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.

Firearms Act

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a tool in the tool chest. As the chiefs of police have stated, this is an important tool in the fight against gun and gang violence. It is not the only solution. It will require a comprehensive plan, prevention, intervention, suppression, legislation and gun control.

However, this is one very important step to stop that leak. I was on the mayor's gang task force in my riding of Surrey. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police told us that up to 70% of the guns used in these violent crimes were legally sourced originally. We need to be able to track them. We need to find out which vendors are turning a blind eye and which vendors are selling them.

Ninety-nine percent of good gun owners will not be affected. They are not the bad guys. They are not the ones we are chasing. We have to plug the hole for those who are breaching the law, who are misusing these loopholes and who are giving guns to those who should not have guns.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, a big deal has been made today about this background check, which is already very extensive. For example, I just got my non-registered and registered PAL this last weekend. When the paperwork goes into the RCMP, it will have 45 days to assess whether I am suitable to purchase a weapon.

Exactly how is the RCMP going to ascertain whether someone has a mental health issue that should preclude the person from purchasing a weapon? Could the member explain that?

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, this is just one of the aspects.

There will be a check to see if there have been any previous court orders, or any threats, any threats online, or if there have been any orders that perhaps pertain to mental health on the record, through child services or court orders or custody orders. If those are there, that can be a tool used to assess the mental ability of one to have a firearm.

This does give more breadth, more tools to the chief firearms officer to ascertain whether someone has the right to possess a firearm. It will make it harder for those who have challenges with respect to keeping a firearm and those who should not have them in the first place.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Madam Speaker, this discussion gets down to the fact that we talk about illegal firearms and legal firearms. Could the member across the way tell me how many of these crimes in the statistics involved the use of illegal firearms?

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Madam Speaker, my understanding is that 60% are from guns that were obtained in Canada from licensed gun owners, but perhaps obtained illegally or by theft, and that only 40% were those that were from across the border in the U.S.

The perception is that all of these guns are coming in illicitly from foreign means, when in fact most jurisdictions are stating that 60% of the guns were domestically sourced, either by theft from legal gun owners or by means of guns sales that were from those who turned a wilful blind eye.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I want to get clarification on the routine we have here during questions and comments. A question came from that side twice, I believe, and then it came back here. However, I think there were three in total. In that way—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

I appreciate the member's comments. Unfortunately, there was a change in the Speakers, and I did not quite know who had spoken first. I will be very mindful during the rounds. I apologize if someone else got recognized.

The other thing I want to do is remind the member that when a member on the government side is making a speech, the questions generally go to the opposition to allow for that debate, as the member will remember. Especially within the 10-minute time frame, the same party will get one question, unless other people do not get up.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Calgary Nose Hill.

As the member of Parliament for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, I rise today to defend my fellow Canadians' rights to own and enjoy private property, in this case firearms. I oppose any efforts by the Liberal Party that would lead to another useless, wasteful long-gun registry, and I do so on behalf of my constituents and the tens of thousands of Canadians who are without representation from their local MPs on this issue.

I spent the summer listening and hearing what citizens from across Canada had to say.

One of the myths perpetrated by the urban media is that there is uniform support for a gun registry in Quebec. That may be true in urban Montreal, but that is not true in rural Quebec. Rural Canadians, regardless of whether they are English or French speaking, are united in their opposition to a wasteful, useless gun registry.

The Upper Ottawa Valley enjoys a long and historic relationship with people on both sides of the river, Ontario and Quebec.

Hunters from Quebec tell me one of the reasons François Legault and the CAQ are polling so well in Quebec in that provincial election, particularly in rural ridings and among francophones, is because of the decision by the Quebec Liberal Party to bring in a provincial long-gun firearms registry.

In the Upper Ottawa Valley, opposition in the Pontiac to the return of a Liberal long-gun registry has brought attention to a very historic wrong that must now be addressed.

The Canada-Ontario Boundary Act, 1889, legislation that was subsequently enshrined in the Constitution of Canada when the Constitution was repatriated in 1982, clearly situates the Ottawa River Islands of Allumette and Calumet in the province of Ontario.

This fact was confirmed by the Minister of Natural Resources Surveyor General of Canada in the House on January 21, 2016, when he stated in response to a question I placed on the Order Paper:

As stated in the Canada (Ontario Boundary) Act, 1889, the middle of the main channel still delineates the boundary between Ontario and Quebec. The main channel of the Ottawa River today may be different than that shown on the map of the Ottawa Ship Canal Survey by Walter Shanly, C.E.; nevertheless, it does not change the interprovincial boundary.

The people who live on Calumet and Allumette Islands in the Ottawa River, according to the Constitution of Canada, are legally residents of Ontario. However, Quebec is claiming ownership and enforcing its laws on island residents. Firearm owners on those islands have a legal right to refuse to register their firearms with the Quebec provincial government.

The Government of Canada has a constitutional obligation to protect the rights of the citizens who live on those islands. They do not want to be subject to the Quebec gun registry just because no one has bothered to correct the mapping error.

This error has been magnified by Bill C-71, which is why it has now become an urgent and pressing issue. Lawful firearms owners know that the Quebec gun registry could be used by other provinces as a template. These efforts by the federal government to introduce a backdoor long-gun registry through a province must be stopped in its tracks.

This is a test.

If the Prime Minister is sincere about his respect for the Constitution, he will protect the rights of the Canadian citizens who live on Allumette and Calumet Islands. No more virtue signalling about the notwithstanding clause. Bill C-71 is his problem that he created with this border crisis. Now we have to deal with it.

How appropriate, after the Prime Minister's summer of failure, he would focus on a piece of divisive legislation to divert attention from his summer of failures, with the Gerald Butts culture wars policy of dividing Canadians rather than dealing with real issues.

Let us keep this simple.

Bill C-71 is a knee-jerk response to a problem that does not exist. Law-abiding farmers and hunters are not the problem; criminal behaviour is. Let us quit rewarding criminal behaviour with soft penalties and watch the crime rates drop in Toronto. Let us withdraw Bill C-75 along with Bill C-71. It is as simple as that.

A summer of failure is one spent listening, but not actually hearing constituents and what they were trying to tell members. They were trying to tell the Liberals that this was bad legislation. For one-term members of the House, like the members for Northumberland—Peterborough South and the Bay of Quinte, third reading of legislation, coming after report stage, is when parliamentarians, after listening to their constituents, make amendments to respond to their concerns.

Clearly, government members of the House, who will have to answer directly to voters on behalf of their party, have been too busy not listening to actually hear what the constituents in their ridings have to say about banning firearms. Banning firearms because they might look scary or misleading the public about banning assault weapons when the public has been prohibited from owning assault weapons for over 20 years will not solve Toronto's gun violence.

The members for Northumberland—Peterborough South, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, Thunder Bay, Kenora, Nipissing—Timiskaming, and Yukon should ask to speak to the Liberal MP I defeated. Maybe he will them what happens to MPs when they support a useless, wasteful gun registry or talk about banning firearms because they look scary.

I can confirm for the benefit of the one-term member for Hastings—Lennox and Addington that his constituents were given the now false impression that he would be proposing a whole series of amendments to Bill C-71, the act to harass law-abiding Canadians who happen to enjoy Canadian heritage activities like hunting.

The member for Thunder Bay—Superior North should know that her constituents, who contacted me, thought Bill C-71 would be withdrawn. After alienating a large segment of voters in her riding, penalizing people of faith by demanding a humiliating loyalty attestation oath and taking away funding for student summer jobs, I can assure her that people who enjoy outdoor activities in her riding are an even larger segment of the population to alienate as we enter this final year before a federal election is called.

I understand the Prime Minister is too preoccupied, in his summer of failure, giving 4.5 billion Canadian tax dollars to Texas billionaires to build pipelines in the U.S. and losing manufacturing jobs in the auto sector to listen to the concerns of average middle-class Canadians.

While Liberal MPs might have spent the summer hearing complaints about their government and Bill C-71, the fact this legislation is being rammed through the House demonstrates how ineffectual they are. We know individual Liberal MPs are being ignored by their own party, thanks to the insight provided by the newest member of the Conservative caucus. I take this opportunity to welcome the newest member of the Conservative caucus, the member for Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill. The member's frustration that led her to cross the floor was not being listened to.

The arrogant, elitist party hierarchy led by technocrat Gerald Butts, whose extreme leftist experiments crashed the Toronto Liberal Party so hard, is no longer recognized as an official party in the Ontario legislature. I can assure the government members who I mentioned that their constituents shared their frustration with me over Bill C-71.

Unlike the members opposite, as I always do, I spent my summer listening to my constituents. I hear what they have to say, and I represent their interests in Parliament, as I am doing today.

I thank all the members of the Madawaska Valley Fish & Game Club; the Ottawa River Sportsman Club; the Eganville & District Sportsman's Club, which recently celebrated its 40th anniversary; and the Pembroke Outdoors Sports Club, which is celebrating its 60th anniversary. They shared their concerns, signed petitions, attended information sessions and educated their fellow citizens. They recognize that banning handguns is just one step away from banning hunting rifles.

A gun ban will be another costly failure to add to all the other costly failures of the government, like paying $4.5 billion for a pipeline that ends up giving wealthy Texas oilman Kinder Morgan chairman Richard Kinder a profit of 637% on that fire sale.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, Bill C-71, simply put, is another commitment from the last federal election being fulfilled by the Prime Minister.

The Conservatives are out of touch with what Canadians really feel are important issues. The member across the way started by accusing the government of bringing in a registry. That is just not true. Even a Conservative amendment to the bill that was accepted, adopted and passed said that the bill had nothing to do with a registry. That was actually passed, yet she continues to spread misinformation about the content of this bill.

Does the member believe that members of Parliament should be straightforward with their constituents and not try to apply something that is just not true?

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Madam Speaker, the member opposite is trying to play Canadians as fools. They know that when the date, time, model, make, address and personal information of person purchasing a firearm are matched with a vendor, the information is put into a database, and it is not too difficult to match it across other purchases. By virtue of doing so, they are able to construct another useless, wasteful long-gun registry, and other registries. A hand gun registry has been in existence since the 1930s and so-called assault weapons have been prohibited for over 20 years. Saying they are going to ban assault weapons is a total farce.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member began her speech by saying that the people of Pontiac, which is just across the Ottawa River, along with everyone else in Quebec and all francophones, are against gun control. That is utterly ridiculous.

I represent the riding just south of Pontiac on the other side of the Ottawa River, and I can say in no uncertain terms that people in Quebec are strongly in favour of the reasonable measures in this bill. My colleague's speech completely misrepresented the intention underlying Bill C-71. I do not understand why she keeps saying things that are just not true. I suppose she cannot help her conditioning.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Madam Speaker, the distortion is the ruse that Bill C-71 is actually going to do something to curb gun violence. I can tell the member opposite that members from his constituency and all along the Pontiac come to my office so they can have a member of Parliament who will actually listen to their concerns.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for pointing out the complete lack of integrity in this whole argument of trying to make it look like Canadians will be safer with this Bill C-71, while at the same time the government is putting forward Bill C-75, which would reduce sentences. However, she mentioned toward the end of her speech the idea of a ban on assault rifles, which, as she already pointed out, have been banned for many years.

I would just like to quote the member for Scarborough—Guildwood who said, “I don't think I speak out of turn when I say that there is no tolerance for people having guns in Toronto, period—long guns, short guns, in-between guns, fast guns, slow guns”. This statement by the chair of the committee that studied this legislation shows a complete lack of understanding of the issues.

Therefore, does my colleague think that the Liberals are actually on track to try to ban all guns in Canada?

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Madam Speaker, in visiting most of the gun clubs across my riding and in other ridings, people there tell me that Bill C-71 bans some firearms. They know it will be these firearms now, and then it will be more firearms, because this is not being done based on how a firearm actually operates. It is based on cosmetics. First, it will be the semi-automatics and then it will go to plain rifles. People know that is the ultimate goal of the Liberals.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Madam Speaker, I would like to think that preventing violence against any Canadian is a goal that everyone in the House would share. It is laudable when we have debates about how to ensure that is the case. The unfortunate thing about Bill C-71 and its subsequent journey through committee and now at the stage of debate we are at is that the government would be very hard pressed to point out statistically any one part of the bill that would actually make Canadians safer.

There were a couple of articles published by Global News in the last month. One was entitled, “A fair gun control debate requires accurate firearms facts”. Another published on September 6 was entitled, “Data shows that Toronto's gun 'surge' never happened”. These two articles are really important because they underscore the fact that any member on the government side in this place would be hard pressed to stand in the House and take any part of the bill and show how it would materially reduce violence in Canada. That, to me, is a waste of parliamentary time.

I could stand here and talk about numerous ways that would demonstrably reduce violence in Canada. If we want to talk about firearms violence, it is very important that we set the parameters of what firearms violence looks like in Canada. According to Statistics Canada, only three per cent, and I want to preface this by saying this number should be zero, but only three per cent of violent crime in Canada is related to a firearm.

Considering that statistic, we need to look at some of the claims my colleagues have made about violence against women. As Statistics Canada indicated today, patterns in weapons used in injury largely reflect the fact that common assault was the predominant offence against intimate partners. In the majority of incidents, some 70% of them, the perpetrator used their own physical force rather than a weapon to threaten or cause injury to a victim. In another 13% of incidents, the perpetrator used a weapon, while in 17% of the incidents no weapon was used.

The following is going to be a very unpopular statistic, but I am going to read it verbatim from Statistics Canada:

Given the greater use of weapons against men and the higher tendency for injury among incidents involving weapons...male victims were slightly more likely than female victims to suffer physical injury (55% versus 52%). Minor injuries accounted for this gender difference, with 53% of male victims sustaining minor physical injuries and 50% of female victims. There was no gender difference in major injury or death, as male and female victims of intimate partner violence were equally as likely to either die or experience a physical injury requiring professional medical attention....

If we drill down into the statistics, we can start talking about the causes and how we address them. Our former Conservative government invested millions of dollars directly toward programs to work with men and other groups to prevent and identify the causes of violence. My former colleague, Rona Ambrose, was Status of Women minister at the time and this was one of her big passions. She spoke all the time and worked day after day to create programs to ensure that we were preventing violence. My colleagues who were with the Minister of Justice also put forward legislation to penalize those who perpetrated this type of violence so that it would become a deterrent to people engaging in these types of behaviour, so we are looking at both ends of the coin.

The bill does none of that. It does not do anything to reduce incidents of violence. Why? It is because we know that, first of all, Canada is not the United States. The government is desperately trying to import the American debate into Canada, and that is just not the case. I am a law-abiding firearms owner. I have both my standard possession and acquisition licence, as well as my restricted possession and acquisition licences. It took me over a year to do that, from the day I decided to become a firearms owner to the day I actually became one. I had to go through an exceptional amount of training, testing, and vetting as well. It was very detailed screening. Once I did become a firearms owner, it took a long time to transfer the firearm into my possession even after this licensing process. Today, I am subject to daily vetting by the RCMP. I am also subject to very strict laws on how I transport my firearms and for the purposes they are used.

Therefore, under that system in Canada, the statistics show that a law-abiding firearm owner, someone who owns a firearm under our legal system in Canada, is three times less likely than a member of the general population to commit a firearm-related offence. Those are the statistics, so if we look at the statistics we have to start looking at when firearms-related violence happens and how prevent it.

Going back to the articles I mentioned, especially the one entitled “Data shows that Toronto's gun 'surge' never happened”, there were statistics going around that 50% of the guns were from legal sources. That is not even close to the real statistic. It was debunked by the article.

I am going to back up. The RCMP does not even consistently track where guns come from, so we should have been looking first to get better data. However, the data we do have shows an overwhelming majority of firearms used in violence are illegally sourced, and most of those are smuggled from the United States. Therefore, I do not understand why the government would not have first sought to table legislation that would have shown how it planned to better detect firearms coming in from the United States, and then have stronger penalties for those who would seek to do so.

There is so much misinformation out here. It is already a significant offence to illegally obtain a handgun or a firearm of any sort and sell it to someone who does not have a licence. That is actually an offence at this point in time.

We could be talking about all sorts of things, like better enforcement and stronger penalties, but the government is just so concerned about making symbolic gestures. The parliamentary secretary to the House leader in his last question said something to the effect of why would we take something to our constituents if it were just not true?

With regard to the component in Bill C-71 dealing with the authorization to transport, I was reading some testimony from a Dr. Caillin Langmann. I asked if there been any firearm-related violence associated with how the current ATT system, the authorization to transport system, worked. This was his testimony in response:

There is currently no empirical evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of the ATT. The fact is that the vast majority of legitimate gun owners do not use their firearms for illegal purposes let alone to cause harm.

That is true. I understand the great responsibility I bear in handling my firearms responsibly and the penalties I would incur if I were not doing that correctly. There is no way I am going to break those rules. That is why the statistics show that people who own firearms legally, those who use them legally as tools on their farms and in rural communities for hunting, people who are sports shooters—and that is the only legal reason, for all intents and purposes, that people can own a handgun in Canada—are not the ones we need to worry about.

Someone in my city, an alleged gang leader, who had used an illegally obtained firearm to shoot people walked away from criminal penalties after doing so, scot-free, because the government had not appointed judges and Jordan's principle was applied to his case. Why is the government not appointing judges? Why did it put forward Bill C-75, a bill that waters down penalties for serious violent crime, and gang related crime? Why are we not increasing those penalties?

Furthermore, if we want to take a more liberal view, which I rarely do, the government put a lot of money into a consultation process in which it announced it was going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on preventing gang violence, and it has allocated virtually none of that, even though it has spent billions of dollars on other things that are completely useless.

I wish we could focus on facts, because all of this is cheap political tactics to import a debate from the United States into Canada. It is not going to keep anyone safe. It is highly unfortunate, because the government had an opportunity to do something, to effect change, and it failed. All the government wants to do is impose an ideological agenda on a country that already has some of the tightest firearms laws in the world. Our statistics show that our legal firearms owners are not the source of this violence. Why would we then not focus on those who are perpetrating these crimes?

Someone who has obtained a handgun illegally is not, by definition or by virtue, going subscribe to the penalties in Bill C-71. It just affects law-abiding firearms owners, and those are not the people we need to focus on, based on the statistics we have.