Public Safety Committee on Oct. 20th, 2022

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Let's specifically turn, Inspector Rowe, to the issue of being able to order these component parts by mail.

What are specific measures you would like to see in this legislation to help ensure that it is something that is stopped or at least hindered substantially, so as to limit the access folks have in finding the parts they need to be able to build these ghost guns?

[Insp Michael Rowe]

Naturally, it needs to be a thorough, broad approach, having some regulations or prohibitions on the importation of firearms parts. Regulating the importation of firearms parts is key, as well as an educational program to educate people on why the importation and sale and possession of these firearms parts is being regulated. We also need to provide our border services, our partners at the RCMP and other municipal police agencies with the tools and the firearms enforcement teams required to go out and conduct the investigations to dissuade and disrupt the entry of these parts into our country.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Inspector, I'd like to turn our attention now to the consequences of legal firearms and suicides.

We had a number of physicians testify before this committee earlier this week. They talked about the impact of access to legal weapons in homes on suicide, and the impact it had on them as medical professionals, based on what they saw. It was the impact of easy access to legal firearms in homes with respect to people being able to take their lives.

As a police officer, can you share your perspectives on what you, the VPD and other law enforcement have seen in terms of access to legal weapons and suicide, and the impact it has, not just on families but also on the service?

[Insp Michael Rowe]

I very much sympathize with those witnesses, because I too have had to react to personal experience in suicides and firearms and their use. It's tragic. Mental health disorders and all of the different factors that would lead a person to take their own life using a firearm all require as much attention and funding as we can possibly give them.

As the chief mentioned, section 117 of our Criminal Code, and potentially these new red or yellow flag laws, could allow us tools for people—maybe even medical professionals—to step forward and identify when somebody who is a legal firearm owner is potentially experiencing a mental health crisis. We would not only be able to limit their access to their lawfully owned firearms, but also, hopefully, be able to provide them with the support they need, so that they are able to recover from that mental health crisis without it getting to the point of suicide.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Inspector.

Thank you, Mr. Noormohamed.

Ms. Michaud, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here.

Mr. Friedman, I see you putting in your earpiece, thank you. I will ask you some questions in French. I appreciate your opening remarks. Your position seems quite clear.

Can you understand me?

[Solomon Friedman]

We don't hear you on the translation. I'm plugged in, but I don't hear anything through it at all.

Now I hear you.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

I was saying that your position was quite clear in your opening remarks. I was reading a Global News article from last June in which you said you were opposed to the red flag system proposed by the Liberal government. You said the following:

...a proposed “red flag” law from the Liberals could be taken advantage of by bad actors and lead to “swatting,” where law enforcement is called on an individual for illegitimate reasons.

What I find interesting in your position is that the firearms lobby often says that the Liberals and people who want firearms legislation don't know anything about guns, because there is already a red flag system. Just about anyone can report an individual under the Canadian firearms program.

So I am trying to understand your position. What specifically are you afraid of in Bill C‑21 regarding red flags?

[Solomon Friedman]

Thank you very much for that question. It's an excellent question and an important issue. I echo much of what Chief McFee said about this mechanism, which is that right now it is unknown exactly who is going to enforce it.

I have two primary concerns. The first one is access to the courts. Access to justice is an enormous problem right now. I can tell you that I spent the past two days, as I do many days, litigating at our Ontario Court of Justice. We are waiting 12 to 18 months for a trial in those courts. The reason is that our judges and justices of the peace are at capacity.

What we're doing here is by cutting out that screening mechanism of police investigation, we're essentially inviting people to flood the courts. They're almost all going to be self-represented individuals, which poses all sorts of other challenges. That's not where they should be going. They should be going to the police. Under section 117 of the Criminal Code, the police have the authority to act immediately, with or without a warrant, when there is a genuine concern to public safety. That's very important. If there are exigent circumstances or if there is a pressing public safety concern, the police don't need to go to a judge. That's exactly how it should be, because when it comes to a potential firearm safety threat, the police should act first and then ask questions later. That already happens.

Who is going to be using this mechanism? It will be the people who have gone to the police with a complaint, and the police, after even the most preliminary investigation, have deemed the complaint meritless. In other words, they have deemed that there is some personal vendetta at stake here or that there is simply no public safety concern. I'd say that happens in a minority of cases. Those people would be able to go to the court anonymously, interestingly enough, and then engage very scarce justice system resources.

That's an enormous concern, because you're basically creating a funnel such that the only people who are going to access that resource are people who have been denied by the police. They've been denied by the police because the police take their jobs very seriously.

I would be very, very curious to see any data whatsoever that supports the contention that individuals have gone to police with a public safety concern with respect to firearms and have been ignored. I can tell you this: In almost 15 years of practice, I've never seen that. I've seen—and I'd say this as a defence lawyer, with respect to Chief McFee and Inspector Rowe—far more overzealous police enforcement than absolutely non-reactive.

Once again, it's a solution in search of a problem. All it will do is clog up our resources. It could present public safety dangers, because if Chief McFee's or Inspector Rowe's officers are told to enforce essentially a bogus complaint that they have already pre-screened, they need to send armed officers into that situation. They will need to engage armed officers in a confrontation with a firearms owner. Because they've pre-screened the complaint, they know there's nothing wrong with that person, but the confrontation automatically creates real public safety concerns.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

So, if I understand correctly—and quite frankly, I don't know if this is the case right now—, a victim or someone who is afraid for their life because a firearm is present should be able to rely simply on a police officer, who could go to the scene and confiscate the weapon, even if it had been obtained legally.

As I said, I am not sure if a police officer has the right to do that now, but you are suggesting that justice should be set aside and that police officers alone should be given that responsibility. Is that correct?

[Solomon Friedman]

Well, it's not about setting aside justice; it's about the fact that the police have a statutory mandate to protect the public.

I can tell you this, as I'm sure our police witnesses today can as well: The moment the words “firearms” or “firearm” or “gun” or “pistol” are uttered on a 9-1-1 call or complaint, it's not one police officer who is responding, but two, three, four, five and whoever is in the area, because police take those complaints extremely seriously. As I said, I'm an open-minded guy as a defence counsel—we occasionally are—and I'd love to see a shred of data that people are being ignored when they call the RCMP Canadian firearms program and report firearms public safety concerns or make those complaints to the police.

Once again, we're legislating this whole scheme. There will be new applications and forms and judges' time taken up when there is not an iota of evidence that there is any need that has to be met.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Thank you.

Apparently, I have just 30 seconds left.

In your opening remarks, you said the government relied on skewed data to introduce Bill C‑21.

Can you be more specific? Which data are you referring to?

[Solomon Friedman]

You know even better than I do that you're going to have credible and reliable witnesses use the same dataset and draw different conclusions from it.

Data is very much in the eye of the beholder, but using it for explicit partisan purposes just can't be the basis of good criminal law decision-making. We require data, not anecdote, in order to pass criminal laws that have real criminal law consequences.

I gave the example of crime guns as one of the examples of skewed data. It's a term that means whatever the party using wants it to mean. Another one is when we talk about trends in violent crime. Whichever party wants there to be more violent crime will self-select a portion of that data and say that in the past five years, we can see it's increasing. The party that doesn't want it will say, “Look, since the 1970s, we've had a rapid decline in violent crime.”

For example, take handgun crime. It's a great example. You can look at the last StatsCan report and see that from 2009 until 2014, handgun crimes make up the same proportion of firearms violent offences as they do from 2015 until 2020, so when we talk about a rise, I'm very skeptical of the application of the data, not the underlying data itself.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you.

We go now to Mr. MacGregor for six minutes, please.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Mr. Friedman, I'd also like to continue on the red flag law, because this aspect has received a lot of mixed feedback from many different sectors.

On May 16, which I grant was before Bill C-21 was introduced, there was a letter to the minister from several organizations, including the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, Women's Shelters Canada, the Ending Violence Association of Canada, White Ribbon and the Canadian Labour Congress. It's quite a broad cross-section of Canadian society.

I'll quote from the letter: “Shifting the onus of enforcement to women and third parties, as Bill C-21's “Red Flag” provisions attempt to do, is a guaranteed route to increased fatality.” Could you give your comment on that aspect?

I know Bill C-21 is also trying to protect the identity of the complainant. If we don't need to add that to the Criminal Code, can you explain how the police would protect the confidentiality of someone who might be in danger?

[Solomon Friedman]

That's a great question.

Let's all focus on what we're trying to accomplish here with this law. What we're trying to establish is that there is a public safety concern about someone who is in possession of firearms, either legally or illegally. If there's a concern about someone who has illegal guns, this process can be followed as well. We want the police to take possession of reliable information and then carry out some enforcement. What we really want is for it to be preventive enforcement action. This provision is not about charging people for criminal offences; it's about preventing harm. That's what we're all trying to accomplish.

Right now, the system works as follows. The police get information, and it can be a complaint or a call to them. I agree that putting the onus on women and other victims of violent crime to go to the courthouse themselves and stand in front of a justice of the peace and plead their case in this application is bananas. I say that as someone who knows how the court system works. However, the police should be able to take that information and, if they have time—in other words, if it's not immediately an emergency—they can draft a warrant or they can go seize the guns and draft the warrant afterward.

With regard to that warrant, there is an important point about confidentiality. Warrants are issued “ex parte”. I know we all hate Latin, but I'll give you a little bit of a Latin lesson. “Ex parte”means without the other side present, and that makes sense. You don't want to tell the gun owner, lawful or not, that the police are coming to get your guns, so why don't you come to this court hearing? That makes sense.

Police are permitted to rely on confidential informants. Confidential informant privilege is the second-highest protected privilege in this country, after the privilege that I get, solicitor-client privilege. Although, once again, Inspector Rowe and Chief McFee might disagree, they're pretty close there, because we recognize that effective law enforcement requires confidential informants. Those provisions exist already, and the police once again also have counsel who can advise them about these authorizations.

Essentially, directing victims of crime who are already traumatized and victimized to go get their own self-help mechanism and go to the court would be like requiring people to lay private criminal information when a crime has been committed. Does that exist? Yeah, but it's one in a million that it happens. The police are taking this problem seriously, and they have effective enforcement tools.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

I appreciate that. Thank you.

I only have just under three minutes left.

Maybe I will address my questions to our police witnesses. I'll start with you, Chief McFee.

We've heard a lot of feedback from the airsoft community with respect to Bill C-21. They are desperately trying to find a way to not only acknowledge the concerns that law enforcement has but also trying to keep alive a sport that they're very passionate about and that many members enjoy playing. They've come up with suggestions such as requiring a minimum age of 18 to purchase airsoft, opaque carrying cases and maybe a type of licensing system.

Do you have any feedback on what the airsoft community is suggesting to our committee as a way forward that offers a compromise?

[Chief Dale McFee]

No. I haven't seen any of the airsoft feedback that you would have the privilege to.... Certainly I can give evidence on what I was saying in relation to tighter restrictions and regulations on airsoft. We do see a lot of replica firearms used in the commission of offences. The bottom line is that they're treated as real firearms. Without seeing that....

As Inspector Rowe says, a lot of these can be converted. To think of what the present suggestion is and what the concern is, I'm not sure if any police witnesses or anybody has actually had the chance to look at the—

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Inspector Rowe, I do want you to testify about this, so this question is for you.

You've talked about how airsoft guns can be converted to fire real ammunition. I went and saw the airsoft community play their game. They pulled apart their airsoft rifle to show me the internal mechanisms. They countered by saying that it would require someone with very specific knowledge and technical know-how to make that kind of conversion.

Just to help our committee understand, when that conversion location was discovered, was it very technical knowledge to convert an airsoft rifle to fire real ammunition?

[Insp Michael Rowe]

Thank you for the question, sir.

I would respectfully suggest that specific knowledge, technical abilities and technical instructions are readily available on the Internet to just about anyone nowadays. With a small amount of practice and very easily accessible tools, people can conduct very complex and specific machining mechanisms on different firearms.

I would suggest that the best way for airsoft to save their sport, as you said, would be to move away from the extremely realistic-looking airsoft guns that we're seeing produced nowadays. As the chief just mentioned, it is virtually impossible to tell the difference between a high-quality airsoft gun and its real counterpart. They are designed to look identical to existing real firearms, right down to the manufacturers' stamps on them. Some have some type of serialized number on them so that they appear to be manufactured firearms.

That is part of the culture of the sport, perhaps, or something that people are looking for. They need to move away from that. It's very easy to tell the difference between a—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

I'm sorry, Inspector. I have to cut you off there.

Thank you, Mr. MacGregor.

We have a hard stop at 13 minutes after the hour. By my timing, that's six minutes from now. I'm going to give every party a minute and a half, and I'll have to be brutal about the time.

Mr. Ruff, please go ahead. You have a minute and a half.

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have a quick question to all the witnesses: Is an assault weapon a fully automatic firearm or a semi-automatic firearm?

[Solomon Friedman]

In our Criminal Code and the Firearms Act, there is no definition of the term “assault weapon”, nor is there a generally accepted technical definition. In general, the term “assault rifle”, which is a technical term and not a legal term, refers to a select-fire light-ammunition-firing rifle that can fire both semi-automatic and fully automatic.

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

You said fully automatic.

Chief McFee and Inspector Rowe, would you agree with Mr. Friedman's definition?

[Insp Michael Rowe]

I would suggest that I don't like to use that term to describe firearms.