Public Safety Committee on May 24th, 2018

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

What's the difference between the magazine capacity legislation in Canada and the United States?

[Rod Giltaca]

In Canada, we have magazine capacity restrictions for a centre-fire semi-automatic rifle or shotgun. That's five rounds. In the United States, typically they don't have magazine capacity restrictions, other than in a few states.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Are you aware of any province in Canada that would allow a .223 for the hunting of deer?

[Rod Giltaca]

The .223s are used constantly for hunting deer.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

They aren't in Alberta; it's illegal. That calibre is actually illegal. This is a sport shooting firearm, for the most part, I would argue, and so would you, but there are significant differences in the way the legislation handles those firearms in Canada and in the United States. That is the difference, and that legislation is already in place.

Mr. Bernardo, when the minister was here, he spoke about gun shows, and so did the bureaucrats. They would require a heads up in order to process...because of course the bureaucracy works Monday to Friday from nine to five, most of the time, and of course the gun shows happen on the weekends.

Do you have any concerns about the capacity for unlawful transactions to occur outside normal business hours of the Government of Canada?

[Tony Bernardo]

We have lots of concern about the ability of the government to process the transactions, and not just in the gun show area. As Mr. Torino mentioned, what about estate sales? Somebody dies, the executor brings in 20 or 30 or 50 guns that need to be transferred, but they can't transfer them because they don't have a firearms licence.

How do you transfer them? You have to put the seller and the buyer in. Now, therefore, we have a gigantic log jam.

What about when you're dealing with places in the great white north, where there are no abilities to do this electronically? How do you do the verification process then?

There are all kinds of holes in this. You could drive a truck through them.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

In one case, Minister Goodale indicated that if you were willing to use the website there would be an automatic approval of a transaction. What does that tell you about the actual intent of the process for the transaction?

[Tony Bernardo]

It's to register it, nothing more than that.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

My question is to the CCFR.

I asked Minister Goodale to elaborate, because in his words he said that the purpose of some of this legislation is to pursue the source of the crime for those lawful firearms that are stolen and then used subsequently.

What would Mr. Goodale's purpose be in saying that he wants to be able to trace—of course, he'd have to trace those records against the registry—back to the source of a lawful sale and get to the source of the crime? What does that mean to you?

[Tracey Wilson]

I'm not sure how tracing it to the source of the original owner or purchaser helps, if it has been stolen. It still doesn't direct you to where the crime happened. It's just a registration of the transactions that happened between licensed gun owners.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Thank you.

Mr. Zimmer, do you have any questions to follow up?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

If he has, he has 30 seconds.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

I just want to ask Mr. Torino one quickly.

You talked about having formerly had a role, and it was the same with Mr. Bernardo, on the Canadian firearms advisory committee, one that crossed party lines.

Can you go into your history? One thing we've seen is a polarization and a politicization of this argument, but this was a good example of taking the politics out of decisions made around firearms.

Can you speak to that, Mr. Torino?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Do it in a little less than 10 seconds.

[Steve Torino]

As I said, I chaired the committee for ministers of justice from 1996 to 2006 for the Liberal government and for the next nine years for the Conservative government. Whether our policies were all accepted or not, our credibility was completely accepted, because we never told any stories. We based everything on StatsCan, on current events, and always told the truth, as our colleagues here do also.

I think that's the main item we should take a look at: the credibility of the witnesses who come and of the statements they make. The firearms community has proven itself since the beginning of Bill C-68. The daily check of our licences is probably proof of this more than anything else.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Zimmer, and welcome to the committee. Your great talent has shown that you can squeeze a minute out of 30 seconds.

We will suspend for two minutes and repanel. Thank you all.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

We're back.

We have one witness out of two, which is unfortunate. We're trying by some technical means or other to get Firearms Instructors Association Canada, Mr. Nielsen. In the meanwhile I'll ask Ms. Cukier.

You have 10 minutes, please.

[Wendy Cukier, President, Coalition for Gun Control]

Thanks very much. My name's Wendy Cukier and I'm the President of the Coalition for Gun Control. I appreciate your giving me the time to appear before you today.

I have provided a brief in both French and English. Rather than walking through the entire document, I'd just like to highlight a few key points.

The first point that is important to emphasize is that the Coalition for Gun Control was founded in 1991 and is focused on reducing gun death, injury, and crime. I say that because, as many of you know, when we look at the misuse of firearms it extends far beyond gangs and guns. Certainly, gang-related violence is a problem in big cities, but as you will have heard from many groups focused on domestic violence, the role of firearms in domestic violence is a huge issue for women's shelters across the country.

You've heard from the Canadian Paediatric Society that the misuse of guns has a particular toll, not just in terms of death but also injury. From groups like the Canadian Public Health Association, the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians, and others, you've heard that the number one cause of firearms death in this country is actually suicide. From our perspective, strong and effective gun control regulation is a critical part of a crime prevention strategy, but it's also a critical part of a suicide prevention strategy, and of any strategy that is attempting to address issues around violence against women, or indeed radicalization and political violence. How we define the issue is important.

Many Canadians take pride in the fact that the rates of gun injury, death, and crime in Canada are much lower than in the United States. It was ironic that we saw Canadians across the country join in solidarity with the March for Our Lives in the U.S. to ban the AR-15 there, yet we've just heard that in Canada it's sold as a restricted firearm. Many Canadians don't know a lot about how our gun laws actually compare to those in the United States. They certainly don't know that currently most U.S. states have better controls over the sales and traceability of rifles, shotguns, and unrestricted weapons than we now do in Canada. Most Canadians, when asked, support stronger gun laws. We've provided a recent poll in the brief, but the polls are consistent.

What's also interesting is that this is without question a gendered issue. While polls will show that the majority of gun owners may oppose certain kinds of firearms regulation, the majority of people living with gun owners support them. In those very rural communities where people are very concerned about the opinions of gun owners, it's important to underscore the fact that there are many people living with gun owners who actually support stronger gun laws. The gender splits on this issue are quite clear.

The other thing that is important to emphasize is that in much of the discussion around firearms control, it has been presented as an urban issue, with the elites imposing their will on law-abiding gun owners in rural areas. However, if you actually look at the data, the rates of gun death and injury in rural communities in the west are much higher than in the cities. Rates of women and their children being threatened with guns in domestic violence are higher in rural areas. Rates of suicide, particularly among youth, are higher in rural areas. The rates at which police officers are shot and killed are higher in rural areas and in the police services that operate there. The guns that are typically used in those environments are rifles and shotguns, which are currently sold as unrestricted weapons.

The other piece that I think we need to be attentive to just as background to this issue is the sources of guns that are misused. When we look at rural communities, when we look at the west, when we look at, for example, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Yukon, and so forth, what you will see is a predominance of unrestricted rifles and shotguns, especially in domestic violence, suicide and the murders of police officers, and many of those guns are legally owned.

On the other hand, when we look at gang-related violence in big cities it's no surprise that handguns are the firearms most often used. One of the very troubling trends that we have seen in recent years, which we would say is a direct result of the relaxation of controls over the sales of firearms, and particularly restricted and prohibited weapons, is, first of all, a doubling of restricted and prohibited weapons. There are now more than a million in Canada. They're supposed to be restricted and prohibited because they're considered to represent a greater risk than other sorts of guns. But the other phenomenon, which you may have heard about from other witnesses, is that for the first time in 30 years more of the firearms recovered in crime in Toronto that were traced were traced back to Canadian sources, rather than smuggled in from the United States. That's largely a function of the fact that it's easier to get guns now in Canada and so there's less demand for smuggling.

The Illegal Firearms Task Force from British Columbia, which I'm sure many of you saw, has reinforced that the same thing has happened in British Columbia among the firearms that they have traced. I think it's worth emphasizing that the diversion of legal guns has become a much bigger problem. I want to quote from this and read into the record:

Over the past three years in B.C., however, approximately 60 per cent were sourced in Canada, according to data from the National Weapons Enforcement Support Team (NWEST). NWEST attributes this trend to changes in firearms legislation in states such as Washington and Oregon requiring recordkeeping at the point of sale for all firearms, which allows tracing to identify a purchaser.

In Canada, there is no national legislation to require record keeping for sales of nonrestricted firearms. Unlike many American states, sellers need not keep any records of sales of non-restricted firearms. Purchasers can re-sell, trade or give away a firearm without keeping records. Without sales records, crime investigators often cannot trace the ownership of crime guns

I think it's critically important to remind people, and I know you know this, that when the registry was dismantled, the registration of rifles and shotguns was dismantled, the 1977 legislation, which required restricted weapons to be tracked by dealers, was not reinstated, in spite of cries from police and particularly conservative witnesses who came before the committee.

There are three amendments that we are hoping you will consider. One is with respect to licensing, ensuring that the provisions are broad enough to address the intent, which is that a person is not eligible to hold a licence if it is desirable in the interests of the safety of that or any other person, meaning suicide prevention is supposed to be one of the measures considered in the licensing provision. We would like a (d) section added to the list that says, is considered a threat to themselves or any other person.

The second revision is with respect to the record-keeping. I refer to the table at the back and the 1977 legislation. We would like to see added, “The business must produce the record and inventory for inspection at the request of any police officer or police constable or any other person authorized by regulations”, etc.

I think returning to the legislation from 40 years ago is a small price to pay. It would bring us in line with the legislation in the United States, and no matter what people say it is not a reinstatement of the registry.

The final point is that previously the authorizations to transport were restrictive, in that they said you were authorized to take your firearm from two or more specified locations, i.e. your home, to a shooting range. The legislation that was introduced a few years ago changed that to require that you be authorized to take the firearm to any shooting club in the province where you're resident. There are shooting clubs in every community. That, in fact, is carte blanche to be transporting the firearm.

Thank you very much. There are some other matters I can discuss with you as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

I'm sure you will be able to work them in during the question and answer session.

Our second witness cannot be contacted so we will go to the question-and-answer session. Colleagues, I want to reserve a minute for committee business at the end of our questioning.

With that, we have Ms. Dabrusin.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Thank you for coming and presenting to us today.

I found the contrasts we heard between the two panels interesting. I was looking at the materials you gave to us. You specifically address in here domestic violence as one of the issues.

In our previous panel we had also discussed domestic violence briefly. One of the issues that came up is we were told that a woman who had felt threatened by a person who had a gun in their household could report it, and that would resolve the issue. That would be a quick resolution.

Could you talk to us about why a woman who's feeling intimidated by the presence of a gun in her household in a domestic violence situation might not feel able to immediately report that?

[Wendy Cukier]

I am not an expert in domestic violence, and I know you have had requests from a number of front-line shelters to appear before the committee, and they could answer this better. Obviously, when women feel threatened in the environment, they are not likely to report. Often there are economic issues. Often there are concerns that police can't protect them.

There is another thing, I think, that is important to remember. While taking guns away from someone after there's a threat is, of course, really important, and that's why we have prohibition orders and so on, we want to prevent people who have a history of risky behaviour from having access to firearms in the first place. That was the intent of the screening processes, and specifically the spousal notification measures that were introduced with the previous legislation, and still exist.

The problem I see currently is the way in which this is being framed, police often take things very literally. If the focus is entirely on cases where there has been a conviction, or a formal complaint, or someone has been confined to a mental hospital, you're going to miss a lot of the risk factors that we know often don't make it into formal systems.

Does that answer your question?

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

It does, and I appreciate that.

Following up a bit on what you just said, one of the witnesses in the previous panel—I believe it was Mr. Torino—challenged removing the five-year limit on background checks. I believe in the testimony we just heard there was a statement that there was no tangible benefit to removing the five-year limit on a background check.

Could you speak to that? What would be the benefits of removing that five-year limit?

[Wendy Cukier]

There are certainly people I have spoken to.... In fact, I believe a women from Mr. Holland's riding whose daughter was shot and killed said specifically that this provision would have made a difference.

I should have said this at the outset. The Supreme Court has said repeatedly there is no right to own guns. The United Nations has said we have a right to be safe, and states that do not properly exercise their responsibility to keep their citizens safe from firearms violence, particularly women and children, are not exercising their duty.

I think it's really a question of where you're putting your priority. What is the downside of opening it up for 10 years? It doesn't mean that automatically because you had a marijuana conviction when you were 16 years old that you'll never own a firearm, but it signals that the police have the discretion that the opening clause of the licensing provisions wants them to have. It says, “A person is not eligible to hold a licence if it is desirable, in the interests of the safety of that or any other person, that the person not possess a firearm”.

The risk factors that might make it undesirable for someone to own a firearm don't necessarily have a time limit on them.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Thank you for that.

That was helpful with regard to what someone said about the contrast with the right to be safe, as identified by the UN.

Which document is that in, by the way—about the right to be safe?

[Wendy Cukier]

It's Freedom from Fear.

You know, the Declaration of Human Rights talks about freedom from fear. It does not talk about the right to bear arms. Our Supreme Court has said repeatedly that there is no right to bear arms.

The U.S. rhetoric, which has framed a lot of this debate in Canada, is very troubling.