Evidence of meeting #13 for Public Safety and National Security in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was firearms.
A recording is available from Parliament.
As an Individual
You're talking about this process being cumbersome, which is true for the average person in the north or in our area. And I, for one, agree. By the same token, we're amending part of that, or trying to address amending part of that.
Conservative
Ryan Leef Conservative Yukon, YT
Right. Now these people who haven't done that are criminals. There is also, admittedly, a good proportion of people who haven't provided information to the registry, which is not necessarily any help to the RCMP. We've certainly heard that through the Edmonton Police Service, the Saskatchewan police services, and the Ontario conservation officers. On the front line, the RCMP officers I know and have worked with as a former member of the RCMP found the registry horribly ineffective. There's definitely a disconnect between what the chiefs of police are saying and what the front-line police officers are saying.
Anyway, I'll turn over the remainder of my time to my colleague.
Conservative
Conservative
Garry Breitkreuz Conservative Yorkton—Melville, SK
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our witnesses for appearing before us today.
I want to point out that there is a precedent for destroying information. After the Second World War, all the information that was collected on people of Japanese background who had been in Canada or detained here was destroyed.
What really concerns me is the misuse of firearms registry information, and it's potentially putting Canadians at risk. The inaccuracy of that information is a reality. Archivists want accurate information. They wouldn't want to collect a lot of garbage.
It would be irresponsible for a government to turn over that kind of information. I would like to point out to you that when the Auditor General did her report, she reported that 90% of the registration certificates contained errors. Nothing has been done to correct those errors. So as I said, I think it would be irresponsible to turn that over.
A police officer has probably died because he thought the information in there was correct. He let down his guard. The family has requested that we respect their privacy on this, but wouldn't it be very irresponsible on the part of government to turn over information that is so totally inaccurate and potentially could put Canadians at risk? If the wrong people were to get that information—and we have anecdotal evidence to support this—the individuals could be targets for the criminal element, because the criminal element would use this information as a shopping list.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson
Thank you very much, Mr. Breitkreuz.
Unfortunately, you've not formulated your statement into a question. It was two minutes and three seconds, so we're just going to go right back to Mr. Scarpaleggia. If the rules apply for one side, they apply for the other. We're going to try that to be fair.
Mr. Scarpaleggia.
Liberal
Francis Scarpaleggia Liberal Lac-Saint-Louis, QC
Thank you, Chair.
Mr. Breitkreuz brought up the issue of the destruction of data on Japanese Canadians who were interned during the war. Is that correct? Are you aware of that?
Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
I'm not aware of it. I don't know.
Liberal
Francis Scarpaleggia Liberal Lac-Saint-Louis, QC
I would imagine that if this is true and if this was done, it was done because internment itself was a gross violation of human rights. But I find it hard to see that the gun registry is a gross violation of human rights. At least, the Supreme Court of Canada has said that that's not the case.
Mr. McNeely, I sympathize with the inconvenience that the registry causes many people in your community. That's one of the reasons why my party, as part of its election platform, promised that if elected it would not be a criminal offence for first-time failure to register. But would you like to see the licensing provisions done away with as well? As well as registration, you'd like to see licensing done away with?
November 22nd, 2011 / 11:40 a.m.
Liberal
As an Individual
I say probably, Francis, for the simple reason that I'm voicing my opinion that—
Liberal
Francis Scarpaleggia Liberal Lac-Saint-Louis, QC
Absolutely. That's an honest reply.
The government often makes the distinction between the registry and the certificate—the firearms acquisition certificate. Yet from what I've been told, the paperwork needed to obtain a firearms acquisition certificate is so much more complex than to register. I'm told that you can register at the gun shop.
So you'd be in favour of getting rid of the licensing requirement?
Liberal
Francis Scarpaleggia Liberal Lac-Saint-Louis, QC
Well, that would essentially be the same thing, but that's fine.
Ms. Decter, the argument we seem to be hearing—and I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth—is that police officers who are in favour of the registry, emergency room doctors who are in favour of the registry, and those who run women's shelters and are in favour of the registry are somehow irrational about this whole issue. The argument goes that the registry doesn't save lives, so these people have a fear of what life would be like without the registry and they're not being rational or they're greatly misinformed. Would you like to comment on that?
Director, Advocacy and Public Policy, YWCA Canada
Actually, I'd like to pass it to Lyda because I think she can explain exactly how the registry works in terms of enforcing the revocation of guns after an emergency protection order.
Executive Director, YWCA Yellowknife, YWCA Canada
The YWCA in Yellowknife facilitates emergency protection orders and we do about 90% of them for the whole territory. We work closely with the RCMP, who use the gun registry to identify what guns are in a location, so that they can't be sloughed off when they go to revoke them. They know what guns are there, and they can then look for those guns and say, “That's not all the guns you have. We show that you have other guns, or more guns, or whatever.”
They have been adamant with us about the value of the registry in domestic incidents. If I'm irrational.... You see so much violence in northern Canada, and I will do anything I can to try to reduce that, to try to reduce the impact on the lives of women, kids, elders, and men. So I'm not understanding how this is a battle of statistics when we register cars and we register births.
Executive Director, YWCA Yellowknife, YWCA Canada
I'm failing to understand entirely how the lives of Canadians can be taken so lightly.
Liberal
Francis Scarpaleggia Liberal Lac-Saint-Louis, QC
I heard a statistic. I think it was Ms. Young who said that—and correct me if I'm wrong, Ms. Young—only 9% of women are killed by guns. Was it? I shouldn't be asking you questions; I should be asking the witness questions.
According to the RCMP's 2002 data, 71% of spousal homicides involve rifles and guns. How do you reconcile these figures?
Director, Advocacy and Public Policy, YWCA Canada
That figure should be 71% of spousal homicides with firearms involve rifles. So when you're talking about homicides with firearms, particularly of women, it is long guns and rifles.
Liberal
Francis Scarpaleggia Liberal Lac-Saint-Louis, QC
Okay. The argument has also been made that it doesn't matter if you have a gun or not, because if you don't have a gun, you'll resort to strangulation, or you'll use a knife. How would you respond to that?
Obviously, a firearm is going to be a more foolproof means, let's say, of committing a murder. It's very hard for the person to resist, as one would if one were in a struggle with a knife or something. Do you agree with that?
Director, Advocacy and Public Policy, YWCA Canada
Well, yes, it would be hard to disagree with that.
Liberal
Francis Scarpaleggia Liberal Lac-Saint-Louis, QC
Okay, but many do. Thank you for putting that on record.
I have a study from the University of Montreal by two criminologists who were looking at the data from 1974 to 2004, and they found, doing their regressions, that Bill C-51 and Bill C-68 were followed by a significant drop in the number of homicides committed with a firearm, a decrease of 5% to 10%, depending on the province. So here we have some evidence. We have some social science peer-reviewed work that shows there is a link between the two.
Then we have someone else by the name of—