I will, sir.
On behalf of the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians, I would like to thank you and the committee for inviting us and allowing us to bring what we think is a different perspective to this debate. By way of introduction, Dr. Carolyn Snider is an emergency physician and trauma team leader at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto and a researcher in injury prevention.
We probably represent a bit of a dichotomy with respect to emergency services. I'm a rural family physician who runs a small-town emergency department. I don't think Carolyn owns guns, but I do, so it'll be an interesting one-two, I think, in terms of how we view emergency medicine and gun control in Canada.
CAEP is the national specialty society for emergency medicine. It represents in excess of 1,800 physicians nationwide who have an interest or a practice in emergency medicine. We have evolved as a specialty since our recognition three decades ago. Initially we focused solely on the evaluation of the acutely ill or injured, but increasingly we've been placing increasing emphasis on such things as system design, research, and injury prevention. Injury continues to be a major issue for our association, but underlying this persistent concern is the realization that our collective ability to treat injury as health care providers in the economy that we're in has largely been maximized, and therefore prevention assumes greater importance for us.
Our membership continues to have concerns with respect to firearm-related injury and death, even since our initial support for Bill C-68 back in 1994-1995, and they have insisted that their professional association, which we represent, vigorously support efforts to reduce the tragic human toll associated with firearm misuse. We have been leaders in the call for mandatory reporting of gunshot wounds in Canada and continue to vigorously support the provisions of the gun control bill as a sensible package of regulations to minimize the risk of gun-related injury and death in Canada.
Injury is a major public health issue. It is the leading cause of death for people between one and 44 years of age, and most deaths from injuries occur before we ever have an opportunity to intervene. They occur in the home and on the roadside. There is a large economic burden to injury as well, not just from the direct medical costs but also from the costs of rehabilitation and in terms of the human toll of suffering.
Canada's emergency physicians and nurses, as well as trauma surgeons, have been active in promoting an awareness among legislators with respect to their role in injury prevention. We believe strongly that these educational efforts, coupled with socially conscious legislation, lead to positive societal change, injuries prevented, and lives saved.
We urge you to consider the provisions of the Firearms Act as it now stands, not as elements of a crime control bill but rather more importantly as key elements of a socially responsible public health and safety bill. There has been a reduction in firearm-related mortality in Canada since the introduction of firearms regulations both in 1991 and 1995, and we see actually no compelling reason--none whatsoever, actually, from a public health perspective--to dramatically alter such effective legislation.
In front of you are our brief and our background paper. I think we're all familiar with the level of gun ownership in Canada. It is important to realize that rural areas have high rates of gun ownership, and, more particularly, that rural areas, including the territories and the communities in the north, are overrepresented with respect to firearm-related death, usually by the long gun.
For instance, in the province of Ontario in 2004-2005, the rate per 100,000 emergency visits resulting from firearm injury was 8.7 per 100,000 in northern communities, contrasting considerably higher than the provincial average of 5.3 per 100,000 in more southern Ontario.
Firearms are an important cause of injury and death in Canada. In 2005, 818 Canadians were killed by the use of firearms, and despite a general media focus on crime, 72% of these firearm injuries were caused by suicide, so for us this is largely a suicide prevention issue.
Despite the impressive reductions in mortality associated with provisions of the Firearms Act, as will be discussed briefly, there remains much to be done to reduce this tragic societal toll and unacceptable financial waste. This is not the time, in our view, to consider reducing efforts at better gun control.
Suicide is the second most common cause of death in Canada for those aged 10 to 34, the flower of our youth, and the ninth leading cause of death overall. In 2005 firearm deaths accounted for 15% of all suicides, and, as previously mentioned, 72% of all firearm-related deaths are in fact associated with suicide.
The majority of suicides are not, in fact, premeditated acts; rather, they are impulsive in nature. Access to firearms facilitates the completion of a suicide attempt. If you put a gun to your head and pull the trigger, you stand about a 96% chance of dying. If you take an overdose of medications, that is substantially reduced to less than 5%. Suicide attempts using guns are particularly lethal.
We have noticed in our review of the literature, which led to the CAEP gun control position, that firearm-related suicides in Canada have decreased by 46% since the introduction of Kim Campbell's bill in 1991 and by 35% since the introduction of the Firearms Act in 1995, so we believe there has been some strong evidence that gun control in Canada, in its various forms, has led to a cumulative expression of reduced suicides by firearms in this country.
I will skip a little bit. With respect to intimate partner homicide, a gun in the home is a recognized risk factor for spousal homicide. We know the spousal homicide rate is five times higher against women than men. Rifles and shotguns were used in 62% of these homicidal acts. We also note that firearm use in spousal homicide has decreased by 36% since the passage of the Firearms Act, down from 25 victims in 1995 to 9 in 2008.
We know nothing about crime control. We'll defer to our friends from various police associations, but we do note with interest that with respect to homicides, despite the fact of increased gang violence in Toronto and Abbotsford, in fact the homicide rate by firearm in Canadian society has decreased by a significant percentage since the introduction of Bill C-68.
I'm going to skip unintentional injury, as well as the paradigm of injury prevention. Suffice it to say that we believe the legislators of our country have a role to play in public health bills.
Am I doing okay for time?