Thank you very much. Good morning.
Hello, Mr. Chair, ladies and gentlemen of the committee.
The organization “PolySeSouvient” is an informal group of students and graduates of the École Polytechnique, as well as survivors and families of the victims of the 1989 massacre at the Polytechnique. We also work with the families of victims of other gun killings.
I would like to mention the presence of Nathalie Provost, a survivor of the Polytechnique killings, and Serge St-Arneault, the brother of Annie, who was killed there. We are also joined by representatives of student associations, including Wendy Vasquez, President of the Quebec Confederation for Engineering Student Outreach, Jade Karim, Mobilization Coordinator of the Quebec Student Union, Manuel Klaassen, President of the Association des étudiants de Polytechnique, or Polytechnique student association, as well as a number of other students and graduates who are with them.
Our mission is simple: to reduce the number of deaths, injuries, and crimes committed with firearms. Having witnessed the human suffering that a single gun in the wrong hands can cause, we consider it our duty to make our voices heard in the public debate on gun control in order to defend everyone's right to life and safety.
Despite our strong criticism regarding its scope and its strength, we support Bill C-71. The measures contained in the bill will allow Canada to move forward by reversing some of the losses that occurred under the previous government, namely the requirement to verify the validity of a potential buyer's licence, and a reinstatement of sales records at commercial points of sale—in both cases, for non-restricted firearms.
Unfortunately, Bill C-71 is not a bold step. It barely fulfills the Liberal election promises, and it fails to address many flaws in the current law. For example, the Liberals promised to “repeal changes made by Bill C-42 that allow restricted...weapons to be freely transported without a permit”. However, before Bill C-42, authorizations to transport allowed the transportation of restricted weapons for very specific itineraries and even a period of time, for example, between a gun owner's home and the gun club of which he or she was a member. Bill C-71 does not reinstate this previous situation. In fact, the bill still allows the owner of a handgun to transport it between his home and any of the approved shooting clubs or ranges within the province, even if the person is not a member and the gun has no business being there.
The bill also does the minimum in terms of control on sales. If the goal is to support effective police work and deter illegal sales, Bill C-71 should have extended this requirement to private sales, as was recommended by the B.C. Task Force on Illegal Firearms. Since private sales are not included, opportunities for undetected diversions to the illegal market are still possible. For example, it will not be possible to track the future sale of any of the seven or eight million non-restricted firearms that are currently privately owned in Canada. At least in Quebec, more than a third of all transfers of non-restricted weapons in a year are between private individuals—one third.
Finally, the bill in no way addresses the legal availability of assault weapons, despite repeated warnings by the RCMP about their risk to public safety.
The intent of the 1991 and 1995 laws was to prohibit civilian versions of military weapons and large-capacity magazines, but because of the arbitrary nature of some of the criteria in the laws, the failure to update regulations meant to ban variants of prohibited weapons, loopholes, and unforseen market adaptations with respect to large-capacity magazines, it is today legal in Canada to own assault weapons for recreational purposes and to easily equip them with magazines that surpass the legal limit.
We hope that this committee will see fit to strengthen the legislation, and we hope that the Liberal government will also commit to further improvements beyond this bill.
Thank you.