Justice Committee on Nov. 22nd, 2006

[Lynn Barr-Telford]

What we have done and provided to you is...we have plotted the rifle-shotgun homicide rate and so forth.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Slide 6....

[Lynn Barr-Telford]

Yes, it's in slide 6, which indicates the different points of legislation. As I said, we didn't do that for any intention of causality, but we have not done any systematic analysis beyond this.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

I may independently write a letter and ask you that, and it could be done, I guess. I'll just take it that it might, because I don't want to waste my time here on my question.

[Lynn Barr-Telford]

It's a very difficult question for me to answer because precisely what it is that we would be looking at is--

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

I'd have to give you the benchmarks, as I said.

[Lynn Barr-Telford]

Yes, that would be very good to know.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

So as not to burn my time up, I'll ask you specifically about slides 4, 5, and 6. My synthesis of it is that if you look at the tail end of the years 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005, there's a general decrease before that in those slides. I'll leave the handgun issue aside, but in homicides, for sure.

Then there's a spike up. The whole predication of this bill is that there's this massive spike-up in homicide crime and shooting homicides, and in slide 6, gun-related homicides, in general, especially handguns. The only one that seems to be along that line is handguns, starting in 2002.

Here are the trends and here's the per-100,000 population. For instance, on slide 4, you have the actual numbers of homicides in Canada in 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005. So could you just give me those right now?

[Lynn Barr-Telford]

The actual number of homicides?

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Yes.

[Lynn Barr-Telford]

I can give you 2005 now and John can give you the rest because he has the numbers.

There were 658 homicides in 2005; 222 homicides were firearm homicides.

John will give you the previous numbers.

[John Turner]

I'll take my time to make sure I get them right.

In 2004, 624 homicides; 173 were shootings. In 2003, 549 homicides; 161 were shootings. In 2002, 582 homicides; 152 were shootings.

Do you need me to go back further than that?

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

No, I don't, because it's very clear that the years in question are 2002 to 2005. We're talking about an increase in gun-related homicides in those four years going from 152, 161, 173, to 222. That's a gradual increase, albeit maybe there's an argument in 2005 that the number of roughly 50 gun-related homicides--the raw number is 49--from 173 to 222 gun-related homicides.... Let's say it's 50. How many of those do you figure are related to gang-related homicides? Is there a number for gang-related--the new definition or the old, it doesn't matter to me, although it does matter to me--for the purposes of those same years? How many of those homicides were gang-related? This seems to be the pith and substance of the publicity drive, if not the bill.

[Lynn Barr-Telford]

We can give you the number of gang-related homicides, and I believe we can also talk to the type of firearm involved in gang-related homicides.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Well, keep it simple for a moment. Could you just give me the gang-related homicides for the same years?

[John Turner]

For 2005, 107; for 2004, 72; for 2003, 84; for 2002, 46.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

It seems a little all over the board in the sense that it's 46, 84, 72, and 107, but that big spike is 107 from 72, which is 35 of the 50. It's significant in one year, and it's too early to say.

Do you keep half your stats for 2006? Is there no such thing?

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

Mr. Murphy, I know they're good questions and I'm interested, too, but....

Mr. Lake.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Good afternoon. I appreciate your being here today. This is my first time sitting on this committee, so if I mix up my terminology or something like that, you'll excuse me.

We're here studying Bill C-10, and Bill C-10 includes escalating firearm use offences. In slide 11, it depicts a situation in which about 30% of offenders, the top three bars there, in 2003-04 had prior firearm convictions. So first of all, it seems that the escalating penalties of Bill C-10 will only touch a relatively small number of offences. Is that accurate?

[Lynn Barr-Telford]

What I can tell you is we had about 40 offenders with at least one prior conviction in this graph for the four-year minimum firearms offence.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Forty offenders...?

[Lynn Barr-Telford]

We had about 40 offenders who've had at least one prior conviction for a four-year minimum firearms offence.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Okay.

Continuing to take a look at this, with this chart, it just talks about firearm convictions. In terms of the seriousness of the crimes committed by the people in the top three bars, how many of those, what percentage, were homicides or attempted murders?

[Craig Grimes]

I haven't broken that out for this slide. Really, what we did was look at the 10 most serious offences with a firearm and looked back to see whether or not there was at least one of those prior. We didn't look at the type of that, but it is possible.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Further to that line of questioning, is there research that shows, in terms of homicides, how many people who commit homicides--what percentage of people who commit a homicide or attempted murder--would have been convicted of a gun crime previously?