Thank you.
My name is Sandro Giammaria and I am counsel with the criminal law policy section at the Department of Justice.
To clarify, the clause referred to speaks about a particular component of a handgun, not the firearm itself. What we're talking about is the barrel of a handgun, not the entire completed firearm. It would help to know that a barrel that measures 105 millimetres or less is a prohibited device in Canada because it forms part of a firearm that is itself prohibited, a barrel being a part that you can swap out or otherwise create a firearm with. Back in 1998, the barrel itself was deemed to be a prohibited device.
This speaks to a carve-out or an exception to that with respect to firearms used for international sporting competitions, but it pertains only to the barrel. The issue you identified—a discrepancy between the sport federation's definition of a firearm and the Criminal Code's definition of a firearm—is not engaged here.
To put a final point on this, it is just the nomenclature of the organization that's changing here. That's the long and short of it.