Mr. Chair, vice-chairs, honourable members, thank you for inviting us to address you on the subject of Bill C-71.
My name is Solomon Friedman. I'm a criminal defence lawyer and a managing partner of Edelson and Friedman LLP. I'm joined today by my associate Mr. Fady Mansour. We're both members of the Criminal Lawyers' Association.
As you may know, the association comprises over a thousand criminal defence lawyers, many of whom practise in the province of Ontario, but some of whom are from across the country. It's both a privilege and a pleasure to be given the opportunity to appear before this committee to express our views on this particular piece of legislation.
The Criminal Lawyers' Association supports criminal law reform that is modest, fundamentally rational, and supported by objective evidence. On each of these measures, Bill C-71, in our view, fails to meet the mark.
First, the proposed reforms in Bill C-71 are unsupported by the evidence. In fact, in presenting its rationale for this bill, the government has misrepresented the objective statistical data to create the appearance of a problem that simply does not exist. As a society, we are the poorer for it when government promotes criminal legislation on a misunderstanding or, worse yet, a willful manipulation of what it claims is empirical evidence.
On May 8, 2018, the honourable Minister of Public Safety, Ralph Goodale, told this committee that between 2013 and 2016, the number of criminal incidents involving firearms rose by 30%. Gun homicides in that period went up by two-thirds. Those numbers are alarming. They give the clear impression that gun crime and homicide by firearm specifically are a rampant and increasing problem in our society.
With the greatest of respect to the minister, that is simply not the case. The year 2013, the starting point for the purported trend, was not chosen at random. As we now know, 2013 represents a statistical aberration in terms of violent crime and homicide in Canada. That year saw the lowest rate of criminal homicide in Canada in 50 years. To put that in perspective, every single year since 1966 has been worse than 2013, and it's not surprising that the three years following 2013 would be worse as well.
The truth of the matter is that homicide by firearm, in fact, has been steadily declining in Canada since the mid-1970s, and when an appropriate sample size is taken, the alarming trend that the minister purported to identify is seen for what it is: a selective manipulation of statistical data. The rate of homicide by firearm, when viewed over a 10-year period, a reasonable sample size, has remained relatively stable. In fact, it was slightly lower in 2016 than it was 10 years earlier, in 2006.
The same lack of empirical evidence extends to Minister Goodale's contention, echoed by others who have testified before this committee, that there has been some dramatic change in the sources of firearms used in crimes. They claim that these guns are increasingly being traced to domestic sources, such as break and enters or straw purchasers. These claims are anecdotal and wholly unsupported by Statistics Canada research on this topic. I cite no greater authority than Lynn Barr-Telford, director general of health, justice and special surveys at Statistics Canada who stated at the recent guns and gangs summit, “We don't know...the origin of firearms involved in gun crime” in Canada.
Surely if the numbers cited by certain police representatives were based on hard evidence, word of this would have reached Statistics Canada. That, however, is not the case.
Second, this committee should bear in mind that there is no stand-alone scheme for regulating firearms in Canada outside of the criminal law. Accordingly, any violation, no matter how minor or technical, engages the criminal law process. As all justice system participants know well, the criminal law is a blunt tool. It is more akin to a sledgehammer than a scalpel, and most importantly, it is an ill-suited implement of public policy. Indeed, this legislation creates new criminal offences where none were needed. For example, Bill C-71 will make it an offence for a firearm owner to transfer a firearm—meaning to give, sell, or barter—to another person without first obtaining a reference number from the registrar of firearms. Let me be clear: It is already a criminal offence to transfer a firearm to an individual who is not authorized to possess it.
Section 101 of the Criminal Code prohibits that precise conduct. It is punishable by a maximum of five years' imprisonment. In fact, I have personally represented retailers who have been charged under the existing scheme for failing to check licence validity.
The government says that the new provisions under Bill C-71 are required to ensure that firearms are not transferred without lawful authority. Not surprisingly, the existing offence under section 101 is entitled “Transfer without authority”. However, under Bill C-71, one law-abiding licensed firearm owner can transfer a firearm to another law-abiding licensed firearm owner and still commit a criminal offence if the government is not duly notified. This does nothing more than create another trap for the unwary, a trap that carries with it criminal consequences. For what? It is not for actual public safety, but for the appearance of public safety.
With respect to one final area of Bill C-71 that is particularly worrisome, I'll give the balance of my opening time to my colleague, Mr. Mansour.