Public Safety Committee on May 12th, 2015

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

In any event, since you talked about the hunting and angling caucus, I want to outline clearly that we are strong supporters of the hunting and angling community. It is big business and important to the economy in the country. For many people, hunting is a way of life, and they're to be congratulated on it.

I want to come back just for a minute to.... Bill C-68 always seems to come up with Allan Rock's name. I wonder if you have any idea who drafted the original bill that became Bill C-68.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

No, I haven't.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

I'll tell you. She was the minister of justice. She was actually prime minister. It was Kim Campbell. If we want to really be pure, we can go back to those days. I believe the bill was Bill C-17, if anybody wants to look. But let's not get too pure in what previous ministers and governments have done.

In any event, on this bill specifically, can you tell us how many criminal charges have been laid in the last five years under this section of the Criminal Code that you're trying to remove?

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

No.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Have there been any?

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

Not that I'm aware of, but I stand to be corrected, Mr. Easter.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

So we don't know whether there were any charges under the Criminal Code.

Do we know whether there are any stats on any injuries that might have happened with BB guns, pellet guns, paint guns, etc., which this section, if abided by in the Criminal Code, might have prevented? Do we have any of those numbers?

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

I don't know what kinds of records are kept here, but in terms of your point about the value of the hunting and angling outdoor way of life and the fact that you and your party support it, I'll take that at face value.

However, your leader's views on Bill C-42 shocked many of us. I have an article here from November of last year. I'll quote from it:

Wednesday, following the Liberals’ weekly caucus meeting, Trudeau insisted that should C-42 become the law assault rifles, machine guns and high-powered handguns would be commonplace “outside busy places like shopping malls, grocery stores and sports arenas.”

That doesn't strike me as somebody who supports the hunting and angling way of life. I respect your support for this way of life, and I know that you respect it. As for the leader, this over-the-top comment shows where the leadership of the Liberal Party is coming from.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

One thing I've never seen from a Conservative member is an over-the-top comment. Have you, Mr. Chair? I never have.

In any event, I know that what Mr. Trudeau was talking about was machine guns and so on. They were prohibited guns, not something that hunters and anglers normally use. People going to a shooting range certainly sometimes do, and he is, as we are as a party, worried about that open transport becoming common practice.

I also want to underline something the leader said. He said he has absolutely no intention of bringing back the gun registry. That's a no-go. I think that lesson has been learned, and I hope it has been learned by all parties. I have some familiarity with that myself.

In any event, there really doesn't seem to be a lot of reason in terms of stats and numbers why these changes are being made.

I want to come back to Mr. Randall's point, because I think it is probably the most important one and one of the reasons we are taking the position we do, and that is the value of education and having this where it is under law. I respect everyone who, like myself, has had BB guns or pellet guns. I admit that we did some unsafe things with them when we were kids.

As for the value of education, I think it is wrong to have two sets of rules. Do you not see any value in leaving things as they are? There have been obviously no charges under the law. When people are using BB guns and pellet guns appropriately, and then they transfer into hunting rifles and so on, it's a good start to get into hunting and angling, etc. Is there no value to that? Why wouldn't you want the same law? I think you are complicating things with this bill.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

Au contraire, we are uncomplicating things. This is going back to the situation the way it was before the appellate court reversed the trial judge's decision. This is a return to the status quo, basically.

In terms of safety and so on, of course I agree with you. Proper gun safety is often taught using these low-velocity devices, but if these devices were subject to the Firearms Act and storage requirements, you would get into the absurd situation, for example, where a BB gun would have to be locked in a safe and the BBs, which are basically just pellets with no propellant in them or anything, would have to be locked up in another room. That is clearly absurd.

It is the absurdity of these kinds of laws, like the registry itself, that has caused the outdoors community to rise up. Again, I talked to the outdoors community across the country in my role as chair of the Conservative hunting and angling caucus, and I can say categorically that the support for my bill is widespread in this particular community.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much. That's it, Mr. Easter.

We will now go to Madam Doré Lefebvre.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for joining us today, Robert. We spent a few months together on the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans. We shared some fishing tales. It's very nice to have you with us today.

I am also part of Canada's hunting and fishing community. I don't like to be depicted as part of any given community. I sometimes find that the Conservatives put all the hunters and fishers in a specific category.

I agree with some of the points. However, I think that practically all the committee members have a least one air gun, as every time someone asks questions about that, they mention that they have one. So I will jump on the bandwagon. I also have air guns at home. It's always very nice to relax at the cottage and fire at targets.

That is why I have been looking at the current practices on air guns. I know that practically anyone can buy air guns with a velocity of less than 500 feet per second. They are currently not considered firearms under the Firearms Act. They are also not subject to the Criminal Code penalties for the possession of firearms. Air guns are considered firearms under the Criminal Code only if they are used to commit a crime.

This brings a lot of questions to my mind. Are the current laws not logical? Why would we want to change things? I feel that the logic is very simple. An air gun is considered to be a firearm under the Criminal Code only if a crime is committed. Why would we want to change the rules in that regard?

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

Well, I make the point that I'm not changing the rules. We are returning to the original situation with this technical amendment. My bill deals with the storage and transport requirements for these devices. It says that the current transport and storage would not apply to these devices, because they're clearly different from true firearms.

I do take at face value your individual support for the hunting, angling and outdoor community, but I would refer to two comments made by your colleagues from October of last year. Jean Crowder, the New Democrat member for Nanaimo—Cowichan, said that she supports—and this was dealing with the debate on Quanto's law—legislation in which “animals would be considered people and not just property”. The MP for Gatineau on the same day and in the same debate said that animals should be treated with “the same protection that we afford to children and people with mental or physical disabilities”. Why is this important? If those views were ever to get into law, that would be the end of all outdoor activity.

While I accept that you personally support them, I do not see the same view in your party.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

I would like to come back to the provisions and proposals in the bill presented today.

We have had discussions with the representatives of the Canadian Police Association. I must say that they have some reservations about Bill C-637. According to the discussions we have had with them, there have been fewer than a dozen convictions for transporting an air gun in all of Canada. So the number is very low. The Canadian Police Association feels that the amendments proposed in your bill would be unjustified given the number of charges laid.

What do you think about the Canadian Police Association's position on your bill?

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

Thank you for that.

As one who has been fighting the long-gun registry wars for many years, long before I became an MP, I became acutely aware of the differences between what the rank and file officers on the street thought versus what the representatives of the police chiefs association thought. The disconnect was very stark.

Again, the criminal use of these devices, such as using a look-alike item in a criminal act, is clearly a crime: it was a crime; it is a crime, and it will remain a crime. This bill is a technical amendment to that court ruling that basically would treat these low-velocity devices in the same way as true firearms, and my bill corrects that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Norlock, you have five minutes.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Thank you very much.

I really enjoy being told that it was a previous Conservative member of Parliament, a cabinet minister and actually prime minister, who brought in the original FACs, which the outdoors community had no problem with. It's only when the Liberals tried to up the ante and brought in the long-gun registry.... She never brought that into law and quite frankly would not have gotten it past most Conservatives in this country. I need to get that out of the way.

When the opposition talks about tracking sales, that's code for a new kind of registry through the back door; that's what it's all about. In actual fact, they're not entirely wrong, because under the old FAC, there was a tracking of it, and we might have had something like that anyway without all the kerfuffle, but the Liberals, always trying to one-up everybody else, brought in the long-gun registry, and we know what that caused in this country: great debate.

I'd also like to talk about safe storage and proper handling of such things as BB guns and pellet guns. For the edification of those here, the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters works in partnership with the Ontario government in delivering the hunter safety courses. Of course, because they support this legislation, one would have to assume that their partners in education also would support this piece of legislation, which I agree with you is simply bringing common sense back. Here's what you would have.

We have, of course, mostly young people using BB guns and pellet guns. I know my two grandchildren have received gifts of those, and their fathers go out with them to teach them proper firearm safety such as you talk about. The opposition talk about the value of education. I'd like to talk about the value of education as given by mom and dad. We don't need the big hand of the state in every form because in some legislators' eyes you can't trust mom and dad to do the good thing but have to have the state do it. My dad taught me firearm safety beginning with BB guns. So I have to agree with you there.

Here's the problem I have with the current legislation, if we don't adopt this bill to deal with a flaw in the law. We potentially could have a lot of young people ending up in young offenders court because they put the BB gun in a closet and didn't lock it up or didn't put a trigger lock on it. That's what would happen, as far as I'm concerned, because police officers, like anybody else, each interpret the law, and that's why all the laws say a police officer “may” charge.

When I became a police officer, we were told that you lay a highway traffic offence when a warning won't suffice. I can tell you, having a son in the police, that the education is completely changing. It's that you charge people first, unless you think a warning will suffice. So there is a change.

I have to agree with you. When any private member of Parliament sees something that they think needs to be corrected in law, it is their right to bring legislation forward. To suggest that any member of Parliament bringing a private member's bill forward who happens to be part of the governing party shouldn't bring it in, that it should be the party that does so.... You're right: we have a duty as legislators to do it.

If you wouldn't mind, given what we heard about injuries that could be sustained by BB guns and pellet guns, could you talk about the injuries that could be sustained by knives or baseball bats? I wonder whether you'd like to talk about any of the subjects that I've just ranted over.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

I agree with everything you've said, Mr. Norlock. Of course, Mr. Norlock, you're one of the strongest defenders of the outdoors community, and your bill proves that.

Anything can be used in an inappropriate way, including these particular devices. To your point about families being teachers, about parents mentoring their children, those are very profound and intimate experiences that last a young person an entire lifetime. Again, to your scenario of a young person, if the law stayed the same and the judge's ruling were allowed to stand, what would a child being thrown into court because their BB gun was stored the wrong way do to that child, in terms of their willingness to participate in the outdoors and perhaps willingness even to participate in conservation activities?

Again, that conclusion may be tenuous, but for me and millions of others who got their start in that particular way and ended up in careers in conservation, as the member for Yukon and the member for Wetaskiwin did, this is a very profound chain of events that can truly enrich a person's life, as it did mine.

Your points are very well taken, Mr. Norlock.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much. Time is up, Mr. Norlock.

We will now go to Ms. Michaud, for five minutes.

[Élaine Michaud, NDP, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Sopuck, thank you for being here.

I think it's fascinating that the government is using the public safety committee to impute motives to the opposition parties. I thought there was enough time in the House of Commons for that. This is a strange forum for these kinds of comments.

The riding I represent, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, is a rural riding where hunting and fishing are especially important. In fact, the Fédération québécoise des chasseurs et pêcheurs has its headquarters in my riding, in Saint-Augustin-de-Desmaures. I have developed some very strong relationships with those groups. We hold interesting and meaningful discussions on firearms and other issues.

That brings me to my question. I heard you talking about groups you have consulted. But those groups only seem to consist of people who already approve of your proposal. You don't seem to have actually consulted police forces from across the country. I'm not sure you have consulted any people who might raise issues with regard to your bill.

Could you give us more details on the consultation process you used? What groups have you consulted in Quebec, where there are special sensitivities around the firearm issue? I would be very curious to find out who you talked to in Quebec, in particular regarding your bill.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

I very much appreciate the question. I am only beginning to appreciate the outdoor culture in Quebec. I have met with Mr. Pierre Latraverse a number of times, and I consider him to be a friend. The outdoors culture in Quebec is profound.

I found it very interesting that the Quebec federation you speak highly of, and I speak very highly of, came out strongly in support of the Supreme Court decision to eliminate the long-gun registry records in Quebec.

[Élaine Michaud, NDP, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Mr. Sopuck, as I don't have much time, I would like to bring you back to my question about which groups you consulted in Quebec.

I think your party's opinion on the long gun registry is very clear. The NDP has also been clear: it does not want to bring the long gun registry issue back on the table. The discussion should not be about that.

I would like to bring you back to my original question: which groups did you consult in Quebec while you were drafting your bill?

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

It wasn't me that brought up the Quebec federation or the supposed sensitivities of Quebeckers to the registry. You did, so I'm responding to that.

[Élaine Michaud, NDP, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

You are talking about firearms and not the registry.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Madam Michaud, a question also deserves a response. If it's out of order, or out of line, the chair will order it so.

Please, Mr. Sopuck.