Public Safety Committee on June 7th, 2018

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

In the event that the applicant believes that the grounds were not appropriately applied, what recourse do they have to seek remediation?

[Rob O'Reilly]

With the exception of a refusal or a revocation because of a court order, the individuals do have legal recourse through a reference hearing at that point, in which case the CFO would have to demonstrate that the decision which he or she took was reasonable. The individual would have the opportunity to provide a counter argument at that point.

If the judge determined that the decision of the CFO was not reasonable, then, as Paula has indicated, they would have to give consideration to reversing their decision.

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

Okay.

I have one more question about paragraph (d). The headline of this particular clause only goes back five years, and the new addition under (d) reads:

is or was previously prohibited by an order - made in the interests of the safety and security of any person - from communicating with an identified person or from being at a specified place or within a specified distance of that place;

It's a PO, a prohibition order, right? Is that only going to go back to POs that are less than five years old, or is it going to go back to POs that are from 20 years ago?

Because of the way the headline of this clause of the bill is, and given the fact that there is discretion from the CFO to go back as far as they want to in certain circumstances, how do you expect that to be interpreted and implemented by the CFO, should this law pass?

[Nicole Robichaud, Counsel, Department of Justice]

Under the amended subsection 5(2), they're going to be removing “within the previous five years”, which means all of these criteria would be considered going back throughout the person's lifetime.

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

That's right.

That's the answer I was looking for.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

I find that the arguments being offered by my friends are getting to the point where they are repetitive. Each example being offered is almost a mirror of itself. The officials are answering, and I appreciate that. We all do. The answers that they are giving, however, are almost mirrors of themselves as well.

We've been debating this particular amendment for what seems like almost an hour—sorry, 45 minutes—and I wonder if we're anywhere close to voting on it.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

I don't disagree with your point that there is an element of repetitiveness in the questioning. However, that's not a point of order. Members are entitled to ask their questions. I would like it if honourable members focused those questions towards the end.

Mr. Fragiskatos does make the point that this has been a section that has gone over not only now but in the previous session.

Mr. Calkins.

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

That's fine. Mr. Fragiskatos is welcome to his opinion, but it's my right as a parliamentarian to do my duty.

My question now is moving on to paragraph (d). I wonder about the implications. Can we get the implications of how this is going to impact the Youth Criminal Justice Act?

If somebody is caught up as a youth through jealousy, immature relationships, or other things at that particular point in time, and some 15 or 20 years later, if they are now a mature adult in a relationship and want to go hunting, or if they want to obtain a firearms licence for whatever reason, is it the expectation that they are going to get caught up in this?

[Nicole Robichaud]

Neither this amendment nor anything in the bill impacts the current provisions of the Youth Criminal Justice Act. All the current restrictions on access to records after the period set out in the act would continue to apply.

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

What about somebody who's 18 or 19 years old who gets a prohibition order. Is that going to be under consideration? If somebody's in their forties now, and something happened 25 years ago when they were an adult, that will get looked at by the chief firearms officer at this particular point in time. Is that correct?

[Nicole Robichaud]

Yes.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Just to amplify Mr. Fragiskatos' concern, I direct members' attention to the rules of order, “Repetition is prohibited in order to safeguard the right of the House to arrive at a decision and to make efficient use of its time.” Although the principle is clear and sensible, it's not always easy to apply. There is considerable discretion in this regard, and we're close to exercising that discretion.

Thank you.

Mr. Motz.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

I have a couple of things to talk about. One, if we're trying to deal with safety, I find it rather offensive that, if this is the actual issue, we're trying to improve public safety through a firearms bill that has nothing really to do with it. It didn't have anything in it, until some of these amendments came forward, that we would want to limit debate and all that goes with it.

This amendment, although we had opportunity to talk briefly about it, was given to us this morning at the start of our committee. If we're going to be not just paying lip service to something, and we're legitimately concerned about dealing with public safety, then we—

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Chair, point of order.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

—deal with this the way it is. So yes, I do have a question, but in response to the point of order that's—

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

The point of order has precedence over the question.

Ms. Damoff.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

We're losing sight of what the amendment was for. The reason we left this was we thought there was consensus about the amendments. It's becoming obvious that there isn't consensus on the intent of this nor the wording of it. I'm a little confused as to why we need to continue debate.

It's not a new amendment. It is something that was modified, based on conversations we had for about an hour last meeting. I thought we were getting towards consensus, and it doesn't seem that we are, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

That's an observation, not a point of order.

Mr. Motz.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Chair, we talked about a number of statements that were made at committee on Tuesday, and again today there were a couple of comments on how, in the current system and moving forward in this new bill, there are always provisions for judicial review for an individual who may feel that their firearms have been.... They haven't been able to obtain a firearms licence, or they've had it revoked, or whatever. There is opportunity for judicial review.

Is there any indication, from experience, Mr. O'Reilly, of what it would cost an individual to go through that process where an error had been made in the first place, and we're trying to fix it at the front end so that we don't have law-abiding gun owners having to go through a judicial review unnecessarily?

Is there any indication of what that might cost?

[Rob O'Reilly]

Unfortunately, sir, I don't have any information that would answer that question.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Getting back to Ms. Damoff's question, we might be closer than it appears, but this is a big deal. Getting it right, making sure that we have language that's appropriate, is all we're trying to get at and trying to understand. I know the intent behind this, and I applaud the intent behind it, and I support the intent behind it. It's the language and the interpretation of that language and how it's going to be interpreted not only now but down the road.

We can hear from witnesses today, but these aren't the people who are going to be adjudicating this in the future. It's going to be a CFO down the road, and so that's why it's important that we have a firmer understanding of what this means and the implications of some of the language, as innocuous as it might appear. For example, in (d), as I said before, “was previously prohibited by an order” has huge ramifications.

Ms. Clarke, you mentioned the exclusions before we took a break. There are exclusions that you indicated in trying to understand court orders. There are some common law peace bonds that apply, and there are some that don't. I'm looking at that and asking who decides what they are.

Right now the way it's read, you know that, but is the CFO going to know that? That's my point. If there are some orders that do not apply to the ability for a CFO or someone else to make that adjudication where someone is going to have their PAL revoked or someone is going to not be able to obtain their licence, then we need some clarity around that, because I don't see anything here that talks about the exclusions that you mentioned previously.

That caught my attention. Who's going to know that, and how is it going to be interpreted?

[Paula Clarke]

I'm taking your question not so much as a Criminal Code question, but it's more of a police records question, so I'm going to ask my colleagues from the RCMP to answer that question.

[Rob O'Reilly]

Sir, I would maybe provide this. If I can speak on behalf of the chief firearms officers, when we're talking about subsection 5(2), the very last part of subsection 5(2) before we get into the paragraphs says the CFOs “shall have regard for”. What we're talking about here are certain things that the CFO, in essence, must consider when making a determination of eligibility.

Prior to these amendments, that wasn't an exclusive list, “shall have regard” meaning they must consider these things. Subsection 5(1) of the act says, “A person is not eligible to hold a licence if it is desirable, in the interests of the safety”, so CFOs do more broadly look, and have always more broadly looked at eligibility to hold a licence beyond what we are currently talking about under subsection 5(2) right now.

When you speak about exclusions, CFOs will look at anything that is brought to their attention, which may make a person ineligible, according to subsection 5(1), “in the interests of safety”. I don't think there are any hard exclusions of things that they will not look at, if they believe they are relevant in the interests of safety.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

That brings me to exactly another point.

You've worked within the current legislation for many years, running the firearms program in Canada, and have been working and involved with CFOs and all those interpretations from the different CFOs. We also know that there have been instances where firearms have been issued to individuals who fell through these cracks that already existed, because these provide additional language around some of the things that may be more ambiguous in subsection 5(2) of the act, but they still should never have acquired a firearm.

I'm thinking of the testimony we heard from Ms. Irons, who explained the offences that her daughter's killer had committed prior to even obtaining a firearms licence. As horrific and tragic as that incident was, this act was in place previous to that and would have prevented him from acquiring a licence and therefore legally acquiring a firearm, yet he still did.

I don't know if there's any foolproof way that this change in language completely removes the human error and allows someone not to acquire a firearm when they shouldn't have one. Really, all the new amendment has done is added more language around what already exists in subsection 5(2). I don't see anything else there that doesn't exist between paragraphs (a) and (c) other than some clarity of language around threatening conduct or an order, but the order could be covered off as “a history of behaviour”. That's included in paragraph (c), and as you just said, the CFOs look at a broad range of issues when they're dealing with a licence, so paragraph (c) covers all those things. Really, in the interests of public safety, we've just added more words that already exist in subsection 5 (2).

I'm curious to know, in your opinion, will the new, improved language prevent what we heard from Ms. Irons, who told us what happened? What wasn't said was that it wasn't that the law allowed that guy to get a PAL. It was that someone who was interpreting that law and applying that law had made an error.

Will this new language prevent that from happening?