Public Safety Committee on Oct. 20th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

I call this meeting to order.

We're starting a little late. We will extend a little late. We can go a little further. We're still waiting for one witness, but I think as we proceed, the video conference witness will come on board with us.

I'd like to welcome you all to meeting 39 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. We will start by acknowledging that we are meeting on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin people.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of November 25, 2021. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely by using the Zoom application.

Pursuant to the order of reference of Thursday, June 23, 2022, the committee is resuming its consideration of Bill C-21, an act to amend certain acts and to make certain consequential amendments with regard to firearms.

We have today two panels of witnesses, with one panel of three witnesses per hour.

In the first hour, we will have by video conference the Centre culturel islamique de Québec and their spokesperson, Boufeldja Benabdallah. We'll give them an opportunity to make their statement when they join us.

With us today in person we have, from Danforth Families for Safe Communities, Ali Demircan, Ken Price and Claire Smith. Thank you.

From One By One Movement inc., we have Marcell Wilson, founder, and Savino Griesi, chief executive officer.

With that, each group will have an opportunity to give five minutes of opening remarks, after which we will proceed with rounds of questions.

We will start with Mr. Price, Ms. Smith and Mr. Demircan.

Go ahead, please, for five minutes.

[Ken Price, Member, Danforth Families for Safe Communities]

Mr. Chair and members of the committee, I am Ken Price. Let me introduce Claire Smith and Ali Demircan. We represent Danforth Families for Safe Communities. We're based in Toronto.

We experienced terror and tragedy from gun violence on a horrific night on July 22, 2018. It was a handgun that came to a retailer in one part of the country and was stolen and then used in Toronto to kill a girl and a teenager and injure 13 others that night. One of those injured was Ali, and another was my and Claire's daughter, Samantha. It is through the lens of that experience, therefore, and through our own subsequent findings as a grassroots group that emerged from that night that we have joined others in calling for a need for action to reduce the growing gun violence problem.

We're not here to be critical of all gun owners or of all gun ownership. Our group is made up of citizens with various levels of experience in the use of firearms, but since we were brought into this issue due to the tragedy, we are troubled that gun violence and homicide by gun have continued to grow.

We also agree that no one measure will be sufficient to combat this issue. We support Bill C-21 because it is a wide-reaching bill that has many aspects. It's not just about a freeze on handguns or a buyback of assault rifles—it has a number of items that we support—but other groups are going to talk about other measures and have given testimony in that regard.

We are going to focus on what has been called the “freeze” on handguns and the efforts to reduce the widely held private supply of handguns, which we believe is contributing to crime in this country.

It gives us no pleasure to make that statement. It gives us no pleasure to stand here and say that the domestic source of legally imported and licensed guns contributes to a significant portion of guns used in homicides and violence. As evidence, of course, we have our own experience of this being true. Through a survey of accredited news sources, we've compiled a list of incidents in which handguns were stolen or diverted, where straw purchases occurred or where licensed gun owners themselves were the ones carrying out the violence.

We combined this anecdotal and incidental information with our reading of Statistics Canada data. According to Statistics Canada reporting, for those guns that were successfully traced and used in a homicide, the number of guns traced to Canada was two and a half times greater than the number of guns traced to the United States. We realize that this number is likely to be challenged and is different from what other people are presenting in social media.

StatsCan also reports that the gun format that's primarily used in crime is the handgun, so it's not about all guns. We're not taking issue with the vast majority of gun owners who own rifles and shotguns. We are taking issue with the fact that handguns themselves are the problem.

Of course, we also conclude that there is an issue with guns coming across the border. We absolutely acknowledge that. We know that. We've talked to lots of groups that would acknowledge that as well, but we're here to say that there's not one problem to solve where supply is concerned. There are two problems to solve, and therefore the freeze is necessary, unfortunately.

In that regard, we have three comments we'd like to make about what has been proposed. All of these lead to some clarification and perhaps tightening of some of the exemptions, which I think are well-meaning but could lead to an undermining of the goal of freezing and reducing the number of handguns in the country.

First is the exemption for elite sports shooters. We think the wording needs to be clarified and tightened so that it is more clear that it's really the pistols being used in those competitions and not a general licence for handgun ownership.

We also ask that the program being supported is that which exists today. Related to this point, we're already seeing that other sport shooting organizations are coming forward and asking, “What about us?” IPSC is an example of that. Our concern is that those other organizations have very broad definitions with respect to how many and what kinds of handguns they can use. They have an open category, so virtually any handgun could qualify. We're concerned that it would undermine the objective of the bill, which is to freeze and reduce the handgun supply in Canada.

Second, we'd like to see a loophole closed that existed in our case. The person who had stolen a gun was able to buy magazines without having to present that they had an RPAL or a PAL and an ability to buy that. We would like to see that wherever a licence is required to buy a gun or ammunition, the magazine is included in that.

Third, suggestions have been made that perhaps the gun ranges themselves could get the business exemption. We understand that idea, although we're very concerned. We have seen evidence that gun ranges can be a target of theft. Therefore, should that go forward, we're opposed to this ownership model until or unless regulations are agreed to that would ensure the safety of all Canadians. We shouldn't back into that as an idea; it should be an idea that we construct.

Mr. Chair, thank you to all the MPs on this committee for their service. Maybe as Canadians we don't say that enough to our MPs. Thank you for your attention to this complex and difficult issue, and thank you for letting us make these statements today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you.

We go now to Mr. Wilson to make an opening statement. You have five minutes, please.

[Marcell Wilson, Founder, One By One Movement Inc.]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and Mr. Chair.

Once again I'm honoured to be here. More so, I'm honoured to speak on behalf of the people and the communities that the One By One Movement serves, ensuring that their voices are amplified.

I've had the privilege to speak as a subject matter expert on gang culture theory and violence prevention at a number of round tables and events on the impacts of violence, gun violence in particular.

Today I'm going to speak to you less formally than I normally would. Today I'm going to speak to you from the heart, simply as a human being, as a person with lived experience and as a proud Canadian.

Participating in these round tables, I consistently hear statistics and reports about people who live with and face a great deal of violence daily, yet in these settings I rarely hear from people who are experiencing first-hand the majority of gun violence. I feel this is one of the reasons that we are not seeing the progress we should in combatting this issue.

I see and hear people making a living and a name for themselves speaking on behalf of people and communities they don't really know or understand, for personal gain or political leverage. Some may think that's what I'm doing now, but there's a big difference between them and me. We're not the same.

As many of you know, I am a former gang member and organized crime figure in Canada and abroad, but before I was ever involved in a life of crime, I was a victim and a survivor of gun violence on a number of occasions.

I'd like to start by sharing with you a short story of the first encounter I had involving a firearm. I was about 11 years old, playing outside with a group of friends in the southwest end of Toronto, in a public housing complex called Swansea Mews. There was a group of older guys from my neighbourhood who were involved in bad things. Some of them relentlessly bullied us kids and terrorized the community. Though we were children, we had to learn to navigate and cope the best we could with this.

On this day, a known gunman who hung out in our area decided he was going to fire shots at us kids above our heads just to see us run. I remember hearing the zing of bullets passing us. This was entertaining to him, because when I looked back as I was running for my life, I remembered seeing him laugh. I'll never forget this day.

Now, as an adult, I can look back and isolate and identify. This is one of the many root-cause risk factors that helped to lead me down a path of self-destruction. I tell you this story because when I think about this incident and this individual at the time, if Bill C-21 had existed, or a bill like it, would it have prevented this traumatizing experience from happening to me? I strongly say that it would not. It would not have changed anything, because I'm confident he did not use a legal firearm to shoot at us that day. This man was not a citizen of Canada. He was a hardened criminal, and most definitely could not have acquired a licence to legally own a gun here.

Also, I'd like to tell you about a best friend of mine, who was a highly respected gangster at one point in his life. His name was Deurgueune Cisse. After a life of crime and the many traumas he was left with due to the terrible things and the violent acts he committed and to the violence he himself endured, he sadly took his own life.

I remember speaking to him the day leading up to it. He was extremely down and didn't believe that he could, or was good enough to, get back up again. He had made his decision and he was motivated. I wish he had been able to get the help he needed before it got as bad as it did. He did not use a firearm to take his life.

The reason I told these stories is to really drive home the point that we are wasting precious time focusing on the wrong things. Through decades of data collection, we have all learned what most of the root-cause risk factors are that lead society on a path of extreme violence. Let us focus on the cheaper, most logical solution, and that is prevention. Let us get these illegal guns off our streets and treat our less fortunate better. Let us focus more on the demand and less on the supply.

I am tired, and we are tired.

Thank you for listening.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you.

Our witness from Centre culturel islamique de Québec has joined us. I'll ask the clerk to briefly do a sound check, and then we'll continue with his statement.

Go ahead.

[Boufeldja Benabdallah, Spokesman, Centre culturel islamique de Québec]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, for your forbearance with this delay. I was not able to connect properly. Of course, we are still dinosaurs when it comes to new technologies.

That said, for more than five years, I have been involved with the Quebec mosque, which has suffered horribly because of handguns.

I would like to speak to you straight from my heart, and share my recommendations with you, hoping that this is in line with the fight against firearms so that we can find peace for ourselves, our families, children, schools and universities, and so that Canada remains a non-violent country, where people can live in freedom and safety.

To begin, I must tell you that the gun attack on the Quebec mosque was a turning point in our existence on Canadian soil. The killer, who exercised his legal right to purchase two kinds of firearms, namely, hand guns and assault weapons, did not hesitate to enter a place of worship and coldly murder six fathers, seriously injure five other people—one of whom is now a paraplegic and still has a bullet in his neck that the health authorities were unable to remove—and traumatize dozens of people.

In fact, the entire population of Quebec and Canada was hurt by this thoughtless act, which was emboldened by the sense of power that comes from having a firearm. A person with a firearm feels invincible. That feeling can lead the person to commit thoughtless acts and to kill people. This was not the only attack. We all know there have been others, including at the Polytechnique. Those 14 girls could have been builders of our society now. The attack at Dawson College was the same type of thing. There was the attack in Portapique, and others. Unfortunately, it is a long list. Should we be pessimistic? Yes, but be we must also remain open to the possibility of implementing regulations and raising awareness in order to combat this scourge called the “possession of firearms”.

We, the mosques, were extremely glad and grateful to have had the opportunity to see the introduction of this bill on May 30 of this year, an historic day. We are honoured to have played a role in this significant and historic victory for public safety in our great country of Canada. For five long years, we have advocated for a ban on handguns, because in less that two minutes, these weapons brought tragedy to our mosque: six fathers killed, 17 orphans, five injured people and the people of Quebec and Canada shaken by something they said could not happen in Canada. And yet, it did happen here because of firearms.

Minister Mendicino, whom we commend for his sincerity and dedication, gave Canadians what they wanted, a firearms ban and the phasing out of existing weapons. I am not telling you anything new, but we must commend him. We celebrated by calling on Canadians to convey their support to their municipal, provincial and federal elected officials who are committed to this fight.

We know that the firearms lobby will fight this bill tooth and nail. The imminent passage of Bill C‑21 will put an end to this lobby group's efforts and contribute to peace on our streets and in our schools.

We presented our 10-point proposal in various fora and on various media. We also presented our proposals to elected officials who have visited the Quebec mosque on many occasions, including the right honourable Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, honourable ministers Marco Mendicino, David Lametti, Ahmed Hussen, Omar Alghabra, Pablo Rodriguez and Jean‑Yves Duclos, along with MPs who are close to us and who have worked hard on this issue, including Rachel Bendayan and Joël Lightbound. Today, we would like to remind you of what we said to them; we are reiterating it and will reiterate it again: please listen to us and try to convince the other parties to work together to resolve this matter.

Here are the 10 points we wish to propose, we the mosques of Quebec who are part of this fight against firearms.

First, amend the bill as the minister promised to establish a broad and permanent definition of prohibited weapons, including all military-type semi-automatic weapons, which are not reasonable for use in hunting. We do not need weapons of war. I was born during the Algerian revolution and I saw the weapons of war that traumatized our parents, and I am still traumatized. We do not need weapons of war on Canadian soil.

Secondly, there must be a complete ban on the flow, sale...

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

I am sorry, Mr. Benabdallah.

We have to cut it off there. I hope those points are in your brief. We will be able to see them from there.

[Boufeldja Benabdallah]

Okay, that is right.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

I'm sorry. We have to carry on with the questions.

Thank you for joining us. I recognize we had some issues with the video conferencing. Thanks for bearing with us.

We'll go now to our first round of questions. We'll start with Ms. Dancho for six minutes, please.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very sincerely to all the witnesses for being here today. We greatly appreciate your candid testimony and sharing with the committee your thoughts on this bill and the country's approach to dealing with gun violence in general. On behalf of the Conservative Party, we are deeply sorry for the loss that you've experienced in your life as a result of violent crime and gun violence.

I've worked with this committee for a while now. Although we have different approaches by party to solve this, I can say quite confidently that we all take this very seriously and we want to see an end to gun violence in Canada. We are working very hard to achieve that.

I will start my questions with Mr. Wilson and his colleague. Thank you for both being here. It's an honour to finally meet you in person. Thank you for your contributions to many studies that we've had at the public safety committee.

Mr. Wilson, when you were here last February contributing to our guns and gangs study, you mentioned:

...when speaking on gun control, when we hear the phrase, it should always be synonymous with illegal gun crime and illegal gun trafficking as over 80% of the gun violence we are witnessing is committed with illegal firearms smuggled in from the USA.

You mentioned in your opening testimony that you experienced a life of crime for quite some time. Can you elaborate on that comment? How do criminals who commit gun violence...? Where do they get these guns from? Why do they have them?

Can you elaborate on that for the committee?

[Marcell Wilson]

Unfortunately, at one point in my life, I was a person who was involved at some level with importing and exporting firearms in this country. Now I look at what's happening in our communities and how easily accessible they are to very young children, and I know for a fact that most of the guns that are used now are guns that have been imported.

How do I know this? I know this because we work directly in communities with a lot of the gang-involved youth. Because of my background and my history, they speak a lot more openly with us than they would with you, law enforcement or other people. We do a lot of poking around and we do a lot of inquiring with these young guys. They speak openly with us, so we know maybe not the direct source, but we've challenged kids. We had the media come to us in one case to see how quickly we could source a weapon. It was under two hours, and it was done by a 17-year-old boy.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

It was under two hours in certain parts of...you're talking about Toronto. You can source an illegally obtained weapon. Anyone with any criminal background could get an illegal handgun within two hours, that's what you're....

You have a remarkable story with the One By One Movement. You completely turned your life around, and you're saving lives and pulling people out of a life of crime. Thank you for your contribution to society in that way. We need many more Marcell Wilsons and your colleagues across the country in all of our major cities.

It's that easy to obtain an illegal weapon. How can we, as policy-makers, possibly go about tackling that issue? How do we stop that from happening?

[Marcell Wilson]

We've spoken quite a bit about having an acute focus on the root-cause risk factors and the motivations behind why a child or a person would even want to pick up a gun,. If we can tackle that issue, we can focus a lot less on the tools of destruction.

For me, I had experiences and certain things that happened to me that built me up to wanting to react. I was angry due to certain social issues that were going on in my neighbourhood. I was angry that I grew up in what would be considered an impoverished neighbourhood and had to see the fancy houses and condominiums right across the street from me. I wondered why I couldn't have or acquire these things.

There are so many layers that we need to invest in before a murder happens, as opposed to focusing on the tool.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

That's attacking the root problems of poverty and crime and investing our resources there.

Would you say that gun trafficking is related to drug trafficking at all?

[Marcell Wilson]

They are directly linked, absolutely.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Are firearms used to defend drug turf and enforce gang rules? Is that what they're used for?

[Marcell Wilson]

One hundred per cent.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Thank you.

Bill C-21 does many things. One thing is to focus on freezing any new, legal, lawful ownership of handguns. Currently, we have trained, tested and vetted people who go through a very rigorous process and can get a restricted licence and purchase a handgun. It's focusing on those individuals.

Do you think focusing on those individuals will have any impact on what you're seeing in Toronto with the gang elements and guns? Do you see this bill meeting that need at all?

[Marcell Wilson]

From my direct experience, I don't recall there ever being a time when we had sourced any gun legally. Any of the guns that may have been from a legal source would come from a robbery or from them being taken. That was also a very rare occurrence. I don't see how, in any way....

Before I came here, I spoke to our youth and I spoke to guys who are currently in prison, always posing that question: Do you think something like this, the banning of any type of legal firearm, would help us?

The answer is 100% always the same: We never used legal firearms, or sought out to, because it was much easier to get them illegally.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Ms. Dancho.

We go now to Mr. Van Bynen for six minutes, please.

[Tony Van Bynen, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank our witnesses for arriving today. I just can't imagine the horrible tragedy that many of you have experienced. I extend my condolences to you for the very sad experiences in your life.

I think prevention needs to be a priority and outreach is critical, as we heard earlier. The national crime prevention strategy has arranged $665 million to support 684 crime prevention interventions.

Have you been able to access any of those crime prevention funds at all, Mr. Wilson? As part of your program, have you been able to access any of the crime prevention funding?

[Marcell Wilson]

Thank you for the question.

We have been at tables where funding was talked about. We have been at consultation round tables and have spoken about this money. To date, we have yet to receive any funding.

[Tony Van Bynen, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

To me, then, the question is this: Has the government not been reaching out to organizations such as yours to indicate to you the application process, or am I correct that you have just been providing advice and not receiving any support on any of your programs?

[Marcell Wilson]

They have reached out, and we have spoken to them. We have sort of been through the gamut, I guess, for lack of a better term, when it comes to understanding and learning the process of how to acquire funds or receive funding here. That's one of the issues or root causes we've identified: It's that organizations that are doing the real work may not be well versed in the application processes or the language. A lot of the time they are left out, because the process is very rigorous.