Evidence of meeting #19 for Public Safety and National Security in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was firearms.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:20 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Garry Breitkreuz
Thank you very much, sir.
We will now proceed to Sergeant Duane Rutledge.
Anytime you're ready, sir, go ahead.
4:20 p.m.
Sgt Duane Rutledge Sergeant, As an Individual
Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, and fellow witnesses.
My name is Duane Rutledge. I'm a member of the Glasgow Police Service in Nova Scotia. I'm in my thirtieth year of service. I've been a police officer for two-thirds of my life. I have worked general duty, drugs, GIS, major crime, and undercover, and I'm a member of the emergency response team. Presently, I'm a dog handler. Since I was eight years of age, I've handled firearms in either a hunting or a work capacity.
I would like to thank the committee for giving me this opportunity to speak on this controversial matter regardless of which side I might stand on. As an average citizen, it confirms my faith in our system to be involved in the making and changing of laws in our country without fear of reprisals or punishment. It's something that's unheard of in most places. For that, I thank the Government of Canada and Canada's people for an open and inclusive justice system.
We are here today to discuss the long-gun registry and why I feel that it has not achieved what it proposed to do. In my view, it is a failure both in protecting citizens and in assisting the police in their efforts to keep communities safe and criminals off the street.
I feel that to understand this we must go back to the start, to how it was presented to Canadians by the government of the day. How it was delivered to the public was one of the biggest issues: that it would make society safer by registering. It was rural against urban and non-owners against owners. Its astronomical cost turned even those who were not gun owners against it.
Initially, it was looked at as a tax on gun owners. Mostly, it targeted rural Canadians.
It's an unreliable system. Some people registered their weapons in this country, some people registered a few weapons in this country, and a lot of people didn't register any. Now we have an underground economy as a result of that.
Also, people who have licences to “possess only” have the ability to possess guns that are not registered to them, the guns of other people. There is no way of tracking that regardless of what system there is, because no one keeps track of those movements.
For the most part, the people this law was targeted at were hunters, sportsmen, collectors, and rural people--basically, honest Canadians, which is most of this country. In my experience, a large number of Canadians did not buy into it on the front end, which has caused the underground economy of weapons. Most importantly, in my experience, criminals will not even participate in the registry.
People who register a gun realize that this does not make it safe for them or for anyone else. Speaking in particular, it is an administrative function. It will not render a gun safe. As for recording the serial number, putting a serial number on it is not adequate to stop a knife or a bat from harming someone.
It's the person with the intent to cause harm who the police are most concerned about. And at the end of the day, in every homicide in this country, the common factor is another human being.
Safe handling and storage, along with education of the public, is the best way to attack this. The most powerful piece of legislation passed in this country in my lifetime was the one that locked up guns and separated ammunition from guns. Also, it was for safe training and for handling the storage of firearms. In my belief, that's what has caused a drop in a lot of things.
On elimination of private ownership, which is on the minds of most gun owners, I don't believe that's the answer, because only the police, the military, and the criminals then would have guns. I recall my initial reaction back in 1996-97 when this proposed gun legislation became public. I admit that I was a little upset at the onset. I was not positive towards it, and I thought that maybe I should speak to people before I came up here because my views have been fairly steady all along.
So I took the time before I came up here to speak to colleagues in my policing community, both those on the federal side--for some of them it has been tried to muzzle them--and local police officers. I've talked to the prosecution service. I've talked to a judge. I've talked to the lady who runs our local transition house. I've talked to people who have criminal records to get a view of how they looked at the system.
I knew how I looked at it and I thought that maybe I was missing something. After my conversation with them, it's very clear. Very few of them believe that it has protected the public. There are a few in those numbers who did believe it was helping. The majority of people I spoke to did not believe that.
In my over 30 years of experience, I've encountered numerous situations involving violence. There are far more involving knives and edged weapons than guns. Shotguns and hunting rifles are not a weapon of choice for most criminals because of their actual size; when they are used, they are cut down to become prohibited weapons.
In the 1930s, handguns were registered, and violence in handguns is still growing today. It seems to be one of the biggest rises in this country, the use of handguns in cities, gangs, and organized crime, and automatic weapons.
In other words, I have no hesitation in saying that in my opinion, the long-gun registry does not help police stop violence or make these communities safer from violence. And there's no evidence that it has ever saved a single life on its own merits.
I am disappointed that this issue has become so political in this country. I've heard the chiefs of police quoted here and also the Canadian association of professional police. To my knowledge, my members, where I'm at, were not polled by the Canadian Police Association for their viewpoint on this. Many people have been, in an attempt to muzzle them from giving their full views on this issue. It's something that's uncalled for in this country. As I said, everyone should have the ability to speak their opinion, regardless of which side you stand on, and when someone says they represent someone, they should represent those people by actually polling them and getting their full views. I know that on the police level that has not been done, regardless of what people have been told, and there has been a fair amount of political pressure put on people to be quiet about this.
My own chief was outspoken about this. He was scheduled to testify here, and now he's not testifying. I spoke to him personally, but as to why he's not here, you would have to speak to him. I know why he's not here. I came, myself, as an individual to represent the people who I've spoken to.
As I said, in my opinion it has not done what it was set out to do. Inflammatory remarks by members of those organizations referring to policemen who disagree with this as anonymous, donut-eating, sitting-in-the-coffeeshop police officers is uncalled for, and there's no need for it, either at this level or at the level of representing the chiefs of police or the Canadian Police Association.
Thank you very much.
4:25 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Garry Breitkreuz
Thank you, sir.
Last, but not least, we have Professor Emeritus Mr. Gary Mauser.
Go ahead, sir.
4:25 p.m.
Dr. Gary Mauser Professor Emeritus, As an Individual
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this opportunity to address the committee.
I'm a professor emeritus at Simon Fraser University. I am here as an individual criminologist to present facts, not myths; facts, not emotion.
In this presentation I will briefly show how claims made by the opponents of Bill C-391 are blatantly false or misleading. For more details, see my submission, which has already been distributed to members of this committee. It is also on the web at the Social Science Research Network, SSRN.
Suggestions that the long-gun registry is vital to police because authorities consult it 10,000 times a day or more are false. This claim confuses the long-gun registry with the Canadian Firearms Registry On-Line, the CFRO. The Honourable Peter Van Loan, then public safety minister, in November 2009 analyzed the police data and reported that 97% of the time when authorities check the CFRO, they want information about the owner, not the firearm. This concerns licensing, not registration.
Bill C-391 proposes no changes in licensing. The long-gun registry only includes information about the firearm. Contrary to some people who have testified here, it contains nothing about the location of that firearm, nor the owner.
The key question we have to look at is the effectiveness of the registry, not whether guns are dangerous. Focusing on guns is myopic. It ignores the problem of substitution. Murderers are opportunistic. This is particularly true for spousal murderers.
It is disingenuous to claim that the best approach to saving lives was to invent a new bureaucracy for $2 billion merely to track long guns, and then waste more millions every year to maintain the illusion that we are doing something when demonstrably we are not. There is no convincing evidence supporting the claim that the long-gun registry has had any effect on homicide, suicide, or domestic violence rates. On the other hand, screening and training firearms owners, which we have done since the 1970s, has been shown to be effective.
The long-gun registry was not introduced until 2001—not in 1995, as some have led you to believe. Since 2001, homicide rates have been essentially flat, even though homicide rates had been plummeting since the early 1990s. The long-gun registry has not saved any lives.
Few guns involved in violent crime have been stolen. Studies differ, but the numbers are as low as 1% and as high as 17%. This is not the bulk of guns used in crime. Almost all of the guns involved in criminal violence have been smuggled. Smuggling is a problem in Canada, Australia, and the U.K. That is the source of crime guns, not your citizens.
Suicide rates have slowly declined over two decades. Firearm suicides have declined as well, but suicides by hanging have soared. Some call this a success. In 1991, 3,500 people took their own life; in 2005, 3,700. The long-gun registry has not saved any lives.
Sixteen percent of suicides involve firearms. Almost half of suicides involve hanging. You wouldn't know this from some of the opponents' testimony. Hanging, carbon monoxide poisoning, drowning, and shooting all have nearly identical fatality rates. Eliminate one and the rest remain. But oh, we could have a $2 billion bureaucracy for each of those.
Some suggest that the costs of the long-gun registry are minimal, but $4 million a year is a gross underestimate. That would make a massive contribution to programs that are more effective: suicide prevention efforts, community clinics for abused spouses, treatment programs for those with addiction problems. It is disappointing that women's groups, even medical groups, ignore real problems to flog firearm fears.
No jurisdiction anywhere in the world can show that the introduction of new gun laws has been linked to a reduction in murder, suicide, or aggravated assault. See my Harvard paper, which I did with criminologist Don Kates, also available on the web at SSRN. Research by both the National Academy of Sciences and the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta back up my claim.
It is difficult to understand why the chiefs of police support the long-gun registry. The CFRO has so many errors that relying upon it puts the lives of rank-and-file police members at risk. This is a classic database problem: garbage in, gospel out. The police should know better.
Millions of entries are incorrect or missing. Most striking, less than half of all long guns in Canada are in the registry. The long-gun registry does worse; it misdirects the police. People who have registered their firearms are less likely to be violent than Canadians who don't even own firearms. They should be. Gun owners have been screened by the police since 1979. We are told that 15% of the guns used in homicides are long guns. What is not said is that virtually none were registered. How does the gun registry help?
When I spoke at the Ontario Police College, one of the instructors told me privately that trusting the registry was a way to get good police officers killed. Consider the four RCMP rookies who were gunned down by James Roszko in Mayerthorpe, Alberta. His firearms were not in the registry. Trusting the registry lulled these young people into a sense of safety. The registry showed no guns present: so there must not be any. When they went to his home they were killed. Poor training contributed to the deaths of these rookies. Experienced front line police officers know that when attending to potentially violent situations, they must always assume a weapon could be present. The registry is no help.
Similarly, when enforcing court orders to confiscate firearms, the registry cannot be relied upon to identify firearms at a residence. The RCMP have testified in court they cannot trust the registry. The registry is no help.
Opponents to Bill C-391 argue that the long-gun registry is important because rifles and shotguns can be used in domestic homicide. This is a red herring. The problem is the murder of family members, not the means of killing. Almost all firearms used by abusive spouses to kill their wives are possessed illegally. They are not in the registry.
It has been illegal since 1992 for a person with a violent record to own a firearm. They are not even in the CFRO. There is no empirical support for the claim that the long-gun registry has reduced spousal murders. Knives are used in almost one-third of domestic homicide. Rifles and shotguns, much less often--18% or so. Why aren't opponents of Bill C-391 concerned about women being killed with other weapons?
Opponents of Bill C-391 claim that spousal murder with guns have fallen threefold since the law was passed, while spousal murders without guns have remained the same. This is false. Spousal murders with and without guns have been slowly declining since the mid-seventies. The long-gun registry, I repeat, was not started until 2001. See charts one and eight in my submission.
Bill C-391 does not change licensing or screening requirements. It only concerns the long-gun registry. Neither the long-gun registry nor licensing is typically useful to police in solving spousal homicides. In almost all cases the accused is immediately identified.
The focus on the long-gun registry is a red herring. It distracts attention from serious problems such as gang crimes. Gang-related homicides have been increasing since the early nineties. In 2008 about one in four homicides was gang-related. Almost all of these were committed with illegally possessed handguns. See my charts two and three in the submission.
In closing, I urge committee members to read my submission in full. They will find my claims to be fully substantiated. My citations are not newspaper clippings.
I support gun laws that are based on what has been shown to work, not those based on perceptions or fears. When a government program isn't working, it should be shut down rather than being permitted to drain funds for no good reason except employment.
Finally, I wish to thank the chair of the committee, as well as the committee members, for allowing me an opportunity to show how the claims of the opponents of Bill C-391 are blatantly false or misleading.
Thank you.
4:40 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Garry Breitkreuz
Thank you very much, sir.
As is the usual practice of the committee, we will now have seven minutes of questions and comments, beginning with the Liberal Party. I would like to remind everybody that it includes the answers as well, so hopefully you will take that into account when you're doing this.
Mr. Holland, please.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
Mark Holland Liberal Ajax—Pickering, ON
Thank you very much to all of the witnesses for appearing today.
I would like to start, Minister Bentley, with yourself as Attorney General for Canada's most populous province. We know that not only are the Canadian Police Association and the Canadian Chiefs of Police saying this is a vital public safety tool to save lives, but that in fact of the more than 430 chiefs in the country, only three support dismantling the registry, and that of the more than 150 police associations across the country, only six support dismantling the registry; all the rest say it's vital. In fact, of those six, they're represented by one broader association that is now reconsidering their position in light of all the facts that have come in front of them. Of course, we have paramedics, doctors, labour, all of these organizations....
Is it pretty extraordinary for one tool that police have to have this kind of support out there?
4:40 p.m.
Attorney General of Ontario, Government of Ontario
It is extraordinary. The chiefs have spoken seemingly with a near-unanimous voice. I know you'll be hearing from Chief Blair, representing the chiefs of police, in the future. But in my experience, it is an extraordinary expression of support.
I simply say that I have enormous respect for all of our police officers, whether they're chiefs or front line. Whatever their experience, I want to make sure they have the tools they need to stay safe themselves and to properly investigate and keep the rest of us safe.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
Mark Holland Liberal Ajax—Pickering, ON
Minister, I, too, have deep respect and recognize that in the policing community, as in any community, there's going to be divergent opinion. You're not going to get 100% on anything. So I respect of course that we have a very excellent officer here, I'm sure, from New Glasgow. We had three retired officers from Winnipeg. So of course we would expect there's going to be outlying opinion.
I'm wondering what your opinion is on this. Even if we were to assume that somehow the police associations, which are elected by rank-and-file police officers, are somehow not representing police, and even if we were to assume that the divide that is attempted to be painted here indeed existed, and let's say only 50% instead of 98% of those on the front lines of keeping our communities safe said that this is an important tool and it saves lives and they need it to do their jobs, would that not unto itself be sufficient, if you say that 50% of officers said this was a tool that they used and needed for their job?
4:40 p.m.
Attorney General of Ontario, Government of Ontario
Well, the tool exists, and as long as a significant number of front line officers or chiefs say it's important in protecting the public, I think we should think once, twice, and three times before dismantling it.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
Mark Holland Liberal Ajax—Pickering, ON
To Ms. Cukier, first of all, I'm sorry you're here, to be honest. You've been fighting this battle for a very long time, representing more than 300 victims' groups, and worked very hard for us to get an effective gun registry that does save lives. I'm sorry that you're yet again having to fight this battle.
One of the things I want to tackle is the issue of cost. I don't think anybody can deny costs were high. The Auditor General spoke clearly about that. But one of the things that wasn't mentioned about the Auditor General's 2006 report was that she said the system is now efficient and working effectively.
In fact, the Auditor General has now stated that the cost is $4.1 million. Given the fact that hopefully...and, I would say, presumably, because things are cyclical, we're going to eventually have another government, if Bill C-391 was successful and dismantled the registry, would it not be enormously costly to then have to restart the registry all over again, when we've already incurred those costs of starting up the registry and we're now down, according to the RCMP and the Auditor General, to $4.1 million a year in costs?
4:40 p.m.
President, Coalition for Gun Control
Thanks very much for raising that question. I'll try to be brief.
One of the things that is clearly not well understood, and some would argue has been deliberately confused and misrepresented, is the fact that firearms are registered once--one time only--unless they're sold or traded. Hence, 7 million firearms are registered. Most of those never, ever have to be registered again; hence, it is a sunk cost. The $4.1 million, which I think is the estimate from the RCMP of what would be saved if we ended the registration of rifles and shotguns tomorrow, represents the costs of registering guns that are traded or sold.
The big-ticket item, both now and in the past, the item that has cost the most—I know you have the Auditor General coming, and I'm sure she can address this—was licensing, which everyone here says they support. What I find interesting is that there's this hue and cry over the $4 million that maintaining the long-gun registry will cost given that we've sunk all those other costs, and nobody has raised a peep at the $22 million in waived and refunded fees that this government basically wasted in terms of taxpayers' money. I think that's critically important.
The other thing is that one complex murder investigation can easily cost $2 million. The value of the registry as an investigative tool and the costs that will be incurred as a result of not being able to trace guns back to their source is immense and inestimable.
4:45 p.m.
Liberal
Mark Holland Liberal Ajax—Pickering, ON
Thank you.
Another issue that has been raised is that this is an issue for the urban community, not the rural community. I asked the Canadian Police Association, and they gave me a listing by census region of the most firearms-related incidents per 100,000 people. Of the top 50 census regions, 50 of 50 were in rural communities. That means rural communities lead the list of firearms-related incidents.
I'm wondering if you could talk to us on behalf of victims--as pediatricians have, as many police associations and national associations have--about the importance of this registry for rural communities.
4:45 p.m.
President, Coalition for Gun Control
Again, I think you raise a really important point. It's part of the reason it's important to look at rates per 100,000. That's basically what public health and epidemiologists consider, as well as criminologists. They look at the rates per 100,000 of crimes and death because that gives you an indication of the severity.
And you're absolutely right; in fact, I have the Criminal Code incidents right in front of me. Toronto has one of the lowest rates of firearms homicide in the country and certainly one of the lowest rates of firearms deaths.
If you talk to the Canadian Paediatric Society or the Association for Adolescent Health or the Canadian Public Health Association or the suicide prevention groups, they will tell you that young people are more at risk of being killed with firearms in rural communities, and in the west and in the north, than they are in downtown Toronto because availability is such a critical issue. In fact, as you note, children are often caught in the crossfire of domestic violence when firearms are involved--very often in rural communities.
4:45 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Garry Breitkreuz
We'll have to leave it there for this round.
Ms. Mourani, please.
4:45 p.m.
Bloc
Maria Mourani Bloc Ahuntsic, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you to our witnesses for being here today.
I have a question for Mr. Boisvenu. I paid close attention to your presentation and perhaps you can tell me if I'm wrong. In a way, you have not taken a position on the registry, you have not said whether you are for or against it. You said that the registry is a work tool for police officers, specifically in regards to health and safety.
Do you believe this single aspect of the registry is significant enough for it to be maintained?
4:45 p.m.
Senator, CPC, Senate
I worked for 15 years as a public safety senior official. The first thing police officers are taught in training is that they are responsible for their own safety. I fully agree with Professor Mauser: the murder of the four young police officers in western Canada was attributable to a professional mistake on their part. In Ms. Gignac's case, where she was killed with a registered firearm, one should not forget that a judge had granted an individual with psychiatric issues the right to carry the weapon for a month, during the hunting season.
If the registry only serves to protect police officers' lives, that is a fundamental flaw. I am not saying that querying the registry to see whether an individual possesses a firearm does not have an effect. In fact, close to 40% of address-related data in the registry is false. We have to pay $2 billion to protect the health and safety of police officers. In my opinion, that is the only causal relationship we have any evidence for. It is too expensive.
4:50 p.m.
Bloc
Maria Mourani Bloc Ahuntsic, QC
I'd like to get back to your point, when you were referring to the registry as an effective tool for prevention.
We heard from Mr. Cheliak of the RCMP who told us that in 2009, 7,000 firearms registration certificates had been revoked in Canada, either by a judge or by a firearms officer. The reasons for doing so included mental health problems, domestic violence, risk of suicide and the uttering of death threats by young people who threatened to commit mass shootings in their high school or colleges. The weapons were removed for prevention purposes.
In my opinion, to prevent incidents, we need to act before an offence is committed. I think you would agree with that. The fact that 7,000 certificates were revoked from potentially dangerous individuals because they had a host of problems is a sign of great effectiveness, is it not, if you consider the 4 million we are referring to?
4:50 p.m.
Senator, CPC, Senate
Yes. That said, there is no way of proving whether murders would have been committed if they had not been revoked.
Take for instance the situation which occurred in the Lac-Saint-Jean area last year. A request was issued to revoke the licence of someone who had psychiatric problems. It was never done, and two weeks later, he killed someone.
4:50 p.m.
Bloc
Maria Mourani Bloc Ahuntsic, QC
Well in fact, that is a good example, because we were saying that 7,000 individuals had their certificates revoked, including some people with major mental health problems. This was done before they committed any offence. It's a great preventive measure for society.
4:50 p.m.
Senator, CPC, Senate
There are other means to arrive at the same results.
4:50 p.m.
Senator, CPC, Senate
An individual with psychiatric problems can possess an unregistered firearm.
4:50 p.m.
Senator, CPC, Senate
It is not another matter. You are saying that an issue I am raising is another matter. In fact, it is the very same thing. The management of firearms—
4:50 p.m.
Bloc
Maria Mourani Bloc Ahuntsic, QC
Wait a moment. I am talking to you about the registry. You are questioning the usefulness of the registry—we are indeed talking about the registry—with respect to prevention.
Mr. Cheliak informed us that the registry had enabled us to revoke 7,000 certificates, each certificate possibly being valid for several firearms. We can never prove whether or not crimes would or would not have been committed, since the instrument which would have been used had been taken away.