Public Safety Committee on Nov. 15th, 2011

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

I'm done?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Yes. Thank you very much.

We'll now move to Ms. Hoeppner, please.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I just have a few minutes so I'm going to try to go rather quickly.

Mr. Friedman, I'm wondering if you could comment on previous testimony on Bill C-391, which will be part of this study.

We heard that certain studies have shown that if you are a licensed gun owner, you're actually 50% less likely to commit a homicide or a gun crime because, by and large, that means you are a law-abiding individual who complies with rules and regulations as they are established.

We heard testimony from Mr. Grismer that the best way to prevent gun crime is education, training, and licensing, all of which—as even Mr. Harris acknowledged—would be complied with by somebody who had agreed to be trained, to be educated, and to be licensed. As well, those would be individuals who would agree to register their firearms. All of this has to do with compliance, with people who are complying with the laws.

Mr. Friedman, approximately a year and a half ago, the Toronto police department did a sweep of the city and they looked at who had a licence and who had a registration. They ended up spreading about 1,500 long guns on a table, saying, “Look at all the guns we got off the street.” I asked them, “Did you arrest one drug dealer, one person who had been domestically violent, one person who was involved in gang activity, or did you make any arrest for criminal activity?” The answer was “No.”

Can you explain, Mr. Friedman, who was being targeted and what kind of effect that had on the law-abiding gun owners in Canada?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Friedman.

[Solomon Friedman]

Absolutely.

I think the very first point you raised is the answer to your question, which is that we already have a wonderful database in this country of law-abiding citizens. It is the firearms licensing system. Those individuals are pre-approved through rigorous background checks. In fact, if I were to compare the screening I underwent to obtain a secret security clearance for the Government of Canada with the screening that a law-abiding firearm owner goes through to obtain a possession and acquisition licence, without a doubt the licence screening is far more rigorous. We have a list of individuals who have been pre-cleared as law-abiding citizens, who are legitimate gun users. They are not the ones who are trafficking in firearms; they are not the ones who are smuggling firearms.

When we talk about the abolition of the registry and perhaps allowing firearms owners to transfer their firearms without a record, these are individuals who have already been pre-qualified by the Government of Canada as law-abiding citizens. They are not the ones who have anything to do with the proliferation of illegal firearms into this country.

The answer, of course, as you alluded to, is drug dealers—individuals with lengthy criminal records that would make them ineligible for a firearms licence, and in many cases, individuals with outright firearms prohibitions imposed by our courts, meaning that under no circumstances could they lawfully possess a firearm, transfer one legitimately, or obtain a licence. That has absolutely nothing to do with the registry. The registry targets one group, and one group alone, and that's law-abiding firearms owners.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Thank you very much.

Sergeant Grismer, in regard to the police using the registry—or not using it, because it's so unreliable—you referred very briefly to our current fingerprint database as well as our DNA database, and the reliability of both those databases as compared to the long-gun registry.

If we do truly depend on it, and if you can get warrants based on the fingerprint database or the DNA database, can you explain a little further why you can't you get a warrant based on the long-gun registry database? That's a huge gap.

[Det Sgt Murray Grismer]

My presentation says I cannot and will not swear out a warrant based on the information contained in it. For me to obtain a search warrant, I have to swear before a judge or justice that I invariably believe the information contained in it to be true. If I include anything from the firearms registry, I can't swear out the warrant. That would be a false declaration.

I can't do that because I know of the errors. I know that in excess of a million guns and other firearms in Canada aren't in the registry. I know of the tens of thousands of firearms that are registered using patent and model numbers, and I know of the number of firearms in the registry that hold multiple registration certificates.

It's a database that, by all accounts from people within the registry, will take 70 years of attrition in order to be anywhere near accurate. I'm not going to swear before a judge, justice, or court that I believe information from it be true. I can't do that.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Thank you.

Mr. Farrant, you spoke briefly about something that is very disturbing to me and, I think, to all Canadians. That's the fact that two NDP members of Parliament who represented their constituents—whom you also represent with your organization in Ontario, because these two NDP MPs are from Ontario—were penalized severely by their party for consistently representing the constituents' views on this issue. They say they were never told this was a whipped vote. No one ever went to them and advised them of the consequences.

Bruce Hyer and John Rafferty have consistently stood up for their constituents, and they have now been severely penalized by the NDP, which would rather hear from some union representatives than their own members of Parliament who represent their party.

Can you please explain to all of us on this panel what message that sends to the people you represent in Ontario about how well respected their views are by the NDP?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

[Greg Farrant]

Thank you very much, Ms. Hoeppner, for the question.

Quite clearly, members of Parliament are sent here to represent constituents. They're elected by people locally to come to Ottawa to represent the views of the people in the community in which they reside. The two individuals in question have consistently represented the views of our members and the vast majority of legal, law-abiding hunters and recreational sport shooters in the Thunder Bay area. In the process they have been told they are not allowed to do that; they're supposed to toe the party line.

The message that sends back to our members in Thunder Bay, and indeed all legal, law-abiding firearms owners, is that when you send somebody to Ottawa to represent your interests, don't count on it if they don't fall within the party paradigm. I think that's a dangerous message to deliver.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much.

We'll now go to the final question of the day.

Mr. Scarpaleggia, you have seven minutes, please.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Thanks very much.

There has been very interesting testimony by individuals who have a lot of experience and knowledge of this issue.

Mr. Friedman, you quoted the Supreme Court. There's another quote from the case Regina v. Wiles, which I guess you're familiar with. The court said that the possession and use of firearms—I'm translating here—was a heavily regulated privilege. I don't think we can make a case against the registry based on the fact that gun owners have rights maybe tantamount to what exists in the United States.

On that note, I'd like to say for the record that the gun owners I know in my community happen to be the pillars of the community. So we're not impugning gun owners by being in favour of the registry. I don't think that long-gun owners should be made to feel like criminals because they have to register their guns. I believe the government has torqued that rhetoric. Previous governments never suggested they were criminals, but over time the government has told them they should feel like criminals if they register their rifles, and it snowballed from there. That's a bit of a tangent.

I understand your point about a gun owner perhaps feeling that they're breaking the law because some paper has been misplaced, or they haven't done their homework properly, or whatever. Our party recommended decriminalizing the failure to register the first time. I think if you fail to register two or three times, there might be a problem that needs to be addressed--maybe through the Criminal Code.

If we decriminalize the need to register the first time, would that not satisfy a lot of people who feel that maybe it's a little heavy-handed?

[Solomon Friedman]

Thank you very much for the question. The reason I mentioned the Firearms Act reference, the Supreme Court case, was that it's the case in which the validity of the law, in fact the federal regulation of firearms, was disputed by several provinces.

The way the Supreme Court solved this issue, and it's key to your point, was by saying that the federal government has jurisdiction to regulate personal property that is otherwise under the jurisdiction of the provincial governments, because it does so using the criminal law power. Not testifying as a constitutional expert here, but as a criminal defence lawyer, I would in fact question whether or not Parliament would be allowed to enact simple regulatory provisions regarding private property such as firearms.

The issue of firearms' owners feeling targeted by Parliament, being treated as criminals, is why they end up at my door. I'm a criminal defence lawyer and this is a strong segment of my practice.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Well, the thing is—

[Solomon Friedman]

I wish that segment of my practice would disappear. The end result is that firearms owners are targeted; they're charged and they're prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

The question of whether or not that could occur by decriminalizing it doesn't take it out of the realm of criminal jurisdiction. You're telling gun owners, “You are governed under the same statute”—the Criminal Code—“that governs assault, murder, etc., simply because you've licensed your gun and have complied voluntarily with this scheme.” That's the targeting of gun owners.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

The last word is yours, Mr. Scarpaleggia. You get to conclude for the day.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

There were a couple of points made that I would like to address. One is that this registry was a reaction to a media story and that there's no evidence the registry is useful. We see that a lot in Parliament. For example, the government introduced anti-smuggling legislation in response to a highly sensationalized story about the arrival of a boat of refugees on the west coast. Respectfully, we also see the government constantly harping on about minimum sentences when there is no real evidence to suggest they work.

For the sake of consistency, I thought I'd mention that, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Scarpaleggia.

On behalf of this committee, I want to thank all of the witnesses for coming here and bringing their perspective. We have a number of other meetings and we'll hear from many other witnesses. We want to thank you for the presentations you've made today.

The meeting is adjourned.