Thanks very much for allowing me to appear. I'll try to address points that have not already been raised and keep to my time allotted.
The Coalition for Gun Control is a non-profit organization that was founded in the wake of the Montreal massacre. Its position on firearms regulation, including support for the licensing of all firearms owners and the registration of all firearms, has been supported by over 300 organizations across the country, including all major public safety organizations, as well as the Canadian Public Health Association, major injury prevention groups, victims' organizations, labour, and the like. So I appreciate having the opportunity to speak on behalf of the members who represent the coalition.
I want to make a few key points. I hope we'll have time to address in the Q and A some of the problematic claims that have already been made.
Fundamentally, all firearms are potentially lethal. There has been an effort to differentiate rifles and shotguns from handguns. While this is appropriate to a certain extent, because restricted weapons—particularly handguns—are more concealable than rifles and shotguns, there have been many claims suggesting that rifles and shotguns don't kill. That is simply not the case.
In fact, if we look at the data, rifles and shotguns are the firearms most often used in suicides, in domestic violence, and to kill police officers in this country. While references to “duck guns” seem to suggest that these firearms are somehow toys, let us not forget that if this bill passes, the Ruger Mini-14--the powerful semi-automatic used in the Montreal massacre--will no longer be registered; nor will a number of sniper rifles that have the power to shoot with accuracy at two kilometres and pierce Kevlar vests.
The other thing that is important to understand is that the firearms legislation was established not just as a crime-fighting tool, not just for police, although that was clearly one of its functions. The firearms legislation was also passed because of advocacy by public health organizations and injury prevention organizations across the country who were, like the Prime Minister of Canada, concerned with suicide prevention. You have in the brief a complete list of some of those organizations who have insisted that stronger controls on rifles and shotguns--the firearms most often used in suicides--because they are the firearms most readily accessible need to be registered in order to reinforce the licensing provisions.
The risk factors for suicide and for homicide are very similar. That's part of the reason why 50% of domestic violence incidents involving firearms end in suicide. That's part of the reason why many of the public shootings that have attracted considerable attention also end in suicide.
The screening provisions in the licensing portion of the legislation are critical for addressing this. As the Supreme Court clearly stated, the registration of all firearms is essential to reinforce the licensing provisions:
The registration provisions cannot be severed from the rest of the Act. The licensing provisions require everyone who possesses a gun to be licensed; the registration provisions require all guns to be registered. These portions of the Firearms Act are both tightly linked to Parliament’s goal of promoting safety by reducing the misuse of any and all firearms. Both portions are integral and necessary to the operation of the scheme.
Part of the reason the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police and the Canadian Police Association, representing rank and file police officers, advocated for both licensing and registration back in 1991, culminating in the legislation that was passed in 1995, was because of the gaps in the existing legislation.
Many people around this table have argued that the firearms acquisition certificate was sufficient, that licensing was not required. Only one-third of firearm owners had valid firearms acquisition certificates. One of the big problems with the old firearms acquisition certificate system was that while records were supposed to be kept of firearm sales and transactions, there was in fact no record of how many guns an individual purchased unless police went store to store and examined their records. That meant legal gun owners could acquire as many rifles and shotguns as they wanted. If those rifles and shotguns were given, sold, or stolen, and ended up in the wrong hands, there were no mechanisms for tracing them back to their original owners. Hence, registration is absolutely essential for reinforcing the licensing provisions of the legislation. So people around this table who claim they support licensing must also logically support registration, which is key to reinforcing the licensing provisions.
It's also important to underscore the fact that the registry has been used by police to remove firearms from individuals who are potentially at risk to themselves or others. I know you have heard from the Canadian Police Association and you will be hearing from the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, so I won't detail that any further, other than to say that we know for a fact that almost immediately after the shooting at Dawson College, a copycat made threats on the Internet, and the registry was part of what allowed the police to identify that individual and remove the firearms. Other cases have already been identified where the firearms registry has been instrumental in leading to convictions of individuals who have committed serious offences.
One of the other points that has been made in this debate is the notion that the support for firearms regulation, and particularly the registry, is purely an urban phenomenon. In fact, that is not the case. The groups that support the licensing and registration provisions of the legislation range from large national organizations to women's organizations in small rural communities, suicide prevention organizations, the Alberta council of injury prevention, and others. So the notion that this is just a big-city issue flies in the face of the evidence those groups have brought forward, and in fact, the data.
In my brief I've shown quite clearly that the rates of gun death and injury in Canada tend to be higher in the regions where there are more firearms available, even though in those very regions we see more opposition to the legislation.
I also want to draw your attention to the evidence we see when we look at rates of gun death and injury, when we look at rates of homicide with rifles and shotguns, when we look at rates of intimate partner violence. Rates are important. Some members around the table talk about numbers. It's important to look at the rate per hundred thousand.
What we see is that over the last 35 years, as we have strengthened controls over firearms, rates of firearm death and injury have declined. It's always very difficult to prove causal connections when we're dealing with complex phenomena such as crime or suicide, but the evidence appears to show that today we are far safer as a result of stronger firearms control than we were in the early 1970s.
I wish to draw the committee's attention to the fact that the provisions in this legislation do not simply eliminate the registration provisions that were introduced in 1995--