Evidence of meeting #15 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 amendment.
A recording is available from Parliament.
11:50 a.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
No. I would only remind committee members that Minister Baird would not have much do at committees if he were unable to bring photos and screens and teleprompters. Mr. Kenney and the ministers seem to be—
November 29th, 2011 / 11:50 a.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Okay.
This is a plea to my colleagues across the way. This is not a hunting weapon. This is not used by farmers to protect their livestock. This is a weapon that is designed, purchased, and used as a sniper weapon. A weapon described by its own manufacturer as being for urban combat is not a weapon for the people we're talking about. The transfer of these weapons into unknown hands is a danger, a clear and present danger for all of us.
All we ask for in this amendment, this change to the bill, is that we regard the classification of these types of weapons two years after this bill comes into force, so that we can understand that we're not letting loose guns into the public that the public doesn't want to see.
We all claim to seek safer streets. This amendment allows us to do that. If the government had similar amendments in their previous bill, as Ms. Hoeppner's did, why have it then and not now? What have you learned in the meantime that says that the transference of these types of weapons is suddenly a good idea? It was in government Bill S-5and in Ms. Hoeppner's bill, which I voted for. That was a good provision.
We have to understand what we're talking about here. We can't simply go back to the public and say that letting this gun loose is a good idea. It's not. So let's make the amendment. Allow for the reclassification of guns that we don't want out in the public. That's what this amendment seeks to do.
It's reasonable and it's what the public wants. It's just to protect the public against these kinds of firearms. These aren't just firearms for hunters, but for other people too, and they are being used for something else. We can improve this bill now, in the next few minutes.
The chair is going to rule this one potentially out of order, but there is a potential for us as a committee to realize that this is incorrect as the bill is written. We can amend this.
This one's not out? Oh, good. Hooray!
11:50 a.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Hope is re-inspired.
Let's make the change. Let's make the change, folks. We need to. This is correct.
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
11:50 a.m.
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank Mr. Cullen for bringing forth this amendment. In fact we've adopted the Conservatives' approach to naming things, and we call this the bad scary guns amendment. I know they like to name things, have some fancy names on things, so simply to help everybody understand what this amendment is for, we call it the bad scary guns amendment.
Mr. Cullen has showed us some of the guns that end up in a category, and I call it a category for a good reason, because there are different categories. There are prohibited weapons, there are restricted weapons, and there's everything else. The everything else the government likes to call the long-gun registry, but in fact the everything else includes bad scary guns.
Now, some of them they may not think are bad and scary, like sawed-off shotguns, double-barrelled 12 gauge shotguns that are actually manufactured in the same shape and size as a sawed-off shotgun, with a 12.5-inch barrel. In fact it's called the outlaw; that's what the manufacturer calls it. It's called the outlaw shotgun and you can buy it for $300, according to the advertisements. You can stick it in your backpack. Now, why you want a 12 gauge double-barrelled sawed-off shotgun in your backpack, I'm not sure. People saw off shotguns--as some members opposite have been engaged in why they are illegal--so they can conceal them.
This amendment.... I think Mr. Cullen talked about it being required within two years. But it's also before any of the provisions of the act come into force, and every two years thereafter, conduct a review along with experts on the classifications of firearms. So which ones should be in what category?
There's a very good reason for this, even outside of the provisions of this bill, because there's a habit among gun manufacturers to actually change the model numbers, make slight modifications to their guns for the sole purpose of them fitting into one category or another. Under our Criminal Code, I haven't looked at this particular schedule lately, but there's a schedule of guns that are listed as restricted, and they're very detailed--the manufacturer, the name, the model number. So all the manufacturers of guns have to do is change the model number, and then it's not on the list any more. They probably have to make some modification to demonstrate that it is actually a different gun, but as I understand it this is a habit of gun manufacturers, and I think anybody involved in law enforcement would be aware of that.
Mr. Cullen told me, and he made the speech privately, but apparently a whole episode of The West Wing, the famous TV show about what goes on in the United States White House, was devoted to how gun manufacturers get around the gun laws. They had a big conversation about what they do, the specifics of what they do to make that happen.
This is why we think the government is being irresponsible here. When they seek to throw out the gun registry for rifles and shotguns, they're also throwing out the registration requirements of guns like these semi-automatics, like these assault weapons, like the guns that were used in the Montreal massacre at the Polytechnique in 1989 on December 6, with the next anniversary being next Tuesday. That weapon is in the same category as hunting rifles and the shotguns that people might use for hunting ducks or birds. That weapon, along with shotguns and others, will now be in the category where not only is there no registration required, but the information concerning who owns and who has those particular guns, if they're registered, will be destroyed--irresponsibly, in our view--by this government. The consequence would be that the buying and selling of these types of firearms, as well as the rifles and shotguns, will be without record.
As the RCMP said, in their evaluation of the gun registry and the gun control system in Canada in February 2010, “anyone can buy and sell firearms privately and there would be no record”. There would be no record of what happens to these guns, who buys them and who sells them. Also there is the concern expressed by the RCMP that the registration of these guns “...is very useful in investigating licensed owners in the trafficking of firearms to unlicensed users. Without the registry it becomes almost unenforceable.”
So when you take away the transfer requirements to verify the accuracy of a licence.... That's not something that Ms. Hoeppner, in her bill last year, would allow, but this year, in this bill, there's no problem; we'll reduce that requirement. We're going to have essentially unenforceable laws related to the transfer of guns. The bad, scary guns that we're talking about here will be in the same category and be able to be transferred willy-nilly in our society.
That is something we have heard a lot of frightened people talk about—women who have come before this committee, victims of violent crime. We had a person who survived the assault on the women engineers of the Polytechnique before us last week. In the circumstances on the committee, the witnesses were given five minutes to speak. Essentially, they were begging this committee to be concerned about the proliferation of guns and weapons that will come with this bill.
This amendment is a responsible measure that would ensure....
It's one thing for the minister to go into the House and say we're not doing anything, or as Ms. Hoeppner said last week, we're not changing classification; we're not doing anything with the classification of records.
Well, let me say this. You are responsible for the consequences of your actions. If you take away the protection of a whole category of weapons, you can't just say we're trying to help out duck hunters and farmers, when you're letting loose these bad scary guns, which happen to be in the same category. You're not changing the categories, but the category they're in now requires them to be registered, requires them to be stored in a certain way and registered. It requires that if you transfer them, the registration particulars have to be sent, you have to verify who's buying them, you have to make sure they actually have a valid licence and that there are no gun prohibitions in place, you have to phone the registrar of records to make sure that licence is still valid and that there are no changes.
Now they're in a category that says you have to ask for a licence, and as long as you have no reason to believe it's not valid, then you're okay. If you want, you can phone up the registry, but—and here's the “but”—the registrar is not even allowed to keep a record of the fact that you called.
So somebody comes by—the police, maybe—and says “We're looking for this gun, which was used in a homicide, and we think you had a gun like this.”
You say: “Oh, yes, I had one, but I sold it to this guy who came by. I forget his name, but he showed me this licence. In fact, I even went so far as to phone the registry, and they said it was valid.”
“Well, what's his name?”
“I don't know.”
“Do you have a bill of sale?”
“Nope. I never kept that; I just sold him the gun. I complied with the act. Who can prove that I didn't?”
That's how loosey-goosey this bill will be if it passes—and we always live in hope—and that loosey-goosey control, or lack of control, will apply to these bad scary guns. That's what this amendment is for. It's an opportunity, folks, for you to put something in that actually recognizes the consequences of what you're doing. They're negative consequences. You can't just say you're not changing the registration—you're changing the law, and one of the effects of this change in the law is to allow these bad scary guns to proliferate in our communities and get in the wrong hands, get in the hands of criminals.
Noon
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson
Thank you, Mr. Harris.
We do have a speakers list. It's Mr. Scarpaleggia, Madam Boivin, and Madam Hoeppner.
Noon
Liberal
Francis Scarpaleggia Liberal Lac-Saint-Louis, QC
Thank you, Chair.
I think it's a fine idea to require that classifications be reviewed every two years. I think, as in all aspects of society, technology is changing. New kinds of weapons are being developed and hitting the market all the time. How could we not require, when we're talking about something as dangerous as a weapon, that there be some second-guessing every couple of years, that it be required that the government show that it's tracking what's going on in the market?
We've heard a lot during these hearings about dads and moms who want to teach their sons and daughters about longstanding family and community traditions of hunting. Very few people quarrel with that. We all respect that different parts of the country have different traditions. But what we're seeing, Chair, in this day and age is that the demographics of gun ownership are changing.
I would like to quote from an article written by Jeff Davis in the Edmonton Journal of October 26. I'll quote verbatim here:
The consumer tastes of Canadian gun owners are fast changing, as shooters eschew vintage hunting rifles in favour of the latest "tacti-cool" military-style weapons—many of which appear in movies and popular video games, such as Call of Duty. As a new generation of young men become interested in shooting, but not hunting, retailers are trying to meet the growing demand for sleek firearms. Canadian authorities, meanwhile, facing the repeal of the long-gun registry by the federal government, are worried about the trend.
That's what really came to mind when I saw the very useful photographs that Mr. Cullen showed us. These are obviously not gopher guns. They're not meant to protect farms from rodents, including gophers. One can't imagine what these would be used for in the daily conduct of a farming business, Chair.
Now, the demographics are changing. We don't understand the new demographics of gun ownership. Perhaps these individuals are no different in their attitudes and comportment from legitimate hunters and farmers, but we just don't know. We haven't done the research on this.
That's why I think it's important that we review gun classification every couple of years, because those who manufacture guns, those who work on modifying guns, are always a step ahead. It's not just in terms of the gun market; it's in terms of everything. We've seen, for example, that the RCMP changed its mind not long ago. It allowed the Norinco Type 97 rifle to be imported and sold as a non-restricted weapon. About 50 were sold, up until the point where the RCMP discovered that maybe it needed to reclassify this gun, which is what it did. It reclassified the Norinco Type 97 as a prohibited weapon. As a result, the RCMP took the step of sending letters to 50 owners who had bought these guns and asking them to turn the guns in to their local police stations.
If we don't have the registry, I don't know where we're going to send the letters. If retailers aren't required to keep records, I don't know where we're going to send the letters, Chair.
The point I'm trying to make here is that gun classification is not an exact science. I've used this term before. We're not talking about space science here. This is a very crude and inexact science, so gun reclassification can happen, and should happen, from time to time.
If we don't amend the bill to include the NDP's well-motivated amendment, I would suspect that the RCMP would feel discouraged. There would be a disincentive. They'd say that nobody really cares about reclassifying firearms, so why should they go to the trouble of researching the situation, of researching firearms, and reclassifying them? It's not a priority for the government. They don't think they need to ever really reclassify firearms. Besides, we're facing budget constraints because of recession budgets. We should be spending our money on something else rather than looking at reclassifying a firearm.
So I think this amendment is a good one. It would send a signal to the RCMP and to others that reclassification is an ongoing matter and that reclassification will be required in going forward, just as a fact of life.
I applaud the honourable member for bringing this amendment, and I will be voting for it.
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
12:10 p.m.
NDP
Françoise Boivin NDP Gatineau, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
We know that time is wasting and that the clock is ticking for the firearms registry. It's obvious. Having said that, this might be our last chance to plead with the majority Conservative government that just because it comes from the opposition doesn't mean that it isn't fundamentally and necessarily good.
In fact, in exactly one week to the day, all the politicians, all the parties combined, will stand up on December 6, with their hands over their hearts and rise up against violence against women and say how appalling it is. Right now, the image I have in my mind as I address you, Conservatives, is of all those victims of the Polytechnique, the people who appeared here. That association has never stopped working, since 1989. The registry became a symbol, and with this symbol some of them managed to divide people. There are some Canadians who are also victims of horrible criminal acts, and then there are hunters and sport shooters. I cannot say it enough.
Instead of trying to find ways to bring everyone together, to find logical solutions, that hold water, that meet the greatest common denominator—and there is one—the amendments that have been presented… On this side of the table, we have people who are in favour of the registry and some who are opposed because we are able to remove the irritants that made some people feel singled out.
We heard some horror stories as if, on this side of the table, we were trying to make criminals out of these people. I won't go back to that. We heard from young people from Dawson College who testified before us. We also heard from people who are working hard with the anti-firearms coalition. Over the many years and through all the different debates and the different bills of all kinds that have been presented in Parliament, they have all learned to watch, knowing that one day we would be in this position where we'd be up against a wall. They all tried to put a little water in their wine when it came to this registry, which costs practically nothing compared to some expenses. In fact, the issue of expenses is certainly not your strongest argument. We need to look at how to get rid of the irritants. That's what counts.
I want to clarify this because it's important. I'll quote from part of the amendment:That Bill C-19, in Clause 31, be amended by adding after line 25 on page 12 the following:“(2) Despite subsection (1), the Minister must, before any of the provisions of this Act comes into force and every two years after any provisions of this Act comes into force, conduct a review, in consultation with experts, of the classification of firearms under…
Personally, I'm not a lover of firearms. I don't know much about them, save for what I've learned through the study of this bill. In fact, I had shivers up my spine when I saw the pictures—a picture's worth a thousand words—of some weapons that will be sold freely. Someone could easily acquire an unlimited number of these long guns without anyone being upset, asking questions or being concerned about the situation.
Just because it comes from the opposition doesn't mean it's fundamentally bad. Open your eyes, open your ears, open your heart if you have heard the cry from some of the groups who testified and some of the individuals who may not necessarily be great fans of the registry, but who can understand that, in a free and democratic society, sometimes certain limits are necessary, while not preventing them from doing what they want to do, such as hunt, sport shoot or collect firearms, and so on.
Unfortunately, this is one of my last speeches on this matter. I would like to tell you what Chief Matthew Torrigan said. He said that you cannot accept our opinion when it serves your purposes, then reject it when it goes against them.
Mr. Harris and I spent hours and hours in the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. We heard these same witnesses, who supported the government, tell you that. These people wanted to be respected for the role they play in society.
These people have been very clear and unequivocal in their remarks here. I think there is a way to accommodate all the elements. This is certainly one of the amendments that will help me to feel a little safer when I leave here. Without it, my belief will be that Canada has just taken several steps backwards and I will have serious doubts as to my safety.
12:15 p.m.
Conservative
12:15 p.m.
Conservative
Candice Bergen Conservative Portage—Lisgar, MB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to begin by saying that I always get a little nervous when the NDP start showing bad scary guns and saying they are guns that won't have to be registered. We know what happened over the weekend: the bad scary guns you showed were actually restricted firearms. Sometimes you may have some confusion as to which firearms are restricted and which are not restricted.
12:15 p.m.
Conservative
Candice Bergen Conservative Portage—Lisgar, MB
For the record, I want to let the committee know that the government will not be supporting this amendment. Classification is done through regulation, and we believe that's where it should stay and not in this bill.
Thank you.
12:15 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson
Thank you.
Very quickly, Mr. Cullen. You've already spoken to it. Go ahead.
12:15 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
As Madame Boivin said, I suppose we're looking for a governor's pardon here at the eleventh hour. We're looking for the Conservatives to understand that the mandate they were given by Canadians, by law-abiding hunters and farmers, was not a mandate to let more guns like this into society. This isn't the gun that Candice and I have talked about. This isn't the gun that can kill somebody at two and a half kilometres, pierce Kevlar armour, and is designed for light armoured vehicles. This is another thing.
We're pleading with the government. We know they have a certain focus and ideology when it comes to the registry, and that's fine. They campaigned on one piece, but they didn't campaign on this. They didn't get a mandate from the Canadian public for this. You're associating law-abiding gun owners with this, and that's not right.
We can make this change. Let's make this change as a committee right now. This is within your power. We're pleading, but we're also deeply concerned about the consequences of what this committee is about to do and what Parliament is about to do, in terms of the health and safety of the people we represent.
12:15 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson
Thank you, Mr. Cullen.
We will proceed now with amendment NDP-7 to clause 31.
12:15 p.m.
NDP
Françoise Boivin NDP Gatineau, QC
I would like a recorded vote.
(Amendment negatived: nays 6; yeas 5)
(Clause 31 agreed to on division: yeas 6; nays 5)
(On clause 1—Short title)
12:15 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson
We will move back to the short title of this act. We have a New Democratic Party amendment to this, reference number 5281217.
Mr. Harris, please.
12:15 p.m.
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
Thank you, Chair.
I'm speaking to the amendment to clause 1, which is an amendment to change the short title of the act. The current short title of the act specifically calls it the Ending the Long-gun Registry Act. My proposal is to change the title to reflect the consequences of the act. That is to change the title to the Risking Public Safety Act. Anticipating that there may be a ruling coming at some point, I will talk about the amendment and the title.
I don't know whether it's in order or not to change the title in this manner. I hope it is. Whether it is or not, I think the point has to be made here that we've just been through a process of trying to improve this legislation. In fact, the Ending the Long-gun Registry Act title indicates what the government's plan was, but you know, I think the fact of the matter is that our party didn't like the registry the way it was either. We had in fact put forward a whole series of balanced proposals throughout this debate, including here today, to try to remove the problems people had experienced with this act, the concerns that people had.
We offered a suggestion to decriminalize first-time failure to register guns. We wanted to protect the privacy of identifying information that the government in fact released to some people to do studies and polls. We wanted to enshrine Auditor General oversight. We wanted free registration in legislation. We wanted grace periods to register inherited guns. We wanted to provide a legal guarantee for aboriginal treaty rights. We wanted to ensure that important information would be shared among the police, military, and the Canadian firearms program to identify dangerous individuals. We wanted to make sure that only long guns for hunting or sports could be classified as non-restricted and the bad scary guns we talked about wouldn't get into that category. We wanted to close the important business importation loophole, which brings all kinds of guns into Canada without proper border controls. And we wanted to ensure that status cards for aboriginal people were accepted as official IDs.
There were a lot of problems. A lot of problems have been identified over the past number of years, and we haven't had this government do anything to fix those problems in the five years that it's been in government. Instead, it brought in this legislation, which effectively ends the long-gun registry and does nothing else.
What it does when it's ending the long-gun registry exposes the public to risk. That's why we would suggest a more appropriate name for this act. I'm glad the order has been changed by the chair or the experts, to say that a logical order is to have this debate last, because if I had said this at the beginning we may have made amendments that would have made this Risking Public Safety Act title a little bit harder to be convincing. But having attempted to enhance public safety by amendments to this act, as we've had here debated this morning, and failed, it's pretty clear to me that this bill really should be called the Risking Public Safety Act, not the Ending the Long-gun Registry Act.
We think it's irresponsible for this government to bring in this legislation without any amendments. We've brought in amendments to ensure that business records are kept by sellers of guns, by people who are in the business of selling guns. This has been the law since 1977 or 1978, I believe, that a gun shop or someone who is selling guns keeps a record of the gun and who they sell it to, and the registration number and the serial number and the model number, so that there's a starting-point record of guns that are available in our communities.
Who gave this government a mandate to say that guns can proliferate in our community without anybody who sells them, buys them, imports them, or manufactures them keeping a record of who sells them?
This is something brand new. This is not a part of the irritation of the long-gun registry, where people were trying to register their guns and register transfers. That was brought in, yes, in the nineties. Long before that, individual guns were considered of such importance and potential danger that for public safety reasons, for police enforcement reasons, and for criminal investigation reasons....
I talked to the chief of the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary recently. He said this is an important investigative tool, knowing where guns are. It helps to investigate crimes. If people are subject to a gun prohibition, at least we have some record that they had guns at one time. It's not the complete record. It helps us identify them.
By the way, no police officer should knock on the door of someone in a domestic dispute or a dispute of some kind where that person has a firearms prohibition and assume, because of the firearms prohibition, that there are no guns there. That was the case that was brought before us a couple of days ago, in which it was said it was a case where the firearms registry killed a police officer. Now, I'm extremely hurt by this tragedy that occurred to a police officer who was shot by someone who was a prohibited firearms owner and she lost her life. To shamelessly try to use that for political purposes in a hearing we had last week and to suggest this person was killed by the registry I find appalling. I find that appalling. It's a tragedy when anybody loses their life as a result of a gun, whether it's a police officer or an individual or the victims of the massacres we've heard about.
Let's not play politics with this. Let's look at the fact that we had a system in this country where manufacturers sold guns to businesses. When they sold them to individuals, there was a record kept. It was useful for all sorts of purposes: for protection of public safety for police investigation, for attempts to find the people who, if you're trying to trace a gun.... We have international obligations in terms of tracing records of firearms for the purposes of public safety. They're going to be gone. We tried to fix that by putting back the business records here.
We tried to tighten up transfer requirements to the ones they were before. If you're going to sell a gun, you have to verify who owns it. Even Mrs. Hoeppner's bill in the last Parliament ensured that was there. That's gone. We've put in a provision that suggests that before you start doing all of this and putting in these loosey-goosey regulations, have a reclassification review. No, no. We suggested that provinces, territories, and aboriginal groups may want to have some ability to control firearms and guns in their communities. No. We've had the Minister of Public Safety for Quebec come before this committee pleading for cooperation and assistance from the Government of Canada. No.
We have all of these things that have happened--
12:25 p.m.
Conservative
Brent Rathgeber Conservative Edmonton—St. Albert, AB
I think it's incumbent on Mr. Harris to introduce his amendment and then seek a ruling on its admissibility. He's clearly arguing his amendment rather than introducing it.
12:25 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson
I'm giving him a little latitude on the introduction.
I perhaps should have given this speech a little earlier. When we introduce the amendment, we introduce it as quickly and succinctly as we can. Then when we move into debate, that's a different issue.
Just wrap it up, Mr. Harris.