops and CSE will not have powers to protect Canada.

Are you concerned about Bill C-59, our national security legislation, as well as Bill C-71, which included really important protections for survivors of intimate partner violence, being delayed in the Senate?

National Defence Act

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Madam Speaker, the bill before us today, Bill C-77, aims to help protect victims of military offences by providing needed updates to the current military justice system.

Updating the judicial system of the Canadian Armed Forces can be a daunting task. Those in the service commit their lives to defend Canada, Canadian values and beliefs. Whether on foreign soil or here at home, they must regularly deal with high-tension situations. Their decisions and reactions can often be the difference between life and death, war and peace. The importance of their work cannot be overstated and, as such, they hold themselves to a higher standard.

The armed forces judicial system is in place to maintain discipline and structure. Following the chain of command is an essential pillar of the military. In this separate judicial system, the offenders are held directly accountable to their commanding officers. While the military justice system is separate from the civilian one, it still operates under the auspices of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This separate system is constitutional and has been upheld by the Supreme Court.

I represent CFB Shilo, the military base in Brandon—Souris, which is a very important part of our community. Many of us have family, friends and neighbours who serve at the base. It houses the 1st Regiment, Royal Canadian Horse Artillery and 2nd Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry. The base is the home station of the Royal Canadian Artillery. It is also home to the component of the Western Area Training Centre, 742 Signals Squadron Detachment Shilo and 11 CF Health Services Centre. Other supported units include 26 Field Regiment and the RCA Brandon's Reserve Unit.

Westman is proud to be home to our brave men and women in uniform. They are an essential and prominent part of our community and have been for many years, if not decades. Many develop strong ties and settle here when they complete their service and return to civilian life.

Bill C-77 seeks to align the military's justice system with the Criminal Code of Canada. I am pleased to see that this bill has built upon Bill C-71, presented by our former Conservative government, and seeks to enshrine the rights for victims in the National Defence Act.

Created in 1950, after World War II, the National Defence Act was put in place to protect our men and women in uniform. As we all know, legislation is constantly in flux, always seeking progress. As such, this act has been modified numerous times since its inception. This bill should be our next step in improving the National Defence Act.

Indigenous Languages Act

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to stand today in this place and add my voice to the discussion around Bill C-91.

The House may not be aware that today is End It Movement Day. It is a movement to end modern-day slavery in our country and around the world. The people who participate wear a red X on their hand. Many may not know that within Canada, human trafficking probably happens within 10 blocks of where they live if they live in the city and within 10 miles of where they live if they live in the country.

Modern-day slavery has many faces in Canada, but the vast majority of cases, about 50% of them, involve indigenous women and girls. That is why I am wearing a red X on my hand today.

Bill C-91 is about respect and about protecting indigenous languages here in Canada. Many bills have been brought up about this issue, and the government has spoken in length about it as well.

Back in December 2016, the government said it was seized with this issue and would table some legislation. Now, at the eleventh hour of this Parliament, the government has tabled a bill, and here we are, discussing it today.

I find it frustrating to see the government's approach to supporting something. Supply management is a good example. It says all the time that it supports supply management, but it has very narrowly cast that support. The support is purely for the two words, “supply management”. It is the same in this case as well. The government says it supports indigenous languages, but that is really just the two words, “indigenous languages”.

Many times when we support something, the actual thing that needs to be supported needs the entire surrounding infrastructure or the surrounding society to support it. Only supporting the end result does not necessarily help the actual goal we are trying to achieve.

Let us use the case of supply management as an example. It is really great for the government to say it supports supply management, but when it takes milk and dairy products and animal proteins out of the food guide, it is not supporting supply management whatsoever.

A couple of people who work in my office are coffee connoisseurs. They always ask me why I put cream in my coffee. They think I am ruining the coffee by doing so. I tell them I support supply management, so I put cream in my coffee. Supporting supply management means actually supporting supply management and targeting the actual issue.

We are seeing that again with this indigenous language bill. It says we are going to support indigenous language and we are going to have an ombudsman and all of these things, but if we do not support communities and do not support the culture of these languages, they will become dead languages.

I know a bit about dead languages. I know a bit of Latin. It is a language that is used all the time, but it is not a spoken language. There are records of languages that have been brought back. I understand Hebrew is one of those languages that has been brought back from being a dead language to a language that is now alive and well.

I failed to mention at the beginning of my comments that I will be sharing my time with the member for Edmonton West.

This is a great bill. I am sure that we will take the language, codify it and keep a record of it. Many organizations around this country are working on translating the Bible into all indigenous languages.

The House may be aware that both the German language and the English language were codified when the Bible was translated into those languages. There is a language known as High German. It was not really a language spoken by anybody, but it was the language that the Bible would have been translated into for a big swath of the world that spoke Germanic languages. It codified the whole language into a common language.

We are seeing work being done on that around the country. The funding that will be coming through this legislation will probably support many of those initiatives. I support that idea.

The point I am trying to make is that we would like these languages to be living languages, not dead languages, and in order to do that, we need to support communities. What does supporting communities look like? For one thing, we have a rich heritage in this country around the fur trade. Canada was built on the fur trade. I always say Canada was built on a number of things, such as the fur trade, the railway and other things, but the fur trade for indigenous peoples was a major part of the economy. It is a shame that today we do not champion the fur trade in this country.

Representatives of the fur trade association were in my office the other day, and they told me that fur will not even be on the winter Olympics uniforms. I do not know if anyone saw that Canada Goose recently came out with a new lineup of jackets designed by an Inuit designer. They are amazing jackets. They have nice fur on the hood. I am sure there are more fur products on the inside as well, though I could not see. The fur trade is what made these communities sustainable. Their languages were able to survive with or without government funding, and the Inuit are a prime example of that. Most them still have their languages because it is a vibrant community.

Where I am from, many of the Woodland Cree people still speak the language, and their communities are thriving. Why are they thriving? It is because the economy is thriving. No doubt a generation has lost the language due to the residential schools, but when communities come together and operate well, the language continues to thrive, so we see that bills like Bill C-69 do nothing. We say we want to support languages and indigenous communities, but then the government introduces a bill like Bill C-69, which hamstrings all of the northern Alberta communities that rely on the economy that pipelines, the oil patch and resource development bring to northern Alberta. The government says it supports indigenous languages, but it supports them in a very narrow way. We need to ensure these communities have a good economy; then the language will flourish.

Another area that is frustrating to me is the language around firearms that the Liberals in particular use all the time. They seem to be very suspicious of people who own and use firearms on a regular basis. It is our indigenous communities that use, own and work with firearms on a regular basis. The language and laws coming from the Liberal government, particularly Bill C-71, are onerous to all first nation communities for sure. Firearms are a big part of their culture. Firearms are a way of life for them, so to say we are going to support their languages and culture and then make it more onerous to own a firearm is not supportive of the culture whatsoever.

Lots of people say we already have languages and ask me why I think it is so important. We all have a world view, a narrative, a place that we belong in the world, and being part of a culture that has identifiable languages and creeds and those kinds of things gives us our sense of belonging in the world. A language does that to a large degree. Studies bear out the idea that when people feel they are tied to a language, a people, a land and a culture, they are much more successful in nation building and culture building.

For all of those reasons, I support this bill, but I find it ironic that we are here at the eleventh hour debating a bill to support indigenous languages.

Firearms

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, the fourth petition is about Bill C-71. It raises concerns about that bill and supports the right of lawful firearms owners to not face punitive measures from the government.

Criminal Code

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will use one of the member's own positions as a good example. He was opposed to the last Liberal long gun registry, which was subsequently struck down by a previous Parliament. I think he supports the new backdoor registry through Bill C-71. However, I would suggest to him that if a court would make a determination on the property rights of someone impacted by Bill C-71 that would not be inoculated by the fact there was a charter statement.

I know my friend from Parkdale—High Park, who is a bright young lawyer and will be returning to his full practice after the 2019 election, wants to make hay over some of the losses of the previous government in the Supreme Court of Canada. However, I would suggest to both members that is how the system works. One cannot get a seal of approval from an adviser within the department saying “It is all good here. There is nothing to look at.” Actually, Canadians have the charter right to challenge legislation in the Supreme Court through the Oakes decision. It has set the stage for that since 1984. Since the time of the father of the Prime Minister, there have not been charter statements because we respect the role of the court.

I hear lots of criticism of the past, but I have yet to hear a substantive contribution on why that is necessary or how it adds to the legal rights and protections of Canadians.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

We did it on Bill C-71 as a way of highlighting an issue. In that case in particular, it was on provincial issues, but this is for something that we feel strongly enough about to bring to corrections. There's no obligation for them to do anything—

Firearms

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present yet another petition signed by constituents from my beautiful riding of Haldimand—Norfolk who are deeply concerned about the Liberal government's Bill C-71. They are concerned that all this bill would do is recreate the ineffective long-gun registry and punish law-abiding gun owners. Instead, they ask that the government invest more money in our front-line police forces to help them tackle the true sources of firearms violence.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Well, far too many communities have felt the sting and the pain of gun and gang violence. The whole purpose of changing the law through Bill C-71 and making the investments we have made—$327 million—available to provinces, local communities, municipalities and law enforcement is to try to put the communities in a better position to be safe and to make sure that people in your community know that they live in a safe and secure society and that we're all working together to make it even safer.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

I'm prepared to look at any reasonable and enlightened idea to deal with the illegal use of firearms. I think we've made a very good start in Bill C-71, and a very good start with the guns and gangs initiative, which will invest in local communities and local law enforcement as well as the RCMP and CBSA. If others have other ideas to suggest, we'll take a look at the suggestions. Our objective here is to keep Canadians safe.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

I'm very glad to have the question, Mr. Motz, and to clarify any uncertainty you might see.

In the original announcement of the funding for the guns and gangs initiative, which was coupled with Bill C-71, there were two parallel initiatives. One was the legislation; the other was the funding. The legislation has proceeded forward, and we're now moving forward on the funding. The original announcement was for $327 million over five years beginning in this fiscal year. At the end of that fiscal year, the amount would be $100 million per year every year ongoing into the future. As we ramp up the initiative, it will be $327 million over five years, and then $100 million a year ongoing indefinitely into the future.

Now, of the $327 million, approximately $214 million will be transferred through intergovernmental agreements from the Government of Canada to the provinces. We have—

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Minister, for being here.

I'm glad you started speaking on Bill C-71. It's interesting that you talk about the investment in gang and gun legislation and all the money that you're going to put into law enforcement to deal with gangs and guns, yet the announcement was $500 million initially, and then it was reduced to $327 million. The numbers keep changing. It's tough to find out which number is going to get paid.

Right now, the last I heard, Minister Blair has a document that he signed that says that not a dime has been spent yet of the $327 million that you have promised. It's interesting that it's not having any impact. Your legislation, Bill C-71, has zero reference to gangs or gun violence, and quite honestly, the Canadian Police Association spokesman may have said that they agree with it, but the individuals I have spoken to across the country have a different view.

We know that the whole gang violence issue in this country occurs in municipalities policed predominantly by municipal departments. Most Canadians are policed by municipal police services in this country. I see that money is going to the RCMP for gang violence, and I see you just indicated that $200 million over five years is going to the provinces. I'm just kind of curious to know when you anticipate this money rolling out to municipal agencies so that they can start dealing with the gang and gun issues that their communities are faced with.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

In my view, that would be very much a regressive step. It would, for example, eliminate all the work that has been done very conscientiously on all sides of the table with respect to background checks.

Very often, legislation with respect to firearms can be controversial. It can be divisive, but I note in the debate, both in the House and at this committee, the issue of background checks. There was near unanimity on the value of the provisions that were put into Bill C-71, and indeed the committee worked very hard to strengthen those provisions to make sure that the background checks were effective.

The same, I think, can be said with respect to many of the other provisions in Bill C-71, and I note that the committee took the perhaps unusual step—but I think the important step—of inserting into Bill C-71 a clarifying amendment that made it abundantly clear that nothing in that legislation could ever be interpreted as a backdoor long-gun firearm registry, which has been a concern for some people.

With that clarification now in the law, that nothing in Bill C-71 could ever be interpreted in such a way as to create a long-gun registry, the other provisions in Bill C-71 are, I think, very valid. They make legitimate contributions to public safety, and again I recall the words of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, which said that this is very important legislation that will assist them in fighting crime and in keeping Canadians safe.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you, Minister.

I was going to ask Minister Blair this question, but I think I'll ask you. We passed Bill C-71 here at committee. One of the provisions in the bill was that when someone has a prohibition order and they're prohibited from owning firearms, those firearms are now forfeited to the Crown. That's new. In the past, if someone was prohibited from owning firearms, those weapons could go to another person—a gang member, a friend, a family member—as long as that other person had a firearms licence.

In my particular instance, I knew of a domestic violence situation where that would have been very helpful. That's something really important that was put in by our government.

The opposition leader has come out with a guns and gangs policy. One of the things he has talked about is repealing Bill C-71. In terms of that provision, then, the firearms would no longer be forfeited to the Crown, but he has included a lifetime firearms ban. Well, you can ban gang members from owning guns, but they just pass them off to their brothers.

I'm wondering what your thoughts are on that aspect of repealing Bill C-71.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal government has proven time and time again that they are soft on crime and do not prioritize the safety of Canadians. Rural crime in communities across Canada has been steadily increasing, and law enforcement has been unable to mount an adequate response.

With Bill C-71, the Liberals doubled down by going after law-abiding firearms owners while doing nothing to make communities safer or to reduce gun violence. Now they are proposing a blanket handgun ban, which will do nothing to curb gun violence and will instead only make criminals out of law-abiding firearms owners.

Yesterday the leader of Canada's Conservatives committed to getting tough on criminals who use guns to commit violence, while respecting law-abiding firearms owners. This Conservative plan will get illegal guns out of our communities and put criminals behind bars for a long time. These common sense proposals—tackling straw purchases, creating a firearms smuggling task force, having a firearms ban for violent and gang criminals and giving more tools to police to solve gun crime—will make a real difference in our communities, both rural and urban.

Unlike the soft-on-crime Liberals, the Conservatives have a real plan for a safer Canada.