Bill C-21

An Act to amend certain Acts and to make certain consequential amendments (firearms)

This enactment amends the Criminal Code to, among other things,
(a) increase, from 10 to 14 years, the maximum penalty of imprisonment for indictable weapons offences in sections 95, 96, 99, 100 and 103;
(b) establish a regime that would permit any person to apply for an emergency prohibition order or an emergency limitations on access order and allow the judge to protect the security of the person or of anyone known to them;
(c) deem certain firearms to be prohibited devices for the purpose of specified provisions;
(d) create new offences for possessing and making available certain types of computer data that pertain to firearms and prohibited devices and for altering a cartridge magazine to exceed its lawful capacity;
(e) include, for interception of private communications purposes, sections 92 and 95 in the definition of “offence” in section 183;
(f) authorize employees of certain federal entities who are responsible for security to be considered as public officers for the purpose of section 117.07; and
(g) include certain firearm parts to offences regarding firearms.
The enactment also amends the Firearms Act to, among other things,
(a) prevent individuals who are subject to a protection order or who have been convicted of certain offences relating to domestic violence from being eligible to hold a firearms licence;
(b) transfer authority to the Commissioner of Firearms to approve, refuse, renew and revoke authorizations to carry referred to in paragraph 20(a) of the Act;
(c) limit the transfer of handguns only to businesses and exempted individuals and the transfer of cartridge magazines and firearm parts;
(d) impose requirements in respect of the importation of ammunition, cartridge magazines and firearm parts;
(e) prevent certain individuals from being authorized to transport handguns from a port of entry;
(f) require a chief firearms officer to suspend a licence if they have reasonable grounds to suspect that the licence holder is no longer eligible for it;
(g) require the delivery of firearms to a peace officer, or their lawful disposal, if a refusal to issue, or revocation of, a licence has been referred to a provincial court under section 74 of the Act in respect of those firearms;
(h) revoke an individual’s licence if there is reasonable grounds to suspect that they engaged in an act of domestic violence or stalking or if they become subject to a protection order;
(i) authorize the issuance, in certain circumstances, of a conditional licence for the purposes of sustenance;
(j) authorize, in certain circumstances, the Commissioner of Firearms, the Registrar of Firearms or a chief firearms officer to disclose certain information to a law enforcement agency for the purpose of an investigation or prosecution related to the trafficking of firearms;
(k) provide that the annual report to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness regarding the administration of the Act must include information on disclosures made to law enforcement agencies and be submitted no later than May 31 of each year; and
(l) create an offence for a business to advertise a firearm in a manner that depicts, counsels or promotes violence against a person, with a few exceptions.
The enactment also amends the Nuclear Safety and Control Act to, among other things,
(a) provide nuclear security officers and on-site nuclear response force members with the authority to carry out the duties of peace officers at high-security nuclear sites; and
(b) permit licensees who operate high-security nuclear sites to acquire, possess, transfer and dispose of firearms, prohibited weapons and prohibited devices used in the course of maintaining security at high-security nuclear sites.
The enactment also amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to
(a) designate the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness as the Minister responsible for the establishment of policies respecting inadmissibility on grounds of transborder criminality for the commission of an offence on entering Canada;
(b) specify that the commission, on entering Canada, of certain offences under an Act of Parliament that are set out in the regulations is a ground of inadmissibility for a foreign national; and
(c) correct certain provisions in order to resolve a discrepancy and clarify the rule set out in those provisions.
Finally, the enactment also amends An Act to amend certain Acts and Regulations in relation to firearms so that certain sections of that Act come into force on the day on which this enactment receives royal assent.

Criminal Code

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, the member is very good, as usual, at citing hypotheticals, but he has not pointed at all to anything in the bill that would prevent someone from becoming a sport shooter. The critical thing is to take it back and focus on—

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

What would they shoot with? They need a gun. Be serious.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

The hon. member had an opportunity to ask a question. If he has another question, then he should wait until asked for questions and comments.

I would ask the hon. parliamentary secretary to wrap up.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am glad to provide my colleague with an answer. The answer is that Bill C-21 deals with criminal activity. For his purposes, though, to reassure him, authorized high-performance sport shooting and athletes and coaches are exempt in the bill. It is under the exemptions.

I am not sure where the Conservatives are coming from. Perhaps they are borrowing from the Bill C-71 playbook from a few years ago where they made a concerted effort to mislead Canadians on this issue of what the government is doing to counter gun violence and criminality. We saw that then and I hope we do not see it this time.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

I want to remind the parliamentary secretary that he cannot say indirectly what he cannot say directly. I would ask members in the House to be careful with the language that they use.

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Madam Speaker, I was saying earlier that the government decided to proceed with a freeze that did not take effect immediately, but rather 30 working days after the announcement. This resulted in an explosion in handgun sales across the country.

It appears that the government realized this today. It tried to move a motion at the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security to refer the regulations directly to the House to speed up the process. The motion was blocked, so we did not get to debate it.

Does the government intend to come back with a similar motion so that we can push this process along before Parliament rises for the summer?

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, earlier tonight the Minister of Public Safety spoke to that very issue. I welcome any ideas that can be put in place to counter the challenge and problem that my colleague has pointed out. There has been an increase, as we have seen in news media reports, in the purchase of handguns, so any suggestions to lead to a countering of that are worth exploring.

Again, I go back to the fundamental purpose of the bill. When organizations across the country, many of which have members whose lives have been destroyed because of gun violence, look at measures like a freeze on the selling of handguns, for example, among the other freezes that I mentioned, it is a good thing for the country. I point to the Association of Chiefs of Police. It agrees that public safety would be drastically improved with this bill.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Madam Speaker, I tried to intervene earlier to say that the member was misleading the House when he said this would not affect sport shooters. It certainly would.

I have family members and friends who participate in the sport of cowboy action shooting. They are using antique firearms, some of them 100 years old and more. They will not be able to use these firearms. They are amateurs, but they compete around the world in countries like Australia and New Zealand. They are able to take their firearms there. Here the government wants to eliminate that opportunity.

How can the member say that and mislead the House?

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

I want to remind members not to use that word because it is saying indirectly what one cannot say directly.

The hon. parliamentary secretary has time for a brief answer because we are at midnight.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, as I said before, looking at the bill directly, I would advise colleagues, with enormous respect, to look at the bill before offering commentary on it.

Authorized high performance, sport shooting, athletes and coaches are all under the exemption category. This is the reality. I think it is very important to look at the substance of the bill and recognize that we have to do something to counter gun violence. The government has moved forward in a very important way, in a way that we have not seen in decades. I would advise Conservative colleagues, who are the ones that are really against this bill, to please—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

That is all the time we have.

The House resumed from June 9 consideration of the motion that Bill C-21, An Act to amend certain Acts and to make certain consequential amendments (firearms), be read the second time and referred to a committee, and of the amendment to the amendment.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Yellowhead.

This is a real opportunity to speak against Bill C-21. The premise of my whole talk today will be that Bill C-21 would actually make Canadians less safe, as it spends sparse resources in ways that are ineffective and targets law-abiding firearms owners instead of the real problem, which is gangs and guns in our inner cities.

In 2018, Public Safety Canada put forward a paper, “Reducing Violent Crime: A Dialogue on Handguns and Assault Weapons - Engagement Paper”. It starts off by explaining what I am trying to explain today:

The vast majority of owners of handguns and of other firearms in Canada lawfully abide by requirements, and most gun crimes are not committed with legally-owned firearms.

It goes on:

Recent estimates indicate that there are about 900,000 handguns registered to individuals in Canada. In most cases, individuals own handguns either in the context of sport shooting activities or because those handguns form a part of a collection.

Later it states:

Any ban of handguns or assault weapons would primarily affect legal firearms owners....

It is not just Conservatives who are saying this; the former public safety minister himself actually said that he knows that handgun bans would not work. In a 2019 interview with The Globe and Mail, he said that months of consultation have led him to the conclusion that banning handguns would be costly and ineffective. Again, that is from the Liberal former public safety minister across the way:

I believe that would be potentially a very expensive proposition but just as importantly, it would not in my opinion be perhaps the most effective measure in restricting the access that criminals would have to such weapons, because we'd still have a problem with them being smuggled across the border.

I could not agree more. That is why I find it strange that the government has not imposed a handgun ban previously and has admitted that it is going to be ineffective and very expensive. Again, the premise is very expensive, and I do not even necessarily want to speak to that, because how can we quantify the life of one of our children? We cannot. They are priceless. Instead, let us actually deal with the problem in a way that would actually save lives on our streets instead of prolonging the problem.

This is a quote from a police officer. Staff Superintendent Sean McKenna of Peel Regional Police recently tweeted:

Another illegally owned firearm seized by Peel Police. This is becoming a far too common occurrence in our community. A municipal, provincial or federal ban on firearms will not stop criminals from carrying them. Root cause issues need to be addressed.

Exactly. Here is somebody who sees the problems on the streets daily and knows where the real problem lies.

Another police officer, Ron Chhinzer, tweeted, “In my time in the integrated gun and gang task force, I don't recall ever seizing a legally owned firearm from any of the investigations that I was involved in.

“The law-abiding population should never suffer or pay because of the unlawful criminal.”

Again, here is someone who is actually on the streets, seeing this first-hand. What I am going to talk about later is how we should give those police officers better resources to deal with the root problems, like recidivism. Criminals get to walk free and commit crimes all over again. We are also not dealing with some of the root causes that cause violence in the first place.

Here is another quote from another police officer, Steve Ryan, who tweeted, “I investigated 150 homicides—never seized one legally owned gun as a murder weapon. In my opinion, it makes more sense to ban legally owned kitchen knives and scissors! Those I have seized as murder weapons. Banning legally owned guns won't decrease violence. Root cause will!”

There is a consistent message coming from our police officers today: The focus should be on the problem instead of on the diversion, the law-abiding firearms community.

Chris Lewis, a former OPP commissioner who works for CTV, is a crime specialist who has been a very vocal opponent of wasting resources on gun bans. Here is a quote from Mr. Lewis: “They aren’t legally owned handguns, nor are they shotguns and hunting rifles. Taking more guns from lawful owners and putting a toothless municipal handgun ban in place will do the square root of sweet”...nothing, I will say, because he uses another word, “to impact violent crime.”

There it is. Even the former commissioner is saying the same thing.

I will go on. I have a few more quotes, and then we will get into more discussion. I am sure there will be questions.

The deputy chief of the Toronto Police Service, Myron Demkiw, stated, “The City of Toronto's experience is that guns are not from law-abiding citizens that are being used in crime. They're guns being smuggled from the United States. Those engaged in handling those firearms are not law-abiding, licensed gun owners; they are criminals with no firearms licence.”

I am a firearms owner. I have my RPAL. I know that it is a very rigorous process to purchase a firearm in Canada, whether it is a non-restricted firearm or restricted. It is very difficult. There is training that is involved and there is a vetting process that is involved, and every day they look at our records to make sure that we can still legally and safely own our firearms.

I will go on to a quote from somebody who is very important. This was part of the recent public safety study. It is from Marcell Wilson. He is the founder and president of the One By One Movement, an organization founded by former gang members, extremists and organized crime members to help identify, address and research strategies on effective social programming for youth outreach.

He explained:

...when speaking on gun control, when we hear the phrase, it should always be synonymous with illegal gun crime and illegal gun trafficking as over 80% of the gun violence we [witness is] committed with illegal firearms smuggled in from the USA.

It has not just been me. I always like to quote other individuals with expertise a lot of better than my own, such as actual police officers on the streets. This is from Marcell Wilson, former gang member, who is really trying to fix the root problem of the issue of kids dying on our streets as the result of illegal firearms.

I think that as Conservatives, this is where we take quite a different position from the Liberals across the way. We Conservatives actually support dealing with the real problem. We saw a Liberal long-gun registry that cost $2 billion the last time. We have another bill, Bill C-21, that is part of resurrecting another long-gun registry and a confiscation regime too. It is going to be in the billions.

My argument is always to just take even a fraction of that money and put it into places where it is going to be effective, such as giving border agents better resources to inspect containers as they cross the border. I do not even want to say the percentage of the containers that are actually inspected, but how about we triple that, or even increase it times 10 to an exponential number of inspections to actually deal with these firearms and stop them right at the border? How about we give inner city police the tools to crack down on illegal firearms and gang activity? How about we give resources to help these police officers deal with these young gang members and try to get them out of those gangs and into productive lives?

We support stopping the revolving door. We even saw recently, with Bill C-5, that the Liberals want to let people who are convicted of firearm crimes out the door sooner than they should be, just to recommit those crimes. Why do we not deal with all of those situations? That will actually cause a real effect, a real, positive change in safety in our inner cities and on our streets.

At the end of the day, I started off by saying that the bill actually makes our country less safe. What the Prime Minister is touting is a bait and switch. Just because he is talking about guns and getting rid of them does not mean he is talking about the right guns to get rid of. He needs to get rid of the illegal firearms on our streets. Once he starts tackling that and stops misleading Canadians about what really will make a change, my hope is that he will finally realize what that is, but I think he uses this issue to divide Canadians. I would rather see us tackle the real problem with illegal firearms on our streets.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety]

Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for mentioning the excellent study that the public safety committee did on guns and gangs. I wonder if the hon. member is aware that the government is actually investing $250 million into community groups exactly like the One By One Movement that the hon. member mentioned. By no means is the bill intended to be the one solution for gun violence; it is meant to be comprehensive.

In Saskatchewan, the people who are dying by firearms are actually white, rural, older men who are dying by suicide. I am wondering if the hon. member supports the red flag provisions that are in Bill C-21.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

Madam Speaker, the member across the way highlights the problem. She said there was $250 million to basically deal with the issues in inner cities and to support folks like Marcell Wilson, but it is a fraction of what is necessary.

She is talking about spending probably upwards of $5 billion on tackling the wrong problem, a problem that really does not exist, because lawful firearms owners are not the problem. She is saying that we should keep spending that $5 billion and only spend $250 million on this other problem. How about we spend all that money on what the real problem is? We would be in agreement and would probably support the bill. When the Liberals constantly say they are going to protect Canadians by making laws more difficult for law-abiding firearms owners, it is just ill-focused.